Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination: Interpreting Historicism in Nineteenth-Century Music (Musical Performance and Reception)

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PALESTRINA AND THE GERMAN ROMANTIC IMAGINATION Focusing on the reception of Palestrina, this bold interdisciplinary study explains how and why the works of a sixteenth-century composer came to be viewed as a paradigm for modern church music. It explores the diverse ways in which later composers responded to his works and style, and expounds a provocative new model for interpreting compositional historicism. In addition to presenting insights into the works of Bruckner, Mendelssohn and Liszt, the book offers new perspectives on the institutional, aesthetic and ideological frameworks sustaining the cultivation of choral music in this period. This is the first modern publication to provide an overview and analysis of the relation between the Palestrina revival and nineteenth-century composition, and it demonstrates that the Palestrina revival was just as significant for nineteenth-century culture as parallel movements in the other arts, such as the Gothic revival. J A M E S G A R R A T T is a lecturer in music at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, specializing in nineteenth-century German music, aesthetics and culture. He is also active as a choral conductor.

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General editors: John Butt and Laurence Dreyfus This series has as its centres of interest the history of performance and the history of instruments. It includes annotated translations of authentic historical texts on music and monographs on various aspects of historical performance and instrument history. Recent titles John Butt Bach Interpretation: Articulation Marks in the Sources of J. S. Bach Nicholas Thistlethwaite The Making of the Victorian Organ Christopher Page (trans. and ed.) Summa musice: A Thirteenth-Century Manual for Singers Ardal Powell (trans. and ed.) The Virtuoso Flute Player by Johann George Tromlitz Beth Bullard (trans. and ed.) Musica getutscht: A Treatise on Musical Instruments by Sebastian Virdung David Rowland A History of Pianoforte Pedalling John Butt Music Education and the Art of Performance in the German Baroque Rebecca Harris Warrick and Carol Marsh Musical Theatre at the Court of Louis XIV Le Mariage de la Grosse Cathos Julianne C. Baird (trans. and ed.) Introduction to the Art of Singing by Johann Friedrich Agricola Valerie Walden One Hundred Years of Violoncello A History of Technique and Performance Practice, – Bernard Brauchli The Clavichord Suzanne J. Beicken (trans. and ed.) Vocal Performance and Ornamentation by Johann Adam Hiller Hugh Macdonald (trans. and ed.) Berlioz’s Orchestration Treatise

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE AND RECEPTION

General editors John Butt and Laurence Dreyfus

This series continues the aim of Cambridge Musical Texts and Monographs to publish books centred on the history of musical instruments and the history of performance, while broadening the focus to include musical reception in relation to performance and as a reflection of period expectations and practices. Published titles John Butt Playing with History: The Historical Approach to Musical Performance James Garratt Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination: Interpreting Historicism in Nineteenth-Century Music

PALESTRINA AND THE GERMAN ROMANTIC IMAGINATION Interpreting Historicism in Nineteenth-Century Music

JAMES GARRATT

          The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom    The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © James Garratt 2004 First published in printed format 2002 ISBN 0-511-02917-9 eBook (Adobe Reader) ISBN 0-521-80737-9 hardback

To my parents

Contents

page xi xiii

Acknowledgements List of abbreviations



Introduction  Historicism in nineteenth-century art, aesthetics and culture Originality: consensus or controversy? ‘On the benefit and detriment of history’ Hegel, historicism and the ‘Decay and disintegration of Art’

 Romanticism and the problem of church music Hoffmann and the Romantic idealization of Palestrina Palestrina and the Romantic new mythology Palestrina and absolute vocal music Palestrina and the modern composer

 The Protestant Palestrina revival Old Italian music, Bildung and the German Singvereine Quasi-liturgical music: Spohr and Nicolai Mendelssohn and the Berlin Palestrina revival Winterfeld and the historical Palestrina Broader trends in performance and composition Palestrina and the primacy of vocal music

 The Catholic Palestrina revival Tradition and reform Witt and the Allgemeine Deutsche C¨acilien-Verein Broader trends in composition: Palestrinianism Completing Palestrina: Haberl, Haller and the Gesamtausgabe Liturgical function and aesthetic value Liszt, Bruckner and the Palestrina revival

ix

                      

x

Contents

 Palestrina in the concert hall Palestrina in secular and non-liturgical music Wagner’s ‘Stabat mater’ and the poetics of arrangement Liszt, Wagner and allusion

   

 Interpreting the secondary discourse of nineteenth-century music



Notes Bibliography Index

  

Acknowledgements

The Palestrina revival has been at the centre of my concerns for the best part of a decade, and with this book I take leave – at least provisionally – of this fascinating and extraordinarily rich topic. I would like to thank everyone whose help and encouragement have sustained my work in this field. I first began exploring the Palestrina revival via an undergraduate dissertation on the church music of Liszt and Bruckner (the sole copy of which, thankfully, is in my possession), and must thank Roger Parker, John Warrack and Susan Wollenberg for stimulating my interest in this topic. Then, having moved from Oxford to the University of Wales Cardiff, I wrote my Ph.D. thesis under the title of the present book; my research would not have been possible without the financial support of a Research Studentship from Cardiff University. I am very grateful to everyone at Cardiff who gave advice and support, including Kenneth Gloag, Natasha Page, Robin Stowell, Stephen Walsh, Peter Williams and especially my doctoral supervisor, David Wyn Jones. Although based on my Ph.D. dissertation, this book represents a substantial reworking of my initial ideas; I have also drawn on my more recent work on historiography and performance practice. Some of the new material has appeared in other publications: portions of chapters  and  were first published in my ‘Mendelssohn’s Babel: Romanticism and the Poetics of Translation’, Music and Letters  (), –; portions of chapters  and  appeared in a different form in ‘Prophets Looking Backwards: German Romantic Historicism and the Representation of Renaissance Music’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association  (), – ; and various passages of the book (in the age of ‘copy and paste’, it is hard to be more specific) have appeared in ‘Performing Renaissance Church Music in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Issues and Challenges in the Study of Performative Reception’, Music and Letters  (), –. I am grateful to the St¨adelsches Kunstinstitut und St¨adtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main, for permission to reproduce Philipp Veit’s xi

xii

Acknowledgements

Die Einf¨uhrung der K¨unste in Deutschland durch das Christenthum (left panel: Italia) as the jacket illustration. This idealized representation of Italy (by an artist related to two of the protagonists in the book, Felix Mendelssohn and Friedrich Schlegel), provides a rich and inspiring metaphor for the present topic. It was John Butt who suggested that I reshape my dissertation into a book, and I am very grateful to him and to Penny Souster for the enthusiasm with which they have pursued this project. I must also thank my colleagues at the National University of Ireland Maynooth for their advice and assistance, especially Barra Boydell, Patrick Devine and Gerard Gillen; in addition, I acknowledge with gratitude the work of all the librarians who have facilitated my research, especially the staff of the Music Department Resource Centre at Cardiff and of the Russell and John Paul II libraries at Maynooth. Most of all, I wish to thank Sin´ead Dempsey, who not only typeset the music examples at the very last minute, but who – in its final stages – tolerated the book’s inexorable encroachment into what seemed like every minute of our lives.

Abbreviations

AmZ BR

CK CU

CVC

DC DC

DC

FB HA¨ HSA

Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung Atti del secondo convegno internazionale di studi Palestriniani: Palestrina e la sua presenza nella musica e nella cultura europea dal suo tempo ad oggi (Palestrina, ), ed. Lino Bianchi and Giancarlo Rostirolla, Palestrina, . Caecilien Kalender Der Caecilianismus: Anf¨ange – Grundlagen – Wirkungen. Internationales Symposium zur Kirchenmusik des . Jahrhunderts, ed. Hubert Unverricht, Tutzing, , Eichst¨atter Abhandlungen zur Musikwissenschaft . Vereins-Catalog. (Begonnen .) Die von dem Referentencollegium des C¨acilien-Vereines f¨ur alle L¨ander deutscher Zunge in den ‘Vereins-Catalog’ aufgenommenen kirchenmusikalischen oder auf Kirchenmusik bez¨uglichen Werke enthaltend. (Supplement to FB.) Franz Xaver Witt, Reden an den C¨acilien-Verein, ed. Christoph Lickleder, Regensburg, , Documenta Caeciliana . Franz Xaver Witt, Das kgl. bayerische Cultus-Ministerium, die bayerische Abgeordneten-Kammer und der C¨acilien-Verein. . Abtheilung, ed. Christoph Lickleder, Regensburg, , Documenta Caeciliana . Christoph Lickleder, Choral und figurierte Kirchenmusik in der Sicht Franz Xaver Witts anhand der ‘Fliegenden Bl¨atter’ und der ‘Musica sacra’, Regensburg, , Documenta Caeciliana . Fliegende Bl¨atter f u¨ r katholische Kirchen-Musik ¨ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Asthetik, ed. Friedrich Bassenge,  vols., nd edn, Berlin and Weimar, . Heinrich Heine S¨akularausgabe, ed. Fritz Mende et al.,  vols., Berlin and Paris, – .

xiii

xiv HSW

HW

KFSA KJb MGG MGG

MS NG PGA

PK

PK

POC RW

ZkK

List of abbreviations Johann Gottfried Herder, S¨amtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan,  vols., Berlin, –; repr. Hildesheim, –. Die Ausbreitung des Historismus u¨ ber die Musik: Aufs¨atze und Diskussionen, ed. Walter Wiora, Regensburg, , Studien zur Musikgeschichte des . Jahrhunderts . Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, ed. Ernst Behler et al.,  vols., Munich, – . Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Allgemeine Enzyklop¨adie der Musik, ed. Friedrich Blume, Kassel, –, –. Die Musik im Geschichte und Gegenwart. Allgemeine Enzyklop¨adie der Musik begr¨undet von Friedrich Blume, nd edn, ed. Ludwig Finscher, Kassel and Stuttgart, – . Musica sacra. Beitr¨age zur Reform und F¨orderung der katholischen Kirchen-Musik The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,  vols., ed. Stanley Sadie, London, . Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrinas Werke. Erste kritisch durchgesehene Gesammtausgabe, ed. Franz Xaver Haberl et al.,  vols., Leipzig, –. Palestrina und die Kirchenmusik im . Jahrhundert, vol. I: Palestrina und die Idee der klassischen Vokalpolyphonie im . Jahrhundert: zur Geschichte eines kirchenmusikalischen Stilideals. Bericht u¨ ber ein Symposion in Frankfurt am Main, ed. Winfried Kirsch, Regensburg, . Palestrina und die Kirchenmusik im . Jahrhundert, vol. III: Palestrina und die klassische Vokalpolyphonie als Vorbild kirchenmusikalischer Kompositionen im . Jahrhundert, ed. Martina Janitzek and Winfried Kirsch, Kassel, . Le opere complete di Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, ed. Raffaele Casimiri et al., Rome, –, – . Religi¨ose Musik in nicht-liturgischen Werken von Beethoven bis Reger, ed. Walter Wiora, Regensburg, , Studien zur Musikgeschichte des . Jahrhunderts . Zeitschrift f¨ur katholische Kirchenmusik

Introduction

This study explores historicism in nineteenth-century German music, focusing on the reception of Renaissance church music, in particular the works of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. –). It explains how and why the works of a sixteenth-century composer came to be viewed as the paradigm of church music, assessing and interpreting the relationship between the idealization of his style and contemporary composition. The approach taken is threefold in nature. First, it confronts and offers solutions to an aesthetic problem, establishing why nineteenth-century composers sought to relate their works to the music of Palestrina and how they were able to justify such relationships in the face of Romantic postulates of originality, authenticity and contemporaneity in the artwork. Second, it addresses a historical problem, examining the complex differing natures of the Protestant and Catholic Palestrina revivals, and comparing the compositional responses to Palestrina by north German Protestants and south German Catholics. Third, it addresses a theoretical problem, exploring how relationships to earlier musical styles and materials in nineteenth-century compositions can best be discussed and understood, proposing a new model for interpreting compositional historicism. The Palestrina revival – a phrase used throughout the study to indicate both the reawakening of interest in Palestrina’s music and its emulation by nineteenth-century composers – has not been entirely neglected by modern musicology. Even so, outside Germany and Austria this topic has had a marginal role within musical scholarship: it has often been treated as an esoteric oddity, merely an episode in the epic tale of the decline and fall of church music, of little or no relevance to the mainstream of nineteenth-century music or modern musicology (the sole contact that many anglophone readers will have had with the issues raised by the Palestrina revival is through occasional, gnomic remarks in the translated works of Carl Dahlhaus). In recent years, however, German 



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

and Austrian scholars have devoted increasing attention to aspects of the Palestrina revival: in particular, two collections of papers edited by Winfried Kirsch have provided much information on the critical reception of Palestrina’s works in Germany, the liturgical backgrounds to the Palestrina revival and the relation between it and the works of individual composers (especially those associated with the Catholic revival in Bavaria), while Peter L¨uttig has explored the role of the Palestrina style in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century counterpoint treatises. The present study builds on and challenges ideas that have emerged in recent German studies: in particular, the three problems outlined above represent a response to what is absent or underdeveloped in previous discussions of the topic. It is the first modern publication to provide an overview and interpretation of the relation between the Palestrina revival and nineteenth-century composition, and aims to establish the importance of this topic to the wider field of nineteenth-century music, thought and culture; in short, I hope to demonstrate that the Palestrina revival was just as significant as parallel trends in the other arts, most notably the Gothic revival and the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The picture that emerges is complicated and multifaceted, a complexity that stands in a paradoxical relationship with the self-conscious simplicity of much of the music examined. Such contradictions, however, are fundamental to the Palestrina revival and to nineteenth-century church music in general. Of crucial importance in discussing the relation between Palestrina and nineteenth-century music – both in terms of establishing the intentions of composers who engaged with the ideal that Palestrina represented and in interpreting their works – is disentangling the meanings and associations of the term Palestrina-Stil. My concern is primarily with relationships to the style of Palestrina as evinced in his works, with nineteenth-century perceptions of that style and with the compositional reception of specific Renaissance pieces, not with the use of the abstract and supposedly timeless rules of the ‘Palestrina style’. The employment of such universal laws of composition is discussed here only in so far as they were conceived as an accompaniment to and means of more accurately replicating the style of Palestrina and his contemporaries. A central problem in previous discussions of this topic is that the distinction between Palestrina’s style and the ‘Palestrina style’ is even less easily apprehended in German than in English. While the English phrase ‘Palestrina style’ generally refers to the body of contrapuntal techniques that became, in part through the mediation of Johann Joseph Fux (–), a timeless corpus of rules applicable within a variety of styles, the term Palestrina-Stil

Introduction



can refer in nineteenth-century and more recent usage to a wider range of idioms: (i) The style of Palestrina as evinced in his works. (ii) The style of Palestrina and his Roman contemporaries (from now on, for the sake of clarity, ‘Palestrina’s language’), or of late sixteenthcentury choral music in general. (iii) The language of Palestrina’s Roman successors or ‘school’, in particular Felice Anerio (c. –), Giovanni Francesco Anerio (c. –), Francesco Soriano (c. –) and Gregorio Allegri (–). (iv) The Palestrina tradition, the continuation in Italy of stile antico composition as an alternative liturgical idiom throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (v) The strenge Satz (‘strict style’) of counterpoint outlined in Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum () and subsequent treatises. (vi) The stylus a capella described in Fux’s Gradus, the combination of components of the strenge Satz with later musical elements that remained in use in south Germany and Austria well into the nineteenth century. In exploring the relationships between Palestrina and nineteenth-century compositions, it is vital that these categories be differentiated, since they have very different aesthetic implications. It will become clear not only that these distinctions are ignored in some critical discussions, but that some nineteenth-century composers relied on this ambiguity as a means of justifying their cultivation of Palestrina’s language. An appreciation of these distinctions is essential in discussing the aesthetic problems raised by nineteenth-century church music: crucially, the question of how composers were able to reconcile the cultivation of Palestrina’s language with contemporary aesthetic norms. An adherence to the rules of the strenge Satz need not, of course, result in the imperatives of originality, authenticity and contemporaneity being contravened; similarly, the perpetuation of the Fuxian stylus a capella does not suggest the intention to replicate or even emulate Palestrina. But the presence of compositions that were intended to replicate Palestrina’s language demands that the aesthetic frameworks underpinning them be scrutinized. It cannot be assumed that such compositions were somehow exempted from these imperatives, that church music was not subject to aesthetic criteria operative in other fields. In addition, the notion that such replication was justified by a continued adherence to otherwise outmoded aesthetic conceptions – eighteenth-century doctrines of imitation – does



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

not provide a plausible explanation of the compositions of the Palestrina revival. Chapter  provides a broad-based introduction to nineteenth-century historicism and to the ideational foundations underpinning the critical, historiographical and compositional reception of early music. In idealizing Palestrina and elevating his works as a model for modern church music, critics and musicians deployed a complex range of ideas derived from many extra-musical sources. As a consequence, it is vital to locate compositional historicism within broader artistic trends. While in Chapter  the relationship between the historicism and originality in nineteenth-century art is explored in general terms, the ideas discussed here are applied more directly to the Palestrina revival in Chapter , via an examination of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s essay ‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’. The purpose here is not to treat the essay to a minute exegesis, but rather to use it as a point of access to the views of the wider body of writers who contributed to the idealization of Palestrina. Hoffmann’s complex answer to the question of how modern composers should respond to this model provides a point of entry to the diverse types of compositional response examined subsequently. The second problem outlined above concerns the differing natures of the Protestant and Catholic Palestrina revivals. Hitherto, the majority of discussions of this topic have approached it via the works of a single composer, or by concentrating solely on the Catholic Palestrina revival. Neither approach is capable of doing justice to the complexities of the phenomenon as a whole: any attempt to interpret the ramifications of the idealization of Palestrina for nineteenth-century music must take into account the activities of both Protestant and Catholic composers, since to fail to do this would result in a distorted picture of the revival. At the opposite extreme, to attempt to provide an exhaustive historical survey of the revival in Germany and Austria would run the risk, given its widely pervasive nature, of becoming drowned in minutiae of little interest to the non-specialist. In striving to provide a more balanced approach, this study does not attempt to present an encyclopaedic survey of the revival in Germany and Austria, or undertake thoroughgoing comparisons with similar trends elsewhere in Europe (most notably in France and Italy). Rather, it focuses on the high points of the Protestant and Catholic revivals: in north Germany, primarily Berlin, from the mid-s to the mid-s; and in south Germany and Austria, primarily Regensburg, from c.  to c. . Further, since it is impossible to explore the relevant works of all composers active within these periods,

Introduction



the discussions focus primarily on Protestant composers associated with the Berlin Domchor and Singakademie (especially Mendelssohn, Nicolai, Grell and Bellermann), and Catholics associated with the Allgemeine Deutsche C¨acilien-Verein in south Germany and Austria (especially Witt, Haller, Liszt and Bruckner). With regard to genre, the liturgical music discussed is in general restricted to motets and other single-movement compositions. For both Catholic and Protestant musicians, the replication or emulation of Palestrina was, in part, associated with specific seasons of the church year; since motet texts are explicitly linked with particular seasons and feasts they provide a means of establishing whether, within one centre or composer’s output, the cultivation of Palestrina was universal or seasonally restricted. Furthermore, it is in such pieces that the tension between aesthetic and functional imperatives fundamental to the Palestrina revival is most pronounced. Although the two central chapters are devoted primarily to examining and comparing compositional responses to Palestrina, and to exploring how individual composers justified the use of earlier artistic materials, the broader implications of these works are also discussed. Each subsection introduces either an issue that was crucial in encouraging compositional historicism, or one of the features that distinguishes the Palestrina revival from similar contemporary movements, or a problematic factor characterizing the reception of Renaissance music. The Palestrina revival touches on a huge range of aesthetic, historical and theoretical issues: the problems surrounding music and moral education, objective versus subjective historicism, music and politics, value judgement, the sublime, the process of secularization in nineteenth-century society, and many others. It should be borne in mind that the discussions of these topics approach them from the perspective of compositional historicism, and are not intended as comprehensive interpretations of these wider issues in and of themselves. Chapter  explores the institutional and ideological frameworks sustaining the Protestant Palestrina revival. In addition to discussing how the ethical concerns of the north German choral societies encouraged composers to disregard aesthetic criteria, it explores the importance of quasi-liturgical music as a vehicle for the emulation of Palestrina, exemplified in the works of Nicolai and Spohr. At the heart of this chapter is an exploration of Mendelssohn’s engagement with old Italian music; his output serves to epitomize the aesthetic and stylistic tensions present in church music from the first half of the nineteenth century, and illustrates how composers and their critics wrestled with the problem of authenticity.



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

In the s and s, perceptions of Palestrina’s language gradually changed as a result of the proliferation of editions of Renaissance music, while ideological factors encouraged Protestant reformers to shift their attention to German music of the Reformation era. These developments are explored through a consideration of the views of the historian Carl von Winterfeld and through a survey of the repertory of the Berlin Domchor. Finally, this chapter discusses how the emulation of Palestrina was stimulated by the rejection of aesthetic norms: the activities of Grell and Bellermann represent a counter not only to the idea of absolute music, but to aesthetic autonomy. Chapter  explores the diverse ideological, liturgical and aesthetic factors animating the Catholic Palestrina revival. In contrast to the historicist revival of Renaissance music in north Germany, the activities of south German musicians exhibit a tension between tradition and reform: in the first half of the century, the revival and emulation of Palestrina coexisted with the perpetuation of the Fuxian stylus a capella. The central focus is the work of the Allgemeine Deutsche C¨acilien-Verein, the most influential nineteenth-century movement for church music reform. In addition to examining the compositions and polemical writings of its first president, Franz Xaver Witt, the tensions within this organization are discussed: of particular interest are the views of those, such as Haller, who advocated the literal replication of Palestrina’s language. The chapter culminates with a discussion of the wider influence of the movement, examining the relation between the most significant composers of Catholic church music – Liszt and Bruckner – and the Palestrina revival. While Chapters  and  are concerned solely with liturgical and quasiliturgical music, the wider ramifications of the idealization of Palestrina for nineteenth-century composition are discussed in Chapter . Here, the problems involved in interpreting references to Palestrina’s music or language in secular and non-liturgical religious works are discussed. In addition to delineating the specific associations that such references can access, works by Mendelssohn, Loewe, Liszt and Wagner serve as test cases for exploring their function and significance. The third problem addressed – how relationships to Palestrina’s language in nineteenth-century compositions can fruitfully be interpreted – is discussed empirically throughout the study, and a framework for exploring such relationships is formulated in the final chapter. It will become apparent that the traditional concepts with which this topic is discussed, imitation and historicism, prove inadequate for understanding the complex varieties of stylistic pluralism that are encountered. On the

Introduction



other hand, while critical interpretations of this repertory need not be wholly couched around the intentions of the composers concerned, to ignore the historical and aesthetic context of the works by approaching them via critical ideas conceived around later music or other art forms will not prove satisfactory either. Kevin Korsyn, for example, has approached the music of Brahms from such a perspective: ‘What appears modern – or rather postmodern – in Brahms is his recruitment of a plurality of musical languages. By mobilising a number of historically differentiated discourses, Brahms becomes “both the historian and the agent of his own language”. Thus he knew the very modern anxiety . . . of having to choose an orientation among languages.’ In Korsyn’s analysis, Brahms’s compositional confrontation with earlier musical languages is an act of clairvoyance, a sign of ‘the extent to which Romanticism anticipated our problems’. But viewing concern with and employment of historical discourses as something peculiar to modernism downplays the importance, even centrality, of stylistic pluralism to Romanticism, a phenomenon clearly apparent in the repertory discussed here. While it could well be argued that one justification for studying how nineteenthcentury composers were able to use the music of the past and reconcile themselves with such use is its relevance to the issues and problems of our postmodern age, it will become clear that the reverse is not necessarily the case. The stylistic pluralism in the works examined is the product of the specific context under discussion; this cannot be disregarded in interpreting this repertory. Finally, it is necessary to justify the central premiss behind this study: the conviction that studying the relation between sixteenth- and nineteenth-century music can contribute significantly to our understanding of both. This is not the place for a thoroughgoing discussion of the aesthetics of reception or of competing reception theories; it would, however, invite misunderstanding if some fundamental issues are not rendered explicit. The main justification for discussing the engagement of one group of musicians with another is, as with any study of such distant or remote reception, the light that it sheds on the recipient. Accordingly, it will be evident that this study is intended primarily as a contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century music, aesthetics and culture. But a further crucial task for reception history is its potential for mediating between past and present perceptions of a body of art; that is, its use as a means of understanding present-day conceptions and interrogating their foundations. Indeed, any discussion of the analytical, critical or historiographical reception of Renaissance and Baroque compositions

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

will broach matters fundamental to how we discuss them today. In addition to acknowledging the potential of reception studies as a means of redefining the relation between nineteenth-century and modern conceptions, it is vital to recognize the extent to which these matters impinge on our perceptions of Palestrina, his works and his place in history. It is often still contended that the reception of sixteenth-, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century compositions in the nineteenth century need bear no relation to our engagement with this music: that it is the task of the music historian to strip away the distortions and misconceptions accrued in the course of history. But instead of viewing these successive responses to Palestrina and his music as redundant detritus, to be stripped away in order to access original truths, we should recognize that his cultural significance and the meanings of his works subsist in a dynamic interplay between past and present. We should recognize – following Hegel’s dictum that ‘every work of art is a dialogue with all who confront it’ – that these successive responses ineluctably constitute part of the essence of his music.

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Historicism in nineteenth-century art, aesthetics and culture

ORIGINALITY: CONSENSUS OR CONTROVERSY?

The relation between nineteenth-century compositions and Palestrina’s music presents an intractable aesthetic problem: how were composers and their audiences able to reconcile the compositional use of the music of the past with the Romantic imperatives of originality, authenticity and contemporaneity? This discussion approaches the wide range of relationships to Palestrina that are distinguished in the rest of the study in more general terms: here, the implications of such relationships for these three postulates – and thus for aesthetic value – are more important than their specific configurations. But, given the existence of compositions whose totality is defined by their relation to Palestrina’s language, it is necessary to explore contemporary aesthetic frameworks which not only justify the partial or transformed use of historical styles in modern art, but also legitimize or condone the literal replication of an earlier style. While the composers discussed in later chapters justified their engagement with the music of the distant past in a variety of ways, one factor is constant: they conceived the problem of compositional historicism not in isolation, but in the context of broader artistic trends. Accordingly, in exploring how art historians, critics and philosophers confronted artistic historicism, the aim is not to construct a spurious Zeitgeist as a background to contemporary musical activities. Rather, it is to seek provisional solutions to this aesthetic problem from a wide range of sources, solutions which will be refined subsequently in relation to specifically musical debates. The centrality of the concept of originality to post-Enlightenment aesthetics is indisputable. This concept – uniting the categories of individuality, novelty and spontaneity – stands diametrically opposed to imitation and copying: the artist is permitted to learn from, and to be inspired by the works of the past ‘by a sort of noble contagion’, but must avoid at all costs any kind of ‘sordid theft’. In describing the 

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status of originality in Romanticism, Leonard B. Meyer comments that ‘geniuses are natural innovators (the “Walters”, not the “Beckmessers”, of the world). And this innate proclivity was encouraged by an ideology that not only placed a premium on originality and change, but highly prized individual expression.’ But to speak of a Romantic ideology of originality is misleading, if it implies that all contemporary writers, artists and composers subscribed to a monolithic and unquestioned doctrine. In early nineteenth-century Germany, conceptions of originality were the subject of debate rather than consensus. The ideas of Schopenhauer and Goethe represent two different stances regarding originality, and a consideration of their views not only reveals the wide divergence of these opinions but clarifies the issues involved. Schopenhauer emphasizes the difference between the genius who, although steeped in tradition is cut off from the world and creates the original, and the imitator, who – being dependent on the achievements of others rather than his own instincts – lifts elements of previous works whole, producing nothing more than collections of undigested material. The genius, in the moment of inspiration, is able to surrender himself to the representation of the archetypal forms of nature, becoming ‘the clear mirror of the inner nature of the world’. In contrast, the artist not possessing the gift of genius can only represent what he has earlier experienced in concrete form, in nature or in art. For Schopenhauer, there is seemingly no middle ground between originality and imitation; artists lacking the inspiration and spontaneity of genius inevitably produce reflective, contrived fabrications: Imitators, mannerists, imitatores, servum pecus [imitators, the slavish mob] . . . note what pleases and affects in genuine works, make this clear to themselves, fix it in the concept, and hence in the abstract, and then imitate it, openly or in disguise, with skill and intention. Like parasitic plants, they suck their nourishment from the works of others; and like polyps, take on the colour of their nourishment. Indeed, we could even carry the comparison farther, and assert that they are like machines which mince very fine and mix up what is put into them, but can never digest it, so that the constituent elements of others can always be found again, and picked out and separated from the mixture. Only the genius, on the other hand, is like the organic body that assimilates, transforms and produces.

