Rene Descartes (1596-1650) - Enlightenment

René Descartes (March 31, 1596 - February 11, 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius, was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy," and much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which continue to be studied closely to this day. In particular, his Meditations continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes' influence in mathematics is also apparent, the Cartesian coordinate system allowing geometric shapes to be expressed in algebraic equations being named for him. He is accreditied as the father of analytical geometry. Descartes was also one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution.

Descartes frequently sets his views apart from those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul, a treatise on the Early Modern version of what are now commonly called emotions, he goes so far as to assert that he will write on his topic "as if no one had written on these matters before". Many elements of his philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like St. Augustine. In his natural philosophy, he differs from the Schools on two major points: First, he rejects the analysis of corporeal substance into matter and form; second, he rejects any appeal to ends — divine or natural — in explaining natural phenomena. In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of God’s act of creation.

Descartes was a major figure in 17th century continental rationalism, later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, and opposed by the empiricist school of thought consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Leibniz, Spinoza and Descartes were all well versed in mathematics as well as philosophy, and Descartes and Leibniz contributed greatly to science as well. As the inventor of the Cartesian coordinate system, Descartes founded analytic geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry, crucial to the invention of calculus and analysis. Descartes' reflections on mind and mechanism began the strain of Western thought that much later, impelled by the invention of the electronic computer and by the possibility of machine intelligence, blossomed into the Turing test and related thought. His most famous statement is: Cogito ergo sum (French: Je pense, donc je suis; English: I think, therefore I am; OR I am thinking, therefore I exist), found in §7 of part I of Principles of Philosophy (Latin) and in part IV of Discourse on the Method (French).

Related Reading:

Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Music in the Western World: A History in Documents
Rene Descartes
Passions of the Soul (1645-1646) (Pages 212-217)

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The Age of Enlightenment or The Enlightenment is a term used to describe a phase in Western philosophy and cultural life centered upon the 18th Century, in which Reason was advocated as the primary source and basis of authority. Developing in Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands, and Italy, the movement spread through much of Europe, including Russia and Scandinavia. The signatories of the American Declaration of Independence, the United States Bill of Rights and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen were motivated by "Enlightenment" principles (although the English Bill of Rights predates the era).

The intellectual and philosophical developments of that age (and their impact in moral and social reform) aspired towards governmental consolidation, centralization and primacy of the nation-state, and greater rights for common people. There was also a strong attempt to supplant the authority of aristocracy and established churches in social and political life: forces that were viewed as reactionary, oppressive and superstitious.

The term came into use in English during the mid-19th Century, with particular reference to French philosophy, as the equivalent of a term then in use by German writers, Zeitalter der Aufklärung, signifying generally the philosophical outlook of the eighteenth century.

The terminology Enlightenment or Age of Enlightenment does not represent a single movement or school of thought, for these philosophies were often mutually contradictory or divergent. The Enlightenment was less a set of ideas than it was a set of attitudes. At its core was a critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals. Some classifications of this period also include the late 17th century, which is typically known as the Age of Reason or Age of Rationalism.

There is no consensus on when to date the start of the age of Enlightenment, and some scholars simply use the beginning of the eighteenth century or the middle of the seventeenth century as a default date.

If taken back to the mid-1600's, the Enlightenment would trace its origins to Descartes's Discourse on the Method (1637). At the other end, many scholars use the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars (1804–15) as a convenient point in time with which to date the end of the Enlightenment.

Still others describe the Enlightenment beginning in Britain's Glorious Revolution of 1688 and ending in the French Revolution of 1789. However, others also claim the Enlightenment ended with the death of Voltaire in 1778.

***



Pierre Corneille (June 6, 1606 - October 1, 1684) was one of France's three great 1600's dramatists, along with Molière and Racine. He has been called “the founder of French tragedy” and produced plays for nearly 40 years.

Related Reading:

Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Music in the Western World: A History in Documents
Pierre Corneille
Andromede: Preface (1650) (Pages 200-204)

***


John Milton II (December 9, 1608 - November 8, 1674) was an English poet, prose, polemicist, and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England. He is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost and for his treatise condemning censorship, Areopagitica.

Milton was writing at a time of religious and political flux in England. His poetry and prose reflect deep convictions, often reacting to contemporary circumstances, but it is not always easy to locate the writer in an obvious religious category. His views may be described as broadly Protestant, and he was an accomplished, scholarly man of letters, polemical writer and an official in the government of Oliver Cromwell.

After his death, Milton became the subject of partisan biographies, such as those by Edward Phillips and John Toland, and a hostile account by Anthony à Wood. Samuel Johnson described him as "an acrimonious and surly republican"; but William Hayley's 1796 biography called him the "greatest English author," at a time when his reputation was particularly in play.

