
|
|
CLASSICAL MUSIC
The great composers and their masterworks
by John Stanley
(Classical Music
Map)
Introduction
Classical
Music
The Middle Ages and the Renaissance
The Baroque Era
The Classical Era
The Romantic Era
The Romantic Legacy
The Modern Age
A
Brief
History of Jazz
|
"Music expresses that which cannot be put into
words and that which cannot remain silent."
Victor Hugo
|
Introduction
|

Vermeer
The Concert
|
Human beings have been inspired to make
music from the very earliest times. This most sophisticated of
arts is also the most fundamental. There is something in us
that responds to sound and to rhythm, and in producing our own
music we have taken our inspiration from nature, be it the
wind in the trees, the pounding of waves, or the calling of
birds. We have developed methods of imbuing sound with
meaning, combining notes, pitches, and rhythms to make melody,
and using music as an intricate means of expression on
infinitely varied levels.
It was late in history that music was
written down; until the Middle Ages it was passed down orally
from generation to generation. The voice was the most
primitive instrument, with songs - often wordless - being
employed in all cultures as far back as prehistoric times for
prayer and ritual, for celebration, exhortation, and lament.
The first written music was the plainchant of medieval monks,
who were also the first composers; their simple vocal lines
celebrated the glory of God. Basic pre-Christian instruments
such as reed pipes, bone flutes, and pottery drums were
refined through the ages, and during the Renaissance were
incorporated fully into sacred as well as secular music. The
role of the composer developed as Western society became ever
more complex, and music reflected the sometimes radical
changes of a constantly evolving culture.
With the lessening influence of both church
and royal court as artistic patrons in the nineteenth century,
composers were freed from the inevitable restrictions that
patronage imposed. Public concerts and publication became
important sources of income, a trend that continues today with
broadcast fees and recordings. Classical music has become in
some areas almost dauntingly experimental, but, paradoxically,
is now in many ways more accessible to a broader public than
ever before.
|
The Composer in Society
Music has been a vital part
of human society since time immemorial. In the West, what we
now call classical music evolved over centuries, although its
documentation did not begin until around the ninth century,
with the first systems of musical notation. Because the church
and court effectively dominated classical music until the
nineteenth century, the art and culture of these institutions
have left the clearest record. The composer's position in
society' has also evolved as our expectations of music have
changed and grown.
|

Vermeer
Lady Standing at a Virginal
|
The Medieval period
The first composers probably did not
consider themselves composers as we think of them today. They
composed as a way of glorifying God, often in the context of
monasteries, such as that at Cluny in the eleventh century.
These monasteries became the first great musical centres, and
one of their members, the Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, was
among the earliest recognized composers. Their form of
expression was plainchant (or plainsong) — a single, clear
line of vocal music - used in religious services and devised
primarily to convey the words and meaning of the sacred texts.
Outside the church, twelfth-century French
troubadours and their successors created a demand for secular
music that rivalled the sacred. With the Crusades came a
rediscovery of ancient Greek culture, knowledge, and
philosophy. At the same time, the first universities such as
those at Bologna, Paris, and Oxford came into existence.
Against this background church composers expanded their music
into an art of its own, with grammar and rules of construction
that did not depend on religious texts or functions. The new
musical techniques drew inspiration as well from the great new
cathedrals that were being built around Europe at the time,
especially Notre Dame in Paris, with its vast soaring vaults
that virtually demanded equally soaring, celebratory music.
In the early 1300s the composer and
churchman Philippe de Vitry dubbed the new music Ars Nova: New
Art. Pope John XXII, in his Edict Docta Sanctorum
(1324—5), described it as "a multitude of notes so confusing
that the seemly rise and decorous fall of the plainsong
melody, which should be the distinguishing feature of the
music, is entirely obscured." Negative reaction to modern
music is not unique to our own times; but in this case it
revealed papal recognition that the leading
composers had begun to consider themselves
not merely servants of the liturgy, but also artists.
The major composers continued to combine the
functions of churchman and musician (often as chapel or
cathedral singers) until the Renaissance and beyond, but they
also increasingly served in the courts of the ruling classes,
writing both sacred and secular music. The fourteenth-century
composer Guillaume de Machaut, though better known for his
complete musical setting of the Mass, actually wrote more
secular music, and held positions at the courts of Luxembourg
and Normandy as well as at Rheims Cathedral.
|
The Renaissance
With the Renaissance came a shift in music's
centre of gravity in Europe. The great new bastions of culture
were not the monasteries of northern France but rather the
city states of Italy. Music now depended on the patronage of
various dukes and princes. Within the aristocratic courts
themselves, music -like all the arts — was still focused
largely on religion, and the pope remained a leading patron.
