CHAPTER X
THE GOLDEN AGE OF POLYPHONY

I

The deep vital forces which had for two hundred years been urging Italy to magnificent achievement broke through into music during the course of the sixteenth century. Music was, as she has always been, the last to respond to a general movement; but the response, when it came, entailed an entire reconstruction of the art. All through the century the process of reconstruction was active. It was, however, gradual in its working. Only toward the very end of the century a few bold explorers and experimenters turned their backs upon the past, cut loose from the old art of music and started in to build with new stone and new tools a new art. We have to do in this chapter with the old art; on the one hand, with influences which boldly altered it, and with new developments which were set free through these alterations; on the other, with its ultimate perfection and consequent end.

The invention of music-printing just before the beginning of the century had a powerful influence upon the development of music. The beautiful manuscripts in which early music has been preserved to us were the work for the most part of monks, and are another evidence of the restriction of music to the church. With the invention of printing came a liberation from this restraint. Music circulated through the lay society—all kinds of music, both secular and sacred—it stepped from the dim vast cathedrals and went among the people and entered into their homes and into their lives. The world of men and women welcomed it and changed it, formed it to the expression of their joys and sorrows. The superhuman intricacies of counterpoint and canon little by little withered and fell by the way.

Ulrich Han, of Ingolstadt, in 1476 solved the problem of printing music by means of movable types, but his invention seems to have languished until other enterprising men took it up. In Italy this was done by Ottaviano dei Petrucci, born in 1466 at Fossombrone, near Ancona. Petrucci, one of the first monopolists in the business of printing music, was, like Aldus Manutius, a man of good birth and fortune. Some time before 1498 he had established himself at Venice, and obtained from the municipal council the sole privilege, for twenty years, of printing figured music (canto figurato), and music in the tablature of the organ and lute. This meant that, so far as Venice was concerned, all the published lamentations, frottole, motets, and masses were to issue from Petrucci’s press.

His first publication in 1501 was a collection of ninety-six pieces, most of them written for three or four voices, by Okeghem, Hobrecht, Josquin, Isaak, and others. The printing was done by a double process: first the staff, then the notes, in a small quarto, with fine black ink. The parts stood opposite one another on the open page, thus:

soprano │ tenor
alto │ bass

The registry or ‘fit’ of the notes was perfect, and the effect of the whole was admirable.

This expensive double process, however, was superseded about five years later by another, simpler one, involving only one impression. In 1511 Petrucci left his plant at Venice in the hands of others and returned to Fossombrone. Two years later he obtained a patent from Pope Leo X for all the printing in the papal states for a period of fifteen years. Petrucci’s last publication, a collection of eighty-three motets, is dated 1523. His works are rare and highly valued as antique specimens of printing, and the man himself is also remembered for the standards of neatness and precision which he established.

Pierre Attaignant is said to be the first to introduce music printing by means of movable types into France. In the nine years from 1527 to 1533 Attaignant printed nineteen books of motets of various French and foreign masters. These prints are also very rare and historically important. His work was still going on in 1543, but it seems that the famous Ballards were soon to take it up. The names not only of printers, but of the engravers and founders of these first music types are justly preserved. Pierre Hautin was engraver for Attaignant, and Etienne Briard a founder at Avignon. Briard furnished the first known specimens of round notes, in place of the usual quadrangular shapes, and these were used for the first time in printing the works of Carpentras in 1532. This, however, was an exception, as the round notes were not generally introduced into print until about the year 1700. Le Bé was another well-known type founder. His types were of the sort which printed notes and lines simultaneously. Each individual type contained a note and a portion of the staff; but later Le Bé adopted Petrucci’s method of double impressions.

Adrian Leroy, a lute player, singer, and composer, appears as the next printer of renown in Paris after Attaignant. Leroy presently joined forces with another follower of the craft named Ballard—incidentally marrying the daughter of the house—and in 1552 the firm obtained a patent as sole printers of music for King Henry II of France. This patent, frequently renewed, remained in the Ballard family until it was abolished by the French Revolution, more than two hundred years later; and the types of Le Bé, printing both notes and lines at once, purchased by Pierre Ballard in 1540 for fifty thousand livres, were still in use in 1750. One cannot help suspecting that these types, excellent as they must have been, grew old-fashioned long before they were laid aside. But monopoly has its uses. There was no one to compete on equal terms with the distinguished and influential Ballards; so there was no use to them in making expensive changes in type.

