-- Kin Hubbard, "Abe Martin's Sayings"
In 1833 Cherubini produced his last work for the stage, _Ali Baba_, adapted (with new and noisy features which excited Mendelssohn's astonished disgust) from a manuscript opera, _Koukourgi_, written forty years earlier. It is thus, perhaps, not a fair illustration of the vigour of his old age; but the requiem in D minor (for male voices), written in 1836, is one of his greatest works, and, though not actually his last composition, is a worthy close to the long career of an artist of high ideals who, while neither by birth nor temperament a Frenchman, must yet be counted with a still greater foreigner, Gluck, as the glory of French classical music. In this he has no parallel except his friend and contemporary, Méhul, to whom he dedicated _Médée_, and who dedicated to him the beautiful Ossianic one-act opera _Uthal_. The direct results of his teaching at the conservatoire were the steady, though not as yet unhealthy, decline of French opera into a lighter style, under the amiable and modest Boieldieu and the irresponsible and witty Auber; for, as we have seen, Cherubini was quite incapable of making his ideals intelligible by any means more personal than his music; and the crude grammatical rules which he mistook for the eternal principles of his own and of all music had not the smallest use as a safeguard against vulgarity and pretentiousness. Entry: CHERUBINI
The effect of the remaining key-relationships involves contrasts between major and minor mode; but it is otherwise far less defined, since the primary tonic chord does not occupy a cardinal position in the second key. These key-relationships are most important from a minor tonic, as the change from minor to major is more vivid than the reverse change. The smoothest changes are those to "relative" minor, "relative" major (C to A minor; C minor to E[flat]); and mediant minor and submediant major (C to E minor; C minor to A[flat]). The change from major tonic to supertonic minor is extremely natural on a small scale, i.e. within the compass of a single melody, as may be seen in countless openings of classical sonatas. But on a large scale the identity of primary dominant with secondary subdominant confuses the harmonic perspective, and accordingly in classical music the supertonic minor appears neither in the second subjects of first movements nor as the key for middle movements.[6] But since the key-relationships of a minor tonic are at once more obscure harmonically and more vivid in contrast, we find that the converse key-relationship of the flat 7th, though somewhat bold and archaic in effect on a small scale, has once or twice been given organic function on a large scale in classical movements of exceptionally fantastic character, of which the three great examples are the ghostly slow movement of Beethoven's _D major Trio, Op. 70_, No. 1, the scherzo of his _Ninth Symphony_, and the finale of Brahms's _D minor Violin Sonata_ (where, however, the C major theme soon passes permanently into the more orthodox dominant minor). Entry: V
The only remaining canonic device which figures in classical music is that known as _cancrizans_, in which the imitating part reproduces the leader backwards. It is of extreme rarity in serious music; and, though it sometimes happens by accident that a melody or figure of uniform rhythm will produce something equally natural when read backwards, there is only one example of its use that appeals to the ear as well as the eye. This is to be found in the finale of Beethoven's sonata, _op._ 106, where it is applied to a theme with such sharply contrasted rhythmic and melodic features that with long familiarity a listener would probably feel not only the wayward humour of the passage in itself, but also its connexion with the main theme. Nevertheless, the prominence given to the device in technical treatises, and the fact that this is the one illustration which hardly any of them cite, show too clearly the way in which music is treated not only as a dead language but as if it had never been alive. Entry: A
Converse harmonic relationships are, as we have seen, always weaker than their direct forms. And thus the relation of C major to B major or minor (as shown in the central episode of the slow movement just mentioned) is rare. Still more rare is the obtaining of indirect artificial relationships, of which the episode in the first movement just mentioned is an illustration in so far as it enhances the effect of the slow movement, but is inconclusive in so far as it is episodic. For with remote key-relationships everything depends upon whether they are used with what may be called cardinal function (like complementary keys) or not. Even a near key may occur in the course of wandering modulations without producing any effect of relationship at all, and this should always be borne in mind whenever we accumulate statistics from classical music. Entry: V
