CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



and a half of its foundation. We owe to it in 

 great measure our modern methods of handling 

 instruments, and even when Italy itself, having 

 fallen to the level of Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, 

 could no longer pretend to produce composers, the 

 Italian method of singing, the method first taught 

 by the Neapolitan school, remained, as it remains 

 still, unrivalled. 



The French operatic school was founded by an 

 Italian, Jean Baptiste Lulli (1633-1687), the story of 

 whose life has perhaps been told oftener, and in 

 more detail than that of any other musician of the 

 same age. We need not repeat it here. Lulli was 

 unquestionably a genius ; he went to Paris in a 

 very humble capacity as a boy of twelve (he can 

 scarcely have had any musical education previ- 

 ously), gained notice by his excellent violin-play- 

 ing, was allowed to devote himself to music (but 

 to teaching and conducting, not to learning), and 

 became a most prolific composer, apparently self- 

 taught. He was an excellent violinist, a capital 

 comic actor and dancer, an unequalled theatrical 

 manager, a thoroughly unscrupulous but most 

 successful man. He seems to have endeav- 

 oured to make his music dramatic, to give it 

 really some close connection with the words and 

 the situation, and to avoid the continual senseless 

 repetition of words and phrases, so common in the 

 pure Italian style since his time. These objects 

 were certainly praiseworthy enough. He is also 

 credited with having introduced the practice of 

 putting a ballet in the middle of the opera, a 

 vicious custom, which has since held its own in 

 French opera, with as much reason on its side as 

 the dance which Nicholas Nickleby had to insert 

 in his play. Lulli's music held its own in France 

 for a hundred years, until at length it was displaced 

 by a man who may be called the Wagner of his 

 century, Christopher Gluck, of whom we shall 

 have to speak farther on. 



INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 



Among the earlier musicians separate instru- 

 mental music was unknown ; it may without much 

 error be said to have been brought into existence 

 by the opera, which was necessarily the cause of 

 increased attention being given to the construction 

 of, and performance on, orchestral instruments. 

 To Italy, to whom we owe the opera, we owe also 

 instrumental music. Strangely enough, while the 

 operas of the I7th century have passed out of 

 existence, and the instruments have been so im- 

 proved as to be different in all but name from 

 those of that time, some of the earliest com- 

 positions for instruments have retained their popu- 

 larity, and are perhaps as familiar to the English 

 musician of to-day as they were to the Italian of 

 two centuries ago. These are the violin sonatas* 

 of Archangelo Corelli (1653-1713), compositions 

 so fresh and melodious, and so modern in shape, 

 that it is difficult to realise their age, and still more 

 difficult to do adequate justice to the greatness 

 of their composer's genius, who, surrounded by 

 pedantry and conservatism, and hedged in by 

 innumerable rules, could yet free himself of them 

 all, and strike out suddenly in a new path, as 



* Written for two violins and violoncello, with accompaniment 

 for the organ. A sonata is a piece of music written for one or 

 more instruments, and consisting of several parts, called ' move- 

 ments.' The majority of sonatas are for pianoforte solo. 

 712 



readily as if it were one with which he had been 

 familiar all his life. The sonatas (frequently 

 called trios) which we have mentioned were pub- 

 lished in Rome in 1683, and yet are still listened 

 to with the same genuine pleasure as that with 

 which we listen to one of Haydn's quartettes. 



In connection with Monteverde's Orfeo we have 

 mentioned many of the instruments used during 

 this period. Viols existed in immense variety; 

 we cannot identify all the modifications which 

 are mentioned in the scores of the early instru- 

 mental music, but we know that they were much 

 feebler than our instruments of the same class, 

 although often played in the same way. The wind 

 and reed instruments were, on the other hand, 

 harder and less manageable than ours. The 

 pianoforte, in which the strings are struck by 

 hammers, had not been invented ; the clavichord, 

 virginal, spinet, and afterwards the harpsichord, 

 were the instruments which preceded it. In them 

 the strings were twitched by some kind of plec- 

 trum. The organ, as we have already mentioned, 

 was a tolerably perfect instrument even before the 

 commencement of the Third Period. 



THE ORATORIO. 



We have mentioned the name of Giacomo 

 Carissimi in connection with the growth of opera, 

 to which his music indirectly contributed. He is, 

 however, chiefly to be held in remembrance as the 

 father of modern oratorio. The expression and 

 emotion which his contemporaries were striving to 

 infuse into dramatic music, he developed in con- 

 nection with the sacred cantata. His compositions 

 were almost confined to this class of music ; he 

 wrote but few masses, and no operas. His ora- 

 torio of Jephtha was revived by Mr Hullah a good 

 many years ago, and performed at St Martin's 

 Hall ; it has never been published, but it is de- 

 scribed as being very remarkable for the beauty 

 and force of its recitatives, a musical form in which 

 Carissimi seems to have had few equals, even 

 among his greater successors. The dates of Caris- 

 simi's birth and death are uncertain, but his life 

 must have been nearly coextensive with the I7th 

 century. 



The object of this article being rather to trace 

 the development of music than the lives of indi- 

 vidual composers, we can do no more than mention 

 a few of the best known names in this period, 

 before looking at the work of the great masters 

 with whom it ended, Bach and Handel. In 

 Italy (besides the names mentioned already), 

 were Stradella, Metastasio, Porpora, Geminiani, 

 Pergolesi, and many others ; in Germany, Keiser, 

 and Graun, and Hasse ; in France, Rameau ; and 

 in England, Jenkins and Lawes, Lock, Humphreys, 

 Blow, Croft, Arne and Boyce, and Henry Purcell. 



BACH. 



In John Sebastian Bach the music of the 

 German Protestant Church reached its highest 

 point. He was born at Eisenach in 1685 (the 

 year also of Handel's birth), one of the fifth gener- 

 ation of a musical family, and lived a quiet, un- 

 eventful life, never leaving his native country. 

 His compositions are very numerous : they em- 

 brace five entire series of cantatas for all the 

 Sundays and holidays in the year, numerous 

 motets, at least two sets of ' Passions-musik,' the 