The composer Josquin Desprez, although he was born and died in
the French-speaking Netherlands, found his varied career in
the service of the powerful Sforza family of Milan, Duke
Hercules of Ferrara, and the pope, among others.
Josquin's importance is reflected in how
much of his music was published from the beginning of the
sixteenth century by the Venetian pioneer of music printing,
Ottaviano dei Petrucci.
The advent of printing had an enormous
influence on the music world, enabbling the widespread
distribution of sheet music for the first time, and doubtless
contributing to Josquin's fame throughout western
Europe. It fed the first commercial demands for music coming
from an emerging middle class of traders and imerchants, who
gathered informally to sing madrigals or chansons (two forms
of secular song). The new
secular forms pervaded church music too;
composers increasingly turned to secular melodies for their
sacred compositions, the Masses, Passions, and Magnificats.
The Catholic Church could not significantly
influence the new musical developments of the secular world.
But in the Council of Trent (1545-63), convened principally in
reaction to the Protestant Reformation, it attempted to curb
what it regarded as dangerous elements in religious music,
still the principal focus of leading composers. The greatest
composer of the time, Palestrina, and his followers were
instructed to re-address themselves to a clear, unadorned
setting of the sacred texts, free from all emotional or
artistic extravagances. In fact they achieved a musical style
of great beauty and artistry, but one that still deferred to
the authority of the church.
|

Vermeer
Woman Playing a Lute near a Window
|
The Baroque period
With opera — perhaps the single most
important development of the Baroque period - secular music
finally acquired a form that was sufficiently popular,
expressive, and large-scale to tip the balance of patronage
away from the church to the princely courts, and eventually to
the general public. Monteverdi, whose La favola d'Orfeo
(1607) is credited as the first true opera, spent the first
half of his professional life at the courts of Cremona and
Mantua, and then from 1613 until his death as director of
music at St Mark's in Venice.
The circumstances of Orfeo dispel the
notion, however, that aristocratic (rather than church)
patronage meant artistic emancipation. Monteverdi was required
to alter his original version to provide a happy ending
suitable for the occasion of its performance - this was
probably part of an attempt to arrange a politically
advantageous marriage. The very first public opera house, the
Teatro San Cassiano in Venice, opened in 1637, and Monteverdi
wrote music for or some of the competing establishments that soon
appeared in its wake. The phenomenon reflected an increasing
appetite not only for opera but also for public access to
music in general.
The public concert also appeared in an early
form in the Baroque period. In private academies — learned
societies for the promotion of science and the arts, including
music — performances were given for the aristocracy as well as
well-bred outsiders. The Accademia Filarmonica in Verona
(founded in 1543) was probably the first to promote music, but
accademias spread rapidly in the seventeenth century until
every major town had one, and sometimes several. The Accademia
dei Filarmonici, founded in Bologna in 1666, counted Mozart
and Rossini among its later members.
The Venetian ospedali, or orphanages,
also fulfilled a function as embryonic music conservatoires.
Virtually all the major seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Italian composers spent time as either pupils or teachers at
these establishments, which also mounted frequent public
concerts. Vivaldi — who had trained as a priest - was for 36
years in charge of music at the Ospedalc della Pieta for
girls.
In England, the period of the Commonwealth,
after the Civil War, left music predominantly in the hands of
the middle classes, who mounted semi-private performances in
private houses, colleges, and taverns. Roger North,
Attorney-General and author ot Memoires of Musick
(1728), cites a 1664 performance at the Mitre Inn, London, as
the first public concert. In 1678, Thomas Mace converted a
room in the York Buildings near Charing Cross in London into a
specialist concert venue, and by 1700 a number of such
enterprises existed, not only in the capital. Concerts
proliferated in eighteenth-century England, promoted by music
societies in all the major towns. The success of Handel's 1733
concerts in Oxford prompted the foundation there of the
Holywell Music Room - supposedly the first venue built
specifically for the holding of concerts.
But it would be a long time before composers
could live on the income from such ventures. Unless they
appeared themselves as performers, they usually earned nothing
from performances of their music. Without performing rights
protection, and with the first (hopelessly inadequate)
copyright legislation appearing only in 1709, composers still
relied on salaries from their wealthy patrons, supplemented by
payments for works accepted by often exploitative publishers.
