Part 11 (1/2)

[Sidenote: _Tone of the harpsichord and spinet._]

[Sidenote: _Bach's ”Music of the future.”_]

The spinet, virginal, and harpsichord were quilled instruments, the tone of which was produced by snapping the strings by means of plectra made of quill, or some other flexible substance, set in the upper end of a bit of wood called the jack, which rested on the farther end of the key and moved through a slot in the sounding-board. When the key was pressed down, the jack moved upward past the string which was caught and tw.a.n.ged by the plectrum. The blow of the clavichord tangent could be graduated like that of the pianoforte hammer, but the quills of the other instruments always plucked the strings with the same force, so that mechanical devices, such as a swell-box, similar in principle to that of the organ, coupling in octaves, doubling the strings, etc., had to be resorted to for variety of dynamic effects.

The character of tone thus produced determined the character of the music composed for these instruments to a great extent. The brevity of the sound made sustained melodies ineffective, and encouraged the use of a great variety of embellishments and the spreading out of harmonies in the form of arpeggios. It is obvious enough that Bach, being one of those monumental geniuses that cast their prescient vision far into the future, refused to be bound by such mechanical limitations. Though he wrote _Clavier_, he thought organ, which was his true interpretative medium, and so it happens that the greatest sonority and the broadest style that have been developed in the pianoforte do not exhaust the contents of such a composition as the ”Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue.”

[Sidenote: _Scarlatti's sonatas._]

The earliest music written for these instruments--music which does not enter into this study--was but one remove from vocal music. It came through compositions written for the organ. Of Scarlatti's music the pieces most familiar are a Capriccio and Pastorale which Tausig rewrote for the pianoforte. They were called sonatas by their composer, but are not sonatas in the modern sense. Sonata means ”sound-piece,” and when the term came into music it signified only that the composition to which it was applied was written for instruments instead of voices. Scarlatti did a great deal to develop the technique of the harpsichord and the style of composing for it.

His sonatas consist each of a single movement only, but in their structure they foreshadow the modern sonata form in having two contrasted themes, which are presented in a fixed key-relations.h.i.+p.

They are frequently full of grace and animation, but are as purely objective, formal, and soulless in their content as the other instrumental compositions of the epoch to which they belong.

[Sidenote: _The suite._]

[Sidenote: _Its history and form._]

[Sidenote: _The bond between the movements._]

The most significant of the compositions of this period are the Suites, which because they make up so large a percentage of _Clavier_ literature (using the term to cover the pianoforte and its predecessors), and because they pointed the way to the distinguis.h.i.+ng form of the subsequent period, the sonata, are deserving of more extended consideration. The suite is a set of pieces in the same key, but contrasted in character, based upon certain admired dance-forms.

Originally it was a set of dances and nothing more, but in the hands of the composers the dances underwent many modifications, some of them to the obvious detriment of their national or other distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics. The suite came into fas.h.i.+on about the middle of the seventeenth century and was also called _Sonata da Camera_ and _Balletto_ in Italy, and, later, _Part.i.ta_ in France. In its fundamental form it embraced four movements: I. Allemande. II.

Courante. III. Sarabande. IV. Gigue. To these four were sometimes added other dances--the Gavotte, Pa.s.sepied, Branle, Minuet, Bourree, etc.--but the rule was that they should be introduced between the Sarabande and the Gigue. Sometimes also the set was introduced by a Prelude or an Overture. Ident.i.ty of key was the only external tie between the various members of the suite, but the composers sought to establish an artistic unity by elaborating the sentiments for which the dance-forms seemed to offer a vehicle, and presenting them in agreeable contrast, besides enriching the primitive structure with new material. The suites of Bach and Handel are the high-water mark in this style of composition, but it would be difficult to find the original characteristics of the dances in their settings. It must suffice us briefly to indicate the characteristics of the princ.i.p.al forms.

[Sidenote: _The Allemande._]

The Allemande, as its name indicates, was a dance of supposedly German origin. For that reason the German composers, when it came to them from France, where the suite had its origin, treated it with great partiality. It is in moderate tempo, common time, and made up of two periods of eight measures, both of which are repeated. It begins with an upbeat, and its metre, to use the terms of prosody, is iambic. The following specimen from Mersenne's ”Harmonie Universelle,” 1636, well displays its characteristics:

[Music ill.u.s.tration]

[Sidenote: _Iambics in music and poetry._]

Robert Burns's familiar iambics,

”Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon, How can ye bloom sae fair?

How can ye chant, ye little birds, And I sae fu' o' care!”

might serve to keep the rhythmical characteristics of the Allemande in mind were it not for the arbitrary changes made by the composers already hinted at. As it is, we frequently find the stately movement of the old dance broken up into elaborate, but always quietly flowing, ornamentation, as indicated in the following excerpt from the third of Bach's English suites:

[Music ill.u.s.tration]

[Sidenote: _The Courante._]

The Courante, or Corrente (”Teach lavoltas high and swift corantos,”

says Shakespeare), is a French dance which was extremely popular in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries--a polite dance, like the minuet. It was in triple time, and its movement was bright and brisk, a merry energy being imparted to the measure by the prevailing figure, a dotted quarter-note, an eighth, and a quarter in a measure, as ill.u.s.trated in the following excerpt also from Mersenne:

[Music ill.u.s.tration]