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Page 80
Riehl says that art is always in danger of ruin when its simple
foundation forms are too much elaborated, overlooking the fact
that music is not an art, but psychological utterance.
It needed all Wagner's gigantic personality to rise above this
wave of formalism that looked to the past for its salvation,
a past which was one of childish experimenting rather than of
aesthetic accomplishment. The tendency was to return to the
dark cave where tangible walls were to be touched by the hands,
rather than to emerge into a sunlight that seemed blinding.
XIX
ON THE LIVES AND ART PRINCIPLES OF SOME SEVENTEENTH AND
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY COMPOSERS
There is much of value to the student to be derived from a
study of the lives and art principles of the composers of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To go back to an earlier
period would hardly be worth while, as the music composed in
those days is too much obscured by the uncertainty of tradition
and the inevitable awkwardness of expression that goes with
all primitiveness in art.
The first whom I would mention are Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince
of Venosa, and Ludovico Viadana.
The former was a nephew of the Archbishop of Naples, was born
in 1550, and died in 1613. His name is important from the fact
that he went boldly beyond Monteverde, his contemporary, in the
use of the new dissonant chords (sevenths and ninths) which
were just beginning to be employed, and adopted a chromatic
style of writing which strangely foreshadowed the chromatic
polyphonic style of the present century. He wrote innumerable
madrigals for a number of voices, but his innovations remained
sterile so far as the development of music is concerned, for
the reason that while his music often acquired a wonderful
poignancy for his time by the use of chromatics, just as often
it led him into the merest bramble bush of sound, real music
being entirely absent.
Viadana (1566-1645) has been placed by many historians of
music in the same category as Guido d'Arezzo (who is credited
with having invented solmization, musical notation, etc.),
Palestrina, Monteverde and Peri, who are famed, the one for
having discovered the dominant ninth chord, and the other
for the invention of opera. Viadana is said to have been the
first to use what is called a _basso continuo_, and even the
figured bass. The former was the uninterrupted repetition of
a short melody or phrase in the bass through the entire course
of a piece of music. This was done very often to give a sense
of unity that nowadays would be obtained by a repetition of
the first thought at certain intervals through the piece. The
figured (or better, ciphered) bass was an entirely different
thing. This device, which is still employed, consisted of
the use of figures to indicate the different chords in music.
These figures or ciphers were written over or under the bass
note on which the chord represented by the figures was to be
played or sung. A 5 over or under a bass note meant that with
that note a perfect major triad was to be sounded, considering
the note written as the root of the chord; a 3 was taken to
stand for a perfect minor triad; a 6 for the chord of the sixth
(first inversion of a triad), and 6/4 for the second inversion;
a line through a 5 or 7 meant that the triad was a diminished
fifth or a diminished seventh chord; a cross indicated a leading
tone; a 4 stood for the third inversion of the dominant seventh
chord. This system of shorthand, as it may be called, was and
is still of tremendous value to composers. In the olden days,
particularly, when many of the composers engraved their own
music for publication, it saved a great deal of labour. It is
probably not generally known that the engraving of music by
the composer was so common; but such was the case with Bach,
Rameau, and Couperin.
And this reminds me that the embellishments, as they were
called, which are so common in all harpsichord and clavichord
music, were also noted in a kind of shorthand, and for precisely
the same reason. The embellishments themselves originated
from the necessity for sustaining in some way the tone of
the instrument, which gave out little, dry, clicklike sounds;
if the melody were played in simple notes, these sounds would
mingle with the accompaniment and be lost in it. Therefore,
the embellishments served to sustain the tones of the melody,
and thus cause them to stand out from the accompaniment. Their
notation by means of symbols copied from the primitive _neumes_
vastly facilitated the work of engraving. Much confusion arose
in the notation of embellishments, owing to the fact that each
composer had his own system of symbols.
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