Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/140

 '''64. Lassus and the South German Masters.'''—In the 16th century Bavaria was almost as potent a factor in the Empire as Austria. Religiously it was strongly Catholic in sympathy and in close communication with Italy. Some of its cities, like Nuremberg, Augsburg and Ulm, were musically known throughout Europe, not only as Meistersinger centres, but as headquarters of music-printing and instrument-making. About 1550 Munich rose to eminence under the culture-loving Dukes Albrecht and Wilhelm. Furthermore, here as elsewhere, the native power of German genius was beginning to compete on equal terms with that of the Netherlands. Even Protestant Württemberg and other states to the west, though less active, were not without worthy musicians.

In the early development of South German music are seen certain musical traits that are more or less distinctive of all German music. Perhaps most valuable among these is a remarkable sincerity and directness of sentiment, heartfelt and wholesome, combined with imaginative and creative energy. From the outset German composers realized the unequaled capacity of music for the real embodiment of human life on all its sides, and strove to fuse together in their works the intellectuality of the Netherland school with their own richness of experience and phantasy. In illustration, it is enough to adduce the German fondness for the song-type, from the homely folk-song with its artless earnestness up to the studied part-song. The religious bent of the German mind, also, is exceptional in its heartiness of conviction, its independence and its practicality. Hence, while the mere working out of forms suited to the mediæval ritual was elsewhere accomplished, the broader application of music to religious utterance was first conceived in the atmosphere of German life. Even in the 16th century, when music was acquiring its first self-consciousness as an art, the later German leadership in it can already be descried, asserting itself in both vocal and instrumental writing.

Historically, it was important that so gifted an artist as Orlandus Lassus was brought to spend the productive part of his career in Germany. His genius towered above that of all his contemporaries except Palestrina. Both were in full command of the resources of polyphonic construction, and both aspired to compositions of the grandest magnitude and quality. But the differences between them are noteworthy. Lassus exhibited the greater breadth and fertility, though he was not as essentially ideal in purely ritual music. His warmth of human feeling and readiness of sympathy made his impress upon progress wider and more genial. He was more truly a