COMMUNICATION DE M. J. A. FU LIER MAITLAND

A certain foolish statement has been commonly made, to the effect that among the nations of the earth, one has surpassed ail the rest in the art of music. Unfortunately, it has been very generally accepted as true in England, if not elsewhere. The nation referred to, as I need hardly say, is Germany, and it is difficult to persuade people that the statement is at least open to question.

The fact is that Germany did hold the sceptre of music for a longer period than any other country ; for from the birth of her first distinguished composer, Heinrich Schütz, down to the death of her last great master, Brahms, was a period of a little more than three hundred years. And by a singular coincidence , a similar period of three hundred years, or a little over, covers the whole of the pictorial art of Italy that is of the highest importance, that is from the birth of Cimabue to the death of Paolo Veronese.

More than three centuries before music began in Germany its lise, as a conscious artistic utterance, began both in France and England. Just as two small streams may rise close to each other, and run in opposite directions, to pour their waters into the sea at points hundreds of miles apart, so the beginning of our music lies very near the beginning of french music (I am speak-

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ing now of music logically constructed on recognized artistic principles, not of the songs of the french trouvères or english minstrels, whose antiquity is not to be gauged). Twenty-five years only separate the famous « rota », « Sumer is icumen in » from Adam de la Halle’s Jeu de Robin et Marion. The english piece, which is extraordinarily modem in style, far exceeding in this way anything written for many years afterwards, seems to anticipate the great glory of english music, choral singing, while Adam de la Halle 's Work is a prophecy of opéra, that distinguishing pride and prérogative of french music.

In these very early days, the musicians of our two countries exchanged the discoveries that were always being made in the direction of composition in parts, and the names of Walter Odington and Guillaume Machault are examples of the writers on theory who influenced one another.

Among the english composers of the Tudor period, are some names that hâve only lately become known, such as Lionel Power, Chilston, and king Henry VL, but the greatest of them was John Dunstable, of whom Prof. Wooldridge says :

He was indeed the first of english composers to create works of any considérable extent, controlled throughout by some cohérent scheme founded upon purely technical resources and apart from or beside the plainsong.

The famé of Dunstable was even greater on the continent than in England, as is shown by the fact that the larger part of his compositions are preserved in continental libraries. He was the chief agent through whom music as a conscious art was introduced into the low countries, and he may fairly be considered to hâve founded the great flemish school which had such far-reaching results. For one of the Flemings, Adrian Willaert, was in like manner the pioneer of music in Italy, and we know how powerful was the influence of the italian school of the sixteenth century upon varions countries and in varions forms of art. Heinrich Schütz

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learnt from it the contrapuntal skill which started the geiman school ; the italian madrigalists, with Palestrina at their head, produced types which, beautiful 2ls they are in themselves, were yet capable of a deeper meaning, a greater range of expression, and a compléter originality of theme.

These were found in England, where the Elizabethan masters carried the types to their highest point of development, under such men as William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, and many others, who were associated in that wonderful tribute to their Queen, called « The Triumph of Oriana ». The Italians were again a source of new musical discoveries, for after the great artistic révolution of 1600, when « monody » triumphed over the polyphonie style that had reached so high a point of perfection in its own way, the dramatic truth of expression sought after by Péri, Monte verde and their contemporaries, started the form of art which reached its climax in the Grand Opéra in France.

The english masters of the madrigal also excelled in composition for the keyed instrument of the time, and as M. Charles van den Borren has pointed out, the early english compositions for the « \irginal » or « épinette » had a powerful influence upon executive art. The English were, in fact, the leaders in this kind of music ; and it is interesting to see that, just as Dunstable’s Works are mostly to be found in continental libraries, so there are several collections of virginal pièces of english origin, one of them in the handwriting of one of the english composers. Benjamin Cosyns, in the Conservatoire.

Is it fanciful to suppose that, through these, the influence of the spécial art of keyboard music spread to Chambonnières and the Couperins ? The kind of passages that we meet with in Couperin « le grand » and the other french clavecinistes is anticipated in the english virginal pièces, and the characteristic omaments, or « agréments », that are so puzzling to modem players and listeners, are the same in both schools. That Bach owed something to the Works of Couperin is beyond question, so that here once more we

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hâve an illustration of the way in which musical innovations hâve passed from one country to another.

The great italian school of monodists were the spiritual ancestors of Lully, through whom France obtained her Grand Opéra, that branch of music in which she was for many years so highly distinguished. The dramatic instincts of the french nation created some of the greatest masterpieces of the stage, and the Grand Opéra, that began with Lully and Cambert, has had a noble career of almost uninterrupted success. Beside the great french masters of Opéra, foreigners, like Gluck, Rossini, Meyerbeer, profited by the vogue of Grand Opéra in France, and gave to the form their worthiest productions.

From Lully again, the art of writing for the stage spread to England, for Pelham Humfrey, or Humfreys, was his pupil for some years, and brought the fashion into England. There is an amusing account in the famous Diary of Samuel Pepys, of how, in 1667, « little Pelham Humfreys »

was lately returned from France, and is an absolute Monsieur, as full of form, and confidence, and vanity, and disparages everything, and everybody’s skUl but his own. The truth is, every body says he is very able, but to hear how he laughs at ail the King' s Musick here, as Blagrave and others, that they cannot keep time nor tune, nor understand anything and that Grébus (i. e. Grabu), the Frenchman, the King’s Master of the Musick, he understands nothing, nor can play on any instrument, and so cannot compose.

