Chapter VIII: The Orchestra (2)

Take, for instance, Descoteaux, one of the most famous flute-players of the time. Descoteaux was a great friend of Boileau, Molière and La Fontaine. He lived to be very old, and Marais (the _viola da gamba_ of Lully’s Orchestra) speaks of him in his _Journal_ in 1723 as follows: “During the _fêtes_ I saw Descoteaux, whom I thought was dead. It was he who carried the German flute to its highest point and who brought to perfection the pronunciation of words in singing according to the rules of grammar. The value of literature he understood better than anybody. He sang words very correctly. Descoteaux had the love of flowers to a supreme degree and he was one of the greatest amateur florists in Europe. He lives in the Luxembourg, where they have given him a little garden, which he cultivates himself. La Bruyère has not forgotten to include him in his _Caractères_ and that fad of his for tulips, to which he gave names as he pleased. He wants to be a philosopher now and talk Descartes; but it is quite enough to be such a musician and such a florist.”

Thirty years before, when the tulip mania had spread from Holland throughout Europe, causing people to win and lose large sums—fortunes indeed—upon choice bulbs—and to spend time and money on the production of new species—(a fad so well described in Dumas’s novel of _The Black Tulip_), La Bruyère wrote of Descoteaux in _De la Mode_ (1691). He did not mention Descoteaux by name; but everybody knew for whom the pen-portrait was intended. Descoteaux had his garden then in the faubourg Saint-Antoine.

Here is La Bruyère’s picture of Lully’s first flute: “The florist has a garden in a faubourg. He runs to it at break of day and he visits it before he goes to bed. We see him as if he were planted and had taken root in the middle of his tulips and before the _Solitaire_. He opens his eyes wide; he rubs his hands with delight; he goes closer to look at it; he kisses it; his heart swells with joy, for he thinks he has never seen it look so beautiful. Then he leaves it for the _Orientale_. From the _Orientale_, he goes to the _Veuve_ (the widow); then he goes to the _Drap d’or_ (Cloth of Gold); then he goes to _Agathe_; and then he goes back to the _Solitaire_, where he takes root again. There he stands or sits, rapt, and forgets all about his dinner. How beautiful her shading, her stripes, her satiny, oily skin! How lovely her chalice! He gazes upon her, admiring God and nature in her; and he would not give up that tulip bulb for a thousand _écus_. But he will be glad to give it away for nothing when tulips go out of fashion and pinks come in. This sensible man, who has a soul and a religion, as well as a fad, returns home fatigued but very contented; for he has seen his tulips!”

Descoteaux was a great virtuoso. So was Philbert, who was also a member of Lully’s Orchestra. Descoteaux and Philbert often played together; and they often played with Vizé, who was just as celebrated on the theorbo and guitar as they were on the flute.

Philbert was famous for his gayety, his wit and his talent for mimicry. He saw the ridiculous in everything and everybody; and he burlesqued everything and everybody to make his friends scream with laughter.

In his chapter on _Des Femmes_, La Bruyère touches him off under the name of Dracon. Addressing Lélie, he says: “But you have Dracon, the flute-player! No one else in his profession can puff out his cheeks so decently in blowing into an oboe, or a flageolet. The number of instruments that he can make talk is infinite! Pleasanter still, he can make children and young women laugh! Who can eat and drink more than Dracon at a single meal? Dracon enlivens a whole company, and he is always the last to get up!”

Poor Dracon had a sad love-story. A woman fell in love with him—not an unusual thing to happen with Philbert—but she poisoned her husband so that nothing might stand in the way of marrying him. At the last moment she confessed her crime; and she was hanged and burned in the old _Place de Grève_ in Paris. Philbert was perfectly innocent; but he, doubtless, suffered terribly—poor fellow!

An artist’s life is not always a happy one!

Both Descoteaux and Philbert were great favorites of Louis XIV. As the Philidor and Hotteterre families were renowned for their skill on the flute, oboe and bassoon, some of them, undoubtedly, played in Lully’s Orchestra. These families were famous in musical Paris for generations.

One of the bassoons was La Bas. He married an opera-singer, named Mlle. Le Rochois. The marriage was somewhat unusual. Mr. Bassoon wrote his promise to marry the lady on the back of a card—the Queen of Spades (_Pique Dame_) and then he tried to get out of it; but the lady showed the Queen of Spades to Lully; and Lully made Mr. Bassoon keep his promise.

Conductors have many duties!

One of the first violins, Verdier, was also the husband of an opera-singer; but we do not know the story of his marriage.

Then there was Jean Baptiste Marchand, who played the lute and also the violin. He wrote such a fine Mass that it was performed in the noble old cathedral of Notre-Dame of Paris.

Then there was Teobaldo di Gatti, a native of Florence, who was so charmed with the “symphonies” in some of Lully’s operas that he had heard (and perhaps played in) that he went to Paris in 1676 especially to see Lully. As soon as he arrived, he hurried to call on the great composer and conductor and told him why he had taken the journey. Lully was highly flattered; and, after hearing him play, he recognized his ability and gave him a place in the Orchestra at once. And here Teobaldo, the _basse de viol_, played for fifty years! He died in 1727, playing in the Orchestra up to the last. Teobaldo was a very well-known figure in Paris; and everybody went to hear his opera, _Scylla_, when it was performed in Paris.

Perhaps the best musicians in all this Orchestra of _virtuosi_ were the two violinists, Lalouette and Collasse, and the bass violist, Marais, whose snap-shot of a fellow-member is quoted on page 165. Each of these three artists became Lully’s assistant conductor.

