“THE EMOTIONAL AND NUANCED INSTRUMENT”
“Just as the painter imitates nature, so wind and string players should
imitate the human voice.” Silvestro di Ganassi del Fontego (Venice, 1542)
From the mid-1500s onwards, if a musician and composer was not
Italian by birth or descent, then if he was sensible he certainly put
himself literally or vicariously in the way of those who were – in those
days all that was fashionable came out of Italy. Even much earlier than
the 16th century, when you contemplate that Hugh Ashton’s De
Institutione Musica - an Oxford thesis on the volumes of Bœthius (a 6th
century philosopher) - was published in Venice in 1491/2. Johann
Pachelbel’s inspiration often was derived from Italians such as
Girolamo Frescobaldi and Alessandro Poglietti. And in the next
generation, Georg Philipp Telemann used Agostino Steffani and
Antonio Caldara as his models.
It was also during this time that the violin family, as we know it, matured
and took the familiar, finite shape that its members still enjoy, and began
to wield enormous influence and power as to what was composed, by
whom and when it was played.
Our program also includes Giovanni Paolo Cima in Milan; Giovanni
Gabrieli at St. Mark’s in Venice; Carlo Farina in Mantua, Parma and
Lucca; Biagio Marini in Brescia, Parma and later joining Monteverdi's
group at St. Mark’s in Venice; and Johann Rosenmüller at a slighter
later time at St. Mark’s. All in their own way at the creative stages of
what the violin could do and how it could be played. What techniques
were possible: which were rare and bizarre and which were refined and
delicate? How could this instrument be brought to affect the senses of
both the player and the listener alike? Brescian Biagio Marini was a
wonderful contributor to the development of all of these aspects. He
extended the performance range (how ‘high’ the violin could play) of
the solo and accompanied violin; he incorporated the slur (more than
one note played in the same direction of bowstroke), the double and
even the triple stop (two or three notes played as a chord) and the first
directly notated tremolo effects into his music – but more about this to
follow.
Around the middle of Claudio Monteverdi’s life (1567-1643), a real
revolution occurred in Western Art Music, such as had never been heard
of before or since. And where else but in Italy! Up until that time, music
was composed with poetry as its impetus. Instruments rarely appeared
without voice. Sacred or secular lyrics were written and madrigals (a
lyric poem suitable for being set to music, usually short and often of
amatory character, especially fashionable in the 16th century and later,
in Italy, France and England), motets (a polyphonic choral composition
on a sacred text usually without instrumental accompaniment) and
masses were composed with their musical expression based on the
overall mood of the poem. The inspiration for the composer was not the
idea of transmitting the text per se to the listener, but the textual meaning
or simply put, the feeling of the poetry.
So a love poem, for example, was set so abstractly to music in a multivoice (i.e. polyphonic madrigal, say four parts – the most popular form)
that the lover’s dialogue in the poem became an artifice. No one thought
of naturalistic discourse or dialogue. Indeed, the (sung) text could barely
be understood since the various musical voices were composed in
imitation of each other resulting in the simultaneous singing, among the
voices, of completely different and conflicting words. These polyphonic
works (without their texts) were eventually taken on by instruments,
giving non-singers an extensive repertoire, albeit one that was not
originally inspired by the sounds and possibilities of the instruments
themselves.
Thus, this vocal/instrumental mixed-up medium was accepted generally
as the basis of the whole of musical life. It was an ‘end stage’ without a
perceptible potential for further development; it may well have
continued on in this way, well ... indefinitely.
But suddenly, at the snap of a violin E string, various musicians in one
particular spot on the globe came up with the idea of making language
itself, including dialogue, the basis of all music. Music must be dramatic
– not just a mellifluous expression of the mood of a poem. As its point
of departure, dramatic music took dialogue – its content being based on
argument, persuasion, inquiry, affirmation and negation. Born of the
belief that contemporary art was inferior to Classical Greek and Roman
works, the germ of this idea was, of course, Classical antiquity.
It was easy enough to see: visually it lay all about, albeit in ruins. A
passionate interest in the Ancients led to the view that Greek drama
would have been sung, not declaimed. After all, singing throws the
voice further than can the spoken word. An effort was undertaken, by
these lovers of antiquity, to revive the ancient tragedies, with the
intention of being faithful to the originals. (It is interesting that this new
departure was developed by those who believed in the reconstruction of
something very old – akin to the current Early Music movement or
restoration of an ancient monument.) No one knew, though, how a
Greek tragedy would have sounded, so the style had to be invented. The
most famous of these dramatic societies, where these musings took
place, were the Cameratas of the Counts Corsi and Bardi in Florence.
