The Rise of Virtuosity

The Rise of Virtuosity, from The Age of Bach and Handel

J. A. Fuller-Maitland

 

[Editor’s note: links offer recorded music examples.]

 

No feature of the musical history of the period under consideration is more remarkable, and few more important in influence and effect, than the prominence gradually gained by executive skill, manifested in vocal or instrumental music. Looking away from the giant forms of Bach and Handel, the world of their contemporaries seems to have been given up to the admiration of virtuosity pure and simple, that is to say, of technical ability acquired and practised for its own sake, not for the sake of interpreting the nobler thoughts of the great composers. Many causes combined to bring about this state of things; in the first place, solo performances were a comparatively new invention in music of an artistic or cultivated kind, and as a matter of course they gave a splendid opportunity for the growth of that spirit of emulation which is inherent in humanity; in the second place, the virtual non-existence of concerts, using the word in its modern sense of an entertainment open to all who can afford to pay for admission, had the result of limiting the enjoyment of the more elaborate kinds of musical performances to the nobility, and at the same time of giving enormous importance to the preferences of individual amateurs, most of whom were but half-educated in musical matters. Until about the middle of the seventeenth century there are few, if any, traces of that cleavage between the professional and the amateur musicians which in later days has crippled the influence of both classes alike. The performance of madrigals, of concerted instrumental music, such as the early sonate da camera, are difficult to associate with the payment of a fee by those who listened; the opera in its early stages of development was distinctly an amateur invention; and it was by ecclesiastical rather than by mercantile restrictions that the singers of church music were separated from the rest of the world. The most prominent instances of professional standing were the members of the various bands maintained at every court in Europe, and by many noblemen; and in the case of such salaried officials as these, it would have been out of the question to regard them as being paid at so much for every performance. It was when the standard of execution was so high that it could only be attained by devoting the greater part of the performer’s life to practice, that the custom became necessary of receiving payment for the exhibition of the skill thus painfully acquired; and as no amateurs could hope to vie with the executants who sacrificed everything to this side of their art, the only way in which the amateur could make himself felt was by setting up for a judge on the merits of rival performers. The delight of this occupation was greatly increased when the mere fact of having been present at some performance by a renowned virtuoso was enough to stamp the amateur as a member of the aristocracy, and we need not be surprised at the amount of interest excited by the frequent contests of skill between pairs of eminent musicians, or by the fact that Burney, both in his ‘tours,’ and in his history itself, devotes far more space to the details of the execution of the music he hears than to the character or the merits of the music itself. It is most fortunate for us that Burney and the men of his time were so much more busied about the performance of music than about the compositions themselves, for in the great majority of cases the works they heard are accessible in the present day; it is only the manner of their execution that has passed out of reach.

While fully recognizing that the virtuoso element in music is very far from being the highest, it is necessary that we should bear in mind the artistic result of this wave of admiration for the powers of the great executants. Without it, it is unlikely that the concerto would have reached exactly the stage of development at which it exerted, as we saw in the last chapter, so strong an influence upon the sonata form of the future; without it, such arie di bravura as ‘Rejoice!’ from The Messiah, ‘Let the bright Seraphim,’ from Samson, or ‘Sweet bird,’ from L’Allegro, could hardly have been written, since the skill they require in the singer would not have been gained; and without it, Bach’s ‘Chaconne’ for violin alone, the harpsichord sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, and the ‘Trillo del Diavolo’ of Tartini must have been widely different from what they are. Again, the rage for technical skill had an important result upon the next generation, since it brought about a wider recognition of the legitimate resources of all the instruments at the composer’s disposal, and thus had a good deal to do with the settlement of the orchestra into a regular and acknowledged entity.

