Page:EB1911 - Volume 20.djvu/419

 notion of an overture thus has no existence until the 17th century. The toccata at the beginning of Monteverde’s Orfeo is a barbaric flourish of every procurable instrument, alternating with a melodious section entitled ritornello; and, in so far as this constitutes the first instrumental movement prefixed to an opera, it may be called an overture. As an art-form the overture began to exist in the works of J. B. Lully. He devised a scheme which, although he himself did not always adhere to it, constitutes the typical French overture up to the time of Bach and Handel (whose works have made it classical). This French overture consists of a slow introduction in a marked “dotted rhythm” (i.e. exaggerated iambic, if the first chord is disregarded), followed by a lively movement in fugato style. The slow introduction was always repeated, and sometimes the quick movement concluded by returning to the slow tempo and material, and was also repeated (see Bach’s French Overture in the Klavierübung).

The operatic French overture was frequently followed by a series of dance tunes before the curtain rose. It thus naturally became used as the prelude to a suite; and the Klavierübung French Overture of Bach is a case in point, the overture proper being the introduction to a suite of seven dances. For the same reason Bach’s four orchestral suites are called overtures; and, again, the prelude to the fourth partita in the Klavierübung is an overture.

Bach was able to use the French overture form for choruses, and even for the treatment of chorales. Thus the overture, properly so called, of his fourth orchestral suite became the first chorus of the church cantata Unser Mund sei voll Lachens; the choruses of the cantatas Preise Jerusalem den Herrn and Höchst erwünschtes Freudenfest are in overture form; and, in the first of the two cantatas entitled Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, Bach has ingeniously adapted the overture form to the treatment of a chorale.

With the rise of dramatic music and the sonata style, the French overture became unsuitable for opera; and Gluck (whose remarks on the function of overtures in the preface to Alceste are historic) based himself on Italian models, of loose texture, which admit of a sweeping and massively contrasted technique (see ). By the time of Mozart’s later works the overture in the sonata style had clearly differentiated itself from strictly symphonic music. It consists of a quick movement (with or without a slow introduction), in sonata form, loose in texture, without repeats, frequently without a development section, but sometimes substituting for it a melodious episode in slow time. Instances of this substitution are Mozart’s “symphony” in G (Köchel’s catalogue 318), which is an overture to an unknown opera, and his overtures to Die Entführung and to Lo Sposo deluso, in both of which cases the curtain rises at a point which throws a remarkable dramatic light upon the peculiar form. The overture to Figaro was at first intended to have a similar slow middle section, which, however, Mozart struck out as soon as he had begun it. In Beethoven’s hands the overture style and form increased its distinction from that of the symphony, but it no longer remained inferior to it; and the final version of the overture to Leonora (that known as No. 3) is the most gigantic single orchestral movement ever based on the sonata style.

Overtures to plays, such as Beethoven’s to Collin’s Coriolan, naturally tend to become detached from their surroundings; and hence arises the concert overture, second only to the symphony in importance as a purely orchestral art-form. Its derivation associates it almost inevitably with external poetic ideas. These, if sufficiently broad, need in no way militate against musical integrity of form; and Mendelssohn’s Hebrides overture is as perfect a masterpiece as can be found in any art. The same applies to Brahms’s Tragic Overture, one of his greatest orchestral works, for which a more explanatory title would be misleading as well as unnecessary. His Academic Festival Overture is a highly organized working out of German student songs.

In modern opera the overture, Vorspiel, Einleitung, Introduction, or whatever else it may be called, is generally nothing

more definite than that portion of the music which takes place before the curtain rises. Tannhaüser is the last case of high importance in which the overture (as originally written) is a really complete instrumental piece prefixed to an opera in tragic and continuous dramatic style. In lighter opera, where sectional forms are still possible, a separable overture is not out of place, though even Carmen is remarkable in the dramatic way in which its overture foreshadows the tragic end and leads directly to the rise of the curtain. Wagner’s Vorspiel to Lohengrin is a short self-contained movement founded on the music of the Grail. With all its wonderful instrumentation, romantic beauty and identity with subsequent music in the first and third acts, it does not represent a further departure from the formal classical overture than that shown fifty years earlier by Méhul’s interesting overtures to Ariodant and Uthal, in the latter of which a voice is several times heard on the stage before the rise of the curtain. The Vorspiel to Die Meistersinger, though very enjoyable by itself and needing only an additional tonic chord to bring it to an end, really loses incalculably in refinement by so ending in a concert room. In its proper position its otherwise disproportionate climax leads to the rise of the curtain and the engaging of the listener’s mind in a crowd of dramatic and spectacular sensations amply adequate to account for that long introductory instrumental crescendo. The Vorspiel to Tristan has been very beautifully finished for concert use by Wagner himself, and the considerable length and subtlety of the added page shows how little calculated for independent existence the original Vorspiel was. Lastly, the Parsifal Vorspiel is a composition which, though finished for concert use by Wagner in a few extra bars, asserts itself with the utmost lucidity and force as a prelude to some vast design. The orchestral preludes to the four dramas of the Ring owe their whole meaning to their being mere preparations for the rise of the curtain; and these works can no more be said to have overtures than Verdi’s Falstaff and Strauss’s Salome, in which the curtain rises at the first note of the music.

 OVERYSEL, or, a province of Holland, bounded S. and S.W. by Gelderland, N.W. by the Zuider Zee, N. by Friesland and Drente, and E. by the Prussian provinces of Hanover and Westphalia respectively; area 1291 sq. m.; pop. (1904) 359,443. It includes the island of Schokland in the Zuider Zee. Like Drente on the north and Gelderland on the south, Overysel consists of a sandy flat relieved by hillocks, and is covered with waste stretches of heath and patches of wood and high fen. Along the shores of the Zuider Zee, however, west of the Zwolle-Leeuwarden railway, the country is low-lying and covered for the most part with fertile pasture lands. Cattle-rearing and butter and cheese making are consequently the chief occupations, while on the coast many of the people are engaged in making mats and besoms. The river system of the province is determined by two main ridges of hills. The first of these extends from the southern border at Markelo to the Lemeler hill (262 ft.) near the confluence of the Vecht and Regge, and forms the watershed between the Regge and the Salland streams (Sala, whence Salis, Isala, Ysel), which unite at Zwolle to form the Zwarte Water. The other ridge of hills extends through the south-eastern division of the province called Twente, from Enschede to Ootmarsum, and divides the basin of the Almelosche. Aa from the Dinkel and its streams. The river Vecht crosses the province from E. to W. and joins the Zwarte Water, which communicates with the Zuider Zee by the Zwolsche Diep and with the Ysel by the Willemsvaart. Everywhere along the streams is a strip of fertile grass-land, from which agriculture and cattle-rearing have gradually spread over the sand-grounds. A large proportion of the sand-grounds, however, is waste. Forest culture is practised on parts of them, especially in the east, and pigs are largely bred. The deposits of the Salland and the Dinkel streams are found to contain iron ore, which is extracted and forms an article of export to Germany. Peat-digging and fen reclamation have been carried on from an early period, and the area of high fen which formerly covered the portion of the province to the north of the Vecht in the neighbourhood