Schopenhauer’s conception of originality, while influential and indicative of the changing status of the artwork in the early nineteenth century, was not shared by all his contemporaries. Goethe repeatedly dismissed the idea of originality, arguing that no artist could rely solely on instinct and inspiration: ‘Even the greatest genius would not get far if he wanted

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to owe everything to his innermost self.’ The idea that the artist can divorce himself from other artworks and produce a work unconsciously from the gift of genius is absurd, and ‘so-called creation out-of-oneself ’ (Aus-sich-Sch¨opfen) produces merely ‘false originals and mannerists’. Rather, every artist is a composite being indebted to a multiplicity of sources, and greatness can proceed only from the ‘appropriation of other people’s treasures’ (Aneignung fremder Sch¨atze). The inevitability of the author being influenced by his predecessors makes it ridiculous for critics to attempt to discredit him by criticizing his dependence on their works: ‘It is truly ridiculous’, said Goethe; ‘people might just as well ask a well-fed man about the beef, mutton and pork which he ate and which gave him strength. We probably have our own talents, but we owe our development to a thousand effects of a great world upon us, from which we pick up what we can and what suits us . . .’. ‘Anyway’, continued Goethe, ‘the world is now so old, and so many significant men have for thousands of years lived and thought, that little new can be found and said anymore.’

The gulf separating Goethe and Schopenhauer, both of whom expressed these opinions at roughly the same time, is sufficient to confirm that no unified conception of originality existed in the early nineteenth century. Further, the complex ways in which such views will be seen to interact reflects not merely two coexisting mentalities (it would be illusory to label these positions ‘Classical’ and ‘Romantic’), but a plethora of competing ideologies. From the perspective of the compositional emulation of Palestrina, it will become clear that commentators on church music frequently echoed Goethe’s equation of originality with mere novelty and mannerism, a gambit that served to buttress the conviction that it was subservient to other concerns. But if the concept of originality could thus be diluted and disregarded, the allied imperatives of authenticity and contemporaneity could not be dismissed so readily. In discussing originality, both Goethe and Schopenhauer formulate their ideas around adjacent authors and works: they do not distinguish between, on the one hand, the relation between an author and his contemporaries or immediate precursors, and on the other cases where the texts involved are not chronologically immediate or where the earlier author has had no significant prior relation to the cultural milieu of the later one. But while such a distinction is seemingly not important to the concept of originality, the ‘warping’ of history represented by relationships between nineteenth-century works and the art of the distant past raises

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its own aesthetic problems. Such relationships risk contravening imperatives which, although often formulated in nebulous terms, were of crucial importance throughout the nineteenth century: the demand that, to be of value, a work must be the authentic expression of its author’s convictions and of the world-view of his age, an authenticity that must be reflected in the contemporaneity of its forms. It is necessary, therefore, to explore how authors articulated these criteria in discussing the engagement of modern artists with the art of the past, and to establish the margins within which such relationships could be legitimized. ‘ON

THE BENEFIT AND DETRIMENT OF HISTORY’

The relation between nineteenth-century compositions and the music of the distant past cannot be considered in isolation from the rise in historical consciousness at the beginning of the century and its subsequent development. In a provocative interpretation of this paradigm shift, Michel Foucault argues that as a result of the new awareness of the historicity of language, objects and man himself, Western civilization was ‘dehistoricized’; a hitherto uniform and essentially unchanging inheritance shattered into a thousand alien pasts; artefacts came to symbolize fragmentation and transience rather than unity and permanence. History becomes a strategy of retrieval and repossession: the cherishing of objects from the past represents an attempted return to origins, an endeavour to deny the pastness of the past by asserting the pastness of the present. Both nineteenth-century and modern commentators have often approached the development of this new historical consciousness – the rise of historicism – by dividing it into two interacting strands, a method that provides a useful provisional strategy for interpreting the complex and seemingly contradictory nature of the relationships between Romanticism and the art of the distant past. These two strands have been characterized by Walter Wiora as retrospective and relativistic historicism: on the one hand, ‘increased devotion to earlier times and their gifts to posterity, for example, the cultivation and copying of varied styles of old music’ and, on the other hand, the belief that all phenomena are essentially historical and determined by the circumstances in which they arose. Similarly, Stephen Bann contrasts the subjective ‘desire for history’ that retrospective historicism represents with the development of a more objectified, relativistic historical consciousness that emerged at the same time. The tension between these two positions is clear:

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while objective historiography sought to represent ‘how it really was’, it neglected the demands of those whose prime concern was to use the past as a guide to ‘how it really should be’. It will become evident that this opposition was a decisive element within Romantic representations of Palestrina, in that the desire for a malleable myth and source for compositional renewal interacted uneasily with the impulse towards the faithful representation of the past. The relation between these two forms of historicism was addressed by the music historian Philipp Spitta and, more famously, by Nietzsche. Spitta’s analysis, in ‘Kunstwissenschaft und Kunst’ (), seeks sharply to distinguish the academic treatment of history from other approaches to the past, and to disentangle the history of art from contemporary artistic concerns. Spitta insists that the value of historical scholarship is not dependent on its potential for reforming contemporary art: the historian’s task is to seek after truth through the piecemeal reconstruction of the past, and it is an abuse of history when ‘historical points of view are elevated and are supposed to serve as criteria for judgement, where only aesthetic criteria have legitimacy’. While he acknowledges that a crucial part of the historian’s role is the recovery of old artworks for the present, the scholar must not attempt to dictate present-day artistic practices through recourse to history: ‘Rules which were authoritative in the past are not as a consequence still important for the future. The oftused phrase “the historian is a prophet looking backwards” [ein r¨uckw¨arts gewandter Prophet] is a dangerous half-truth.’ The most compelling nineteenth-century analysis of the relation between these forms of historicism, that of Nietzsche, presents a wholly different perspective. In Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie f u¨ r das Leben () he depicts subjective historicism as being of benefit to modern life if not depended on excessively, while it is objective historicism, the treatment of history as a quasi-scientific intellectual pursuit, that is the deviant, detrimental offshoot from true historical perception. Nietzsche describes the burden that the historical orientation of his and the preceding two generations has placed on modern life and creativity; this is the result of the failure to use history as a means of serving present needs: ‘Certainly we need history. But our need for history is quite different from that of the spoiled idler in the garden of knowledge, even if he in his refinement looks down on our rude and graceless requirements and needs. . . . Only so far as history serves life will we serve it.’ The subordination of history to present-day culture is impossible if history is elevated to the status of a science, since the need to maintain the dynamics of historical research

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and writing results in modern life no longer being ‘the sole ruler and master of the knowledge of the past’. Scholarly objectivity ‘neuters’ the use of history for life; Nietzsche characterizes objective historians as a ‘race of eunuchs’ guarding the ‘great historical world-harem’, whose vain pretension to being servants of truth renders them impotent in serving the present. In a typically oracular utterance, he sums up the mistaken perspective of the objective historian: ‘Overproud European of the nineteenth century, you are mad! Your knowledge does not complete nature but only kills your own. Just measure your height as a knower by your depth as a doer.’ In opposition to objective historicism, Nietzsche discusses three ways in which history may be used to enhance the understanding of the present and to serve contemporary needs: ‘it belongs to him in so far as he is active and striving, in so far as he preserves and venerates, and in so far as he suffers and is in need of liberation’. These three kinds of history – monumental, antiquarian, and critical – constitute the possible subjective relationships to the past that he perceived in contemporary life, and are capable of being both of benefit and of detriment to it. Monumental history serves the present by providing modern man with a classicizing perspective, forming a chain linking mankind’s highest cultural and artistic achievements: it provides inspiration through giving the knowledge that greatness was once possible and may be possible again. Instead of the distortion that arises through the monumental way of viewing the past, antiquarian history views all past events and artefacts as equally significant, but is concerned solely with preserving life, not with generating it. In contrast, critical history provides a means of ‘judging and annihilating a past’ in order to create a new present. While, for Nietzsche, these three perspectives combine to form a complete picture of contemporary subjective historicism, his categories, taken individually, provide valuable critical tools for assessing the impact of successive developments in German historicist thought on aesthetics and criticism. As will be shown in the next chapter, the appropriation of the ideas, constructions and terminology of earlier art and literary historiography – exemplified here by the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang Goethe and the Romantic circle – played a crucial role in facilitating and shaping the idealization of the church music of the past, and in encouraging the elevation of Palestrina. Crucially, Nietzsche’s tripartite scheme also provides a means of elucidating shifting attitudes towards both the use of historical elements in modern art and its aesthetic implications.

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Monumental history The twin strands of retrospective and relativistic historicism emerged in German art history in Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (), a work whose ideas and language, transmitted both directly and indirectly, resonate throughout nineteenth-century descriptions of Renaissance music. This study was considered in the early nineteenth century to have marked the birth of a new historical sense and outlook; Winckelmann represents ancient Greek artworks as characteristic products of their cultural context, and describes them in terms of a succession of styles rather than merely as timeless aesthetic objects. The greatest significance of Winckelmann’s work for the nineteenth century, and the factor which most clearly links him to Nietzsche’s monumental history, is his initiation of a tradition of historical writing whose primary justification was its relevance to perceived problems in contemporary art: he viewed his history as ‘no mere narration of successive periods and developments’, but rather ‘an attempt to produce a didactic system [Lehrgeb¨aude]’, a means of freeing contemporary art from the inauthentic restrictions of French neo-classicism. Winckelmann’s historical outlook reflects a critical uneasiness with his own time; he contemplates the decline of art, in a description much alluded to by the Romantics, ‘as a woman on the seashore gazes after her departing lover without hope of seeing him again; her weeping eyes follow him into the distance and believe they can see the shadow of her beloved on the sails of his ship’. By idealizing the art of ancient Greece and placing the zenith of artistic perfection in the distant past, he decisively contradicted Aufkl¨arung notions of linear artistic progress, fulfilling Nietzsche’s description of those for whom ‘monumental history is the disguise in which the hatred of the mighty and the great of their time parades as satisfied admiration of the mighty and great of past ages’. In spite of his longing for the past, Winckelmann’s history is orientated around present-day reform: as Herder saw it, his conception of ancient Greek and Renaissance art was entirely determined by the desire to awaken a new Raphael among modern German artists. For Nietzsche, the insistence of monumental historiography on elevating illustrious models as exemplars for imitation results in a distortion of the past: those portions of the past considered unworthy of modern attention are ignored or vilified, while that which remains is ‘reinterpreted according to aesthetic criteria and thus brought closer to fiction [ freien Erdichtung]’. Nietzsche considers that monumental historiography fictionalizes history

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by forcing ‘the individuality of the past into a universal form’, in which ‘all sharp corners and lines are broken off for the sake of conformity’. This notion of fictionalization provides a means of approaching two key concepts that early nineteenth-century commentators on church music appropriated from art historiography: the idea of a golden age in the distant past and the organic model of narrative construction. Winckelmann’s deployment of these concepts has a firmly didactic role; he presents a triadic historical scheme consisting of a golden age, its decline and fall, and a third stage, the hope of a future art and culture revivified through a return to earlier artistic principles. This basic scheme is underpinned by one of the most elemental modes of narrative emplotment: the organic model, the tracing of the successive stages of artistic development by analogy with the processes of organic life. For Winckelmann, a history of art should teach its origin, growth, development and fall; using this basic plan of the life cycle of an organism, he traces the successive stylistic developments of ancient Greek art. The older style lasted until Phidias: it was forceful but harsh, powerful but lacking in grace, and was hidebound by rules that distanced it from nature. Art flourished with Phidias and his contemporaries; while traits of the older style remain, the ‘great and lofty style’ is freer and more sublime. The age of Praxiteles, Lysippus and Apelles is characterized by a greater degree of gracefulness and agreeableness, but the ‘beautiful style’, maintained by their school, descended in the hands of imitators into mannerism and eclecticism, leading gradually to the fall of art. Winckelmann employs a similar emplotment in his treatment of Renaissance painting, and in so doing reveals the malleable nature of the organic model: The fate of art in more recent times is basically the same as that of antiquity with regard to periods: likewise, four chief changes occurred, but with the difference that art did not gradually decline from its peak as with the Greeks, but rather suddenly fell back again . . . as soon as it had reached the highest possible level of perfection in two great men. The style was dry and stiff up until Michelangelo and Raphael; with these two men the re-establishment of art reached its peak; following an interregnum ruled by bad taste came the style of the imitators: the Caraccis, their school, and their followers, and this extended up to Carl Maratta.

Winckelmann’s organic construction serves two purposes, both of which were crucial to nineteenth-century representations of Renaissance music. He characterizes it as a universal model for art history, an inevitable natural law whose existence may be presumed in individual cases even in the absence of evidence; it provides a means of creating a

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coherent picture in spite of ‘the shortcomings of our knowledge of ancient art’. Just as important, it serves a didactic purpose, by directing practising artists towards those beautiful monuments which are most suitable for ‘contemplation and imitation’. The artists of Winckelmann’s second golden age, the Italian Renaissance, owed their success entirely to having learned ‘good taste from its source’, and Raphael attained his high level of excellence through imitating the relics of antiquity. For Winckelmann, ‘the only way for us to become great, and even, if it is possible, inimitable, is by imitating the ancients.’ Greek artworks achieve their status as models for modern art because of their technical perfection and good taste, not primarily as a result of their venerable status as relics of a golden age; modern artists and connoisseurs must free themselves from the prejudice that the only benefit to be gained from imitating them emanates from the ‘rust of antiquity’ (den Moder der Zeit ). Winckelmann does not consider that modern painting can obtain the chief qualities of ancient Greek and Renaissance art – ‘noble simplicity’ (edle Einfalt) and ‘calm grandeur’ (stille Gr¨oße) – merely by being inspired by it or emulating its spirit; the only way to achieve these qualities is by transferring the techniques of Greek sculpture directly to modern art. It will become clear that the Romantic idealization of Palestrina was, in some ways, related to the classicizing dimension of Winckelmann’s monumental historicism, to his view that the value of ancient artworks lies not in their pastness but in the universal norms of perfection which their techniques epitomize. It should not be assumed, however, that the historical origin of Palestrina’s music and language was immaterial for their nineteenth-century revival. For Dahlhaus, ‘the Palestrina style, though historical in origin, was extrapolated from his work and placed outside history. Combining textual intelligibility, a “pure” texture, and a “seraphic tone”, it was an ideal that burst the bonds of history . . . a musical verity that would remain true regardless of when it happened to be uttered’. The problematic linguistic identity in German, discussed earlier, between the style of Palestrina as evinced in his works and the abstracted Palestrina style is readily apparent here. This identity encourages the view that the Romantic idealization of that language exclusively reflects a classicizing impulse, the honouring of universal compositional rules. It will become clear, however, that while the nineteenth-century cultivation of the Palestrina style can represent an adherence to timehonoured norms, the appeal to Palestrina’s language is a historicist ‘return to origins’. Winckelmann advocated the imitation of the Greeks as a means of revealing their true nature, which for him had been obscured

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by the prescriptions and proscriptions of neo-classical poetics. Similarly, the shift in perceptions of Palestrina in the early nineteenth century reflects the impulse to reveal the true nature of his language, as distinct from the contrapuntal abstraction of the Palestrina style codified by Fux. Winckelmann’s notion that the rejuvenation of modern art requires not merely the emulation of the spirit of Greek art but the imitation of its techniques raises problems fundamental to the Palestrina revival. This notion reflects the continued flourishing in the eighteenth century of a mimetic model of artistic production, whose tenets were justified by the belief that to imitate illustrious works of art was analogous to imitating nature. The replication of Palestrina’s language in nineteenthcentury compositions might seem initially to represent the perpetuation of this model. For Dahlhaus, church music was exempt in the nineteenth century from the aesthetic criteria applicable in other fields of composition, an exemption which granted legitimacy to imitation. The idea that imitation in liturgical compositions could be legitimized by aesthetic concepts outmoded in other fields cannot be dismissed entirely, but it will be seen that, in general, church music was not exempted from the postulate of originality by virtue of its functionality. The idea of such an exemption would have granted church music the possibility of attaining value not in aesthetic terms, but solely in relation to the success with which it fulfils its function. Not all liturgical pieces were considered to be merely functional by their composers, and even those that were regarded in this light risked being condemned by contemporaries as ‘copies’ or ‘slavish imitations’. Church music as a whole was not exempted from aesthetic criteria, and consequently the idea that the cultivation of Palestrina’s language in the nineteenth century represents a continuation of earlier mimetic conceptions is not unproblematic. Certainly, it does not suffice on its own as a means of explaining the intentions of Romantic composers whose works are related to this language. Antiquarian history The impact of Winckelmann’s organicism and embryonic relativism is evident from Goethe’s Italienische Reise: ‘Through Winckelmann we were urged to separate the various periods and to recognize the different styles used by different peoples, and to see how they gradually emerged over the course of time and finally ended in decadence.’ It was these aspects of Winckelmann’s writings, rather than his monumentalist conception of Greek art, that were most significant for eighteenth- and early

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nineteenth-century thought; they provided a means for reassessing the art of other peoples and periods, crucially the art of the Middle Ages. Herder, while acclaiming Winckelmann as ‘the best historian of ancient art’, condemned the didactic thrust of his monumental classicism; for Herder, the belief that the principles of classical art represent universal norms is wholly unjustifiable: ‘What legitimacy have the decrees of praise and rebuke which we shower on all the world as a result of being besotted with a favourite people of antiquity!’ Since Winckelmann’s eye was ‘formed by the Greeks, and his spirit filled with the Greek ideal of beauty’, he was unable to appraise the art of other nations and periods on its own terms; Herder considers such prejudices to be omnipresent in Enlightenment Germany, in that all art that fails to exhibit the Greek rules of beauty is condemned as barbaric: ‘a Greek temple must therefore for us be valued more highly than a Gothic church, Greek beauty more than Chinese beauty, Greek wisdom in literature and history more than the passionate enthusiasm [Schw¨armerei] of the Arabs’. Herder’s relativism provided a means of reassessing medieval and Renaissance art on what he saw as its own terms, rather than subjecting it to criteria derived from classical antiquity. The reappraisal of Shakespeare, for example, required the realization that the standards of classical and neo-classical drama were not universal norms, an idea whose radical novelty can be seen in Herder’s emphatic repetition: ‘In Greece drama developed in a way that it could not develop in the north. In Greece it was what it could not be in the north. In the north, therefore, it is not and should not be what it was in Greece.’ Similarly, Goethe’s ‘Von deutscher Baukunst’ (), the essay which initiated the German Gothic revival, is reliant on the emancipation of his critical perceptions from the norms of neo-classical taste. Goethe writes that on first visiting Strasbourg Minster, his head was full of ‘universal perceptions of good taste’: Under the heading Gothic, as in a dictionary entry, I had drawn together all the synonymous misunderstandings concerning the ill-defined, the disordered, unnatural, cobbled together, patched-up, and overcrowded which had ever come to my mind. With no more wisdom than a people which terms barbaric all the world that is strange to it, I termed Gothic whatever did not fit my system.

Nietzsche expressly identifies Goethe’s interest in Strasbourg Minster as an example of antiquarian history. Nietzsche’s antiquarian historian reverences the past as a means of gaining contentment with his surroundings and a sense of deep-rootedness; Goethe’s empathetic identification

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with the architect of the Minster, Erwin von Steinbach, allowed him to disregard the precepts of neo-classicism and view the architecture of the distant past as ancestral: ‘in the tempest of his [Goethe’s] emotions the historical cloud cover spread between them tore, and for the first time he saw the German work again “exerting its influence out of a strong robust German soul”.’ But while the contentment and security that antiquarian history can provide are for Nietzsche a positive service to life, antiquarianism also has negative aspects which greatly contrast it with classicizing monumentalism. While antiquarian history encourages the reappraisal of artworks, styles or periods previously viewed as primitive or barbaric, this tendency contains the danger that ‘the time will finally come when everything old and past which has not totally been lost sight of will simply be taken as equally venerable’. The promiscuous idolization of everything that is old leads to a ‘blind lust for collecting’, ‘a restless raking together of all that once has been’. Nietzsche’s diagnosis calls to mind one of the most tangible symptoms of the antiquarianism of the Goethezeit, described by Theodore Ziolkowski as the ‘museal impulse’: the desire to gather together a hoard of old cultural artefacts in a temple-like building and call the result a museum. Although the museal impulse, like Winckelmann’s monumentalism, elevates old artworks to the sphere of timelessness, their indiscriminate veneration – epitomized by the potpourri nature of the early museum – cannot provide exemplars for modern artists or encourage new composition. While Winckelmann’s monumentalism is orientated around the possibility of modern artistic renewal, antiquarianism stems from a belief in ‘the old age of mankind . . . the belief of being a latecomer and epigone’: it understands merely how to preserve the art of the distant past, not how to generate new art or to sustain its possibility. Accordingly, the antiquarianism of Goethe and Herder discourages not only the imitation of classical art, but also the idea that modern art can be renewed through recourse to old models. Herder dismissed Winckelmann’s doctrine of classical imitation as a vain delusion, considering the time of the ‘beloved sweet simplicity’ of ancient art to be irretrievably lost: ‘the dream of our memories, our histories, studies and fervent desires will not reawaken it’. While both Herder and Goethe reject Aufkl¨arung notions of artistic progress – in Herder’s phrase, the assumption that ‘human destiny is marching forward in giant steps’ – their conception of human and artistic development is nonetheless based on organic growth: ‘the tender roots full of sap, the slender flourishing shoot, the mighty trunk, the thrusting entwined boughs, the broadly

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radiating airy twigs – see how all these rest on each other and grow out of each other! . . . If all the branches and twigs wanted to be the trunk and the roots, what would become of the tree?’ For Herder, every age can touch the ‘electric chain of destiny’ at only one point; no country can ‘take a backwards step and become for a second time what it was before’. Similarly – despite condemning the ideas of originality and creation ‘out-of-oneself ’ – Goethe dismissed attempts to revive earlier styles, even if these are transformed through the addition of modern elements: ‘You choose yourselves a model and mix it with your individuality: that is all your art amounts to. No thought for any principle, schools, or successors; all is arbitrary and just as it occurs to you.’ In spite of his enthusiasm for Gothic architecture, Goethe condemned the idea that it could be imitated, believing that further historical and critical investigations would dispel the desire to copy medieval buildings; it is a false tendency to seek to bring back to life those aspects of the past that are treasured, because they developed under ‘completely different conditions’. Thus, for the antiquarian, the relativistic awareness of the different conditions under which the art of the past was produced prevents any single style being elevated as a universal ideal, or being adopted as a paradigm for modern art. Critical history While the subjective historicism of Winckelmann and of Goethe and Herder reflects, respectively, a preponderance of Nietzsche’s monumental and antiquarian histories, the historicism of the Romantic circle reveals a predominance of Nietzsche’s third category of subjective historicism: critical history. For the Romantic circle – Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Novalis and Jean Paul Richter – the revival of the art of the distant past provided a means of breaking free from more recent tradition: The genuinely new grows only from the old, Our future must be founded on the past! I shall not support the stifling present I shall bind myself to you, eternal artists.

A. W. Schlegel’s condemnation of the ‘stifling present’ reveals a critical attitude towards the artistic and intellectual legacy of the Aufkl¨arung. For Nietzsche, the modern man of action whose impulses are curbed by tradition ‘must have the strength, and use it from time to time, to

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shatter and dissolve something to enable him to live: this he achieves by dragging it to the bar of judgment, interrogating it meticulously and finally condemning it’. The judgement and conviction of the immediate past, and the use of the more distant past as an authority was not of course unprecedented before the nineteenth century. W. Jackson Bate comments in relation to English poetry of the eighteenth century that, for the artist, invoking the art of the more distant past is ‘pleasing because it is not an authority looming over you but, as something ancestral rather than parental, is remote enough to be more manageable in the quest for your own identity’. The use of the distant past, the ancestral, permits one ‘even to disparage the parent in the name of “tradition”’. But for Nietzsche, any attempt to manufacture ‘a past from which one would like to be descended in opposition to the past from which one is descended’ brings its own problems. However successfully a critical historicist is able to implant a second nature within himself and make his first nature wither away, ‘second natures are mostly feebler than the first’. In his polemical obituary for the early Romantics, Heinrich Heine emphasized the extent of their dependency on the art of the Middle Ages as a means of rejuvenating literature and turning German culture away from the French Enlightenment. He notes that the Romantics’ ideal of, in Goethe’s ironic phrase, ‘neu-deutsch-religi¨os-patriotische Kunst’ was set up in opposition to the French neo-classical tradition, being a reaction against the ‘sober imitation of ancient classical art’; the anti-French fervour of A. W. Schlegel led him to ‘conspire against Racine in the same way that Minister Stein conspired against Napoleon’. According to Heine, the Schlegel brothers viewed medieval art and culture as the only means of providing rebirth for the belated modern writer: Our poetry [Poesie] is stale, said the Schlegels, our muse is an old woman who knits, our cupid is no youthful blonde but a shrivelled dwarf with grey hair, our feelings are withered, our fantasy is spent: we must refresh ourselves, we must seek out the buried streams of naive, simple medieval poetry, since here bubbles the draught of rejuvenation . . . They plunged into this miraculous fountain and drank, slurped and guzzled with profligate greed.