For more than two centuries, then, the Ballard family held an important place as printers of music in France. The famous Orlando di Lasso visited them; Lully’s operas were printed by them, first from movable types, later from copper plates. In the early days of the firm Leroy himself wrote an instruction book for the lute, which was translated into English in two different versions—one by a writer named F. K. Gentleman. Leroy also wrote an instruction book for the ‘guiterne’ (guitar) and a book of airs de cour for the lute, in the dedication of which he said that such airs were formerly known as voix de ville. In England Thomas Tallis and his pupil, William Byrd, obtained in 1575 a monopoly for twenty years of all music printing done in the realm.

II

The invention of printing meant, as we have said, that music was no longer centralized about the church. Yet it has to be granted that one of the greatest impulses music has ever received came to it in the early sixteenth century from a new religion; an impulse which, destined to be checked for a while, though not killed, by the horrors of religious warfare in the next century, was to gain thereafter ever more and more strength and lead at last to truly magnificent heights in the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. The new religious movement to which we refer was the Protestant Reformation under the leadership of Martin Luther.

We have said consciously that music received thereby a new impulse. To hold that music was entirely reconstructed by Luther, that he discarded all the forms and technique of music that had been up to that time developed in the art, is quite as mistaken as to hold that he wholly discarded the Roman ritual and built up a new and independent service. The change which the Reformation brought to music was like the change it brought to the service, far more one of spirit than one of form. Luther’s reform was essentially to abolish the mediation of the priesthood, to clear from the service in so far as possible all that might stand between the worshipper and his God, to give freedom to the intimate personal communion between God and man which the northerner naturally feels and practises. In this respect Luther’s reform would theoretically restore all music in the service to the congregation. But Luther was dearly fond of music, of, so to speak, the best music. His favorite composers were Josquin des Prés and Ludwig Senfl, both contrapuntists of enormous skill. Their music was a worthy adornment of the service. ‘I am not of the opinion,’ he said, ‘that on account of the Gospel all the arts should be crushed out of existence as some over-religious people pretend; but I would willingly see all the arts, especially music, in the service of him who has created and given them.’ Congregational singing is anything but an art; often, indeed, is hardly music. Luther had no intention to dismiss trained choirs from the churches and give over all the music of the service to the untrained mass of worshippers. The trained choir therefore was retained in all the Lutheran churches, which could afford to pay for one, and music for these choirs—that is, artistic music, often music written by Catholic composers in complicated contrapuntal style—held an honored place in the Lutheran ritual.

The personal intimate spirit from which the reform drew life, however, found an expression in music. To the congregation was allotted a greater or less portion of song. It will be remembered that the early Christians sang together and that not until the seventh century was the privilege taken from them and restricted only to a trained choir. The German people, as a matter of fact, seem never to have quite given up their share in the musical part of the service. At some of the great festival services they joined in the Kyrie and in the Alleluia, and very early it became the custom to insert German verses in the liturgy at these places. Thus there developed a literature of German hymns, sometimes partly German and partly Latin, as the following old Easter hymn, obviously interpolated in the Kyrie:

In connection with the mystery plays other hymns were written, such as the following cradle-song, part German, part Latin and part nonsense:

About these hymns there was woven a sort of religious folk music. By the time of the Reformation there was a whole literature to draw from and Luther needed only to organize and standardize many of the hymns which had been familiar to the people for generations. To these he added others of his own writing. The music was drawn from all sources, practically none was especially composed. Luther had to aid him in compiling his hymn-book two famous musicians, Konrad Rupff and Johann Walther. In 1524 these two men were his guests for a period of three weeks. Köstlin[114] writes: ‘While Walther and Rupff sat at the table bending over the music sheets with pen in hand, Father Luther walked up and down the room, trying on his fife to ally the melodies that flowed from his memory and his imagination with the poems he had discovered, until he had made the verse melody a rhythmically finished, well-rounded, strong, and compact whole.’ Here we have a picture of the German hymn-tune, later called the chorale, in the process of crystallization.

‘The Devil does not need all the good tunes for himself,’ Luther wisely remarked, and he drew from all sources, secular and sacred, for his melodies. The same breadth of choice was likewise exercised by his followers throughout the century: a song sung by the footsoldiers at the battle of Pavia became the Durch Adam’s Fall ist ganz verderbt; the chorale melody Von Gott will ich nicht lassen, can be traced to an old love song, Einmal tät ich Spazieren; a love song, Mein G’müt ist mir verwirret von einer Jungfrau zart, by Hans Leo Hassler, became the choral melody to the funeral-hymn Herzlich thut mich verlangen, and later the same melody was set to Paul Gerhardt’s hymn, O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden, and in that form holds a leading part in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Nor were the chorale tunes taken from Germany alone. Favorite part-songs of Italy and France were appropriated and set to German words.