Jean François Lalouette, the first of Lully’s conductors, was born in 1615. He studied the violin under Guy Leclerc (one of the Twenty-Four Violins) and began to play under Lully when he was only twenty. First he played among the violins; and then Lully made him his secretary and put him to writing recitatives. He also instrumented some of Lully’s operas. But when he boasted that he had composed the best parts of Lully’s opera of _Isis_, Lully discharged him. Lalouette then devoted himself to composition. Finally, he became _maître de chapelle_ at Notre-Dame, Paris. He died in 1728. When Lalouette was dismissed in 1677, Lully gave his place to Pascal Collasse.

Collasse was born in Rheims in 1649. At an early age he was taken to Paris, where he became a chorister at St. Paul’s and a pupil of Lully. He was more fortunate than Lalouette, for he stayed with Lully until the latter’s death and completed his operas that were left unfinished.

Marin Marais was conductor at the same time as Collasse. Perhaps they alternated, perhaps there was so much to do that two were kept busy. It looks as if Lully only conducted when he wanted to—perhaps on a first performance of one of his operas. At any rate, Marais and Collasse worked together. Marais was a Parisian and was born in 1656. He sang in the choir of Sainte-Chapelle and took lessons on the _basse de viole_[45] with Sainte-Colombe. At the end of six months Sainte-Colombe, seeing that his pupil was likely to surpass him, told him that he could teach him nothing more. But this did not satisfy Marais; for he loved the _basse de viole_ passionately and wanted to perfect himself by learning from this master. At that time Sainte-Colombe used to practise in his garden in a little shed he had built around a mulberry-tree where he could be undisturbed. Marais hid behind the shed and listened to his master practise some very difficult passages and bowings that Sainte-Colombe wished to keep for himself. This did not last long because Sainte-Colombe found it out. The next time he heard Marais he congratulated him on his progress. Moreover, one day when Marais was playing for a company of great distinction, Sainte-Colombe, who happened to be present, was asked what he thought of Marais. He replied that “there were always pupils who could surpass their master, but that nobody would ever be found who could surpass Marais.”

Marais became the best performer on the _basse de viole_ of his time. It was Marais who gave the instrument a seventh string and it was he who wrapped the three lowest strings with wire. In 1685 he was soloist in the King’s Chamber Music and he also played in Lully’s Orchestra. Lully gave him lessons in composition. In 1686 he published a collection of pieces for the _basse de viole_. An _Idylle Dramatique_ came out in the _Mercure de Paris_ in 1693.

Marais wrote a great deal of music for the strings. “We know,” writes a contemporary, “the fecundity and beauty of the genius of this musician by the number of works that he composed. They are astounding in taste and variety. His great knowledge appears in all his works; but particularly in two pieces: one, in his fourth book called the _Labyrinth_, where, after having gone through various scales and touched on diverse dissonances, and marked his way by grave tones and then by lively and animated ones, describing the uncertainty of a man who is going through a labyrinth, he comes out happily in a graceful and natural _Chaconne_. But he astonished connoisseurs still more by a piece called the _Scale_—_La Gamme_—a symphonic composition which mounts insensibly through all the notes in the octave and then descends again with harmonious and beautiful melodies through all the musical scales.”[46]

Marais also wrote several operas, one of which, _Alcyone_ (1706), had in it a storm that the people of the time thought perfectly terrific; for the drums rolled continually; the violins played on the highest string—the _chanterelle_; the oboes screamed; and the bass viols and bassoons added to the horrors in depicting the agitated sea and the whistling wind.

Many were shocked!

In 1725 Marais, very old, lived in a house in the rue de Lourcine and devoted himself to the cultivation of flowers. He also rented a room and gave lessons two or three times a week to talented pupils.

Marais died in 1728.

Then there was La Londe, who began life as a _valet de chambre_ to the Maréchale de Grammont. He was very talented and became one of the best violinists in Europe. Then there was another violinist known as Baptiste. It is supposed that he was Baptiste Anet, a pupil of Corelli. We know of a few other names: Nicholas Baudry, _dessus de violon_; Julien Bernier, German flute; Bernard Alberty, theorbo; Jean Théobalde, _basse de violon_; and Jean Rabel, clavecin. There was also connected with the Orchestra Jean Fischer (born in Swabia in 1650), who came to Paris when very young and belonged to Lully’s orchestral family as a music-copyist.

An old document came to light in Paris several years ago that gave the pay-roll of Lully’s Orchestra. Here it is:

Batteur de mesure 1,000 livres
10 instruments de petit chœur à 6,000 6,000 ”
12 dessus de violon à 400 4,800 ”
8 basses à 400 3,200 ”
2 quintes à 400 800 ”
2 tailles à 400 800 ”
2 hautes contres à 400 1,200 ”
3 hautbois flutes ou basson à 400 3,200 ”
1 timbalier à 150 150 ”
------
21,150 livres

This shows that there were forty men in the Orchestra and that the average pay was 400 livres. We also learn that the clavecin player received 600 livres. The ten instruments that had the biggest salary were, of course, Lully’s pet _Petits Violons_.[47]

The Abbé Raguenet, in comparing the Italian and French Orchestras of the time, says: “Besides all the instruments they have in Italy, we still have the oboes, which, with their equally soft and piercing tones have such advantage over the violins in ‘airs of movement,’ and also the flutes such as the illustrious Philbert,[48] Philidor, Descoteaux[49] and the Hotteterres know how to make wail in a manner so touching and to make sigh so amorously in our tender airs.”

