A Popular History of the Art of Music Part 7

Out of this combination of contrasting spirits of race, the movement of awakened national life, arose, first, what were called Cantilenas--short songs of a ballad-like character. The language is a mixture of German, Latin and French, intermingled in a most curious manner. For example, consider the following verses from the cantilena of St. Eulalie, as given by M. Gautier, p. 65:

"Buona pulcella ft Eulalia; Bel avret corps, bellezour anima.

Voldrent la vientre li Deo inimi, Voldrent la faire diaule servir.

Elle n'out eskoltet les mal conselliers Qu'elle Deo raniet chi maent sus en ciel."

Which being somewhat freely rendered into English, it says that:

"A good virgin was Eulalia; She had a beautiful body, more beautiful spirit; The enemies of G.o.d would conquer her, Would make her serve the devil; But never would she understand the evil ones who counsel To deny G.o.d, who is above all in heaven."

And so the ballad goes on twenty-three verses more to narrate how she withstood the exhortations of the king of the pagans, that she would forsake the name of Christian; and when they threw her into the fire the fire would not burn her, for the fire was pure; and when the king drew his sword to cut off her head the _demoiselle_ did not contradict him, for she wished to leave the world. She prayed to Christ, and under the form of a dove she flew away toward heaven. These charming verses of the ninth century were probably sung to music having little of the movement which we now a.s.sociate with the term melody, but which was more of a chant-like character.

Of similar literary texture were a mult.i.tude of songs, of which many different ones related to the same hero. Hence in time there was a disposition on the part of the cleverer minstrels to combine them into a single narration, and to impart to the whole so composed something of an epic character. Thus arose the famous _Chansons de Geste_ already mentioned, the origin and general character of which have been most happily elucidated in the work of M. Gautier, already referred to. He says:

"The great epics of the French had their origin in the romantic and commanding deeds of Charlemagne and the battles against Saracens in 792. The fate of civilization trembled in the balance at Ville Daigne and at Poitiers. It is the lot of Christianity, it is the lot of the world, which is at stake. The innumerable murders, the torrents of blood, these thousands of deaths have had their sure effect upon history. The world has been Christian in place of being Arab. It appertains to Jesus instead of Mahomet. This civilization, of which we are so proud, this beauty of the domestic circle, this independence of our spirit, this free character of our wives and children it is to Charles Martelle, and above all to William of Orange, that we owe them, after G.o.d. We possess only a limited number of these primitive epics, the _Chansons de Geste_, and are not certain that we have them in the second or even the third versions. At the head of the list we place the 'Song of Roland,' the Iliad of France. All the other songs of action, however beautiful and however ancient they may be, are far inferior. The text of the 'Song of Roland' as it has come down to us cannot have been written much before 1100. Besides this there is the '_Chanson de Nimes_,' '_Ogier le Danois_,' '_Jour de Blaibes_,' all of which were written in the languages of Oc and Oil. All these have something in common; the verse is ten syllables, the correspondences are a.s.sonances and not rhymes. In style these _Chansons de Geste_ are rapid, military, but above all dramatic and popular. They are without shading, spontaneous, no labor, no false art, no study. Above all it is a style to which one can apply the words of Montaigne, and it is the same upon paper as in the mouth. Really these verses are made to be upon the living lip, and not upon the cold and dead parchment of the ma.n.u.script. The oldest ma.n.u.scripts are small, in order that they may be carried in the pocket for use of traveling jongleurs and singers. They have Homeric epithets. The style is singularly grave.

There is nothing to raise a laugh. The first epics were popular about the end of the eleventh century. The idea of woman is purer in the early poems. There is no description of the body; there is no gallantry. The beautiful Aude apprehends the death of Roland; she falls dead. In the second half of the twelfth century our poets would have been incapable of so simple and n.o.ble a conception. We find, even in '_Amis et Amelis_,' women who are still very German in physiognomy, and alluring, but they are Germans, so to say, of the second manner.

They have a habit of throwing themselves into the arms of the first man who takes their fancy.

"Each one of the races which composed France or Gaul in the sixth or seventh century, contributed its share toward the future epics. The Celts furnished their character, the Romans their language, the Church its faith; but the Germans did more. For long centuries they had the habit of chanting in popular verse their origin, their victories and their heroes. Above all they penetrated the new poetry with their new spirit. All the German ideas upon war, royalty, family and government, upon woman and right, pa.s.sed into the epic of the French.

