In this respect it may be said to have anticipated centuries to come. With every appreciation, sincere and even reverend, of the ancient music of the Church, it must be acknowledged that in spirit it was rigid, severe and formal. In other words, it appealed to the religious and intellectual sense rather than that of beauty. "Sumer is icumen in," on the contrary, seems to be the work of one who is able to leap over the centuries and speak in the tones of ages unborn, to be, in fact, a forerunner, a teacher of the ages then in the womb of Time.
It has, in perfection, three great qualities of the highest art – perfect skill in execution, commanding appeal to the purest emotions, and the power to leave the mind in a state of ecstatic rest or emotional contentment that makes one oblivious of the world while listening or watching. It was the outcome of an age of great religious enthusiasm. The monks had great dreams, and with them came the energy that inspired their brains to the utmost fulfilment.
The dream that led to the Crusades is the one that has most appealed to the imagination of the world; but it was only one of many.
"Sumer is icumen in" was written in a form that seems to have especially appealed to those early composers, for the canon13 was a constant medium of musical expression in mediæval times.
That the reader may the more readily understand, I quote here a specimen that is at once beautiful and familiar to all, and is known as the "Morning Hymn." Its simplicity will make it intelligible to the least technically instructed of musical readers: —
It will be observed that the last four notes in the treble clef indicate the repetition of the melody, which can continue indefinitely as here represented.
When we come to the consideration of instrumental music of olden times, we have little to guide us in the formation of any dear conception of its value or importance.
It is evident, however, that up to the time of Purcell or that immediately preceding it, the state of development was altogether inferior to that of vocal music.
For many centuries, except as regards its use in the Church, it occupied the humble position of handmaiden to the sister art of dancing.
Such of it as still exists is, practically, all written in dance measure. The dances were, it is true, in varied forms and rhythms. Some were stately and even serious in character, and offered the composer an opportunity to display his skill in a more thankful task than in furnishing accompaniments to the lighter and more frivolous ones.
Beautiful specimens of these are found in the compositions of William Byrd, John Ball, Orlando Gibbons, and others of the same period; they were mostly written for the virginals.
To those living in this age of stupendous achievement in the art, the comparative simplicity and ineffectiveness of instrumentation may well seem strange, seeing to what a point of splendour vocal music had attained.
The explanation is, I think, to be found in the defective nature of the instrument on which the composer had to rely to provide the sounds that his consciousness urged him to produce.
The violin had yet to be brought to perfection through the genius of a Stradivarius, and time was needed to show its full capacities in the hands of a Paganini.
The wind instruments, too, of the modern orchestra are of incomparable possibilities to those in use in the sixteenth century.
However, with the improvement and perfecting in their manufacture came a decided step towards a higher and independent form of art, and that this advance was not slowly taken advantage of is shown in the most extraordinary way in the works of Purcell.
Again, the very imperfect forms of musical notation must have always proved a stumbling-block to those early musicians. Even to-day, with its advanced methods, the act of putting on paper a modern orchestral composition is a work of enormous labour. The reader will understand this, when I say that music which takes but merely a few minutes in performance may easily take the composer as many hours to translate on to the pages of his score.
That this obstacle to musical progress was signally true as applied to organ music, I am convinced.
An organ is known to have been used in a French cathedral as early as the sixth century.
Primitive in its structure as it must have been, it probably had sufficient pipes to aid the congregation in the singing of the plain-song.
As time advanced, the monks, ever restless in their desire to add glory to the Church, made unceasing efforts to improve this great adjunct to her service, and by the fifteenth century an instrument had been constructed that was secure in the promise of untold possibilities, and had already become a verification of their early dreams.
The sixteenth century saw the organ come into general use, and in the early days of the seventeenth it arrived at maturity. The immense advance in the structural appliances in modern times are, it would seem, simply scientific application to ancient ideas.
One cannot help thinking how many must have been the inspired strains that rang through cathedral aisles in those early days as the hands of the monks wandered over the organ keys, the double incentives of religious fervour and love of art urging them on to higher achievement: a strange and yet fascinating figure of saint and artist.
By the time of Purcell instrumental music had advanced beyond the dance measure, and arrived at a state of independence. It could stand by itself without the aid of singer or dancer to sustain it. The process of emerging from the parasitic stage of clinging to these arts for sustenance was completed, and it had struck its roots so deep down that future ages might well, with wondering amazement at its magnificent growth, find it difficult to grasp the idea of its humble origin. The compositions left, in this kind, by Purcell, such as the fantasias, sonatas, incidental music to plays, harpsichord and organ music, indicate only, it is true, the first offshoots of the wonderful tree that was destined to so fascinate the world, but they gave birth to many noble branches that helped to invigorate the initial life in its struggles for existence, and were the most prolific of the tendrils that make for healthy growth.
In conjunction with his sacred music, these amply justify the claim made for Purcell that he was, from whatever point of view he may be judged, the greatest of all English composers.
CHAPTER III
EARLY ENGLISH COMPOSERS
Most of the pre-Reformation music destroyed – Tallis, the oldest English musician of which anything certain is known – Organist of Waltham Abbey at time of the suppression of the monasteries – Date of his birth unknown – Favourite of King Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth – State of difficulty and danger in intervening reigns – Chaotic state of things in the Church – Queen Elizabeth's policy – View of it taken by the present Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral – Greatness of Tallis as a composer – His death.
We are, unfortunately, not able to write of the earliest English composers, as much of their work (and with their work their very names) perished at the time of the destruction of the monasteries by King Henry VIII. in 1540, and what was left of it was destroyed by fire during the sacking of the cathedrals by the Puritans in the Commonwealth period. We are, then, obliged to begin with the early English composers, who date no further back than the sixteenth century and the Reformation.
In dealing with these and their music, it is impossible to think without emotion of the terrible sacrifice of treasures of art caused by the veritable holocaust made of them by the Puritans, for, of the work of centuries, there is, practically, little or no trace left. What we do know of the works of those composers who lived before and during the early Reformation period, shews that ecclesiastical music had arrived at a point of great splendour, and if Tallis may be considered as the descendant of a great school of composers, which he undoubtedly was, it can help us to realize the extent of our loss.
He was, fortunately, able to protect his own work, or, doubtless, that would have perished with the rest, since all of his early music (and some of the noblest specimens) was written for the monastery at Waltham Abbey.
Tallis