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The Boydell Press, 2006 576
pp. [ISBN 1 84383 200 3] £75 UK. This
expansive volume has its genesis in a book originally intended as a part of an aborted OUP series devoted to the history of
music. It’s revival, completion and eventual appearance under the Boydell imprint is welcome, for if not without flaws
there is much of value to both scholar and general reader. The
title raises an issue that has much exercised music historians in recent times – how exactly do we divide musical history
into appropriate segments? Editor James Haar goes straight to the point, noting in his Preface that the choice of dates is
not arbitrary, but covers a period whose parameters are the recognition of a recently established ars perfecta as represented
by the works of Josquin, and a cut-off date approximating with the end of the late-Renaissance/early Baroque era, a clear
statement of intent that is refreshingly direct and avoids the excessive hand wringing on the topic indulged in by another
recently published anthology of essays, The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music. Haar might have added that the
period straddles one of the crossroads in European music: the challenge to the age of polyphony from the emergent seconda
prattica, a relatively rare case of theory and philosophical considerations working in tandem. To what degree we are able
to relate the rise of humanist thought to developments in music is one of the debatable topics discussed in somewhat deconstructionist
terms by Gary Tomlinson in the opening chapter, but what is clear is that the drive to create a new intelligibility of text
and concurrently a closer alignment between words and music runs like a thread throughout the book. Motivated by either the
secular quest to recreate the spirit of antiquity, or by the new found desire for religion to give greater clarity to its
message (whether Protestant or Catholic), this is the dominant topic of the period under discussion.
That discussion is carried out by a team of scholars, most of who
on the evidence of the spelling appear to be American. It would have been helpful to have been provided with brief biographies
of the 26 contributors; not all are familiar names. The scheme is a division of chapters between those
devoted to the major European countries, specific forms such as the Mass, motet, madrigal and so forth and more general chapters
covering such matters as aesthetics, printing and music theory. It is a plan that I’m not convinced works entirely satisfactorily.
Some chapters appear to be oddly placed, “Early Opera: The Initial Phase” (Giuseppe Gerbino and Iain Fenlon),
for example, coming long after the three chapters devoted to Italy, being sandwiched near the end of the book between the
sections devoted to Spain and England. More importantly, national divisions are problematical given the extraordinary amount
of cross-border activity between musicians that took place during the period in question. The number of Franco-Flemish musicians
who worked in Italy until at least the latter part of the 16th century is a typical case in point, while Lassus is of course
the paradigmatic example of a pan-European composer who can be (and is) legitimately discussed under chapters devoted to the
Netherlands, France and Germany, in addition to those covering the Mass, the motet and the chanson. This inevitably leads
to a certain amount of duplication of effort, always a danger in anthologies, and leaving one feeling rather sorry for Kristine
K. Forney, whose rather prosaic account of music in the Netherlands is further undermined by the number of “her”
composers also dealt with elsewhere. In his Preface, Haar notes
with a certain wry humour that while he imposed few limitations on his contributors, most of them failed to observe what guidelines
he did lay down. This is readily apparent. Not only does there seem to have been no consensus as to whether to include chapter-end
bibliographies or simply bibliographical references in footnotes (which, thankfully, are footnotes and not endnotes), and
music examples, but there is no uniformity on such vexed questions as to whether it is ‘mass’ or ‘Mass’.