"Our fathers had no epics, it is true, but they had popular chants, rapid, ardent and short, which are precisely what we have called cantilenas. A cantilena is at the same time a recitation and an ode.

It is at times a complaint and more often a round. It is a hymn, above all religious and musical, which runs over the lips and which, thanks to its brevity, mainly, is easily graven upon the memory. The cantilenas were a power in society; they caused the most powerful to tremble. When a captain wished to nerve himself up against a bad action he said, 'They will make a bad song about me.'

"The heroes and the deeds which gave birth to French epics are those of the commencement of the eighth century to the end of the tenth.

France is then more than a mere land; it is a country; a single religious faith fills all hearts and all intelligence. Toward the end of the tenth century we see the popular singers arresting crowds in all public places. They sing poems of 3,000 or 4,000 verses. These are the first of the _Chansons de Geste_. Out of the great number of cantilenas dedicated to a single hero it happened that some poet had the happy thought of combining them into a single poem. Thus came a suite of pieces about Roland or William, and from these, in time, an epic. The latest of the epic cycles was that concerning the crusades.

The style is popular, rapid, easy to sing. It recalls the Homeric poetry. The constant epithets, the military enumerations, the discourses of the heroes before combat, and the idea of G.o.d, are simple, childlike, and superst.i.tion has no place. The supernatural exists in plenty, but no marvels."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IX.

THE TROUBADOURS, TROUVeRES AND MINNESINGERS.

To the full account of the origin of the _Chansons de Geste_ in the foregoing chapter, it remains now to add a few notes concerning the _personnel_ of the different cla.s.ses of minstrels through whose efforts these great songs were created.

The first of these singers were the troubadours, who were traveling minstrels especially gifted in versification and in music. Their compositions appear to have been short, on the whole, and of various kinds, as will presently be seen. The earliest of the troubadours of whom we have definite account was Count Wilhelm of Poitiers, 1087-1127. Among the kind of songs cultivated by these singers were love songs, canzonets, chansons; serenade--that is, an evening song; auberde, or day song; servantes, written to extol the goodness of princes; tenzone, quarrelsome or contemptuous songs; and roundelays, terminated forever with the same refrain. There was also what was called the pastourelle, a make-believe shepherd's song.

The so-called chansonniers of the north, who flourished toward the end of the twelfth century, were also troubadours. Among them the name of Count Thibaut of Champagne, king of Navarre, stands celebrated--1201-1253.

He composed both religious and secular songs. The following is one of his melodies unharmonized. Its date is about the same as that of "Summer is Coming In." Another celebrated name of these minstrels was Adam de la Halle, of Arras in Picardy--1240-1286. Upon many accounts the music of this author is of considerable interest to us. He was a good natural melodist, as the examples in Coussemaker's "Adam de la Halle" show. He is also the author of the earliest comic opera of which we have any account, the play of "Robin and Marion." We shall speak of this later, in connection with the development of opera in general.

[Music ill.u.s.tration:

L'autrier par la ma-ti-ne-e, En-tre un bois et un ver-gier U-ne pastoure ai trou-ve-e Chantant pour soi en-voi-sier, Et di-soit un son pre-mier 'Chi me tient li maus d'amor.'

Tan-tost ce-le part m'entor, Ka je l'oi des rais-ner; Si li dis sans de-la-ier.

Bel-le Diex vous doint bon-jor.]

Immediately following the troubadours came the trouveres, who were simply troubadours of n.o.bler birth, and perhaps of finer imagination.

There were so many of these singers that it is quite impossible here to give a list of their names. Among the more celebrated, forty-two names are given by Fetis, the most familiar among them being those of Blondel, the minstrel of Richard Coeur de Lion, and the Chatelaine de Coucy (died about 1192), from whom we have twenty-three chansons.

It was the trouveres who invented the _Chansons de Geste_ already mentioned--songs of action; in other words, ballads. One of the most celebrated of these was the "Story of Antioch," a romance of the crusades, extending to more than 15,000 lines. This poem was not intended to be read, but was chanted by the minstrels during the crusades themselves. One Richard the Pilgrim was the author. The song is, in fact, a history of the crusade in which he took part, up to a short time before the battle in which he was killed. Another very celebrated piece of the same kind, the "Song of Roland," the history of a warrior in the suite of Charlemagne, is said to have been chanted before the battle of Hastings by the Jongleur Taillefer. Other pieces of the same kind were the "Legend of the Chevalier Cygne"

("Lohengrin") "Parsifal" and the "Holy Grail." Each one of these was sung to a short formula of melody, which was performed over and over incessantly, excepting variations of endings employed in the episodes.