It would be difficult if not impossible to trace a continuous history of virtuosity, and it would be untrue to represent it as steadily advancing from the unaffected simplicity of the earlier days through successive stages of regular development to a condition where it monopolized public attention to the exclusion of all else. It is rather like an epidemic bursting out for no apparent cause in different countries and periods, and dying down again without any obvious reason. Its earliest appearance would seem to have been in the virginal music of the time of Queen Elizabeth; such a collection as the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book contains abundant instances of pure virtuosity, in variations, &c., of which the technical difficulty is the only attraction; but in the better specimens of the kind, it is curious to notice how the passages of purely technical interest are subordinated to those for which musical value may be claimed, so that after the utmost speed possible upon the instruments of the time has been attained, it is usual to find a concluding variation of massive structure, depending entirely upon harmonic sonority for its effect. But after the date of the completion of this collection, about 1625, there occurs, for many years, no further attempt to write difficult harpsichord music for the sake of its difficulty; and the suites of Purcell are as wholly free from the typical virtuoso style of writing as are his sonatas of three and four parts, or that for violin solo, recently published. In the same way, although J. J. Walther (b. 1650) had apparently learnt in Italy the art which found expression in many  compositions for the violin, of small musical interest but considerable technical difficulty, going up to the sixth position, and abounding in arpeggios and difficult double-stoppings, &c., there is no trace of the virtuoso influence upon Corelli, who was his near contemporary. With him, as with Purcell, it may have been a conscious abandonment of difficulty for its own sake, in favour of the higher beauties of purely musical ideas; but on the other hand, it may have been partly from other considerations. From various stories current about Corelli, it would appear that he lacked the temperament of the typical virtuoso altogether; in his own compositions he never goes beyond the third position, and their solid style is enough to show that passages of mere display must have been repugnant to his nature. It is difficult to imagine what can have been the passage in Handel’s overture to II Trionfo del Tempo which so disconcerted Corelli in Rome; but the unusual height of some of the passages agrees oddly with the fact of Corelli’s own limitations in this direction as exhibited in his own works. Another story represents Corelli as being compelled to endure a reproof from Alessandro Scarlatti caused by a persistent mistake he made in a work of that master’s; and the humiliation of this, coupled with the extreme favour bestowed in Rome upon a younger violinist named Valentini, is said to have shortened Corelli’s life. But, whatever his position in regard to technical display, it is certain that as a violinist he ‘laid a firm foundation for all future development of technique and of a pure style of playing,’ and that ‘by rigidly excluding everything that appeared to him contrary to the nature of the instrument, he not only hindered a threatened development in the wrong direction, but also gave to this branch of art a sound and solid basis, which his successors could and did build upon successfully.’ Corelli’s solo parts do not differ in any essential feature from those he gives to the orchestral violins. In Vivaldi’s concertos we find a more complete independence, and a distinct feeling for solo effects as we understand them. This composer (c. 1675-1743) has a special importance in consequence of the fact that Bach arranged a number of the violin concertos for harpsichord; and his influence was no doubt strong on Bach’s treatment of the solo violin. Francesco Maria Veracini (c. 1685-1750) is credited with the manifestation of a strong individuality, both in his playing and compositions; his passionate nature exposed him to the charge of eccentricity, and he has strong claims on our esteem, not only for the sake of his compositions, but on account of the influence he had on Tartini, a far greater man. We get a clearer idea of Veracini’s impulsive temperament from the various stories concerning his oddities that are given in Burney’s history than from his own compositions, which, as Burney says, were ‘too wild and flighty for the taste of the English at that time.’ His boldness in modulation seems to have been the chief drawback to the popularity of his works in the England of his day. Although such a passage as the coda of the first movement of his sonata in E minor is easily understood in the present day, and the sequence of harmonies is accepted almost as a commonplace by every ear accustomed to music, it must have sounded very eccentric at the time it was written:–

 

Were it not for the testimony of the dates, it would not be difficult to persuade oneself that Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1 770) was a leader of the modern romantic movement in music, whose passionate ideas, by his own choice, were thrown into the concise forms of an older day. The circumstances of his life were as romantic as his musical ideas, and matched them with a rare exactness. Born at Pirano in Istria, he was intended for the priesthood, and his musical studies were only taken up in earnest after he had devoted himself successively to the science of law and the art of fencing, and had moreover contracted a secret marriage with a niece of the Archbishop of Padua. The consequences of this last exploit drove him to seek the seclusion of the monastery at Assisi, where for two years he studied music, being taught composition by the organist, Czernohorsky, called ‘il Padre Boemo,’ whose nationality may perhaps support the theory of those who love to trace all musical influence to eastern Europe as its source. It is hardly astonishing to find Burney referring to the uncertain temper of Tartini’s wife; for no sooner was her offended uncle pacified, and the couple re-united, than Tartini, happening to hear Veracini at Venice, determined to prosecute his violin studies to more purpose than before (he had hitherto been, apparently, his own teacher), and dispatching her to his relations at Pirano, he betook himself to Ancona, where, about 1714, he lit upon the discovery of the ‘third’ or combination-tone, which results from the association of two notes in perfect intonation. From 1731 onwards he lived in Padua, with the exception of a three years’ stay at Prague as chamber-musician to Count Kinsky. His position at Padua was that of solo violinist and conductor of the orchestra at the church of San Antonio. His salary was 400 ducats a year, and his services were only required on great festivals; yet, says Burney, who went to Padua only a few months after Tartini’s death, ‘so strong was his zeal for the service of his patron saint, that he seldom let a week pass without regaling him to the utmost power of his palsied nerves.’ That a change came over his character about the time of his residence at Assisi, changing his impulsive nature to one in which modesty and patience were the most remarkable traits; and that in after years he altered his style to some extent (‘from extreme difficult to graceful and expressive,’ says Burney, who gives the date 1744 as that of the change in his playing), seems admitted on all hands. It seems to have been at Ancona that he acquired the wonderful mastery over the bow, in regard to which it may be mentioned that he used a longer and more elastic bow than had hitherto been in favour. A glance at the table in Grove’s Dictionary, Art. Bow, will show that Tartini’s bow approaches more nearly to the perfect Tourte proportions than to those of Corelli’s time. It is logical, seeing how powerful an agent the bow is in regulating the quality of tone, to connect these improvements with the emotional character of Tartini’s own compositions, even if many of his followers failed to realize as he had done the possibilities thus opened out. His command of double stops, and the ease with which he accomplished shakes and double shakes, is brought home in the present day to every hearer of his famous ‘Trillo del Diavolo’; and his ‘Arte dell’ Arco’ gives the student as good an idea as possible of the point to which his technique had come. His ‘divine adagio’ may have been the main feature of his later playing; but the fact that his Op. 1, which apparently was published about 1734, contains the passionate sonata in G minor, makes it hard to accept Burners date for the change in his style. This work, more than any other of its date outside the compositions of Bach, contains in its three short movements a wealth, eloquence, and sincerity of expression that have hardly been surpassed in modern times; and not the least surprising part of it is that the stiff conventional forms in which it is cast seem not to hamper the directness or intensity of its emotional power in the least. Besides the ‘Trillo,’ issued after his death, forty-eight sonatas for violin and bass were published, as well as twelve concertos and twelve sonatas for two violins and bass. There is some confusion in the opus numbers, as ‘Op. 1’ appears on the title-page of the first six concertos, as well as on that of the first twelve sonatas. An enormous number of sonatas, &c., are reported to have existed, Gerber giving 200 as the total of unpublished violin concertos, while Fétis’ estimate of forty-eight unpublished sonatas coincides so exactly with the number known to have been published in his lifetime that it may be disregarded.

