The harpsichord possesses in common with the organ its keyboard or keyboards, which render the playing of solid chords possible. The lighter action of the harpsichord gives it the advantage over the organ in the playing of rapid passages, particularly of those light ornamental figures used as graces or embellishments, such as trills, mordents, and turns. A further comparison with the organ, however, reveals in the harpsichord only negative qualities. It has no volume ofsound, no power to sustain tones, no deep pedal notes. Consequently the smooth polyphonic style which sounds rich and flowing on the organ, sounds dry and thin upon the weaker instrument. The composer who would utilize to advantage what little sonority there is in the harpsichord must be free to scatter notes here and there which have no name or place in the logic of polyphony, but which make his music sound well. Voice parts must be interrupted, notes taken from nowhere and added to chords. The polyphonic web becomes disrupted, but the harpsichord profits by the change. It is Chambonnières who probably first wrote in such a style for the harpsichord.
The harpsichord possesses in common with the organ its keyboard or keyboards, which render the playing of solid chords possible. The lighter action of the harpsichord gives it the advantage over the organ in the playing of rapid passages, particularly of those light ornamental figures used as graces or embellishments, such as trills, mordents, and turns. A further comparison with the organ, however, reveals in the harpsichord only negative qualities. It has no volume ofsound, no power to sustain tones, no deep pedal notes. Consequently the smooth polyphonic style which sounds rich and flowing on the organ, sounds dry and thin upon the weaker instrument. The composer who would utilize to advantage what little sonority there is in the harpsichord must be free to scatter notes here and there which have no name or place in the logic of polyphony, but which make his music sound well. Voice parts must be interrupted, notes taken from nowhere and added to chords. The polyphonic web becomes disrupted, but the harpsichord profits by the change. It is Chambonnières who probably first wrote in such a style for the harpsichord.
He learned little of it from what had been written for the organ, but much from music for the lute, which, quite as late as the middle of the century, was interchangeable with the harpsichord in accompaniments, and was held to be equal if not superior as a solo instrument. It was vastly more difficult to play, and largely for this reason fell into disuse. The harpsichord is by nature far nearer akin to it than to the organ. The free style which lutenists were driven to invent by the almost insuperable difficulties of their instrument, is nearly as suitable to the harpsichord as it is to the lute. Without doubt the little pieces of Denis Gaultier were played upon the harpsichord by many an amateur who had not been able to master the lute. The skilled lutenist would find little to give him pause in the harpsichord music of Chambonnières. The quality of tone of both instruments is very similar. For neither is the strict polyphony of organ music appropriate; for the lute it is impossible. Therefore it fell to the lutenists first to invent the peculiar instrumental style in which lie the germs of the pianoforte style; and to point to their cousins, players of the harpsichord, the way towards independence from organ music.
Froberger came under the influence of Denis Gaultierand Chambonnières during the years he spent in Paris, and he adopted their style and made it his own. He wrote, it is true, several sets of ricercars, capriccios, canzonas, etc., for organ or harpsichord, and in these the strict polyphonic style prevails, according to the conventionally more serious nature of the compositions. But his fame rests upon the twenty-eight suites and fragments of suites which he wrote expressly for the harpsichord. These are closely akin to lute music, and from the point of view of style are quite as effective as the music of Chambonnières. In harmony they are surprisingly rich. Be it noted, too, in passing, that they are not lacking in emotional warmth. Here is perhaps the first harpsichord music which demands beyond the player’s nimble fingers his quick sympathy and imagination—qualities which charmed in Froberger’s own playing.
Kuhnau as a stylist is far less interesting than Froberger, upon whose style, however, his clavier suites are founded. His importance rests in the attempts he made to adapt the sonata to the clavier, in his experiments with descriptive music, and in the influence he had upon his contemporaries and predecessors, notably Bach and Handel. Froberger is the real founder of pianoforte music in Germany, and beyond him there is but slight advance either in style or matter until the time of Sebastian Bach.
What we may now call the harpsichord style, as exemplified in the suites of Chambonnières and Froberger, is relatively free. Both composers had a fondness for writing in four parts, but these parts are not related to each other, nor woven together unbrokenly as in the polyphonic style of the organ. They cannot often be clearly followed throughout a given piece. The upper voice carries the music along, the others accompany. The arrangement is not wholly an inheritance from the lute, but is in keeping with the general tendencyin all music, even at times in organ music, toward the monodic style, of which the growing opera daily set the model.
But the harpsichord style of this time is by no means a simple system of melody and accompaniment. Though the three voice parts which support the fourth dwell together often in chords, they are not without considerable independent movement. They constitute the harmonic background, as it were, which, though serving as background, does not lack animation and character in itself. In other words, we have a contrapuntal, not a polyphonic, style.
A marked feature of the music is the profuse number of graces and embellishments. These rapid little figures may be akin to the vocal embellishments which even at the beginning of the seventeenth century were discussed in theoretical books; but they seem to flower from the very nature of the harpsichord, the light tone and action of which made them at once desirable and possible. They are but vaguely indicated in the manuscripts, and there can be no certainty as to what was the composer’s intention or his manner of performance. Doubtless they were left to the discretion of the player. At any rate for a century more the player took upon himself the liberty of ornamenting any composer’s music to suit his own whim. Theseagrémens[7]were held to be and doubtless were of great importance. Kuhnau, in the preface to hisFrische Clavier Früchte, speaks of them as the sugar to sweeten the fruit, even though he left them much to the taste of players; and Emanuel Bach in the second half of the eighteenth century devoted a large part of his famous book on playing the clavier to an analysis and minute explanation of the host of them that had by then become stereotyped. They have not, however, come down into pianofortemusic. It is questionable if they can be reproduced on the pianoforte, the heavy tone of which obscures the delicacy which was their charm. They must ever present difficulty to the pianist who attempts to make harpsichord music sound again on the instrument which has inherited it.