There we find Vincenzo Galilei (1520-1591: the astronomer’s father),
Giulio Caccini (1551-1618) and Jacobo Peri (1561-1633) setting the
tone as musicians and plotting this new dramatic medium or melodrama.
Though the first “Opera” of Peri and Caccini were not musical standouts – more thought-provoking prototypes – the underlying ideas led to
a completely “new music” - Nuove Musiche – the title of Caccini’s
(1602) impassioned and programmatic work. Together, they shone their
combined torches, lighting the way to “Baroque music” – a music which
speaks directly. In his writings, Caccini in particular describes quite new
forms of expression; a strong aura radiating from the singer is most
important to him. Interestingly, he recommends that coloraturas and
ornaments of all types be only used where and when they reinforce
verbal expression i.e. not as an end in themselves (a later development),
or to compensate for the singers lack of “aura” or stage presence.
Ornaments, he affirms, were not invented because they are necessary
for good singing but rather as “Ear ticklers” for those not capable of
performing with passionate intensity.
What was fundamentally new in all of this was that text, often a
dialogue, was set to music for just one voice, with the rhythm and
melody of speech being followed precisely and naturally i.e.
“Recitative”. The important, abiding consideration was to render the
text as clearly as possible and with the greatest expressiveness.
Everything else which had previously been considered as essential was
now rejected as being a distraction to gaining the full, clear meaning of
the text. The new form derided word repetition, in contrast to the
madrigal where words or groups of words are often repeated
ridiculously. (In real dialogue, after all, words are only repeated if the
hearer has missed something, or when particular word or concept needs
emphasis – a practice used in this “new music”.) This Nuove Musiche
we term “Monody”.
Such an idea was certainly innovative and at first must have been really
quite outrageous. Imagine yourself alive in those days – the turn of the
17th century. You are about 35 years old and the music that you have
heard since birth has never been anything other than what you have
gleaned coming out of a patrician house, heard in a church or, if you are
lucky enough, an aristocrat’s palace. It might be the wonderful
madrigals of Luca Marenzio (1553–99), the youthful Monteverdi or
Flemish composers in vogue, such as Adrian Willaert or Josquin des
Pres: highly esoteric and complex multilayered vocal music with
instruments playing a capella (i.e. their corresponding parts of each
voice type).
Now, without warning, someone proposes that the way people speak is
in and of itself Music. Indeed, that is the true Music! Again, where else
but in Italy, where the language does sound melodramatic! Just stand in
a marketplace in Italy or imagine yourself in an Italian courtroom,
listening to Italian trial barristers summing up their cases; then you will
understand what Caccini and Galilei meant. All that is lacking are a few
well-placed chords plucked on a lute, guitar or harpsichord to complete
the monody – this recitativo. So, for music lovers – appassionati di
musica – whose madrigal dreams were suddenly shattered by monody,
this new music had greater impact and came with a greater after-shock
than even that caused by the arrival, a century ago, of Arnold
Schönberg’s atonal music.
In his Nuove Musiche, Caccini claimed that polyphony (the
simultaneous combining of a number of parts, each forming a distinct
melody and harmonising with each other) and counterpoint (the
technique of writing or playing a melody or melodies against itself,
according to fixed rules) were the work of the devil, that they only made
music incomprehensible. The accompaniment must be so discreet that
one is not attracted to it; dissonances should be used pertinently in order
to add emphasis to the expression. The parts in his book relating to
language, the “melody of speech” and accompaniment are critical to the
development of Opera and the recitative, and ultimately the
instrumental sonata and concerto.
This sensational idea of “Speech as song” only gets interesting for us
because it was taken on by a musical genius. Claudio Monteverdi,
slightly younger than Caccini, was the greatest madrigal writer of his
time; he had mastered every finest detail of counterpoint. Monteverdi,
however, did not blindly accept the theories and dogmas of the ‘Caccini
club’. He could not, for instance, admit or believe that counterpoint was
“Satan’s aural deception”. Nor could he subscribe to the notion that the
music would detract from the text if, in its own right, it was interesting!
So although he found Caccini’s ideas worth considering, from 1605
onwards, Monteverdi set about to develop his own vocabulary for his
music dramas. In 1607, he wrote the still-famous L’Orfeo; in 1608
Ariana. And from then, everything – without precedent – was a kind of
experiment. Every short piece, every duet, every trio. He tells us just
how aware he was of where he knew he was heading. With the greatest
care, he searched for the most effective musical nuance for every affect
or emotional state, for every human sentiment and for each word.