The hymn-book compiled by Luther with the help of Rupff and Walther was published in Wittenburg in 1524. It was intended for church use, and that the compilers had the choir, not the congregation, in mind is proved by the fact that all the tunes are contrapuntally set, with the melody as cantus firmus in the tenor, that is to say, in the middle of the music, not soaring triumphantly aloft majestically to guide the congregation. We have, therefore, in these chorales of Luther not a new form but a new spirit. How great a part the congregation ever actually took in them is open to discussion. Doubtless in those churches where there was no skilled choir, congregational singing played an important rôle; but it seems likely that in those churches where there was such a choir, congregational singing was kept as much in the background as possible. In 1586 Lukas Osiander published a set of fifty chorales, ‘set contrapuntally in such a way that the whole Christian congregation can always join in them.’ This was obviously a kind attempt to bring the more or less neglected congregation into the musical part of the service. In Osiander’s arrangements the melody is in the soprano. But the setting is still too intricate for general use and the same rather condescending, yet still lofty, attitude toward the congregation is characteristic of all composers down to the time of Bach.

The question of just how the congregation sang those chorales allotted to them is also in doubt. It is hardly possible that in the first half of the sixteenth century the organ accompanied them. The organ was still far too imperfect to attempt polyphonic playing such as would afford a harmonic support to the singers, who, we may presume, sang only in unison. It is more likely that the organ and the congregation alternated, or that the choir and the congregation sang in turn. Toward the end of the century attempts were made to have the choir lead the congregation, and then later, in the course of time, the organ was perfected and was used for accompaniment, coming soon to drown out the choir, which had little chance to maintain a leadership over the mass of singers on the one hand and the organ on the other. Thus the organ finally took the leadership. In its new position it no longer alternated with the congregation, and the skill which organists had had an opportunity to show in the solo passages, alternating, in the old days, with the congregation, was now concentrated upon the prelude. In this way the foundation for a characteristically German art-form in organ music, the chorale-prelude, was laid.

Though Luther was too much of a musician to be willing to give over the music of the service to be mishandled by a crowd of untrained singers, he none the less intended his chorale melodies to enter into the lives of the German Protestants. Thus, while, on the one hand, we have Luther’s own book and subsequent books in the same contrapuntal style, on the other, we have hymn-books in which only the melody was written and which carried the noble old tunes to every hearth and home throughout Protestant Germany. The first ‘house’ hymn-book appeared a short while before Luther’s church book. It was compiled by Luther’s friend, Justus Jonas, and was called the Erfurt Enchiridion. Among the hymns contained in it were two old Latin hymns, already mentioned in Chapter V, the Veni redemptor gentium, by St. Ambrose, and the Media in vita, by Notker Balbulus, both, of course, done into German. An interesting collection was published in Frankfurt in 1571 with the preface: ‘Street songs, cavalier songs, and mountain songs transformed into Christian and moral songs, for the abolishing, in the course of time, of the bad and vexatious practice of singing idle and shameful songs in the streets, in fields, and at home, by substituting for them good sacred and honest words.’ The chorale melodies, indeed, became the property of the Germans. They were colored with the sentiment of a whole race; they took on a nobility and a dignity, they seemed to germinate new life, and, finally, they became the glory of a lofty art, based on the skill of the Netherlanders, modified and adorned according to a new style soon to be perfected by the Italians, and infused with rich, warm life flowing from the very hearts of the German people.

The Protestant Reformation did not, then, at once alter the form of church music in Germany. Other influences, sprung from Catholic Italy, were to be far more powerful in that respect. Even the tendency toward harmonic writing, toward emphasizing the progression of chords rather than the interweaving of melodies, which the chorale melodies undoubtedly furthered, was a tendency very evident in Italian church music of the time, notably at Venice, was indeed a mark of the time. The true significance of the Lutheran reform in the history of music is that it laid music open to a flood of genuine strong feeling, personal, intimate, intensely human feeling, which little by little during the next two centuries, in spite of the horror and agony of persecution and warfare, permeated every vein and artery of music, and filled them with vital warmth and glowing color. During the Thirty Years’ War only the hymn and the chorale melody escaped destruction in Germany, and these survived because they were actually a part of the people and could cease to exist only when the race had been stamped out.