The freedom from polyphonic restraint, inherited from the lute, and the profusion of graces which have sprouted from the nature of the harpsichord, mark the diversion between music for the harpsichord and music for the organ. In other respects they are still much the same; that is to say, the texture of harpsichord music is still close—restricted by the span of the hand. This is not necessarily a sign of dependence on the organ, but points rather to the young condition of the art. It is not to be expected that the full possibilities of an instrument will be revealed to the first composers who write for it expressly. They lie hidden along the way which time has to travel. But Chambonnières, in France, and Froberger, in Germany, opened up the special road for harpsichord music, took the first step which others had but to follow.
Neither in France nor in Germany did the next generation penetrate beyond. Le Gallois, a contemporary of Chambonnières, has remarked that of the great player’s pupils only one, Hardelle, was able to approach his master’s skill. Among those who carried on his style, however, must be mentioned d’Anglebert,[8]Le Begue,[9]and Louis and François Couperin, relatives of the great Couperin to come.
In Germany Georg and Gottlieb Muffat stand nearly alone with Kuhnau in the progress of harpsichord music between Froberger and Sebastian Bach. Georg Muffat spent six years in Paris and came under Frenchinfluence as Froberger had come, but his chief keyboard works (Apparatus Musico Organisticus(1690)) are twelve toccatas more suited to organ than to harpsichord. In 1727 his son Gottlieb had printed in ViennaComponimenti musicali per il cembalo, which show distinctly the French influence. Kuhnau looms up large chiefly on account of his sonatas, which are in form and extent the biggest works yet attempted for clavier. By these he pointed toward a great expansion of the art; but as a matter of fact little came of it. In France, Italy, and Germany the small forms were destined to remain the most popular in harpsichord music; and the sonatas and concertos of Bach are immediately influenced by study of the Italian masters, Corelli and Vivaldi.
In Italy, the birthplace of organ music and so of a part of harpsichord music, interest in keyboard music of any kind declined after the death of Frescobaldi in 1644, and was replaced by interest in opera and in music for the violin. Only one name stands out in the second half of the century, Bernardo Pasquini, of whose work, unhappily, little remains. He was famous over the world as an organist, and the epitaph on his tombstone gives him the proud title of organist to the Senate and People of Rome. Also he was a skillful performer on the harpsichord; but he is more nearly allied to the old polyphonic school than to the new. A number of works for one and for two harpsichords are preserved in manuscript in the British Museum, and these are named sonatas. Some are actually suites, but those for two harpsichords have little trace of dance music or form and may be considered as much sonatas as those works which Kuhnau published under the same title. All of Kuhnau’s sonatas appeared before 1700 and the date on the manuscript in the British Museum is 1704. Pasquini was then an old man, and it is very probable that these sonatas were written some years earlier; inwhich case he and not Kuhnau may claim the distinction of first having written music for the harpsichord on the larger plan of the violin concerto and the sonatas of Corelli.[10]
Two books of toccatas by Alessandro Scarlatti give that facile composer the right to be numbered among the great pioneers in the history of harpsichord music. These toccatas are in distinct movements, usually in the same key, but sharply contrasted in content. The seventh is a theme and variations, in which Scarlatti shows an appreciation of tonal effects and an inventiveness which are astonishingly in advance of the time. He foreshadows unmistakably the brilliant style of his son Domenico; indeed, he accounts in part for what has seemed the marvellous instinct of Domenico. If, as is most natural, Domenico approached the mysteries of the harpsichord through his father, he began his career with advantages denied to all others contemporary with him, save those who, like Grieco, received that father’s training. Alessandro Scarlatti was one of the most greatly endowed of all musicians. The trend of the Italian opera during the eighteenth century toward utter senselessness has been often laid partly to his influence; but in the history of harpsichord music that influence makes a brilliant showing in the work of his son, who contributed perhaps more than any other one man to the technique of writing not only for harpsichord but for pianoforte.
Little of the harpsichord and clavichord music of the seventeenth century is heard today. It has in the main only an historical interest. The student who looks into it will be amazed at some of its beauties; but as a whole it lacks the variety and emotional strength which claim a general attention. Nevertheless it is owing to the labor and talent of the composers of these years that the splendid masterpieces of a succeeding era were possible.They helped establish the harmonic foundation of music; they molded the fugue, the prelude, the toccata, and the suite; they developed a general keyboard style. After the middle of the century such men as Froberger and Kuhnau in Germany, Chambonnières, d’Anglebert, and Louis and François Couperin in France, and Alessandro Scarlatti in Italy, finally gave to harpsichord music a special style of its own, and to the instrument an independent and brilliant place among the solo instruments of that day. Out of all the confusion and uncertainty attendant upon the breaking up of the old art of vocal polyphony, the enthusiasm of the new opera, the creation of a new harmonic system, the rise of an instrumental music independent of words, these men slowly and steadily secured for the harpsichord a kingdom peculiarly its own.