How we wish that we could go to one of the King’s Little Suppers at Marly and hear a concert by this famous Orchestra! How we should like to hear Descoteaux and Philbert play a duet on their flutes, or hear the whole Orchestra play a Sarabande, or a Courante, under Lully’s careful conducting!

Charles II of England had not been on the throne very long before he created an Orchestra of Twenty-Four Violins like that he had heard so many times with delight at the Court of Louis XIV.

The chief violinist and leader of this organization was Thomas Baltzar of Lübeck.

“His Majesty, who was a brisk and airy prince, coming to the crown in the flower and vigor of his age was soon, if I may so say,” says Burney, “tired with the grave and solemn way which had been established by Tallis, Byrd and others, ordered the composers of his Chapel to add symphonies with instruments to their anthems; and thereupon established a select number of his private music to play the symphony and _ritournelles_ which he had appointed.

“The old way of consorts was laid aside by the prince immediately after his restoration when he established his band of Twenty-Four Violins after the French model; and the style of Musick has changed accordingly. So that French Musick became in general use at Court and in the theatres. Indeed, performers on the violin had a lift into credit before this period when Baltzar, a Swede, came over and did wonders upon it by swiftness and double stops. But his hand was accounted hard and rough, though he made amends for that by often tuning in the lyre way and playing lessons conformable to it, which were very harmonious.

“During the first years of King Charles’s reign all the Musick in favor with the _beau-monde_ was in the French style, which at that time was rendered famous throughout Europe by the works of Baptiste Lully, a Frenchified Italian and master of the Court Musick at Paris, who enriched the French Musick by Italian harmony which greatly improved their melody. His style was theatrical; and the pieces called _branles_, or _ouvertures_, consisting of an _entrée_ and a _courante_ will ever be admired as the most stately and complete _mouvements_ in Musick. All the composers in London strove hard to imitate Lully’s vein. However, the whole tendency of the air affected the _foot_ more than the _ear_; and no one could listen to an _entrée_ with its starts and leaps without expecting a dance to follow.

“The French instrumental music, however, did not make its way so fast as to bring about a revolution all at once; for during a great part of this King’s reign the old Musick was still used in the country and in many private meetings in London; but _the treble viol was discarded and the violin took its place_.

“It may be ascribed to the peculiar pleasure which King Charles II received from the gay and sprightly sound of the violin that this instrument was introduced at Court and the houses of the nobility and gentry for other purposes than country-dances and festive mirth. Hitherto there seems to have been no public concerts and in the Musick of the chamber, in the performance of _Fancies_ on instruments which had taken the place of vocal madrigals and motets the violin had no admission, the whole business having been done by viols.

“The use of the violin and its kindred instruments, the tenor and violoncello, in Court was doubtless brought from Italy to France and from France to England; for Charles II, who, during the Usurpation had spent a considerable time on the Continent, where he heard nothing but French Musick, upon his return to England, in imitation of Louis XIV, established a band of violins, tenors and basses, instead of the viols, lutes and cornets of which the Court band used to consist.”

Anthony Wood, that quaint old English writer, also throws a light on the question of violin-playing in England at that time.

“The gentlemen in private meetings,” he writes, “which A. W. frequented, played three, four and five parts with viols as treble viol, tenor, counter-tenor and bass, with an organ, virginal or harpsicon, joined with them; and they esteemed a violin to be an instrument only belonging to a common fiddler and could not endure that it should come among them for fear of making their meetings to be vaine and fiddling. But after the Restoration of Charles I, viols began to be out of fashion and only violins used, as treble violin, tenor and bass violin; and the King, according to the French mode, would have Twenty-Four Violins playing before him while he was at meals, as being more airy and brisk than viols.”

Then he goes on to tell us something about the chief violinist.

“Tho. Baltzar, a Lübecker born, and the most famous artist for the violin that the world had yet produced, was now in Oxford; and this day, July 24, A. W. was with him and Mr. Ed. Low, lately organist of Christ Church, at the house of Will Ellis, A. W. did then and there to his very great astonishment hear him play on the violin. He then saw him run up his fingers to the end of the fingerboard of the violin and run them back insensibly and all with alacrity and in very good time, which he, nor any in England, saw the like before. A. W. entertained him and Mr. Low with what the house could then afford and afterwards he invited them to the tavern; but they being engaged to go to other company, he could no more hear him play, or see him play at that time. Afterwards he came to one of the weekly meetings at Mr. Ellis’s house and he played to the wonder of all the auditory; and exercising his finger and instrument several ways to the utmost of his force. Wilson, thereupon, the public professor, the greatest judge of music that ever was, did, after his humorsome way, stoop down to Baltzar’s feet to see whether he had a hoof on, that is to say to see whether he was a devil or not, because he acted beyond the parts of man.”

Burney goes on to say:

“We are able to ascertain the time when concerts consisting of two treble violins, a tenor and a bass violin, or violoncello, came into practice; that they had their origin in Italy can scarce admit of a question; and it is no less certain that they were adopted by the French.

“Indeed the idea of a performance where the instruments for the bass and intermediate parts were in number so disproportionate to the treble, seems to be absurd; and there is reason to suspect that the song ‘Four and Twenty Fiddlers all in a row,’ in D’Urfey’s _Pills to Purge Melancholy_, was written in ridicule of that band of twenty-four violins, which, as the French writers assert, was the most celebrated of any in Europe.”