In France and in England the Protestant movement had far less influence upon music than in Germany. In France this seems to be explained by the fact that the French had not, like the Germans, a literature of native hymns, but had to construct their hymn-book from the Psalter, and that they had a more slender stock of genuine folk-song to draw upon. Zwingli, the leader of the Swiss Reformation, which was to win the support of the Frenchman Calvin, was not in favor of music, and his followers were ruthless in their destruction of organs and collections of music. Calvin, on the other hand, had in regard to music more the point of view of Luther. He drew freely from the Lutheran hymn-books both melodies and words, but especially in favor of metrical versions of the Psalms. These were set to music often excellent and finely harmonized. Among the Calvinistic psalm writers Clement Marot is most famous. It was he who, as court poet to Francis I, made several versions of the Psalms into the style of ballads, which won great popularity by their novelty and were set to gay tunes and sung by the people at court. Subsequently, in forced exile at Geneva, he added nineteen more to the collection of thirty he had already written, and these were later supplemented and arranged in final form by Theodore de Beza. Most conspicuous among the musicians connected with the movement in France were Loys Bourgeois and Claude Goudimel. The latter may have been a Netherlander and a pupil of Josquin. He was killed in the massacre of St. Bartholomew in Lyons (1572). Bourgeois composed many melodies himself to the Calvinistic hymns and set them more or less simply in four parts. Goudimel, on the other hand, composed elaborate settings in the style of motets with the melody, seldom his own, in the tenor.

The English, like the French, relied upon metrical versions of the Psalms for their hymn-books. Furthermore, the beginning of the Reformation in England was complicated with political motives and the movement was, for a long time, simply a break from the Church of Rome rather than an outburst of religious convictions. Yet after the suppression of monasteries between 1536 and 1540 there was something of the same destruction of organs and music which had wrought such havoc in Switzerland, and a general condemnation of elaborate church service. The first attempt at hymn tunes was the Goostlie Psalmes of Coverdale, drawn largely from Lutheran sources. Under Edward VI (1547-1553) began the organization of the Anglican Church and the drafting of liturgies in English. The movement was checked by the reign of Mary, but under Elizabeth resulted in a standard ritual which called forth the best musical genius of the country. An elaborate setting of the canticles, etc., used in morning and evening prayer was encouraged and a new art-form, the musical flower of the English Reformation, the anthem, resulted from the setting of the variable portions of these services.

III

The great spirit of the Italian Renaissance, which was essentially a spirit of freedom and joy in individuality, thus took shape in Germany, England, and France, and laid a hand upon music as it had already done in Italy. On every hand it scatters its seeds, which will take root and later flower. Elements of form and design, rich chromatic alterations of harmony, splendid dramatic effects of answering double choirs are woven into the intricate web of Netherland polyphonic music, touching it with color and fire, making it fertile with new and vast developments. But all is gradual; the art grows slowly and only slowly changes. Amid the turbulent restlessness, the experiment and daring, the old ideal, the ideal of the monasteries and the great cathedrals, still awaits perfection—the touch of Lassus and of Palestrina.

We have seen that Petrucci’s first publication of 1501 contained ninety-six pieces, most of which were by Okeghem, Hobrecht, Josquin, Isaak, and others, such as Ghiselin, La Rue, Alex. Agricola, Brumel, Craen, by far the most part Netherlanders. This was in Venice. We need no further evidence of the popularity of the Netherland art in Italy. The Netherland style had become by this time the standard style of Europe; and during the first quarter of the sixteenth century Netherlanders still held sway over the development of music. There were pupils of Josquin in the Netherlands, in France, in Spain, in Italy, and in Germany. His music flowed over the face of Europe and his art penetrated to all the courts and into all the cathedrals. And upon all his pupils the spirit of the Renaissance was at work. Thousands of madrigals, of love songs, drinking songs, and hunting songs came crowding from their pens and jostled masses and motets in confusion. Program music was in the air, songs of battle, songs of gossiping women, of birds, of shepherds and of shepherdesses. It is hardly surprising that music for the church began to take on colors more and more brilliant. It is more surprising that the old ideal of exalted polyphony still endured and still called men to its standard.