d. _Contrary and Unconnected Keys._--There remain only two pairs of keys that classical music has not brought into connexion, a circumstance which has co-operated with the utter vagueness of orthodox theories on the subject to confirm the conventionally progressive critic in his conviction that all modulations are alike. We have seen how the effect of modulation from major tonic to minor supertonic is, on a large scale, obscured by the identity of the primary dominant with the secondary subdominant, though the one chord is major and the other minor. Now when the supertonic becomes major this difference no longer obviates the confusion, and modulation from C major to D major, though extremely easy, is of so bewildering effect that it is used by classical composers only in moments of intensely dramatic surprise, as, for example, in the recapitulation of the first subject of Beethoven's _Eroica Symphony_, and the last variation (or coda) of the slow movement of his _Trio in B[flat], Op. 97._ And in both cases the balance is restored by the converse (and equally if not more contradictory) modulation between major tonic and major flat 7th, though in the slow movement of the _B[flat] Trio_ the latter is represented only by its dominant chord which is "enharmonically" resolved into quite another key. The frequent attempts made by easy-going innovators to treat these key-contrasts on another footing than that of paradox, dramatic surprise or hesitation, only show a deficient sense of tonality, which must also mean an inability to see the intensely powerful effect of the true use of such modulations in classical music, an effect which is entirely independent of any ability to formulate a theory to explain it.[7] There now remains only one pair of keys that have never been related, namely, those that (whether major or minor) are at the distance of a tritone 4th. In the first place they are unrelated because there is no means of putting any form of a tonic chord of F[sharp] into any form of the key of C, or vice versa; and in the second place because it is impossible to tell which of two precisely opposite keys the second key may be (e.g. we have no means of knowing that a direct modulation from C to F[sharp] is not from C to G[flat], which is exactly the same distance in the opposite direction). And this brings us to the only remaining subjects of importance in the science and art of harmony, namely, those of the tempered scale, enharmonic ambiguity and just intonation. Before proceeding we subjoin a table of all the key-relationships from major and minor tonics, representing the degrees by capital Roman figures when the second key is major and small figures when minor. Thus I represents tonic major, iv represents subdominant minor, and so on. A flat or a sharp after the figure indicates that the normal degree of the standard scale has been lowered or raised a semitone, even when in any particular pair of keys it would not be expressed by a flat or a sharp. Thus vi[flat] would, from the tonic of B[flat] major, express the position of the slow movement of Beethoven's _Sonata, Op. 106_, which is written in F[sharp] minor since G[flat] minor is beyond the practical limits of notation. Entry: V
LLOYD, EDWARD (1845- ), English tenor vocalist, was born in London on the 7th of March 1845, his father, Richard Lloyd, being vicar choralist at Westminster Abbey. From 1852 to 1860 he sang in the abbey choir, and was thoroughly trained in music, eventually becoming solo tenor at the Chapel Royal. He began singing at concerts in 1867, and in 1871 appeared at the Gloucester Musical Festival. His fine evenly-produced voice and pure style at once brought him into notice, and he gradually took the place of Sims Reeves as the leading English tenor of the day, his singing of classical music, and especially of Handel, being particularly admired. At the Handel Festivals after 1888 he was the principal tenor, and even in the vast auditorium at the Crystal Palace he triumphed over acoustic difficulties. In 1888, 1890 and 1892 he paid successful visits to the United States; but by degrees he appeared less frequently in public, and in 1900 he formally retired from the platform. Entry: LLOYD
Quite apart from its significance in the history of dramatic music, _Orpheus_ is a work which, by its intrinsic beauty, commands the highest admiration. Orpheus's air, _Che faro_, is known to every one; but still finer is the great scena in which the poet's song softens even the _ombre sdegnose_ of Tartarus. The ascending passion of the entries of the solo (_Deh! placatevi_; _Mille pene_; _Men tiranne_), interrupted by the harsh but gradually softening exclamations of the Furies, is of the highest dramatic effect. These melodies, moreover, as well as every declamatory passage assigned to Orpheus, are made subservient to the purposes of dramatic characterization; that is, they could not possibly be assigned to any other person in the drama, any more than Hamlet's monologue could be spoken by Polonius. It is in this power of musically realizing a character--a power all but unknown in the serious opera of his day--that Gluck's genius as a dramatic composer is chiefly shown. After a short relapse into his earlier manner, Gluck followed up his _Orpheus_ by a second classical music-drama (1767) named _Alceste_. In his dedication of the score to the grand-duke of Tuscany, he fully expressed his aims, as well as the reasons for his total breach with the old traditions. "I shall try," he wrote, "to reduce music to its real function, that of seconding poetry by intensifying the