Europe: A History (120 page)
Poetry was particularly susceptible to the drive for rigorous style and form. In English it is dominated by the triad of John Milton (1608–74), John Dryden (1631–1700), and Alexander Pope (1688–1744). Pope’s intellectual discourses, written in the heroic couplets of the
Essay on Criticism
(1711) and the
Essay on Man
(1733), are infinitely expressive of his generation’s temper and interests:
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
’Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo of the sense.
All nature is but art, unknown to Thee;
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good.
And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
2
Later, lyrical poetry reasserted itself to redress the balance—in the Scots poems of Robert Burns (1759–96), the German of Christian von Kleist (1715–59), F. G. Klopstock (1724–1803), and the young Goethe, and the French of Jean Roucher (1745–94) and André Chénier (1762–94). Prose-writing, though heavily dependent on the non-fictional genres, witnessed the growth of true fiction. Here, the pioneers appeared in England. Apart from
Robinson Crusoe
, the leading titles included Jonathan Swift’s
Gulliver’s Travels
(1726), Samuel Richardson’s
Pamela
(1740), Henry Fielding’s
Tom Jones
(1749), and Laurence Sterne’s
Tristram Shandy
(1767). In France, both Voltaire and Rousseau, among their other talents, were accomplished novelists (see below).
Although French, English, and German authors predominated, the reading public was by no means confined to their countries of origin. Almost all educated people in Europe read French at this time; and local translations of important titles were widespread. In Poland, for example, which many might mistake for a cultural backwater, the catalogue of translations into Polish included
Robinson Krusoe
(1769),
Manon Lesko
(1769),
Kandyd
(1780),
Gulliwer
(1784),
Awantury Amelii
(1788),
Historia Tom-Dźona
(1793). Some Polish authors, such as Jan Potocki (1761–1825), the orientalist, wrote in French for both a local and an international readership.
European musicians, from J. S. Bach (1685–1750) to W. A. Mozart (1756–91) and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), consolidated the foundations of the classical repertoire. They worked in each of its main divisions: instrumental, chamber, orchestral, and choral; and they developed a style, which, though often confused with the preceding Baroque, was marked by a very particular rhythmic energy that has given it lasting appeal,
[
SONATA
]
They also preserved a balance between the sacred and the profane. This may be illustrated from Bach’s cantatas, Mozart’s
Requiem
(1791) and Beethoven’s
Missa solemnis
(1823), and from Bach’s concertos, Mozart’s forty-one and Beethoven’s nine symphonies. Austro-German composers enjoyed a growing preponderance. In addition to Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, their first rank included Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706), G. P. Telemann (1681–1767), G. F. Handel (1685–1759), and Josef Haydn (1732–1809). Yet music remained essentially international in character. In their day, the Italians J.-B. Lully (1632–87), Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713), Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725), Tomaso Albinoni (1671–1751), and Antonio Vivaldi (1675–1741) were just as influential as the Germans. So, too, were the Dane Dietrich Buxtehude (1637–1707), the Frenchmen François Couperin (1668–1733) and J.-P. Rameau (1683–1764), or the organist of Westminster Abbey, Henry Purcell (c.1659–95), in London. The violin, the prime instrument of European music, was perfected by Antonio Stradivari (1644–1737) of Cremona. The pianoforte was invented in 1709 by B. Cristofori of Padua. Opera developed from the early stage of dialogue-with-music to the full-scale musical dramas of W. C. Gluck (1714–87).
[
CANTATA
] [
MOUSIKE
] [
OPERA
] [
STRAD
]
Formal religion stayed set in the earlier mould. The religious map of Europe did not change significantly. Established Churches continued to operate according to rigorous state laws of toleration and non-toleration. Members of the official religion gained preferment, having sworn oaths and passed strict tests of conformity, non-members and non-jurors, when not actively persecuted, lingered in legal limbo. In Catholic countries, Protestants were generally deprived of civil rights. In Protestant countries, Catholics suffered the same fate. In Great Britain, the Church of England and the Church of Scotland formally barred both Roman Catholics and their respective Protestant dissenters. In Sweden, Denmark and Holland similar proscriptions applied. In Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church enjoyed sole recognition; there were no Jews legally resident. In Poland-Lithuania, where the greatest degree of religious heterodoxy persisted, restrictions none the less increased. The Socinians were expelled in 1658 for alleged collaboration with the Swedes. In 1718 all non-Catholics were barred from the Diet. In 1764 the Jews lost their Parliament, but not their
kahals
or local communes. Russian propaganda began to bemoan the plight of Poland’s Orthodox, whose position was considerably easier than that of Catholics in Russia. Prussian propaganda inflated the alleged persecution of Lutherans.
