Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/491



sacred works, including 8 oratorios, masses, Requiems, the whole of the Psalms, innumerable motets, etc., mostly in an extremely learned a cappella style, many also with orchestral accompaniment. His specialty was devising fugues for various numbers of voices which could be rendered by separate choirs or combined polychorically (as 6 choirs of 4 voices that could be united into one of 24, 16 of 4 that could be made one of 64, etc.). To crown all, he completed (1852, Rome) a set of three oratorios, Potifar, Giuseppe and Giacobbe, which were first given separately and then combined into a composite rendering. The mental power evinced in all this was phenomenal and in all his works are passages of beauty and originality; but he spent himself in achieving ''tours de force''.

In addition to Generali (d. 1832), Paër (d. 1839), Mayr (d. 1845) and Morlacchi (d. 1841), who were prominent in sacred music as well as in opera (see sec. 175), the less important names may be given of Giuseppe Niccolini (d. 1842), the writer of about 60 operas (from 1793) in the Neapolitan vein, who from 1819 was choirmaster at Piacenza and thenceforth composed prolifically for the church; and Melchiore Balbi (d. 1879), from 1818 opera-director at Padua and from 1854 cathedral-choirmaster, who, after a few operas (1820-5), turned to church works and theoretical studies.

What may be called the Viennese type of Catholic music was a part of the 'classical' style as a whole of which Vienna was the original centre. It began with Haydn and Mozart, and was sustained by a host of lesser writers. It tended to differ from Italian types, as a rule, in having less mere sentimentality of melody and conventional theatric passion, and, on the side of scholarship, in adhering more to the German style of instrumental counterpoint than to the more archaic vocal counterpoint of the South. Its whole structure was usually much affected by the forms of instrumental concert music which all the great Viennese masters pushed into the foreground. Hence came a compactness and clarity, a certain nervous vigor, a general air of intellectuality that were less frequent in the common Italian work. The voices were perhaps treated less 'vocally,' but the instrumental side had much elegance and force. Of course, behind these external characteristics played the personality of the individual composer, varying widely in religious earnestness and profundity of spiritual imagination. Yet even strong individuality could not far outstep the limitations of the general style, which was more concerned with outward finish and brilliance than with depth of conviction. That the style, however, stands in somewhat close relation with the feeling of Catholic musicians is shown by the fact that it has continued in fairly general use ever since.