In yet another way Tartini was a romanticist long before the time when that word was first used. He would connect his music with suggestions from the outside, such as sonnets of Petrarch, and would write the words of favourite poems underneath his violin-parts; with the evident susceptibility to impressions from many quarters, we need not be surprised to find the melancholy of Assisi reflected in some of his movements, or the emotional import of some of Petrarch’s sonnets revealed in others. The story of his dreaming that the devil played him an exquisitely beautiful violin sonata, of which the ‘Trillo del Diavolo’ was but the faint remembrance, is of a piece with his romantic temperament, and we need not care whether the vision was actually seen in a dream or not. In spite of the formidable difficulties of many of Tartini’s works, he was scarcely more of the typical virtuoso than Corelli. He must have been looked upon as something of a reactionary, for all inducements to leave his beloved church for the brilliant career of a public performer in England were in vain.

One of the first of the typical Italian violin virtuosi of the period was Tartini’s senior by twelve years. Francesco Geminiani (1680-1761) studied with Corelli, and is said to have been Alessandro Scarlatti’s pupil for composition. England near the beginning of the eighteenth century had become an ideal soil for the fostering of virtuosity; and Veracini and Geminiani, who arrived here in the same year, Veracini preceding Geminiani by a few months only, divided the favour of the amateurs who were privileged to hear them in the private houses where their talents were chiefly exhibited. Like his rival, Geminiani was an eccentric, but in spite of his free employment of the shift and his ease in double-stopping, his chief period of success was after the departure of Veracini to Dresden in 1720. He had his revenge, for when Veracini returned in 1735 to London, his success was materially impaired by Geminiani’s established fame.

Many of the symptoms of the ordinary virtuoso are to be traced in Geminiani’s history; he refused to play at a court concert in London unless Handel accompanied him, and a foolish passion for dealing in pictures, of which he had no special knowledge, landed him in money difficulties; his pupil, Lord Essex, had to free him from gaol, and afterwards procured him, it is said, the appointment of the leader of the Viceroy’s band in Dublin. Horace Walpole is said to have objected to the appointment on the ground of Geminiani’s religion; and the place was given to Dubourg, his pupil. Geminiani was in Paris from 1748 till 1755, and his death took place while on a visit to Dubourg in Dublin. Geminiani’s compositions, which consist of thirty-six solo sonatas for violin, and twenty-four concertos (concerti grossi), besides arrangements of works of his own and of Corelli for different combinations of instruments, and a book of harpsichord lessons, have considerable boldness of design, but cannot compare either with Corelli’s simple, austere beauty, or with Tartini’s passionate emotion. The work by which Geminiani’s name deserves to live is his famous instruction book on The Art of Playing on the Violin. The question of the date of this work is a difficult one (1), but, in the shape in which it is acknowledged as Geminiani’s, we shall not be far wrong in attributing it to the middle of the century. Herr David, in Grove’s Dictionary, says of its contents: ‘lt has the great merit of handing down to posterity the principles of the art of playing the violin, as they were finally established by Corelli. The rules which Geminiani gives for holding the violin and bow, the management of the left hand and the right arm, are the same as are recognized in our days. In one particular point he even appears to have been in advance of his time, since he recommends the holding of the violin on the left-hand side of the tail-piece, a practice now universally accepted and indispensable for a higher development of the technique but, strange as it seems, not adopted either by Leopold Mozart or by the masters of the German school until the beginning of the present century.’ The other literary efforts of Geminiani, including treatises on ‘Memory,’ ‘Good Taste,’ ‘The Guitar,’ and ‘Accompaniment,’ are of less value than his instruction book for his own instrument.

