Chapter 8: Music Travels: Trends in Italy, Germany, France, and England
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Chapter 8: Music Travels: Trends in Italy, Germany, France, and England I. Introduction A. During the seventeenth century, instrumental music rose in prominence and respect. B. Different political climates in Italy, France, Germany, and England resulted in national musical styles. II. Instrumental Music A. Some Organists: Frescobaldi, Sweelinck, and Others 1. Formal plans that did not depend on a text allowed instrumental music to expand to substantial compositions. 2. Written examples demonstrated what a virtuoso performer could do in improvisation. a. The music of the organist at St. Peter’s, Rome, Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583– 1643) is a good example of how this works. 1) He was a flamboyant composer whose music illustrates that early seventeenth-century musicians performed in an almost excessively impressive style. 2) Twelve of his sixteen published volumes are of instrumental music. 3) Two genres associated with him are the toccata and partite. a) Toccatas turn the act of playing into a form of theater, thereby linking them to current trends in vocal music. b) Frescobaldi’s toccatas are sectional and can be ended where need be. 4) His partite, or variations, were inventive works that evince years of improvisation. a) They include examples of the passacaglia and ciaccona. b. Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562–1621), a Dutch organist, was another famous composer, chiefly known for improvisation. 1) He published old-fashioned vocal music but also performed in a modern style on the keyboard. 2) English Catholic composers who moved to the Netherlands introduced Sweelinck to the music of the virginalists (English keyboard composers), including Byrd. B. Lutheran Adaptations: The Chorale Partita and Chorale Concerto 1. Sweelinck taught a number of Germans, and his interest in variations carried through to them, especially in the genre known as chorale variations. a. The melody of the chorale is present throughout but moves into different voices. b. Polyphonic treatment was one possibility, which became recognized as a genre called chorale partita. 1) Sweelinck’s pupil Samuel Scheidt was an early practitioner of the chorale partita. a) He published a version of Christ lag in Todesbanden in 1624 in his Tabulatura nova—“New Tablature.” b) Each variation in Anthology 1-70 demonstrates a different variation technique. 2. The Lutheran chorale concerto was a vocal counterpart to the chorale partita that mixed instruments with voices. Two proponents were Michael Praetorius (1571–1621) and Johann Hermann Schein (1586–1630). They reveal a fascination with the new Italian music. a. Schein was a civil servant who wrote sacred and secular music. 1) His Banchetto musicale (1617) was a book of dances organized into groups that are eventually called suites. 2) Schein’s prefaces to publications indicate he was interested in new styles. 3) In his setting of Christ lag in Todesbanden, the fact that one could replace the two solo singers with instrumentalists reveals that Schein conceived of lines, not as specific responses to the text. b. Praetorius also composed pieces for voices and instruments together, as well as instrumental ensemble music and five treatises. III. Italian Music in Germany A. Ruin: Germany, the Thirty Years War, and Heinrich Schütz 1. The Thirty Years War severely weakened Germany as a power. These caused necessary adaptations to the courtly arts, most clearly seen in the career and compositions of Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672). a. Recognized early as an exceptional singer, Schütz received musical training in Kassel. b. In 1609, the man who had discovered Schütz’s talent enabled the composer to travel to Italy to study with Giovanni Gabrieli. 1) The trip to Italy allowed Schütz to learn to compose in the new Italian style, which was his life’s dream. 2) The turmoils of state, however, prevented him from writing in a purely Italian style, but he managed to combine aspects with great success. a) A new appointment in Dresden, a reigning musical center, at first allowed him to use large forces. (1) Schütz’s Psalmen Davids show how he was able to write for large forces with antiphonal choruses. (2) He wrote an opera, Daphne, to a German text (the first). b) With war demanding pared-down forces, Schütz composed his Cantiones sacrae and Geistliche ChorMusic for smaller groups, some bordering on austere. B. The “Luxuriant Style” 1. While he was still in Italy, Schütz composed fifteen sacred concertos, Symphoniae sacrae (1629), as a tribute to Gabrieli. 2. One of his pupils described a “luxuriant style,” which can be seen as an aspect of rhetoric through ornamenting musical speech. a. The style of one of the Symphoniae sacrae, O quam tu pulchra es, exhibits characteristics of the “luxuriant style.” b. The refrain, with its dissonant fourth, acts both as formal unifier and as a reinforced message of desire. C. Back to Germany at War 1. After a second trip to Italy, Schütz returned to war-torn Germany. 