Some of the pupils of Josquin are worthy of separate mention. Perhaps the most distinguished of them was Nicolas Gombert. He was a Netherlander by birth. We find him in the service of the sovereign of the Netherlands, later in the royal chapel at Brussels. In 1530 he was master of the boys at the imperial chapel in Madrid, and afterward probably first master in the same chapel. In 1556 he was back in his own country again, where, a few years after, he died. A large number of his works, from special editions of the sixteenth century, have come down to us, and some of his manuscripts, like so many other treasures of this period, are in the Munich library. His work for the church is characterized by a gentle, harmonious beauty, and Fétis called him the predecessor of Palestrina, especially on account of a beautiful Pater noster, which is marked by a lofty religious sentiment. He was very successful as a composer of motets, and, in his secular works, showed a tendency toward tone-color effects—program music—especially in his chansons, Le berger et la bergère, and Le chant des oiseaux.

Benedictus Ducis, another Netherlander and pupil of Josquin, born at Bruges in 1480, was distinguished by the musical brotherhood of Antwerp by being elected Prince of the Guild—the highest honor an artist could achieve at that time in the Netherlands. Leaving Antwerp in 1515 he appears to have visited Henry the Eighth of England, and later to have been in Germany. There is some difficulty in distinguishing the works of Ducis from those of Benedictus Appenzelder, owing to the peculiar custom of the time of signing manuscripts only with the Christian name. It is generally conceded, however, that Ducis composed a funeral ode on the death of his master Josquin, also a motet for eight parts, Peccantem me quotidie, passion music and settings of the Psalms, the earnestness and nobility of which justify his fame.

Jean Mouton, another pupil, was born probably near Metz, in Lorraine, became chapel singer to Louis XII and Francis I of France, then canon of Thérouanne and afterward of St. Quentin. His works show him to be a master of counterpoint and a worthy pupil of Josquin. Petrucci printed five of his masses in 1508, and later more than twenty of his motets; and Attaignant included his compositions in the third book of a famous collection of masses published in 1532, and also in a collection of motets which appeared somewhat earlier. A few masses in manuscript are in the Munich library. A large number of his motets have been preserved, justly valued for their artistic and effective qualities, which in some instances closely resemble those of his master. His pupil, Adrian Willaert, was one of the most gifted and one of the most influential composers of the next generation. He may be regarded as the founder of the Venetian school of composers, who played such a brilliant part in the history of music during the sixteenth century, who were experimenters and innovators, whose energy opened many a new channel to the course of music. The influence of Josquin thus passed to Venice.

Adrian Willaert, born probably in 1490 at Roulers, in Belgium, first studied law in Paris. Afterward he adopted music as his profession and became a pupil of Jean Mouton. In 1516 we find him travelling in Italy, visiting Rome, Venice, and Ferrara. There is a story to the effect that in Rome he heard a motet of his, the Verbum dulce et suave, sung by the papal choir, whose members believed it to have been written by Josquin; and that they refused to sing it again when they discovered it to be by an unknown composer. If this story be true, it may be added here that Willaert lived to see the day when his compositions were considered entirely worthy of attention, even from the most distinguished body of singers in Christendom.

That time was not yet come, however. Willaert left Italy, taking service as chapel master to King Ludwig II, ruler of Hungary and Bavaria; but in 1526 he was back again in Venice, where, in the following year, he received the appointment as first chapel master of the Basilica of St. Mark, at a salary of seventy ducats, about one hundred and sixty dollars. This was later increased to two hundred ducats, about four hundred and sixty dollars, which was considered a princely income. For thirty-five years the master kept at his post, although twice during that time, once in 1542 and again in 1556, a longing for his native country drew him back to Belgium. It was his hope, indeed, to spend his last years in Bruges; but he had taken root too firmly in Italy. Friends, admirers, and patrons urged him to remain in Venice, and it was there, in 1562, that he died.

The Basilica of St. Mark was already ancient when Willaert came to Venice. Founded in 830 to receive the relics of the second Evangelist brought from Alexandria, rebuilt a hundred and fifty years later, it had received its permanent form about the middle of the eleventh century. Five hundred years had but increased its beauty and added mellowness and historic interest to its charm. Externally, its domes and pinnacles, its encrusted marbles and pillars, its bronze horses and many-colored arches constitute a unique and splendid monument of history. Within its walls, statues, columns crowned with capitals from Greece and Byzantium, and rich mosaics blend in a beauty at once impressive and magnificent. The interior is not large, two hundred and five by one hundred and sixty-four feet; but it is particularly well adapted to the use of the two organs, which are placed opposite each other.