A very eminent author of pieces of this kind was the Chevalier de Coucy, who died 1192, in the crusade. There are twenty-four songs of his still in the Paris Library.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 26.

REINMAR, THE MINNESINGER.

(From a ma.n.u.script of the thirteenth century, in the National Library at Paris.)]

A similar development of knightly music was had in Germany from the time of Frederick the Red--1152-1190. These were known as minnesingers. Among the most prominent were Heinrich of Beldeke, 1184-1228, an epic writer; Spervogel, 1150-1175; and Frauenlobe, middle of the twelfth century. The forms of the minne songs were the song (_lede_), lay (_lerch_), proverb (_spruch_). The song rarely exceeded one strophe; the lay frequently did. A little later we encounter certain names which have been recently celebrated in the poems of Wagner, such as Heinrich von Morungen, Reinmar von Hagenau, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Stra.s.sburg, Walther von der Vogelweide, Klingsor, Tannhauser, etc. All of these were from the middle of the thirteenth century. A portrait of Reinmar, the minnesinger, has come down to us with a ma.n.u.script now contained in the National Library at Paris. The last of the minnesingers was Heinrich von Meissen, 1260-1318. His poems were always in the praise of woman, for which reason he was called Frauenlob ("Woman's Praise").

An old chronicle tells us that when he died the women of Mayence bore him to the tomb, moistened his grave with their tears, and poured out libations of the costliest wines of the Rhineland. The following ill.u.s.tration is supposed to be a representation of this minstrel, although the drawing is hardly up to the standard of the modern Academy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 27.

MASTER HEINRICH FRAUENLOB.

(From a ma.n.u.script in the Manesse collection at Paris.)]

The work of the minnesingers was succeeded in Germany by a cla.s.s of humbler minstrels of the common people, known as the Mastersingers, the city of Nuremberg being their princ.i.p.al center. A few of these men were real geniuses--poets of the people. One of the most celebrated was Hans Sachs, since represented in Wagner's "Meistersingers." Sachs was a very prolific poet and composer, his pieces being of every kind, from the simpler songs of sentiment and home to quite elaborate plays.

About nine volumes of his poems have been reprinted by the Stuttgart Literary Union.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 28.

MINSTREL HARPS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.]

The princ.i.p.al influence of these different cla.s.ses of popular minstrel was temporary, in keeping alive a love for music and a certain appreciation of it. The most of their music was rather slow and labored, and it is impossible to discover in the later development of the art material traces of their influence upon it. In this respect they differ materially from the Celtic and English bards mentioned in the previous chapter. Although the productions of those minstrels have all pa.s.sed away, they have left a distinct impress upon musical composition, even to our own day, in certain simple forms of diatonic melody of highly expressive character. The troubadours, trouveres and minnesingers, on the other hand, never acquired the art of spontaneous melody, and as for harmony, there is no evidence that they made any use of it. Their instrument of music was a small harp of ten or twelve strings, but no more--a much smaller and less effective instrument than the Irish harp of the eleventh century, or the Saxon of the tenth. (See Fig. 28.)

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER X.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

It is not easy to define the influence of the Christian Church in this transformation, for the reason that upon the technical side it was slight, although upon the aesthetic side it was of very great importance. From the circ.u.mstance that all the early theoretical writers from the sixth century to the thirteenth were monks or ecclesiastics of some degree, and from the very important part played by the large cathedrals in the development of polyphonic music, many historians have concluded that to the Church almost this entire transformation of the art of music is due. This, however, is wide of the truth. The Church as such had very little to do with developing an art of music through all the early centuries. The early Christians were humble people, for the most part, who had embraced a religion proscribed and at times persecuted. Their meetings were private, and attended by small numbers, as, for instance, in the Catacombs at Rome, where the little chapels in the dark pa.s.sage ways under ground were incapable of holding more than twenty or thirty people at a time.

Under these circ.u.mstances the singing cannot have been essentially of more musical importance than that of cottage prayer meetings of the present day. In another way the Church, indeed, exercised a certain amount of influence in this department as in all others, an influence which might be described as cosmopolitan. The early apostles and bishops traveled from one province to another, and it is likely that the congregation in each province made use of the melodies already in existence. The first Christian hymns and psalms were probably sung to temple melodies brought from Jerusalem by the apostles. As new hymns were written (something which happened very soon, under the inspiration of the new faith and hope), they were adapted to the best of these old melodies, just as has been done continually down to nearly our own time. Our knowledge of the early Church, in this side of its activity, is very limited. It is not until the time of St.