The allusions to the King’s Music give us another example of french influence, for Charles II imitated the court of Louis XIV so far as to start a band of twenty-four fiddlers in imitation of the « vingt-quatre violons du Roi », and this was the nucléus of the royal orchestra which still exists at the english Court.

Humfrey seems to hâve kept up his intercourse with France, for the score of his music to The Tempest has lately been discovered in the Bibliothèque du Conservatoire in Paris, and has been fuUy described by Pereyra in the Bulletin de la Société de Musico~

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logie. It is probable that this music was written, for a revival of Shakespeare’s play, in its more or less mangled form, as adapted by Davenant, in 1674, or seven years after the date of the extract I bave just read from Pepys’s Diary. The french fashions in music were still strong in England in 1691, when Henry Purcell wrote his famous music to Dryden’s King Arthur, for that work contains, in its celebrated « frost scene », an adaptation from an idea of Lully’s ; in Isis the french master makes his singers imitate shivering by a vocal trémolo, and Purcell does exactly the same thing, printing a wavy line above the notes, to produce this realistic effect.

Mil® Pereyra has well said, of this music of Humfreys :

Certes l’assimilation des procédés français est complète sans devenir pour cela une imitation servile, mais, malgré cette influence indéniable, le caractère de la musique anglaise de l’époque reparaît à chaque instant dans la déclamation, la courbe mélodique, la tonalité, la forme, les harmonies.

These words exactly define the sort of influence of one nation upon another which is altogether healthy, and it is true of english music down to the period of the Restoration, and indeed until the arrivai of Hândel in England. Handel’s popularity was at first due, of course, to political causes, and the establishment of the House of Hanover. He had the wisdom to profit by his study of the masters of choral writing, Purcell among the number, and there was every reason why his music should succeed. But it need not hâve killed our own native style in music as it did. For, from that time, our musicians began to write in the Hàndelian style, since no üther could hope for success ; their imitation was indeed an « imitation '•ervile », and, for more than a century, it was very little else. The habit of considering everything that came from Germany as excellent was formed then, and persisted in England down to quite recent times ; indeed it may almost be said to hâve lasted down to the commencement of the Great War.

After the Hàndelian fashion had become weaker, the influence of Mendelssohn was exerted in the same way as Hàndel’s had

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been ; our oratorios were little more than « imitations serviles » of Mendelssohn, and, in ail classes of our musical productions, the same thing was to be traced. In ail but one, I should say ; for, in our Church Music, there was always a line of ecclesiastical writers who kept to their own tradition and were only very slightly afîected by influences from without.

The art of writing for choirs was always congénital to the english composers, and from the date of the Reading « rota » down to the présent time, our nation has excelled in the production and performance of such things. In course of time, even our cathédral style, as it was called, was affected by the popularity of Charles Gounod, who very nearly succeeded in establishing the same kind of dominant influence that Hândel and Mendelssohn had enjoyed for so long. The extraordinary success of The Rédemption, that Work especially designed to impress and please english taste, is an illustration of our national habit of admiring to excess what cornes from the continent. It was something, indeed, that the influence this time was french, not german ; and the short career of our gifted Arthur Goring Thomas, with his two successful opéras, showed that influence in a far healthier way than was done in the great number of productions that were merely Gounod and water. With these exceptions, the greater part of the english music of the xix^h. century came to us from Germany ; and there could be no reciprocity of influence, for there was so little really original work produced in England during that time. As the century drew to a close, men of conspicuous power and real "freshness of utterance, such as Parry, Stanford, Elgar, and some others, created Works that were almost wholly independent of outside influence.

It was a good many years before it was realized, in England, how vast an artistic révolution had been accomplished by the quiet unobtrusive work of César Franck and his followers ; it is a révolution of equal importance with that of 1600 in Italy, and we hâve not seen the full results of it as yet. Even if its ripe fruit has been gathered in France (a point upon which I am not compe-

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tent to speak), the influence of this modem style is still strong upon the best of our young composers, such as Vaughan Williams, Balfour Gardiner, Holst, Goossens, and many others, who hâve been strongly influenced by the newer french masters, with Debussy and Ravel at their head.

It is possible that, in the future, we may hâve somet hingworthy of being given back to the French in return for this admirable influence, for the point I wish to bring out particularly is that there is a nationality in ail music, which prevents the imitation of foreign music from becoming «servile».... Music is the one universal language, as we ail know ; but yet there are idioms and phraseology in each country’s music, which remain individual and peculiar to that country, whatever the outside influences may be.

These idioms, this phraseology are to be found at their strongest in what we call « folk-song », and it is that to which we may look to keep the art of each country fresh and characteristic. From the trouvères of ancient France to the most modem french composition, the idiom is recognizably french ; from the chorales of Germany down to Richard Strauss, the kind of melody is german ; and so the style of music that is preferred in each country leaves an indelible impression upon its more elaborate music, and I think our english weakness in the face of the Hândelian invasion may be due to the want of interest in our own folk-songs. In my childhood it used to be said that the English, unlike the Scotch, the Irish and the Welsh, had no folk-songs ; but later research has proved the utter falsity of this assertion, and we may trust that the proved existence of a great wealth of english folk-song will do much to preserve nationality of style in our own country, just as the more lasting vogue of the folk-music in other countries has given their music character and individuality. Let us hope that, in the future, the musicians of various nations will influence each other in a wholesome way, each style remaining based on its own folk-song traditions ; but ail ready to leam the lessons that each nation may hâve to teach.