Chapter XIII: Birth of Oratorio and Opera—Monteverde and Heart Music

BIRTH OF ORATORIO AND OPERA

A friend of Palestrina, Saint Filippo Neri, was the founder of Oratorio. In 1558, Father Neri started daily religious meetings to which all sorts of people came. These were held in a side room of the Church called the Oratory (chapel for private prayer), and in addition to his talks,—hymns, litanies and motets were sung, and scenes from the Bible were performed somewhat like opera. The name “Oratorio” was soon used, not only in Rome, but throughout all of Europe, wherever there were sacred dramas with music. Palestrina arranged and wrote some of the music for Father Neri.

BIBLE STORIES ACTED

The acted stories of the Bible can be traced back into the Middle Ages, and probably descended from the Greek and Roman theatre, for many early Christians were Greeks and Romans and had a natural love for drama. The Church understood this and saw in it a way to teach the history of the Scriptures. You know yourselves how much better you remember historical events when you have seen them in moving pictures! This natural love of play-acting in mankind goes back to primitive man who acted out his prayers in his religious rites. These theatrical performances were called “moralities,” “mysteries,” or “miracle-plays,” and a very beautiful example is _Everyman_, which was revived in England and America a few years ago.

In the 8th century, Charlemagne’s time, people gathered in the public markets, and the merchants entertained them by shows in which were singing and dancing. The priests forbade these performances because they were coarse and vulgar, but realizing how successful and how much loved they were, they themselves turned actors, built stages in many of the churches, turned the Bible stories into little plays, and added music. Sometimes when there were not enough priests to take part, dolls or puppets were used as in _Punch and Judy_ shows. Isn’t it interesting to think that operas and plays began in the Church?

One of the most famous of the church plays was the _Feast of Asses_ in the 11th century.

The people did not have means of entertaining themselves as we have, and the Church was the place to which every one went for amusement as well as religion. In the 14th century some plays given in England were: _Fall of Lucifer_, _Creation_, _Deluge_, _Abraham_, _Salutation and Nativity_, _Three Kings_, _Last Supper_, _Resurrection_. The clergy hired minstrels during this period to supply the music.

In the 15th century there were also elaborate pageants.

The clergy soon saw that the people wanted to take part in the plays, so societies were formed in Paris, Rome, and in England for the people. In England, like in Germany in the 16th century, the guilds (trade-unions) performed plays that were based on religious subjects, although more or less comic. The trade-guild of water-drawers, who delivered water from door to door, liked to give the _Deluge_! The story goes: Mrs. Noah objected to going aboard the ark with her husband and children, because she did not want to leave her friends, “the gossips”; she even tells Noah to get himself another wife, but her son, Shem, forces her into the ark, and when she finally enters, she slaps Noah’s face!

The subjects were not always comical, some were beautiful and inspiring, like the _Passion Play_ still given in Oberammergau, Germany, every ten years.

MASQUES

During Henry VII’s reign (1485–1509), which began the Tudor period, the moralities and religious pageantry were at their best, and the Masques began. Nobles, who appeared at balls in gorgeous costumes with masked faces, danced, had a jolly time, and usually surprised the guests with an elaborate entertainment in pantomime with much music and dancing. This became more and more important until it combined poetry, instrumental and vocal music, scenery, dancing, machinery, splendid costumes, and decorations in the Masque.

The greatest masques were written in the reigns of the Stuarts (17th century), by Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and John Milton. _Comus_ and Shakespeare’s _Tempest_ were set to music in this form. While the Italians were experimenting with _Dramma per Musica_ (drama with music), England was finding a new musical entertainment in the masque, and opera was its direct descendant.

The custom of masking for the ball came from Italy, and before that, the actors in the Greek drama (400 B.C.) wore masks, and that is why the mask is used in art to represent the theatre.