This old song begins:

“_Four and twenty Fiddlers all in a Row;_
_And there was fiddle fiddle and twice fiddle fiddle._
_’Cause ’twas my Lady’s Birthday,_
_Therefore we kept holiday,_
_And all went to be merry._

“_Four and twenty Drummers all in a Row,_
_And there was tantarra rara, tan, tantarra._
_Rara, rara, rara rar, there was rub, etc._

“_Four and twenty Tabors and Pipers all in a Row_
_And there was whif and dub,_
_And tantarra rara, etc._”

and goes on in the same way for several verses.

The next name of importance after Lully is that of Corelli.

We must not imagine that Corelli suddenly appeared like a great shining star in a dark night. No artist ever leaps suddenly upon an astonished world. Every artist builds on the works of those who have gone before him.

To understand Corelli, we must go back a little and recall something that we have already noticed; and that is the importance of the work of the Italian violin-makers.

Let us then fix it in our minds that when Corelli was born, in 1653, Nicolò Amati had already made a great number of fine violins and that Stradivari was working all through Corelli’s life and that he outlived him. So that the question of violin-playing was the chief one that engaged the attention of the composers of Corelli’s time. They were all working on the question of _how to play the new instrument_, just as the makers had been, and were still working on the _technique_ of the instrument itself. Amati and Stradivari, like those who had gone before them, were trying for _tone_. The composers were now trying to show off the voice, or _tone_, of the new instrument to the best advantage.

This question is of the greatest importance for us to remember, because _the violin is the very foundation of our modern Orchestra_.

At first the violin was the _prima-donna_ of the Orchestra; but eventually the other members of the Violin Family—viola, violoncello and double-bass—also became singers. In short, the Violin Family became the very backbone of the Orchestra.

Corelli had much to do with making this the case.

Before Corelli was born in Fusignano in 1653, the Italian composers, particularly those who were attached to the cathedrals and private Orchestras of the wealthy princes and lords of Lombardy—Brescia, Cremona, Mantua and Padua—who were right in the midst of the activities of violin-making, had been writing sonatas, “Flowers” and dances of all kinds for the new violin, to be accompanied by the spinet, the organ, or two or three other stringed-instruments. Their compositions gradually grew more elaborate as they discovered the possibilities of the last new model sent from the workshop of Gasparo di Salò, Maggini, Amati, or Stradivari. There was a great deal more Italian music—and good music, too—composed at that time than most people have any idea of.

Arcangelo Corelli studied the violin under Giovanni Battista Bassani, a musician who is almost forgotten to-day, but who was a great violinist, a composer, a conductor of the Cathedral-music, first in Bologna and afterwards in Ferrara; and he was particularly happy in his writings for the string-quartet. Bassani was about the same age as Corelli; and to his pure instrumental style and knowledge of counterpoint Corelli and modern music owe not a little.

After studying the violin with this master, Corelli went to Rome and studied with Matteo Simonelli, who had had a splendid musical education.

Corelli travelled in Germany and was for a time attached to the Court of the Elector of Bavaria. Then he went to Paris in 1672, and, returning to Italy, settled in Rome. He became a favorite in society and lived in the household of the splendid Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, taking charge of that prince’s music. His regular Monday concerts were a feature of the social and artistic life in Rome.

Pupils swarmed to him. One of them was Geminiani. Corelli became one of the great personages of Rome. When Christina of Sweden went to Rome, Corelli conducted an Orchestra of a hundred and fifty men in her palace. When he died in 1713 he was buried in the Pantheon, not far from Raphael. For years after his death a musical service was held annually at his tomb, where some of his compositions were piously played by his pupils.

Geminiani’s estimate of Corelli’s character seems very just. He said: “His merit was not depth of learning, like that of Alessandro Scarlatti; nor a great fancy, nor rich invention in melody or harmony, but a nice ear and most delicate taste, which led him to select the most pleasing harmonies and melodies and to construct the parts so as to produce the most delightful effect upon the ear.”

At the time of Corelli’s greatest reputation Geminiani asked Scarlatti what he thought of him. Scarlatti answered that “he found nothing greatly to admire in his composition, but was extremely struck with the manner in which he played his concertos and his nice management of his band and uncommon accuracy of the whole performance gave the concertos an amazing effect; and that, even to the eye as well as the ear”; for, continued Geminiani, “Corelli regarded it as essential to the _ensemble_ of a band that their bows should all move exactly together, all up or all down; so, that at his rehearsals, which constantly preceded every public performance of his concertos, he would immediately stop the band if he discovered one irregular bow.”

“There can be no doubt that above all Corelli was a great violin-player and that all he wrote grew out of the very nature of his instrument. In his _Chamber-Sonatas_ and _Concerto-Grossi_ he must be considered the founder of the style of orchestral writing on which the future development is based; while in the _Sonatas_ (op. 5) which have merely an accompanying fundamental bass, he gives a model for the solo sonata; and, thereby, for all writing for the violin as a solo-instrument.

“All his works are characterized by conciseness and lucidity of thought and form, and by a dignified, almost aristocratic, bearing. The slow movements show genuine pathos as well as grace, and bring out in a striking manner the singing-power of the violin.

“Corelli’s _Gavottes_, _Sarabandes_ and other pieces with the form and rhythm of dances, do not materially differ from similar productions of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries, although, like everything that he wrote, they are distinguished by great earnestness and dignity of style and are especially well adapted to the instrument. He was not so much an innovator as a reformer; he did not introduce new striking effects; it cannot be denied that his technique was a limited one—he never goes beyond the third position—but, by rigidly excluding everything that appeared to him contrary to the nature of the instrument, and by adopting and using in the best possible way everything in the existing technique which he considered conformable to the nature of the violin, he not only hindered a threatened development in the wrong direction, but also gave to this branch of art a sound and solid basis, which his successors could, and did, build upon successfully.”[50]

Burney tells us that “After the publication of Corelli’s works, the violin seems to have increased in favor all over Europe. There was hardly a town in Italy, about the beginning of the present century (the Eighteenth), where some distinguished performer on that instrument did not reside.”

