Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/112

Rh 100 MUSIC [HISTOKY. neither dramas nor music, but this cannot exempt them from dramatic and musical censure. The very remarkable commotion he has made in the world of art might be com pared with that excited by the rivalry between Buononcini and Handel in London and that between Piccini and Gluck in Paris, but that these were in each instance the conten tion between one musician and another, whereas in the present case it is the opposition of one writer to all the musicians in the world, save the few members of the pro fession who, believing in the man, his doctrine, and his power to apply it, undertake propagandism as a duty, and endeavour to make proselytes to their faith. Wagner s recent death has left judgment free as to his theoretical and practical merit ; a few years will determine the perma nence or evanescence of his productions, and an article on his name in the present work may be written far enough from now to chronicle the result. Oratorio. Within the present century the oratorio has undergone large modification, somewhat in structure and more in style. Haydn s Creation is planned on the model of the several settings of music to the recitation of the Divine Passion which were frequent from the date of the Reformation till the 18th century was one-third advanced. Its text con sists of a Bible narrative interspersed with reflective verses which have no pretension to be defined as poetry. The work was said to have been suggested to the composer by his hearing some of Handel s oratorios during his two visits to England, but it differs in character as widely from these as was natural in coming from a musician whose genius, however great, was wholly unlike that of his pre decessor. The Seasons, by the same master, has a secular subject which is secularly treated, and in this, equally with the other, the manner of the author, as evinced in his instrumental music, is ever apparent. Beethoven s Mount of Olives is in dramatic form, though changed into narra tive in several English versions. The portions of this that have most interest are those which are the least sacred for instance, the chorus of the soldiers who come to seek and then to arrest the Accused of Iscariot. The Deluge, by Schneider, is also a drama by a modern hand. It and the Moses of Marx have sent only the reputation of their esteem into England. Spohr s three oratorios -especially Die letzten Dinge, known here as the Last Judgment bear so strongly the impress of his speciality in the constant prevalence of the chromatic element throughout them, and in the rich but always transparent orchestration, and they were so largely imitated by contemporaries, that they may be said to have opened an epoch which, however, was early closed. Far more important in themselves and in their influence are the two works of the class by Mendelssohn, with which may be associated the Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise), written to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the invention of printing. In these the dramatic, the narrative, and the didactic elements all appear, the first so conspicuously and so grandly in consonance with the spirit of the time that it specially distinguishes the works as they do the master who, through them, holds a rank in England as a sacred writer all but parallel to that of Handel. The influence of Mendelssohn s oratorios is obvious in the works of other musicians, and public approval attests it to be an influence for good. Compositions styled oratorios have been produced by Liszt and Gounod which seem to aim largely at novelty, but a future generation must judge whether they have struck the mark. In England, Crotch s Palestine emulated Handelian precedent, and stood for long alone as a native production. Many years later Sir Stern- dale Bennett s Woman of Samaria won wider sympathy. The living writers who have courted and gained fame in England by longer or shorter oratorios are J. F. Barnett, Sir J. Benedict, Sir M. Costa, and Sir A. Sullivan. With some pleasure and some regret must be mentioned Tonic the active exertions of John Curwen (1816-1880), a Non- Sol-fa, conformist minister, with a large staff of adherents, in the promulgation of a professedly new musical system under the title of &quot; Tonic Sol-fa &quot; : pleasure, because of the wide extension of musical study resulting from his indefatigable zeal ; regret, because perhaps a larger and certainly a better result would have rewarded like energy in the propagation of musical knowledge in the shape that has grown into maturity through eight centuries, and possesses the whole world s acceptance. He who is honoured as the founder of the system professed to have derived it from Miss Glover of Norwich, whose method he but modified and expanded ; but hers was based upon the ancient gamut already described, omitting the constant recital of the alphabetical name of each note, together with the arbitrary syllable that indicates its key relationship, and omitting too the recital of two or more of these syllables when the same note is common to as many keys, as &quot; C, Fa, Ut,&quot; meaning that the note C is the subdominant of G and the tonic of C. The notes are represented by the initials of the seven syllables still used in Italy and France as the fixed names of the seven notes ; but in &quot; Tonic Sol-fa &quot; the seven letters refer to key relationship and not to pitch. Further, the system has a wholly different terminology from that in universal use. It would be uncandid not to state that many men of greatest eminence outside the musical profession and many musicians support the system ; here may only its bare principles be stated and not its merits discussed. A somewhat analogous action has, at the same time, been busy with regard to musical notation in France. Emile Cheve (1804), a surgeon in the French marine service, having married Nanine, the sister of Aime Paris, learned from her the views of her brother (who had adopted them from Galin) as to another new system of musical notation, and he, Cheve, in 1844 applied himself to its dissemination. The system bears the name of &quot; Galin- Paris-Cheve,&quot; and, like the other, refers the notes to key relationship and not to pitch, but employs the first seven numerals as their symbols. This invention, if so it may be called, was strongly discouraged by the most esteemed musicians of Paris, but its advocates persevere in its pro pagation. As a summary of all the precept and example that has Day s been cited in this survey of the centuries let the writer fui| ! la - state his convictions on musical theory, which are, that the J! e &quot; Treatise on Harmony (1845) by Alfred Day (1810-1849) InTdL- comprehends whatever is practically available, and recon- tinction ciles the previously apparent discrepancies between prin- of styles, ciple and use. The laws of the primitive diatonic style had never been repealed ; the discovery by Noble and Pigot of generated harmonics had been held as belonging to science and not pertaining to art ; composers had employed what may be classed as natural in distinction from arbitrary combinations, but each only on the prompting of his own genius and only with the justification of their effect. The author now cited Avas the first to classify the ancient, strict, uniform, diatonic, contrapuntal style, apart from the modern, free, exceptive, chromatic, massive style, to sepa rate the principles that guide the one from the laws that control the other, and to place a subject that is at once sublime and beautiful in a light of unfailing clearness. He showed that one or another beautiful chord and the progressions thence were not capricious violations of rule, permissible to genius though unallowable to ordinary writers ; he showed that such things were acceptable not only because great masters had written them, and so small musicians might repeat the trespass ; he proved this by demonstrating the self-perfection of the ancient canon and the also perfect modern system that rests on a basis totally