HISTORY OF MUSIC
3. Approaching the
Baroque era
In our previous chapter
we ended around 1643 with the death
of Frescobaldi. We discussed composers
of the Renaissance and Reformation but
such classifications are not able to
be defined exactly with dates. No-one
can say when an era of a type of music
began or ended exactly and therefore
classifications are not an exact science,
if there is such a thing as an exact
science.
One composer who could
be described as belonging to three periods
of musical history is Henry Purcell
arguably the first of the great British
composers. He was born in 1659 during
the interregnum between Charles I and
Charles II who came to the throne in
1660 in Purcell's first year of life.
During the 11 years without a king upon
the British throne and the protectorate
of the unfairly maligned Oliver Cromwell
theatres were closed and entertainment
curtailed because such entertainment
was usually of a bawdy and despicable
nature and corrupted the morals of theatre-goers.
Charles II reopened the theatres but
passed a law outlawing all and any act
of adultery, prostitution and other
immoral acts. This was hypocritical
of the king for he was a man with an
insatiable lust for women and had several
mistresses.
Throughout history
Britain has regularly and often called
for a return to basics and high moral
principles but it never comes to anything
and the moralists are dismissed as judgmental.
Purcell was a choirboy
in the Chapel Royal from 1669 - 73.
He then became the assistant organist
to John Blow at Westminster Cathedral
and when Blow retired in 1679 Purcell
took over. Like many of the baroque
composers his church position meant
that he had to write much church music
and on demand thus making it all much
of a muchness. Because of the volume
of music demanded a lot of it is rather
ordinary. This can be said of the Bachs
and of Mozart although one hastens to
add that they all wrote some very fine
works. The resurgence of interest in
the theatre meant a lot of incidental
music but the theatres still specialised
in bawdy productions and so Purcell
wrote some bawdy secular music as well
as sacred music.
Purcell wrote several
welcome odes and there is no doubt that
his finest work is the opera Dido and
Aeneas written for a girls' school.
It is the first British opera of any
note and is quite superb.
His death in his mid-thirties
is a mystery. Of his wife it is said
that she locked him out one night in
the cold from which he caught a fatal
chill. Others say that he died of eating
unhygienic chocolate.
As we approach the
baroque era we have to comment on some
of the most irritating facets of this
music which, in the last forty years
or so, has caused division, schism and
enemies in the music world. There is,
for example, the matter of ornamentation,
the 'twiddly bits' marked in the music
by signs rather than by notes. There
is the turn, the shake, the mordents,
upper and lower, and so on. Does the
turn end with a shake? Does the turn
start on the note above the given note?
Musicians argue about such things relentlessly
and claim to pursue authenticity but
that is a worthless pursuit for they
were not around in the baroque era.
Another annoying feature is the practice
of slowing down at the end of pieces
in unauthorized rallentandos. This was
brought to the fore by Dame Myra Hess
and her ghastly arrangement and performance
of Jesu, joy of man's desiring with
its final bars grinding to a halt. I
have just heard her recording of the
Schumann Piano Concerto which is so
slow and dreary that it is boring and
shows up the legion of wrong notes.
She was not a good pianist.
Purcell is very important
in the history of music. His best music
deserves even more attention but must
not be trammelled in performance by
alleged authenticity. Readers should
examine the catalogue of Purcell recordings
available on Hyperion.
It is generally considered
that the baroque period is the time
of Bach and Handel and that it was Mozart
and later Beethoven that moved from
the baroque style into the classical
style. Although Haydn was born in 1732
and therefore in the baroque age his
music have never really acquired the
baroque label.
With the death of Purcell,
British music lost its identity somewhat
and British music was greatly influenced
by the German-born Handel. Foreign influence
had the greatest say in British music
and it is true that British composers
made rather characterless imitations
of foreign music. However when it came
to church music they distinguished themselves
and maintained an Anglican style. They
were also adept at writing glees in
which an English tradition was maintained.
Among these composers
were William Croft, Maurice Greene and
William Boyce who are sadly neglected
today. Croft lived from 1678 to 1727
and was also a pupil of John Blow at
the Chapel Royal. Later he became organist
at the Chapel Royal and Westminster
Cathedral. He wrote anthems, sonatas,
songs and hymn tunes of which St Anne
(O God our help in ages past) and Hanover
(O worship the King) are widely known.
Dr Maurice Greene lived
from 1695 to 1755. He collected cathedral
music which he bequeathed to Boyce.
He was Master of the King's Music from
1735 and wrote opera and orchestral
pieces as well as church music.
Of the three, William
Boyce is best known. Born in London
1710 he was a chorister at the new St
Paul’s and became composer to the Chapel
Royal in 1738. Sadly he is only really
known as the composer of Heart of Oak
but he wrote ten symphonies, remarkable
for their time, concerti grossi and
much church music. His choral music
is especially fine. He died in 1779.
The collection of the best of church
music began by Greene, continued by
Boyce was taken by Boyce's pupil Samuel
Arnold (1740- 1802). Jonathan Battishill
(1738- 18001) was another St Paul's
choirboy and wrote some interesting
church anthems.
The glee was an English
invention, a song for male voices unaccompanied.