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(1) The date given in Grove’s Dictionary, 1740, is not impossibly a printer’s error for 1748, the date given by Burney; in Mr. E. Heron-Allen’s De Fidiculis Bibliographia, part v., section 2, it is noted that the contents of this, and of the companion tutors, Compleat Instructions for the Violin, &c., by ‘Geminiania,’ are virtually identical with those of some books published anonymously considerably before this date, viz.,  ‘The Art of Playing on the Violin with a New Scale showing how to stop every Note, Flat or Sharp, exactly in Tune, and where the shifts of the Hand should be made,’ a treatise which was included in Prelleur’s Modern Musik-Master, dated 1731. The book in its original form is dated conjecturally by Mr. Heron-Allen 1720, but the names and addresses of its two publishers give evidence, according to Mr. Frank Kidson’s valuable British Music-Publishers, that it cannot have been issued before 1734. This work, however it first appeared, is indisputably the first violin tutor ever published, preceding Leopold Mozart’s Violin-Schule by at least twenty-two years; and the similarity of contents leaves little doubt that it is the first form of the treatise afterwards acknowledged by Geminiani.

 

With Pietro Locatelli (1693-1764) Italian violin virtuosity reached almost its extreme point, and he seems, in some particulars, to have been only exceeded by Paganini in astonishing feats of skill not always very well applied. He employed the device called ‘scordatura’ or mistuning, by which, for certain special effects, an unusual method of tuning was employed; an example of his excursions into regions of then unheard-of height is given in Grove’s Dictionary, from a work called Caprices énigmatiques; and in his compositions there is but little musical importance, although some of his more moderate sonatas have been played with effect in recent times. He was born at Bergamo and died at Amsterdam, where he had settled and established concerts for some years before his death.

Giovanni Battista Somis, the more famous of two brother violinists (c. 1676-1763), is of greater importance as a link between his master, Corelli, and his pupils, Giardini and Pugnani, than on his own account; for the latter was the master of Viotti, and thus carried down the tradition of Italian violin-playing to modern times; a third pupil, Jean Marie Léclair (1697-1764) may be said to have revolutionized violin-playing in France. Before him the best were J.-B. Senaillé (1687-1730) whose compositions have a distinct charm of their own; and J. B. Loeillet (d. 1728), a native of Belgium who settled in England.

Felice de Giardini (1716-1796) seems to have been led by popular applause into the worst habits of exaggeration, and of interpolating ornaments into the violin accompaniments of the songs in operas, &c. At Naples, during an opera of Jommelli’s, the composer came into the orchestra and sat down close to Giardini. The young virtuoso took the opportunity of showing off his powers, and added a brilliant cadenza into the accompaniment of one song, at the end of which Jommelli gave him a sound box on the ear. Handel’s famous rebuke to Dubourg, the violinist, on some occasion of the same kind, was in the words, ‘Welcome home, Mr. Dubourg’; and the two stories show that the fashion of exaggerated ornament was not in much favour with the best composers.

Tartini’s favourite pupil, Pietro Nardini (1722-1793) was solo violinist at the court at Stuttgart from 1753 to 1767, and after that devoted himself to the care of his master until Tartini’s death; from him he inherited the tenderness of expression which, rather than any great technical skill, is associated with his name. Another pupil of Tartini, Johann Gottlieb Graun (c. 1698-1771), the brother of the better known composer, was also a pupil of J. G. Pisendel of Dresden (1687-1755), who had learnt his art from Torelli and Vivaldi, and who paid a good deal of attention to Bach’s newly-invented instrument, the viola pomposa. The other most prominent name among German violinists of the time is that of Franz Benda (1709-1786) the founder of the head of a large family of musical brothers and nephews of Bohemian origin. His compositions, to judge from the few specimens that are accessible, have decided musical value, and almost his only touch of virtuosity is in a particularly lavish use of grace notes, a characteristic which will be discussed later.

In the technique of the keyboard, mere speed of finger seems to have counted comparatively little, except in England, where William Babell (c. 1690-1723) makes a link between the virginal composers of the past and the fashioners of operatic potpourris of a later day. He was a good harpsichordist and violinist, and was organist of All Hallows, Bread Street. He found his opportunity in the popularity of Handel’s operas, and set the ‘favourite airs’ with all kinds of meaningless ornamentation for the harpsichord. Not speed alone, but accurate judgement in distant intervals, and a perfect command of the various difficulties that arise from crossing the hands, are the chief requirements in Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas, discussed in the last chapter. In the composer’s later days, it is said that he became so fat that he could no longer execute the passages which required crossing of the hands, but the continuance of the device throughout his works makes us accept the statement with reserve.

To Couperin the most important part of virtuosity was the ornamentation of his themes in accordance with the stereotyped abbreviations with which the music was so liberally supplied; by far the greater part of his excellent instruction book, L’Art de toucher le Clavecin, 1717, is taken up with the explanation of the proper interpretation of these ornaments, such as the ‘pincé’ or mordent, the ‘tremblement’ or shake, and the ‘port-de-voix,’ a combination of an appoggiatura with a mordent. Mr. Dannreuther, in his treatise on Musical Ornamentation, vol. i. p. 100, points out that ‘while Couperin is treating of graces, he also treats of matters which would, now-a-days, come under the head of phrasing, or style, or expression’; but the ornaments are actually connected in the closest way with the expressive side of the music of the time.

