Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/253

 *fessional ambition, it altered the whole social bearing of the art, besides affecting its inner character. Music now competed for social regard in a new way, unsupported by the sentiments or institutions of religion, in a form essentially public and democratic. While it is true that the opera has always had grave possibilities of misuse in that it tempts to superficial methods and tends to degenerate into a vulgar diversion, yet from the first it has also afforded room and incentive to great artists to give voice to certain profound and intense emotions for which church music makes no demand. It has therefore never failed to be counted one of the consummate tonal art-forms.

The hectic cultivation of the opera brought into prominence one or two sides of music that were but imperfectly developed before. For example, the art of solo-singing received an altogether new impetus. It is true that fine vocalization was required in the Palestrina type of choral writing, but such music demanded nothing like the versatility and magnetic self-expression essential to stage-declamation and the delivery of elaborate arias. The 17th-century opera was necessarily sensational in method and aim, for vocalists quite as much as for librettists and stage-managers. Hence came an art of singing not heard before, or perhaps since. Every latent power of dexterity and compass, of sonority and delicacy, of color and chiaroscuro, was not only diligently cultivated, but enthusiastically applauded, until the display of virtuosity became the be-all and end-all of the musical drama. Though this excessive glorification of vocal technique at length made necessary a revolution in operatic methods, it yet served a purpose in revealing once for all the possibilities of the voice as an artistic instrument.

The opera also brought out the values of certain instrumental voices. Especially notable was the rapid advance of the violin family. The utterance of passionate feeling and the depiction of thrilling situations were impossible without appliances very different from the feeble and colorless instruments of the 16th century. Hence suddenly this new group of instruments came into view, with presently a new order of performers, and then a new style of writing suited to the new resources. In all this lay the promise of the modern orchestra, of modern chamber music, and of the modern use of the violin as the solo instrument par excellence.