Friedrich Schlegel explored the predicament of the modern artist and the role that the art of the distant past should have for modern art in his Gespr¨ach u¨ ber die Poesie (). Schlegel – or rather his character Ludoviko – comments that the modern artist lacks a firm foundation for his activity: ‘Our poetry, I assert, lacks a focal point, such as mythology was for the ancients; and one could summarize all the essentials in which modern

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poetry is inferior to the ancients in these words: we have no mythology. But, I add, we are close to obtaining one or, rather, it is time that we earnestly work together to create one.’ Modern art lacks the coherent and communal world-view that provided the basis of classical and medieval poetry, lacking its basis in religion, which should be the ‘actual soul, the kindling spark of all poetry’. In the absence of such a mythological foundation, it is impossible for art to have a content; without a relation to the infinite artworks are ‘quite simply empty and pointless’. As a consequence, such a foundation must be created synthetically, through recourse to older works and systems of belief: ‘to accelerate the genesis of the new mythology, the other mythologies must also be reawakened according to the measure of their profundity, their beauty and their form.’ Schlegel and his circle come closest to Heine’s polemical caricature in discussing how Catholic fine art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance might aid the modern painter seeking to regain such a foundation for his activities. The conception of old Italian and German painting present in the criticism of the Schlegels and Wackenroder evinces a complex combination of Winckelmann’s monumentalism and Herder’s relativism. All three authors condemn or contradict Winckelmann’s insistence that Raphael’s excellence is the result of his adherence to classical precepts: for A. W. Schlegel, ‘if one judges modern painters merely by their distance from or proximity to the ancients one will be unfair to them, as is undoubtedly true of Winckelmann with Raphael’. But while seeking to divorce Renaissance art from classical principles, they nevertheless construct golden ages according to the organic model and assert that the peaks of these periods represent a universal ideal. Schlegel’s golden age of old Italian painting presents two broad subdivisions instead of Winckelmann’s four; this scheme is also borrowed, as Schlegel reveals in commenting that Italian painting is divided into old and new schools, ‘just like Italian poetry’. Following Winckelmann’s pattern, Schlegel’s oldest style of Italian painting is characterized by ‘strict, even meagre forms in sharp outlines’ and a ‘childlike, good-natured simplicity and restrictedness’; while the strictness of the older school remains present up to Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael – alongside Titian, Correggio, Giulio Romano and Michelangelo – initiated the newer school, and thus is ultimately responsible for the ‘ruination’ (Verderben) of art. The decline of art into effect and theatricality begins with the last works of Titian, and it is doubtful whether later painters and schools have a place in the history of art. Schlegel’s construction, like Winckelmann’s, has a clear didactic

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

purpose. He shares Winckelmann’s conviction that works of art from the peak of his golden age remain a valid model for modern painting, emphasizing that only through the ‘living use of earlier achievements’ can art be rejuvenated and the abuses of the Enlightenment redressed. Schlegel’s endeavours to create firm foundations for modern painting and literature through the idealization of medieval art and, eventually, by adopting Catholicism were derided by Heine: Schlegel was ‘a prophet looking backwards [einen umgekehrten Propheten]’, who ‘regarded the agonies of our time not as the pains of rebirth but as the agonies of death, and fled from this death-angst into the tottering ruins of the Catholic church’. In Heine’s view, the enthusiasm with which Schlegel and his circle embraced medieval art not only legitimized and encouraged its imitation, but resulted in their works consisting of little else: ‘What then was the Romantic school in Germany? It was nothing other than the revival of the poetry [Poesie] of the Middle Ages, as it manifested itself in songs, sculpture and architecture, in art and life.’ According to Heine, Tieck’s novel Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen () and Wackenroder’s Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders () exhort artists not only to emulate the ‘piety and childlike quality’ of medieval poetry, but also to imitate its ‘clumsiness of technique’. Despite Heine’s remarks, the Romantic circle’s elevation of earlier art cannot be regarded as encouraging or legitimizing imitation. Friedrich Schlegel condemns imitation by linking it with mass-production: imitators are ‘strayed economists’ whose art is ‘vacuous and tradesman-like [handwerksm¨aßig]’. Similarly, A. W. Schlegel dismisses the products of imitation as ‘lifeless school exercises’ (tote Schul¨ubungen), since material appropriated from earlier art must be reborn within the artist in order for it to emerge poetically. Significantly, the Schlegels and Jean Paul focus their discussions of imitation on neo-classicism, as if imitation cannot be an issue in Romantic art. In Jean Paul’s taxonomy, imitation encompasses not only the appropriation of phrases and idioms from Greek poetry but also the attempt to emulate its simplicity and plainness. Furthermore, even unintentional dependency on earlier styles or works is equated with imitation: Jean Paul introduces the potentially useful concept of ‘reversed’ imitation to describe authors who are so deeply immersed in Greek literature that the language unconsciously shapes their German prose. Crucially, both Jean Paul and Friedrich Schlegel consider the replication of earlier works or styles not only to be illegitimate in theory but impossible in practice: even authors who attempt to replicate earlier styles

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precisely inevitably include modern elements, with the result that they produce parodies of the originals. Jean Paul considers the chief offence of the imitator to lie not in his theft of forms and material, but in his ‘reenactment – often against his will employing parody – of what is most sacred in the original, the imitation of the innate’. Similarly, for Schlegel the ‘important concepts of unintentional parody and passive wit’ can readily be seen in the imitation of classical poetry. The idea that the desire to imitate a work or style results – unintentionally – in parody brings us closer to establishing how the use of earlier materials could be justified for the Romantic circle: through the corollary that if the treatment of such materials is consciously parodic, or at least mediated by the critical reflection of the artist, it acquires legitimacy. While the imitator responds to the artworks of the past solely through objective calculation, and the ‘feminine, receptive or passive genius’ described by Jean Paul responds solely through uncritical creation, Romantic irony offers a means of response that combines subjective creation and objective reflection. The broader metaphysical and aesthetic ramifications of Romantic irony are explored later; most important here are its implications for the two central components of originality, novelty and spontaneity. While Schopenhauer’s original genius creates spontaneously and instinctively, for Friedrich Schlegel the work of genius must also be the product of reflection: ‘In every good poem everything must be intentional, and everything must be instinctive. That is how the poem becomes ideal.’ Irony is not merely the habitual self-criticism of the artist, a factor that even Schopenhauer saw as necessary to artistic production, but a mode of reflection pervading all parts of the artwork and all stages of the creative process: ‘There are ancient and modern poems that breath the godly breath of irony in their entirety and in all their parts. . . . Internally, in the mood that looks over everything and lifts itself infinitely above everything conditioned, even above its own art, virtue, and genius; externally, in performing the mimic manner of a mediocre Italian clown [Buffo].’ But while such reflection enables artists to free themselves from the contingencies of instinctual creation, Schlegel nonetheless warns against the opposite extreme of unlimited arbitrariness, ‘otherwise caprice will turn into self-destruction’; further, self-creation, the invention and enthusiasm of the artist, must attain fruition before self-restraint is applied. The knowing ironic artist produces Poesie (i.e., literature) that arbitrarily combines spontaneous, instinctual creation with critical reflection, the naive with the sentimental, the fruits of inspiration with wilful caprice:

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Intention taken to the point of irony and with the arbitrary appearance of selfdestruction is just as naive as instinct taken to the point of irony. Just as the naive plays with the contradictions of theory and practice, so the grotesque plays with strange transferences of form and material, liking the appearance of the random and bizarre and flirting with unconditional caprice.

The reflection of the ironic creator not only contravenes the postulate that originality necessitates spontaneity, but also the requirement for substantial novelty: instead of being tied to one mode of representation, form or style, the artist may juxtapose and combine a wide variety of materials. For Schlegel, modern Romantic poetry must ‘now mix and now fuse poetry and prose, genius and criticism, art poetry and folk poetry [Naturpoesie] . . . fill and saturate the forms of art with strong cultural material [Bildungsstoff ] of every kind’. The poet’s reception of the cultural products of different ages and cultures has the result that he contains within himself ‘a whole system of personas’ and can transport himself arbitrarily into a multitude of spheres: he can tune himself at will, ‘as one tunes an instrument’ to being ‘critical or poetic, historical or rhetorical, ancient or modern’. Importantly, Schlegel considers the Poesie of the reflective modern artist to consist not merely of the mixing of a variety of earlier styles and forms, but to constitute the fusion of poetry and criticism. The modern poet’s use of earlier styles and elements of earlier works is not merely the end product of critical reflection, but can itself embody an act of criticism, indeed, ‘poetry can be criticized only through poetry’. Schlegel represents Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister as the archetype of both the ironic juxtaposition of disparate materials and of Romantic Poesie functioning as a critical interpretation of an earlier work (in this case, Shakespeare’s Hamlet). The relationship between play and novel is not one of repetition but of supplementation; the poetic critic that Goethe exemplifies contemplates an earlier work of art and represents it anew: ‘he will supplement the work, rejuvenate it, and newly shape it.’ The ironic attitude of the author is what unifies his disparate materials and guarantees the originality of his work: originality resides in the author’s imagination, not in his materials. Although Schlegel’s conceptions of irony and critique are clearly related to his desire to establish new mythological foundations for art, these ideas interact problematically. The ironic adoption of earlier world-views could not adequately provide the modern artist with the firm foundation that Schlegel sought, and it will become clear that his later writings – especially those on fine art – confirm Heine’s notion of a withdrawal into the certainties of medievalism and Catholicism. Heine’s rejection of the

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Romantic circle’s engagement with the past as imitation is, in part, the result of his more radical conception of irony and critique, which will also prove important in later discussions. Although he dismissed early Romantic attempts to duplicate the simplicity of medieval Volkslieder as resembling ‘artificial spa water’ and ‘German moonshine’, he nonetheless viewed the folksong as a touchstone for modern poetry. In theory and practice, Heine advocates two ways for the modern poet to respond creatively to the medieval folksong. He praised Wilhelm M¨uller for capturing the spirit of the old song forms without imitating them, through a ‘sensible avoidance of all antiquated expressions and turns of phrase’. In addition to the avoidance of the most antiquated elements of medieval poetry, Heine also engages with it through irony, which serves as a means of asserting the impossibility of naiv poetry in the modern age. Heine’s use of an abrupt parodic twist at the conclusion of a Volkslied – the Stimmungsbrechung – effects a departure from the prevailing style and mood of the rest of the poem: ‘Heine, at first still a Romantic himself, moved away from this by affixing to all his poetry the little devil of frivolous irony which joyfully proclaims: “look how pretty this is, good people! But don’t kid yourselves that I myself believe in such stuff !” Almost every one of his beautiful poems ends with such a suicide.’ This device can be seen at the end of Wahrhaftig from the Buch der Lieder (), where the final quatrain ironically comments on the neo-medieval topics and imagery (the joys of spring, minstrels, love songs) of the preceding lines: ‘But songs and stars and little flowers, and little eyes and moonlight and sunshine, however much this stuff pleases, it is nowhere near being the whole world.’ Heine’s irony is more than a comment on the futility of modern attempts to manufacture the naiv: it also highlights the inadequacy of the content and expression of medieval poetry to modern sensibilities. By subjecting medieval poetry, neo-medievalism and his own creativity to critique, Heine not only confronts the predicament of the reflective modern poet but ‘gives evidence of it through every nuance of his form’. While Nietzsche’s conception of critical history can be said to apply to the Romantic circle’s reaction against its immediate predecessors, Heine’s critique confronts not merely the immediate past (for him, the Romantic school) but also its golden age. In assessing the relation between Romantic ironic reflection and the various ideational strategies sustaining the compositional products of the Palestrina revival, it will be necessary to take into account Heine’s brand of irony as well as that of Schlegel. While it will become clear that the reflective construction

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

of a mythological basis for modern creation provides a useful perspective in examining the Palestrina revival, Heine’s subversion of such a foundation through the ‘little devil of frivolous irony’ may seem a less helpful means of approaching Romantic church music. Yet the presence of similarly abrupt stylistic shifts in some of the compositions of the Palestrina revival will be seen to function in a comparable, if not identical way. By asserting the presence of modernity within works that otherwise replicate the language of Palestrina, such stylistic shifts may suggest that these compositions also reflect the combination of spontaneity and reflection, critique and self-critique, embodied by Romantic Poesie. HEGEL, HISTORICISM AND THE

‘DECAY

AND

DISINTEGRATION OF ART’

It will become evident that the three strands of historicism discussed above collectively provided an impetus for the revival and idealization of Palestrina, and individually played important parts in shaping the critical and historiographical reception of Renaissance music. In addition, clear relationships exist between the strategies with which Winckelmann and the Romantic circle justified the use of earlier styles, and the ideas which shaped compositional responses to Palestrina. It is crucial to recognize, however, that while Winckelmann and the Romantic circle provided frameworks within which the use of earlier styles could be legitimized, these ideas had to compete with more pervasive and compelling aesthetic criteria. Consequently, while these ideas provide valuable perspectives for interpreting compositional historicism, they cannot be assumed to correspond with the ways in which composers justified their engagement with earlier styles. A central aspect of these rival imperatives has already become apparent in the relativism of Herder and Goethe: their conception of the historicity of style is inimical to the warping of history that an artistic return to origins involves. For some early nineteenth-century critics, the increasing concern for historicity served not only to militate against compositional historicism, but to preclude it entirely: any work dependent on an earlier style inevitably infringes the demand for contemporaneity of expression and is thus an inauthentic product of its age. This rigid stance was advocated by the classicist Ludwig Schorn, in the sole article dedicated to the subject of originality to appear in the Leipzig AmZ in the

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first quarter of the nineteenth century. Schorn’s conception of artistic creation is inimical both to the imitation of classical works and to any use of materials foreign to the world-view of the modern artist: all art of value must proceed from the instinct, conviction and unique mentality of the individual artist. Significantly, Schorn’s censures encompass the perpetuation of conventions and traditional styles, a process associated in particular with religious ritual; even if works are the product of a similar manner of thinking and context to their stylistic model, they ‘no longer come from the fire of inspiration and are no longer accomplished from the free contemplation of nature, and therefore must be inferior by far in value’. In order to be grounded in a true relation to nature, all artworks must be the characteristic embodiment of their age and context. To adopt a style which does not reflect the world-view of the artist and his community will result in mannerism: this occurs when an artist appropriates the external form of his work ‘from the works of a foreign master, a distant age or a different people, without being capable of transplanting himself completely into their ideas and without nature being entirely in control’. Schorn’s emphatic demand for contemporaneity excludes not only the imitation of earlier styles but also the perpetuation of convention: his stance would invalidate both the historicist revival of Palestrina’s language and the continuation of the traditional stylus a capella. His views – especially the nature of his distinction between form and content in the artwork – are useful not because they were particularly influential, but because they provide a point of access to a far more significant body of ideas, the aesthetics of Hegel and his followers. It is within this framework that the majority of the composers, historians and critics discussed in this study explored compositional historicism, whether seeking to repudiate or to justify it. Hegel’s most extensive discussion of artistic historicism occurs in the context of a broader diagnosis of the disintegration of the Romantic form of art. Here, he explores the ways in which recent artistic developments, particularly in Germany, reflect the initiation of the final phase of Romantic art (for Hegel, the art of the Christian Western world from the Middle Ages to the present). This final phase represents the point at which the disintegration (Aufl¨osung) of the classical ideal – a factor implicit in all Romantic art – appears explicitly as disintegration: it marks a final separation of inner content and external appearance, whose identity is a prerequisite for art being art. The ideal of art, the absolute relation of

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form and content, is to be found in the art of antiquity, more specifically Greek sculpture: The perfection of art reached its peak here precisely because the spiritual was completely drawn through its external appearance; in this beautiful unification it realized the natural and made it into an adequate embodiment of the spirit’s own substantial individuality. Therefore classical art became a completely adequate representation of the ideal, the consummation of the realm of beauty. Nothing can be or become more beautiful.

The ideal of art that the artworks of antiquity constitute for Hegel is not merely the union of the style of a work and the idea of the artist described by Schorn, but the product of the synthesis of a complicated array of dialectics operating on different levels. On the highest level, art is the revelation of the absolute in sensuous form, the embodiment of truth: ‘in the case of the Greeks, art was the highest form in which the people represented the gods to themselves and gave themselves some awareness of truth.’ Classical art gains its place at the pinnacle of Hegel’s system as a result of the rich spiritual life of the Greeks being reflected in their art as its substantial and stable content; in their art the Greeks gave their gods an ‘existent embodiment’ (Dasein) which adequately objectifies its content: ‘On account of this correspondence . . . art in Greece has become the supreme expression of the absolute, and Greek religion is the religion of art itself.’ The complete identity of form and content is a result of the stability of Greek religious beliefs and the communality of their mythology – Schlegel’s ‘firm foundation’ – whose result is that the content of Greek art is wholly predetermined, and the realization of the form instinctive: ‘the artist seems only to execute what is already cut and dried on its own account in essence.’ The absolute relation of essence and appearance present in Greek art is not a possibility for art of the Christian era, since the content of Romantic art transcends sensuous manifestation: ‘art no longer counts as the highest mode in which truth manifests itself ’. While the Greeks’ conception of the divine could be embodied in their art, the forms of Romantic art cannot provide an adequate vehicle for the absolute: Romantic art has a determinate content, but there can only be a contingent relation between this content and the form of art. But if, at highest level, the relation between the realms of spirit and the external is contingent, artistic beauty is still dependent on lower-level correspondences of form and content, and the external form must have the function of ‘referring us back to the beauty of soul’. For Hegel, the course of the

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Christian Romantic era charts an ever-increasing polarity of form and content, a divergence moving inevitably and irretrievably towards their total severance. He identifies the final phase of this dissolution as having been initiated by his own contemporaries, in whose art can be seen ‘the severance of the sides whose complete identity affords the proper essence of art, and therefore the decay and dissolution of art itself ’. Importantly, the use of earlier artistic materials need not result in the dissolution of the relation between form and content. Hegel acknowledges that the modern artist is no longer tied to a particular material or mode of representation, and in choosing his forms is not restricted to the styles and resources of the present: ‘For this purpose he needs his supply of images, modes of configuration, earlier forms of art which, taken in themselves, are indifferent to him and only become important if they seem to him to be those best suited to this or that subject-matter [Stoff ].’ For Hegel, the use of earlier styles can be either legitimate or illegitimate: the illegitimate use of historical materials results in an incommensurability of form and content, or produces a work alien to the modern world-view. In a related earlier discussion exploring how dramatists and poets should treat historical elements in period pieces, Hegel identifies objective and subjective approaches to the problem of form: the artist can either ‘forget his own time and keep his eye only on the past’ or can ‘fashion his work according to the ideas which coincide with the particular circumstances of his own time’. Neither approach emerges as entirely satisfactory. Treating materials with objective fidelity to their original context makes modern German culture ‘too tolerant of foreign oddities’, and fidelity in external matters can be attained only at the expense of ‘the content of our present-day outlook and contemporary sentiment’. Hegel’s interpretation of the faults of objectivity in period pieces can be related to his attitudes towards the imitation of earlier styles. Like Schorn, Hegel views the imitation of earlier forms as a type of mannerism, since it can grasp solely the external aspect of art and thus produce only ‘soulless and therefore cold repetition and fabrication’. Accordingly, Hegel condemns Winckelmann’s notions of classical imitation; although Hegel praises his historical classifications of Greek art, the modern artist who copies the ‘ideal forms of antiquity as expounded by Winckelmann’ can produce nothing more than ‘false and empty abstractions’. Similarly, Hegel dismisses contemporary attempts to imitate primitive folksongs, considering that even if poets are able to empathize with alien customs and perceptions, such oddities have no value for contemporary culture.

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But modern authors using historical materials must also avoid the opposite error of excessive subjectivity. In Hegel’s interpretation, the latter approach resembles Nietzsche’s notion of monumental history: it places so heavy an emphasis on serving the needs of the present that the past is falsified. While objective fidelity in treating historical materials results in them being wholly alien to modern culture, excessive subjectivity robs them of their cultural and spiritual value. For Hegel, such ‘stark subjectivity’ in using historical settings, forms and materials results in parodic juxtapositions and an empty play of ‘deliberate bizarrerie’. While the modern artist is not restricted to using the external forms of the present, he cannot pick and choose the spiritual basis, the content of his art: Hegel insists that for the artist, ‘the content must constitute the substance, the inmost truth of his consciousness’. For Hegel, art must be the product of a subjective inner conception and objective execution; the combination of a content which for the artist comprises ‘the inner life of his heart and his imagination’ and the objectifying of this feeling, which must ‘shine clearly and thoroughly through the external material in which it has enshrined itself ’. This relation is reversed in the art of the Romantic ironists; their reflection leads not only to ‘stark subjectivity’ in their choice of forms but to a reflective attitude towards their spiritual content, which instead of being instinctual and subjective is objectively chosen, making them a tabula rasa in both content and form. While Hegel considers such subjective reflection to be a universal element in contemporary art, it is the Romantic ironists who epitomize this tendency and thus the decay and dissolution of art itself. Hegel considers Friedrich Schlegel’s irony to be a transference to the artistic sphere of the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the doctrine of the I (ego) as expressed in the Wissenschaftslehre (). In Hegel’s interpretation, the ironic artist considers everything that has value for mankind to be merely a product of his own power of caprice, to have no existence except in his subjective ego. For the ironic artist, no content counts as absolute or real but is merely a product of his free choice: ‘And now this skill in living an ironical artist life apprehends itself as a God-like geniality, for which every possible thing is a mere dead creature, to which the free creator, knowing himself to be wholly unattached, feels in no way bound, seeing that he can annihilate it as well as create it.’ The modern artist whose ironic reflection has dissolved any substantial spiritual beliefs cannot take on a mentality derived from the past in order to acquire a firm foundation for his productions. In a swipe at

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Friedrich Schlegel, Hegel comments that if reflection has left the modern artist bereft of a substantial content, ‘no help can be gained by appropriating as that substance, so to speak, world-views from the past . . . by, for example, converting to Catholicism as many have done recently for the sake of art, in order to give stability to their mind and to give the character of something absolute to the specifically limited character of their artistic product in itself ’. Hegel acknowledges that under some circumstances, the artist may legitimately take up a spiritual basis for his work that diverges from the prevailing world-view of his contemporaries: the necessity for such a step ‘arises only with the need to turn against the content that was alone valid hitherto’. It is clear, however, that in Hegel’s conception of critical history, the adoption of earlier world-views cannot constitute a legitimate means of rebelling against the present. Both the content and the form of the artwork must be the authentic expression of the spirit of the artist’s age, sincere religious beliefs and his firm conviction: As long as the artist is bound up with the specific character of such a worldview and religion, in immediate identity with it and with firm faith in it, then he is also in true seriousness [Ernst] with this content and its representation; that is, this content remains for him the infinite and true element of his own consciousness . . . while the form in which he represents it is for him as artist the final, necessary and supreme manner of bringing to perception the absolute and the soul of objects.

Hegel’s insistence that the external forms which the artist adopts must reflect his world-view and conviction naturally restricts the historical styles and materials available to him. External forms which are ineluctably linked to a world-view foreign to the modern artist can consequently not be adopted by him: ‘[if we] nowadays propose to make the subject of a statue or a painting a Greek god, or, Protestants as we are today, the Virgin Mary, we are not seriously in earnest with such material. It is the innermost faith which we lack here.’ Similarly, while the modern artist may inform his techniques and style through the study of works from the distant past, his own productions cannot replicate their mode of treatment; here, Hegel would seem to be issuing a definite ban on the literal use of earlier styles: ‘No Homer, Sophocles, etc., no Dante, Ariosto, or Shakespeare can appear in our day; what was so magnificently sung, what was so freely expressed, has been expressed; these are materials, ways of looking at them and treating them which have been sung once and for all. Only the present is fresh, the rest is dull and stale.’

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Given the importance of the principle of non-repetition to Hegel’s philosophy of history, it is not surprising that he should reject the replication of earlier styles. But Hegel’s position is curiously equivocal. In his earlier discussion on how poets and dramatists should represent the past in period pieces, Hegel introduced the idea of employing ‘necessary anachronism’ in treating the materials of the past: the injection of modernity into historical materials in order to render them capable of assimilation into the modern world-view. There he states that the true artistic mode of using historical materials requires that the artist use old forms ‘only as frames for his pictures’. But in discussing how the artist can legitimately respond to historical styles, Hegel’s language is more ambiguous. Here, he appears to demand that the modern artist’s use of older forms must exhibit tangible signs that they are the product not of ironic caprice but of conviction, an evidence that requires the inclusion of modern as well as historical formal elements: In the face of this breadth and variety of material we must above all make the demand that the real presence of the modern spirit [die heutige Gegenw¨artigkeit des Geistes] shall be expressed at the same time throughout the mode of treating this material. . . . [All] materials, whatever they be and from whatever period and nation they come, contain their artistic truth only through this living presentiality [lebendige Gegenw¨artigkeit], through which they fill the breast of man with our own mirror-image and bring truth home to our feelings and imagination.

Here, Hegel twice asserts the necessity for die Gegenw¨artigkeit, the ‘being present’ or presentiality of the modern spirit within the external form of a work. Given the centrality of Lutheran theology to Hegel’s conception of the Romantic phase of art, this neologism has a particular significance: for a Lutheran German, it is inseparably linked to Gegenw¨artig, the Lutheran term for the doctrine of the Real Presence. In Lutheran theology, the Eucharistic elements are not merely symbolic, nor are the bread and wine converted wholly into the body and blood of Christ (transubstantiation) but contain the Real Presence of Christ in an incorporeal form. The evocation of this doctrine problematizes Hegel’s argument, with the result that he does not propose unequivocally that the use of historical styles in modern works must reflect the modern spirit in a tangible way; the receiver can only assume, through faith, that this modern content is reflected in the form of a work. Thus, while Hegel is hostile to artistic historicism, the dynamics of his form/content dualism paradoxically provide a strategy for legitimizing the use of historical elements, and even for the replication of historical

Historicism in nineteenth-century art, aesthetics and culture

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styles. Further, he serves to encourage the employment of earlier styles, by emphasizing that the stylistic freedom of the modern artist is no mere ‘accidental misfortune’ engineered by the Romantic circle, but rather the ‘effect and progress of art itself ’. The difficulty of determining whether a work is the authentic product of the modern world-view has the result that its form is a mask, whose affinity to its spiritual content can only be taken on faith. No work can be judged on ‘face value’. The encouragement that this Hegelian dualism gives to artistic historicism was discussed, in a broader context, by Nietzsche. Attributing the cultural ills of modern Germany to the contradiction of form and content, Nietzsche argues that form is merely a costume and disguise, serving to conceal the truth that the content – the German inwardness – has evaporated; as a result of the burden of history, modern men are mere shadows: ‘If one takes hold of such masks believing them to be real and not just a puppet . . . one suddenly has hold of nothing but rags and multi-coloured patches. Therefore one ought no longer allow oneself to be deceived, and should address them imperiously: “take off your jackets or be what you seem!”’ In the arts too the mask, derived from the past, conceals its counterfeit content: ‘“We feel with abstraction . . . we portray expressions of feeling which no longer occur nowadays. Shakespeare has spoiled all us moderns.”’ Just as Shakespeare provided the most important historical mask for nineteenth-century drama, Palestrina was, unquestionably, the most important mask for nineteenth-century liturgical music. While Winckelmannian imitation and Romantic irony encourage the use of earlier artistic materials, it will become apparent that musicians seeking to justify compositional historicism were more often reliant on Hegelian conceptions of form and content. By condoning the use of earlier artistic materials even when the relationship between the resulting artwork and the modern world-view is seemingly oblique, he creates a framework in which a modern composer may emulate or even replicate the language of Palestrina; the composer can justify the return to an earlier form as a means of regaining the spiritual content of that form, while simultaneously reflecting – however intangibly – the spirit of modernity. It must now be established why composers sought to regain the spiritual content of Palestrina’s music, and how the need for the mask of Palestrina’s language came to outweigh the compelling demands for contemporaneity.

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Romanticism and the problem of church music

HOFFMANN AND THE ROMANTIC IDEALIZATION OF PALESTRINA

So far, we have explored the complex strands of historicist thought that encouraged the idealization and emulation of historical styles in general terms. It is now necessary to examine the emergence of the Palestrina revival, establishing how early Romantic commentators on church music engaged with the ideas and tendencies described earlier. E. T. A. Hoffmann’s essay ‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’ () has been chosen as the framework for this discussion because it provides an exposition of most of the themes central to the Palestrina revival, not because it initiated them. Hoffmann was neither the first nor the most influential German Romantic writer to idealize the music of Palestrina and to agitate for church music reform: the significance of his essay lies primarily in its synthesis of existing ideas on reform and on the revival of old music. But while much of what Hoffmann wrote had been said before (in particular in earlier issues of the AmZ ), he was the first author to single out Palestrina for particular attention and to justify his elevation as the paradigm of church music through detailed historical and aesthetic arguments. Moreover, Hoffmann was the first commentator to engage seriously with the question of how modern composers should respond to the Palestrina ideal: his response to this problem, while seemingly fuzzy and impractical, outlines the major issues with which critics and composers were to wrestle throughout the nineteenth century. Hoffmann’s essay situates the defects of modern church music within a broader critique of art and culture. In a move typical of early Romantic discussions of this topic, his idealization of early church music occurs in tandem with a polemic against Enlightenment culture: as with the critical historicism of the Romantic circle, old music is placed at the opposite end of the moral and religious scale to the art of the Enlightenment. 

