Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/258

 The conspicuous happenings in music before 1750 were these. In Germany the advance of church music, both for voice and for organ, came to a mighty culmination in Bach, the first of the triumvirate of superlative geniuses now universally recognized. The older type of the Italian opera was perfected by Alessandro Scarlatti and Handel, the one working in Italy itself, the other mostly in England. Connected with this was the establishment by Handel of the English oratorio as a concert-form. The means of instrumental music were greatly improved. As has already been seen, during the first third of the century the violin was perfected. The invention of the pianoforte belongs to the same period, though its special influence came much later. In the field of clavier music Domenico Scarlatti stands out as a pioneer. Chamber music continued to grow, with a fuller recognition of the individuality of particular instruments. Musical theory and science exhibited fresh activity in accordance with the analytic spirit of the age. The possibilities of harmonic expression were much increased by the growing acceptance of the doctrine of tuning in equal temperament. The half-century before 1750, then, shows itself as a new meeting-point between the old and the new, rising in a few of its achievements into comparison with the 16th century.

116. German Church Music at its Culmination.—While in Italy sacred music revolved about the Catholic liturgy and drew its materials from Gregorian sources, in Germany it was based upon the chorale, which was the product of a different race and faith. The chorale, unlike Plain-Song, was vitally connected with popular life and feeling, and its fund of material was constantly growing. Hence Protestant composition instinctively advanced on lines quite unknown in Italy. In the face of the rage for the opera it preserved its integrity, proceeding with two great styles which Italy presently forgot, namely, chorus music and organ music, both contrapuntal in structure. As has been noted, a multitude of writers in the 17th century labored earnestly and fruitfully upon the chorale-elaboration, the fugue, the motet and the immature liturgical oratorio. Church music in Germany was an intensely living art.

The great Bach led all this progress to a consummation so complete that no later period has been able to add much