The next link in our chain is Scarlatti.

Alessandro Scarlatti was born in Trapani, Sicily, in 1659. We find him at a comparatively early age settled in Naples, where he was celebrated as a singer, and a performer on the harp and the harpsichord and as a composer of operas. He was the chief of the Neapolitan School. Modern critics have proved that on his ideas the great Gluck built his musical edifice.

Scarlatti was a prolific composer. He wrote one hundred and fifteen operas and two hundred masses, besides oratorios, cantatas and other works.

He is of importance to the Orchestra because of the new way he wrote for the instruments. He made the accompaniment of vocal recitative of new importance and gave the Orchestra a great part to do throughout the entire opera. The strings formed the groundwork of his Orchestra; and he also used oboes, flutes, bassoons, trumpets, drums and horns (the latter an innovation).

Scarlatti was the creator of modern opera, and the “Father of Classical Music,” the forerunner of Gluck, Mozart and Haydn and many others. Dr. Burney put the debt that great composers owe to Scarlatti concisely when he said: “I find part of Scarlatti’s property among the stolen goods of all the best composers of the first forty years of the present century.”

With regard to his treatment of the violoncello, Dr. Burney says:

“The violoncello parts of many of his cantatas were so excellent that whoever was able to do them justice was thought a supernatural being. Geminiani used to relate that Francischello, a celebrated performer on the violoncello at the beginning of this century, accompanied one of these cantatas at Rome so admirably, while Scarlatti was at the harpsichord, that the company, being good Catholics and living in a country where miraculous powers have not yet ceased, were firmly persuaded it was not Francischello who had played the violoncello, but an angel that had descended and assumed his shape.”

Scarlatti also divided his strings into four parts and carefully balanced with them the wind instruments that he used; but the strings were the most important and stood out in relief against the wind; or, if we prefer to think of the matter another way, the wind was subordinate to the strings.

Very little is known regarding his private life.

His son, Domenico, was also a prolific composer and was a famous player on the harpsichord (_Gravicembalo_). To him is due the original idea of the _form of the Sonata which Haydn afterwards perfected_. Domenico Scarlatti is remembered, too, for his “_Cat’s Fugue_,” written on the notes that his favorite cat touched one day when she walked down the keys of the harpsichord.

Next in line comes Rameau, who was born in Dijon, in 1683, just two years before Bach. He was at the height of his fame when Mozart was born. Rameau came of a musical family, showed his talent early, played the clavecin at seven and studied the violin and organ. Eventually he settled in Paris. First he wrote little musical comedies, and, finally, operas—_Hippolyte et Arcie_, _Les Indes Galantes_, _Castor et Pollux_ are some of them—and ballets, which as M. Choquet truly says, “contain beauties which defy the caprices of fashion and will command the respect of true artists for all time.” Rameau died in 1774. Rameau looked very much like Voltaire. He always used the violin when composing. Rameau’s new ideas of orchestration created animosity among the followers of Lully.

What did Rameau do for the Orchestra?

_He gave to the different members of the Orchestra an individual rôle_; he extended the technique of the violins; he made an increasing use of arpeggios; and he was the first to use _pizzicato_ chords with all the strings at once. He also made a delicate and light use of the woodwind.

Every day Rameau is taking a larger place in Music. French critics consider him the most _French_ of all their composers.

_By Restout_]

While the Italian Renaissance had developed the opera, the dance and music that delighted the drawing-room, under the bright skies of Italy, in the colder North, under the influence of stern Martin Luther, the _Chorale_, or hymn-tune, had arisen to supply the needs of the new Lutheran religion. The _Chorale_ is austere and solemn, although melodious. It was largely owing to these chorales that the new Reformed religion made its way so rapidly among the people of Northern Germany. The sources of these Chorales were various: some came from old church-hymns; others, from folk-songs. A good example is the “_Old Hundredth Tune_” beginning “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”

The custom of playing these _Chorales_ on the organ with elaborate accompaniments and treating them also as themes for fugues and counterpoint was a special fancy of the German organists.

Germany had the finest organists in Europe in the Seventeenth Century; and there was no greater one among them than Johann Sebastian Bach.

Moreover, no one understood the _Chorale_ better, or made more use of it, than Bach.

Bach’s life was uneventful. He was born in 1685 in Eisenach, near the Wartburg (celebrated for the legend of Tannhäuser), was organist at Weimar and _Kapellmeister_ at Cothen for the Prince Leopold and Cantor of the Thomas School in Leipzig from 1723 until his death in 1750. He was also organist and director of the two chief churches in Leipzig.

Bach wrote every form of music except the opera. His industry was prodigious. “In Bach’s hands the music of the period marked its climax of expression, the _Chorale_ was idealized to its highest pitch, the combination of Orchestra, chorus and solo voices in the Passions, the B-minor mass and the Church Cantatas became pillars of the house of musical art for all time, the principle of equal temperament[51] was fixed for good in Clavichord work, the _violin became a solo instrument which could speak unaided for itself_, and the organ came finally into its own. All this immense range of work was accomplished by an unobtrusive, unadvertising man of the highest moral force and of simple, deeply religious and deep-feeling character, a personality who would have considered it the highest possible tribute to be called the worthy father of a devoted family.”[52]

When Bach and his son, Philipp Emmanuel, went to work to draw their family tree, they found they had fifty-three musicians to hang on the boughs.