expression of sentiments and the interest of situations without interrupting the action by needless ornament. I have accordingly taken care not to interrupt the singer in the heat of the dialogue, to wait for a tedious _ritornel_, nor do I allow him to stop on a sonorous vowel, in the middle of a phrase, in order to show the nimbleness of a beautiful voice in a long _cadenza_." Such theories, and the stern consistency with which they were carried out, were little to the taste of the pleasure-loving Viennese; and the success of _Alceste_, as well as that of _Paris and Helena_, which followed two years later, was not such as Gluck had desired and expected. He therefore eagerly accepted the chance of finding a home for his art in the centre of intellectual and more especially dramatic life, Paris. Such a chance was opened to him through the _bailli_ Le Blanc du Roullet, attaché of the French embassy at Vienna, and a musical amateur who entered into Gluck's ideas with enthusiasm. A classic opera for the Paris stage was accordingly projected, and the friends fixed upon Racine's _Iphigénie en Aulide_. After some difficulties, overcome chiefly by the intervention of Gluck's former pupil the dauphiness Marie Antoinette, the opera was at last accepted and performed at the Académie de Musique, on the 19th of April 1774. Entry: GLUCK
LATROBE, CHARLES JOSEPH (1801-1875), Australian governor, was born in London on the 20th of March 1801. The Latrobes were of Huguenot extraction, and belonged to the Moravian community, of which the father and grandfather of C. J. Latrobe were ministers. His father, Christian Ignatius Latrobe (1758-1836), a musician of some note, did good service in the direction of popularizing classical music in England by his _Selection of Sacred Music from the Works of the most Eminent Composers of Germany and Italy_ (6 vols., 1806-1825). C. J. Latrobe was an excellent mountaineer, and made some important ascents in Switzerland in 1824-1826. In 1832 he went to America with Count Albert Pourtales, and in 1834 crossed the prairies from New Orleans to Mexico with Washington Irving. In 1837 he was invested with a government commission in the West Indies, and two years later was made superintendent of the Port Philip district of New South Wales. When Port Philip was erected into a separate colony as Victoria in 1851, Latrobe became lieutenant-governor. The discovery of gold in that year attracted enormous numbers of immigrants annually. Latrobe discharged the difficult duties of government at this critical period with tact and success. He retired in 1854, became C.B. in 1858 and died in London on the 2nd of December 1875. Beside some volumes of travel he published a volume of poems, _The Solace of Song_ (1837). Entry: LATROBE
INSTRUMENTATION. "Instrumentation" is the best term that can be found for that aspect of musical art which is concerned with timbre. The narrower term "orchestration" is applied to the instrumentation of orchestral music. Since the most obvious differences of timbre are in those of various instruments, the art which blends and contrasts timbre is most easily discussed as the treatment of instruments; but we must use this term with philosophic breadth and allow it to include voices. Instrumentation is in all standard text-books treated as a technical subject, from the point of view of practical students desirous of writing for the modern orchestra. And as there is no branch of art in which mechanical improvements, and the consequent change in the nature of technical difficulties, bear so directly upon the possibilities and methods of external effect, it follows that an exclusive preponderance of this view is not without serious disadvantage from the standpoint of general musical culture. There is probably no other branch of art in which orthodox tradition is so entirely divorced from the historical sense, and the history, when studied at all, so little illuminated by the permanent artistic significance of its subjects. When improvements in the structure of an instrument remove from the modern composer's memory an entire category of limitations which in classical music determined the very character of the instrument, the temptation is easy to regard the improvement as a kind of access of wisdom, in comparison with which not only the older form of the instrument, but the part that it plays in classical music, is crude and archaic. But we should do better justice to improvements in an instrument if we really understood how far they give it, not merely new resources, but a new nature. And, moreover, those composers who have done most to realize this new nature (as Wagner has done for the brass instruments) have also retained, to an extent unsuspected by their imitators, the definite character which the instrument had in its earlier form. Entry: INSTRUMENTATION
