The Art of Music : a Comprehensive Library Of

liiii^Mi •- 8,2iaE*H#.#ii<*fti?trii-j^'MK BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF 1891 k:3MA3^. 3.ML7.. 9306 MUSIC Cornell University Library ML. iao.M39 The art of music :a comorehensve llbrar ill 3 1924 022 385 268 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022385268 THE ART OF MUSIC The Art of Music A Comprehensive Library of Information for Music Lovers and Musicians Editor-in-Chief DANIEL GREGORY M^SON Columbia University ^ Associate Editors EDWARD B. HILL LELAND HALL Harvard University Past Professor, Univ. of Wisconsin Managing Editor CESAR SAERCHINGER Modern Music Society of New York In Fourteen Volumes Profusely Illustrated NEW YORK THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC 1916 5 v<e. SaSiiB«it*J**- King Rene and his Musical Court From the Breviary of King Reni, a 15th century manuscript in the Biblio- thique de VArsenal THE ART OF MUSIC: VOLUME ONE A Narrative History of Music Department Editors: LELAND HALL AND CESAR SAERCHINGER Introduction by C. HUBERT H. PARRY, Mus. Doc. Director Royal College of Music, Loodon. Formerly Professor of Music, .University of Oxford, etc. BOOK I THE PRE-CLASSIC PERIODS NEW YORK THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC Copyrigbt, iSlS, b; THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC, Inc. [All Righti Eeserred) CONTENTS OF THE SERIES Volume I. Narrative History of Music—^Book I: The Pre-Classic Periods. Introduction by Sir C. Hubert H. Parry, Mus. Doc, Director of the Royal College of Music, London. Volume II. Narrative History of Music—^Book II: Clas- sicism AND Romanticism. Introduction by Leland Hall, Past Professor of Musical History, University of Wisconsin. Volume III. Narrative History of Music—Book III: Mod- ern Music. Introduction by Edward Burlingame Hill, In- structor in the History of Music, Harvard University. Volume FV. Music IN America. Introduction by Arthur Farwell, Associate Edi- tor, 'Musical America.' Volume V. The Voice and Vocal Music. Introduction by David Bispham, LL.D. Volume VI. Choral and Church Music. Introduction by Sir Edvpard Elgar, O.M. Volume VII. Pianoforte and Chamber Music. Introduction by Claude Debussy. Volume VIII. The Orchestra and Orchestral Music. Introduction by Dr. Richard Strauss. Volume IX. The Opera. Introduction by Alfred Hertz, Conductor, Met- ropolitan Opera House, New York. vii CONTENTS OF THE SERIES Volume X. The Dance. Introduction by Anna Pavlowa, of the Imperial Russian Ballet. Volume XI. Dictionary of Musicians and General Index. Volume XII, Dictionary of Music and General Index. Volume XIII. Musical Examples. Volume XIV. Modern Musical Examples. vui THE ART OF MUSIC GENERAL INTRODUCTION So many and varied are the paths of musical enjoyment and profit opened out in the following pages, so different and sometimes so conflicting are the types of art represented there, that the timid or inexperienced reader may well pause at the threshold, afraid of wholly losing his way in such a labyrinth. He may hesitate to trust himself in so unfamiliar a landscape without first seeing some sort of small-scale plan of the ground, which, omitting the confusing details, shows in bold relief only the larger and essential divisions—the 'lay of the land.' Such a plan it is the object of this introduction to furnish. Of the two most general types of reader, the profes- sional musician and the amateur or lover of music, the first is least in need of such assistance. His keen interest in his specialty will naturally determine the order of his reading; he will look first for all he can find about that, and later work out from that centre in various di- rections, and meanwhile the plan peculiar to this work of assembling all information on a given subject con- tained in any of the volumes under a name or subject word in the index volume will make this process as systematic and economical of time as it is fascinating to intellectual curiosity. Thus the index volume will serve as a sort of central rotunda, so to speak, making each room in this house of information accessible from ix THE ART OF MUSIC every other, and it will matter little at what point we enter. The singer may go in by Volume V, the pianist by Volume VII, the organist by Volume VI: all will eventually penetrate the entire edifice. It is, then, the music lover unfamiliar with all musical technique, and quite unspecialized in his interest, who most needs the help that these preliminary sug- gestions may offer. The kind of help he will want will depend, of course, on what it is he chiefly wishes to gain by his reading. Now we shall probably not go far wrong in saying that such a