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Hoffmann, like the Schlegel brothers, dismisses neo-classical works as mere shadows, ‘lifeless puppets’ in comparison to older art; he identifies the frivolity and emptiness of modern art as a result not merely of the Enlightenment, but of the pernicious influence of the French. Hoffmann’s condemnation of French culture is more than just a triumphalist response to the defeat of Napoleon’s forces earlier in the year that his essay appeared; rather, through patriotic rhetoric, he is able to blame the detrimental effect for German art of the Enlightenment – a pan-European phenomenon – entirely on the French. While Stephen Rumph has argued that, in his essays for the AmZ, Hoffmann cloaks ‘his political sentiments beneath an aesthetic polemic’, it is more important for the present discussion to see how the political situation provided the opportunity for the strengthening of a pre-existing aesthetic campaign: the movement against the values and standards of neo-classicism that had emerged in Germany well before the Napoleonic wars. By identifying the faults of modern art as the responsibility of the French, Hoffmann, like the Romantic circle, paves the way for a return to the virtues of a more distant ancestral art by entirely disowning the parental. In this way, the reform of art – and the revival of old church music in particular – becomes the patriotic duty of the many, instead of the musical and spiritual desire of the few. In developing his critique of modern church music, Hoffmann draws on several themes well established in contemporary debates on this topic. Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century critics associated the faults of modern church music with a more general dissolution of traditional generic distinctions: Herder and Johann Friedrich Reichardt, for instance, considered that composers no longer upheld the basic distinction between the sacred and the profane, mixing elements of the operatic style with the church style. Herder argued that church music lost its dignity through aping the ‘charming, effeminate melodies’ of the court song, while Reichardt illustrated the disintegration of genres by demonstrating the similarities between modern Italian oratorio and opera buffa. In seeking to define the church style, critics tended to approach the matter through proscription rather than prescription: as an abstract construct (i.e., when it is not linked to a particular historical paradigm) its essence lies in its distance from opera. Accordingly, Reichardt and Herder reject the use of dramatic elements, while Tieck (or rather, his character Ernst) insists that church music must shun mimetic and passionate effects. Although neither Herder nor Reichardt seeks to distinguish the church style from the oratorio style, this distinction was fundamental for

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Hoffmann and other nineteenth-century commentators: indeed, a key aspect of polemical debates on this topic throughout the century was the belief that, as the aesthetician Ferdinand Hand (–) put it, ‘not all religious music, even if it comes from pious inspiration, is suitable for inclusion within the liturgy of the church, and in circles of cultured listeners devotion and enthusiasm can be awakened by material which must be excluded from the church’. Although Hoffmann approaches this distinction less rigidly than other contemporary critics, it nonetheless has important implications for his argument. For Hoffmann, even the greatest modern church music bears witness to and is tainted by generic impurity: while he represents Mozart’s Requiem as a belated remnant of the true church style, he concedes that some sections of even this work ‘lapse into oratorio style’. Crucial to the classification of the characteristics of the church style was the identification and idealization of models from the past. Among the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century authors who agitated for the revival of old church music, two broad tendencies can be distinguished: an antiquarian and a monumentalist. These tendencies, which sometimes commingle within the works of individual authors, reflect the broader tension in contemporary historicism between – to put it crudely – the relativism of Herder and the classicizing perspective of Winckelmann. Antiquarian contributors to the debate on church music, sharing Herder’s conviction that ‘the age of Christian church music is over’, appeal to the music of the past as a counterbalance to the present, but do not do so systematically by means of historical narratives; typically, they merely create lists of unrelated composers or works from the distant past and contrast them with the degeneracy and generic impurity of present-day church music. While Glenn Stanley is right to consider Hoffmann’s ‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’ as the culmination of a German literary tradition of panegyrics to Palestrina, this tradition cannot be viewed as a sustained campaign for the revival of his music since it consisted of little more than the inclusion of his name in such seemingly arbitrary lists of ideal composers for the church. In fact, in the two decades preceding Hoffmann’s essay, a bewildering variety of composers from the past were acclaimed as ideal models of church music, and generally little attempt was made to justify or explain the choices of such figures as models. The music described in the AmZ as a worthy model ranges across the entire gamut of church music, from Gregorian chant to Mozart’s Requiem. In an article from , the ‘Christian simplicity’ of plainchant is recommended for study, since its notes, ‘full of longing’,

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still have the power to move the heart, while in  the editor Friedrich Rochlitz wrote that just as Raphael’s works are the source of modern painting, Mozart’s should be the source of modern religious music. Generally, however, the composers acclaimed by the antiquarian camp are drawn from two traditions, corresponding to the generic distinction between the church style and the oratorio style: old Italian music, and the works of Handel and C. P. E. Bach (and later J. S. Bach). In , Reichardt recommended the compositions of Lotti, Durante, Leonardo Leo, Prenestini (Palestrina), Gasparini, Frescobaldi, Fux, Froberger, Zelenka, Hassler, C. P. E. Bach, Handel, Graun, Kirnberger and Homilius as suitable for church singing, while in  he provided extracts by six composers as examples of genuine church music: four Italians, Palestrina, Benedetto Marcello, Francesco Feo, Nicola Porpora, and two Germans, C. P. E. Bach and Fasch, are represented. The list of exemplary church composers that Herder gives in his essay ‘C¨acilia’ from  conforms to, and helped to establish, this pattern: For a poet who wants to write more than just individual hymns for the church, studying these books [the Old Testament prophets and Psalms] is just as indispensable as studying the unattainable models of old church music . . . is for the composer. For, Saint Cecilia, with what miraculous and heartfelt notes have you inspired your favourites Leo, Durante, Palestina [sic], Marcello, Pergolesi, Handel, [C. P. E.] Bach, and so on! In and through them sacred music resounds in a full, pure flood.

Rochlitz’s list of ideal church composers from  is similarly wideranging, though he includes Haydn and Mozart who were to prove more problematic for later commentators: ‘How church music ought therefore to be written has been set out further in other places, and the musician should readily learn from models; these can be found in the older Italians, the older Germans such as Seb. Bach, Handel, and others, and also the more recent Germans such as Joseph and Michael Haydn, Mozart, and others.’ An unsigned review from  praises the ‘simple, noble, melodically rich, and yet profound’ church music of the Italians, naming (seemingly for the purpose of alliteration) Leonardo Leo and Francesco Feo, alongside German music ‘up to Seb. Bach, Handel, etc.’, while an article by Christian Friedrich Michaelis from  (the same year as Hoffmann’s essay) also affirms the importance of the old Italians and of Bach and Handel, and introduces Johann Kuhnau and Andreas Hammerschmidt to an already crowded arena of ideal composers for the church. It would clearly be mistaken to view these random lists as

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

evidence of a systematic approach to the problems perceived in church music, or of a classicizing approach to music history. Rather, they are signs of the antiquarian historicism of the Goethezeit, or in Nietzsche’s words, the indiscriminate veneration of everything that is old that leads to a ‘restless raking together of all that once has been’. The first authors to follow a systematic historical plan in outlining their conception of the church style were Hoffmann and the Heidelberg jurist ¨ Reinheit Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut (–), whose book Uber der Tonkunst () presents arguably the most influential nineteenthcentury manifesto for church music reform. Although the concepts and terminology with which they construct their schemes are all individually present in earlier contributions to this debate (especially those of Reichardt and Tieck), Hoffmann and Thibaut were the first authors to employ Winckelmann’s organic emplotment as a means of elevating Palestrina. Both Hoffmann and Thibaut use this model to construct a golden age of old Italian church music, encompassing a rise from primitive beginnings, blossoming, development, and gradual decline into decadence. Hoffmann follows Winckelmann in tracing the emergence of his golden age from earlier art that was hidebound by rules and abstractions; for Hoffmann, Palestrina’s immediate predecessors (none of whom are named) were ‘obsessed with harmonic affectations’ and reduced music to a speculative science. While Hoffmann’s golden age emerges ex nihilo, initiated by Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, Thibaut traces a more gradual rise in the quality and profundity of church music, via Goudimel, Morales and Lassus. Both are united, however, in describing a gradual decline in church music after Palestrina. Hoffmann’s survey of Italian music depicts a gradual decline into theatricality: With Palestrina began what is indisputably the most glorious period in church music (and therefore in music in general); in ever-increasing richness it maintained its pious dignity and strength for almost two hundred years, although it cannot be denied that even in the first century after Palestrina that lofty inimitable simplicity and dignity sank into a sort of elegance for which composers strove.

The transition Hoffmann traces from Palestrina’s ‘lofty, simple style’ to the elegance of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century stile antico recalls Winckelmann’s conception of a shift from the great and lofty style to the beautiful style. A comparable trajectory is presented by Thibaut, whose golden age comes much closer in terms of duration to the Winckelmannian prototype ( years) than that of Hoffmann.

Romanticism and the problem of church music

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Even though Hoffmann’s emplotment of developments in Italian church music was the first to draw on all the components of Winckelmann’s organic scheme, the idea of a decline of old Italian music is present in earlier contributions to this debate. Reichardt argued in  that modern Italian composers, corrupted by opera, were no longer able to write church music like that of Lotti, Palestrina, Gabrieli, Frescobaldi, Leo or Durante, but the list he gives does not present a systematic conception of a gradual decline. In , however, he comes closer to the gradual decline represented by Hoffmann and Thibaut: here, Palestrina is described as the greatest composer in the sublime, ceremonious church style, while Marcello lacks the ‘great boldness and harmonic richness of Palestrina’, and the church compositions of Pergolesi evince a disregard for the ‘lofty school’ (hohe Schule). In the same year, Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart gave a more precisely delineated account of this decline, commenting that ‘the second period of Italian music lasts roughly from the year  to . In it extreme simplicity and splendour were passed over, and the worldly expression of drama combined with the ashen face of the church style: and herein lay the first reason for the decline of music!’ For Spitta, in the earliest musicological discussion of the Palestrina revival, the idea of a gradual decline in Italian music originated with Tieck and Wackenroder: he comments that they created a ‘new genealogy [Geschlecht]’ for Italian music after Palestrina by approaching it solely from the perspective of tracing his continuing influence. In fact, Tieck and Wackenroder add little new to the conceptions of Reichardt and Schubart. Tieck similarly considers the second period of Italian music – which he identifies with Leo and Marcello – to constitute a departure from Palestrina’s ‘pure, sacred path’, while Pergolesi and his followers reflect the increasing worldliness of church music. Significantly, Tieck is the first critic to link his emplotment with similar trajectories in art history, by comparing the roles played by the imitators of Pergolesi and Correggio in the decline of music and painting. The selection of Palestrina by Hoffmann and Thibaut as the apex of their organically emplotted golden ages requires explanation, since not only was little of his music known to German musicians in the first decades of the nineteenth century, but Allegri and his Miserere were far more frequently named and discussed by earlier commentators than Palestrina. Reflecting on this situation, Rochlitz was later to comment that ‘if fame rested on the quantity rather than quality of adulatory voices, Allegri would be the most famous master of all [this school], not excluding Palestrina’. The popularity of the Miserere was stimulated

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

by enthusiastic descriptions of its performance in the Sistine Chapel during Holy Week, and performances of the work had taken place in Leipzig in  and Kassel in . As a consequence, for earlier authors it was this work, rather than any composition by or attributed to Palestrina, that constituted the high point of the Italian church style. This is apparent in Schubart’s discussion of the history of Italian music, since in describing the contribution of Italian composers to church music he does not even mention Palestrina: Since the earliest times they [the Italians] have defined the church style; as far back as several centuries ago, Allegri composed choruses and responsorial pieces of such excellence that one cannot hear them without rapture. His Miserere, which is still sung today in almost all Catholic churches on Good Friday, is composed with heavenly feeling, and will never cease having an effect so long as it still makes hearts glow with devotion.

Earlier, Herder had alluded to the work in his essay ‘C¨acilia’, while Wackenroder made the Miserere synonymous with a whole style, evoking Renaissance church music by describing ‘that old chorale-like church music which sounds like an eternal “MISERERE MEI DOMINE!”, the slow, deep chords of which creep along in deep valleys like pilgrims laden with sin’. Although, by the time of Hoffmann’s essay, the Miserere had for at least two decades been seen to epitomize Renaissance church music, he downgrades its status, considering its popularity to be the result merely of the veneration surrounding its performances in the Sistine Chapel. In placing Palestrina rather than Allegri at the peak of the church style, Hoffmann recognizes that a composer known for a single work did not provide a firm enough foundation for the construction of his golden age: Palestrina’s stature, vouchsafed by the supposed role of the Missa Papae Marcelli in the deliberations of the Council of Trent, thus enabled him to be elevated as a universal ideal. Consequently, Palestrina’s role as the paradigm of the church style is grounded primarily not in the aesthetic or liturgical superiority of his music, but in its significance for music history. Not only do Hoffmann and Thibaut construct their golden ages of Italian church music according to a pre-existing model, but the terminology with which they describe Palestrina’s style is also borrowed from art history. Both Hoffmann and Thibaut share Reichardt’s conviction that the chief character of this style consists of ‘emphatic and often bold progressions of predominantly consonant chords, whose resolute impression is neither modified nor weakened by melodic ornaments or rhythmic diversity’. In perpetuating Reichardt’s evocation of starkly

Romanticism and the problem of church music

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simple homophony, Hoffmann and Thibaut draw heavily on his language, placing an emphasis on Palestrina’s use of ‘successions of consonant triads’: ‘Without adornment and without the impetus of melody, chord follows upon chord; most of them are perfect consonances, whose boldness and strength stir and elevate the spirit with inexpressible power.’ Other contributors to the church music debate were certainly familiar with the contrapuntal Palestrina style as codified by Fux, or with the Italian and German stile antico traditions: Michaelis, for example, considered the status of old Italian church music as an ideal vehicle for the eternal character of religion to stem from its basis in the ‘wonderful art of counterpoint, canonical and fugal work’. But Hoffmann does not idealize the strenge Satz of contrapuntal theory: rather it is the language of Palestrina as evinced in his most starkly simple homophonic works that is elevated as the peak of the church style. Hoffmann considers Palestrina’s language to be epitomized by a responsory which he quotes (Ex. .; actually from the Responsoria hebdomadae sanctae by Marc’ Antonio Ingegneri); it is significant that he quotes only the homophonic first section of this responsory, omitting its polyphonic second part which would seemingly contradict his representation of Palestrina’s style. Hoffmann’s assertion that this simple piece is representative of the rest of Palestrina’s output is certainly indicative of the small amount of his music readily available in this period: half a century later, Franz Xaver Haberl, the principal editor of the Breitkopf and H¨artel complete edition, was to complain that ‘an entirely false idea of the style of Palestrina has been promulgated for over fifty years through the publication of solitary four-voice responsories from the matins of the last three days of Holy Week’. In the early nineteenth century, popular perceptions of Palestrina’s style were entirely defined by the simple homophonic works in the papal choir’s Holy Week repertory: most of the small number of Palestrina’s works published and performed in north Germany in this period were derived from this repertory, such as the ‘Stabat mater’ and Improperia. Crucial to the elevation of these works as the paradigm of the church style was their powerful effect in the context of these performances. A spurious Miserere included by Rochlitz in an  issue of the AmZ typifies contemporary perceptions of Palestrina’s idiom (Ex. .): Rochlitz describes it – in terms that recall Wackenroder’s evocation of Allegri’s Miserere – as ‘extremely slow, solemn, and sung not strictly in time, like a chorale’. Goethe’s description of Palestrina’s starkly homophonic Improperia in his Italienische Reise reflects the circumstances that popularized this music: he acclaimed the Holy Week music as

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. Marc’ Antonio Ingegneri, ‘Tristis est anima mea’, Responsoria hebdomadae sanctae, bars  –

Romanticism and the problem of church music

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‘unimaginably beautiful’, considering it to be ‘uniquely suited to the antique fittings of the papal chapel and to the group of Michelangelos, the Last Judgement, the Prophets and the biblical history’. Similarly, experiencing these simple homophonic pieces in the Sistine Chapel led Tieck’s character Ernst to the conviction that, just as for painting and sculpture, Rome was the home of the ‘true, lofty school of music’. While the small number of Palestrina’s works in circulation can account in part for the emphasis on stark homophony present in the writings of Reichardt, Goethe and Tieck, this does not suffice as an explanation of the representations of his style by Hoffmann and Thibaut. Hoffmann, after all, mentions and was familiar with the Missa Papae Marcelli, while Thibaut discusses this and several other masses, including the canonic Missa ad Fugam. For Peter L¨uttig, the language with which Hoffmann and his contemporaries represent Palestrina’s style is derived – via Reichardt – from English historiography; he argues that Reichardt’s evocation of this style is a ‘barely filtered’ repetition of Charles Burney’s description of the ‘Stabat mater’: Palestrina begins his Stabat Mater, which is still used in the pope’s chapel, and printed in the music performed there during Passion week, by three successive common chords, with sharp thirds, to this base A G F, descending, diatonically; and yet this modulation is so qualified by the disposition of the parts, and tempered by the perfect manner in which it is sung, that though it looks unscientific and licentious upon paper, its effects, of which no idea can be acquired from keyed instruments, are admirable.

But while Burney and the German commentators all emphasize the startling and powerful effect of Palestrina’s progressions of consonant chords, Burney does not present the highly selective reading of Palestrina’s style offered by Hoffmann and Thibaut (commenting elsewhere that ‘Fugue seems as natural to Palestrina, as Rhyme to Dryden’), and therefore cannot be regarded as the source of it. Rather, in focusing exclusively on Palestrina’s homophony, Hoffmann and Thibaut orient their accounts of his style around the terminology which Winckelmann and the Romantic circle had applied to art history. Earlier, Reichardt had repeatedly invoked Winckelmann’s by then well-known paeans to the noble simplicity and calm grandeur of ancient Greek and Renaissance art, as a means of idealizing not merely the music of Palestrina, but also works by eighteenth-century German composers. But with Hoffmann and Thibaut, Winckelmann’s maxims are reserved for Renaissance music, and serve to bolster the historical emplotments that they construct by

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. ‘Miserere von Pal¨astrina’

analogy with Renaissance painting. Hoffmann describes Palestrina’s style as evincing ‘lofty, inimitable simplicity and dignity’, while Thibaut praises the ‘ancient dignity and simplicity’ of the music of his golden age: for both authors, these criteria are best fulfilled by Palestrina’s most austerely homophonic works. Even their technical descriptions of Palestrina’s style recall contemporary accounts of Italian Renaissance paintings, indicating a burgeoning reciprocity between these two revivals: they are

Romanticism and the problem of church music

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strikingly similar to Friedrich Schlegel’s interpretation of the colouristic techniques – ‘like pure chords free from all dissonances’ – in a Madonna by Raphael. PALESTRINA AND THE ROMANTIC NEW MYTHOLOGY

The extent to which the mode of emplotment and terminology used by Hoffmann and Thibaut were borrowed from earlier art criticism was recognized by contemporaries. For critics baffled by the growing enthusiasm for old Italian music, exposing the extent of this dependency enabled them to dismiss the idealization of Palestrina as mere posturing on the part of dilettante critics. Johann Gottfried Hientzsch, for instance, deplored the use of allusions to ancient Greek art and music as a means of elevating Palestrina as ‘a classical model for all times and all peoples’: bewildered by such analogies, Hientzsch urgently cautioned his readers to remember that ‘music in Italy around  was entirely different from that of the Greeks’. More significantly, the Swiss composer, publisher and educationalist Hans Georg N¨ageli condemned the elevation of Palestrina by dilettantes as an arbitrary attempt to manufacture a musical focus for their enthusiasm for other forms of Renaissance art: ‘It is an understandable error when art enthusiasts, who admire Dante, Ariosto, Raphael and Michelangelo as great artistic creators, assume in addition the existence of great artists from that country in the field of music without really knowing the same and without having proved it either historically or critically.’ N¨ageli considers this mistaken assumption to be harmless where it occurs in the novels and poems of his contemporaries, and it can even be delightful, as in the works of Tieck: If Tieck believes that he offers the goddess of music the highest homage by disowning German art, failing to recognize its heroes, and celebrating instead Palestrina, Marcello and Pergolesi, we can think of Bach, Handel and St¨olzel while reading these beautiful poems and in this way avoid being disillusioned by the fact that this brilliant idealist – by here idealizing music that is devoid of ideas – has deceived himself in his passionate fantasy.

But while such misjudgements are, for N¨ageli, acceptable in a novel or a poem, it is unjustifiable for the authors of critical works to make similar claims about old Italian music. N¨ageli’s critique stems from his progressivist conception of music history: he dismisses the ‘sketchy and shapeless’ (d¨urftigen und unf o¨rmlichen) works of Palestrina as the products of technical

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

immaturity, considering them to violate modern aesthetic criteria by containing so many arbitrary and unessential ingredients. Accordingly, N¨ageli argues that while the Germans embraced Italian painting because Winckelmann had demonstrated its superiority in terms of technique, no such demonstration has been or could be attempted for old Italian music. Rather, to take N¨ageli’s perspective a stage further, for dilettante critics it is as if the mere placing of Palestrina at the peak of an organicist golden age is sufficient to prove that it too constitutes a universal ideal. N¨ageli’s conviction that the idealization of Palestrina was merely an arbitrary response to the enthusiasm of the early Romantics for other forms of old Italian art provides a hypothesis with which to explore the emergence of the Palestrina revival. It is clear that the appropriation of concepts from art criticism provided a means of elevating Palestrina as the peak of the church style. More complex is the question of why Protestant critics sought to embrace a foreign, Catholic ideal: why did Hoffmann choose Palestrina as the paradigm of church music from among all the other figures proposed over the preceding years, and what ideological factors encouraged later critics and composers to follow Hoffmann’s lead? It has already been seen that for the Romantic circle, the art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance provided the key to modern artistic renewal: now it is necessary to establish in what ways Hoffmann’s golden age corresponds with Friedrich Schlegel’s new mythology for art and literature. For Schlegel, the absence in modern times of the coherent and communal world-view that provided earlier artists with a firm foundation for their activity has the result that modern artists must reawaken older mythologies in order to provide their works with a substantial spiritual content. Such a modern mythology can only be gained by the revival of older Christian art and techniques, since the modern artist, to secure such a foundation for his work, must construct a similar relationship to the infinite: ‘Only someone who has his own religion, a characteristic relationship to (and view of ) the universe, can be an artist.’ Even for the sincere Protestant composer or painter, Protestantism cannot form a part of such a mythology; it has been corrupted by Reason and is too prone to reflection: ‘Catholicism is naiv Christianity. Protestantism is sentimental.’ The sole means, in Schlegel’s view, for the modern artist to achieve such a foundation is through Catholicism, and ‘the greatest mythical work must again be Catholic’. In addition to the two central

Romanticism and the problem of church music



components of Schlegel’s mythology – Catholicism and medievalism – an optional third foundation for artistic production is provided by the adoption and magnification of a traditional German characteristic: ‘Sehnsucht nach dem S¨uden’, longing for Italy. Although this had been an element of German culture since the Renaissance, the attraction of Italy for the Romantics was dramatically increased: it provided a weak but tangible link to the naiv culture of the Middle Ages, being viewed as an enduring remnant of the Holy Roman Empire (an entity whose idealization only increased when Napoleon formally dissolved it in ). Schlegel, Tieck, Novalis and Wackenroder idealized medieval Italian art and the culture that produced it, contrasting the political and religious unity that sustained artistic production in the Holy Roman Empire with the confessional, cultural and political factionalism of modern Germany. Hoffmann, Tieck and other early Romantic commentators underpin their representations of old Italian music with frequent comparisons to the golden age of painting. Hoffmann’s identification of medieval Italian art as the greatest period in painting links his enthusiasm for Palestrina not only to the tripartite mythology of the Romantic circle, but to the activities of contemporary German artists. The three components of Schlegel’s new foundation can be seen in practice in the work of the ‘Brotherhood of St Luke’ or the Nazarenes, a group of German painters, led by Friedrich Overbeck and Franz Pforr, who settled in Rome in . Inspired by the descriptions of the lives and works of Italian painters presented in Wackenroder’s Herzensergiessungen, the Nazarenes sought to challenge neo-classical principles through a return to the techniques and spiritual fervour of medieval art. Hoffmann’s paeans to the Italian painters of the ‘early period’ (alten Zeit) parallel the vague periodicization of old Italian art underpinning the ideas of Wackenroder and the Nazarenes. Although their golden age of art centres on Raphael and other early sixteenth-century artists, they sought to represent this ideal as a product of medieval Catholicism: this process, by extension, allowed Palestrina to be perceived as a pre-Reformation composer. In the cases of both Raphael and Palestrina, this historiographical sleight of hand enabled these models to conform with the most crucial aspect of Schlegel’s mythology: the idea that the naiv art of the Catholic Middle Ages provides the paradigm of the relation between a secure religious foundation and superlative artistic production. Accordingly, Tieck and Hoffmann emphasize not merely the religious quality of Palestrina’s music, but

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

the idea that its greatness stems from having been conceived by a naiv genius in an age of unreflective belief: that it embodies, as the aesthetician Eduard Kr¨uger later put it, a ‘mentality of unalloyed innocence [Gesinnung unzerspaltener Unschuld ], a paradise of childhood lost to us’. For Tieck, this music possesses a ‘heavenly innocence’, expressing ‘purity and sanctity of devotion’, while for Hoffmann, ‘Palestrina is simple, true, childlike, pious, strong, and sturdy; truly Christian in his works like Pietro da Cortona and our old D¨urer in painting, composing was to him a religious practice’. Similarly, Michaelis echoes Winckelmann’s notion of the innocent optimism or serenity (Heiterkeit) characterizing early art, and emphasizes that the greatest virtue of early church music is its status as a product of the golden age of Christianity: ‘The interest of ancient works does not merely lie in their pastness, in their great antiquity in itself . . . but in the serious, noble and religious character of their age, which, at least by composers of works of sacred music, is expressed so unmistakably.’ The idealization of medieval Catholicism served a multiplicity of functions in early Romantic literature and criticism. It is necessary, therefore, to establish whether critics idealizing old Italian music shared Schlegel’s conception of naiv Catholicism, or were merely invoking a fashionable literary topos. In Schlegel’s view, the painting of Raphael and his predecessors not only demonstrates the necessity of Catholic inspiration for superlative artistic production, but provides an exemplar of the true pur¨ Religion pose of art. For Schlegel – stimulated by Schleiermacher’s Uber () – such painting symbolizes the union of art and religion, an ideal also exemplified by Dante: ‘the great Dante, sacred founder and father of modern poetry entered this path, uniting religion and poetry.’ Similarly, while Goethe’s ‘Von deutscher Baukunst’ had concentrated on the sublime power and national significance of Gothic architecture, Schlegel emphasizes its basis in Catholicism, viewing it as the exemplar of Christian architecture. Schlegel’s desire to revivify the union of art and religion was shared by the Nazarenes and becomes programmatic in their works. In Overbeck’s Der Triumph der Religion in den K¨unsten, and in Die Einf¨uhrung der K¨unste in Deutschland durch das Christenthum by Philipp Veit, Catholicism is represented as the source of all German art, while in Johann Heinrich Olivier’s Die Madonna, von großen K¨unstlern verehrt, Palestrina is included among the artists venerating the Madonna. Similarly, in idealizing Palestrina, Hoffmann and Tieck represent the service of religion as the loftiest purpose of music and locate the paradigm of this union in medieval Italy: Hoffmann notes that for the composer, ‘the most sacred

Romanticism and the problem of church music



depths of his noble, truly Christian art are first revealed in Italy when Christianity shone forth in its greatest splendour’. Hoffmann’s stance is very similar to that of Schlegel: so similar, that it may seem to represent – as so often in Hoffmann’s writings – the dogged pursuance of an ironically assumed posture. Not all Romantic authors, after all, shared Schlegel’s belief that Catholicism was the sole source for artistic renewal: many sought merely to exploit the allegorical or picturesque potential of Catholic imagery, or to engage in what he regarded as ‘whimsical trifling’ (Spielerei der Fantasie) with Catholic symbols. In a discussion from , the (Catholic) poet Joseph von Eichendorff stressed the plurality of roles assigned to Catholicism in early Romantic literature. While Schlegel asserted that artistic renewal required the consecration of the church, other authors located what Eichendorff describes as the ‘Catholic mythology’ within a pantheistic framework: the poet Zacharias Werner, for instance, ranked Christ alongside Prometheus and assorted Egyptian, Nordic and Indian gods as mediators between mankind and the divine. Eichendorff notes that a third group of writers, such as Tieck, sought to disentangle the mysterious and miraculous aspects of Catholicism from the inconveniences of dogma, while others employed Catholic elements merely as decoration, assigning only aesthetic validity to Catholicism. The spirit of aesthetic Catholicism identified by Eichendorff is evident in other aspects of early Romantic culture. It is reflected in the popularity of the religious plays of Calder´on de la Barca – many of which contain Eucharist scenes – and in the colourful rituals and monastic intrigues of the Gothic novel. This trend, and in particular the vogue in the late s and s for converting to Catholicism, was satirized by Heine in Die Stadt Lukka (). Here, Heine dismisses the paintings of the Nazarenes – ‘the long-haired Christian new German school’ – as mere parodies of old Italian art; crucially, Heine also links the early Romantic enthusiasm for Palestrina with the contemporary vogue for Catholicism, at the moment when the German narrator attempts to seduce a pious young Italian girl: I will become a Catholic myself – but only for this single night! Oh, the beautiful, blest, Catholic night! I will lie in your arms, with a strict Catholic faith in the heaven of your love; from our lips we shall kiss each other’s lovely confessions, the word will become flesh, faith will become sensual, in shape and form – what a religion! You priests! Chant your Kyrie eleison . . . let Palestrina’s mass resound . . . but as soon as I wake up next morning, I shall rub the sleep and the Catholicism from my eyes, and again see the sunshine and the Bible clearly, and be rational, sensible and Protestant, as before.

