To Lully as a musician belongs the credit of having given definite form to his overtures. The so-called French overture as he established it was generally in two parts or movements—the first slow and serious, the second lively and in vigorous, fugal style. Sometimes a third movement recalling the first was added. These overtures were much admired in their day and during the next century, and the form was adopted by most of the German composers as the first movement of the orchestral suite, and by Handel for overtures to his oratorios. Lully seems to have been most successful in instrumental music of a ‘noble and martial kind.’ Marches from his operas were actually played for soldiers in the field, and ‘when the prince of Orange wanted marches for his troops, he had recourse to Lully, who sent him one.’ All of Lully’s airs and especially his dance tunes have a simplicity and a clearness of outline which secured to them a popularity not forgotten even to-day. It is music easy to remember, vigorous in rhythm and in sentiment, positive and definite, often poor in harmony and grace and never subtle, but on the other hand never vague orweak. As far as it goes it goes unfalteringly and with a sureness that challenges respect and is at times superb.
After the death of Lully, early in 1687, French opera subsisted upon what he had left it. There was no man to take over his supreme dictatorship and until 1723, when Rameau began to write for the stage, no operas of any influence were written in Paris. Conventional form was too strong even for a man like Charpentier, whose musical gifts seem to have been higher than Lully’s. Desmarets, Des Touches and Campra are hardly more than imitators of Lully. Lully stands alone in the history of French opera during the seventeenth century as absolute a despot in the realm of music as his great patron, Louis XIV, over the lands of Europe. He won his place by intrigue, he kept it by an enormous strength of will and perseverance and by shrewd observation of the court taste.
There was no more genuine critical appreciation of music in France during the gorgeous reign of Louis XIV than there was in Italy, Germany or England at the same time. According to M. Combarieu,[140]there was no more real public than there were true critics—a few wits writing verses and publishing their dislikes or their flatteries, their naïve admiration for banal prowess in virtuosity. The mark of the king is on all music; music for the king’s ballets, for the king’s opera, for the king’s suppers, for the king’s fêtes, and above it all the haughty, majestic king. Lully and Racine, Lully and Molière!
In salon music courtly elegance shines in miniature. After the death of Lully a young man grew into prominence who was to win from the king his ownappellation, the Great—François Couperin. He was born of a family of famous musicians in Paris in 1668. From 1693 he was organist to the king in the chapel at Versailles, and in 1696 he was elected organist of St. Gervais, a post which had been held for many years by members of his family; but though he is said to have been an excellent organist, his fame now rests upon his skill in playing and writing for theclavecin. He was private teacher to princes and princesses, to the highest ladies of the land, and never by one note did he offend against the precise and elegant etiquette in the midst of which he was formed. He was an exquisite dainty stylist in music, a painter of delicate miniature portraits. Porcelain is not more fragile than his music, nor crystals of frost clearer cut. There is no suggestion of feeling too deep for elegance. A touch of courtly tenderness, a mood of courtly melancholy are thenadirof his emotion. His little works for theclavecinare masterpieces of form and style. They never suggest the great power of music to express the fire of man’s heart and the struggle of his soul.
Lacking the daring brilliance of Scarlatti’s sonatas, they are none the less perfectly suited to the thin, frosty instrument for which they were written. For many years they stood as perfect models of harpsichord style and their influence can be traced in the works of all his contemporaries, even in those of J. S. Bach. Four sets of them were printed in 1713, 1717, 1722, and 1730. There are twenty-seven suites orordres, each containing a varying number of little pieces which no longer bear dance names nor emphasize dance rhythms, but are given suggestive, dainty names after the style of Gaultier and Chambonnières. Many of them are portraits of court ladies of the time.La douce et piquante,La majestueuse,L’enchantresse,L’engageante,L’attendrissante,L’ingénue, etc. Others affect the fashionable pastoral romance, suchasLes bergeries,Le barolet flottant,La fleurie, ou la tendre Nanette; others are bits of delicate realism,Les petits moulins à vent,Le carillon de Cythère, etc.; and a few have highly colored names such asFureurs bachiquesandLes enjouements bachiques. Besides theseordreshe published transcriptions of works by Corelli and Lully which were calledApothèse de Corelli, andApothèse de l’incomparable Lully.