ITALIAN OPERA’S BEGINNINGS

In Italy during the second half of the 16th century, a group of people tried to combine music and drama to fit the new ideas of art. The Renaissance had influenced poetry, sculpture, painting, architecture, and now it was music’s turn to profit by the return to Greek ideals. The Florentines and the Venetians felt that the madrigal was not the best form to express the feelings and emotions of the subjects of their plays. In the Middle Ages, the subjects were always Biblical, but now, as a result of the new learning they were chosen from Greek mythology and history. From the first operas at the close of the 16th century, to those of Gluck in the 18th, the names of Greek gods and heroes are used as the titles of operas: _Orpheus_, _Euridice_, _Daphne_, _Apollo_ and _Bacchus_. These first operas were a combination of early _ballets_, and a sort of play called a _pastorale_.

Torquato Tasso, the Italian poet of the 16th century, wrote several _pastorales_, and was interested in music with drama. Like Ronsard in France, Tasso wrote beautiful poems for madrigals, which were set to music by the composers. He was a friend of Palestrina and of Don Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, a famous patron of art, particularly of music. In the Prince’s palace at Naples, a group of men met to spread and improve the taste for music. They also wished to create music that would fit the stage-plays better than the polyphonic or poly-melodic style imported from the Northern countries. They wanted melody and they wanted it sung by one voice alone, as were their popular songs, accompanied by the lute, called _frottoli_, _vilanelles_, etc. Tasso, no doubt, talked over his ideas with composers from Florence who had formed a club, and who were directly responsible for the first opera in Italy, _Daphne_ by Jacobo Perti.

THE CAMERATA

This Florentine club was called the “Camerata”; it met at the home of Count Bardi, himself a poet, and among its members were Vincenzo Galilei, an amateur musician and father of the famous astronomer; Emilio del Cavalieri, a composer and inventor of _ballets_; Laura Guidiccioni, a woman poet; Giulio Caccini, a singer and composer; Ottavio Rinuccini and Strozzi, poets; and Peri, a composer and singer. They must have had wild times at their club meetings, for the musicians who were not amateurs did not want the popular song with lute accompaniment to replace polyphonic music, which was the “high-brow” art of that time. But the poets and singers and less cultured musicians won the day. Pretending to return to Greek music drama of which they knew less than nothing, they made a series of experiments which led to the invention of the artsong, or homophonic style (one voice, or melody, instead of polyphonic—many voices), which seemed to satisfy the Italian’s natural love for melody.

Galilei set a scene from Dante’s _Inferno_, for solo and _viola da gamba_, an instrument of the violoncello type. Following this, Peri invented the “speaking style” of singing now called _recitative_. This was a very important step in the making of opera and oratorio, for it did away with spoken words, and instead, the conversation was sung, or intoned, to satisfy the poets who wanted the meaning of their words made very clear. It was accompanied by simple chords on the lute, and later, the harpsichord.

Here were all the parts needed for a real opera,—the solo song, or aria; the recitative, or story telling part; the chorus or ensemble, which was the old madrigal used in a new way; and the accompanying instruments which grew into the orchestra. Peri was the first to put all these parts together in an opera for which Rinuccini wrote a real play based on the Greek story of Daphne. Caccini and his daughter Francesca sang it, and no doubt made many suggestions as to how it should be done. Its first private performance (1597) was an important event for the closing of an important century. The audience thought that it was listening to a revival of Greek music drama, but we know that it was another case of Columbus’s passage to India! Although the Greek drama was not like this, after 2000 years it helped to create modern music.

Its success led to an invitation in 1600 for Peri and Rinuccini to write an opera, _Euridice_, for the marriage festivities of Henry IV of France and Marie de’ Medici. Several noblemen, probably members of the “Camerata,” took part in the first performance; one played the harpsichord, and three others played on the chitarrone (a large guitar), a viol da gamba, and a theorbo (double lute). The orchestra was completed by three flutes. This orchestral score was notated in a sort of musical shorthand called figured bass which shows the chords to be used as accompaniment to a melody by means of a bass note with a figure above it. Peri and his colleagues seem to have been the first to use this, but it was adopted by all composers into the 18th century, including Bach and Handel. It was called _basso continuo_ or figured bass or thorough-bass.

