Meanwhile great though subordinate activity was also shown
in the evolution of a new choral music dependent upon an instrumental
accompaniment of more complex function than that of
mere support. This, in the hands of the Neapolitan masters,
was destined to lead straight to the early choral music of Mozart
and Haydn, both of whom, especially Mozart, subsequently
learnt its greater possibilities from the study of Handel. But the
most striking choral art of the time came from the Germans,
who never showed that thoughtless acquiescence in the easiest
means of effect which was already the bane of Italian art.
Consequently, while the German output of the 17th century fails
to show that rapid attainment of modest maturity which gives
much Italian music of the period a permanent if slight artistic
value, there is, in spite of much harshness, a stream of noble
polyphonic effort in both organ and choral music in Germany
from the time of H. Schütz (who was born in 1585 and who was a
great friend and admirer of Monteverde) to that of Bach and
Handel just a century later. Nor was Germany inactive in the
dramatic line, and the 17th-century Italian efforts in comic opera,
which are so interesting and so unjustly neglected by historians,
found a parallel, before Handel’s maturity, in the work of
R. Keiser, and may be traced through him in Handel’s first
opera, Almira.
The best proof of the insufficiency of 17th-century resources is to be found in the almost tragic blending of genius and failure shown by our English church music of the Restoration. The works of Pelham Humfrey and Blow already show the qualities which with Purcell seem at almost any given moment to amount to those of the highest genius, while hardly a single work has any coherence as a whole. The patchiness of Purcell’s music was, no doubt, increased by the influence of French taste then predominant at court. When Pelham Humfrey was sixteen, King Charles II., as Sir Hubert Parry remarks, “achieved the characteristic and subtle stroke of humour of sending him over to France to study the methods of the most celebrated composer of theatrical music of the time in order to learn how to compose English church music.” Yet it is impossible to see how such ideas as Purcell’s could have been presented in more than French continuity of flow by means of any designs less powerful than those of Bach and Handel. Purcell’s ideas are, like those of all great artists, at least sixty years in advance of the normal intellect of the time. But they are unfortunately equally in advance of the only technical resources then conceivable; and Purcell, though one of the greatest contrapuntists that ever lived, is probably the only instance in music of a man of really high genius born out of due time. Musical talent was certainly as common in the 17th century as at any other time; and if we ask why, unless we are justified in counting Purcell as a tragic exception, the whole century shows not one name in the first artistic rank, the answer must be that, after all, artistic talent is far more common than the interaction of environment and character necessary to direct it to perfect artistic results.
6. Bach and Handel.—It was not until the 18th century had begun that two men of the highest genius could find in music a worthy expression of their grasp of life. Bach and Handel were born within a month of each other, in 1685, and in the same part of Saxony. Both inherited the tradition of polyphonic effort that the German organists and choral writers had steadily maintained throughout the 17th century; and both profited by the Italian methods that were penetrating Germany. In Bach’s case it was the Italian art-forms that appealed to his sense of design. Their style did not affect him, but he saw every possibility which the forms contained, and studied them the more assiduously because they were not, like polyphonic texture, his birthright. In recitative his own distinctively German style attained an intensity and freedom of expression which is one of the most moving things in art. Nevertheless, if he handled recitative in his own way it was not for want of acquaintance with the Italian formulas, nor even because he despised them; for in his only two extant Italian works the scraps of recitative are strictly in accordance with Italian convention, and the arias show (when we allow for their family likeness with Bach’s normal style) the most careful modelling upon Italian forms. Again, as is well known, Bach arranged with copious additions and alterations many concertos by Vivaldi (together with some which though passing under Vivaldi’s name are really by German contemporaries); and, while thus taking every opportunity of assimilating Italian influences in instrumental as well as in vocal music, he was no less alive to the importance of the French overture and suite forms. Moreover, he is very clear as to where his ideas come from, and extremely careful to maintain every art-form in its integrity. Yet his style remains his own throughout, and the first impression of its resemblance to that of his German contemporaries diminishes the more the period is studied. Bach’s art thus forms one of the most perfectly systematic and complete records a life’s work has ever achieved. His art-forms might be arranged in a sort of biological scheme, and their interaction and genealogy has a clearness which might almost be an object of envy to men of science even if Bach had not demonstrated every detail of it by those wonderful rewritings of his own works which we have described elsewhere (see Bach).
Handel’s methods were as different from Bach’s as his circumstances. He soon left Germany and, while he never betrayed his birthright as a great choral writer, he quickly absorbed the Italian style so thoroughly as to become practically an Italian. He also adopted the Italian forms, but not, like Bach, from any profound sense of their possible place in artistic system. To him they were effective, and that was all. He did not trouble himself about the permanent idea that might underlie an art-form and typify its expression. He has no notion of a form as anything higher than a rough means of holding music together and maintaining its flow; but he and Bach, alone among their contemporaries, have an unfailing sense of all that is necessary to secure this end. They worked from opposite points of view: Bach develops his art from within, until its detail, like that of Beethoven’s last works, becomes dazzling with the glory of the whole design; Handel at his best is inspired by a magnificent scheme, in the execution of which he need condescend to finish of detail only so long as his inspiration does not hasten to the next design. Nevertheless it is to the immense sweep and breadth of Handel’s choral style, and its emotional force, that all subsequent composers owe their first access to the larger and less mechanical resources of music. (See Handel.)
7. The Symphonic Classes.—After the death of Bach and Handel another change of view, like that Copernican revolution for which Kant sighed in philosophy, was necessary for the further development of music. Once again it consisted in an inversion of the relation between form and texture. But, whereas at the beginning of the 17th century the revolution consisted mainly in directing attention to chords as, so to speak, harmonic lumps, instead of moments in a flux of simultaneous melodies; in the later half of the 18th century the revolution concerned the larger musical outlines, and was not complicated by the discovery of new harmonic resources. On the contrary, it led to an extreme simplicity of harmony. The art of Bach and Handel had given perfect vitality to the forms developed in the 18th century, but chiefly by means of the reinfusion of polyphonic life. The formal aspects (that is, those that decree the shapes of aria and suite-movement and the balance and contrasts of such choruses as are not fugues) are, after all, of secondary importance; the real centre of Bach’s and Handel’s technical and intellectual activity is the polyphony; and the more the external shape occupies the foreground the more the work assumes the character of light music. In the article Sonata Forms we show how this state of things was altered, and attention is there drawn to the dramatic power of a music in which the form is technically prior to the texture. And it is not difficult to understand that Gluck’s reform of opera would have been a sheer impossibility if he had not dealt with music in the sonata style, which is capable of changing its character as it unfolds its designs.
The new period of transition was neither so long nor so interesting as that of the 17th century. The contrast between the