Related Reading:

Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Music in the Western World: A History In Documents
John Milton
Areopagitica (1644) (Pages 189-190)

***



Jean de La Bruyère (August 16, 1645 – May 10, 1696), was a French essayist and moralist.

Related Reading:

Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Music in the Western World: A History In Documents
Jean de La Bruyere
Caracteres (1688) (Page 204)

[8619 Strozzi / 8596 Descartes / 8586 Schein]

Johann Schein (1586-1630) - Crumhorn

Johann Schein (1586-1630) - Padovana (Crumhorn)



Johann Hermann Schein (January 20, 1586 - November 19, 1630) was a German composer of the early Baroque era. He was born in Grünhain and died in Leipzig. He was one of the first to import the early Italian stylistic innovations into German music, and was one of the most polished composers of the period.

On the death of his father, Schein moved to Dresden where he joined the choir of the Elector of Saxony as a boy soprano. In addition to singing in the choir, he received a thorough musical training with Rogier Michael, the Kapellmeister, who recognized his extraordinary talent.

From 1603 to 1607 he studied at Pforta, and from 1608 to 1612 attended the University of Leipzig, where he studied law in addition to liberal arts. Upon graduating, he was employed briefly by Gottfried von Wolffersdorff as the house music director and tutor to his children; later he became Kapellmeister at Weimar, and shortly thereafter became cantor at Thomasschule zu Leipzig, a post which he held for the rest of his life.

Unlike his friend Heinrich Schütz, he was afflicted with poor health, and was not to live a happy or long life. His wife died in childbirth; four of his five children died in infancy; he died at age 44, having suffered from tuberculosis, gout, scurvy and a kidney disorder.

Schein was one of the first to absorb the innovations of the Italian Baroque --monody, the concertato style, figured bass—and use them effectively in a German Lutheran context. While Schütz made more than one trip to Italy, Schein apparently spent his entire life in Germany, making his grasp of the Italianate style all the more amazing. His early concertato music seems to have been modeled on Lodovico Grossi da Viadana's Cento concerti ecclesiastici, which was available in an edition prepared in Germany.

Unlike Schütz, who composed only sacred music (except for an early and unrepresentative collection of madrigals), Schein wrote sacred and secular music in approximately equal quantities, and almost all of it was vocal. In his secular vocal music he wrote all of his own texts. Throughout his life he published alternating collections of sacred and secular music, in accordance with an intention he stated early on — in the preface to the Banchetto musicale -- to publish alternately music for use in worship and social gatherings. The contrast between the two kinds of music can be quite extreme. While some of his sacred music uses the most sophisticated techniques of the Italian madrigal for a devotional purpose, several of his secular collections include such things as drinking songs of a surprising simplicity and humor. Some of his works attain an expressive intensity matched in Germany only by those of Schütz, for example the spectacular Fontana d'Israel or Israel's Brünnlein (1623), in which Schein declared his intent to exhaust the possibilities of German word-painting "in the style of the Italian madrigal."

Possibly his most famous collection was his only collection of instrumental music, the Banchetto musicale (Musical banquet) (1617) which contains 20 separate variation suites; they are among the earliest, and most perfect, representatives of the form. Most likely they were composed as dinner music for the courts of Weissenfels and Weimar, and were intended to be performed on viols. They consist of dances: a pavan-galliard (a normal early Baroque pair), a courante, and then an allemande-tripla. Each suite in the Banchetto is unified by mode as well as by theme.


Sacred Vocal

Cymbalum Sionium (1615)

Opella nova, geistlicher Concerten (1618)

Fontana d'Israel, Israelis Brünlein (1623)

Opella nova, ander Theil, geistlicher Concerten (1626)

Cantional oder Gesangbuch Augspurgischer Confession (1627, 1645)


Secular Vocal

Venus Kräntzlein (1609)

Musica boscareccia (1621, and several portions published later)

Diletti pastorali, Hirten Lust (1624)

Studenten-Schmauss (1626)


Instrumental

Banchetto musicale (1617)

***



The crumhorn is a musical instrument of the woodwind family, most commonly used during the Renaissance period. In modern times, there has been a revival of interest in Early Music, and crumhorns are being played again.

The name 'crumhorn' derives from the German Krumhorn (or Krummhorn or Krumphorn) meaning bent horn. This relates to the old English crump meaning curve, surviving in modern English in 'crumpled' and 'crumpet' (a curved cake).

The crumhorn is a capped reed instrument. Its construction is similar to that of the chanter of a bagpipe. A double reed is mounted inside a windcap at one end of a long pipe. Blowing into the windcap produces a musical note. The pitch of the note can be varied by opening or closing finger holes along the length of the pipe. One unusual feature of the crumhorn is its shape; the end is bent upwards in a curve resembling the letter 'J'.

