DICTIONARY OF MUSIC - El Atril

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HARMONY HARMONY 309
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In fact, Palestrina's success in the attempt to
revivify Church Music lay chiefly in the recognition
of harmonic principiles ; and in many
cases this recognition amounts to the use of
simple successions of chords in note against
note counterpoint, as a contrast to the portion
of the work which is polyphonic. His success
also depended to a great degree on a very
highly developed sense for qualities of tone in
chords arising from the distribution of the
notes of which they are composed. He uses
discords more frequently than his predecessors,
but still with far greater reticence than a modern
would do ; and in order to obtain the necessary
effects of contrast, he uses chords in various
positions, such as give a variety of qualities of
softness or roughness. This question, which
shows to what a high degree of pierfection the
art was carried, is unfortunately too complicated
to be discussed here, and the reader must be referred
to part ii. chap. xii. of Helmholtz's work
on the Sensations of Tone as a Physiologieal
Basis for the TJuory of Jhfsie, where it is completely
investigated. As an example of the
freedom with which accidentals were used in
secular music in Palestrina's time may be taken
the following passage from a madrigal by Cipriano
Eore, wdiich is quoted by Burney (Hist. iii.
319):—
It will have been remarked from the above
survey that from the dawn of any ideas of combination
of notes, musicians were constantly
accepiting fresh facts of harmony. First pierfect
consonances, then imperfect, and then suspended
discords, which amounted to the delaying of
one note in passing from one concord to another ;
then modifications of the scales were made by
the use of accidentals, and approaches were by
that means made tow-ards a scale which should
admit of much more complex harmonic combina-
tions. But before it could be further modified,
it was necessary that a new standpoint should
be gained. The great musicians of the 16th
century had carried the art to as high a pitch
of perfection in the pure polyphonic style as
seems to us jiossible, and men being accustomed
to hear in their works the chords which were
the result of their polyphony were ready for the
first steps of transition from that style to the
harmonic. Palestrina, the hero of the old
order, died in 159li, and in 1600 the first
modern opera, the ' Euridice ' of Giacomo Peri,
was performed at Florence. It is impossible to
point definitely to any particular time and say
' Here the old order ended and the new began,'
for in point of fact tlie jteriods overlap) one
another. A species of theatrical performance
accompanied by music had been attempted
long before this, and secular music had long
dispilayed very Iree use of chromaticisms similar
to the modern style of writing ; and, on the
other hand, fine examples of polyphony may be
found later ; but nevertheless the appearance
of this ojiera is a very good typical landmark,
since features of the modei'n school are so clearly
disyilayed in it, such as arias and recitatives
accomp)anied harmonically after the modern
manner ; moreover in these the harmonies are
indicated by figures, which is a matter of considerable
impiortance, as it implies a total change
of position relative to the construction of the
music. As long as harmony was the accidental
resultofthc combination ofdifferent melodies, the
idea of using abbreviations for a factor which was
hardly a recognised part of the ertect would not
have occurred to any one, but as soon as harmony
came to be recognised as a prominent fact, the
use of signs to indicate the grouping of notes
into these chords would naturally suggest itself,
especially as in the infancy of these views the
chords were of a simjile descripition. That the
system of figuring a bass was after\^ards largely
employed in works founded exclusively on the old
theor^'of counterpoint is no argument against this
view, as no one can fail to see how entirely inadequate
the figuring is to su})ply any idea whatever
of the effects of contrapuntal music. With Peri
are associated the names of Cavaliere, Viadana,
Caccini, and Monteverde, To Caccini the invention
of recitative is attributed, to Viadana
that of the 'basso continue,' and to Monteverde
the boldest new experiments in harmony ; and
to the present question the last of these is the
most important. It has already been remarked
that during the previous century progress had
been rather in technical expression and perfec-
tion of detail than in newharmonies. Palestrina's
fame does not rest upon elaborate discords, but
upon perfect management of a limited number of
difl'erent combinations. Monteverde evidently
abandoned this ideal refinement, and sought for
harsher and more violent forms of contrast.
Thus in a madrigal ' Straccia me pur,' quoted in
Buruey's i/'isi'o/-;/ (iii. 239), the following double
suspensions occur ;
But a far more important innovation, which