This circumstance suggested to Willaert the device of dividing his choir so as to contrast the mass effect of the united voices with antiphonal singing. With this device, happily carried into effect, there developed in time, under Willaert’s hands, a new style of composition for two choirs. It was this style which continued in vogue for more than a century and formed the standard and became the peculiar characteristic of the Venetian school.

In his early experiments with the divided choir Willaert made use of the Psalms, whose poetical form, with the parallel half-verses and refrains, seemed especially adapted to antiphonal rendering. Following these, he composed hymns and masses, not after the manner of the eight or ten-part compositions known in the Netherlands, but works specially adapted to the double choir, each part complete in itself, each combining with or opposing the other, and yet creating an impression of unity and centralization. This was actually a new artistic creation, and by reason of it Willaert became almost the idol of the Venetians. They called his lovely music ‘liquid gold,’ adapted his name to ‘Messer Adriano,’ honored him with verses and public addresses, and, in his old age, besought him to leave his ashes to the city in which his artistic triumphs had been achieved.

Willaert’s experiments with double choir effects had a profound and lasting influence upon the development of music. In the first place, owing to this, devices of imitation and canonic progression which had so long been the most prominent feature of ecclesiastical and secular music, became secondary in importance to chord progressions. The reason is obvious. To get the best effect with two answering choirs the sections which each sings must not be long and complicated, but relatively short and clear cut, otherwise the effect of balance or of echo is lost; and in these relatively short sections there is hardly time to accomplish elaborate polyphonic development. Even if there were, the polyphonic effects are far too subtle to be easily recognized in echo or answer. The tendency in writing music for two choirs was therefore toward a simple style, clearly balanced, with certain definite harmonic relationships which could not fail to be recognized when repeated. The composers of the Venetian school were almost within reach of the harmonic idea of music, which rose clearly to supremacy only late in the next century. They were actually breaking away from the ecclesiastical modes, not only by thus trying to write in a simple harmonic style, which was founded nearly on our ideas of tonic and dominant, but also by enriching their harmonies with chromatic variations. Willaert thus stands out as one of the founders of what has been called the coloristic or chromatic school of the sixteenth century. In his music, and even more in the music of his followers, the old modes are constantly altered and with them the practice of musica ficta, already mentioned, reaches its height.[115] It meant the crumbling of the model system. It must not, however, be supposed that Willaert abandoned entirely the traditions of the Netherlanders and that he gave up writing in the complicated style altogether. He, indeed, employed imitation and canon, but more casually; often only at the entrance of short alternating sections. His voice parts then proceeded in ‘solid chord pillars,’ as Naumann has happily said, in a style markedly in advance of the old contrapuntal conceptions. In him therefore we have a brilliant example of the old style worked upon by new impulses, by the spirit of the Renaissance, the desire for rich color and varied, beautiful form.

Willaert was an industrious composer, and his works go far toward making the period from 1450 to 1550 ‘the golden century of the Netherlands.’ Masses, motets, psalms and hymns, madrigals and canzone are all well-represented. One unusual composition, for five voices, in the form of a narrative based on the Bible story Susannah, seems like an early prophecy of the sacred cantata, although the treatment is severely hymnlike and not dramatic. As a writer of madrigals and of frottole Willaert’s position is discussed in another chapter; though it may be said in passing that in these, as in his sacred music, his individuality is marked, and his knowledge and musical skill evident.

Though a northerner by birth, Willaert became the founder of a school characteristically Italian, and his work seemed, to his contemporaries, to embody the very spirit of Venetian life, in its richness and variety. He brought to the Italians the inheritance of the Netherland art, turned it into new and interesting channels, and revealed to later masters what possibilities of color lay hidden under the strictness of its laws.

Upon the death of Willaert, his pupil, Cipriano di Rore,[116] was appointed to the high office at St. Mark’s. Works of di Rore, including madrigals, motets, masses, psalms, and a Passion according to St. John, were held in high esteem by his contemporaries, especially in Munich, where they were frequently performed under the direction of Lassus. Duke Albert of Bavaria caused a handsome copy of a collection of his church compositions, graced by a portrait of the composer, to be placed in the Munich library, where it still remains.