Nevertheless, the overall standard of writing is pretty high and there is a merciful lack of the kind of academic jargon that
sends normal people screaming for the nearest Dan Brown, although one or two essays tend to dryness. Some
of the chapters devoted to individual countries don’t always avoid the ever-lurking temptation to turn into a catalogue
of names and dates, but in general each provides a useful overview of the development of music in the specified region. Some,
such as those devoted to “England 1485-1600” (Roger Bray) and “Spain 1530-1600” (Todd M. Borgending
and Louise K. Stein), go beyond that, although Stein’s consideration of the subsequent period in Spanish musical history
is rather an anti-climax, while the total lack of attention to Victoria’s motets is mystifying. Most outstanding of
all the national surveys is Bray’s on the earlier English period, an absorbing account that is an object lesson not
only in avoiding the “catalogue” syndrome, but also how to wear profound scholarship lightly. Particularly valuable
are Bray’s observations on the inter-relationship between the “massive” early-Tudor style of sacred music
and church architecture, which contrary to common belief was seemingly influenced by music, not vice-versa. Associations between
music and building are also taken up by the excellent essay “The Reformation and Music”, where Robin A. Leaver
notes Luther’s opposition to large, high cathedrals on the grounds that their acoustic obscured the Word. Bray is also
especially illuminating in his articulate explanation of how the adoption of the vernacular in the English Protestant liturgy
dictated changes of musical style that go beyond the desire for textural clarity. Another
outstanding contribution comes from Karol Berger, whose weighty-sounding title “Concepts and Developments in Music Theory
” conceals an essay that includes the most succinct and even-handed discussion of the famous Monteverdi/Artusi controversy
I have yet read, in addition to a wonderfully clear and riveting exposition of the gradual move from modality to tonality,
a process started during the period under discussion, but one not completed and codified until Rameau did so more than 150
years later. Equally valuable and thought provoking is the distinction Berger draws between theory leading music (i.e. in
the case of the so-called “Florentine Camerata”), and musicians showing the way to the theorists (as in the case
of early 17th-century recognition that it was the triad and not any single interval that was the fundamental unit of harmonic
hearing). Haar himself contributes two essays, reserving for himself one
of the plums, a lucid, well-written survey of the madrigal, which he believes achieved a level of general compositional expertise
“rarely, if ever exceeded in the history of Western music”, one of the books rare excursions into hyperbole, but
in this instance surely justified. More attention to the frottola in this chapter would have been welcome, and the major role
of Marenzio is rather underplayed, while the absence of bibliographical reference to Marco Bizzarini’s important study
of the composer (see Goldberg 27) suggests that the article was written some time ago and was in need of revision. The reference
to “Arioso” for “Ariosto” (p. 235) is one of a number of small typographical errors that might have
been eliminated with more careful proofreading, while the numbering of tables has gone awry in the chapter on the Mass. Nevertheless,
imperfections and unevenness aside, this is an extremely useful addition to music historiography that will both aid students
and provide many insights to the more general reader who feels in need of an over-arching survey of the period. This
review is to be published in Goldberg Early Music Magazine
MOZART AND HIS OPERAS
David Cairns
Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 2006. 301 pp. Hardcover, illustrations $29:95. Paperback due 2007 There are many for whom the mature operas of Mozart stand at the very heart of their musical experience.
They are works that in a way unparalleled save for the plays of Shakespeare reveal the human condition in all its manifold
complexity, inexhaustible creations that have been the subject of wonder, of joy, of adulation, of puzzlement, and of a bewildering
range of conflicting critical interpretation ever since they first saw the light of day. It is therefore hardly surprising that the operas have formed the subject of an extensive literature stretching back
to Edward J. Dent’s ground-breaking Mozart’s Operas: A Critical Study (1913), a work that despite the huge
advances in Mozart scholarship over the past century is still of value today. The question of whether yet another book on
the subject is needed is addressed by David Cairns in the opening words of this new addition to the ranks. Cairns, who will
be better known to most music lovers as today’s leading Berlioz authority, provides a succinct and disarming answer.
The book reflects his need to write on a topic that, he tells us, has stood at the center of his life for sixty years.