The whole Bach family played the organ and every other keyboard instrument. They were all marvellous players of the harpsichord.

Bach’s contribution to the development of the Orchestra is that he treated each separate instrument lovingly and as if it were an individual, so that _he prepared the way for the occasional solos in orchestral compositions_. He wrote for a great many instruments that were rapidly going out of fashion, such as the _oboe d’amore_, the _oboe di caccia_, the _viola d’amore_ and the _viola da gamba_.

Bach stands at the parting of the ways of ancient music and modern music. Bach is the bridge between the Old and the New. He is often called the “musicians’ musician.”

Bach’s four Overtures for Orchestra are usually spoken of as _Suites_; but they are compositions on the Lully type. Critics have pointed out that Bach uses instruments to get the effect of _fulness_ rather than _color_.

_By Lissewsky_]

Bach’s compositions for a solo violin, unaccompanied, are the most stupendous works ever written by anybody for a single instrument. Great players have always delighted in mastering their technical difficulties, which are very great.

Handel was born the same year as Bach, in 1685, though he seems a little nearer to us somehow. While Bach was living his quiet, uneventful life, Handel was gaining experience in the world. He was a native of Saxony and was the son of a surgeon, who considered music a degrading business. We know under what difficulties little Handel practised the spinet in the garret. The Duke of Saxe-Wessenfels heard him play and persuaded his father to let him follow the bent of his genius. Handel played in the Orchestra in the Opera House of Hamburg, “the Northern Venice,” a cosmopolitan city where the people had the best of music.

Then Handel travelled in Italy, where he met the famous Alessandro Scarlatti[53] and had his opera of _Agrippina_ performed. Then he went to the Court of Hanover to become _Kapellmeister_.

But Handel wanted a larger field for his activity, and so he went to London in 1710 and brought out several operas. Queen Anne was reigning at this time and her Court was famous for its brilliant literary men—Pope, Addison, Steele, Sheridan and many others; and Handel’s music pleased many of the Court, as well as the Queen herself. In 1713 he wrote a _Birthday Ode_ for her, which delighted Her Majesty. It was literally “to the Queen’s taste.”

But Queen Anne died in 1714; and a strange thing happened for Handel—the Elector of Hanover, his old patron, was called to the British throne as George I. Handel now became director of the King’s Music.

In 1717 he left George I to become Chapel-master for the Duke of Chandos, who had a palace at Cannons, not far from London, where he lived in great magnificence. For instance, he had a guard of a hundred Swiss soldiers and a chapel like those of Italy. His Orchestra was of the best.

Handel stayed at Cannons three years and then he became director of the Italian opera in London, where he produced one opera after another, some of which brought forth witty satires from Addison and Steele, but all of which attracted large audiences. Most of them were on mythological subjects, were written in the Italian style and were superbly staged. Occasionally, a beautiful aria from one or another of these operas appears on a programme to-day; and it is so noble and lovely that we long to hear the old operas themselves. As a rule, these arias are accompanied by several instruments supporting one that plays an _obbligato_ part; and these show what Handel did to develop and exhibit the _technique_ of various instruments.

The last years of his life were devoted to composing the magnificent oratorios of _Saul_, _Samson_, _The Messiah_ and _Israel in Egypt_.

_By Thomson_]

Handel became a naturalized English subject and lived far into the reign of George II. When he died in 1751, he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Handel’s contribution toward building up our modern Orchestra is that he helped make it more solid, more sonorous and more vital.

The balance of Handel’s Orchestra was very different from ours, because of the overwhelming number of woodwind instruments. If he had twenty-five strings, he would sometimes have as many as five oboes and five bassoons! The clarinet had not then come into use, and some stringed and some woodwind instruments that Handel used became obsolete after his death. Handel was particularly fond of the oboe: it is often conspicuous in his scores.

Handel made his Orchestra a very strong ally of his operas and his oratories. He conducted seated at the clavier, or organ, and accompanied the singers with the most marvellous art possible to imagine, following their fancies and pleasures and whims; and then, when they had finished, he would _improvise_ to suit his own taste. His audience was always enraptured.

It is little wonder, therefore, that Handel’s orchestration sounds scanty to our ears, if his works are played from the original scores; for we miss the filling in of all this elaborate work done on the spur of the moment and in all the excitement and exhilaration of the concert-hall before the audience who had learned what to expect.

We are told that when Handel conducted one of his oratorios the chorus had their leaders who listened to the organ from which they took their cues. The Orchestra was divided into three sections. Section No. I was the _Concertino_, consisting of a first and second violin and a solo violoncello. Section No. II was the _Concerto Grossi_, consisting of eight first violins, eight second violins, six violas, four to six violoncellos and four double basses. Section No. III was the _Ripienist_, or the supplementary band, consisting of six first violins, six second violins, four violas, three to four violoncellos and three basses. This _Ripienist_ band was employed to fill in the harmonies, or to support the solos, and the _concertante_ parts.