Crumhorns make a strong buzzing sound. They have a limited range, usually a major ninth; while it is theoretically possible to get the reed to overblow a twelfth above the fundamental note, this is extremely difficult since the reed is not held in the mouth, so in practice all playing is confined to the fundamental series. Some larger instruments have their range extended downwards by means of additional holes and sliders or by dropping the pressure. Modern instruments have their range extended upwards to an eleventh by two keys. Crumhorns can be chromatically played by using cross-fingerings, except for the minor second above the lowest note.

Because of the limited range, music for crumhorns is usually played by a group of instruments of different sizes and hence at different pitches. Such a group is known as a consort of crumhorns. Crumhorns are built in imitation of the vocal quartet with soprano, alto, tenor and bass as a whole family, as was true with most instruments of the Renaissance. Occasionally some higher and lower sounding instruments are built, but only the great bass has come to stay in addition to the four other sizes. The c/f-pitch has come to stay as among the most Renaissance wood-wind instruments:

size scale range (modern crumhorn in parenthesis)

Soprano c1 d1 – d2 (– f2)
Alto f0 g0 – f1 (– b1)
Tenor c0 d0 – d1 (– f1)
Bass F G – f0 (– b0)
Great Bass C D – d0 (– f0)

Michael Praetorius suggested the use of crumhorns in some of his sacred vocal works as a possible alternative to trombones, dulcians and other instruments.

Johann Hermann Schein included a padouana à 4 for crumhorns in his collection Banchetto Musicale, 1617.

The band Gryphon used a crumhorn in the 1970's, blending medieval folk music and symphonic rock.

***


Marin Mersenne, Marin Mersennus, or le Père Mersenne (September 8, 1588 - September 1, 1648) was a French theologian, philosopher, mathematician and music theorist, often referred to as the "father of acoustics."

One of Mersenne's most important contributions to the advance of learning was his extensive correspondence (in Latin, of course) with mathematicians and other scientists in many countries. At a time when the scientific journal had not yet come into being, Mersenne was the center of a network for exchange of information.

His philosophical works are characterized by wide scholarship and the narrowest theological orthodoxy. His greatest service to philosophy was his enthusiastic defence of Rene Descartes, whose agent he was in Paris and whom he visited in exile in the Netherlands. He submitted to various eminent Parisian thinkers a manuscript copy of Decartes's Meditations on First Philosophy, and defended its orthodoxy against numerous clerical critics.

In later life, he gave up speculative thought and turned to scientific research, especially in mathematics, physics and astronomy. In this connection, his best known work is Traité de l'harmonie universelle (also referred to as Harmonie universelle) of 1636, dealing with the theory of music and musical instruments. It is regarded as a source of information on 17th century music, especially French music and musicians.

One of his many contributions to musical tuning theory was the suggestion of

as the ratio for an equally-tempered semitone. It was more accurate (0.44 cents sharp) than Vincenzo Galilei's 18/17 (1.05 cents flat), and could be constructed using straightedge and compass. Mersenne's description in the 1636 Harmonie universelle of the first absolute determination of the frequency of an audible tone (at 84 Hz) implies that he had already demonstrated that the absolute-frequency ratio of two vibrating strings, radiating a musical tone and its octave, is 1 : 2. The perceived harmony (consonance) of two such notes would be explained if the ratio of the air oscillation frequencies is also 1 : 2, which in turn is consistent with the source-air-motion-frequency-equivalence hypothesis.

Further Reading:

Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Music in the Western World: A History in Documents
Marin Mersenne
Harmonie universelle, Book III (1637) (Pages 204-205)

[8596 Descartes / 8586 Schein / 8585 Schutz]

Heinrich Schutz (1585-1672) - Saul

Heinrich Schutz (1585-1672)

Psalmen Davids (1619)



[Michelangelo Caravaggio (1571-1610) - The Conversion on the Road to Damascas]

Saul, Was Verfolgst du Mich (Saul, Why Do You Persecute Me) (1625)



The Seven Last Words (1645)



[Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (July 15, 1606 - October 4, 1669) - Heinrich Schutz]

Heinrich Schütz (October 8, 1585, Köstritz - November 6, 1672, Dresden) was a German composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach and often considered to be one of the most important composers of the 1600's along with Claudio Monteverdi. He wrote what is thought to be the first German opera, Dafne, performed at Torgau in 1627; however, the music has since been lost. He is commemorated as a musician in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on July 28 with Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. Schutz was buried in the Dresden Frauenkirche but his tomb has since been destroyed.

Schütz's musical talents were discovered by Moritz von Hessen-Kassel in 1599. After being a choir-boy he went on to study law and etymology at Marburg before going to Venice from 1609-1613 to study music with Giovanni Gabrieli. He subsequently had a short stint as organist at Kassel before moving to Dresden in 1615 to work as court composer to the Elector of Saxony.