The result is a highly personal survey that on every page exudes the author’s
love and enthusiasm for, and profound understanding of, the great operas. It is, as Cairns suggests, intended not for scholars
– though they could learn much, not least as to matters of stylish writing – but rather those who know the operas
and wish to read more about them. Note that I
wrote above “the great operas”, since Cairns devotes little space to the pre-Idomeneo dramatic works, dealing
with them in a single chapter that also sets the scene with a précis of Mozart’s early life. Given the author’s
perspicacity, one might regret the omission of comment on such key moments in Mozart’s dramatic development as the remarkable
scene among the tombs in Lucia Silla and the choruses in the sacred drama La Betulia liberata, both of which
foreshadow what would come later. The later operas
are set within the context of Mozart’s
life around the time of their composition, a scheme that works extremely well, allowing Cairns to provide the reader with
many precious little nuggets of information along the way. One wonders, for example, whether even the most avid Mozartian
will have been aware of the alarming topicality of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, first produced in precisely the year
(1782) in which the entire cast of the Malta Opera was captured by Algerian pirates. Allowing his brief to extend beyond discussion
of the operas also allows Cairns to take some sharp prods at Mozartian myth, and he show himself fully up to date with recent
scholarship over such questions as the purpose of the composition of the three final symphonies, now known to have been composed
for a concert series rather than just written out of romantic compulsion. It is then perhaps surprising to find him continuing
to propagate the largely unproven stories of Salieri’s jealousy of Mozart. More importantly, Cairns also examines with
real insight the influence of Mozart’s instrumental works on the operas, in particular the great series of piano concertos
composed in 1784, a medium, that as Cairns suggests in one of many pithy and percipient phrases that abound in this book,
“became, unprecedentedly, a dramatic form in its own right”. Yet it is in the discussion of the operas themselves that Cairns is at his most penetrating. It will indeed
be a rare (or hidebound) Mozartian who is unable to find grounds for fresh thought, fresh stimulation, and, yes, even dissension.
The author’s scheme is not to provide a full number-by-number analysis (for that we can turn to William Mann’s
The Operas of Mozart (1977), although some may be irritated by Mann’s colloquialisms), but a more freewheeling
approach that allows him to hone in on points that especially interest him. This pays particular dividends in such episodes
as the lengthy discussion of Idomeneo – an opera that has a special place in the heart of all true Mozartians
– where Cairns brilliantly charts the transmutation of a single phrase that recurs throughout the opera (there are brief
musical examples dotted throughout the book). Elsewhere, one may feel that the dangers of such an approach lead to sins of
omission, one of the most glaring being only a passing reference to the great act 2 quartet from Die Entführung, an
omission all the more curious given that it lies at the emotional heart of the work, and concerns what Cairns rightly establishes
as a principal theme running throughout the operas – reconciliation. Cairns’s treatment of the three da Ponte operas is particularly magisterial and perceptive, and
again not afraid to take knocks at self-interested pressure groups who would interpret the operas from a narrow base. His
remarks on the erroneously perceived misogyny of Così fan tutte are especially welcome, including as they do the suggestion
that those feminists who choose to be scandalized by the opera would perhaps not be if they gave closer attention to the score,
which clearly reveals that, as so often in Mozart’s operas, it is in fact the women who feel more deeply (in the case
of Così, I’m not convinced that applies to Dorabella, but it certainly does to Fiordiligi). It is good, too,
to find the author embracing fully the comparatively recent rehabilitation of La clemenza di Tito, which in another
felicitous phrase he sums up as having “the high finish and purity of the finest neo-classical art”, while at
the same time not quite convincing us that he has yet developed real love for the work. There are a few weaknesses. Prime among them is a constant nagging feeling that Cairns’s knowledge
of earlier opera is not a strong point. There is a tendency to “ghettoize” Mozart and credit him with innovations
that were not truly his. To claim that it was Mozart who “defined and established what we mean by drama in music”
or that in Figaro he was the first to create “complete, living operatic characters” is surely as wide of
the mark as the incorrect statement that the flying machines, swift transformations and so on introduced by Schikaneder at
his Theater auf der Wieden were novelties. Such spectacular scenic effects were an established part of dramatic presentations
even before the advent of opera nearly 200 years earlier. Notwithstanding such small caveats, this is a joy of a book that demands a place on the ever-burgeoning shelves of all Mozartians. Elegantly and concisely written - never a danger of “too many words, my dear Cairns”- it is also admirably up to date, with a bibliography that includes the late Stanley Sadie’s superb Mozart: The Early Years 1756-1781(2006). The only bugbear is the old one of endnotes (confusingly arranged by page rather than by number) rather than infinitely preferable footnotes. Lastly, I cannot resist quoting Cairns’s eloquent and moving final words. Having spoken of unsuccessful periodic attempts to identify Mozart’s skull, Cairns concludes: “What is important, perennially, is not the skull but what was inside it, which lives on in the minds and hearts of unnumbered thousands for whom it is a reason for being alive.”
This review was originally published in Fanfare
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