2. With many of his musicians drafted in the army and budgets thinned, he turned to a leaner style, seen in his Kleine geistliche Concerte. a. These works needed far fewer performers. b. The mood was somber and mournfully subjective. c. The sound is sometimes harsh and painful, which some scholars attribute to a German aesthetic. 3. With the peace treaty signed in 1648, Schütz’s patron (Elector Johann Georg) became one of the most powerful Protestant princes in Germany, and as a consequence Schütz’s fortunes improved. a. The works from this period are in German. b. The Geistliche ChorMusic (1648) requires a full chorus, not soloists. c. The third book of Symphoniae sacrae demonstrates how the composer combined elements of his Italian training with the musical asceticism demanded by the wars (German aesthetic). 1) Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich? illustrates this combination of styles. d. His Historien (oratorios) are his largest surviving works. IV. Italian Music A. Carissimi: Oratorio and Cantata 1. The chief Italian composer of oratorios during Schütz’s lifetime was Giacomo Carissimi (1605–74); he worked in Rome. 2. Carissimi taught many foreigners, including Christoph Bernhard and Marc-Antoine Charpentier. 3. Jepthe is Carissimi’s most famous oratorio. a. It combines madrigalisms with stile antico polyphony. b. In the final laments, the part of narrator shifts around to various singers. Carissimi also worked for Queen Christina of Sweden, who lived in Rome after her abdication in favor of Catholicism. 4. The cantata was the solo successor to the madrigal. a. Cantatas eventually came to mix different types of pieces together. b. The quasi-formal structure of recitative alternating with arias came into being in Rome. c. The recit/aria sequence became standard in all dramatic genres, especially opera. d. Conventional opera types are found in cantatas as well. B. Barbara Strozzi: Performer and Composer 1. The genre of cantata spread to northern Italian cities, such as Bologna and Venice. 2. In Venice Barbara Strozzi (1619–66), a composer who had studied with the opera composer Cavalli, published eight books of madrigals, cantatas, and arias. a. That she was able to publish so much as a woman testifies to her reputation as a noteworthy composer. b. Her Lagrime mie is an exemplary cantata. 1) Written from the male perspective, but in the vocal range of a soprano 2) Harsh dissonances give aural perspective to the singer’s pain 3) The final stanza has a recit/aria pairing 3. Special conditions allowed some women throughout music history to pursue careers as composers, but these are mostly the exceptions. a. Careers as singers opened to women in the late sixteenth century (women were not customarily allowed to sing in sacred establishments). 1) Concerto delle donne was one arena for women singers. 2) Opera roles were another. b. Women who performed on stage were often associated with prostitutes. 4. Several women composed in northern Italy during the sixteenth century, but only Maddalena Casulana published (three books of madrigals, 1568–83). 5. Slightly later, women such as Strozzi and Francesca Caccini published works in Italian. a. When Caccini married, she published anonymously. She also outranked her father socially. b. She wouldn’t allow her daughter to sing publicly. V. French Music A. The French Taste: Sense and Sensuousness 1. Musical style in the seventeenth century differed substantially in France from that in Italy. 2. The French determined quality in terms of “taste.” Royal authority determined royal taste, which governed all. 3. Opera took a while to become accepted in France, in part due to a tradition of fine spoken drama. The dramma per musica seemed silly and excessive. B. Tragédie Lyrique: The Politics of Patronage 1. The first operas officially presented in France were performed by Italian musicians who were loyal to Cardinal Jules Mazarin—a masterful politician who was also Italian. 2. French opera was bound to French politics, which evolved around Louis XIV. a. All operas had to be previewed in court. b. The values of spoken drama had to be preserved in opera, which was called a tragédie en musique, later tragédie lyrique. 3. The most important composer of French opera was the Italian Jean Baptiste Lully. a. Lully essentially held a monopoly on French opera. b. With his royal support, Lully defined an art form—and ultimately a national identity. C. Drama as Court Ritual 1. Lully’s tragédie lyrique was an outward expression of the grandeur and authority of the State. a. The king sometimes chose the plot, but they all worked toward the same end: universal order and the divine right of rulers. b. Sacrifice is an important theme. 2. The opening ouverture sets the tone with majestic dotted rhythms, followed by a section in a different meter that is polyphonic (and imitative).