Ambrose, who was bishop of Milan in the last part of the fourth century, that the Church began to have an official music. By this time the process of secularization had been carried so far that there was a great want of seriousness and n.o.bility in the wors.h.i.+p. St. Ambrose, accordingly, selected certain melodies as being suitable for the solemn hymns of the Church and the offices of the ma.s.s. He himself was a poet of some originality. He composed quite a number of hymns, of which the most famous is that n.o.ble piece of praise, _Te Deum Laudamus_, a poem which has inspired a greater number of musical settings than any other outside the canon of the Scriptures. The melodies which St. Ambrose collected were probably from Palestine, and he selected four scales from the Greek system, within which, as he supposed, all future melodies should be composed. This was done, most likely, under the impression that each one of the Greek scales had a characteristic expression, and that the four which he chose would suffice for the varying needs of the hymns of the Church. In naming these scales a mistake was made, that upon re being called the Dorian, and all the other names being applied improperly. The series upon mi was called Phrygian, upon fa Lydian; upon sol Mixo-Lydian. The melodies of St. Ambrose were somewhat charged with ornament, a fact which indicates their Asiatic origin. It is probable that a part of the melodies of the Plain Song still in use are remains of the liturgies of St. Ambrose. The Church at Milan maintains the Ambrosian liturgy to the present date. In this action of St. Ambrose we have a characteristic representation of the influence which the Church has exerted upon music in all periods of its career. Upon the aesthetic and ethical sides the Church has awakened aspirations, hopes and faith, of essentially musical character, and in this respect it has been one of the most powerful sources of inspiration that musical art has experienced. But upon the technical side the action of the Church has been purely conservative and, not to say it disrespectfully, politic.

The end sought in every modification of the existing music has been that of affording the congregation a musical setting for certain hymns--a setting not inconsistent with the spirit of the hymns themselves, but in melody agreeable to the congregation. The question which John Wesley is reported to have asked, "Why the devil should have all the good tunes," has been a favorite conundrum with the fathers of the Church.

Notwithstanding the firmness with which the Church at Milan maintained the Ambrosian liturgy, in other provinces this conservatism failed; and within the next two centuries very great abuses crept in through the adoption of local secular melodies not yet divested of their profane a.s.sociations. St. Gregory the Great (540-595), who was elected pope about 590, set himself to restore church music to its purity, or rather to restrict the introduction of profane melodies, and to establish certain limits beyond which the music should not be allowed to pa.s.s. St. Gregory himself was not a musician. He therefore contented himself with restoring the Ambrosian chants as far as possible; but the musical scales established by Ambrose he somewhat enlarged, adding to them four other scales called plagal. These were the Hypo-Dorian, la to la; Hypo-Phrygian, si to si; Hypo-Lydian, do to do; Hypo-aeolian, mi to mi. I do not understand that the terminal notes of these plagal scales of St. Gregory were used as key notes, but only that melodies instead of being restricted between the tonic and its octave, were permitted to pa.s.s below and above the tonic, coming back to that as a center; for we must remember that in the ancient music the tonality was purely arbitrary, and, so to say, accidental. While all kinds of keys used the series of tones known by the names do, re, mi, fa, so, la, si, do, it was within the choice of the composer to bring his melodies to a close upon any one of these tones, which, being thus emphasized, was regarded as the tonic of the melody.

Whatever of color one key had differing from another was due therefore to the preponderance of some one tone of the scale in the course of the melody. The Plain Song of the Roman Church, and of the English Church as well, has been called Gregorian, from St. Gregory, and the majority of ecclesiastical amateurs suppose that the square note notation upon four lines was invented by St. Gregory. This, however, is not the case. The melody, very likely, may have come down to us with few alterations. The notation, however, has undergone several very important changes, of which there will be more particular mention in chapter XV. The Gregorian notation of the sixth century was probably the Roman letters which we find in Hucbald, as will be seen farther on. Several of the tunes well known to Protestants have been arranged from the so-called Gregorian chants. They are "Boylston,"

"Olmutz" and "Hamburg." The eighth tone, from which "Olmutz" was arranged, has always been appropriated to the _Magnificat_ ("My Soul doth Magnify the Lord").