He held his Dresden post until the end of his life (sowing the seeds of what is now the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden while there), but left Dresden itself on several occasions; in 1628 he went to Venice again, most likely meeting Claudio Monteverdi (with whom he may have studied) and in 1633, after the Thirty Years' War had disrupted life at the court, he took a post at Copenhagen. He returned full time to Dresden in 1641, and remained there for the rest of his life. He died from a stroke in 1672 at the age of 87.

Schütz's compositions show the influence of his teacher Gabrieli (displayed most notably with Schütz's use of resplendent polychoral and concertato styles) and of Monteverdi. Additionally, the influence of the Netherlandish composers of the 16th century is also prominent in his work.

His best known works are in the field of sacred music, ranging from solo voice with instrumental accompaniment to a cappella choral music. Representative works include his three books of Symphoniae sacrae, the Psalms of David (Psalmen Davids), the Sieben Worte Jesu Christi am Kreuz (the Seven Last Words on the Cross) and his three Passion settings. Schütz's music, while starting off in the most progressive styles early in his career, eventually grows into a style that is simple and almost austere, culminating with his late Passion settings.

Practical considerations were certainly responsible for part of this change: the Thirty Years' War had devastated the musical infrastructure of Germany, and it was no longer practical or even possible to put on the gigantic works in the Venetian style which marked his earlier period.

Schütz was one of the last composers to write in a modal style. His harmonies often result from the contrapuntal alignment of voices rather than from any sense of "harmonic motion"; contrastingly, much of his music shows a strong tonal pull when approaching cadences. His music includes a great deal of imitation, but structured in such a way that the successive voices do not necessarily enter after the same number of beats or at predictable intervallic distances. Schütz's writing often includes intense dissonances caused by the contrapuntal motion of voices moving in correct individual linear motion, but resulting in startling harmonic tension. Above all, his music displays extreme sensitivity to the accents and meaning of the text, which is often conveyed using special technical figures drawn from musica poetica, themselves drawn from or created in analogy to the verbal figures of Classical Rhetoric.

Almost no secular music by Schütz has survived, save for a few domestic songs (arien) and no purely instrumental music at all (unless one counts the short instrumental movement entitled "sinfonia" that encloses the dialogue of Die sieben Worte), even though he had a reputation as one of the finest organists in Germany.

Schütz was of great importance in bringing new musical ideas to Germany from Italy, and as such had a large influence on the German music which was to follow. The style of the north German organ school derives largely from Schütz (as well as from Netherlander Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck); a century later this music was to culminate in the work of J.S. Bach.



[Heinrich Schütz, c. 1650-1660 (Leipzig), by Christoph Spetner]

List of compositions by Heinrich Schütz

The following are published works. Most of these contain multiple pieces of music; there are over 500 total surviving individual pieces by Schütz.

Il primo libro de madrigali (first book of madrigals) (Venice, 1611)

Psalmen Davids (Book 1) (Dresden, 1619)

Historia der frölichen und siegreichen Aufferstehung ... (History of the joyful and victorious Resurrection of Jesus) (Dresden, 1623)

Cantiones sacrae (Freiberg im Breisgau, 1625)

Psalmen Davids (Book 2) (Freiberg im Breisgau, 1628)

Symphoniae sacrae (Book 1) (Venice, 1629)

Musikalische Exequien (Dresden, 1636)

Kleine geistliche Konzerte (Book 1) (Leipzig, 1636)

Symphoniae sacrae (Book 2) (Dresden, 1647)

Geistliche Chor-Music (Dresden, 1648)

Symphoniae sacrae (Book 3) (Dresden, 1650)

Zwölf geistliche Gesänge (Dresden, 1657)

Psalmen Davids (revision of Book 2) (Dresden, 1661)

***

Related Reading:

Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Music in the Western World: A History in Documents
Heinrich Schutz
Schutz Recounts His Career (Pages 184-186)

[8586 Schein Crumhorn / 8585 Schutz / 8583 Gibbons]

Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) - The Silver Swan

Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) - The Silver Swan (1612)



Orlando Gibbons (baptized December 25, 1583 – June 5, 1625) was an English composer and organist of the late Tudor and early Jacobean periods. He was a leading composer in the England of his day.

Gibbons was born in Oxford. Between 1596 and 1598 he sang in the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, where his brother was master of the choristers; he entered the university in 1598 and achieved the degree of Bachelor of Music in 1606. James I appointed him a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, where he served as an organist from at least 1615 until his death. In 1625 he became senior organist at the Chapel Royal, with Thomas Tomkins as junior organist. He also held positions as keyboard player in the privy chamber of the court of Prince Charles (later King Charles I), and organist at Westminster Abbey. He died at age 41 in Canterbury of apoplexy, and a monument to him was built in Canterbury Cathedral.