In the early eighteenth century there
were many clubs and societies for the
singing of such items and prizes would
be offered. Glees, catches, rounds and
canons would be performed at such glee
clubs. The composers included Lord Mornington
(1735- 1781) the father of the Duke
of Wellington, Benjamin Cooke (1734-
1793), John Caldicott (1766- 1821) and
Samuel Webbe (1740-1816).
Also of a lighter nature
was the ballad opera of which John Gay's
The Beggar's Opera of 1728 is the best
known. But it is not original in that
the music came from various sources,
from folk tunes to Handel and Purcell.
Gay came from Barnstaple and was primarily
a playwright. He wrote the libretto
to Handel's Acis and Galatea. He also
built the first theatre at Covent Garden
in 1732. The sequel to the Beggar's
opera, Polly is never heard.
Of importance in this
period are the Arnes. Thomas Arne was
born in London in 1710 and was the leading
British composer of his day. He wrote
much incidental music including that
for Shakespeare plays and is best known
for his setting of Rule Britannia. He
wrote a masque Alfred, an opera Artaxerxes
and an oratorio Judith. His illegitimate
son, Michael, was born in London in
1740 and is best remembered for his
song The lass with the delicate air.
For a while he lived in Hamburg.
The Bach family was
a large one and Johann Sebastian Bach
was the most famous. He spent all his
life in Germany and lived from 1685
t0 1750. He has various posts in church
schools and by necessity had to compose,
compose and compose and, as has already
been said, a lot of it may not be of
top quality. It will not please everyone
to hear it said that Bach's music is
cerebral rather than anything else.
He was trammelled by the academia of
the day with its strictness of form
and counterpoint. While he was master
of these formulae and 'clinically '
correct his music is often mere dull
convention and may lack heart being
music that is regimented. Nonetheless
there are works of his that break the
mould of the German school of musical
correctness and are rightly claimed
as masterpieces. His violin concertos
are very fine as is some of his unaccompanied
solo string music. His orchestral suites
are quite superb at times and the Brandenburg
Concertos, if played well, are an absolute
delight. The keyboard music is mechanical
as shown in the Well-Tempered Clavier,
The Art of Fugue and the Goldberg Variations.
Although he was a virtuoso organist
his organ music follows a strict pattern
most of the time thus making the music
somewhat predictable. Parts of the St
Matthew Passion are truly superb and
that can be said of the Mass in B minor
but Bach suffers from indifferent performances
with slow tempi and of being the slave
to alleged authenticity.
It is curious that
his greatest works are not those which
seems to be the most popular. The Dorian
Toccata and Fugue for organ is far better
than the famous Toccata and Fugue in
D minor and it must be remembered that
had it not been for Mendelssohn's advocacy
much of Bach's music may not be known
today.
Bach married twice.
His first wife showed nor interest in
music but his second wife Anna Magdalena
was a musician.
He was a very temperamental
and extremely difficult and, like Elgar,
thought too much of himself. However,
his skill is beyond dispute.
It will surprise some
to hear the suggestion that Bach's 18th
child was a far greater composer than
his father but it is a statement worthy
of consideration. This last son was
Johann Christian Bach born in Leipzig
in 1735. He was not confined to Germany
and, for obvious reasons, was often
known as the English Bach. In fact after
klavier lessons with his half-brother
C.P.E. Bach, J.C. Bach studied in Italy.
In order to get work in the musical
world he converted to Roman Catholicism
and did not follow in his father's religion
of being a Lutherian. J.C. was the organist
at Milan cathedral for a while. Unlike
his father J.C. wrote opera. He also
wrote symphonies, forty piano concertos,
sacred works, sonatas, chamber music
and many songs including the Vauxhall
Songs. With Abel he set up a series
of London concerts .
Unlike his father,
J.C. was adored. On his death in 1782
he left debts largely due to his being
defrauded. Queen Charlotte paid off
those debts and also paid for his funeral.
Gainsborough painted a portrait of him.
This Bach was not a
slave to musical convention and therefore
his music is fresher. Mozart and Beethoven
were influenced by J.C., not J.S. as
was Mendelssohn. J.C. was three years
younger than Haydn and did much for
symphonic music. His wind music is exemplary.
It must not be taken
that all of J.C. Bach's music was top
flight. At the premiere of his oratorio
Gioas, re di Giuda, it was savagely
booed and hissed and the choirboys taking
part laughed so much that many accidentally
wet themselves during the performance
but had to stay on the stage.
Another Bach, W.F.
Bach was somewhat of a rogue and sold
his father's manuscripts in order to
live.
Carl Philip Emmanuel
Bach was born in Weimar in 1714. Many
would say that he is the most prolific
and talented of J.S. Bach's sons. His
godfather was the great Telemann but
it is said that C.P.E. only had one
teacher, his father. Emmanuel went to
Leipzig and Frankfurt universities to
study law before music took him over.
At first his music shows the influence
of his father but, thankfully, an original
style set in. He worked at the court
of Prussian royalty and was employed
by Frederick the Great who was a flautist.
C.P.E. Bach founded the Berlin Singakademie.