Following di Rore at St. Mark’s came Gioseffo Zarlino,[117] a member of the order of Franciscan monks, also a pupil of Willaert, and a theorist of great importance. Few of his compositions have survived, but his theoretical writing, Instituzioni harmoniche, Dimostrazioni harmoniche, and Sopplimenti musicali, remain in an edition of Zarlino’s collected works published in four volumes in 1589. There are also in manuscript French, German, and Dutch translations of the Instituzioni, which contain, besides an important discussion of the third, and the major and minor consonant triad, a clear explanation of double counterpoint in the octave, twelfth, and in contrary motion; of canon and double canon in the unison, octave, and upper and under fifth, with numerous examples based upon the same cantus firmus. Baldasarro Donati and Giovanni della Croce, both distinguished musicians, in turn succeeded Zarlino as maestro di capella at St. Mark’s.

Elsewhere in Italy important composers appear, native Italians who bring to the Netherland art the Italian gift of melody and sweetness. Constanzo Festa,[118] a Florentine, occupies an especially important place. Riemann says of him, ‘He can be looked upon as the predecessor of Palestrina, with whose style his own has many points of similarity. He was the first Italian contrapuntist of importance, and gives a foretaste of the beauties which were to spring from the union of Netherland art with Italian feeling for euphony and melody.’ Constanzo Porta, a pupil of Willaert, was successively maestro of the Franciscan monastery at Padua, and of churches at Ravenna, Osimo, and Loreto. Gafori (or Gafurius, 1451-1522), cantor and master of the boys at Milan cathedral, left many theoretical writings of great value. Arcadelt, already mentioned as a writer of madrigals, composed a volume of masses, published both in Venice and by Ballard and Leroy in Paris in 1557. Jacob Clemens, better known by the name of Clemens non Papa, to distinguish him from the pope—a fact which attests, in a jocular way, his popularity—was a Netherlander, and one of the most famous composers of the epoch between Josquin and Palestrina, leaving to posterity a large number of masses, motets, and chansons, besides four books of hymns and psalms, the melodies of which were taken from Netherland folk song.

Meantime in Germany we find also musicians of distinction, though as yet none of the very first rank. One of the oldest of these was Adam von Fulda, a learned monk, known both as a composer and theorist, and the author of at least one highly esteemed motet, O vera lux et gloria. Heinrich Finck, Thomas Stolzer, Ludwig Senfl, and Heinrich Isaak all deserve an honorable place in the history of German music of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Isaak, though for some time considered a German, was born in the Netherlands, probably about 1450, and was one of the most learned of the contemporaries of Josquin. He lived for a time in Ferrara, afterward becoming organist at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent. From this post he went to Rome, and finally entered the service of the Emperor Maximilian I at Vienna. Petrucci printed five of his masses in 1506, and included many of his other compositions in collections published early in the century. Manuscript works are in the Munich, Brussels, and Vienna libraries. His part songs were considered models of their kind, and are not lacking in interest even to-day. It is to Isaak we are indebted for the lovely Inspruck, ich muss dich lassen, used as a hymn by the followers of Luther, and by Sebastian Bach in the St. Matthew Passion.

Ludwig Senfl (born 1492, died about 1555), a pupil and the successor of Isaak at the court chapel of Maximilian I at Vienna, was later chapel-master at Munich. According to Riemann, Senfl was one of the most distinguished, if not the most important, of the German contrapuntists of the sixteenth century. He is further remembered as a friend of Luther. A great number of his compositions are preserved, among them being masses, motets, odes, songs, and hymns for congregational singing.

The work of the brilliant Clement Jannequin in Paris was largely secular and will be treated in another chapter. It may be remarked in passing that types of composition perfected by him were to have great influence upon instrumental music before the end of the century. In England John Merbecke (d. 1585), Christopher Tye (d. 1572), Thomas Tallis (d. 1585), and William Byrd (d. 1623) match the Netherlands in skill and bring to their music not only the spirit of the new age, but the peculiar melodiousness which has always characterized English music. The works of Tallis became great favorites and in the famous English collections of music for the virginals toward the end of the century several of his vocal works appeared as transcriptions. Byrd must be ranked as one of the most daring composers of the time. Though he conformed to the new religion he remained at heart a Catholic, and his great works are akin to those of the greatest Catholic composers on the continent. He has, indeed, been called the Lassus of England. Here, too, must be mentioned, though belonging almost more to the next century, Thomas Morley (d. 1602), John Dowland (d. 1626), and perhaps the greatest of all English composers except Henry Purcell, Orlando Gibbons (d. 1625). All these men were composing at the end of the century, especially madrigals and other secular forms famous not only for their great technical skill, but for their remarkable sweetness and expressiveness. They were all, moreover, skillful instrumentalists and brought music for the harpsichord to a state far advanced beyond anything on the continent. John Bull (d. 1628) was not only a master of the art of counterpoint but a virtuoso on both organ and harpsichord, whose match could be found only in Andrea and Giovanni Gabrielli in Venice.