The grace notes, which are scattered with so lavish a hand over much of the music of the eighteenth century, no doubt had their origin in the compositions for the keyboard instruments, since none of these, with the exception of the clavichord with its attenuated tone, was capable of varying the power of the different notes, or of emphasizing special points in the musical phrases. It was almost certainly in order to provide some means of suggesting an accent that the important note of a phrase was so often supplied with a little shake or turn, and the actual ornaments invented were probably intended as imitations of different effects that were characteristic of other sound-producing agencies. Thus, the appoggiatura, and the various means by which an imitation of a portamento was attempted, were suggested, no doubt, by the art of the singer; and the arpeggio, as its name implies, was an effect at first peculiar to the harp. The ‘pralltriller’ and ‘mordent’ seem to have been the special property of the keyboard, for they appear in the music for the virginals almost as frequently as in that for the harpsichord, at a date when there is little or no trace of them elsewhere. Be this as it may, the execution of ornaments, whether written out, abbreviated, or merely understood and handed down by tradition, formed a most important branch of musical education in the eighteenth century; and it seems to have been very generally held that in them lay what we should now call the ‘soul’ of music. A strange passage may be quoted from Couperin’s book, the gist of which is sufficiently clear, although some of the terms are employed in an unusual sense:–

‘Je trouve que nous confondons la Mesure avec ce qu’on nomme Cadence, ou Mouvement. Mesure, définit la quantité, et L’égalité des tems : et Cadence, est proprement l’esprit, et l’âme qu’il y faut joindre. Les Sonades des Italiens ne sont gueres susceptibles de cette Cadence. Mais, tous nos airs de violons, nos Pièces de Clavecin, de violes, &c. désignent, et semblent vouloir exprimer quelque sentiment. Ainsi, n’ayant point imaginés de signes, ou caractères pour communiquer nos idées particulières, nous tâchons d’y remédier en marquant au commencement de nos pièces par quelques mots, comme, Tendrement, Vivement, &c., à-peu-près, ce que nous voudrions faire entendre. Je souhaite que quelqu’un se donne la peine de nous traduire, pour l’utilité des étrangers : Et puisse leur procurer les moyens de juger de l’excèlence de notre Musique instrumentale.’

The passing allusion to the Italian musicians, both here and in the passage which precedes this extract, where Couperin complacently tells his readers that his countrymen play the music of foreigners far better than the foreigners play French music, are not to be taken as matters of fact; but they are interesting, as bearing upon the opposition of the styles that were characteristic of the two countries, of which opposition so much was made, although the difference between the French and the Italian styles is not one that can be said to be at all obvious to students in the present day. As time went on, it is clear that the habit of ‘gracing’ a melody, as the term was, increased; Burney (1) implies that, in 1732 or thereabouts, it was an innovation in Germany; in his account of Quantz’s violin-playing, he says ‘His music is simple and natural; his taste is that of forty years ago’ (Burney is writing in 1772); ‘but though this may have been an excellent period for composition, yet I cannot entirely subscribe to the opinion of those who think musicians have discovered no refinements worth adopting since that time. Without giving into tricks and caprice, and even allowing composition to have arrived at its acme of perfection forty years ago, yet a simple melody may surely be embellished by the modern manner of taking appoggiaturas, of preparing and returning shakes, of gradually enforcing and diminishing whole passes, as well as single notes, and, above all, by the variety of expression arising from the superiority in the use of the bow, which the violin players of this age possess over those of any other period since its invention.’ But this branch of virtuosity was by no means so modern as Burney thought, although it reached a pitch of extravagance in his time; the air in Handel’s suite in D minor is adorned with such a profusion of grace notes that its outline can hardly be perceived until it is presented in a simpler form in the variations which follow; and although this is an exception among his works for harpsichord, yet it is enough to show how early the taste for riotous ornamentation began to be formed. As a rule, Handel stands further than Bach from this kind of virtuosity in instrumental music; there are instances scattered up and down the works of the latter which prove him to have been quite cognizant of the fashion for ornamentation, although with him, even in the cases where it occurs, it is never allowed to overpower the groundwork of the composition. The air of the thirty ‘Goldberg’ variations is at first presented in a very ornate form, and this whole work is one of the very few of Bach’s in which the skill of a virtuoso seems to have been thought of. In the dialogue between the two keyboards of the harpsichord, which is kept up with so much effect in many of the non-canonic variations of that set, are some passages which appeal mainly and primarily to technical skill, and in the last two variations before the final ‘Quodlibet’ the figures almost seem to anticipate Liszt. In the particular point of ornamentation we may surely trace the desire to expose the absurdity of a fashionable craze in that section of the ‘Capriccio on the departure of a Brother’ in which the traveller’s friends are represented as using every means to dissuade him from the perilous journey he is about to undertake. Here the multitude of mordents and turns are no less masterly in their grotesque picturing of the dangers of the way and the wheedling accents of the timid friends, than are the chromatic scales in a later movement, of their voluble weeping. This work is among the few which can be dated with absolute accuracy; Spitta (2) shows that 1704 must have been the year of its composition, nine years before the appearance of Couperin’s first book of ‘Ordres’ was published. There are in Bach, too, a small number of pieces in which the influence of Domenico Scarlatti’s peculiar kind of technical speciality is apparent. The gigue at the end of the first partita, and the exquisite little Fantasia in C minor have quite a Scarlatti air in the way the crossing of the hands is managed. And, in the Chaconne for violin alone, the master must have had in his mind some ideal virtuoso, whose skill would be equal to the technical difficulties, while his musical powers would enable him to decipher its contrapuntal intricacies and to present them to an audience. That this ideal was ever realized before the days of Joachim, it is impossible to believe.