To quote one example, we hold the magnifying glass over a scene
composed in 1624 for the cantata Combattimento di Tancredi e
Clorinda. (It was composed for a private entertainment at the Palazzo
Girolamo Mocenigo and performed by musicians from St. Mark's
Venice, where Monteverdi was maestro di cappella.) For it, he sought
a style with which he could express the state of violent anger. “But since
I could not find an example for an impassioned mental state in the music
of earlier composers ... and since I also knew that opposites move souls
the most, something which good music should do, ... I began with all
my energy to search for a passionate form of expression ... In the
description of the struggle between Tancred and Clorinda, I found the
opposites which seemed right for transposing into music: war, prayer,
death.”
Now, is that really true? Is it in fact the case that prior to 1624, music
did not provide the means of expressing states of great passion or great
excitement? And given that supply is contingent on demand, was it even
unnecessary for music to do so before that time? Fortunately, for you
the reader, and me the writer, the research has been done. Well before
he died on 6 March 2016, the eminent and celebrated Austrian
conductor and music scholar of Concentus Musicus fame, Nikolaus
Harnoncourt, was able to conclude that the answer was that apart from
one French example - Clément Janequin's La Guerre (1528) - “No: the
lyric art of the madrigal contains no outbursts of rage and no states of
great excitement either positive or negative.”
So, Monteverdi did have to invent the means of expressing such
emotions. Being familiar with classical philosophers, he looked to
Plato; there he found repeated notes. “I therefore investigated the fast
tempi, which according to the leading philosophers originated in an
excited and martial mood ... Then I discovered the effect for which I
was looking. To accompany words that expressed anger, I divided the
semi-breve [w] into 16 semi-quavers [], each of which is to be
individually struck.” [Preface to Monteverdi’s 8th Book of Madrigals,
published 1638] This he named stile concitato (the agitated style) and
from this point on, agitated emotional states being represented by rapid
note repetition became a familiar device, both for musicians and
listeners. For the remainder of the 17th and the entire 18th centuries, it
was equally used for instance by Handel and Mozart, as well as
composers on our program such as Farina, Marini, Venturini,
Rosenmüller and Telemann.
Monteverdi writes that at first the musicians threatened industrial
action: What’s this? The very same note sixteen times in one bar? What
an insult to be required to do something that until then seemed so
musically senseless. Any ninny can move the bow back and forth over
the string but that is not music! And, after all, note repetitions are ‘not
done’ in strict contrapuntal writing! So, Monteverdi had a bit of fast
talking to do: he had to explain that this device was imbued with extra-
musical meaning relating both to the drama and the human body. It was
a new, purely dramatic and physical element. From then on, repeated
notes were only used to achieve certain effects – usually to do with
heightened emotional states. Many Classical symphony movements, for
example, contain what became known as a “drum bass”. Such
movements are composed over stereotypical repeated quaver notes
played by the bass instruments – and sometimes the viola playing the
‘basso alto’ (high bass). The result is a strong feeling of increasing
tension and excitement springing from such accompaniment. (One of
the joys of being a bass instrument player is to be the one underpinning
that tension.) Often in the performance of music today, repeated notes
are just repetitions of the note or chord and do not express anything.
In addition to types just described, another nuanced kind of repetition
has existed since the early 17th century – tremolo approximates vibrato
and is a nuanced device of expression. As employed by Biagio Marini,
in one bow stroke a throbbing, articulated repetition of notes of the same
pitch is played to represent sorrow and death.
Like Biagio Marini, Carlo Farina is considered to be one of the earliest
violin virtuosos, making many contributions to violin technique. For
example, in his work Capriccio Stravagante (1627) he used the violin
to imitate animal sounds like dogs barking and cats caterwauling. Ten
years later, Marin Mersenne in his l'Harmonie universelle (1637)
“affirmed the violin's specific strength as its versatile ability to adopt
the timbre and musical idioms of other instruments, as demonstrated in
Farina’s Capriccio”.
It is almost impossible for us to imagine a time when instruments were
relegated to second place behind voices. But it is thanks to the turn-ofthe-17th century, overnight simplification of musical texture – that
vocal/instrumental mixed-up medium of one part imitating another that
was characteristic of the Renaissance – and the innovation of monody
that we have instruments in their own right not only imitating the voice
but exploring, in their own way, the emotional extents of the human
character.
© Tim Blomfield 2016