One of the most versatile English composers of his time, Gibbons wrote a quantity of keyboard works, around thirty fantasias for viols, a number of madrigals (the best-known being The Silver Swan), and many popular verse anthems. His choral music is distinguished by his complete mastery of counterpoint, combined with his wonderful gift for melody. Perhaps his most well-known verse anthem is This is the Record of John, which sets an Advent text for solo countertenor or tenor, alternating with full chorus. The soloist is required to demonstrate considerable technical facility at points, and the work at once expresses the rhetorical force of the text, whilst never being demonstrative or bombastic. He also produced two major settings of Evensong, the Second, and the 'Short' service. The former is an extended composition, combining verse and full sections, and the latter possesses a beautifully expressive Nunc Dimittis. Gibbons's full anthems include the expressive O Lord in Thy Wrath and the Palm Sunday setting of O Clap your Hands Together for eight voices. He contributed six pieces to the first printed collection of music in England, Parthenia (of which he was by far the youngest of the three contributors), published circa 1611.

Gibbons was the "favorite composer" of the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. "Ever since my teen-age years his music has moved me more deeply than any other sound experience I can think of."

To this day, his obit service is commemorated every year in King's College Chapel, Cambridge.

[8585 Schutz / 8583 Gibbons / 8583 Frescobaldi]

Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) - Serpent

Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643)

Canzona Due (1643) (Cornetts)





Canzona Quarta (1643) (Serpent)



Girolamo Frescobaldi (baptized mid-September 1583, Ferrara - March 1, 1643) was an Italian musician, one of the most important composers of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. There is no evidence that the Frescobaldi of Ferrara were related to the homonymous Florentine noble house.

Frescobaldi studied under the organist and famous madrigalist Luzzasco Luzzaschi at Ferrara and is also considered to have been influenced by Carlo Gesualdo, who was in Ferrara at the time. His patron Guido Bentivoglio helped him get the position as an organist at the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome in the spring of 1607. Frescobaldi travelled with Bentivoglio to the Low Countries before Frescobaldi became organist of St Peter's in Rome in 1608, a post he held until his death. From 1628 to 1634 he was organist at the court of the Medicis in Florence.

Frescobaldi died in Rome at the age of 59, and a grave bearing his name and honoring him as one of the fathers of Italian music exists in the Church of the XXII Apostles in the same city.

The greatest majority of Frescobaldi's extant output consists of keyboard music. His renowned prowess at the keyboard earned him several important international students, such as Johann Jacob Froberger, who composed pieces highly reminiscent of Frescobaldi's. The Fiori Musicali and the two books of Toccatas and Partitas are his most important keyboard works.

The Fiori musicali (1635) is a collection of organ works designed to be played during the mass service. It also features ricercari, a delicate and sophisticated form of musical counterpoint which includes imitative (or fugal) devices.

His two books of Toccatas and Partitas are written in copper-engraved keyboard tablature for the harpsichord or organ, and were published between 1615 and 1637. Both books open with a set of twelve toccatas written in a flamboyant improvisatory style and alternating fast-note runs or passaggi with more intimate and meditative parts, called affetti, plus short bursts of contrapuntal imitation. In these toccatas, Frescobaldi makes ample use of sharp, unprepared dissonances and other harmonies daring for the time, as well as of virtuosic techniques that make some of these pieces challenging even for modern performers -- such as his Toccata IX of Book II, which he himself labeled with the words "Not without toil will you get to the end."

Besides the toccatas, these books feature partitas on popular motives and basses of the time, as well as 6 canzoni, dances, hymns and other compositions such as the Cento Partite Sopra Passachagli, one of his most virtuosic and experimental works. These two books are prefaced by Frescobaldi's own advice on interpretation, where the composer articulates the "theory of musical affections" prevalent at the time.

His other extant instrumental output consists chiefly in the 1st Volume of Canzoni to be Played with any Type of Instrument, 1628. This work includes instrumental canzonas for one, two, three and four parts over thoroughbass, as well as a few other pieces such as the Toccata for Spinet and Violin.

His vocal music includes a number of masses, motets and madrigals.

Frescobaldi was one of the inventors of the modern conception of tempo, making a compromise between the ancient white mensural notation with a rigid tactus and the modern notion of tempo, which is characterized by acceleration and deceleration within a piece.

Frescobaldi's music was a very important influence on later composers, among them Johann Jakob Froberger and Johann Sebastian Bach (Bach is known to have owned a copy of Frescobaldi's Fiori musicali).