Caccini also wrote an opera which he called _Euridice_, but it was in the style of a pastoral ballet with songs, dances, and recitatives. This work was probably the result of his having helped Peri in working out his ideas at the meetings of the “Camerata.” This same year, 1600, which finished the 16th century, saw the presentation of Emilio del Cavalieri’s mystery play, or oratorio, _La Rappresentazióne di ‘Anima e di Córpo_ (Representation of the spirit and body), for which Laura Giudiccioni wrote the text. This oratorio, with very elaborate decorations, was sung and danced in the oratory of a church. It must have been very like the operas except that it was based on a religious idea, and was performed in a church, while the opera by Peri was performed at the Pitti Palace and was from Greek mythology. The orchestra was composed of a double lyre, a harpsichord, a double guitar, and a theorbo or double lute.

BAIF’S CLUB IN FRANCE

While the Italians were trying to find the old Greek and Latin methods of combining drama and music, there was a movement in France to write poetry in classical verse. Following Ronsard’s example, Baif influenced the composers to write music that should express the feeling of poetry, and also imitate its rhythm. They also tried writing madrigals arranged for a single voice with accompanying instrument, or group of instruments. While the Italians invented the recitative, the French developed a rich fluent rhythmic song form, _musique mesurée à l’antique_, or, music in the ancient metre.

Baif formed a club or an Academy of poets and musicians much like Bardi’s “Camerata” in Florence. They worked hard to perfect mensural or measured music, and opened the way for the use of measures and bars, which in the 16th century were unknown. We are so accustomed to music divided into measures by means of bars, that it is hard to realize what a great step forward was made by Baif’s Academy. They were struggling to get rid of the plainchant which lacked rhythm as we know it, and which for centuries had used “perfect” or “imperfect” time.

Two prominent composers of this group were Jacques Mauduit (1557–1627), also a famous lute player, and Claude Le Jeune (1530–1600), who worked with Baif to bring “measured” music into favor, composer of many _chansons_ and of a Psalm-book used by all the Calvinist churches (Calvin was a church reformer in Switzerland) in Europe except in Switzerland! It went through more editions than any other musical work since the invention of printing. Le Jeune was a Huguenot, and on St. Bartholomew’s eve (1588), he tried to escape from the Catholic soldiers carrying with him many unpublished manuscripts. They would have been burned, had it not been for his Catholic friend and fellow-composer, Mauduit, who rescued the books, and saved his life. The title appears for the first time in history on one of his pieces, “Composer of Music for the King.” (_Compositeur de la musique de la chambre du roy._)

During the second half of the 16th century, in spite of serious political and religious troubles, the most popular form of entertainment at the French court was the very gorgeous ballet. No expense was considered too great, and no decoration too splendid for these ballets in which nobles and even the kings and their families appeared “in person.” They were like the English Masques, and were the parents of the _French opera_. Baif, Mauduit and Le Jeune, together composed (1581) _Le Ballet comique de la Reine_ (Queen’s Comedy-Ballet) which was produced at the Palace of the Louvre in Paris.

Beaulieu and Salmon are often named as the composers of this ballet because in those days, one composer wrote the parts for voices, and another for instruments, so probably the musicians worked with the poets and dramatists to produce it. The characters in this musical drama were Circe and other Greek gods and demi-gods.

With Marie de Medici and Cardinal Mazarin from Italy, Italian opera came into France. But this did not happen until the 17th century.

MONTEVERDE AND HEART MUSIC

Wouldn’t you be proud if you could compose a whole book of music at the age of sixteen? Monteverde did and besides he made music grow by composing things that had never been done before.