SONATA
I
N
origin,
sonata
referred to music that was ‘sounded’, not ‘sung’. But in the eighteenth century it was applied to a particular form of composition that came to dominate almost all instrumental music. Sonata form occupies a central place in the work of the classical composers from Haydn to Mahler. It is to be contrasted with the polyphonic style of the preceding era; and it embodied the conventions against which later ‘modern’ styles were to react. It has two aspects—the division of compositions into a formal sequence of movements and the elaboration of homophonic harmony,
[
TONE
]
Sonata form had no single starting-point. An early manifestation was Gabrieli’s
Sonata pian e forte
(1597) for violin, cornett, and six trombones. But its codification into four set movements did not occur until the work of Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713) of Bologna. It was developed in the keyboard compositions of C. P. E. Bach (1714–88), and was brought to perfection by Haydn and Mozart. Its theoretical foundations were foreshadowed in J.-P. Rameau’s
Traité d’harmonie
(1722), but were not fully expounded until Carl Czerny’s
School of Practical Composition
(1848), twenty years after the death of its greatest exponent—Beethoven.
Conventional sonata form divides the musical work into four contrasting movements. The opening
Allegro
, in fast tempo, has parallels with the operatic overture. The slow second movement grew out of the Baroque
aria da capo
. The third movement, usually minuet and trio, was based on the dance suite. The finale returns to a key and tempo reminiscent of the opening. Each of the four movements follows a standard pattern consisting of the
exposition
of melodic subjects, their harmonic
development
, and, at the end, their
recapitulation
, sometimes with a related
coda
or ‘afterthought’.
Homophony is the opposite of polyphony. It is characterized by music based, like hymn tunes, on a progression of chords, whose constituent notes do not possess either melodic or rhythmic independence. Classical harmony, therefore, is the opposite of polyphonic counterpoint. The scene of J. S. Bach composing his
‘Art of Fugue’
(1750) in an empty church in Leipzig symbolizes the passing of the polyphonic era. The scene of Beethoven, weary but sublimated, struggling to complete his five last quartets, may be taken as the summit of homophony.
Beethoven considered his
Quartet in C sharp minor, Opus 131
(1826), to be his finest work. In it, he expounds each of the elements from which sonata form had grown—an opening fugue; a single-theme scherzo; a central aria with variations; and a ‘sonata within a sonata’ on the inverted fugue. It has been called ‘a cycle of human experience’, and ‘a microcosm of European music’.
1
In that span from 1750 to 1827, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven composed between them over 150 symphonies, over 100 piano sonatas, over 50 string quartets, and numerous concertos—all in sonata form. These works form the core of the classical repertoire.
STRAD
L
E MESSIE
, ‘The Messiah’, bears the most prestigious of all labels:
Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis Faciebat Anno 1716
. It was one of ten violins still in the workshop of Antonio Stradivari (c.1644–1737) almost forty years after his death, and was sold by his sons to Count Cozio di Salabue in 1775. Apart from a dozen years in the possession of the French music teacher Delphin Alard (1815–88), ‘II Salabue’ belonged exclusively to dealers—Tarisio, Vuillaume, and W. E. Hills. Tarisio was always promising to show it to his friends, but never actually did so. ‘It’s like the Messiah,’ one of them said; ‘always promised, never produced.’
1
The instrument, rarely played, sits in virtually mint condition in its humidified case in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. It is nothing remarkable to look at. Unlike the ‘Long Strads’ of earlier date, it has the standard body length of 356 mm. It has a straight-grained belly, angular corners, plain purfling, slanting f-holes, and a two-panelled back in flamed walnut. Its pedigree is only revealed by the orange-brown glow of Stradivari’s unique varnish. Joachim, who played it once, said that it ‘combined sweetness and grandeur’.
2
The key to a string instrument’s tonal quality was often thought to lie in its varnish. Too hard a varnish produces an ugly metallic sound; too soft a varnish dampens the resonance. Stradivari, a master in all departments of his trade, found a varnish whose great elasticity was also durable. His reputation is unequalled.