Sometimes jovially referred to as "Frisky Bald Guy" in musicological circles. A play on his name, it is a fitting description of his characteristically sporadic style of composition, and the receding hairline that is evident in his later portraits.



***


[A man playing the serpent: Engraving from Filippo Bonanni's Gabinetto Armonico pieno d'Instromenti (Roma, 1723)]

A serpent is a bass wind instrument, descended from the cornett, and a distant ancestor of the tuba, with a mouthpiece like a brass instrument but side holes like a woodwind. It is usually a long cone bent into a snakelike shape, hence the name. The serpent is closely related to the cornett, although it is not part of the cornett family, due to the absence of a thumb hole. It is generally made out of wood, with walnut being a particularly popular choice. The outside is covered with dark brown or black leather. Despite wooden construction and the fact that it has fingerholes rather than valves, it is usually classed as a brass, with the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification placing it alongside trumpets.

The serpent's range varies according to the instrument and the player, but typically is two octaves below middle C to at least half an octave above middle C.

The serpent usually has six holes, which are ordered in two groups of three. On early models, the fingerholes were keyless, like those of a recorder. However, later models added keys as on a clarinet, although they were for additional holes (out of reach of the fingers), while the original holes remained unkeyed, and are to be covered or uncovered directly by the fingers of the player.

While it does not have the kind of rigidly defined fingering system that other wind instruments enjoy, the serpent requires an extraordinary amount of effort from the player, who must select the desired pitch with his or her lips, usually overriding the tone the instrument prefers to sound with any particular fingering. The serpent player also has a unique right-hand finger position, in that the index finger may be further down the tube towards the bell than the other fingers of that hand. In this respect the fingering of the right hand is reversed to that found in all other keyed wind instruments, where the keys and holes controlled by the index fingers are further up towards the mouthpiece than the other fingers. This is because the serpent was originally held vertically, with both of the player's hands oriented palm-down; in this position the right hand fingerings are not reversed in the manner described above. Later, players began to hold the instrument horizontally, necessitating a reversal of the right hand to palm-up, with the fingerings changing accordingly.

The instrument was invented by Canon Edmé Guillaume in 1590 in Auxerre, France, and was first used to strengthen the sound of choirs in plainchant. Around the middle of the 18th century, it began to be used in military bands and orchestras, but was replaced in the 19th century by a fully keyed brass instrument, the ophicleide, and later on by valved bass brass instruments such as the euphonium and tuba. After that the Serpent dropped off in popularity for a period of time.

Bernard Herrmann used a serpent in the score of Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959).

In the 1970s instrument-maker Christopher Monk began playing and later making Serpents, and in 1976 he founded the London Serpent Trio. Since then, the instrument has been undergoing a revival of sorts. In 1987 the first (and so far, only) concerto for the instrument was written by Simon Proctor. The Serpent Concerto was first performed on October 21, 1989 at the First International Serpent Festival (celebrating the 399th anniversary of the serpent) with Serpent soloist Alan Lumsden. Since that time, the Serpent Concerto has been performed in public on many occasions, most notably by Douglas Yeo of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops Orchestra, who played the solo part with the Boston Pops under the direction of John Williams. The concerto appears on a commercial CD recording Le Monde du Serpent (The World of the Serpent), on the Berlioz Historic Brass label, BHB 101, with the Berlioz Historical Brass, Gloria Dei Cantores choir, members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra et al.

The serpent underwent an evolutionary process that led to a variety of related instruments. There are two main types of serpent: curved (serpentine, or double-S, shaped) and straight/upright (the tube is mostly straight, but is folded back on itself in the middle, much like a bassoon). Within the curved style, there are two variations; Church (also called French) and Military (also called English). The Church serpent is the original type, invented in France, and is distinguished by gentle, sweeping curves and little (if any) metal reinforcements. The Military serpent was primary made in England, and is characterised by having tighter bends and a slightly more compact overall size as a result, with lots of metal bands and stays between the tubing. Furthermore, there are several different sizes besides the common "church" Serpent, including Contrabass ("anaconda"), Tenor ("serpent") and Soprano ("worm"). Only the original bass size, and possibly the tenor, were made during the serpent's heyday. The soprano is a fanciful modern variant, and the contrabass is based on a single known original made after the serpent was already fading in popularity.