Claudio Monteverde (1567–1643) was born in Cremona, a town made famous by the great makers of violins. Monteverde was one of the first great innovators in music, and he brought new ideas and vast changes into music as an art. His teacher, Marc Antonio Ingegneri, Chapel Master at the Cathedral, taught young Monteverde all the tricks of counterpoint and of the great polyphonic masters, and also gave him lessons on the organ and the viol. He must have been a very talented pupil, for he could play any instrument, and at the age of sixteen, published his first book of madrigals,—_Canzonette a tre voci_ (Little Songs in Three Voices). The last song in this book has these charming words: “Now, dear Songs, go in peace singing joyously, always thanking those who listen to you and kissing their hands, without speaking.” Evidently, little Italian boys were brought up to say nice things!

Even in this first book of madrigals and the four books that followed, Monteverde tried experiments in harmony and wrote music that sounded harsh to 16th century ears. He was trying to create a style that would combine the best points of the old school of polyphony (many voices) with the new school of monody (one melody), and this is why he is called the originator of the modern style of composition, which is, melody and accompaniment. Since his time there have been many originators of new styles in music, and when first heard they have usually been received with harsh words by the many and liked by the few. Monteverde was severely criticized in a book that appeared in Venice, in 1600, on the short-comings of modern music, (and they are still writing “on the short-comings of modern music” today!). The book was written by the monk, Artusi, who liked the old-fashioned music and believed that Monteverde’s work was against all natural musical laws. But if we search we will find that music grows through experiments that are made by the composers, who “go against natural laws,” then after the natural laws are broken, comes a learned theorist who shows that no law was broken at all, and so we go on stretching the boundaries of “natural law,” and music goes on changing all the time. This is what we mean by the growth of music.

In 1590, Monteverde became viol player and singer to Vincenzo di Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, a patron of arts and letters. At one time he took the poet Tasso from an insane asylum; he was patron of Galileo, the astronomer, who was considered to be a heretic because he said that the earth revolved around the sun, contrary to the teachings of the Bible; he also invited the great Flemish painter Rubens, to visit his court; and probably influenced Monteverde to write operas. The Duke engaged many musicians at his court, who formed a little orchestra to play dance music, solos, or parts in the madrigals. These were no longer sung alone, but were accompanied by instruments, or sometimes played by the instruments without voices, (see how music grows up!) because in Italy, the composers had not yet begun to write special music for instruments as they had in France.

The composer went with the Duke on many travels, even into battle, and in the evenings between military encounters, they sang madrigals and played on instruments!

The next trip with the Duke was pleasanter, for it gave Monteverde the chance to visit Flanders, where he heard the beautiful “new music” of Claude Le Jeune, Mauduit, and others. It impressed him so deeply that he began to write heart-music instead of head-music. He was one of the most successful in breaking down old rules and traditions and was enough of a genius to replace them with new things that were to point the way for all the opera writers and most of the composers that came after him.

Monteverde must have heard the music composed by the members of the “Camerata,” but he was too much of a musician to brush aside all polyphonic writing and to value words above music. However, their work opened the way for his. Up to 1607, he had written everything in the form of vocal madrigals, but his last book seems to have been composed for string instruments instead of being madrigals for voices. These sounded as though composed for viols and lutes and not for voices, and were dramatic and full of deep feeling as if written for an opera! No wonder they sounded strange to the audience—even as Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Milhaud do to most people today.

Until Monteverde was forty years old he had never written an opera, the greatest work of his life! He probably would not have done so then had it not been at the command of his patron, Vincenzo di Gonzaga. His first and second operas, _Orfeo_ and _Arianna_, followed each other quickly and were epoch making. Without the work of the “Camerata,” they might never have been written, but they were much better than the best work of the “Camerata” (Peri, Caccini, and Cavalieri). Monteverde was wise enough to adopt their melodramatic form which he improved by his use of the devices of the Italian madrigalists and organ composers, and the _airs de cour_ (songs of the court) and the ballets of the French composers.