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Hoffmann’s enthusiasm for old Italian church music is not as superficial as the short-lived fervour of Heine’s narrator for the external trappings of Catholicism. But some of the stances that he assumes in ‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’ are problematic when approached from the broader context of his musical thought. The elevation of Palestrina represents the construction of a musical equivalent to the paradigms provided by Raphael for painting and Dante for poetry: while Tieck had earlier approached Palestrina with perspectives derived from art criticism, Hoffmann takes this process of appropriation still further. It would be mistaken, however, to assume that Hoffmann simply transfers Schlegel’s tripartite mythology to the musical sphere. Rather, his essay enacts a dialogue between ideas appropriated from the Romantic school and the problems created by their transference to music history (in revising this discussion for Die Serapionsbr¨uder (), Hoffmann renders this dialogic structure explicit). As a consequence, the idealization of naiv Catholic art represents merely one strand in a complex texture: it is necessary now to see how this overall texture departs from Schlegel’s programme. PALESTRINA AND ABSOLUTE VOCAL MUSIC

In exploring the implications of their golden age constructions for the reform of art and church music, Schlegel and Hoffmann diverge on a crucial point. Schlegel’s tripartite mythology is sustained by the conviction that Italian Renaissance art provides a universal model because, in addition to reaching the highest spiritual level, the paintings of Raphael are superlative in terms of technique. Not only did the painters of the older school realize most purely the religious purpose of art, but their works constitute the ‘fortunate coinciding’ of the characteristic essence of Christian beauty and technical perfection: ‘Where should the young artist now find the model for that which is higher, in meaning and expression, in disposition and arrangement, in general in the manner of conception and treatment . . . Where else than in the age and the works in which he recognizes that painting reached the highest peak of perfection.’ Hoffmann, however, is not willing to ascribe to Palestrina the technical as well as spiritual supremacy that he too perceives in old Italian painting. While he considers that Renaissance painters surpass modern artists even in terms of technique, modern music is superior in formal terms to that of Palestrina. Hoffmann’s evolutionary conception of musical technique and expression has the result that, unlike

Romanticism and the problem of church music



Schlegel, he is unwilling to develop his idealization of earlier art into an exclusive mythological foundation for modern church music. As a result, Hoffmann himself comes up against a fundamental problem facing composers of church music: how to reconcile a progressive principle of form with a converse teleology of Christian content. In exploring this problem, Schlegel’s mythology is set in conflict with the aesthetic of absolute instrumental music and the ideology of the sublime: it must now be established how these latter constructs interact with the idealization of Palestrina. Later, it will be seen that, for some nineteenth-century critics and musicians, the idealization of a cappella music stemmed in part from the desire to erect a vocal paradigm as a counterweight to the primacy of instrumental music in mainstream aesthetics and practice. With Hoffmann – as with Tieck – a cappella choral music and absolute instrumental music are not simply placed in opposition, but rather are cast in a complex reciprocal relation. In Tieck’s Phantasus (), this bifurcated stance is articulated through a dialogue: while one character acclaims the a cappella works of the Sistine Chapel as the highest form of music, another asserts that ‘it was left to the most recent times . . . to express the marvellous richness of the human senses in this art, primarily in instrumental music’. While Hoffmann also acclaims both modern instrumental and old Italian vocal works as the highest form of music, he does not compare them directly in the manner of Tieck. Rather, he follows Tieck by pursuing this comparison via a discussion of the contrasting merits of a cappella and concerted church music. On the one hand, Hoffmann acclaims the a cappella performances of the Sistine Chapel as the ideal exemplar for church music: ‘Praise of the highest and holiest should flow straight from the human breast without any foreign admixture or intermediary.’ But on the other hand, his belief in the infinite perfectibility of music in the technical and colouristic spheres leads him to resist the conclusion that orchestral accompaniment has no place in church music: ‘why should we close our eyes to it when the progressing world spirit [ forttreibende Weltgeist] has itself conferred this brilliance on our mysterious art?’ Nonetheless, for both Hoffmann and Tieck it is a cappella rather than concerted music that is elevated as a symbol of ideal vocal music, because the former – paradoxically – can more readily be assimilated within criteria conceived around absolute instrumental music. In order to represent vocal music as a vehicle for the infinite – as a means of ‘saying the unsayable’ in the same way as indeterminate, absolute instrumental music – Hoffmann and Tieck downplay or ignore

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

the presence of words: the works of Palestrina are not viewed as a combination of text and music but as pure music. Accordingly, Tieck insists that vocal music, if it does not abjure instruments, must shun orchestral mimesis and avoid responding to the text in such a way as to become ‘muddy and impure’ (tr¨ube und unlauter): ‘it cannot be melodramatic and insist on its strength and power, or want to indulge itself in despair, since here it loses its own spirit and becomes merely a weak imitator of speech and poetry.’ Both Tieck and Hoffmann contrast the impurity of modern concerted works with the absence of such conflicts in a cappella music: Tieck condemns the text illustration present in Haydn’s oratorios, while Hoffmann stresses that no orchestral mimesis defiles the purity of old Italian church music. In his review of Beethoven’s Mass in C, Hoffmann directs composers of church music to avoid being distracted by textual details, arguing that the words of the mass should provide merely a generalized religious stimulus. Elsewhere, he makes even more explicit the irrelevance of texts in his conception of absolute vocal music: church compositions communicate through the ‘universally comprehensible medium of music’, and ‘the words associated with the singing are only incidental’. Although neither Hoffmann nor Tieck render fully explicit the link between their conceptions of ideal vocal and instrumental music, this connection was made in a contemporary discussion by Schleiermacher, who notes that for listeners unacquainted with Latin, choral settings of the mass have ‘the pure character of instrumental music’. Hoffmann’s strategy of treating Palestrina’s works as absolute music, and of thus bringing them closer to his Beethovenian paradigm, serves several important functions. For Hoffmann, as for the Romantic circle, the absence of determinate meaning in instrumental music is, in theory, its most precious and unique virtue. Hoffmann’s critique of modern musical culture makes clear, however, that this potential has seldom been realized in practice. By stressing that Palestrina’s religiosity inheres in his musical language and not in his ‘incidental’ texts, Hoffmann makes an indirect contribution to his quest to invest modern instrumental music with metaphysical import. Accordingly, the implicit association of Beethoven and Palestrina serves to urge composers to safeguard the expression of instrumental music, by eschewing the trivial and always striving to express the infinite. But while Hoffmann urges composers to heed the eternal, imperishable truths expressed by Palestrina in their quest to ‘say the unsayable’, these truths are not expressed by modern instrumental music. Hoffmann does not represent Beethoven’s symphonies

Romanticism and the problem of church music

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as Christian art. Rather they appear as the most recent embodiment of ‘the prevailing world spirit’ (der waltende Weltgeist); the unknown kingdom that Beethoven’s Fifth unlocks is not necessarily Christian in whole or in part, and is certainly not the same as the kingdom unlocked by the music of Palestrina. This distinction, fundamental to Hoffmann’s conception of a revivified church music, is articulated by reference to Romantic theories of the sublime. Although Hoffmann invokes the sublime in describing the music of both Beethoven and Palestrina, the metaphors and imagery deployed diverge significantly. For Hoffmann and his contemporaries, the sublime provided a means of exploring how art can transcend its human origins without reliance on Christian doctrine: as Thomas Weiskel argues, it is dependent on the substitution of divinity with a ‘credible god-term, a meaningful jargon of ultimacy’ with which to sustain a secularized conception of transcendence. In evoking the sublime incomprehensibility of modern instrumental music, Hoffmann draws on a range of religious images in order to assert its power to exceed the capacity of the imagination. Hoffmann’s ‘jargon of ultimacy’, while relying in part on Christian imagery, provides a vague, pantheistic vision of the supernatural: the least ambiguous religious reference is a comparison in which Beethoven opens an unknown kingdom just as ‘Orpheus’s lyre opened the gates of Hades’. Elsewhere, too, Hoffmann’s evocation of sublime terror owes more to classical mythology than to Christianity: Mozart ‘leads us deep into the realm of shades. Terror encompasses us, but without torment becomes a presentiment of infinity’; his symphonies convey the ‘unending dance of the spheres’. Here, Hoffmann’s infinite consists of a combination of mythologies, a foundation for the production and reception of art constructed reflectively from many traditions. In ‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’, Hoffmann provides a very different vision of the transcendental realm intimated to the listener. When applying the concept of the sublime to the art of the distant past, he draws on several key ideas from earlier art criticism. In discussing the earliest art of their golden ages, Winckelmann and Schlegel explore the ways in which its technical defects – stiffness, angularity and severity – are mitigated by its grandeur and sublimity: in reference to the paintings of Jan van Eyck, Schlegel speaks of the ‘Egyptian sublimity and stiffness of these sharp, strict godly images [G¨ottergestalten]’. Hoffmann’s application of this concept to Palestrina’s starkly homophonic works similarly presupposes that the grandeur of their impression outweighs the limitations of their form. More

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

importantly, Hoffmann shares Schlegel’s conviction that such art provides a naiv Catholic vision of the infinite: for Schlegel, the works of van Eyck are consequently ‘incomprehensible monuments of a greater and stricter early world’, while Hoffmann views the music of his golden age as a remnant of a vanished faith. Hoffmann’s descriptions of Palestrina’s sublime power resemble his evocations of Beethoven: the elemental force of Palestrina’s ‘bold powerful chords, like dazzling shafts of light’ recall the ‘burning shafts of light’ that bewilder the listener in Hoffmann’s review of Beethoven’s Fifth. But while Beethoven’s unknown kingdom is a smothering Hades, Palestrina’s other world provides a less harrowing presentiment of infinity, proclaiming ‘that love, that consonance of all things spiritual in nature which is promised to the Christian’. The terror of Beethoven is replaced by a more benign image of transcendence, akin to that described by an anonymous AmZ contributor in , for whom a Lassus Magnificat was full of ‘calm sublimity’ (stiller Erhabenheit). These two mythologies of the sublime collide in Hoffmann’s review of Beethoven’s Mass in C. The only music actually described as sublime is that of the old Italians; these ‘sublime church choruses’ deserve preeminence among church music for their ‘truly sacred style’. But in the ensuing comparison of these choruses with the new concerted idiom, it is modern church music that is allied with the sublimity of Strasburg Minster, while Palestrina is compared to St Peter’s in Rome and seemingly relegated to the beautiful: The grandiose proportions of this building [St Peter’s] uplift the spirit while remaining commensurable with it, but it is with a strange inner unrest that the observer takes in the Minster, which rises high into the air with the boldest convolutions and oddest intertwinings of bustling fantastic figures and flourishes: only such unease can excite this unknown, wonderful, foreboding feeling, and the spirit gives itself up willingly to dreams in which it believes it recognizes the supernatural, the infinite. Now, this is exactly the same as the impression of the purely Romantic that lives and moves in the fantastic compositions of Mozart and Haydn.

In this way, Hoffmann asserts the superiority of modern instrumental music not merely in the technical sphere, but as a vehicle for transcendence: the music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven presents a more sophisticated vision of the infinite than that of Palestrina, one which fully reflects the complexities of the modern world-view. While Hoffmann’s mythology of instrumental music presents a vague, reflective, secularized vision of the supernatural, old Italian music presents a naiv Catholic vision of the infinite. Palestrina’s music is transcendental, but its

Romanticism and the problem of church music



uplifting of the spirit is restricted by its historicity: the transcendental realm of Palestrina’s music remains commensurable by the standards of St Peter’s, by those of golden age Catholicism. The content – or rather, to use Hoffmann’s phrase, ‘characteristic essence’ – of modern concerted music is for him much richer than that of Palestrina’s music. But it is precisely this richness that renders it unsatisfactory for the church, and in some way, through the mediation of Palestrina, the modern composer must attempt to limit this essence if he wishes to produce true church music. PALESTRINA AND THE MODERN COMPOSER

Hoffmann’s triadic conception of the history of the church style is more complex than the schemes presented by Winckelmann and Schlegel. Winckelmann’s sequence of a golden age, unambiguous decline, and renewal through the revival of earlier techniques is substantially revised: Hoffmann does not contend that old Italian music alone is suitable for church use, and rejects the idea that modern composers should replicate Palestrina’s language. But although Hoffmann’s bifurcated conception of the sublime and progressive principle of form complicate his argument, renewal remains predicated on the music of the distant past. Earlier critics idealizing early church music rarely specified how modern church composers should respond to it. Hoffmann responds to this problem in detail, but provides no easy or unambiguous solutions to it. He rejects the replication of Palestrina’s language on two grounds: because music, unlike painting, has evolved technically since the Renaissance, and because modern composers lack the strong, unreflective religious faith of earlier composers: It is probably completely impossible for a composer today to be able to write in the same way as Palestrina, Leo, and later Handel and others. That age, preeminently when Christianity still shone in its glory, appears to have vanished from the earth, and with it the holy dedication of the artist. Now a composer could just as little compose a Miserere like those of Allegri or Leo as a painter could paint a Madonna like Raphael, D¨urer or Holbein.

Since, for Hoffmann, all music must reflect the prevailing world spirit in order to be authentic, it is impossible to resurrect the golden age of Christian art in spiritually different times simply by replicating earlier techniques. Hoffmann’s position is similar to that of Hegel: the modern artist cannot adopt forms that are foreign to his beliefs and the

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

world-view of his age, since the validity of his works depends on them being the product of conviction. For Hoffmann, the insincerity of such art will be visible in its form; the composer cannot create naiv church music solely by adopting Palestrina’s language, since ‘the invention of genuine sacred melodies reveals the weakness of any composer who is less than sincere; it is the touchstone [Probierstein] of the inner soul’. Hoffmann’s rejection of imitation was echoed by other critics in the decade following his essay. Rochlitz and Gottfried Weber similarly caution composers of church music to heed the postulates of authenticity and contemporaneity. Dismissing the view that the style of the old Italian masters is alone suitable for the church, Weber argues that that the imitation of it can result only in a caricature devoid of content: Every age has its own characteristic manner and way of expressing itself; the forms peculiar to that age, in which people back then expressed themselves fluently, no longer come naturally to us. Any attempt centuries later to copy [nachzu¨affen] the style of that time can at best produce only a caricature . . . which, not inspired by the spirit of its models, can only ape their external form.

While Weber rejects imitation for compromising the historicity of the artwork, Rochlitz focuses on the issue of conviction, arguing that artistic inspiration cannot be acquired second hand. Both critics also dismiss musical ‘copies’ as superfluous, given the availability of original works in this style: Rochlitz amplifies this argument on economic grounds, contending that while there is a market for paintings in the old Italian style because the originals are so expensive, the works of the old composers can be had for a few Groschen. Given the rejection of imitation, how might the composer legitimately respond to the music of Palestrina? Hoffmann’s solution is similar to that outlined in Schlegel’s  apologia for the art of the Nazarenes, and a comparison of how their arguments diverge will clarify Hoffmann’s position. Both critics evoke a future in which a new era of religious art will emerge, arguing that studying models from earlier ages is essential if artists and composers are to progress towards this goal. Schlegel, like Hoffmann, rejects the idea that this new artistic path can be established simply through the imitation of old Italian art: instead, both authors stress the importance of a mastery of technique, while Schlegel considers that success in colouring and fidelity are inborn and cannot be learned from models. Moreover, both critics argue that old art need not be copied, since modern artists should ideally be able to recover its Christian spirituality in their own productions without conscious imitation. Hoffmann

Romanticism and the problem of church music

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argues that through studying the works of great church composers, ‘the artist gifted with a childlike and pious mind’ will discover his own creative strength and an appropriate idiom for church music, while for Schlegel, the study of old art, combined with the ‘godly light of innermost inspiration’, will give the painter the ability to represent the ‘characteristic essence of Christian beauty’. The views of Hoffmann and Schlegel diverge on a crucial point. While Schlegel condemns the imitation of old Italian painting as necessarily resulting in a ‘mannered antiquatedness’ (manierierten Altert¨umlichkeit) he praises the revival by the Nazarenes of ancient fresco techniques, and asserts that if modern art is to regain the spiritual quality of the art of the Italian golden age, a certain degree of archaism must be permitted. For Schlegel – in line with his assertion that to replicate literally is impossible – the onward development of the world spirit does not prohibit the use of old techniques or the inclusion of antiquated elements; rather, it guarantees that modern paintings will contain contemporary elements too, and thus speak validly for the present: Because the spirit never stands still or remains chained to dead forms . . . we must not worry that the new Christian art might come out as a mere repetition and empty imitation of the old masters. Rather, our age and the progressing sensuous development of the Christian world-view, in accordance with the spiritual mood predominating at present, will also bear and produce art and a new artistic epoch characteristic to itself; for this, however – as always in similar cases – real knowledge of the old Christian art and of its characteristic beauty constitutes a truly essential and uniquely indispensable element, and the prime condition for its emergence.

In contrast, Hoffmann asserts the pastness of his golden age, and in his conception of the developing world spirit, any type of archaism is illegitimate. He does not seem to share Schlegel’s confidence that the ‘spiritual mood predominating at present’ will inevitably enter the modern form and thus prevent the use of elements of old art from having the appearance of copying. While the modern composer must have the standard that Palestrina sets ‘constantly in his thoughts’, he must not compose reflectively but solely through inspiration; his composing should consist ‘only in writing down the sacred melodies that pour from his soul as though in divine ecstasy’. The works of Palestrina and his golden age are of aid to such a composer solely as paradigms of spirituality, not as precise stylistic models. In ‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’ and in his review of Beethoven’s Mass in C, Hoffmann describes two ways in which old Italian music can aid the



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

modern composer, through processes that can be labelled sublimation and suppression. First, Hoffmann argues that the composer who subjects himself to early church music will find – if he is childlike and pious – that it will act as a catalyst to aid the revelation of the spiritual style latent within himself: ‘If the young composer has not been destroyed by worldly superficiality, he will be uplifted in miraculous ways by the works of the old masters; yes, he will feel that what was only a confused presentiment in his mind is brought into clear view.’ Through this alchemical process of being uplifted (erheben), transfigured or sublimated, the modern composer will discover a suitable external form for church music which is not at odds with his beliefs or with the developing world spirit, a language just as unreflective and sincere as that of Palestrina. Second, and more practically, Hoffmann notes that one reason why modern composers can no longer achieve the lofty simplicity of the old Italians is because they take too much pleasure in dazzling listeners through effect; the modern composer, in order to achieve a style suitable for the church, must therefore be subject to ‘self-denial’ (Selbstverleugnung). To achieve such simplicity in his own music, the composer must not only devote his energies solely to this goal – suppressing external motives and the desire to impress – but must also suppress those aspects of modern musical practice antithetical to the Palestrina ideal. Given that Hoffmann couches his descriptions of works from his golden age in terms that distance them from modern concerted works, it is clear what composers must avoid: chromatic string figuration, ‘so-called striking modulations’, ‘gaudy figures’, ‘feeble melodies’, and an ‘impotent, confusing clamour of instruments’. As has been seen earlier, however, Hoffmann does not demand that the modern composer’s self-denial includes the total renunciation of instruments. Hoffmann’s position is best seen as proscriptive rather than prescriptive; the two processes by which the modern composer can benefit from older church music, sublimation and suppression, would not have provided his contemporaries with any easy solutions to the problem of composing for the church. The idea that the composer must omit elements of modern musical style was strongly resisted by other critics: Gottfried Weber scorned the notion that composers should avoid augmented-sixth chords and other elements foreign to Palestrina’s language, considering that such ‘dress codes’ (Kleiderordnung) apprehend merely external matters, not the essence of the true church style. Indeed, it is clear that suppression, while providing a means of producing music that is suitable for the church, does not on its own reestablish the

Romanticism and the problem of church music



link to the naiv Christian infinite that Hoffmann considers Palestrina to epitomize; such a link could only be reestablished through the obscure process of sublimation. While Hoffmann does not advocate imitation, his notion of sublimation – combined with his dismissal of the masterpieces of modern church music as a valid model – offers composers a powerful incentive to relate their idiom to Palestrina’s language, or at least to experiment with the use of elements of it in their works. Critical reviews of newly published church compositions from the years surrounding Hoffmann’s essay increasingly reflect the ideas of authors agitating for church music reform. The works included as supplements in the AmZ, and the comments appended to them, suggest that the main criteria for inclusion were their relevance to this debate and their success in reflecting the models elevated by Hoffmann and other critics. In , an a cappella mass by the director of the Leipzig Singverein Friedrich Schneider was commended to those ‘who are attached exclusively to neither the old and strict, nor the new and brilliant, but who can take pleasure in that which to a certain extent stands between the two’; in contrast, an anthology published two years later was dismissed for failing to reflect the true church style. As a result of the growing expectation that modern church pieces should embody a compromise between old and new, they increasingly have the character of compositional essays on the problem of church music: stylistic experiments embodying a tension between historicism and contemporaneity, and between aesthetic and functional demands. Hoffmann’s vision of a revivified church music does not distinguish between how Catholic and Protestant composers should respond to the Palestrina ideal; indeed, such practical matters are largely foreign to his concerns. It is clear, however, that Protestant composers faced an additional problem: as Eichendorff put it in relation to the Romantic circle, ‘they had to translate themselves into the Catholic idiom, since it was not their mother tongue’. For this reason, in exploring subsequent developments in the Palestrina revival and in discussing the various ways in which nineteenth-century church music reflects these tensions, Protestant and Catholic compositions must be approached separately.



The Protestant Palestrina revival

OLD ITALIAN MUSIC, BILDUNG AND THE GERMAN SINGVEREINE

In examining the relation between the idealization of Palestrina in north Germany and modern composition, two categories of works must be distinguished: pieces written for performance in the Protestant service, and quasi-liturgical works intended for secular choral societies. The ideological and institutional foundations underpinning quasi-liturgical music must be discussed first, since the performance and emulation of Renaissance music were initiated not in churches but in Singvereine. Of these, the most significant for the Palestrina revival were the Berlin Singakademie, founded in  by Carl Friedrich Fasch (–) and directed from  by Carl Friedrich Zelter (–), and Thibaut’s Singverein in Heidelberg, which flourished in the second, third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century. In the activities of Thibaut and Zelter, the desire to bolster traditional generic distinctions led to the elevation of earlier works in the church and oratorio styles as models of musical purity. A key role for their choral societies was to restore musical taste through the performance of music epitomizing the true nature of these styles, and thus to provide models for more widespread reform. The activities of the Berlin Singakademie were to provide an important stimulus for the reform of music in the city’s churches, and Zelter compared its chief task – ‘to cultivate the serious style of church music and to preserve the few relics of it in their dignity’ – with Palestrina’s role as a reformer of church music. Neither organization, however, was concerned primarily with improving the state of Protestant liturgical music; rather, the cultivation of early church music was considered to serve a broader cultural role. Both Thibaut and Zelter regarded their activities as part of a wider process of artistic renewal, and their ideas closely correspond with the concerns of 

The Protestant Palestrina revival



contemporary cultural reformers – most significantly, Schiller and Wilhelm von Humboldt – who championed the importance for art for Bildung, the self-cultivation of the individual, and for Volks-Bildung, the cultural regeneration of the populace. The relation between the hellenized humanism of Schiller and Humboldt and the idealization of a cappella music is discussed in greater detail later: here, it is necessary to address the broader implications of the idea of Bildung for the Palestrina revival. It will become evident that in the conception of Bildung articulated by Thibaut and Zelter, the requirements of aesthetics are subjugated to those of ethics: it was the elevation of ethical concerns that fostered the composition of quasi-liturgical music and encouraged the replication of earlier styles. In , Humboldt – at that time Prussian minister for education and religious affairs – acclaimed Zelter’s Singakademie as a model of the societal benefits resulting from the cultivation of church music. Humboldt emphasizes the significance of the ‘serious and solemn church style’ as a tool for shaping the national character, considering that no other art is capable of having such a beneficial effect on even the lowest members of society, or of creating such a ‘natural bond between the upper and lower classes’. Zelter himself described the Singakademie as a ‘temple of virtue [Tugendtempel ] for young and old, for the joy of all the inhabitants of Berlin’, considering it to resemble a utopian aesthetic state predicated on the freedom of the individual within a brotherhood of equals. Similarly, Thibaut emphasizes the universal benefits that musical reforms would bring, arguing that ‘nothing is more capable of having an effect on the masses [das Volk] than elevated music’.  But if Zelter and Thibaut were committed in principle to the ideal of musical renewal for the benefit of the masses, their choral societies made little direct contribution to this cause. Both organizations were socially exclusive, functioning as quasi-religious institutions, temples to the neohumanist cult of Bildung. The Berlin Singakademie – whose members in this period included the Mendelssohn family, Schleiermacher (a tenor), and the future Reichskanzler Otto von Bismarck (a bass) – restricted membership to those who ‘possess the required level of moral and artistic cultivation [sittlichen und Kunst-Bildung]’, while Thibaut similarly insisted that only singers of an ‘elevated moral tendency [h¨ohere moralische Richtung]’ could be admitted. Moreover, both organizations preserved their private character by seldom performing in public; guests, limited to ‘refined friends’ (veredelte Freunde), were admitted to hear Thibaut’s choir only four times a year, and those with uneducated or shallow tastes were excluded



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

( Jean Paul’s request to hear the choir, for instance, was rejected ‘because his vacillating, restless nature is not suited to serious music’). These organizations not only provided their members with a musical supplement to the meagre fare offered in most Protestant churches, but offered a spiritual substitute for the dry rationalism of the contemporary Protestant service. The function of Thibaut’s Singverein as an aesthetic substitute for conventional religion is evident in a pens´ee recalled by his biographer: ‘My music room is my temple: there Marcello supplies me with a text for my edification, Handel inspires me with a sermon, with Palestrina I venerate my God, and our religious language and effective religion is music.’ The sequestered character of both organizations is indicative of their function as counterweights to the perceived degeneracy of contemporary musical culture. This role was fundamental in determining the repertory of these choirs. The idealization of old Italian music by Thibaut and Zelter reflects two elements crucial to their thinking: the moralism underpinning their conception of the purpose of art, and their reliance on the aesthetics of feeling in evaluating artworks. For both musicians, the moral significance of music derives from it being a language of feelings. The elevated feelings expressed in serious music provoke a similar state in the soul of the listener, and thus provide a direct means of improving the morals of the individual and of society: ‘this improvement exists in an activity of inner powers of the soul, whereby man in himself becomes more perfect and therefore more noble.’ Both Thibaut and Zelter condemn modern music for being unable to contribute to such ennoblement; Zelter laments that music has declined into being a mere luxury, nothing more than an empty pastime, while Thibaut complains that ‘our music has no kind of moral influence whatsoever, aside from the encouragement of vanity, addiction to dancing and lasciviousness’. Considering there to be a precise correspondence between the moral purity of a musical work and the state that it produces in the listener, Thibaut argues that some modern compositions have as detrimental an effect on the souls of listeners as poison would have on their bodies: It can be claimed without exaggeration that half of our music is unnatural, a branch of mathematics without an element of life, a sham which brings glory only to nimble fingers and such a mixture of unhealthy ingredients that it may be asked in all seriousness whether or not music does us more harm than good. . . . The most deadly poison is acclaimed under the exalted name of effect, this spasmodic, contorted, exaggerated, intoxicating, maddening trickery, unleashing everything evil in man and threatening eventually to destroy entirely music in its true sense.