Everywhere the Renaissance spirit was at work, but prosperous Venice stands out clearly as the centre of the new movement which so colored and remodelled music. Effects of double choirs, chromatic harmonies, tendencies toward definiteness of form, and even the combination of voices and instruments within the church itself, all marks of the changes which were affecting the development of music, all signs of the liberation of music from the sway of the church and of its closer relationship with passionate active life, are first found in the works of the composers who were connected with St. Mark’s cathedral. But these men were really pioneers and the results of their innovations, though radical and far-reaching, were hardly foreseen. They sowed seeds, so to speak, which were to grow and flower long after their death. We have now to consider how the art of the Netherlanders grew to a present perfection in the works of two men—Orlando di Lasso and Pierluigi da Palestrina—both of whom, but particularly the latter, pursued an ideal untouched by the modern forces playing upon music about them; an ideal which, moreover, they attained and by attaining brought to an end the first great period in the history of European music.

IV

Orlando di Lasso[119] was born in the town of Mons, in Hainault, probably in 1530. The Flemish form of the name, Roland de Lattre, seems to have been abandoned early in favor of the Italian. The fate of the musically gifted boy, both during and long after the Middle Ages, was a choir school; and accordingly Orlando was entered as chorister in the local church of St. Nicholas. A writer named Van Quickelberg, giving an account of Lasso in 1565, says that he quickly came to a good understanding of music, and that the beauty of his voice caused him to be twice stolen from the school in which he lived with the other choristers. Twice also his ‘good parents’ rescued him; but, finally (at the age of twelve), he became attached to the suite of Ferdinand of Gonzaga, Viceroy of Sicily, with whom he travelled to Italy. Orlando stayed for some time in Naples, Rome, and Milan, continuing his studies, and then seems to have undertaken a long journey through France and England. By the year 1555 he was settled in Antwerp and rather widely known as a composer. Two years later Albert V, duke of Bavaria, called him to serve as chamber musician at his court in Munich. Duke Albert was a liberal man, a connoisseur of art, and, oddly enough, a man of some fame both in the athletic and in the religious world. He founded the famous royal library of Munich, to which we have had frequent occasion to refer, and enriched it during his lifetime with many valuable manuscripts and objects of art.

At first Lasso, being unfamiliar with the German language, filled rather a subordinate position among the duke’s musicians; but in 1562 he was appointed master of the chapel, which included both the choir and an orchestra. From this year on, up to the time when the illness attacked him which resulted in his death, his career was one of ever-increasing success and prosperity. He was called the ‘Prince of Musicians.’ In 1570 he was ennobled by the Emperor Maximilian II, and in the year following Pope Gregory XIII decorated him with the Order of the Golden Spur. On visiting Paris he was received with great favor by King Charles IX; while at home Duke Albert assured him his salary for life and appointed three of his sons to honorable positions in the chapel. The successor of Albert, Duke Wilhelm II, not only confirmed Lasso in his position, but presented him, in appreciation of his services, with a house and garden, and also made suitable provision for his wife. Neither the favor of royalty nor the admiration of princes, however, could render him immune to ill fortune. His last few years were clouded by mental trouble and melancholia. In June, 1594, he died, and was buried in the cemetery of the Franciscans. The monastery has been destroyed, but the monument to Lasso was preserved and now stands in the garden of the Academy of Fine Art in Munich.

Although the name of Lasso is not so well known to the world to-day as that of Palestrina, his career was a remarkable one. In the oft-mentioned Munich library, among other works of the master, is a manuscript copy of his most famous work, the ‘Penitential Psalms,’ written between 1562 and 1565, but not published until some time later. At the performance of these psalms Duke Albert was so impressed and affected that he caused a manuscript copy to be made and placed in his library. It was richly ornamented by the court painter, Hans Mielich, and other artists, and magnificently bound in leather.[120] Duke Albert was perhaps an exceptional patron; but, granting that to be the case, Lasso’s career shows how honorable was the position held by a great musician in his century.