In the "Waldstein" sonata, _op._ 53, we see Beethoven's second manner literally displacing his first; that is to say, we reach a state of things at which the two can no longer form an artistic contrast. The work, as we know it, is not only perfect, but has all the qualities of art in which the newest elements have long been familiar. The opening is on the same harmonic train of thought as that of the sonata, _op._ 31, No. 1, but there is no longer the slightest need for a paradoxical or jocular manner. On the contrary, the harmonies are held together by an orderly sequence in the bass, and the onrush is that of some calm diurnal energy of nature. The short introduction to the finale is harmonically and emotionally the most profound thing in the sonata, while the finale itself uses every new resource in the triumphant attainment of a leisure more splendid than any conceivable in the most spacious of Mozart's rondos. Yet it is well known that Beethoven originally intended the beautiful _andante_ in F, afterwards published separately, to be the slow movement of this sonata. That andante is, like the finale, a spacious and gorgeous rondo, which probably Beethoven himself could not have written at an earlier period. The modulation to D flat in its principal theme, and that to G flat near the end, are its chief harmonic effects and stand out in beautiful relief within its limits. After the first movement of the Waldstein sonata they would be flat and colourless. The sketch-books show that Beethoven, when he first planned the sonata, was by no means inattentive to the balance of harmonic colour in the whole scheme, but that at first he did not realize how far that scheme was going to carry him. He originally thought of the slow movement as in E major, a remote key to which, however, he soon assigned the more intimate position of complementary key in the first movement. He then worked at the slow movement in F with such zest that he did not discover until the whole sonata was finished that he had raised the first and last movements to an altogether higher plane of thought, though the redundancy of the two rondos in juxtaposition and the unusual length of the sonata were so obvious that his friends ventured to point them out. Beethoven's revision of his earliest works is now known to have been extensive and drastic; but this is the first instance, and _Fidelio_ and the quartet in B flat, _op._ 131, are the only other instances, of any later work needing important alteration after it was completely executed. From this point up to _op._ 101 we may study Beethoven's second manner entirely free from any survivals of his first, even as a legitimate contrast; though it is as impossible to fix a point before which his third manner cannot be traced as it is to ignore the premonitions of his second manner in his early works. The distinguishing features in Beethoven's second style are the result of a condition of art in which enormous new possibilities have become so well known that there is no need for stating them abruptly, paradoxically or emphatically, but also no need for working them out to remote conclusions. Hence these works have become for most people the best-known and best-loved type of classical music. In their perfect fusion of untranslatable dramatic emotion with every beauty of musical design and tone they have never been equalled, nor is it probable that any other art can show a wider range of thought embodied in a more perfect form. In music itself there is nothing else of so wide a range without grave artistic defects from which Beethoven is entirely free. Wagnerian opera aims at an ideal as truly artistic, and in so far of wider range than Beethoven's that it passes beyond the bounds of pure music altogether. Within those bounds Beethoven remained, and even the apparent exceptions (such as _Fidelio_ and his two great examples of "programme music," the _Pastoral Symphony_ and the sonata, _Les Adieux_) only show how universal his conception of pure music is. Extraneous ideas had here struck him as magnificent material for instrumental music, and he never troubled to argue whether instrumental music is the better or worse for expressing extraneous ideas. To describe the works of Beethoven's second period here would be to describe a library of well-known classics, and we must refer the reader for further details to the articles on SONATA FORMS, CONTRAPUNTAL FORMS, HARMONY and INSTRUMENTATION. It remains for us to attempt to indicate the essential features of his third style, and to conclude with a survey of his influence on the history of music. Entry: BEETHOVEN
_The Character of the New Greek Cities._--The citizen bodies at the outset were really of Greek or Macedonian blood--soldiers who had served in the royal armies, or men attracted from the older Greek cities to the new lands thrown open to commerce. To fix their European soldiery upon the new soil was an obvious necessity for the Macedonian chiefs who had set up kingdoms among the barbarians, and the lots of the veterans (except in Egypt) were naturally attached to various urban centres. The cities, of course, drew in numbers beside of the people of the land; Alexander is specially said to have incorporated large bodies of natives in some of the new cities of the Eastern provinces (Arr. iv. 4, 1; Diod. xvii. 83, 2; Curtius ix. 10, 7). It may generally be taken for granted that the lower strata of the city-populations was mainly native; to be included in the city population was not, however, to be included in the citizen body, and it remains a question how far the latter admitted members of other than European origin (Beloch iii. [i.] 414). The statements, for