Also, following the French ideas, Monteverde used a large orchestra of forty pieces, including two clavichords; two little organs called _organi di legno_, which sounded like flutes; a regal, also a kind of small organ; a bass viol; a _viol da gamba_; two very tiny violins called _pochettes_, because they could be carried in the pockets of the French dancing-masters; ten _violes da bracchia_ or tenor viols; ordinary violins, two _chitarroni_ or large lutes, and the usual trumpets, cornets, flutes and oboes. In this Monteverde was a pioneer for he had no other works to guide him, and had to find out for himself the effects of combining different instruments. Today many of his musical effects sound crude to us, but he had no symphony concerts, at which to hear an orchestra, for such a thing did not exist. Neither were orchestral scores written out, but only indicated, and when instruments were used, their parts were made up at the moment and played, according to the “figured bass.”

During the 16th century, the musicians had learned that trombones and cornets made a wonderful effect in scenes of the underworld (Hades, Inferno, Hell), of which there were many. They discovered, too, that trumpets and drums made battle scenes and war songs real; that flutes, oboes and bassoons gave a pastoral, or shepherd-like effect; that viols were for scenes of love and of sadness; and that to represent Heaven, they needed harps, lutes and regals. Monteverde brought them all together, and studied how to simplify the orchestra to give it a better balance in tone and variety. It must have been a wonderful time to live in this “young manhood” day of music.

The opera _Arianna_ was written a year after _Orfeo_, to celebrate the wedding of the Duke’s son. It must have been a sad task for Monteverde, as he had just lost his wife to whom he was very devoted. Ottavio Rinuccini, poet of the “Camerata”, was his librettist (the writer of the words), and a famous Italian architect, Vianini, built an immense theatre in the castle for the first performance in 1608. Six thousand people assembled, the largest audience that had ever heard an opera! Nothing remains of the opera today, but the text, or words, some published accounts of the performances, and a very touching and beautiful _Lamentation_ in which Arianna expresses her grief at being left by Theseus. This one piece is enough to show Monteverde’s genius, also how freely he expressed human feelings in music. Not a house in Italy with either a clavichord or a theorbo was without a copy of the _Lamentation_!

About this time, Monteverde wrote a prologue for a comedy composed by five other musicians of the court, all well-known composers of their day, Rossi, Gastoldi, Gagliano, Giulio Monteverde, and Birt.

In 1613, a year after the death of the Duke, Vincenzo di Gonzaga, Monteverde was made Chapel master of St. Mark’s in Venice, which had long been famous for its fine music, where Adrian Willaert, Cyprian de Rore and Zarlino had been Chapel masters in the time of the “Golden Age of Polyphony.” Monteverde had much to live up to! But, after his hard work at the court of Mantua, he found his position very agreeable, and he gave his time now to composing music for the Church, madrigals, intermezzos, and a new form of music called “cantata.” His church music can be divided into works written in the old polyphonic style of Palestrina, and those written in the modern style of his day. So, when he did not write in the older church style, it was not because he did not know counterpoint, but because he wanted to make music express feelings through harmony and not through polyphony. He was able to do this as no one else had! His church music is not published for the parts have been so scattered, that a bass will be found in one collection and an instrumental part in another, and perhaps a soprano in still a third. So it would be very much like a jig-saw puzzle to find them all and put them together.

The Gonzaga family tried to persuade him to return to their court, but he refused, although he often wrote special operas for them or short dramatic spectacles which were called intermezzos. Of these, sad to say, almost nothing remains.

The recitative style invented by the “Camerata” had by this time taken such a firm hold upon the people, that it spread even to the music of the Church and to the madrigals. All the Italian composers began to write _recitative_ for solo voices and accompaniment which they called _canzoni_ (songs), _canzonetti_ (little songs), and _arie_ (melodies).