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(1) Present State of Music in Germany, ii. p. 156.

(2) Life of Bach (Eng. transl.), i. 235.

 

Bach was brought into contact with virtuosity in one of its most characteristic manifestations, in the celebrated Marchand incident. Jean Louis Marchand (1669-1732), the private organist to the King of France, seems to have been a brilliant performer both on the harpsichord and organ; falling out of the French king’s favour he was banished, and while he was on a visit to the court of Dresden, the King of Saxony, Friedrich August I, arranged for a competition to take place between him and Bach. According to one account, they had one improvised contest, Bach repeating all the variations that Marchand had just played, and adding twelve new ones of his own; but it seems more probable that the celebrated occasion in 1717 when Marchand failed to keep the appointment would have been the only regular contest. That Marchand had heard Bach play, and dreaded the encounter, is certain; his compositions, however, are better than the story would imply, and Spitta goes so far as to place them on a level with Couperin’s.

Another celebrated meeting of great virtuosi had taken place in Rome some years before this, when Cardinal Ottoboni arranged a similar contest between Handel and Domenico Scarlatti in 1709. The two were declared equal on the harpsichord, but Handel, as might be expected, was pronounced the better organist. The famous combat à outrance between Faustina and Cuzzoni must be related in a subsequent chapter; but all these contests and the many others of which accounts have been given by contemporary historians, go to show how much importance attached to the execution of difficult music in the mind of the average aristocratic amateur. It is quite a relief to find that, at the date of Burney’s visit to Berlin, a protest had been uttered against the excess of ornamentation by no less powerful a person than the autocratic King of Prussia, who would allow no operas to be performed there except those of Graun, Agricola, and Hasse. ‘And in the opera house, as in the field, his majesty is such a rigid disciplinarian, that if a mistake is made in a single movement or evolution, he immediately marks, and rebukes the offender; and if any of his Italian troops dare to deviate from strict discipline, by adding, altering, or diminishing a single passage in the parts they have to perform, an order is sent, de par le Roi, for them to adhere strictly to the notes written by the composer, at their peril. This, when compositions are good, and a singer is licentious, may be an excellent method ; but certainly shuts out all taste and refinement.’ That taste and refinement depended upon the alterations of the composer’s directions was a theory which the great majority of amateurs held, as well as Dr. Burney ; and the technical skill of the vocalists of the time was almost entirely directed to such alterations, whether made spontaneously or prepared beforehand with the aid of the singing master.

Neither in singing nor in playing, does the art of gradating tone, or as we call it, of light and shade, seem to have held an important place. Even the terms forte and piano are quite the exception in Bach, though they do occur, as in the Italian concerto, and a few other places; yet Burney notes that at the end of the oratorio, Maria Vergine addolorata, by Francesco Antonio Pistocchi (1659-0. 1717), ‘all the degrees of the diminution of sound are used; as piano, più piano, pianissimo, equivalent to the diminuendo, calando, and smorzando, of the present times.’

He notices also the curious fact that in Berlin the art of musical shading was even less fully practised than elsewhere. ‘The musicians of many parts of Europe,’ he says (1), ‘have discovered and adopted certain refinements, in the manner of executing even the old music, which are not yet received in the Berlin school, where pianos and fortes are but little attended to, and where each performer seems trying to surpass his neighbour in nothing so much as loudness …. If I may depend on my own sensations, I should imagine that the musical performances of this country want contrast; and there seems to be not only too many notes in them, but those notes are expressed with too little attention to the degree of force that the instruments, for which they are made, are capable of …. When a piece is executed with such unremitting fury, as I have sometimes heard, it ceases to be music; and instead of a part, the whole deserves no other appellation than that of noise.’

No doubt, as musical ‘shading’ was in such a very rudimentary condition, individuality in the performer could only be shown in alterations of the text; it is clear that it must have been so regarded, from the various passages quoted from Burney and elsewhere. But nowhere was the practice of making these alterations carried to more absurd lengths than among the opera-singers, with whom the cadenzas were not the soul of music, as was the case with Couperin’s ‘Cadence,’ but the breath of their own life.