Handel fell out with his unscrupulous publisher, John Walsh,
over the publication of his opera Rinaldo in 1711; he
only returned to the company when Walsh's son took over ten
years later.
Church music flourished for a while in
Protestant England particularly with the anthems of Henry
Purcell, whose versatility also led him to compose music for
the theatre and the royal
court. Religious music enjoyed even more
importance in Lutheran north Germany, where both the clear,
simple congregational hymns or chorales, and more complex
cantatas and Passion settings could be found. Such options
attracted skilled musicians, including Johann Sebastian Bach,
to the larger, well-endowed churches. Bach was probably the
last of the great composers to devote most of his musical
efforts to the church. His employment at Leipzig required him
to write a cantata every week for the Sunday services; despite
the fact that he was effectively writing to order, his
devotional works represent some of his most sublime music.
|
The Classical era
After Bach, the more puritan Pietist
movement successfully replaced the semi-operatic cantata of
the Lutheran service with the sermon. Once again the focus of
religious music shifted south, this time to Catholic Austria,
where the Masses of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert
appeared.
But by now, for these composers and most
others, the growth of interest in orchestral music -
particularly with the development of the symphony - pushed
religious music to
the sideline. The cost of maintaining the
necessary large body of musicians initially concentrated such
music in Mannheim, Paris, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, and with
Haydn's long-time employers at Esterhaza. There it could be
underwritten by a handful of European ruling establishments
with sufficient inclination and resources.
By the 1790s, though, Haydn had won
recognition throughout western Europe. He also earned a
sizeable freelance income, notably from his final 12 London
symphonies for the public concerts organized by the London
impresario, J.P. Salomon, from 1791 to 1795. Haydn was shrewd
in his dealings with publishers, transferring to Breitkopf and
Hartel in Leipzig when he became dissatisfied with Artaria in
Vienna. Breitkopf s pioneering methods produced elegant sheet
music which, with larger print runs, could be sold cheaply and
distributed widely. Haydn may not have reaped die income from
royalties that he might under today's copyright laws, but
Breitkopf s publications brought him widespread tame, and with
it lucrative commissions for new works. By contrast, Mozart,
who for want of a permanent salaried court position also
attempted a freelance existence, tailed to get his works
published in his lifetime and suffered a stunning lack of
professional success.
|

Vermeer
The Guitar Player
|
The Romantic age
Beethoven ranks as the first great composer
to lead a successful freelance career, though it may have been
his unique personal characteristics that enabled him to do so.
He was the first musical figure to whom the Romantic image of
the tortured artist-hero, struggling in isolation with his
muse, applies with any accuracy. Such an existence initially
grew from his habit of wooing the aristocracy for private
commissions, rather than from the public cult following that
he only later attracted.
Beethoven's career nevertheless made the
notion of a professional composer, treed from all except
artistic considerations, seem a real possibility for the first
time, and this matched the spirit of the new subjective and
emotionally liberated Romantic age. In reality, with few
exceptions, composers fulfilled a variety of musical and
non-musical roles out of economic necessity, until the public
recognized their artistic stature — if it ever did.
Liszt and Paganini toured widely as virtuoso solo performers,
for whom there was a huge public demand; Berlioz and Schumann
were music critics; Bruckner was a cathedral organist; and
Borodin taught chemistry. Most, at some stage, played or
conducted their own and others' music.
Artistic greatness has never been a
guarantee of public recognition and still less of financial
success. Conversely,
some composers whose music proved of no
great lasting value were extremely popular in their day. But
for those who won enduring fame, a rapidly growing audience
awaited -the urban and middle-class populations that expanded
dramatically during the industrial revolution. As the great
age of amateur music-making dawned in the nineteenth century,
composers tor the first time earned a significant income from
publication of their work in the form of printed sheet music.
Classical music became recreation for the
middle classes, from informal concerts in private homes to
soirees such as those that took place in the well-heeled
Mendelssohn household. On the larger scale, music societies,
now freed from aristocratic control, sponsored public
orchestral concerts as a feature of city life throughout
Europe and the United States. Beethoven's Ninth symphony
was written partly in response to a L50 commission in 1822
from, the recently founded London Philharmonic Society (1813).
Similar societies appeared in Vienna (1812), Berlin (1826),
and Pans (c.1828), and in the latter half of the century many
of the world's great independent and municipal orchestras and
concert halls were established.