Monteverde was one of the first to turn the madrigal into a _cantata da camera_ which means the recitation to music of a short drama or story in verse, by one person, accompanied by one instrument. But, as things improve or die out, very soon another voice and several instruments were added. This composition is a musical milestone of the 17th century as the madrigal had been of the 15th and 16th. The cantata for more than one voice forms a little chamber music opera without any acting. Some of the best known cantata writers were Ferrari, Carissimi, Rossi, Gasparini, Marcello, and Alessandro Scarlatti. At the age of seventy, Monteverde took up this new style of composition with all the enthusiasm and freshness of a young composer! He was not the inventor of the _cantata da camera_, as is so often claimed for him, as no one man was its inventor. It was the result of the constant search of the composers of that day, who followed along the same path, and worked together to perfect a new form.

NEW FEELINGS EXPRESSED

One of Monteverde’s most important works in this style is the _Combat of Tancredi and Clorinda (Combattimento di Tancredi e di Clorinda)_ a poem by Tasso, which is noteworthy for several new things. In the preface of the published edition, Monteverde says that he had long tried to invent a style _concitato_, or agitated, that he had been struck by the fact that musicians had never tried to express anger or the fury of battle, but had expressed only tenderness and sweetness, sadness or gayety. (Perhaps he did not know Jannequin’s _Battle of Marignan_.) So he wrote battle music.

The second innovation was the tremolo, which, however familiar to us today, he used for the first time to express agitation, anger and fear, and the musicians were so surprised to see something that they had never seen before, that they refused to play it! This was neither the first nor the last time that musicians balked at something new.

The third innovation was that he wrote independent parts for the orchestra, and for the first time the instruments did not “copy” the voice, but had notes all to themselves to play.

In 1630 there was a terrible epidemic in Venice, the “Black Plague” which lasted a year and took off one-third of her population! In gratitude for having been spared, Monteverde became a priest in the Church. This did not seem to interfere with his composing secular works, for after this, he wrote several operas.

Venice was the home of the first public opera house in the world! It was opened (1637) in the San Cassiano theatre by Benedetto Ferrari and Francesco Manelli, and for this in these last years of his life, Monteverde wrote some of his most important operas. Monteverde’s operas of this time were a combination of the Roman _opera-cantate_, then in style, and his first operas, _Orfeo_ and _Arianna_, written thirty-five years before. He had great enough genius to fit his work to the conditions that he found in the opera house, so that when they had to reduce expenses, Monteverde cut down the size of his orchestra to just a clavichord, a few theorbos, a bass viol and a few violins and viols, and wrote works without choruses! He was agreeable, wasn’t he? A thing which people of “near” greatness rarely are!

The last work he composed at the age of 74 is one of his best! Is it not wonderful to think that he had not lost inspiration and enthusiasm after a long life of hard work? The Italian name for his last opera is _Incoronazione di Poppea_, or the “Coronation of Poppea.” It is a story of the court of Nero, and Monteverde has sketched his characters in vivid music, and has made them seem true to life. Henry Prunières, who has made an earnest study of Monteverde says in his book, _Monteverde_, “Monteverde saw Imperial Rome with eyes of genius and knew how to make it live again for us. No book, no historical account could picture Nero and Poppea as vigorously as this opera.” It is the greatest opera of the 17th century, and actually created the school of Italian grand opera. With it, mythological characters gave way to the historical in opera, which enlarged the field of drama with music.

So Monteverde, the great innovator, died in Venice in 1643 and was given by the citizens of Venice a funeral worthy of his greatness.

He dug new paths on which all modern composers travel and throughout his life he followed his ideal, which was to translate into the language of music, human feelings and ideas.

_After a painting by Molenaer in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam._

_A Lady at the Clavier (Clavichord)._
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_After the painting by Terborch._

_A Lady Playing the Theorbo (luth)._
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