In all his work there is an unblemished purity of style, a charm of melody, a delicate sense of harmony. They are all very highly ornamented with trills, mordants, turns, etc., which often sound too heavy on the modern pianoforte, but which were necessary in music for the harpsichord with its thin tone and lack of all sustaining power. His ‘Art of Playing the Harpsichord,’ published in 1717, had an enormous influence. A passage of it almost brings Couperin, court clavecinist, before our eyes. These are his directions for having a correct appearance when playing: ‘One should turn the body a little to the right while at the harpsichord. Do not keep the knees too close together; have the feet parallel, but the right foot a little forward. One can easily correct oneself of the habit of making faces while playing by putting a mirror on the desk of the harpsichord. It is much more becoming not to mark time with the head, the body, or the feet. One must affect an easy appearance before theclavecin, without looking too fixedly at any one object, nor on the other hand looking vague. Look at the audience, if there is one, as if one were doing nothing in particular (this for those who play without their notes).’
Undoubtedly here is a refinement of art which has never since been equalled, a neatness and precision in every detail; but it brought with it a self-consciousness and a suppression of virile emotion, made of music an exquisite toy and of the musician a courtier. Couperin’s music suffers more by being played on the modern pianoforte than that of his contemporaries, Scarlatti, Handel, and Bach. The greater sonority of tone clouds the fragile perfect workmanship. There is in it no depth of emotion nor daring brilliance to meet the strength of the new instrument. As music they belong to their time; as works of perfect art they are imperishable.
Couperin died in 1733, just as the last and greatest of the French composers of this time, Jean Philippe Rameau, was about to bring out his first opera,Hippolyte et Aricie. Rameau was fifty years old. His life had been hard and varied. He had been organist in a provincial town; he had published sets of pieces for harpsichord in Paris; he had published in 1722 a treatise on harmony, the first of his many important works on that subject; he had been engaged in writing ballets for the theatre, and made himself a favorite music-master among ladies of high rank. At the house of La Pouplinière he had met Voltaire and with him had written an opera, ‘Samson,’ which had been forbidden by the Academy on the eve of its performance. At last, on the 1st of October, 1733,Hippolyte et Ariciewas produced at the Academy. It brought a storm of abuse upon the composer who had dared to attempt more than a slavish imitation of Lully. He gradually won some respect and continued to write operas, among whichCastor et Pollux(1737), commonly considered his masterpiece, achieved a marked and continued success. However, no success would silence his detractors. Rousseau made himself the mouthpiece for those who cried him down. And in 1746, just when he had succeeded in overcoming the violent hostility of the Lullists, a company of Italian singers at theComédie italiennewon over a half of the Parisian public so that Rameau found himself engaged in another and yet fiercer struggle as defender and head ofFrench music against the Italian invaders. The malice and brutality of this famousGuerre des bouffonsare incredible, but the whole affair points unmistakably to a state of society in which all critical judgment had given way to unenlightened prejudiced controversy. Rameau won but a temporary victory. After his death, in 1764, Italian opera was supreme in Paris until the arrival of Gluck.
Rameau’s operas are æsthetically different from Lully’s. Less skillful than Lully in recitative, he far excels him in genuineness of feeling and in harmony. Rameau was a great musician. His studies in harmony were profound and far-reaching in their effect, and the texture of his music was softened and warmly colored by a richness of chords and modulation. His works for the harpsichord are not so polished as Couperin’s, but are more virile; and the last set (1736) shows the influence of Scarlatti. What is most striking about him is his independence of court life and convention. Lully was backed by the most powerful monarch in Europe, whose protection assured him success. Rameau had nothing to hope for from the debauched court of Louis XV, in spite of the official royal recognition. He withstood the most venomous attacks alone, and by the courage and power of his own will made himself head and champion of the music of his country.
At the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, Germany was under the influence of the French and of the Italians. In Hamburg there was the nearest approach to a national spirit. Hamburg was one of the most brilliant opera towns, but, whereas in Dresden, Berlin, Munich, and Vienna the Italian opera was supreme and Italian singers and Italian composers held sway, in Hamburg operas were with few exceptions given in German and were furnished by German composers. It must be said, however, that most of the composers were strongly under the influence of the Italians or of Lully, and many of thelibrettiwere translations or adaptations of Italianlibretti. Chief among the composers stands Reinhard Keiser, a man of loose principles and luxurious life, but of extraordinary musical facility. Apart from a great deal of sacred music, he wrote not less than one hundred and sixteen operas. It was while he was at the height of his fame that Handel came to Hamburg.