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(1) Present State of Music in Germany, ii. 202.

 

The extraordinary outburst of popularity with which foreign singers were received in England, the detailed accounts of their qualifications given by Burney and others, make it clear that at the time when Italian opera was first introduced under Handel, the singers were supreme in the mind of the ordinary amateur of the day. The details of the education of many of the most famous singers have come down to us, as in the case of no other class of musicians, and we are able to gauge pretty accurately the relative importance of the different branches of their training. The voices of the adult males were not in great favour, and even the parts of the most virile heroes in operas were given to artificial sopranos, who had been prepared for their profession by a brutal operation at the outset of their training, whereby the higher range of the voice was preserved in perpetuity. A peculiarly soft and full quality of tone seems to have been the general characteristic of these evirati, who, as a class, disappeared from the operatic stage with Velluti, who retired about 1829, and died as late as 1861, but the barbarous practice remained in vogue in connexion with the Papal Choir until far more recent days; the sopranos of the Roman churches in the present day are men who sing in falsetto, but possess the usual male voice below. Among the greatest teachers of singing in Italy, where alone, in the time of Handel, the art was methodically taught, were Pistocchi and Porpora, the first of whom seems to have aimed at a comparatively pure style, since his famous pupil, Bernacchi (c. 1690-1756) only adopted the practice of excessive ornamentation after he had sung in Handel’s Rinaldo in London in 1717; of the vocal teaching of Niccolò Porpora (1686-1767) we hear such stories as that of his keeping Caffarelli for five years to one page of exercises, and then dismissing him with the assurance that he was the greatest singer in Europe; and the various examples of roulades, etc., from his operas given in Grove’s Dictionary (vol. iii. p. 505, where an interesting criticism on the Caffarelli story may be read) show the direction in which excellence was aimed at.

It was from the teaching of Bernacchi that Porpora’s other distinguished pupil, Farinelli, learnt to perfect himself in the art of vocal ornamentation. He had learnt from Porpora some wonderful feats, such as holding and swelling a note of extraordinary length, purity, and volume, so as to be able to surpass a certain famous trumpeter for whom Porpora had written a special obbligato part for the occasion (1). But yet he

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(1) Grove, Dictionary of Music and Musicians, i. 504.

 

had to acknowledge himself conquered when he was pitted, after the fashion of the time, against Bernacchi, who repeated every roulade of Farinelli’s in such perfection that the latter entreated his conqueror to give him lessons. Farinelli, whose career as a performer belongs to a later chapter, had evidently the art of inventing new and more or less interesting embellishments rather than meaningless ornaments, for he was a man of high culture, good taste, and rare generosity and power. That Nicolini, who was considerably older than Farinelli, had ‘a few antiquated tricks in his cadences’ is recorded in a book which gives us the best ideas of the vocal art of its time. In 1723, Pier Francesco Tosi published his Opinioni de’ Contori antichi e moderni, o sieno osservazioni sopra il Canto figurato at Bologna; and in the following year it was translated into English by J. E. Galliard, as Observations on the Florid Song; or, Sentiments of Ancient and Modern Singers. A good epitome of the contents is given in Dannreuther’s treatise on Ornamentation, already quoted; a special interest attached to the English notes on the text of Tosi, since they show that the taste for excessive ornamentation had already begun to decline a little. One of Tosi’s special aims is to explain the intervals at which the appoggiatura can be taken; and incidentally he gives information of considerable practical value as to the intervals in just intonation, before the system of equal temperament was adopted elsewhere than on keyed instruments. He shows his contempt for the composers who think it necessary to mark the appoggiaturas, but it is not to be supposed that he is referring to Bach, the most conspicuous instance of the practice of marking them; and Galliard, in one of his notes, points out that the reference is to the modern Italian writers. Tosi says:–

‘If the Scholar be well instructed in this, the Appoggiaturas will become so familiar to him by continual Practice, that by the Time he is come out of his first Lessones, he will laugh at those Composers that mark them, with a Design either to be thought Modern, or to shew that they understand the Art of Singing better than the Singers. If they have this Superiority over them, why do they not write down even the Graces, which are more difficult, and more essential than the Appoggiaturas? But if they mark them, that they may acquire the glorious Name of a Virtuoso alla Moda, or a Composer in the new Stile, they ought at least to know, that the Addition of one Note costs little trouble, and less Study. Poor Italy! pray tell me; do not the Singers now-a-days know where the Appoggiaturas are to be made, unless they are pointed at with a Finger? In my Time their own knowledge shewed it them. Eternal shame to him who first introduced these foreign Puerilities into our Nation! ….’

On this passage Galliard remarks:– ‘In all the Modern Italian Compositions the Appoggiaturas are mark’d supposing the Singers to be ignorant where to place them. The French use them for their lessons on the Harpsichord, &c., but seldom for the Voice.’