instance, of Josephus that the Jews were given full citizen rights in the new foundations are probably false (Willrich, _Juden und Griechen vor der makkabäischen Erhebung_, 1895, p. 19 f.). The social organization of the citizen-body conformed to the regular Hellenic type with a division into _phylae_ and, in Egypt, at any rate, into _demi_ (Liban. Or. xix. 62; Satyrus, frag. 21 = _F.H.G._ iii. 164; Sir W. M. Ramsay, _Cities and Bishoprics_, i. 60; Kenyon, _Archiv f. Papyr._ ii. 74; Jonguet, _Bull. corr. hell._ xxi., 1897, 184 f.; Liebenam, _Städteverwaltung_, 220 f.). The cities appear equally Hellenic in their political organs and functions with _boule_ and _demos_ and popularly elected magistrates. Life was filled with the universal Hellenic interests, which centred in the gymnasium and the religious festivals, these last including, of course, not only athletic contests but performances of the classical dramas or later imitations of them. The wandering sophist and rhetorician would find a hearing no less than the musical artist. The language of the upper classes was Greek; and the material background of building and decoration, of dress and furniture, was of Greek design. A greater regularity in the street-plans seems to have distinguished the new cities from the older slowly grown cities of the Greek lands, just as it distinguishes the cities of the New World to-day from those of Europe. Alexandria and Antioch were both traversed from end to end by one long straight street, crossed by shorter ones at right angles; Nicaea was a square from the centre of which all the four gates could be seen at the ends of the intersecting thoroughfares (Strabo xii. 565); similar characteristics are noted in the rebuilt Smyrna (ib. xiv. 646). Entry: II
MACKENZIE, SIR ALEXANDER CAMPBELL (1847- ), British composer, son of an eminent Edinburgh violinist and conductor, was born on the 22nd of August 1847. On the advice of a member of Gung'l's band who had taken up his residence in Edinburgh, Mackenzie was sent for his musical education to Sondershausen, where he entered the conservatorium under Ulrich and Stein, remaining there from 1857 to 1861, when he entered the ducal orchestra as a violinist. At this time he made Liszt's acquaintance. On his return home he won the King's Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, and remained the usual three years in the institution, after which he established himself as a teacher of the piano, &c., in Edinburgh. He appeared in public as a violinist, taking part in Chappell's quartette concerts, and starting a set of classical concerts. He was appointed precentor of St George's Church in 1870, and conductor of the Scottish vocal music association in 1873, at the same time getting through a prodigious amount of teaching. He kept in touch with his old friends by playing in the orchestra of the Birmingham Festivals from 1864 to 1873. The most important compositions of this period of Mackenzie's life were the Quartette in E flat for piano and strings. Op. 11, and an overture, _Cervantes_, which owed its first performance to the encouragement and help of von Bülow. On the advice of this great pianist, he gave up his Edinburgh appointments, which had quite worn him out, and settled in Florence in order to compose. The cantatas _The Bride_ (Worcester, 1881) and _Jason_ (Bristol, 1882) belong to this time, as well as his first opera. This was commissioned for the Carl Rosa Company, and was written to a version of Merimée's _Colomba_ prepared by Franz Hueffer. It was produced with great success in 1883, and was the first of a too short series of modern English operas; Mackenzie's second opera, _The Troubadour_, was produced by the same company in 1886; and his third dramatic work was _His Majesty_, an excellent comic opera (Savoy Theatre, 1897). In 1884 his _Rose of Sharon_ was given with very great success at the Norwich Festival; in 1885 he was appointed conductor of Novello's oratorio concerts; _The Story of Sayid_ came out at the Leeds Festival of 1886; and in 1888 he succeeded Macfarren as principal of the Royal Academy of Music. _The Dream of Jubal_ was produced at Liverpool in 1889, and in London very soon afterwards. A fine setting of the hymn "Veni, Creator Spiritus" was given at Birmingham in 1891, and the oratorio _Bethlehem_ in 1894. From 1892 to 1899 he conducted the Philharmonic Concerts, and was knighted in 1894. Besides the works mentioned he has written incidental music to plays, as, for instance, to _Ravenswood_, _The Little Minister_, and _Coriolanus_; concertos and other works for violin and orchestra, much orchestral music, and many songs and violin pieces. The romantic side of music appeals to Mackenzie far more strongly than any other, and the cases in which he has conformed to the classical conventions are of the rarest. In the orchestral ballad, _La Belle Dame sans Merci_, he touches the note of weird pathos, and in the nautical overture _Britannia_ his sense of humour stands revealed. In the two "Scottish Rhapsodies" for orchestra, in the music to _The Little Minister_, and in a beautiful fantasia for pianoforte and orchestra on Scottish themes, he has seized the essential, not the accidental features of his native music. Entry: MACKENZIE