Orchestral concerts and opera performances
were often organized as part of musical festivals, such as on
the Lower Rhine from 1817 (under Mendelssohn's directorship
from 1833 to 1847), and from 1 876 at Bayreuth, where Wagner
built a festival theatre for annual performances of his own
operas. Bayreuth remains a major event in the opera calendar
today.
|

Vermeer
Young Woman Seated at the Virginals
|
The twentieth century and beyond
Many of the features of nineteenth-century
musical life continued into the twentieth century. The
orchestral concert and opera remained the principal focal
points. Societies and festivals proliferated; annual events at
such places as Darmstadt in Germany and Tanglewood in the
United States played a vital role, from the 1940s on, in music
education and in the commissioning and dissemination of new
works. But a number of technological developments in the
twentieth century transformed the musical world at least as
radically as the evolution of notation and printing in earlier
eras.
World War 1 accelerated the development of
broadcasting technology, and by 1920 a number of competing
radio stations, particularly in the United States, scheduled
daily programmes. The BBC was set up in Britain in 1922 as a
government monopoly and had sold 4.5 million licences for
"wireless" sets by 1 931, enabling it to provide generous
sponsorship for music. The BBC founded its own symphony
orchestra in 1 930 and in 1927 it took over the Henry Wood
Promenade Concerts (founded m 1895), which have grown to
become one of the world's major festivals, responsible for
several new commissions each year. In Germany, the state
Rundfunk companies support symphony orchestras in each of the
provinces and major cities. But the main impact of
broadcasting (even more so in the age of satellites) was that
classical music finally became available to a mass audience.
Through the purchase of recordings, this
audience was next able to select the music it wanted to hear.
Beginning with Edison's cylinder phonograph in 1877, recorded
sound developed through disc and magnetic tape in the late
1920s, Columbia Records' Long-Playing disc in 1948,
stereophonic reproduction in 1957, Philips' compact cassette
in 1963, digital recording and compact discs in the early
1980s, and more recently the growth of MP3 players and
downloading. Each innovation has represented an improvement in
convenience and the fidelity of the recording to the original
performance, which has boosted sales and demanded the
re-recording or re-mastering of anything on obsolete formats.
Broadcasts and recordings, requiring no
great musical skill for their appreciation, have now replaced
sheet music as the main distributors (and also sponsors) of
classical music, and have dramatically expanded the overall
market. Recent startling successes for artists such as Nigel
Kennedy, Pavarotti, composers such as Gorecki, and the British
radio station Classic FM have even rivalled those of the
normally far more lucrative pop industry. But many classical
composers agree that they are seeking a more elusive artistic
or spiritual end, for which financial reward is welcome but of
secondary importance.
Despite the growth of their potential
audience, as we step into the twenty-first century composers
may or may not stand a better chance of earning a living from
their music than their Romantic counterparts. Composers are
certainly acknowledged in society as creative artists, writing
from a subjective viewpoint and inspired by personal beliefs.
But they have found new and often better ways of supporting
themselves in related areas, particularly in the film industry
and education. Most modern composers have made contributions
in either or both of these areas, which therefore deserve some
credit as present-day patrons.
The needs of the film soundtrack have, with
a few notable exceptions, rarely coincided with those of great
classical music, and yet a host of composers, from Prokofiev,
through Britten and Copland, to Fart and Takemitsu, have
supplemented their income by writing film scores. Schoenberg,
Shostakovich, Messiaen, Cage, Carter, Beno, and others have
held teaching posts in universities and conservatoires, few of
which are more than a century old. In most cases these
composers probably enjoyed the opportunity to share their
knowledge with the next musical generation, since the life of
a composer can be an isolated one.
|
Conclusion
Classical music has diversified and
developed over the centuries in response to changes in
society; composers, like anyone else, have depended on society
to earn their living. In early times, they began with
practically the sole option of a monastic career, writing
music for the church, of an appropriately limited nature. Most
have striven more or less ever since for greater variety and
freedom of expression, restrained by the type and degree of
patronage that society granted them. Sources of patronage
today have become almost as varied as the music they support,
coming from governments (especially in the countries of the
former Soviet Bloc), universities, film, broadcasting and
recording companies, wealthy societies, foundations and
individuals, and the musical public. All these patrons impose
far fewer rules than the church and aristocracy of previous
ages, but according to the extent of their economic resources,
they still limit what proportion of a composer's output will
be performed. And yet, as is the case with all art forms,
there is no limiting the artistic drive itself, and composers
arc perhaps freer today than ever before.
|

Vermeer
Lady Seated at a Virginal
|
|
|