The Protestant Palestrina revival



In condemning the degeneracy of modern musical culture, Thibaut and Zelter focus their arguments on the increasing predominance of instrumental music, concentrating in particular on the vacuity of instrumental virtuosity. Here, their arguments diverge significantly from the otherwise similar tirades against modern frivolity articulated by Hoffmann. Instead of viewing modern instrumental music and early a cappella music as complementary ideals, they cast them as antitheses: both Zelter and Thibaut viewed their choral societies as counterweights to the predominance of instrumental music in modern culture. Although neither Thibaut nor Zelter share the intense antipathy towards instrumental music that we shall encounter in the writings of their pupils, both depict the rise of instrumental music in the previous half-century as a cause not only of the decline of church music, but of music in general. Both Zelter and Thibaut approach instrumental music from a Kantian perspective, considering that only in combination with language can music attain purposiveness and contribute positively to culture. Zelter’s argument – which was later to be intensified in the writings of his pupil Grell – is that ‘mere playing or the production of notes’ (blosse Spielen oder Notenmachen) is not an end in itself, being powerless in the absence of a conceptual object. For Zelter and Thibaut, the language of feelings that music represents can be activated effectively only through the mediation of concepts; without these, music descends to ‘empty strumming and fiddling’, and a musical work can be no more than a ‘practice piece’. As a consequence, rather than treating Latin works as analogues to absolute instrumental music in the manner of Hoffmann, Thibaut considers their texts to provide the conceptual element essential for Bildung: ‘Music can have no better helpmeet than a good text, since purposive texts attune the soul to that which music develops further. . . . If composers have been inspired by magnificent words, then this will have an obvious influence on their compositions, and what can compare to the human voice when noble thoughts move the soul of the singer.’ In the practical activities of Thibaut and Zelter, the assertion of the primacy of vocal music against modern instrumentalism is reflected in their championing of the a cappella idiom. This resulted not only in the cultivation of Renaissance and stile antico church music, but also in the omission of orchestral instruments in performances of concerted works. In Zelter’s case, this involved the rearrangement of eighteenth-century works for a cappella forces: in the first decade of the nineteenth century, he arranged Handel’s ‘Utrecht’ Te Deum for eight-part a cappella choir (replacing the English text of the original with the Latin), and similar treatments were applied to works by Haydn, Jommelli, C. P. E. Bach and



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

J. S. Bach. Although Thibaut did not produce similar arrangements, he too considered that the omission of instruments enhanced concerted works, arguing that the majority of works in the oratorio style could be performed with ‘vocal forces alone’ (bloß durch S¨anger). Crucially, in the usage of Thibaut, Zelter and contemporaries, the phrases a cappella and ‘for voices alone’ rarely signified unaccompanied performance, but merely the exclusion of orchestral instruments. Thibaut provided a piano accompaniment for a cappella works, while in the Berlin Singakademie, the habitual use of a keyboard doubling the voices was sometimes supplemented by a single cello or double bass (the wholly unaccompanied performance of Renaissance music did not become the norm for the Singakademie until the s). The elevation of a cappella church music as a counterbalance to modern instrumentalism also governed the concert programming of these societies. This is especially apparent in the development of historical concerts, whose content and method of organization functioned as a corrective to the purposelessness of modern virtuoso music. In Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, the programmes of historical concerts were frequently ordered chronologically, a gesture seen – according to Monika Lichtenfeld – as a critique of the ‘potpourri programmes’ of virtuoso concerts; in the Paris concerts of the s arranged by Fran¸cois-Joseph F´etis, for instance, such chronological sequences were applied not only to individual concerts, but to extended concert series. Thibaut’s programmes, while equally didactic in intent, were organized differently: they were often governed by what Baumstark describes as the ‘antithetical principle’ (das Prinzip der Gegens¨atze), by which works of a similar scope from different periods were juxtaposed and comparatively evaluated. Thibaut’s programme for  July , for example, placed a Sanctus by the contemporary Munich court organist Caspar Ett after an ‘Osanna’ by Lassus, while Palestrina’s four-part motet ‘O Domine Jesu Christe’ was followed by Mozart’s ‘Ave verum corpus’; similarly, on  March , an Agnus Dei by Mozart was appended to a programme otherwise entirely devoted to Palestrina. The pedagogical and polemical functions of such comparisons were inextricably linked, since – given Thibaut’s deterministic conception of the inexorable decline of church music after Palestrina – a neutral survey of successive styles was inconceivable. Such oppositional strategies pervade Thibaut’s commentaries on old Italian compositions: these are formulated in terms that stress their distance from the degeneracies perceived in modern church music. Accordingly, in discussing old Italian settings of the Miserere, Thibaut

The Protestant Palestrina revival



argues that their serenity and restraint is the result of the absence of the generic mixing present in more recent church music: ‘In them there is not, from love of supposed artistry, a striving after contrasting effects, but through the constant, pure recurrence of restrained chant the music develops simply, preserving a uniform character which, being linked to the pious state of the soul, moves but does not disturb.’ These comments provide a point of access to a crucial aspect of Thibaut’s aesthetic stance: his dependence on the (Rousseauesque) opposition of nature and artistry. Thibaut’s dismissal of modern virtuoso music as unnatural stems from the incompatibility of artistry and the arousal of feelings: only music that evinces ‘instinctive, pure inspiration’ can contribute to the ennoblement of man. Indeed, even works by Palestrina that exhibit excessive artistry, such as the canonic Missa ad fugam, are dismissed. In elevating old Italian homophony as a medium for Bildung, Thibaut repeatedly invokes natural imagery and analogies: in a particularly telling example, he compares a Magnificat by Palestrina to the singing of nightingales, arguing that the effect of both is enhanced through thinking and dreaming freely rather than listening attentively. Here, Palestrina’s works emerge as a kind of mood music, whose value as a source of calmness and consolation outweighs their artistic dimension. Similar priorities are apparent in Thibaut’s discussions of later stile antico works: ‘a young man, who had many wrong-headed ideas, cried out ecstatically after hearing a mass by Lotti, “this evening no man could be my enemy!”’ The moral power of old church music illustrated by this anecdote is derived, according to Thibaut, not from artistry and striving after effect but from the suppression of artistic impulses: while the church music of modern composers is luxuriant and worldly, music in the true church style exhibits moderation and self-denial: ‘everything should be modest, serious, worthily sustained, thoroughly refined, and dispassionate’ (alles soll m¨aßig, ernst, w¨urdig gehalten, durchaus veredelt und leidenschaftlos sein). It is clear that despite the views of several modern commentators, the revival of early church music by these choirs cannot be understood simply as its transference from the functional to the aesthetic realm. In , Richard Hohenemser argued that in such societies, old church compositions were revivified as ‘autonomous musical creations’ and ‘judged according to their purely musical value’, a view that has been perpetuated in recent scholarship. This interpretation downplays the ethical function that was assigned to this music: while the notion of Bildung was in general predicated on the autonomy of the artwork, the Bildungsidee animating these choral societies represents the perpetuation of eighteenth-century



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

conceptions of artistic and generic function, affective evaluation and a view of art centred on the recipient rather than the object. Only later, in the writings of Grell, was this ethical framework directly pitted against the idea of aesthetic autonomy; this tension, nonetheless, is already implicit in the views of Thibaut and Zelter. Here, it is necessary to locate the problems that this ethical framework creates within broader debates on the purpose of art. For Hegel, art occupies a conceptual space midway between entertainment and instruction: at the extremes, art descends into being merely a trifling diversion or a didactic tool. Exploring the dangers inherent in viewing art as a medium for purifying the passions, instruction or moral improvement, he notes that in recent years the latter has increasingly been seen as the supreme goal of art. Hegel argues that those who propagate such ideas are not satisfied to view moral improvement as a by-product of art but assert that this is its substantial purpose: as a consequence, not only are its other aspects – ‘pleasure, entertainment and delight’ – declared inessential, but the aim of art is degraded to being a mere means to a goal that lies outside of art. Hegel rejects this idea robustly, arguing that the purposes of instruction and improvement do not determine the conception of artworks, and cannot provide a criterion for their evaluation. Conversely, in the writings of Thibaut and Zelter, ethical concerns achieve primacy in the evaluation of early church pieces and in their proposals for modern reform. Neither Thibaut nor Zelter explore in detail how modern composers should respond to the models of the church and oratorio styles: for the most part, they merely entreat composers to heed generic distinctions and, as Thibaut put it, to ‘take on again something of the beautiful, lovely spirit which has brought us so many calming, cheering and innocent melodies’. It is clear, however, that the potential of a piece for Bildung overrides certain aesthetic criteria. While Hoffmann insisted that modern church pieces must reflect the prevailing world spirit, Thibaut dismisses as vainglorious the idea of ‘progressing with the spirit of the age’ and equates originality – in a manner similar to Goethe – with mere affectation and gimmickry. Moreover, Thibaut’s view that the purity of old Italian music derives from the absence of artistry encourages composers to disregard artistic concerns in the pursuit of this ideal. It will become clear that the prizing of ethical concerns over aesthetic criteria (including originality) and of simplicity over artistry were crucial in shaping modern compositions for these choral societies.

The Protestant Palestrina revival



QUASI-LITURGICAL MUSIC: SPOHR AND NICOLAI

In seeking to categorize settings of liturgical texts, nineteenth-century and modern commentators generally differentiate them in functional terms. Writing in the last quarter of the century, Eduard Hanslick and Spitta polarize functional liturgical music and religious compositions conceived for the concert hall: both argue that in the latter, liturgical texts provide merely a poetic framework for the construction of ‘autonomous musical works’, music that is – in Hanslick’s phrase – ‘of the church but not for the church’. Such polarizations, polemical in intent, over-simplify matters. In addition to this basic distinction between liturgical and non-liturgical works (large-scale concerted masses and requiems, for instance), a third strand must be distinguished: quasiliturgical works which, while written for the concert hall, conform with the restrictions and evoke the aura of liturgical music. Although nineteenth-century Protestant composers frequently composed pieces for the Catholic liturgy, many of their Latin a cappella settings were destined primarily for Singvereine. Quasi-liturgical music, more than any other strand of religious composition, provided composers with a medium for stylistic experimentation. Free from the practicalities of writing for the Protestant service, composers were able to explore contemporary ideals of the church style in more abstract terms. In composing for Singvereine, composers were nonetheless subject to the restrictions imposed by the aesthetic views of their directors: the ideals of the ‘strict style’ (gebundnen Styl ) and of a cappella performance advocated by Zelter, or the more stringent emphasis on simplicity recommended by Thibaut. In addition to the use of a cappella forces, quasi-liturgical pieces often contain stylistic relationships to the old Italian church music performed by these societies. Here it must be noted that while Thibaut and Zelter elevate Palestrina as the paradigm of the church style in their writings, his music occupied a relatively minor role in their practical activities: German and Italian Baroque compositions, in particular Italian stile antico works, dominated the repertories of both choirs. As a consequence, it was in general stile antico compositions that served as stylistic models for quasiliturgical pieces, as is apparent from Fasch’s sixteen-part mass (modelled on a mass by Orazio Benevoli (–)), and Zelter’s Latin motets (here, it is worth noting that Goethe emulated Zelter by composing a Latin motet ‘resembling one by Jommelli’). From the s, however, composers of quasi-liturgical pieces increasingly experimented with elements of Palestrina’s style, in some cases seeking to replicate it literally.



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

The diversity present in the compositional responses to Palestrina can be seen in works by Otto Nicolai (–), today best remembered for his opera Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, and Louis Spohr (–), both of whose conceptions of quasi-liturgical music reflect the views and activities of Thibaut and Zelter. Nicolai, a pupil of Thibaut’s prot´eg´e Bernhard Klein, was a member of the Berlin Singakademie from  to , and presented this choir with copies of his Psalm  () and ‘Pater noster’ op.  (). Spohr’s Messe f u¨ r  Solostimmen und zwei f u¨ nfstimmige Ch¨ore op.  () was composed for Thibaut’s Singverein but received its first performance from Zelter’s choir. Nicolai and Spohr, like many of their contemporaries, were exposed to Renaissance Italian music in two different contexts, the German Singvereine and the Sistine Chapel. While Spohr heard the papal choir on only a handful of occasions in  and , Nicolai’s appointment as organist at the chapel of the Prussian legation in Rome (–) fostered a deeper engagement with Palestrina: encouraged by the Prussian minister resident in Rome, Christian Karl Josias Freiherr von Bunsen ( –), Nicolai took counterpoint lessons from the choir’s director Giuseppe Baini (–) whom he considered to have ‘a perfect knowledge of Palestrina and of old music’. While Nicolai’s enthusiastic descriptions of the papal choir’s performances reflect the language of Hoffmann and Tieck, Spohr’s assessments are more ambivalent: these contrasting stances are paralleled in their compositional responses to Palestrina. For Nicolai, the performance tradition of the papal choir represented an ideal model for the interpretation of Renaissance music; he precisely equated the choir’s current practices with the manner of performance that Palestrina had in mind, arguing that German choirs seeking to perform this music must emulate its traditions. In contrast, Spohr approached the idea and the reality of this unbroken tradition with scepticism, comparing the choir’s singing unfavourably with that of the German Singvereine. Although Spohr shared Goethe’s conviction that works in the ‘pure church style’ are precisely suited to this context, his initial responses show little enthusiasm for the unaccompanied idiom: ‘I have once again convinced myself that voices and instruments united are far more effective in church than purely vocal music, which always remains somewhat monotonous.’ The contrast between the views of Nicolai and Spohr is most evident in regard to the most controversial aspect of the choir’s performances, the ornamentation applied to Renaissance and stile antico works. Nicolai considered the embellishments

The Protestant Palestrina revival



employed to be centuries old, comparing them with the naiv features of medieval Italian painting and acclaiming them as the product of true religious conviction. Conversely, Spohr dismissed the ornamentation in the context of a broader critique of the choir’s performing tradition: ‘Can this be the arcane manner of performing these old compositions, which is said to be known only to this choir and which has been passed down through tradition? Of course not! Only modern Italians could be capable of singing so barbarically, since while they have an ear for melody, they are incredibly ignorant in everything concerning harmony.’ Importantly, however, neither Nicolai nor Spohr maintain these stances unequivocally. In spite of his enthusiasm for the performances of the papal choir, Nicolai was unwilling to follow Bunsen in elevating Palestrina against more recent music: ‘one should not as a consequence despise that which is new. Beethoven, Mozart and Handel are as great in their way as Palestrina is in his.’ And Spohr’s later experiences of the Holy Week services, in particular the performance of Allegri’s Miserere, at least partially converted him to this music. Spohr’s most revelatory encounter with old Italian music occurred in Heidelberg, not in Rome; in October  he heard Thibaut’s Singverein, and studied scores from Thibaut’s library of early music at the piano: Until this time I knew nothing of this music, except what I had heard in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and was therefore very grateful to the Hofrat [Thibaut] for allowing me to attend the rehearsals of his society, where I got to know some of the old works that were being carefully prepared by his choir. . . . The simple, impressive style of these works made a great impression on me, and I requested his permission to study the scores thoroughly. Each day I took advantage of this privilege, and was able to learn a great deal about the part-writing and harmonic practice of the old masters. As a result of this, I felt like attempting a piece of polychoral church music alla cappella, and I carried this out the following summer in Gandersheim by composing my ten-part mass, op. .

The relation between Spohr’s mass and the old Italian pieces that he encountered in Rome and Heidelberg is more complicated than these comments suggest. Indeed, it may seem that the only point of contact between the work and old Italian music is its unaccompanied idiom; Spohr’s omission of instruments represents the suppression of an aspect of modern musical practice in order to conform with the Palestrinian ideal (his earlier comments on the constraints of the unaccompanied idiom confirm that this constituted an act of self-denial). Aside from the dialogic double-choir textures in the Credo (bars –), few passages in



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

the mass suggest the unmediated use of elements of Palestrina’s language: as Ulrich Konrad has noted, it is clear that Spohr did not intend to produce a stylistic copy. Spohr’s further comments on the mass in his autobiography have been regarded as the key to this problem, but their meaning is ambiguous: ‘Certainly I did not attempt to move in the simple triadic progressions of the old masters; on the contrary I used the rich modulations of Mozart’s later manner, probably too much for the thing to be practicable.’ While the reference to Mozart’s late style has been viewed as signalling Spohr’s intent to produce an entirely modern work, it seems unlikely that Spohr invokes Mozart – a composer dead for thirty years – to signify his piece’s contemporaneity. Rather, this description suggests that, as with the later ‘Historical’ Symphony no.  in G (), Spohr is appropriating not one historical style, but two styles, those of Palestrina and Mozart. In his autobiography Spohr criticized Thibaut’s rejection of the church music of Mozart, contending that Mozart’s Requiem was superior to all the early church music that he had heard. Spohr’s mass could be seen as an attempt to demonstrate the liturgical validity of ‘Mozart’s later manner’, by combining it with elements of the unimpeachable style of Palestrina. While the chromatic melodic lines and colourful suspensions of the Kyrie, for example, evoke the style of the Requiem, the vocal textures, treatment of imitation and bold consonant chords bear some relation to the old Italian works that Thibaut made available to Spohr. As a consequence of its stylistic pluralism, the mass bears little direct resemblance to Thibaut’s paradigms of the church style, while the technical difficulty of the work rendered much of it inaccessible to his choir and other amateur groups. Nonetheless, Spohr’s mass – dedicated to ‘the German choral societies’ – was conceived as a compositional manifesto for their ideals and represents the first significant example of quasi-liturgical music. Nicolai’s quasi-liturgical pieces evidence a very different relation to Palestrina. The stylistic gulf between these works and his contemporary orchestral compositions is extraordinarily wide, and his ‘Pater noster’ – written shortly after he began taking regular lessons from Baini in  – comes close to the literal replication of Palestrina’s language. In spite of Nicolai’s proximity to Baini, the relation between their compositions and the music of Palestrina is significantly different. Baini’s compositions for the papal choir have sometimes been viewed as a historicist return to Palestrina’s language, ‘an anachronistic and impossible reinstatement of the past’. This view is misleading, to say the least: Baini’s music does

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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not constitute a ‘reinstatement’ of the past, but is rather the perpetuation of an idiom that had been in continuous use in the Sistine Chapel since Palestrina’s death (and was thus not anachronistic in this context). Baini himself emphasized this continuity of tradition in his Memorie storico-critiche della vita e delle opere di Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (–), asserting that Palestrina’s successors have maintained ‘the spirit and tradition of his teaching, his living influence’ up to the present day. Baini’s perpetuation of the Palestrina tradition constitutes the use of modern harmonic and melodic elements within the framework of the stile antico rather than a replication of the historical language of Palestrina. Nicolai was aware of the distance between Palestrina’s language and Baini’s stile antico compositions; this can be seen in his description of Baini’s ten-part Miserere, where he notes that it ‘contrasts greatly with the customary older compositions of the Sistine on account of its modern modulations’. Elsewhere, Nicolai presents a more forthright analysis of the relation between this piece and Renaissance church music, condemning the unprepared dissonances, diminished-seventh chords and banal melodic figures that render it ‘as unlike Palestrina [unpalestrinasch] as is possible’. In contrast to Baini’s perpetuation of the stile antico tradition, Nicolai’s ‘Pater noster’ engages directly with the music of Palestrina. While Konrad has linked this motet to Venetian polychoral music on the basis of its double-choir scoring, it bears closer relation to two works by Palestrina in Nicolai’s possession: a (probably spurious) ‘Pater noster’ and the ‘Stabat mater’, both also for double choir. Nicolai’s handling of this texture, in particular the combining of individual and paired parts from both choirs, closely resembles the varied procedures found in the ‘Stabat mater’; in addition, his treatment of hemiola rhythms and use of a single contrasting section in triple time reflect this model. Aside from a brief passage of imitative writing (bars –), the ‘Pater noster’ also shares the predominantly homophonic idiom of this work; Nicolai’s cultivation of homophony reflects not only the privileging of this idiom in contemporary German criticism, but also the views of Baini, who represented Palestrina’s homophony as a return to the imitation of nature following the empty abstractions of his predecessors. Nicolai’s studies with Baini included a grounding in modal composition, and the harmonic idiom of this motet suggests an attempt to replicate Palestrina’s modal practice. In addition to melodic modal colouring (see Ex. .) and the use of quasi-modal progressions in which secondary chords predominate, modal harmonic parameters operate at a structural level. The internal cadences are on the first, fourth, fifth and sixth degrees of the scale, a

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. Otto Nicolai, ‘Pater noster’, bars –

scheme consistent with Palestrina’s handling of the ionian mode, and these cadences seldom function as vehicles for tonal modulation (the one exception being the section in the dominant, bars  to ; as a result of this, the piece as a whole evinces a fusion of modal and tonal practice). Nicolai’s model-based approach to replicating Palestrina’s language is also apparent in his treatment of tied notes and smaller note values:

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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Example .. (cont.)

this testifies to his intent to evoke Palestrina’s sound world rather than to abide by the timeless rules of the strenge Satz. Nicolai frequently ties notes to subsequent notes of less than half their length, and also ties notes of lesser value to following notes of greater value: the resulting syncopations – impossible in sixteenth-century notation – would have

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. (cont.)

been frowned on by theorists of the strenge Satz, for whom the regulated alternation of arsis and thesis was a paramount consideration. With regard to dissonance treatment, Nicolai’s handling of smaller note values is in general free, and it is significant that he omits some of the more archaic aspects of Palestrina’s dissonance treatment such as the consonant fourth idiom (though not notae cambiatae). Here, it is useful to compare the ‘Pater noster’ to a later, more eclectic piece for the Catholic liturgy, the Offertorium in assumptione beatae Mariae Virginis op.  (). In the Offertorium, the replication of Palestrina’s dissonance treatment in the stark bicinium passage (including a cadential nota cambiata) contrasts with the mellifluous parallel thirds and rhythmic pairing of the voices in bars –, more redolent of the Romantic partsong (see Ex. .). The aesthetic problems created by these two compositions are complex. On the one hand, ‘Pater noster’ can be viewed as a historicist return to origins in opposition to Baini’s corruption of the stile antico: a return to the original purity of Palestrina’s language unsullied by the extraneous additions of those who regarded themselves as his descendants. But on the other hand, the ‘Pater noster’ and to a greater extent the Offertorium themselves depart from Palestrina’s language, through the inclusion of features that cannot simply be explained as unconscious ‘mistakes’. While the departures from Palestrina’s dissonance treatment and part-writing in the ‘Pater noster’ may well have been unintentional, aspects of the harmonic practice in this motet and in the Offertorium resist explanation in these terms. Here it is helpful to return to the criteria expounded by Rochlitz in discussing ‘new-old compositions’ (neu-alten Musikst¨ucke). Seeking to

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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Example .. Nicolai, Offertorium in assumptione beatae Mariae Virginis op. , bars –

discourage imitation, Rochlitz sets out a series of guidelines for composers who intend to emulate the revival of earlier styles and techniques present in recent painting. He advises composers to avoid harmonic emptiness (that is, to refrain from replicating the most archaic features of older styles), and to abstain from the eclectic combining of elements drawn from a number of earlier styles: the crude part-writing and abrupt chord progressions common in old Roman music should only be reproduced

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

(nachbilden) in pieces done completely in this style. Rochlitz’s most significant requirement – as with Hegel – is that composers should also include something ‘peculiar to the modern age’ (eigentlich Modernen) in order to avoid producing pieces whose forms are entirely divorced from the modern world-view. Nicolai’s ‘Pater noster’, while fulfilling the first two of these criteria, is nonetheless problematic when measured by the third: only its brief excursion to the dominant can be viewed as the conscious inclusion of a modern element. Conversely, while the Offertorium surely contains sufficient modern elements to satisfy this requirement, it may seem to offend against the complete congruence of old and new that Rochlitz also demands. Nicolai himself was aware of the aesthetic problems created by his ‘Pater noster’; this is evident in the circumstances surrounding its planned performance in a concert spirituel of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna on  April . The motet was to have been included in a historical concert devoted to Nicolai’s own works in older styles. In addition to his overture on ‘Ein’ feste Burg’ in the style of the eighteenth century, the ‘Pater noster’ was billed as being ‘in the style of the seventeenth century after old Roman studies. Model: Palestrina’. By explicitly identifying the piece (it is no longer a ‘work’) as a study, Nicolai sought to place it outside of aesthetic criteria and make a virtue of its replication of an earlier style: its legitimacy is derived from the degree of success with which it serves pedagogical and ethical purposes, not from whether it is aesthetically valid.