From its beginning as an instrument held vertically between one's knees with both palms facing down, Hermenge (in his serpent method - Paris, 1817) suggested a horizontal playing position that resulted in the right hand palm faced upward. This position was adopted by English military serpents and the instrument was made of a more robust construction (owing to marching or riding on horseback) with thicker walls of the wood and metal stays between the "S" bends of the serpent. The "English bass horn" was a variant on the "cimbasso" (= corno di basso), a form of upright serpent of metal consisting of a tube folded back on itself (rather like the modern bassoon). Mendelssohn scored for the English bass horn in the first edition of his "Midsummer Night's Dream" although the ophicleide was substitituted with his consent after the English bass horn fell rapidly from favor. Coeffet (Paris, active 1810-1845) invented the "ophimonocleide," an upright serpent with six holes and a single key (ophi = serpent, mono = one, kleis = key/covering). Upright serpents called the "basson Russe " (often referred to as the "Russian bassoon") - neither Russian nor a form of bassoon - often had a zoomorphic head like the buccin. The "serpent Forveille'" (pronounced "serpent forvoe" or "forvay" and named after its inventor) featured a small receptacle in the bocal to collect condensation that results from the warm breath of the player. Whereas other upright serpents usually had metal bells and either a metal or wooden body, the Serpent Forveille was half wood on the part from the middle up to the bell, and metal from the middle to the mouthpiece. Gradually keys were added to serpents (the most appear to have been 14, on instruments made by Thomas Key (London, c. 1830) on display at the Museum of Welsh Life in Cardiff, Wales (another specimen is owned but not displayed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City). The extraordinary contrabass serpent (in nominal CC) made by the Wood brothers in Huddersfield, England, c. 1840) has all of its holes covered by keys but, owing to the varying sizes of the holes and "chimneys" extending from each hole which are in turn covered by flat keys, is really more of a wooden contrabass ophicleide in serpentine shape.

The evolution of the serpent was completed with the invention of the ophicleide (again, ophis = serpent, kleis = key/covering, therefore "keyed serpent",) patented in France by Halary in 1821.

[8583 Gibbons / 8583 Frescobaldi / 8582 Ravenscroft]

Marco da Gagliano (1582-1643) - Dafne

[Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) - Apollo e Dafne]

Marco da Gagliano (May 1582, Florence - February 25, 1643) lived most of his life in Florence.

After early study both with a religious confraternity and with Luca Bati, he was employed beginning in 1602 at the church of San Lorenzo for six years as a singing instructor. In 1607 he went to Mantua, where he wrote music for the Gonzaga family, including his impressive operatic setting of Dafne, and in 1609 returned to Florence to become maestro di cappella at the Compagnia dell'Arcangelo Raffaello, the organization from which he had received his boyhood musical training. Later that same year the Medici made him maestro di cappella of their court, a position he held for 35 years.

Gagliano wrote an enormous quantity of music, both sacred and secular, for the Medici, and in addition he was a singer and instrumentalist who entertained them privately. His works include the opera, Dafne (1608) which was praised as the best setting of the libretto by Rinuccini -- even by Jacopo Peri, the first to write an opera on the text. Meanwhile Gagliano or another altered Rinuccini's poetry so strongly that sometimes it is impossible to recognize traces of the original.

Peri indicated that Gagliano's way of setting text to music came closer to actual speech than any other, therefore accomplishing the aim of the Florentine Camerata of decades before, who sought to recapture that supposed aspect of ancient Greek music.

Other music by Gagliano includes secular monodies and numerous madrigals. While the monody was a Baroque stylistic innovation, most of the madrigals are a cappella, and written in a style reminiscent of the late Renaissance (in the first decades of the 17th Century, the continuo madrigal was becoming predominant, for example in the works of Monteverdi). This mix of progressive and conservative trends can be seen throughout his music: some of his sacred music is a cappella, again in the prima prattica style of the previous century, while other pieces show influence of the Venetian School.

Gagliano was extremely influential in his time, as could be expected of the Medici's own appointed head of all musical activities at their court; however his popularity waned after his death, and his music has since been overshadowed by contemporaries such as Monteverdi.

Related Reading:
Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Music in the Western World: A History in Documents
Marco di Gagliani
Dafne: Preface (Pages 174-177)

***



[Antonio Pallaiuolo (1429-1496) - Apollo e Dafne]

Apollo and Daphne is a story from ancient Greek mythology, retold by Hellenistic and Roman authors in the form of an amorous vignette; Thomas Bulfinch drew on those late sources in the following manner:

The curse of Apollo was brought onto him when he chided the young Eros for playing with bow and arrows.

Apollo was a great warrior and said to him, “What have you to do with warlike weapons, saucy boy? Leave them for hands worthy of them. Behold the conquest I have won by means of them over the vast serpent who stretched his poisonous body over acres of the plain! Be content with your torch, child, and kindle up your flames, as you call them, where you will, but presume not to meddle with my weapons.”

The petulant Eros took two arrows, of gold and one of lead. With the leaden shaft, to incite hatred, he shot the nymph Daphne and with the golden one, to incite love, he shot Apollo through the heart. Apollo was seized with love for the maiden, and she in turn abhorred Apollo. In fact, she spurned her many would-be lovers preferring instead woodland sports and exploring the woods. Her father demanded that she get married so that she may give him grandchildren.