The picture facing this page, taken from an old print in the British Museum, represents Handel seated at the clavecin (a _cembalo_ with two keyboards), of which the lid is raised. On his right hand is the violoncellist. Before his eye are two violins and two flutes. The solo singers are near him, on his left, close to the clavecin. The rest of the instrumentalists are behind him, out of sight. “Thus his directions and his glances would control the _Concertino_ who would transmit, in their turn the chief conductor’s wishes to the _Concerto Grossi_ and they, in their turn, to the _Ripienists_. In place of the quasi-military discipline of the modern Orchestra, controlled under the _bâton_ of a chief conductor the different bodies of the Handelian Orchestra governed one another with elasticity; and it was the incisive rhythm of the _cembalo_ that put the whole mass into motion.”[54]

We rarely hear any of Handel’s music with exactly the Orchestra for which he wrote. All conductors realize the difficulty of having anyone improvise on the organ, or piano, to fill in the bald and empty spaces. Moreover, it would confuse the singers and terrify the audience. Improvising at concerts has gone out of fashion.

_Handel at the Cembalo_]

This was even realized in Mozart’s day; and so Mozart wrote those beautiful “additional accompaniments” to _The Messiah_, which give to that oratorio no little of its grace and nobility. Mozart, as we know, was a genius in instrumentation and even in his day people demanded something different from the Handelian concert.

Handel, however, was always seeking for novel effects. He was one of the first to introduce the horn into the Orchestra and he was “the first to assert the expressive personality of the violoncello.”[55] He also appreciated the fantastic and lugubrious quality of the bassoons; experimented with all kinds of instruments; and used the kettledrums as a solo for Jupiter’s oath in _Semele_. This was so unusual and so startling that Sheridan in his burletta on _Jupiter_ had a pistol fired suddenly, upon which one of the characters exclaims: “This hint I took from Handel!”

Handel was considered horribly noisy in his day. His friend, Goupy, the artist, made a caricature that doubtless amused Handel, who saw himself represented at the organ as a huge, unwieldy figure with a boar’s head and enormous tusks (referring to his violent temper) and the room full of horns, trumpets and kettledrums, while a donkey is also present braying loudly and in the distance a battery of artillery is ready for action.

It is noticeable, too, in Handel’s Orchestra, as in Bach’s, that we get no (or very little) tone-color. Handel’s Orchestra is neutral in tint. The organ and the keyboard idea is still prevailing—all the instruments combine, as it were, to produce the one hue.

“But great painter as Handel was, he did not work so much through the brilliancy, variety and novelty of his tone-colors as by the beauty of his designs and his effects of light and shade. With a voluntarily restrained palette and by satisfying himself with the sober colors of the strings, he yet was able to produce surprising and thrilling effects. Volbach has shown that he did not contrast and mix his strings but divided the same family of instruments into different groups. In the introduction to _Esther_ (1732), the violins are divided into five groups, in the _Resurrection_ (1708) into four groups. The violas are sometimes divided into two, the second group being reinforced by the third violin, or the violoncellos. On the other hand, when Handel wanted to do so, he reduced his instrumental forces by suppressing the viola and the second violin, whose places were taken by the clavecin. All his orchestral art is the true instinct of balance and economy, which, with the most restricted means in managing a few colors yet knows how to obtain as powerful impressions as our musicians to-day with their crowded palettes.

“One is prone to accept too readily the idea that expressive _nuance_ is the privilege of modern musical art and that Handel’s Orchestra knew only the great theatrical contrasts between force and sweetness, or loudness and softness. It is nothing of the kind. The range of Handel’s _nuances_ is extremely varied. We find with him _pianissimo_, _piano_, _mezzo piano_, _mezzo forte_, _un poco più F._, _un poco F._, _forte_, _fortissimo_. We never find the orchestral _crescendo_ and _decrescendo_, which hardly appears marked until the time of Jomelli and the school of Mannheim; there is no doubt, however, but that it was practised long before it was marked in the music. The President of Brosses wrote in 1739 from Rome: ‘The voices like the violins used with light and shade with unconscious swelling of sound, which augments the force from note to note, even to a very high degree since its use as a _nuance_ is extremely sweet and touching.’ And endless examples occur in Handel of long _crescendi_ and _diminuendi_ without their expression being marked in the scores. Another kind of _crescendo_ and _diminuendo_—made on the same note—was very common in the time of Handel. His friend, Geminiani, helped to set the fashion.

“As Geminiani explains it: ‘The sound ought to commence softly and should swell out in a gradual fashion to about half its value. Then, it should diminish to the end. The movement of the bow should continue without interruption.’”[56]

Padre Martini said that Gluck combined in the music-drama “all the finest qualities of Italian and many of those of French music with the great beauties of the German orchestra.”

Gluck began where Handel left off. Handel had already treated mythological subjects. He had also written an _Alceste_ and an _Armida_ before Gluck appeared on the scene. Handel (who is said not to have liked Gluck at all) was Gluck’s chosen master on account of “the wonderful beauties of his melodies, the grandeur of his style and his rhythms like armies on the march.”

Gluck not only followed Handel, but he adored him. He kept Handel’s portrait over his bed!

“Gluck gave the Orchestra a new life, assigning the first place to it in some cases, letting it express the feeling that captivates the listener. With him violins, oboes and trombones are not merely sonorous agents; they are living entities, personages of action. Through the Orchestra he adds dazzling beauty to a temple scene, or a scene in the Elysian Field; and by little touches on certain instruments here and there he can make us feel the mystery of the infernal regions. Gluck’s great gift to the Orchestra was to make it _speak_.”[57]

Christoph Willibad Gluck was born near Neumarkt in the Upper Palatinate (Austria) in 1714. He was educated in music in Prague and in Vienna; and fortunately attracted the attention of Prince Melzi, who took him to Milan to direct his private Orchestra. We all know how his successful operas in Vienna prepared the way for still greater triumphs in Paris, where Gluck enjoyed the patronage of the Queen Marie Antoinette, who, being an Austrian, had known and loved Gluck’s works in Vienna.

