DICTIONARY OF MUSIC - El Atril

340 HASSE HASSLER
extant works is given in the Monatshe/te f.
Musikgcschichte, 11, 82 ff, and in the Quellen-
LexikoH.I He set to music tlie whole of Meta-
stasio's dramatic works, several of them three
or four times over. His career was one long
success : few composers have enjoyed during
their lifetime such world-wide celehrity as he ;
of those few none are more completely forgotten
now. Great as was his pei-sonal popularity, it
is insufficient to account for the universal acceptance
of his music. The secret probably lay
in the receptivity of his nature, which, joined
to the gift of facile expression, caused some of
the most genial, though not the deepest, influences
of his time to find in him a faithful echo.
First among these was the spreading fascination
of modern Italian melody. It is as an Italian, not
a German composer that Hasse must take rank,
although, innocent as he was of contrapuntal
science, he has nothing in common with the
majesty, profound in its simplicity, of the early
Italian writers. He began life as a singer, in an
age of great singers, and must be classed among
the first representatives of that modern Italian
school which was called into existence by the
worship of vocal art for its own sake. His harmonies,
though always agreeable, sound poor to
ears accustomed to the richer combinations of
the German composers wdio were his contem-
poraries and immediate successors. Yet even as
a harmonist he is linked to modern times by
his fond and frequent use of the diminished
seventh and its inversion, as an interval both
of melody and of harmony ; while his smooth
and somewhat cloying successions of thirds and
sixths may have afforded delight to hearers
unused to the stern severities of counterpoint.
He had an inexhaustible flow of pleasing melody,
which, if it is never grand or sublime, is never
crabbed or ugly. Many of his best airs are
charming even now, and, if in some respects
they appear trite, it should be remembered that
we have become familiar with the type of which
they are examples through the medium of com-
positions which, in virtue of other qualities
than his, are longer-lived than Hasse's, though
written at a later date. A few have been republished
in our own day, among which we may
quote ' Ritornerai fra poco, ' from a Cantata (to
befound in the seriescalled 'Gemmed' Antichita,'
published by Lonsdale), which has real beauty.
As a fair specimen of his style, exhibiting all
the qualities which made him popular, we will
mention the opening symphony and the first air
in the oratorio ' I Pellegrini al Sepolcro,' written
for the Electoral Chapel at Dresden. To appre-
ciate the deficiencies which have caused him to
be forgotten, we have only to proceed a little
farther in this or any other of his works. They
are inexpressiljly monotonous. In the matter
of form he attempted nothing new. All his airs
are in two parts, with the inevitable Da Capo,
or repetition of the first strain. All his operas
consist of such airs, varied by occasional duets,
more rarely a trio, or a simple chorus, all cast
in the same mould. His orchestra consists
merely of the string quartet, sometimes of a
string trio only ; if now and then he adds hautboys,
flutes, bassoons, or horns, there is nothing
distinctive in his writing for these wind instruments,
and their part might equally well be
played by the violins. Nor is there anything
distinctive in his writing of Church music,
which presents in all respects the same character-
istics as his operas. His Symphonies are for
three, or at the most four, instruments. The
harmonic basis of his airs is of the very slightest,
his modulations the most simple and obvious,
and these are repeated with little variety in all
his songs. The charm of these songs consists
in the elegance of the melodic supei-structure and
its sympathetic adaptation to the requirements
of the voice. Singers found in them the most
congenial exercise for their powers, and the most
perfect vehicle for expression and display. For
ten years Farinelli charmed away the melancholy
of Philip V. of Spain by singing to him every
evening the same two airs of Hasse (from a
second opera, ' Artaserse '), ' Pallido e il sole
' and Per questo dolce amplesso.
Hasse was no prophet, but in his works his
contemporaries found fluent utterance given to
their own feelings. Such men please all, while
they oHend none ; but when the spirit and the
time of which they are at once the embodiment
and the reflection pass away, they and their work
must also pass away and be forgotten. F. A. M.
HASSLER or HASLER, Hans Leo, eldest
of the three sons of Isaac Hassler—a musician
of the Joachimsthal who settled in Nuremberg
—and the ablest of the three. Of his life little
is known. He is said to have been born in
1564 : he received his instruction from his father
and from A. Gabrieli, with whom he remained in
Venice for a year, after which (about 1585) he
found a home in the house of the Fuggers at
Augsburg, There he composed his famous ' (Norimberga,
xxiv
Canzonetti a 4 vooi '
1590) and
his ' Cantiones sacrae de festis ]iraecipuis totius
' anni 4, 5, 8 etplurium vocum (Augsburg, 1591)
— twenty-eight Latin motets. These were
followed by his ' Concentus ecclesiastici ' (Augsburg,
1596) ;
' '
Neue teutsche Gesaeng (1696)
' Madrigali ' (ibid.), and ' Cantiones novae '(1597).
[He was appointed musical director in Augsburg
in 1600 ; and in Nov. 1601 became organist
of the Frauenkirche in Nuremberg. Quellen-
Lexiko7i.'\ The statement so often repeated by
the Lexicons that Hassler entered the Imperial
Chapel at Vienna in 1601 is inaccurate, and
arises from the fact that a certain Jacob Hasler
was appointed court organist at Prague on July
1, 1602. (SeeKochel, Kais. HofJcapdh, p. 53.)
On Oct. 28, 1608, Hassler entered the service
of Christian II. of Saxony, and died at Frankfort
on June 8, 1612.