Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 10.djvu/723

 MUSICAL

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MUSICAL

will and in the spirit of the Church, the hturgical ac- tion at the altar. And, in according to the Church our filial obedience, we need entertain no fear that she, the venerable mother and protector of the arts, will assign to music a function unworthy of its powers.

Krutschek, Die Kircheiimusik nach dem WiLlen der Kirche (5th ed., Ratisbon, 1901); Singenbergeb, Guide to Catholic Church Music (2nd ed., ^rihvallk(■(■, 1005), published by order of the Provincial Counfil of Mllw ml i i; Kornmuller, Lex. der kirchl. Tonkunst (2 part,^, -', ! ! ': ■ii-;bon, 1891-5); Baumkeb, Das kathol. Kirchenlul ,.. ii'sfd (3 vols., PVeiburg, 1S83-

91); JuNGMANN. I. " ' 1 M iliiirg, 18S6); Gietmann, Musik- Aesthetik (Freiburn, I'.tuu). rSin-nal naention must be made of the periodicals on Church music in German and French and to the American periodicals Church Music and Cacilia (the organ of the American Cecilian Society), from which a great deal of theoretic and practical value may be gathered.

G. Gietmann.

Musical Instruments in Church Services. — For

almost a thousand years Gregorian chant, without any instrumental or harmonic addition, was the only music used in connexion with the liturgy. The organ, in its primitive and rude form, was the first, and for a long time the .sole, instrument used to accompany the chant. 1 1 gave the pitch to the singers and added bril- liancy and sonority. In secular music, however, in- struments played an important role at an early date. It may be said that instrumental music developed simultaneously with secular music itself. The trouba- dours, trouveres, and jongleurs (who flourished in France, Italy, and Spain from the eleventh to the four- teenth centuries inclusive), and their English contem- poraries, the minstrels or wayfarers, as well as the minnesingers in Germany during the twelfth and thir- teenth centuries, accompanied their chants and lyric irajirovisations on instruments. Among these were a diminutive harp, which was laid on the table while being played, the fiddle, also called vielle or mola (pro- totypes of our violin), the very ancient crwth, crowd ar chrotla (an instrument having originally three, but later five strings, now obsolete), and the hurdy-gurdy. The last two were more especially in use in Great Britain. Wind instruments, such as the flute in sev- eral forms, the trumpet, horn, sackbut (forerunner of our trombone), and others now obsolete were common with the wayfaring musicians. Instrumental music as an art, however, failed for a long time to gain the rec- ognition of the educated and upper classes, chiefly because it served the purposes of the dance and mere entertainment almost exclusively, and also on account of the more or less vagabond character of most of its votaries. There was, nevertheless, constant progress both in the construction of the instruments and in a more and more widely-extended and skilful use of them. Princes maintained bands of musicians at their courts for their entertainments, and for giving zest and splendour to public festivities. Some of these early orchestras numbered as many as thirty or forty musi- cians. While it is certain that as early as the fifteenth century instruments besides the organ were used in connexion with polyphonic hturgical compositions, it has not been definitely ascertained to what extent such was the case, what passages were played by the instruments alone, and where they simply reinforced the voices. The difficulty in determining the precise nature of instrumental co-operation with the voices is increased by the fact that in those days the text was applied by the composer to only one voice — generally the cantus, or upper voice. In accordance with this model, the singers themselves applied the text to the other voices as they proceeded. At all events the in- struments served at best only as a reinforcement or as substitute for the human voices and had no indepen- dent function in our modern sense. Furthermore, they were employed with sole reference to their pitch and not to their timbre, or tone-quality. Thus, instru- ments of the violin family and flutes would play with the high voices, sopranos and altos, whereas horns and trombones were assigned to the tenor and bass parts. X.— 42

It was with the advent of monody (see Harmony) that the use of instruments in connexion with the voices received a great impetus. The closely-knit, com- pact polyphonic structure which had predominated up to this time, needed no extraneous aid for its effective- ness and sonority. This was not the case with the new style of composition rapidly superseding the old school. It depended to a great extent for its tonal body and artistic existence on the aid of instruments. The great perfection reached in the construction of stringed instruments in the sixteenth century was both a manifestation of, and an aid to the growing ten- dency; virtuosity, not only on stringed, but also on wind instruments was a common accomplishment. The character and individuality of the instruments, so to speak, were being made available as means of expression for the subjective moods, dramatic feelings, and conceptions of the composer.

While all this development had, up to the first half of the sixteenth century, served mainly secular pur- poses, it was through Ludovico Grossi da Viadana (1.564-1627) that the use of instruments became more common in churches. While choirmaster in Mantua and in Venice, this master published his "Cento con- certi ecclesiastici", compositions to sacred texts, for one or more voices and basso continuo, or figured bass played on the organ and supplemented by violins, bass viols, and wind instruments, a species of compo- sition in vogue before his time. A contemporary of Viadana, Giovanni Gabrieli (1.557-1612), choirmaster of St. Mark's, Venice, went a considerable step farther than any one before him. He wrote not only nu- merous works for voices and instruments, but created works for instruments alone, and discovered the prin- ciple of modern orchestration by doubling the voices in octaves and applying the same process to the organ and other instruments. Another event which was destined to exercise a momentous influence, not only on the growth of the use of instruments but also on the futurs development of liturgical music itself, was the birth of opera with the first performance (1594) of Jacopo Peri's "Dafne" in Florence. This new art form, originating as it did with the humanistic spirit of the time and being a return to the musical and literary ideals of antiquity which enthralled the culti- vated classes of the day, soon gained an enormous popularity and completely overshadowed all previously accepted ideals in popular favour. It was but a short time before the spirit and forms of the theatre, instru- ments and all, found their way into the Church. While formerly the spirit and form of church music dominated secular music (most early secular melodies which have come down to us belonging to one or the other of the Gregorian modes) it was now the spirit, taste, and passions of the world as expressed in opera which were in the ascendency and began to dominate the compositions to liturgical texts. It was natural that the people should like to hear in church the forms of composition which delighted them so much in the theatre. The severe simplicity of liturgical chant was set aside; polyphony was considered too formal and artificial. The spirit of universality animating them had to yield to the new style expressions of individual feeling enhanced by the sensuous charm of the in- struments. That which was in accordance with the prevailing and growing taste of the generality was, if not desired, at least tolerated by those in authority, and there was no hindrance to the triumphal conquest by instrumental rriiisic which we have witnessed since.

New purely insl rutiiiiilal forms were developed and cultivated in tlir ((nusc of the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries in Italy, France, and especially in Germany, the most fruitful soil of all, until the sym- phony was evolved, through which the composer gives utterance to all the conflicting emotions which sway him. Peri, for the accompaniment of his first opera, "Dafne", used but a few instruments, namely, a.