His compositions are in many forms and
the later ones show a felicitous style.
Telemann seems to have
had no major champion of his music and,
even now, so-called musicologists denigrate
his music. Michael Kennedy says that
Telemann's music has charm but no depth.
But that is simply not true. Telemann
was not a composer who lived in the
past or saw that only the conventions
of the day were to be observed. He was
forward-looking and had an freshness
of thought which made a lot of his work
strikingly original. In his lifetime
he suffered at the hands of J.S. Bach
and his followers because J.S. Bach
was jealous of him. The same absurd
paranoia was shown by Mozart towards
Salieri. Salieri was the greater composer
and a much better musician than Mozart
and so, Mozart and his father hated
Salieri. In the case of Telemann his
music does suffer from cataloguing procedures
as he wrote collections of works which
he labelled under Table-Music whereas
they would all have done better to stand
as separate works. He wrote many operas
and some of the finest oratorios of
all time including a set depicting all
the major events in the life of Christ.
His instrumental works and concertos
are very fine and he brought the Cinderella
of the orchestra, the viola, to the
fore.
Another irritation
of baroque music was the use of continuo.
This was really the music reduced into
a score for the keyboard and the bass
line would be reinforced by a viola
da gamba or a cello. It meant that the
composer or conductor could direct the
work from the harpsichord. Often the
keyboard was not written on two staves
as most keyboard is but was annotated
by a figured bass, a set of numbers
indicating the chord or harmony so that
if the tonic chord in root was required,
it was not usually indicated but had
it been so numericalised it would read
5 3 1 and so on.
In many recorded performances
these days this continuo feature becomes
prominent and oppressive and the harpsichord
can become tedious with its non-stop
playing. It reminds me of Beecham's
definition of the sound of a harpsichord:
"It is like two skeletons making love
on a corrugated tin roof!"
I judge that that remark
is a little unfair!
One of the very greatest
of baroque composers was Jean-Phillipe
Rameau born in Dijon in 1681. He visited
Italy in 1701 to study techniques in
music and wrote many important textbooks
on such subjects such as his Treatise
on harmony of 1722. However it took
him many years to establish himself
as a composer. He wrote much keyboard
music, which like the works of Telemann
are very confusingly catalogued. The
first of his many marvellous operas
was Hippolyte et Aricie composed when
he was 50 and which was so original
that it caused a riot.
Rameau's music, particularly
his stage works have a biting harmony
and powerful orchestration and did not,
as the French expected, follow in the
style of Lully. Paris was divided about
Rameau. His music created controversy
but a controversialist is one who makes
and prolongs the argument which argument
defies the facts. So incensed were some
of the French that they accused Rameau
of being treasonable simply because
his music broke new ground. And so it
was not just Stravinsky with his magnificent
Rite of Spring that caused a riot 160
years or so later.
But there are many
composers of this age who are neglected.
Johann Adolphe Hasse wrote over 100
operas and those I have heard are incredibly
fine .
Opera earlier than
those by Rameau and Hasse were different
employing a few singers and instruments
and very little chorus work if any.
The Italian composer, Claudio Monteverdi
(1567 -1643) who belongs to the renaissance
period approaching the baroque was also
original as was Rameau. He wrote many
stage works and occasionally reached
the height of sublimity as, for example,
in his setting of the Beatus Vir. Of
course Lully (1632 - 1687) was Italian
born but took French nationality in
1661. He was an argumentative man and
did not like Rameau.
Since we are in Italy
there were many baroque composers who
wrote Concerti Grossi, among other things.
There was Corelli (1653- 1715), the
hugely talented Pietro Locatelli (1695
- 1764) and Geminiani (1687- 1762) to
name but three. It would appear that
Italian composers excelled in instrumental
music.
Handel was born in
Halle in 1685 and took English nationality
in 1726. He does not have the same acclaim
as his exact contemporary J.S. Bach
and it is true that there are many who
find his operas tedious partly because
they conform to a predictable pattern,
content and style. In fact in his own
days he suffered ups and downs. The
success of Gay's Beggar's Opera in 1728
dealt a great blow to what popularity
Handel had. The strain of all his hard
work led to a stroke in 1737 and he
was to go blind in the last seven years
of his life. I think it may be true
to say that none of his operas have
really become great successes and yet
his superb oratorio Messiah is a work
of great inspiration and Zadok the Priest
has always been a favourite. Solomon
is only known for the orchestral piece
The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. Some
of his operas have remarkable arias
within them but as a whole do not really
convince. Angels ever bright and fair
from Theodora, Art thou troubled from
Rodelinda and Where'er you walk from
Semele are obvious examples.
The baroque era was
notable for its development into the
sonata, symphony and string quartet
which had a definite structure and form
which was to come into its own in the
classical period. The silly trappings
of ornamentation and continuo were to
decline and music was to change for
ever ... and for the better.
David C F Wright
THE
HISTORY OF MUSIC 1. Earliest times
to the Renaissance
HISTORY
OF MUSIC Part 2 Music of the Renaissance
and Reformation Periods
HISTORY
OF MUSIC 4.
Early American Music (1620-1800)
Copyright David C F Wright 1974 renewed
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