MENDELSSOHN AND THE BERLIN PALESTRINA REVIVAL

The compositions of Nicolai and Spohr reflect not only the increasing interest in the music of the past, but the growing awareness of the historicity of musical styles. For composers and other artists of the Vorm¨arz, the awareness of the availability of a plethora of earlier styles posed intractable problems: this is especially clear in architecture, where the question ‘in what style should we build?’ centred on choosing an orientation from a multiplicity of competing historical ideals. The extent of styles available to contemporary architects is vividly apparent in Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s design (–) for a memorial cathedral in Berlin to those who died in the wars of liberation. Schinkel’s solution to the problem of choosing from among the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Gothic styles was to combine all three, thus unifying in one design the three forms of art – Symbolic, Classical and Romantic – that Hegel later identified

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

in his lectures on aesthetics. While no musical composition from the s exhibits a degree of eclecticism comparable to that of Schinkel’s design, the exploration of historical musical languages also emerged in this period. Although isolated works by earlier composers exhibit the use or evocation of historical styles – such as Beethoven’s String Quartet in A minor op.  (Heilige Dankgesang) and Missa solemnis – it is the works of Felix Mendelssohn that best represent this tendency. His output provides the closest musical analogue to that of his fellow Berliner, Schinkel, in architecture, and his engagement with earlier styles was a central aspect why, in Schumann’s words, he was the musician ‘who most clearly appreciated the contradictions of his age’. The activities of Zelter, and to a lesser extent Thibaut, were fundamental to the development of Mendelssohn’s historical orientation and conception of the church style. Indeed, the defining impact of Zelter and his Singakademie on Mendelssohn was summed up by his father Abraham, who noted that ‘without Zelter, your musical tendencies would be entirely different’. Both Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn had started composition lessons under Zelter in  and were admitted to the ranks of the Singakademie in October . The impact of this choir’s performances of old Italian music and of the views of Zelter is readily apparent in the young Mendelssohn’s conception of the true church style. In a letter from , he echoed Hoffmann’s criticisms of Cherubini’s Mass in F, considering it to be ‘as jovial [lustig] as he is grumpy; that is, beyond all measure’, while he found the church music of Jean-Fran¸cois Le Sueur (–) ‘even more jolly and galant’ than that of Cherubini, and an Agnus Dei by Hummel is again ‘too jovial’. Mendelssohn’s ideas on church music ¨ Reinheit der Tonkunst and were reinforced by his reading of Thibaut’s Uber by his acquaintance with its author, whom he acclaimed for showing him how to appreciate old Italian music. Importantly, however, it was the wonders of stile antico music, not the works of Palestrina, that Thibaut revealed to Mendelssohn. In recounting their meeting, Mendelssohn refers to a passage from Thibaut’s book describing the powerful effect of Scarlatti’s ‘Tu es Petrus’; Mendelssohn’s own setting of this text () and his other quasi-liturgical pieces for the Singakademie from these years bear a closer relation to stile antico church music than to Palestrina. Mendelssohn’s ‘Tu es Petrus’ (published posthumously as op. ) has often been linked to Palestrina in the critical literature. Wulf Konold argues that the work represents an attempt to evoke Palestrina’s sound world with modern resources, viewing the use of the orchestra as creating a reflective mediation of Palestrina’s language; similarly, Judith Silber



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

considers that the orchestral scoring demonstrates Mendelssohn’s hostility to the imitation of Palestrina by establishing a critical distance from his style. While the stylistic orientation of the work is admittedly complex, its imitative textures bear little relation to Palestrina’s polyphony, let alone to early nineteenth-century perceptions of his style. Thus, orchestra or not, it seems unlikely that Palestrina provided a model for this work: as a consequence, the distance between this piece and Palestrina’s language cannot be seen to represent a critique of more literal nineteenth-century responses to this language. But if Palestrina’s polyphony did not provide a model for ‘Tu es Petrus’, then neither is it related to the fugal idiom which – via Johann Philipp Kirnberger’s Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik ( –) – formed the basis of Mendelssohn’s lessons with Zelter. Rather, the contrapuntal portions of the work are more closely related to the early eighteenth-century Italian stile antico, or to the German stile antico tradition epitomized by the second ‘Kyrie’ of Bach’s Mass in B Minor. Similarly, while the contrapuntal sections of Mendelssohn’s Te Deum () have been linked to Palestrina’s polyphony, they have more in common with Baroque German and Italian church music (the primary models for this work were Handel’s ‘Utrecht’ Te Deum and ‘Dettingen’ Te Deum, both performed under Zelter in the early s). If the contrapuntal passages of the Te Deum and ‘Tu es Petrus’ are related primarily to eighteenth-century models, their homophonic portions nonetheless reflect early nineteenth-century conceptions of Palestrina; the same is true of Mendelssohn’s ‘Hora est’ (), which perpetuates the sixteen-part a cappella texture of Fasch’s mass. The ‘Sanctus’ from the fourth movement of the Te Deum, ‘Tibi cherubim’, presents two different types of reference to Palestrina’s homophonic style: double-choir dialogues (bars  to the end) and successions of slowmoving root-position chords with fragmentary imitations (bars –). If these passages recall the simplicity and restraint that Thibaut prized in Palestrina, the bold progressions in bars – of ‘Tu es Petrus’ re-create the sublime shafts of light that Hoffmann perceived in Palestrina’s homophony. The historical orientation reflected in these pieces is different from that embodied in Mendelssohn’s later works. Rather than consciously engaging with diverse historical styles, these pieces represent the assimilation of the music that surrounded him in his youth: as a result in part of his association with the Singakademie, the music of the past formed a ‘living present’ and his conception of music history resembled a ‘colourful kaleidoscope’. In the absence of a sense of the historicity of styles, Mendelssohn approached the works of the past in terms of their aesthetic

The Protestant Palestrina revival



impression and of the generic criteria passed on by Zelter. Accordingly, his compositional responses to earlier music cannot be understood in terms of historicism, but rather constitute the forging of a means of expression from timeless exemplars. While Georg Feder seems to view all of Mendelssohn’s output from this perspective, a group of factors at the end of the s and beginning of the s transformed Mendelssohn’s historical orientation and the nature of his engagement with earlier music. As a result of his conversations with Goethe, his deepening knowledge of music history and his exposure to a wealth of earlier art during his travels between  and , Mendelssohn increasingly approaches works and styles as historically contingent: the exemplars of the church and oratorio styles recede into a foreign past, becoming ideals to set against the present. As a result, the composition of religious music became a series of engagements with earlier styles: a salvage operation with the aim, as Mendelssohn’s father put it, of ‘combining old ways of thinking [alten Sinns] with new materials’. It was following Mendelssohn’s exposure to the performances of the papal choir that his conception of the true church style became firmly focused on Palestrina. Just prior to this, however, he completed three pieces for the Berlin Singakademie – published as the Drei Kirchenmusiken op.  – that testify to his concern with finding an appropriate style for church music. These three works approach this concern in different ways: ‘Aus tiefer Noth schrei’ ich zu Dir’ op.  no.  consists of four movements in the manner of a Baroque chorale motet flanking an independent aria, while ‘Ave Maria’ op.  no.  seems more related to Viennese Classical church music. The function of the ‘Ave Maria’ as a compositional essay on the problem of church music is evident in the comments of Mendelssohn’s father, who treated the work as a somewhat unsuccessful stylistic exercise. Approaching the work from a perspective resembling the views of Thibaut, Abraham Mendelssohn condemns its central and closing sections for their excessive artistry, considering this to detract from the ‘simple, pious yet truly Catholic style’ of the rest of the piece. More obliquely, he warns against viewing Catholicism as a source of artistic renewal, condemning Protestant settings of the Latin mass and urging Mendelssohn to avoid the mistakes of the Nazarenes, who attempt to regain the religiosity of the fifteenth century through mannerism and topsy-turvy perspective. If the ‘Ave Maria’ presented a defective solution to the problem of composing church music, ‘Mitten wir im Leben sind’ op.  no.  proved more successful. Mendelssohn himself commented on the liturgical orientation of the piece, considering that it ‘puts on the mien of a cantor



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

[ein Cantorgesicht]’ and describing it as ‘one of the best church pieces I have written’. This work can be viewed as an attempt to create an ideal fusion of two traditions of liturgical music, the Protestant chorale and old Italian homophony, a dual orientation reflected in Mendelssohn’s description of it as a ‘Lutheran chorale for eight voices a capella’. The chorale portions of the work reflect not the style of Bach’s harmonizations, but the nineteenth-century ‘reformed’ chorale, the return to the supposed simplicity and suitability for congregational singing of the chorales of the Reformation period advocated by Thibaut and, among others, Mendelssohn’s organ teacher August Wilhelm Bach (–). There is a reciprocal relation between early nineteenth-century ideas on chorale reform and the idealization of old Italian homophony: Thibaut, for instance, condemned the contrapuntal artistry present in Bach’s chorales, championing simple harmonizations consisting mostly of rootposition chords. The severe chorale harmonizations in ‘Mitten wir im Leben sind’ provide an exemplary realization of this ideal; the stark chordal writing of the remainder of the work, however, more closely resembles the Palestrinian homophony present in Mendelssohn’s earlier quasi-liturgical pieces, and the handling of the eight-part texture has also been compared with Palestrina’s practices. None of the sections in this work presents the kind of compositional engagement with old Italian music exhibited in Mendelssohn’s later liturgical music. Even so, it is clear that the work represents a response to contemporary ideals of church music reform: it complies with Abraham Mendelssohn’s demand for a combination of old and new free from the mannerism of the Nazarenes, providing an austere new exemplar of the church style. If Mendelssohn’s quasi-liturgical pieces enabled him to explore the nature of the church style in the abstract, his exposure to the ceremonies of the Sistine Chapel led him to contemplate the special requirements of liturgical music. Mendelssohn’s descriptions of the papal choir’s performances – which he approached, rather self-consciously, with the scepticism of Goethe rather than the enthusiasm of the Romantic circle – repeatedly emphasize a single point: that the starkly homophonic music performed in Holy Week, while artistically restricted, is perfectly attuned to its liturgical context. In attempting to explain the effect of the Holy Week performances, Mendelssohn concludes that it is not the music alone that produces the awed audience reaction, but the ceremonies as a whole. In a letter to his family, written after experiencing the Holy Week services in , Mendelssohn develops this idea further, viewing the music as an inseparable part of a larger Gesamtkunstwerk. He

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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singles out Palestrina’s Improperia for particular praise, echoing Goethe’s comments in the Italienische Reise on the union of music and liturgical action that occur on Good Friday at the adoration of the Cross: ‘It seems to me, after only a single hearing, that it is one of the most beautiful compositions by Palestrina, and they sing it with quite remarkable affection. . . . I could well understand why the Improperia made the greatest impression on Goethe; it is really the height of perfection, since music, ceremony, and everything are in complete accord.’ The significance of the Improperia for Mendelssohn is the ideal nature of its fusion of musical quality and liturgical suitability. His conviction that this ideal was attained solely by old Italian music is again evident in the musical reforms that he initiated in the Catholic churches of D¨usseldorf when he was municipal music director there: reacting adversely to a liturgical performance of a mass by Haydn, and finding ‘not a single tolerably serious mass, nothing by the old Italians’ in the local archives, Mendelssohn travelled to Elberfeld, Bonn and Cologne in order to obtain Palestrina’s Improperia, the Miserere settings of Allegri and Tommaso Bai, and other old Italian pieces. Significantly, Mendelssohn considered these works to represent a liturgical ideal not only for the Catholic service, but also for Protestant church music. In a letter to the Evangelical pastor Ernst Friedrich Bauer, Mendelssohn discussed the problematic role of music within the new Prussian liturgy, introduced following the unification of the Lutheran and Calvinist confessions: True church music – that is, music for the Evangelical service that has a place in the course of the liturgical ceremony itself – seems to me to be out of the question, not merely because I cannot at all see where in the service music should have a place but because I cannot conceive that any such place could exist. Perhaps you have something to tell me which will clarify matters, but up until now I do not know – even if I leave aside the Prussian liturgy [of ] which omits all such things, and will probably not be permanent or last even in the short term – how we can make music an integrated part of the service, and not merely a concert which stimulates devotion to a greater or lesser extent.

Here, Mendelssohn makes a clear distinction between non-liturgical religious works and music suitable for liturgical performance: indeed, he creates an exaggerated opposition between autonomous works (he cites the St Matthew Passion) and music that is subordinated to functional concerns (the ‘old Italian pieces for the papal chapel’). But if Mendelssohn’s evaluation of the latter is more ambivalent than in his earlier comments on the Improperia, he nonetheless concludes that these pieces are the sole

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

true church music. Even if the music of Palestrina did not fully meet his requirements for the union of the artistic and functional spheres, it provided the point of departure for his own later liturgical music. Mendelssohn and the Berlin Domchor The majority of Mendelssohn’s later church compositions – including the Drei Psalmen op. , the Sechs Spr¨uche op.  and the Deutsche Liturgie – were written for performance by the newly reformed Domchor (cathedral choir) in Berlin, following Mendelssohn’s appointment in  as Generalmusikdirektor to the Prussian court with responsibilities for church music and oratorio performances. All these works engage with the issues discussed in his letter to Bauer, representing a series of attempts to re-create the ideal epitomized by the Improperia within the modern Evangelical liturgy. These pieces exhibit a complex and varied relation to Palestrina’s language, and served as models for other Protestant composers seeking to conform with this ideal. It has often been assumed that the brevity of Mendelssohn’s association with the Domchor (he resigned in the summer of ) and his dissatisfaction with his position in Berlin are evidence of a lack of sympathy with the conception of the church style operative there. Mendelssohn’s conflict with the cathedral authorities has been attributed to a dichotomy between the demands of functional liturgical music and his orientation towards autonomous religious works conceived for the concert hall: Wolfgang Dinglinger, for instance, considers that Mendelssohn viewed the circumstances at the Hof- und Domkirche as inimical to art. The polarization of art and functional music present in such assessments seems, however, to oversimplify both Mendelssohn’s conception of church music and the orientation of the Domchor. The clergy, courtiers and musicians associated with the Domchor did not advocate a functional approach to liturgical music, but rather sought to foster church music that simultaneously satisfied aesthetic and functional demands. The reform of the liturgy and of the Domchor in  can be seen as an attempt to restore a significant aesthetic dimension to the Evangelical service, in order to redress the faults of the liturgies introduced in the s: these reforms perpetuate Schleiermacher’s conviction that even if congregations are insensitive to art, it is capable of having a positive effect on them. Indeed, in  the court preacher Friedrich Adolph Strauß noted that as a result of the improved quality of its music, the Domchor had succeeded in attracting lapsed Protestants back to the Church. Mendelssohn’s

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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frustration with the new liturgy and conflicts with the clergy were not motivated by a hostility to this reforming agenda: it is clear that he sympathized with the desire to improve liturgical music and to distinguish its requirements from those of the concert hall. Mendelssohn, admittedly, was frustrated by the limited opportunities for choral music within the service and had no interest in composing chorale arrangements for the congregation; nonetheless, his appointment as Generalmusikdirektor provided an opportunity to put his earlier theories on true liturgical music into practice, and to continue the line of experimentation represented by ‘Mitten wir im Leben sind’. Mendelssohn’s intention to create works combining liturgical suitability with the qualities associated with the music of Palestrina can be seen in a letter to Friedrich Wilhelm Graf von Redern, the Generalintendant in charge of the music at court, in which he asked to delegate the composition of some of the psalms for the new liturgy to other composers. He writes that this task should only be assigned to ‘German composers who have proved themselves through earlier works in the church style’; each psalm must be a ‘genuine liturgical [echt kirchliche] composition’, ‘without any instrumental accompaniment (a capella)’, and the composers must bear in mind that ‘the destination of these compositions for the service makes it desirable that they be declamatory and treated with the least possible word repetition and figuration, so that the sense of the words is comprehensible to the listeners’. While here Mendelssohn implicitly links his conception of liturgical music to the ideal that he considered Palestrina’s Improperia to represent, a more explicit identification of the historical orientation of his psalms is given in an (albeit ironic) account by Fanny Hensel: ‘For the Domchor Felix has composed the second psalm [op.  no. ] for eight voices a capella; very beautiful, very Gregorian and Sistine-like [sixtinisch].’ The relation between the Drei Psalmen and old Italian church music is more complex than Hensel’s comments suggest. Some scholars have viewed them as exercises in the Palestrina style, while others share Moritz Hauptmann’s belief that they bear no relation to historical styles or models. Other commentators have argued that Mendelssohn’s late liturgical music exhibits a combination of elements of Palestrina’s language with Mendelssohn’s own style; in contrast, for Rauol Meloncelli this music does not employ Palestrinian elements directly but presents a transfigured, idealized vision of Palestrina’s language. Given this plurality of stances, it must be determined whether these pieces represent a direct engagement with this language in the manner of Nicolai’s ‘Pater noster’, or whether Mendelssohn’s desire to

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

conform with this liturgical ideal resulted in a more oblique response to it. A key aspect of the stylistic orientation of these psalms is the suppression of elements of Mendelssohn’s customary idiom. This characteristic was denounced in a contemporary critique by Kr¨uger, who considered the psalms to epitomize Mendelssohn’s failure as a composer of church music. He condemns them as products of false humility and sham naivety, dismissing Psalm  op.  no.  in particular for its prosaic character and ‘didactic asceticism in shades of grey’ (didactische Ascetik in grauem Ton). The ascetic impulse identified by Kr¨uger is, however, only a factor at a localized level. In terms of structure, these substantial works resemble Mendelssohn’s earlier multi-movement psalm cantatas; indeed, the final section of Psalm  ‘Richte mich, Gott’ op.  no.  is a transposed variant of the opening of the final chorus of Psalm  op.  (). The varied tonal schemes present in the Drei Psalmen indicate that Mendelssohn’s desire to conform with the Palestrinian ideal did not involve a restriction of large-scale tonal relationships. Each of the psalms follows a trajectory from tonic minor to major; it is the use of the tonic major as a culminatory gesture – an essential part of Mendelssohn’s style – that serves most clearly to distance these psalms from their old Italian models. In contrast, Mendelssohn’s approach to harmony at a localized level suggests the impulse to emulate these models through the suppression of aspects of his customary style; this is especially apparent in the minor-key portions of the psalms. In Psalm  ‘Warum toben die Heiden’ op.  no. , the opening sections evince a restrictive approach to harmony and melody; in addition to emulation through suppression, Mendelssohn evokes the music of the Sistine Chapel through carefully prepared dissonances (mostly – suspensions), root-position harmonies and brief passages of imitative writing. In the section in the tonic major ‘K¨usset den Sohn’ (bars –), these features are combined with elements more characteristic of Mendelssohn’s style, such as the ‘feminine’ cadence, and rhythmic and harmonic sequences. As a result of this stylistic contrast, the work engages with the Palestrina ideal on two distinct levels: while the conception of all the sections of the psalm reflects this liturgical model, the evocation of ‘Sistine-like’ severity in the minor-key sections appears to serve a musico-dramatic function. In this psalm, Mendelssohn’s re-creation of the sound world of the Sistine Chapel is aided by the use of stylized plainchant. The stylized chant used in the fifth section (bars –) resembles a psalm tone that Mendelssohn quoted in a letter describing the Holy Week services in ; he described it as the first tonus (it is closer to the second psalm

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tone) ‘in which one half of the verse ends G A G and the other G E G’. The stylized chant used in bars  – of Psalm  is related to the first half of this psalm tone and creates a striking effect, serving as a textual and musical counterpoint to the material of the soloists. Accordingly, Mendelssohn’s use of chant, like his evocation of Palestrina’s language, forms part of a broader musico-dramatic conception. Mendelssohn’s handling of the eight-part idiom in all three of the psalms reflects the impact of the papal choir’s Holy Week performances. In describing the choir’s performance of Palestrina’s Lamentations, Mendelssohn particularly praised the slow, almost imperceptible merging of one chord into another. Several passages in each of the Drei Psalmen seem calculated to replicate this effect, through the use of sustained pedal notes and chords in one group of voices against material in the other group. Psalm  ‘Mein Gott, warum’ op.  no. , first performed on Good Friday in , provides a synthesis of Mendelssohn’s approaches to recreating the Palestrinian ideal in an Evangelical context. The text of the work and the occasion of its first performance prompted him to engage compositionally with the Holy Week music of the Sistine Chapel, in particular Allegri’s Miserere. Mendelssohn’s preoccupation with the penitential music of the Sistine Chapel is most apparent in the opening section, bars  –. The responsorial structure of this section, in which the full choir responds chordally to solo intonations, is modelled on old Italian Miserere settings,whilethetenorsoloist’sintonations seem intended to evoke plainchant psalm tones (an impression heightened by the indication ‘recit.’). The responses to these intonations resemble the passages of falsobordone – the chordal recitation of liturgical texts based on rootposition triads, harmonizing a psalm tone in one of the parts – present in the Miserere settings of the Sistine Chapel. In bars –, Renaissance falsobordone is more explicitly evoked, since here Mendelssohn harmonizes his psalm tone instead of presenting it as a solo line (here the chant melody is in the second tenor part). In addition, the extended final cadence of this section, bars –, can be regarded as an intensification of the types of cadential dissonance present in Allegri’s Miserere (see Ex. .). In addition to the use of a choral psalm setting as an introit, the Berlin cathedral liturgy stipulated the performance of a Spruch (a short biblical text or verse) after the reading of the Epistle. Mendelssohn’s Sechs Spr¨uche op.  were composed for this purpose and four of them (nos. , ,  and ) were performed in the winter of – alongside Mendelssohn’s psalm settings. While all six of these verses exhibit relationships to early Romantic perceptions of Palestrina, it is the verses with penitential texts

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. Felix Mendelssohn, Psalm  ‘Mein Gott, warum’ op.  no. , bars –

that elicited re-creations of elements of his language from Mendelssohn. The second verse in the collection, ‘Herr Gott, du bist unsre Zuflucht’, performed on New Year’s Day , contains several elements related to this language: the simple imitative writing, bold successions of root-position chords and restricted use of dissonance recall the simplicity and restrained dissonance treatment of the ‘Gloria Patri’ from Psalm  (Ex. .). The music of the Sistine Chapel is evoked here by the simple

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Example .. Mendelssohn, ‘Herr, Gott, du bist unsre Zuflucht’ op.  no. , bars –

suspensions in bars  and , and by the chord repetitions of bars – in the manner of falsobordone. The fourth verse in the collection, ‘Herr, gedenke nicht’, was performed on Passion Sunday  and revised the following year. Here, the penitential text prompted chains of Palestrinian root-position chords, in bars –; in addition, as with Psalm , the responsorial structure is derived from Allegri’s Miserere. The last of the Sechs Spr¨uche, ‘Um unsrer S¨unden’, was performed on Good Friday . The

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Example .. (cont.)

highly restricted homophony of this short verse again recalls the Miserere and Palestrina’s Improperia; moreover, the emphatic harmonic shift from tonic minor to relative major harmonies in bars – seems to be a conscious echo of the opening chords of the Miserere. In Mendelssohn’s psalms and Spr¨uche, both the use and weaker evocation of elements of Palestrina’s language play a part in his attempt to re-create the liturgical ideal that the music of the Sistine Chapel represented. What is less clear is how Mendelssohn was able to reconcile the use of elements of earlier languages with Romantic aesthetic imperatives. Contemporary critics were also troubled by the problems involved in understanding the relation between Mendelssohn’s religious works and the music of the past. The most significant contemporary discussions of these relationships, other than those of Mendelssohn himself, are those of Heine; a consideration of how Mendelssohn and Heine addressed this question can clarify matters. The importance of Heine’s views to this matter has hitherto been underestimated, since his comments have generally been dismissed as part of a broader polemic against the composer. Heine’s attacks, which focus specifically on St Paul, condemn the oratorio for its insincerity and for displaying a disunity of content and form: according to Heine, Mendelssohn uses ‘mimicking [Nach¨affung] of the grand historical style’ as a means ‘to construct academically [wissenschaftlich] the spirit of Christianity’. For Heine, Mendelssohn’s use of external forms copied slavishly from Bach and Handel results in his works lacking artistic truth; they are characterized by ‘a great, strict, very stern seriousness, a resolute, almost relentless dependence on classical models, the finest, cleverest calculation, intellectual lucidity, and lastly, a total lack of naivety’. Here, Heine’s criticisms are clearly linked to his rejection of the attempt by the Romantic school

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to create a new art, and mythological basis for that art, entirely through artifice; just as Heine condemned the enthusiasm of the Romantics for Catholicism as hypocrisy, and the imitation of medieval Volkslieder as producing ‘German moonshine’, so he condemns Mendelssohn’s religious compositions as the product of false belief and the mimicry of older works. This link is made explicit in a later article: [Mendelssohn] always reminds us of the great question, what is the difference between art and falsehood? We admire this master in the main for his great talent for form, for stylistics, his gift for making the most extraordinary things his own, his charmingly beautiful craftsmanship, his fine lizard-like ear, his sensitive antennae, and his serious – I might almost say passionate – indifference. If we look for an analogous phenomenon in a sister art, we find it in poetry, and it goes by the name of Ludwig Tieck. This master, as well, always knew what were the most excellent things, in order to reproduce them in writing or declaiming, and even understood how to manufacture the naive.

Here, Heine unambiguously links Mendelssohn with the irony of the Romantic circle. Mendelssohn’s religious music is the product of irony, since it combines naive instinctual creation and reflection; this is what Heine means in his puzzling comment that Mendelssohn evinces ‘passionate indifference’: the arbitrary combination of spontaneous inspiration and critical reflection that he condemns in the art of the Romantic circle. Heine considers Mendelssohn’s works to be the product of both artistry and fabrication since the quality of his external forms is not matched by a substantial content. While Mendelssohn is proficient in the technical sphere, he can manufacture religious art only through reproducing earlier, unreflective forms of church music. Mendelssohn’s own preoccupation with exploring and defining the nature of the relationship between his religious works and the music of the past suggests a fear not only of being perceived as an imitator, but also of being seen as a reflective ironist. The shift in his historical orientation that occurred during his years of travelling was accompanied by a heightened concern for this question. In response to criticisms that some of the works written in Italy showed too great a dependency on the works of Bach, Mendelssohn contemplated the relationship between his works and earlier music; his ideas seem equally pertinent to the relationship between his later liturgical works and the music of Palestrina and his school. In a letter from  to his friend Eduard Devrient ( –) he wrote, concerning his recent sacred music: If it has similarity to Seb. Bach, again, I cannot do anything about it, for I wrote it just according to the mood I was in; and if the words put me in a mood

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similar to that of old Bach, so much the better. I am sure you do not think that I would merely copy his forms, without the content; if it were so, I should feel such distaste, and such emptiness, that I could never finish a piece.

Mendelssohn’s most emphatic defence of his work occurs in a letter to Zelter from : In your last letter you seemed to fear that I might possibly be led, through my admiration for one of the great masters, to apply myself too much to church music and abandon myself to imitation. This, however, is quite definitely not the case. . . . Nothing is valid except that which has flowed in deepest sincerity [Ernst] from the innermost soul. . . . If the object alone has not given rise to the work, it will never ‘pass from heart to heart’ and consequently imitation is the same as the most superficial appearance of the most foreign thoughts. Certainly, no one can prevent me from enjoying and continuing to work at what the great masters have bequeathed to me, because not everyone should start from scratch, but it should however be a continued working from one’s own powers, not a lifeless repetition of what already exists.

Two points that Mendelssohn makes in these passages are especially significant. First, he denies that the relationship between his works and earlier music is one of imitation, since he sees imitation as copying the ‘form, without the content’. The corollary to this is that Mendelssohn attempted to achieve a similar spiritual content in his works, without merely copying the external forms of earlier works. Second, he considers his works to represent a creative continuation of the substance of these earlier works, rather than imitation. Such defences strikingly reveal the extent of the impact that Mendelssohn’s friendship with Hegel, and knowledge of his aesthetics, had on the young composer’s views and compositional practice. His anxiety that his church music would be seen as containing a disunity of form and content shows an awareness of Hegel’s requirement that the appearance of a work embodies the substance of the artist’s consciousness. Mendelssohn’s concern with demonstrating that his church music originated in ‘deepest sincerity from the innermost soul’ is an attempt to show that similarities to older works present in his music are the product of a comparable religious spirit, a mutual spiritual content. He implicitly distances his activities from the reflection of the Romantic circle, arguing that such similarities are not evidence of an attempt to manufacture a religious content merely by reproducing the external features of earlier religious works; his compositions are the product of conviction (Hegel’s Ernst) rather than caprice, and were written spontaneously, ‘according to the mood I was in’, rather than through a conscious intention to use older forms.

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Crucially, however, Mendelssohn does not deny that earlier religious music forms a basis for his own productions. He does not claim that his works represent a ‘transfiguration’ – to use Meloncelli’s term – or sublimation of earlier compositions or styles, but rather admits that they present a continuation of certain formal elements of earlier works. He emphasizes that his music does not replicate the mode of treatment present in earlier pieces in any literal sense, but is rather a ‘continued working’ on them within a modern context. Mendelssohn’s methods of referring to Palestrina’s language in his liturgical music are, as has been seen, widely varied, but generally involve the use of elements of the earlier language rather than a weaker form of evocation of Palestrina’s sound world. Nevertheless, these works can be said to confirm Mendelssohn’s own analysis that his church music constitutes not merely the ‘foreign thoughts’ of others, and neither are their forms merely the ‘lifeless repetition’ of earlier works; they constitute a re-creative transplantation of elements of Palestrina’s language into an Evangelical liturgical context. WINTERFELD AND THE HISTORICAL PALESTRINA

The s witnessed a shift in the nature of both the revival of old music and its reception by Protestant composers. The placing of Palestrina at the zenith of an organically constructed golden age of church music remained central to Protestant representations of Renaissance music throughout the nineteenth century. But while Palestrina continued to epitomize conceptions of the church style, the increasing amount of early music being published and the work of music historians and polemicists led to a reevaluation of first his Italian, then his German contemporaries. Central to this process was the increasing importance of both objectivity and relativism in the work of German music historians; from the s the monumental subjective historicism epitomized by Hoffmann’s idealization of Palestrina competed with the objective historicism of those seeking to portray more accurately the relation between Palestrina and his contemporaries. It is in this decade that, as Nietzsche put it, the ‘greedy curiosity’ of music historians began to be directed systematically towards the ‘countless minutiae of life and works’, and here that the conflict between subjective and objective historicism becomes endemic. It is with the jurist and historian Carl Georg Vivigens von Winterfeld (–) that the objectivity advocated by Humboldt and Leopold von Ranke was first applied to Renaissance music history, challenging the

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monumental historicism of earlier Palestrina reception. His first book, Johannes Pierluigi von Palestrina (), functions as a critique not merely of Baini’s Memorie storico-critiche but of the Palestrina-centred approach to Renaissance music of which it is the most extravagant epitome. Baini’s monograph on Palestrina, considered by Spitta to combine diligent documentary research with ‘an astonishing immaturity of judgment’, is the most comprehensive attempt to place Palestrina at the centre of an organic model of music history; as Spitta remarks, Baini regards all music prior to Palestrina as merely a lowly preparatory stage, while everything after him represents a ‘contemptible decline’ (schn¨oder Verfall ). Winterfeld responds to Baini’s ‘great critical – or, rather, somewhat uncritical’ monograph on Palestrina in two ways. First, he presents what he considers to be the most worthwhile aspects of Baini’s ideas in a literal or paraphrased form in order to provide a distillation of the facts that is not contaminated by Baini’s critical opinions. Second, Winterfeld criticizes what he considers most misleading in Baini’s study and puts forward his own blueprint for a revisionist approach to Renaissance music. Central to Winterfeld’s critique of Baini is his assertion of the necessity for objectivity and impartiality in music history. While Baini has fulfilled one aspect of the art historian’s task – the connecting of Palestrina and his works to the circumstances of the time – his attempt to prove the supremacy of Palestrina’s music in historical terms leads him to fail to differentiate between historical facts and his own opinions: it will be harmful and misleading for future research in this field if the author’s views and opinions – which are neither consistently dependable nor impartial – are not distinguished from the factual content, and if this pure matter of genuine lasting worth is not extracted so that it can be submitted to the judgment of informed and unbiased friends of art.