The violin emerged in late Renaissance Italy. It was descended from the family of six-stringed viols, and more particularly from the rebec and the
lira da braccio
. It was extremely versatile. Its fine melodic quality suited it for solo purposes, whilst it was the natural leader of the string group of violin, viola, cello, and double bass. As the common ‘fiddle’, it was easily adopted for dance music. Small, portable, and relatively inexpensive, it soon became the universal workhorse both of Europe’s popular and of its ‘classical’ music. With the exception of Jacob Stainer (1617–78) in Tyrol, all the master violin-makers, from Maggini of Brescia to Amati and Stradivari of Cremona and Guarneri of Venice, were Italian.
The art of violin-playing was greatly advanced by the development of systematic teaching methods, including those of Leopold Mozart and of G. B. Viotti. The Paris Conservatoire, from 1795, was the predecessor of similar institutions in Prague (1811), Brussels (1813), Vienna (1817), Warsaw (1822), London (1822), St Petersburg (1862), and Berlin (1869).
A striking feature of violin-playing from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries was the marked predominance of East Europeans. The phenomenon may possibly reflect the traditions of fiddle-playing among Jews and gypsies, and more probably the special status of music-making in politically repressed cultures. At all events, Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840) was for a long time the first and last of the ‘greats’ who was not either East European or Jewish or both. Joseph Joachim (1831–1907) of Vienna and Henryk Wieniawski (1835–80), a Pole from Lublin who helped launch the St Petersburg school, were founders of the magnificent line which ran through Kreisler, Ysaye, and Szigeti to Heifitz, Milstein, Oistrakh, Szeryng, and Isaac Stern. All played their ‘Strads’. The ‘Messiah’ is one of the very few Stradivaris which, sadly, was destined to be seen but not heard. Modern craftsmen pay special attention to the choice of timber, variations in thickness and curvature, and effect of ageing.
The Roman Catholic Church settled into a routine that no longer sought to recover the Protestant lands. Much of its energies were directed abroad, especially to the Jesuit missions in South America, South India, Japan to 1715, China, and North America. The chain of twenty-one beautiful Franciscan missions in California, which were started by Fr. Junípero Serra (1713–84) and which ran from San Diego to San Francisco, have remained a spiritual solace in the surrounding wilderness to this day. In Europe the Vatican could not cope with the growing centrifugal tendencies of the Church provinces. One Pope, Innocent XI (1676–89), was driven in 1688 to excommunicate Louis XIV in secret for occupying Avignon in the
regalia
dispute. Another, Clement IX (1700–21), was pushed against his better judgement to issue the Bull
Unigenitus Dei filius
(1713) condemning Jansenism. The Bull, which was specifically directed against the
Refléxions morales
of Pasquier Quesnel, an Oratorian sympathetic to the Jan-senists, caused a storm of protest dividing French opinion for decades. In the Netherlands in 1724 it led to schism within the Catholic ranks and the creation by the Archbishop of Utrecht of the Old Catholic Church of Holland. In Germany a movement started in 1763 by a tract of J. N. von Hontheim (Febronius) aimed to reconcile Catholics and Protestants by radically curtailing the centralizing powers of Rome. In Poland the Vatican lost effective control through political domination of the Church hierarchy by Russia.
In all these disputes the Jesuits, who showed themselves more papist than the Popes, became a growing embarrassment. Benedict XTV (1740–58), whose moderation won him the unusual accolade of praise from Voltaire, initiated an inquiry into their affairs. They were accused of running large-scale money-making
operations, also of adopting native cults to win converts at any price. In 1759 they were banished from Portugal, in 1764 from France, and in 1767 from Spain and Naples. Clement XIII (1758–69) stood by the Society with the words
Sint ut sunt, aut non sint
(may they be as they are, or cease to be). But Clement XIV (1769–74), who was elected under the shadow of a formal demand by the Catholic powers for abolition, finally acquiesced. The brief
Dominus ac Redemptor noster
of 16 August 1773 abolished the Society of Jesus, on the grounds that it was no longer pursuing its founder’s objectives. It took effect in all European countries except for the Russian Empire. It threw Catholic educational and missionary activities into chaos, opening major opportunities especially for secular schools and universities.
