OrlandodiLasso.
OrlandodiLasso.
In the duke’s chapel were upward of ninety singers and players, several of them composers of merit, all of them musicians of ability. The choir singing was well balanced, and correct in pitch, even through the longest compositions. The general order of the ducal service was for the wind and brass instruments of the orchestra to accompany the mass on Sundays, and festival days, and, on the occasion of a banquet, to play during the earlier courses of the dinner. The strings, under Morari as conductor, then enlivened the remainder of the feast until the dessert, when Lasso and his choir of picked voices would finish the entertainment with quartets, trios, or pieces for the full choir. For chamber music, all the instruments would combine. The duke and his family were keenly interested in Lasso’s work, passionately fond of music in itself and proud of the celebrity of their chapel master. It is one of the instances where reverence and appreciation came to the artist during his lifetime; and it is not to be doubted that these fortunate circumstances had a tremendous influence on the master’s work. His industry and fertility were prodigious. Compositions amounting to two thousand or more are accredited to him—masses, motets, magnificats, passion music, frottole, chansons and psalms. There are two hundred and thirty madrigals alone. Following the lead of Willaert, he sometimes used the divided choir and composed forit, and also showed himself not indifferent to the growing taste for psalm singing.
The Seven Penitential Psalms, composed at the duke’s request, are for five voices, some numbers with two separate movements for each verse, the final movement,Sic erat, for six voices. Each psalm is a composition of some length, though modern ideas as to their tempi, and therefore as to the time required for their performance, show considerable variation. ‘It is not true that Lasso composed the Penitential Psalms to soothe the remorse of Charles IX, after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, but it is more than probable that they were sung before that unhappy monarch, and his musical sense must indeed have been dull, if he found no consolation and hope expressed in them. This is no everyday music, which may charm at all seasons, or in all moods; but there are times when we find ourselves forgetting the antique forms of expression, passing the strange combinations of sounds, almost losing ourselves in a new-found grave delight, till the last few moments of the psalm—always of a more vigorous character—gradually recall us as from a beautiful dream which “waking we can scarce remember”.... So unobtrusive is its character that we can fancy the worshippers hearing it by the hour, passive rather than active listeners, with no thought of the human mind that fashioned its form. Yet the art is there, for there is no monotony in the sequence of the movements. Every variety that can be naturally obtained by changes of key, contrasted effects of repose and activity, or distribution of voices, are here; but these changes are so quietly and naturally introduced, and the startling contrasts now called “dramatic” so entirely avoided, that the composer’s part seems only to have been to deliver faithfully a divine message, without attracting notice to himself.’[121]
De Lasso’s secular compositions are placed by critics almost unanimously even above his ecclesiastical work. The madrigals and chansons reveal force and variety of treatment, bold experiments with chromatics, a freer modulation and a keen sympathy for the popular elements of music. ‘Lasso shed lustre on, and at the same time closed, the great epoch of the Belgian ascendancy, which, during the space of two hundred years, had given to the world nearly three hundred musicians of marvellous science.’[122]The decline and fall of the Netherland school, which began with the death of its last great master, Lasso, are ascribed by Fétis to the political disturbances and wars of the sixteenth and succeeding centuries. But it seems more probable that the intricacies of the contrapuntal art created a desire for simpler methods. The genius of Italy and Germany, upon whose soil the last Netherland masters flourished, supplied the very qualities which brought the art to perfection.
It has already been related how, even as early as 1322, the liberties which careless, ignorant, or sacrilegious singers took with the Roman service had called forth denunciations from the papal chair. The genius of the Netherland schools, dominating church music as it did for a space of two hundred years, was, like Janus, two-faced. On the one hand, it developed a musical technique so complete and perfect in form that any further progress without an entire change of principle seemed impossible; and, on the other, it fostered a dry, mathematical correctness that led, at its worst, to an utter disregard of expression and feeling. Only the genius of a Josquin or a Lasso renderedlearning subservient to beauty of expression and carried out the true mission of art.
In Rome, however, no master had yet appeared who was great enough to force into the background all the unsanctioned innovations by which unscrupulous musicians sought to reach the popular taste. From the time of the return of the popes from Avignon (1377) Roman church music had been a continual source of dissatisfaction to the Curia. As has been pointed out, the plain-chant became more and more overladen with contrapuntal embellishments; the mass sometimes exhibited a labored canon worked over a long, slowcantus firmus, the different voices singing different sets of words entirely unconnected with each other. Sometimes, again, the ritual was enlivened by texts beginning with the wordsBaisez moy; Adieu, mes amours; or the much torturedOmme armé, of which the tunes were as worldly as the text. If these objections were lacking, another was likely to be present in the absurdly elaborate style, which rendered the words of so little importance that they might as well not have existed at all. The mass, ‘bristling with inept and distracting artifices,’ had lost all relation to the service it was supposed to illustrate. ‘It was usual for the most solemn phrases of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, or Agnus Dei to blend along the aisles of the basilica with the unedifying refrains of the lewd chansons of Flanders and Provence.’[123]In this manner the beautiful ritual was either degraded by pedants into a mere learned conundrum, or by idlers into a sacrilegious and profane exercise; and the reproofs of popes and councils had, so far, not availed to keep out these signs of deterioration, much less to lift church music to the level of the sister arts.
