Italy and the monodic style—Song in the seventeenth century; Germany; France—Song in England—The aria—German song in the eighteenth century; French song in the eighteenth century; forerunners of Schubert.
The last half of the fifteenth century was a period of unrest and profound change in music. As we have seen,[10] it was in this period that the old pure style of church music reached its highest perfection under Palestrina, and, because the resources of the style had been exhausted, began to give place to the style which we know as modern. Out of this change grew directly most of the modern musical forms—the opera, the oratorio, the independent orchestral piece with its searching out of instrumental resources, and—the Art-Song.
It is one of the vagaries of history that the Art-Song, though it commenced with definite consciousness about the year 1600, did not become a firmly established art form for full two centuries. By all the signs of the times it seems as though it should quickly have risen to maturity. The humanistic enthusiasm of the Renaissance had sensitized people to individual emotions and moods—the very material of the art-song. Singing was universal and had attained a high degree of technical excellence. And the earliest composers of opera of the time had hit upon the very principles which Schubert exemplified two centuries later—the accurate following of the words by expressive music, independent of ‘pattern’ form. But for various reasons, which we shall examine presently, the art-song became side-tracked. Within twenty years of its birth it had been exiled to a dark cellar of history and its feeble attempts at growth had been smothered by an institution which presently captured the whole civilized world—the opera.
So the history of song from 1600 to 1800 is not unlike that of the five centuries preceding—a delving into the out-of-the-way places where there is to be found much that is charming and interesting, but little with broad and conscious artistic drive. Nevertheless, song in this period does show organic development. The outcast infant in the cellar does grow and become beautiful. But its growth is that of music in general. As technical materials and artistic consciousness develop, song partakes of the common benefits, but only secondarily, here and there, as the servant picks crumbs from the master’s table.
First of all, in common with music in general, song partook of the change from the old modes to the major and minor scales. And here, indeed, it was a leader rather than a follower. We have seen in the previous chapter how the folk-songs of Provence and of the Rhine blossomed into a gentle and flowing major mode centuries before the ecclesiastical music had achieved anything like a feeling for the tonic. And it was perhaps partly because of the introduction of folk-tunes into church music that the latter presently began to show evidences of the change. In all countries we can see how the folk-song, increasing its hold over conscious composers, began to set the spirit for all secular music.