_By Duplessis_]

All the histories and memoirs of the time speak of the quarrel between the followers of Gluck and Piccini. Piccini represented the old Italian style and Gluck stood for the new dramatic style—the latest thing out it happened to be. The Piccinists accused Gluck of composing operas with little melody, no truth to nature, little elegance or refinement, and a noisy Orchestra. “Gluck’s modulations,” they said, “were awkward and he had no originality, no finish, no polish.” In short, Gluck was everything that was abominable.

Dr. Burney informs us that: “No door in Paris was opened to a visitor without the question being asked—‘Monsieur, are you a Picciniste, or a Gluckiste?’”

The Piccinists are forgotten: the Gluckists still live. We are among them; for, to our way of thinking, nothing more noble and inspired than _Orfeo_ was ever written. And if polish and elegance are to be found anywhere in music, they appear in the scores of Gluck.

“Yet, if he had merely carried to perfection the work begun by Lully and Rameau; if his efforts had been limited to removing the harpsichord from the Orchestra, introducing the harp and trombones, employing the clarinets, scoring with skill and effect, giving more importance and interest to the overture and using with such magic effect the artifice of momentary pauses to vary or emphasize speech in music,—if he had done no more than this, he would have earned our gratitude, but he would not in that case have been one of the monarchs of art.

“What then did he accomplish that was so extraordinary?

“He grasped the idea that the mission of music was not merely to afford gratification to the senses, and he proved that the expression of moral qualities is within its reach. He disdained all such tricks of the trade as do not appeal to the heart—in fact, he preferred the Muses to the Sirens. He aimed at depicting historic, or legendary, characters and antique social life; and in his works of genius he put into the mouths of each of his heroes accents suited to their sentiments and to the spirit of the time in which they lived. He made use of the Orchestra to add to the force of a dramatic situation, or (in one noble instance) to contrast external repose with the internal agitation of a remorseful conscience. In a word, all his French operas show him to have been a noble musician, a true poet and a deep thinker.”

Gluck also contributed to the development of the ballet and made the dance a vital part of the story of the opera, as, for instance, the ballet of the Spirits of the Blest in _Orfeo_.

His ballet-music is very beautiful in form and melody and choice of instruments that play it.

“With Gluck,” says Romain Rolland, “the ballet lost some of the delightful exuberance it had had in Rameau’s operas; but what it lost in originality and richness, it gained in simplicity and purity; and the dance airs in _Orfeo_ are like classic bas-reliefs, the frieze of a Greek Temple.”

“To think,” said Beethoven in his last days, looking at a picture of Haydn’s birthplace, “that so great a man should have first seen the light in a peasant’s wretched cottage!”

Haydn’s career once again proves that genius finds its level in the world. Haydn was born of poor parents in Rohrau, a small Austrian village near the borders of Hungary, in 1732. We all know how as a child he sang in the choir at St. Stephen’s in Vienna and played the kettledrums, piano and violin. At an early age he began to compose; and when he was about thirty he became assistant director of music in Prince Esterhazy’s house at Eisenstadt.

The story of Haydn’s entering into the service of one of the most important princes in Europe is interesting.

Haydn had attracted the attention of Prince Esterhazy by one of his symphonies; and friends of Haydn’s arranged that he should compose a symphony to be performed at Eisenstadt on the Prince’s birthday.

“Haydn executed it and it is worthy of him. The day of the ceremony having arrived, the Prince, seated on his throne and surrounded by his court, attended at the usual concert. Haydn’s symphony was begun. Scarcely had the performers got to the middle of the _first Allegro_, than the Prince interrupted them and asked who was the author of that fine composition.

“‘Haydn,’ replied Friedberg, and he made the poor young man, all trembling, come forward.

“‘What!’ exclaimed Prince Esterhazy, ‘is it this Moor’s music?’ (Haydn’s complexion, it must be confessed, gave some room for this sarcasm.) ‘Well, Moor,’ he said, ‘from henceforth you remain in my service. What is your name?’

“‘Joseph Haydn.’

“‘Surely I remember the name. You are now engaged to me. Go and dress yourself like a professor. Do not let me see you any more in this trim. You cut a pitiful figure. Get a new coat, a wig and buckles, a collar and red heels to your shoes; and I particularly desire that your shoes may be high, in order that your stature may correspond to your intelligence. You understand me? Go your way and everything will be given to you.’

“Haydn kissed the Prince’s hand, and retired to a corner of the Orchestra, a little grieved at being obliged to hide his natural hair and youthful figure. The next morning he appeared at his Highness’s Levee imprisoned in the grave costume which had been ordered. He had the title of Second Professor of Music, but his new comrades called him simply _the Moor_.”[58]

In 1762 Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy succeeded his brother and Haydn soon became head of the entire music of the household. The “Magnificent Prince Esterhazy,” as he was called, now turned an old hunting-lodge into a splendid residence, making it a miniature Versailles. The house was not only palatial, but there were deer-parks, gardens, hot-houses, summer-houses, temples, grottoes, “hermitages,” two theatres equipped with scenery and also a chapel. The musical establishment was large. The Prince paid big salaries and the musicians were engaged for several years at a time. There was a large opera company, a large Orchestra and individual solo players on certain instruments. Haydn had charge of it all. He was on friendly terms with Prince Esterhazy himself, for whose _viola di bardone_, or _baryton_, he had to write a new piece every day. Haydn lived at “Esterhazy,” as the place was called, until Prince Nicolaus died in 1790. Then he went to Vienna, where he died in 1809.