The directions concerning the all-important subject of the shake are mainly of the same kind as those which refer to the appoggiatura, that is, it is unlawful to use the semitone in certain parts of the scale, &c. There are several amusing touches which give the reader a certain insight into the practice of the men of Tosi’s and Galliard’s time in regard to the performance both of vocal and instrumental music.

‘The Defects of the Shake are many. The long holding out Shake triumph’d formerly, and very improperly, as now the Divisions do; but when the Art grew refined, it was left to the Trumpets, or to those Singers that waited for the Eruption of an E Viva! or Bravo! from the Populace. That Shake which is too often heard, be it ever so fine, cannot please. That which is beat with an uneven Motion disgusts; that like the quivering of a goat makes one laugh; and that in the Throat is the worst; That which is produced by a Tone and its third is disagreeable; the Slow is tiresome; and that which is out of Tune is hideous …’ Galliard adds ‘The using so often Beats, Shakes, and Prepares is owing to Lessons on the Lute, Harpsichord, and other Instruments whose Sounds discontinue, and therefore have Need of this Help.’

The ‘Divisions’ mentioned above are the groups of rapid semiquavers, such as abound in Handel’s ‘Rejoice’; the ‘Beat’ is a kind of mordent, and the ‘Prepare’ a kind of appoggiatura. In his chapter on ‘Airs,’ ch. vii, we are let into the recognized manner of performing the conventional Da Capo song:

‘Among the Things worthy of consideration, the first to be taken Notice of, is the Manner in which all Airs divided into three parts are to be sung. In the first Part they require nothing but the simplest Ornaments, of a good Taste and few, that the Composition may remain simple, plain, and pure; in the second, they except that to this Purity some artful Graces be added, by which the judicious may hear, that the Ability of the Singer is greater; and, in repeating the Air, he that does not vary it for the better, is no great Master.

‘Let a Student, therefore, accustom himself to repeat them always differently, for, if I mistake not, one that abounds in Invention, though a moderate Singer, deserves much more esteem, than a better who is barren of it; for this last pleases the connoisseurs but for once, whereas the other, if he does not surprise by the Rareness of his Productions, will at least gratify your Attention with Variety.

‘Without varying the Airs the knowledge of the Singers could never be discovered; but from the Nature and Quality of the Variations, it will be easily discerned in two of the greatest Singers which is the best.’

The way in which the opinion of the ‘judicious’ or the ‘connoisseur’ is mentioned shows the attitude of the virtuoso in brief; the point of view of a conscientious interpreter, anxious only to set forth the ideas of one greater than himself, would have been completely foreign to all but a very few people in the eighteenth century. The only consideration is of course what will please the hearers and enhance the singer’s fame; and almost the only word against the excess of ornamentation gets its support from the likelihood of tiring the audience, not from the danger of misrepresenting the composer. So, in the chapter on Cadences:–

‘Every Air has (at least) three Cadences, that are all three final. Generally speaking, the Study of the Singers of the present Times consists in terminating the Cadence of the first Part with an overflowing of Passages and Divisions at Pleasure, and the Orchestre waits; in that of the second the Dose is encreased, and the Orchestre grows tired; but on the last Cadence, the Throat is set a going, like a Weathercock in a Whirlwind, and the Orchestre yawns.’

Such deterrents as were urged by Tosi or Galliard, and Burney’s rather half-hearted condemnation of excessive ornament, do not seem to have had much influence in stopping the admiration of the ‘connoisseurs’ for marvellous feats of virtuosity; but as time went on, the influence of the operatic reforms of Gluck, and other causes, brought about a better state of things. There is an interesting link between the worst degradation of violin virtuosity and the dawn of what is sometimes called the ‘Classical’ era, in Antonio Lolli, an empty-headed violin player, who, born at Bergamo in 1730, lived to bungle sadly over a quartet of Haydn in London, and died in 1802. His skill in all the virtuoso’s usual repertory of double-stopping, harmonics, etc., seems to have reached a point beyond which no progress in that direction was possible.

 

Source: The Oxford History of Music, Vol. IV. The Age of Bach & Handel, by J. A. Fuller-Maitland. Oxford at The Clarendon Press, 1902.

Recording link list (by composer):

Johann Sebastian Bach – Chaconne, Partita No. 2 BWV 1004 | Hilary Hahn

Alexandre Tharaud plays Couperin: Les barricades mystérieuses

Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762) – Concerti Grossi VII-XII Op.5, after Corelli (Andrew Manze)

Regula Mühlemann: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion – G. F. Handel (The Messiah)

Handel: Let the Bright Seraphim (Samson) | Rowan Pierce, David Blackadder & Academy of Ancient Music

Jean–Marie Leclair: Violin Concertos | Opus 7 | c. 1737

Locatelli: L’arte del Violino (Violin Concertos Op. 3)

Domenico Scarlatti – Sonatas Ivo Pogorelić

Giovanni Battista Somis – Violin Sonatas, Op.I

Giuseppe Tartini: Devil’s Trill Sonata – Ray Chen and Amsterdam Sinfonietta – Live Concert HD

Francesco Maria Veracini – 12 Violin Sonatas Op.1 No.4

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