In this situation the Council of Trent was forced to recognize the degradation of music and to take up thequestion of a thorough and complete reform. In 1564 Pope Pius IV authorized a commission of eight cardinals to carry out the resolution of the council, whose complaints were mainly upon the two points indicated above—first, the melodies of thecanti firmiwere not only secular, but sung to secular words, while the other parts often sang something else; secondly, the style had become so excessively florid as to obscure the words, even when suitable, and render them of no account. Some of the members of the council, it is claimed, declared that it was better to forbid polyphony altogether than to suffer the existing abuses to continue. In the passionate desire for the purification of the ritual even Josquin’s works had been abandoned, not because of any lack of admiration for them, but because he shared necessarily in the general condemnation of all music not Gregorian. A modest and devoted composer, however, had already attracted the attention of two of the members of the pope’s commission, Cardinals Borromeo and Vitellozzi, and it was to him they now turned in their need.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was born in 1526[124]of humble parentage in Praeneste, or Palestrina, a town in the campagna four hours from Rome. Early in life he came to the Imperial city, studied with one of the excellent masters resident there, and then returned to his native town to become organist in the cathedral. In 1547 he married the daughter of a tradesman, by whom he had several children. In 1551 Pope Julius III called him to Rome as choirmaster of the St. Giulia Chapel at St. Peter’s, where he succeeded Arcadelt. Three years later, after the publication of a volume of masses, dedicated to the pope, Palestrina received an appointment as singer in the papal choir. He had a poor voice, he was a layman, and married. Each one of these reasons was sufficient, according to the constitution of theRoman College, to forbid his appointment, and Palestrina hesitated in his acceptance of the post. Not wishing, however, to offend his powerful patron, and naturally desirous of obtaining a permanent position, he resigned his office at the St. Giulia chapel and entered the pontifical choir. This appointment was supposed to be for life, and the young singer may well have felt discouraged when, after four years, a reforming pope, Paul IV, dismissed him with two other married men. In place of his salary as singer the pope awarded him a pension of six scudi (less than six dollars) a month. With a wife and family such a reduction of income seemed nothing less than ruin to Palestrina, and, stricken with nervous fever, he took to his bed. A little more courage, however, might have served him better; for his dismissal did not spell ruin. In two months he was invited to fill the post of choir master at the Lateran, and his fortunes again brightened. He was able to keep his pension, together with the salary accorded him in his new position. After six years he was transferred to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he remained for ten years, his monthly salary being about sixteen dollars. In 1571 he was reappointed to his old office of chapel master at the Vatican.
Palestrina was chapel master at the Santa Maria Maggiore at the time of the appointment of the commission for the reform of church music. The Cardinals Borromeo and Vitellozzi, both active members, recommended that one more trial be made to harmonize religious requirements with the better taste of the people. A story has prevailed for centuries that Palestrina was requested to write a mass which should serve as a model of what the music of the sacred office should be, and that he submitted three works, which were first performed with great care at the house of Cardinal Vitellozzi, before a group of clergy and singers. Therewas an immediate and enthusiastic verdict in favor of the compositions. The first two were good, and were sufficiently praised; but the third, theMissa Papæ Marcelli, as it was afterward called in honor of an earlier pope, was felt to be the epitome of all that was noble and dignified in ecclesiastical music, the crown and glory of the service itself. It was first sung in the papal chapel in 1565. In appreciation of the noble work, Palestrina was made official composer to the pontifical choir—a post created especially for him—and succeeding popes confirmed him in his office as long as he lived.
The story of the commission of cardinals and the musical reforms instituted by the Council of Trent has been so emphasized by some historians as to represent Palestrina as the ‘savior’ without whose services church music would virtually have ceased to exist. Such a view, however, requires some modification. Church music was not ‘saved’ by Palestrina in any such sense, though its debt to him is, nevertheless, almost inestimable. There was never any intention on the part of the cardinals to abolish it altogether from the church; but they had long been seeking a form and a style which should be intelligible, acceptable both to the devotee and the layman of cultivated musical taste, and suitable to the office which it holds in the sacred service. Ambros goes so far as to deny that there was any cause for such wholesale purification; but, in view of the facts cited, this is evidently an error. That the evil was widespread is proved by the action that provincial synods took, in following the example of the Council of Trent, Milan and Cambrai in 1565, Constance and Augsburg in 1567, Namur and Mechlin in 1570.
From the time of Josquin attempts had been made by one and another of the masters mentioned in this chapter to make a more suitable connection between text and melody, to simplify the contrapuntal writing,and to put expression into their art. To some extent, as has been seen, they accomplished their purpose. Josquin, Festa, Gombert, Morales, Rore, and especially Willaert and Lasso, have all left evidences of their noble endeavor in this direction. It was left to Palestrina, however, to achieve a high level of style, the excellence of which was reached by the other masters only in isolated instances; and to prove to the cardinals that the music of the church could be lifted to its true dignity. He differs, not in form, but in æsthetic principle, from his contemporaries; but it is precisely that difference which raised Palestrina to the pinnacle of fame.
The outward facts of his later life offer little that need detain the reader. Among his patrons were popes and princes, but they did not, on the whole, distinguish themselves by kindness or generosity to the musician. Jealousy among members of the choir with which he was so long connected was a constant source of unpleasantness, and his faithful work was meagrely rewarded. His largest regular earnings amounted to something like thirty dollars a month, and he apparently never dreamed of any revenue from the sale of his works. Indeed, it is unlikely that any very substantial reward ever came to him with his added honors as a composer. Neither could he have added much to his gains by teaching, for in the whole course of his life he taught but seven private pupils, three of whom were his own sons. Continuous poverty was accompanied by domestic griefs of the deepest kind. Three sons, all giving promise of inheriting the father’s intellect and genius, died one after another; the wife with whom he was especially happy died in 1580; and the one remaining son became a profligate and worthless spendthrift. It may be added that not long after the death of his first wife he married a wealthy widow and so was well provided for till the end of his life.