Some Forerunners of Italian OperaHenderson, W. J. (William James)
History
Some Forerunners of Italian Opera
Henderson, W. J. (William James)
Opera -- Italy
character. Its most Gothic form, the North German fugue, which is the
instrumental descendant of the Netherlands church music, is the most
closely organized of musical types. The Italian architecture, on the
other hand, displayed an aversion for the infinite detail of Gothic
methods and found its individual expression in the grand and patent
relations of noble mass effects. This same feeling speedily found its
way into Italian music, even that composed by the Netherland masters who
had settled in Italy.
Adrian Willaert, who is often called the father of the madrigal (despite
the fact that madrigals were written before he was born), became chapel
master of St. Mark's, Venice, in 1527. He seized with avidity the
suggestion offered by the existence of two organs in the cathedral and
wrote great works "for two choruses of four voices each, so that the
choruses could answer each other across the church. He paid much less
attention to rigid canonic style than his predecessors had done because
it was not suited to the kind of music which he felt was fitting for his
church. He sought for grand, broad mass effects, which he learned could
be obtained only by the employment of frequent passages in chords. So he
began trying to write his counterpoint in such a way that the voice
parts should often come together in successions of chords. In order to
do this he was compelled to adopt the kind of formations still in use
and the fundamental chord relations of modern music--the tonic, dominant
and subdominant."[30]
[Footnote 30: From the present author's "How Music Developed." New
York, 1898.]
In music of this kind there was no longer a field for the intricate
working of canonically constructed voice parts. It must seek its chief
results in the opposition of one choir against the other, not in
multiplicity of voice parts, but in imposing contrasts as of "deep
answering unto deep." The development of fundamental chord harmonies was
inevitable and from them in the fullness of time was bound to spring the
pure harmonic style. Chord successions without any melodic union cannot
be long sustained, and the Italians, with the tentative achievements of
the frottolists before them, were not long blind to this fact. Leone
Battista Alberti, father of Renaissance architecture, in writing of his
church of St. Francis at Rimini uses the expression "tutta questa
musica." One understands him to mean the harmonious disposition of the
parts of his design so that all "sound" together, as it were, for the
artistic perception.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account