She begged her father to let her remain unmarried.

He consented warning her, “Your own face will forbid it.”

Apollo continually followed her, begging her to stay, but the nymph continued her flight. They were evenly matched in the race until Eros intervened and helped him gain upon her.

Seeing that Apollo was bound to catch her, she called upon her father, “Help me, Peneus! open the earth to enclose me, or change my form, which has brought me into this danger!”

Suddenly her skin turned into bark, her hair became leaves, and her arms were transformed into branches. She stopped running as her feet became rooted to the ground. Apollo embraced the branches, but even the branches shrank away from him. Since Apollo could no longer take her as his wife, he promised to tend her as his tree, promising that he would use his powers of eternal youth to make sure that she would always stay green, and since then the leaves of the Bay laurel tree have never known decay.




[Titian (1485-1576) - Apollo and Daphne]



Gian Lorenzo Bernini sculpted a very famous baroque, life-sized marble entitled Apollo and Daphne.



In recent literature it is argued that The Kiss of Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is a symbolic picture of the kissing of Apollo to Daphne at the same moment she is transformed into a laurel tree.

[8583 Frescobaldi / 8582 Marco da Gagliano / 8582 Ravenscroft]

Thomas Ravenscroft (1582-1635) - Blind Mice

Thomas Ravenscroft (1582-1635) - Three Blind Mice (1609)

Thomas Ravenscroft (c. 1582 or 1592 until 1635) was an English composer, theorist and editor, notable as a composer of rounds and catches, and especially for compiling collections of British folk music.

He probably sang in the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral from 1594, when a "Thomas Raniscroft" was listed on the choir rolls; likely he remained there until around 1600, under the directorship of Thomas Giles. He probably received his bachelor's degree in 1605 from Cambridge.

Ravenscroft's principal contributions are his collections of folk music, including catches, rounds, street cries, vendor songs, "freeman's songs" and other anonymous music, in three collections: Pammelia (1609), Deuteromelia (1609) and Melismata (1611). Some of the music he compiled has acquired quite extraordinary fame, though his name is rarely associated with the music: for example Three Blind Mice first appears in Deuteromelia. He also published a metrical psalter (The Whole Booke of Psalmes) in 1621. Hs works include 11 anthems, 3 motets for five voices, and four fantasias for viols.

In addition to his activities as a composer and editor, he wrote two treatises on music theory: A Briefe Discourse of the True (but Neglected) Use of Charact'ring the Degrees ... (London, 1614), and A Treatise of Musick, which remains in manuscript (unpublished).

***

Three Blind Mice is a children's nursery rhyme and musical round.

The modern words are:

Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
See how they run. See how they run.
They all ran after the farmer's wife
She cut off their tails with a carving knife.
Did you ever see such a thing in your life
As three blind mice.

The first publication of this rhyme was written by Thomas Ravenscroft in 1609. The lyrics there are:

Three Blinde Mice,
three Blinde Mice,
Dame Iulian,
Dame Iulian,
The Miller and his merry olde Wife,
shee scrapte her tripe licke thou the knife.

There is an urban legend that this musical round was written earlier and refers to Queen Mary I of England executing three Protestant bishops. The earliest lyrics don't talk about directly killing the three blind mice and are dated after Queen Mary died, however, "she scrapte her tripe licke thou the knife" implies they were prepared and consumed if not a reference to tasting the blood of a slain adversary. (she scraped off the entrails and the knife was licked).
There is a narrative ambiguity at the heart of the rhyme, which is the question over whether the mice are chasing the farmer's wife after she cut their tails off, or whether she cut their tails off after they began chasing her.

In several sports (basketball and hockey, for example, which have three referrees), "Three Blind Mice" is used as a derogatory phrase for poor referees. Bands also play the song to mock referees in similar cases. Such references, however, are heavily frowned upon officially by both sports as unsportsmanlike.

Before major-league baseball required four umpires at every game, there were regularly three.

The Brooklyn Dodgers had a fan band called the "Sym-Phoney Band," led by Shorty Laurice, which started playing "Three Blind Mice" when the umpires came out onto the field until the league office ordered the team to stop it.

Joseph Holbrooke (1878-1958) composed his Symphonic Variations, opus 37, based on Three Blind Mice. Also, Joseph Haydn used its theme in the Finale (4th movement) of his Symphony 83 (La Poule) (1785-86); one of the six Paris Symphonies, and the music also appears in the final movement of English composer Eric Coates' suite The Three Men.



Three Blind Mice was also used as a theme song for The Three Stooges.



The Beatles used the sentence "See how they run" in two of its songs: I am the Walrus and Lady Madonna.

[8582 Dafne /8582 Ravenscroft / 8578 Figured Bass]