reader will desire, first, that general knowledge of the most important schools and the greatest individuals of music history which is not only a powerful aid to the enjoyment of music, but is nowadays coming to be considered an essential part of a liberal education. Secondly, he will wish to gain sufficient familiarity with music itself, and sufficient understanding of the instruments by which it is produced and the ways in which they influence its structure and style, to afford him the basis for sound dis- crimination between good, bad, and indifferent music, to develop, in short, his taste. In the third place, he will justly consider that, however abstruse and involved the theory of music may be, its fundamental principles are nevertheless accessible to the layman, and that familiarity with such principles, especially those of musical structure, affording as it will an insight into the way music is put together, is an invaluable aid to that sympathetic understanding of it which comes only to the alert and attentive listener. In a word, the music lover will demand of his reading that it instruct him historically, that it refine his taste by developing his sense of style, and that it intensify his enjoyment by showing him how to listen. Glancing now at the table of contents, we shall see that 'The Art of Music' naturally divides itself into three portions, each especially suited to subserve one of GENERAL INTRODUCTION these three needs of the reader. The first four volumes, historical in character, are primarily instructive. Volumes V to IX, inclusive, deal with the practical side of the art—^what is sometimes caUed 'applied music'—and in describing the chief media by which it is produced, such as the voice, the organ, the piano, the string quartet, the orchestra, provide general no- tions of what is appropriate to each. The short essays on harmony and on form in Volmne XII, and many passages of explanation of similar matters scattered through all the volumes, will acqpiaint the student with the fundamental principles of musical theory and the standard types of musical structure, thus affording him valuable aid to appreciative listening. The three portions of the work, historical, practical, and theoreti- cal, are finally correlated and unified by Volumes XI and XII, the Dictionary and Index, and illustrated by the musical examples in Volumes XIII and XIV. Let us examine a little more closely the ground cov- ered by each of these three general sections, one after another, not yet in detail—^that will come only with the actual reading—^but with the idea rather of getting a bird's-eye view of the whole field in its salient masses and divisions. The history of music is like that of other arts in being divided into schools or epochs. These are of course to a certain extent arbitrary and artificial—^marked off by critics for convenience of classification—and a com- poser may belong to two or more schools, as Beethoven, for example, is both 'classical' and 'romantic,' without being any more aware of it than we are when our train crosses the line, say, from New York State into Massa- chusetts. But they are also in part natural and real, because any fruitful idea in art—such as the 'impres- sionistic' idea of light in painting, for instance—is so much greater than any one man's capacity to grasp it that a whole generation or more of artists is needed to xi THE ART OF MUSIC develop its possibilities. Such a group of artists forms what we call a 'school' or 'period,' beginning usually with pioneers whose work is crude but novel, continu- ing with countless workers, most of whom are after a short time completely forgotten, and culminating with one or two greatly endowed masters who gather up all the best achievements of the school in their own work and stands for posterity as its figure-heads, or in some cases engulf it entirely in their colossal shadows. Pioneers, journeymen, geniuses—that is the list of char- acters in the drama we call an artistic school. If we try to outline in the roughest way the half dozen or so most important schools we can find in the entire history of music we shall get something like the following. After the long groping among the rudi- ments that went on through Greek and early Christian times there emerged during the middle ages a type of ecclesiastical music which, after a development of sev- eral centuries, culminated in the work of Orlando de Lasso (1520-1594), Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1524-1594), and others. This music is as primitive, archaic, and severe to our ears as the early Flemish re- ligious pictures are to our eyes.

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