Part 19 (1/2)
[Sidenote: _Secular tunes used._]
[Sidenote: _Congregational singing._]
In the Church music of the time, composed, as I have described, by a scientific interweaving of voices, the composers had got into the habit of utilizing secular melodies as the foundation on which to build their contrapuntal structures. I have no doubt that it was the spirit which speaks out of Luther's words which brought it to pa.s.s that in Germany contrapuntal music with popular melodies as foundations developed into the chorale, in which the melody and not the counterpoint was the essential thing. With the Lutheran Church came congregational singing; with congregational singing the need of a new style of composition, which should not only make the partic.i.p.ation of the people in the singing possible, but should also stimulate them to sing by freeing the familiar melodies (the melodies of folk-songs) from the elaborate and ingenious, but soulless, counterpoint which fettered them.
[Sidenote: _Counterpoint._]
[Sidenote: _The first congregational hymns._]
The Flemish masters, who were the musical law-givers, had been using secular tunes for over a century, but only as stalking-horses for counterpoint; and when the Germans began to use their tunes, they, too, buried them beyond recognition in the contrapuntal ma.s.s. The people were invited to sing paraphrases of the psalms to familiar tunes, it is true, but the choir's polyphony went far to stifle the spirit of the melody. Soon the free spirit which I have repeatedly referred to as Romanticism, and which was powerfully encouraged by the Reformation, prompted a style of composition in which the admired melody was lifted into relief. This could not be done until the new style of writing invented by the creators of the opera (see Chapter VII.) came in, but as early as 1568 Dr. Lucas Ostrander published fifty hymns and psalms with music so arranged ”that the congregation may join in singing them.” This, then, is in outline the story of the beginning of modern hymnology, and it is recalled to the patrons of choral concerts whenever in Bach's ”Pa.s.sion Music” or in Mendelssohn's ”St. Paul” the choir sings one of the marvellous old hymns of the German Church.
[Sidenote: _The Church and conservatism._]
[Sidenote: _Harmony and emotion._]
Choral music being bound up with the Church, it has naturally partic.i.p.ated in the conservatism characteristic of the Church. The severe old style has survived in the choral compositions of to-day, while instrumental music has grown to be almost a new thing within the century which is just closing. It is the severe style established by Bach, however, not that of Palestrina. In the Church compositions prior to Palestrina the emotional power of harmony was but little understood. The harmonies, indeed, were the accidents of the interweaving of melodies. Palestrina was among the first to feel the uplifting effect which might result from a simple sequence of pure consonant harmonies, and the three chords which open his famous ”Stabat Mater”
[Sidenote: _Palestrina's ”Stabat Mater.”_]
[Sidenote: _Characteristics of his music._]
[Music ill.u.s.tration: Sta-bat ma-ter]
are a sign of his style as distinct in its way as the devices by means of which Wagner stamps his individuality on his phrases. His melodies, too, compared with the artificial _motivi_ of his predecessors, are distinguished by grace, beauty, and expressiveness, while his command of aetherial effects, due to the manner in which the voices are combined, is absolutely without parallel from his day to this. Of the mystery of pure beauty he enjoyed a wonderful revelation, and has handed it down to us in such works as the ”Stabat Mater,” ”Missa Papae Marcelli,” and the ”Improperia.”
[Sidenote: _Palestrina's music not dramatic._]
[Sidenote: _A churchman._]
[Sidenote: _Effect of the Reformation._]
This music must not be listened to with the notion in mind of dramatic expression such as we almost instinctively feel to-day. Palestrina does not seek to proclaim the varying sentiment which underlies his texts. That leads to individual interpretation and is foreign to the habits of churchmen in the old conception, when the individual was completely resolved in the organization. He aimed to exalt the mystery of the service, not to bring it down to popular comprehension and make it a personal utterance. For such a design in music we must wait until after the Reformation, when the ancient mysticism began to fall back before the demands of reason, when the idea of the sole and sufficient mediation of the Church lost some of its power in the face of the growing conviction of intimate personal relations.h.i.+p between man and his creator. Now idealism had to yield some of its dominion to realism, and a more rugged art grew up in place of that which had been so wonderfully sublimated by mysticism.
[Sidenote: _The source of beauty in Palestrina's music._]
It is in Bach, who came a century after Palestrina, that we find the most eloquent musical proclamation of the new regime, and it is in no sense disrespectful to the great German master if we feel that the change in ideals was accompanied with a loss in sensuous charm, or pure aesthetic beauty. Effect has had to yield to idea. It is in the flow of the voices, the color effects which result from combination and registers, the clarity of the harmonies, the reposefulness coming from conscious ease of utterance, the loveliness of each individual part, and the spiritual exaltation of the whole that the aesthetic mystery of Palestrina's music lies.
[Sidenote: _Bach._]
Like Palestrina, Bach is the culmination of the musical practice of his time, but, unlike Palestrina, he is also the starting-point of a new development. With Bach the old contrapuntal art, now not vocal merely but instrumental also and mixed, reaches its climax, and the tendency sets in which leads to the highly complex and dramatic art of to-day. Palestrina's art is Roman; the spirit of restfulness, of celestial calm, of supernatural revelation and supernal beauty broods over it. Bach's is Gothic--rugged, ma.s.sive, upward striving, human. In Palestrina's music the voice that speaks is the voice of angels; in Bach's it is the voice of men.
[Sidenote: _Bach a German Protestant._]
[Sidenote: _Church and individual._]
[Sidenote: _Ingenuousness of feeling._]
Bach is the publisher of the truest, tenderest, deepest, and most individual religious feeling. His music is peculiarly a hymning of the religious sentiment of Protestant Germany, where salvation is to be wrought out with fear and trembling by each individual through faith and works rather than the agency of even a divinely const.i.tuted Church. It reflects, with rare fidelity and clearness, the essential qualities of the German people--their warm sympathy, profound compa.s.sion, fervent love, and st.u.r.dy faith. As the Church fell into the background and the individual came to the fore, religious music took on the dramatic character which we find in the ”Pa.s.sion Music” of Bach. Here the sufferings and death of the Saviour, none the less an ineffable mystery, are depicted as the most poignant experience of each individual believer, and with an ingenuousness that must forever provoke the wonder of those who are unable to enter into the German nature. The wors.h.i.+ppers do not hesitate to say: ”My Jesus, good-night!” as they gather in fancy around His tomb and invoke sweet rest for His weary limbs. The difference between such a proclamation and the calm voice of the Church should be borne in mind when comparing the music of Palestrina with that of Bach; also the vast strides made by music during the intervening century.
[Sidenote: _The motet._]