Winterfeld’s Rankean belief in the possibility of ‘pure’ objective facts leads him to attack three central aspects of Baini’s study so as to ‘serve justly the history of art’: the idea that the superlative success of Palestrina’s music is derived from its imitation of nature, Baini’s method of categorizing Palestrina’s works into ten styles and, most crucially, his view of Palestrina as the towering, unique genius of his age. In his quest to counter the latter view, Winterfeld employs the legalistic language and scrupulous impartiality of the Prussian high court judge: For, because of the great respect which he inspires in us, we must avoid if possible the appearance of having, without hesitation, passed sentence on his preconceived opinions wherever we do not agree with him. . . . Yet our author

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has a special devotion to his hero – even so, incidentally, it may be possible to be impartial – and probably a biased patriotism which would hand to his home town [Rome] before all others the Palm of Glory, cloud his vision, and transform him from a historian into a panegyrist.

In countering Baini’s view of a Renaissance dominated by Palestrina, Winterfeld identifies the inconsistencies and omissions that result from Baini’s preconceptions; he notes that in wishing to orient everything to the greatest praise of his hero, Baini ‘mires himself in contradiction’, forgetting that – in an epigram worthy of Ranke – ‘the unadulterated voice of history is the surest panegyric’. Winterfeld saps at the credibility of Baini’s picture of Renaissance music by highlighting the distortions that result from overemphasizing Palestrina’s stature and diminishing that of his contemporaries, and by relentlessly exposing factual errors. In opposition to Baini’s idealization of Palestrina, Winterfeld argues that Palestrina’s contemporaries can be divided into four schools, the Flemish, the German, the Roman, and the Venetian, and that music developed as a result of the interactions between them rather than because of the work of a single dominant figure: he identifies Willaert, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Lassus, Senfl and Praetorius as masters alongside Palestrina. Winterfeld continues this revisionary process in his more well-known study Johannes Gabrieli und sein Zeitalter (), where he identifies Lassus, Palestrina and Giovanni Gabrieli as the greatest composers of sacred music of their time. It should not be assumed that Winterfeld’s revisionist approach to the music of the Renaissance marks a complete departure from the subjective historicism of earlier Protestant Palestrina reception, or that his judgments are entirely subjugated to the objectivity that he advocates. Crucially, Winterfeld’s conception is still dependent on the idea of a golden age of church music, although in his hands this does not focus primarily on Roman or even Italian composers, but rather constitutes the blossoming of art in all four of the schools he identifies. As with Hoffmann and Thibaut, Winterfeld’s model is bolstered by analogies to developments in Renaissance painting, but while earlier commentators had sought to construct a musical equivalent to Raphael, Winterfeld argues that the presence of a plethora of great painters in this period renders absurd the idea that only one great composer flourished. Winterfeld’s organicist emplotment, unlike that of Hoffmann, is enunciated explicitly through the use of metaphors derived from the life cycle of flowering plants: he traces the growth of his golden age from its ‘flourishing buds’ (gediehene Knospe) or shoots (Keime/Sprosse), via its blossoming (Bl¨uthe), to

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its eventual wilting (abwelken). Like Hoffmann and Baini, Winterfeld considers music from the period before his golden age to consist of dry abstractions, dismissing the music of the earliest figures in his four schools as artificial, constituting not a ‘living development’ of plainchant but merely a laboured embellishment of it. Furthermore, Winterfeld does not question Palestrina’s legendary status as the saviour of church music, and his perception of what constitutes the characteristic qualities of Palestrina’s music diverges little from that of earlier commentators. Within the first few pages of his book he inserts a lengthy digression from his summary of Baini’s account of Palestrina’s life in order to eulogize the Improperia; in spite of his extensive knowledge of Palestrina’s output, Winterfeld perpetuates the notion that the simple homophonic pieces sung in the Sistine Chapel in Holy Week epitomize his style. In addition to sharing the idea of a golden age of church music in the mid-sixteenth century, Winterfeld perpetuates earlier conceptions of its gradual decline. Winterfeld concurs with Baini that the developing independence of instruments, chromaticism, and declamatory operatic styles were responsible for the wilting of the diatonic system and the strict style, and for the decline of church music; like Hoffmann, however, he rejects the idea that a more general decline in music occurred. His mode of constructing his golden age by reference to the life cycle of flowering plants is in part explained by his treatment of this decline, since in Winterfeld’s conception, the wilting of the older style is accompanied by the budding of the newer: the decline of the older style is thus represented as an inevitable outcome in the cyclic alternation of degeneration and renewal. The organic model was central to Winterfeld’s later revisionary approaches to Renaissance music: crucially, it provided the means of constructing a golden age of German church music to rival those of Hoffmann and Thibaut for old Italian music. Within the gradually widening revival of Renaissance music, it was Winterfeld’s championing of Lutheran composers from the century following the Reformation – especially his lionizing of Johannes Eccard – that provided the most important challenge to Palestrina as the paradigm for the Evangelical liturgy. This development was sustained by a significantly different ideological matrix to that which underpinned the idealization of Palestrina: it reflects the increasing cultural nationalism of the mid-nineteenth century and constitutes a reaction against the aesthetic Catholicism of the early Romantics. In Winterfeld’s case, it was Prussian rather than German nationalism that nourished this revival, combined with a desire

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to demonstrate that Protestant composers equalled the achievements of Catholics in the golden age of church music. Earlier discussions have focused on Winterfeld’s elevation of Eccard – dismissed by Spitta as ‘a charming and tender, but narrowly restricted talent’ – to the level of a ‘German Palestrina’, or ‘Prussian Palestrina’, or Protestant ‘antipope to Palestrina’. It is important to bear in mind that Winterfeld does not use any such formulation himself, nor does he compare Eccard with Palestrina directly; significantly, however, in promoting Winterfeld’s research, his friend Kr¨uger used the by then well-worn phrase the ‘German Raphael’ in reference to Eccard. Nonetheless, Winterfeld does emphasize in more general terms that German Renaissance compositions are the equals of their Italian counterparts: ‘In these works can be found a characteristic strength and living freshness which, in their field, puts them on exactly the same level as the great Italian masters of the same period.’ In Der evangelische Kirchengesang (–), Winterfeld argues that true Evangelical church music emerged only with Eccard’s Preußischer Festlieder (); despite rejecting Baini’s notion of a Roman school of music with Palestrina at its head, he constructs a similar Prussian school encompassing composers who perpetuated the Festlied and Eccard’s manner of chorale setting until the mid-seventeenth century. Aside from this limited perpetuation of Eccard’s manner, Winterfeld traces the decline of Protestant church music through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: even Sch¨utz and J. S. Bach reflect the weakening of church music, and thus cannot share Eccard’s status as the paradigm of Protestant art. As with Hoffmann and Thibaut, Winterfeld’s extraordinarily deterministic emplotment is orientated around present-day reform. He emphasizes that only if the music of his blossoming period is revived will Protestant churches again possess sacred music; furthermore, as with all the earlier writers who constructed monumental golden ages, he considers it no vain hope to expect a new artistic blossoming of church music through a return to the principles and spirit of Eccard and his successors. It is clear that Winterfeld’s construction of a golden age of Reformation church music was not intended to complement the golden age of old Italian music as a paradigm for the liturgy, but to provide a Protestant substitute for it. In stressing that true Protestant church music constitutes the union of the chorale with its artistic elaboration, he implicitly distances old Italian music from the liturgy, within which it cannot be an organic component. Elsewhere, Winterfeld is more explicit in arguing that Lutheran music from the Reformation should constitute

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the primary paradigm for Protestant church music; while maintaining that old Italian music should not be excluded from the Protestant service, he argues that it should never be accorded an unjustifiable primacy: ‘why should we not consider as first and dearest that which developed in closest and nearest connection with our fatherland and our church: why should our attention only be directed to that which belongs to a foreign people and a different confession?’ BROADER TRENDS IN PERFORMANCE AND COMPOSITION

The impact of Winterfeld’s revisionist approach to Renaissance music and to church music reform is evident in the activities of the Berlin Domchor. The choir’s repertory in the s and s does not suggest that German Renaissance pieces increasingly supplanted old Italian music, nor was the primacy of Palestrina as an ideal for Protestant church music challenged in this period. Rather, the eclectic repertory of the Domchor represents the commingling of different conceptions of the church style. In addition to exploring how the choir’s repertory reflects changing perceptions of Renaissance music, it is necessary to see how modern composers responded to these developments. While Mendelssohn sought to emulate the homophonic pieces performed in the Sistine Chapel in Holy Week, the works of other composers writing for the Domchor suggest a more extensive and sophisticated knowledge of Renaissance church music. The reform of the music and liturgy of the Hof- und Domkirche in , instigated by Friedrich Wilhelm IV and his adviser Bunsen, resulted at first in an eclectic mixture of musical elements, few of which had any traditional basis within the Lutheran or Calvinist confessions. While most liturgies represent the accumulation of diverse musical elements added gradually over time, the deliberations of Friedrich Wilhelm and Bunsen resulted in the creation of a liturgy based on historicism rather than tradition. The musical components of the new services can be seen as an attempt to reproduce the repertory and ethos of the German Singvereine within a liturgical context, providing a belated realization of the visions of Hoffmann, Thibaut and Zelter. The music for Christmas Day , for example, juxtaposed ‘reformed’ settings of three Lutheran chorales, two a cappella compositions by Mendelssohn (Psalm  op.  no.  and ‘Frohlocket, ihr V¨olker’ op.  no. ) and a chorus from Handel’s Messiah, ‘Uns ist zum Heil ein Kind geboren’ (‘For unto us a child is born’). The criteria governing the repertory quickly became more stable, the

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most important requirement being ‘unity of style – to be precise, the true church style’: as a result, solo pieces, oratorio choruses and the use of instruments were proscribed. The cultivation of solely unaccompanied choral works was a decisive step in the reform of Protestant church music, since only a small minority of earlier commentators had advocated it dogmatically. This development reflects the impact of the views of Bunsen, Winterfeld and Grell on the reform of the Domchor: as a consequence, the concerted music used in the earliest services under the new liturgy receded in favour of Italian and German Renaissance compositions, seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury Italian stile antico works and German Baroque chorale motets. The breadth of Renaissance music within the choir’s repertory can be seen from the relevant volumes of the collection Musica sacra, published in the s as a means of spreading the ideals of the reformed cathedral liturgy. In the three volumes of early and modern church music edited by the director of the Domchor, (Heinrich) August Neithardt (–), Palestrina is the most represented Renaissance composer, while a large proportion of the remaining works are by his immediate successors or from the Italian stile antico tradition (by Felice Anerio, Giuseppe Corsi, Francesco Durante and Antonio Lotti). Significantly, in addition to a small number of German Catholic pieces from the Renaissance (by Lassus and Handl), nearly one third of the older works are by German Protestant composers from the century following the Reformation (including motets by Eccard, Sch¨utz, Michael Praetorius and Melchior Franck); not only does the presence of these works reflect Winterfeld’s revisionist approach to church music reform, but the majority of them are drawn from the collections of pieces appended to his Johannes Gabrieli and Der evangelische Kirchengesang. The catholicity (in both senses) of the reformed liturgy and music was viewed with suspicion by some commentators. Indeed, the performance of old Italian music within the Evangelical liturgy proved controversial and problematic. Earlier writers championing the validity of performing Palestrina within the Protestant service, such as Thibaut, tended to approach this issue from an ecumenical perspective: Thibaut attributes hostility to Catholic music to sectarian bigotry, arguing that if the opinions of a few ‘anxious custodians’ (¨angstliche T¨urhuter) of the Protestant church are heeded, not only this music but ‘all the masterpieces of Gothic architecture and painting must come under the Protestant anathema for being products of the Catholic faith’. While Friedrich Wilhelm and Bunsen shared Thibaut’s aesthetic Catholicism, Winterfeld asserted

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

the universal validity of old Italian music in different terms; he argues that Palestrina’s works are ‘not strongly or irrevocably attached to the consciousness of any one particular confession’ since, as products of the Counter Reformation, they were shaped by the repercussion of Lutheran ideals. If the ideological objections to the performance of these works could readily be finessed, it nonetheless created practical problems. Winterfeld was vehemently opposed to the adaptation of Renaissance compositions and felt qualms even at the performance of Palestrina with German texts, arguing that translations transform such works into pale shadows of the originals. But the employment of old Italian music within the Protestant service was dependent on a process of translation, sometimes involving drastic alterations. An example of the methods employed can be seen in an adaptation of Palestrina’s Improperia, produced by Bunsen for use in the chapel of the Prussian legation in Rome and included in the reformed repertory of the Domchor. Both Mendelssohn and Nicolai commented unfavourably on the experimental liturgy that Bunsen had introduced to the legation chapel: Mendelssohn viewed its fusion of Protestant and Catholic elements as very defective, while Nicolai commented that ‘Bunsen’s chapel, if it were to be arranged entirely after his manner of thinking, would seem as different from a Protestant church as a bird is from a horse!’ Bunsen’s desire to fuse Catholic and Protestant ideals is clearly apparent in his adaptation of the Improperia: portions of the original are omitted and replaced by a simple, reformed harmonization of the chorale ‘Mitten wir im Leben sind’. In addition, the adaptation introduces the alternation of passages for choir and congregation, which also served to bring the piece closer to contemporary Evangelical ideals. Many of the modern compositions performed by the Domchor also reflect the impulse to fuse Catholic and Evangelical ideals. In the years following Mendelssohn’s resignation, composers for the choir continued to engage with old Italian music and a significant minority of compositions replicate Palestrina’s language or are modelled on specific old Italian works. From the s, however, composers began to respond to the new paradigm elevated by Winterfeld and his followers. Winterfeld’s work had – as Kr¨uger points out – decisively contradicted a notion fundamental to the idealization of Palestrina: the early Romantic assertion that religious devotion in art is not possible without Catholic inspiration. The golden age of church music was increasingly seen to encompass sixteenth-century Lutheran compositions, whose new status as exemplars was acknowledged in the preface to one of the collections

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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associated with the Domchor: ‘alongside the older choral pieces . . . newer ones have also found a place, which in general are composed in the spirit of the church and also more or less according to the well-founded rules of writing of the first century after the Reformation’. In seeking to recover the religious content of Renaissance church music, composers for the Domchor faced not merely a choice of historical paradigms but had to contend with competing aesthetic stances. Neither Friedrich Wilhelm nor Bunsen were apparently troubled by the aesthetic implications of compositional historicism: this is evident in the warm reception given to a performance of Nicolai’s ‘Pater noster’ in , which led to him being offered Mendelssohn’s position as Generalmusikdirektor. In contrast, Winterfeld – arguing from a Hegelian perspective – urged composers to avoid replicating Renaissance idioms. Although he demands that modern composers serve as vessels for the rebirth of the ancient church style, the replication of earlier forms is proscribed: Nothing can be expected from efforts which are capable of perceiving the essence of the church style merely in the external formal outlines of the old masters, imagining that the rebirth of this style can be achieved through toiling at the stunted copying of them. Every form becomes defunct as soon as the spirit no longer breathes life into it, no matter how gloriously the spirit may once have embodied itself in this form. It would be better for choral singing in our churches to fall completely silent than for such soulless apparitions [wesenlosen Schemen] to haunt us!

In examining the relation between the modern repertory of the Domchor and Renaissance music, this survey focuses primarily on Neithardt’s Musica sacra volumes and on a three-volume collection of psalm settings edited by Emil Naumann (–), a pupil of Mendelssohn who served as Hofkirchenmusikdirektor from  to . With regard to stylistic orientation, the psalms, motets and Spr¨uche in the collections of Naumann and Neithardt fall into five groups: (i) pieces in the Liedertafel style (i.e., works resembling the contemporary secular partsong) or in other modern idioms; (ii) works which conform with the Palestrina ideal through the suppression of certain modern elements; (iii) works which evince a number of elements derived from the language of Palestrina and his Italian contemporaries but which do not replicate this language literally or in their entirety (i.e., works which evince a mixture of styles); (iv) works whose totality is informed by relations to this language or which are modelled on specific old Italian compositions; and (v) works related to German Renaissance and early Baroque models.

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

All these works bear the mark of the Palestrina ideal through their unaccompanied idioms and predominantly slow tempos. But not all exhibit more substantial relationships to old Italian music: a number of motets (such as those by Wenzel Gaehrich and Carl Loewe) and several of Neithardt’s psalms unequivocally follow the Liedertafel style. In Neithardt’s settings of psalms  and , the vertically conceived part-writing, passing chromaticisms and repetitive rhythms are distant from the Palestrina ideal; for his more austere contemporaries, the thoroughly secular nature of the latter work would not have been redeemed by the naive allusions to Handel’s ‘Hallelujah’ chorus in its final bars. While the Liedertafel style is predominant in only a handful of pieces, a larger number perpetuate traditional motet styles and can be characterized as conservative but not historicist. In addition, around a third of the modern pieces in these volumes reflect contemporary conceptions of the church style without replicating elements of Palestrina’s language. These pieces epitomize Hoffmann’s notion of self-denial in church music and fulfil Thibaut’s demand for moderation and restraint: elements of contemporary musical syntax are suppressed as a means of attaining the noble simplicity of Palestrina. The subdued idiom resulting from such suppression is evident in the opening bars of Neithardt’s Psalm . Here the chromaticism and melodic freedom of his two Liedertafel psalms are replaced with restrained, mostly conjunct lines; while certain elements associated with Palestrina’s language are present, such as an emphasis on root-position chords and restrictive dissonance treatment, these elements do not on their own suggest a close relation to this language. Roughly a third of the motets and psalms evince closer relationships to Renaissance church music. The nature of these relationships is very varied, ranging from short passages that include several elements of Palestrina’s language to works that attempt to replicate it throughout. The limited evocation of Palestrina can be seen in Neithardt’s motet ‘Sei getreu, bis an dem Tod’ and settings of psalms  and . In Psalm , elements of Palestrina’s language are restricted to the use of a long chain of roots in the central section and a passage evoking falsobordone; similarly, ‘Sei getreu’ and the middle section of Psalm  give the visual impression of old Italian music through their white notation and double-choir textures, but aside from a short passage of stylized suspensions (Ex. .) the harmonic idiom bears little relation to Palestrina. The re-creative approach to Palestrina’s language that is present in Mendelssohn’s psalms – which in parts exhibit an eclectic fusion of two languages – is only apparent elsewhere in the collection in Karl Reinthaler’s Psalm , Naumann’s

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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Example .. August Neithardt, Psalm  ‘Jauchzet Gott’ op.  no. , bars –

Psalm  and Nicolai’s ‘Ehre sei Gott’. In these works, this language is a defining element throughout or for substantial sections, although the exact relation between the two languages present is subject to constant variation. Here, Palestrinian elements are incorporated within a modern harmonic context; harmonic restrictions at a local level occur within the context of wide-ranging tonal schemes.

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

The psalms most closely related to Palestrina’s language are the works by Grell (psalms ,  and ), Naumann’s Psalm  and Neithardt’s Psalm ; in addition, three of Naumann’s responsorial settings for choir and congregation bear close links to old Italian music. Of these pieces, six have penitential texts: psalm  was performed on Maundy Thursday, psalm  was sung in Holy Week, psalm  was performed only at funerals, while psalms  and  were performed on Bußtage (days of repentance). The linking of the language of Palestrina with lamentation indicates the power that the papal choir’s Holy Week performances continued to exercise on the German imagination: it suggests that this association both encouraged and justified an engagement with old Italian music in penitential works. In the majority of these pieces, it is the homophonic idiom of the papal choir’s Holy Week music that is replicated. Naumann’s Psalm  and Neithardt’s Die Worte des Erl¨osers are particularly interesting in this connection, since they are modelled on specific works from the papal choir’s repertory. As Naumann notes, all six of his essays in Psalmodie – which present a new genre alternating choral and congregational singing – were modelled on Allegri’s Miserere. In the preface to his collection of psalms, Naumann describes the problems created by Friedrich Wilhelm’s desire for congregational participation in the psalm singing. Having rejected recitation in the manner of Anglican chant because of its lack of artistic significance, Naumann was sent to Rome by the king in order to observe the psalm performances of the papal choir. Although Allegri’s Miserere involves the alternation of choral polyphony and falsobordone rather than of choir and congregation, Naumann elevated this work as a model for responsorial singing fusing congregational participation and artistic worth. In attempting to transform old Italian practices into contemporary German psalmody, each of Naumann’s six pieces responds to this model in different ways. Naumann’s setting of Psalm  bears the closest resemblance to his avowed model since, in addition to providing a structural template, the Miserere is alluded to in the second and third of the choral passages (see Ex. .). As in Mendelssohn’s psalms, this piece diverges from old Italian models as a result of its tonal trajectory: it is suffixed with a ‘Gloria Patri’ section in the tonic major, thus transplanting early seventeenth-century material into a modern expressive context. Naumann’s Psalm  evinces a different kind of stylistic pluralism. While the structure of the piece is again appropriated from the Miserere, the primary stylistic model for the falsobordone passages and choral responses is the reformed Evangelical chorale. This fusion of Catholic and Evangelical elements is also present in Neithardt’s

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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Example .. (a) Gregorio Allegri, Miserere, bars –

Die Worte des Erl¨osers, modelled on Palestrina’s Improperia (or rather, on Bunsen’s arrangement of it). Both works set a similar series of biblical excerpts responsorially, and both share a highly restricted chordal idiom: the choral portions of Neithardt’s piece (which, like Bunsen’s arrangement, alternates passages for choir and congregation), evoke Renaissance homophony. The most striking feature of Neithardt’s piece is its stylistic pluralism: his re-creation of Palestrinian homophony is alternated with responsories by Grell in the style of the ‘reformed’ chorale, and suffixed with a chorale harmonization by Bach (‘Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden’ from the St Matthew Passion). This eclectic combination of Catholic and Evangelical ideals can be viewed as an epitome of the Musica sacra collection, and of the new Evangelical liturgy as a whole. Among the works in this collection, it is those by Grell that come closest to replicating Palestrina’s language literally. Each of his three psalms presents a distinct response to Renaissance church music, although they share the use of predominantly homophonic writing and refrain structures. The simplest of these pieces is Grell’s Psalm , a setting of the Miserere text. Here, Grell adopts the responsorial structure of Allegri’s Miserere in addition to evoking its falsobordone textures. While all three psalms engage with Palestrina’s dissonance treatment and modal practice, Psalm  evinces a less restricted harmonic palette than the other two psalms, including chromatic chords and other elements foreign to the aeolian mode. If this psalm represents a relatively free response to

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. (b) Emil Naumann, Psalm  ‘Aus der Tiefe’ op.  no.  bars  –

the Holy Week music of the Sistine Chapel, Grell’s other settings evince a more sophisticated knowledge of Renaissance music and replicate Palestrina’s modal practices. In Psalm , Grell’s harmonic resources are entirely limited to triads formed on the degrees of the mixolydian on F: the intermediate cadences do not confirm modulations but emphasize the important degrees of this mode. Similarly, Grell’s Psalm  stays within the harmonic limits of the transposed dorian mode. While – as

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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Example .. Eduard Grell, Psalm  ‘Herr Gott du bist’ bars –

with Grell’s other psalms – this piece is predominantly homophonic, a short section of dense polyphonic writing is included in its final section (Ex. .). This is the sole passage in the collection to suggest an intention to replicate Palestrina’s polyphonic techniques, and also testifies to a thorough grounding in the strict style of counterpoint (while Naumann’s

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. (cont.)

Psalm  also contains polyphonic passages, these evoke Palestrina’s sound world more freely without the replication of his techniques or modal practices). Significantly, however, aspects of this passage (and the alternation of block chordal writing and pithy, syllabic imitative textures earlier in the psalm) resemble early seventeenth-century Venetian or German polychoral music more than Palestrina. As a consequence, Grell’s Psalm  is the only piece in these two collections that reflects Winterfeld’s revisionist approach to Renaissance music, if not his elevation of Eccard. But a number of compositions in another collection, Neithardt’s Sammlung kirchlicher Chorges¨ange (), have more in common with late sixteenth-century German chorale settings and motets. The homophonic writing in the modern pieces in this collection frequently resembles that found in the older chorale settings (by Praetorius and contemporaries) published alongside them: this is especially apparent in the motets by Grell and his successor as organist of the Nikolaikirche in Berlin, Eduard K¨uhnast. Aside from these short, functional pieces – conceived as a means of rendering the ideals of the Domchor accessible to less proficient choirs – the repertory of the Domchor does not suggest that, in this period, Winterfeld’s new paradigm had a significant impact on the compositional reception of Renaissance music. While other works in these collections may initially suggest German Renaissance or early Baroque models, this is primarily due to a shared

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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concern for syllabic text declamation rather than to more significant affinities. The repertory of the Domchor in the s and s testifies to the enduring importance of Palestrina as the paradigm of the church style. In responding to this model, composers did not merely adopt the a cappella idiom but pursued a variety of compositional strategies, ranging from the suppression of elements of modern syntax through to the replication of Palestrina’s modal practices. It is evident, however, that the cultivation of this ideal was not universal: the continuing association of old Italian music with the Holy Week services of the Sistine Chapel circumscribed the use of elements of Palestrina’s language by modern composers. As in Mendelssohn’s psalms and Spr¨uche, it is the pieces with penitential texts that exhibit the most significant relationships to this language and to old Italian works. Of the composers represented in these collections, it is Grell whose works are most consistently and extensively related to Renaissance music: it is in his music and that of his pupils that a more universal cultivation of the Palestrina ideal can be found. PALESTRINA AND THE PRIMACY OF VOCAL MUSIC

The Berlin Palestrina revival reached its zenith in the work of Grell and his pupil and apologist Heinrich Bellermann (–). Their significance to the revival was not confined merely to their compositions but was also due to their positions at the heart of the Berlin musical establishment and their influential theoretical and polemical writings. Grell was associated with the institutions at the centre of the Palestrina revival, the Singakademie and the Domchor; he served as cathedral organist from  to , and as director of the Singakademie from  to . While Grell’s contributions to the revival were largely in the fields of composition and performance, Bellermann’s embraced music theory and historical musicology as well as composition: his composition treatise Der Contrapunkt () is the most significant nineteenth-century codification of the language of Palestrina and of the strenge Satz. Crucial to the championing of Palestrina by Grell and Bellermann is their belief in the primacy of vocal music, more specifically of a cappella singing. Earlier, it has been seen that for Thibaut and Zelter the cultivation of a cappella music served as a counterweight to the predominance of instrumental music in modern culture. In the writings of Grell and

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Bellermann, the idealization of a cappella singing develops a stage further. Their views represent the intensification of a conviction that still flourished in the nineteenth century, albeit as a minority view: the Platonic idea that music and the word are inseparable and that music for instruments alone is merely a deficient offshoot from true music. While Bellermann was willing to grant instrumental works value so long as they remained governed by the rules of a cappella singing, Grell’s position was more extreme: without the word, music is dead, meaningless and soulless, and ‘a genuine musical artwork can exist only in song’. His most important argument against instrumental music – as with Kant and Hegel – is its inability to express determinate concepts. He objects to the use of the word Tonkunst, since to view music as the ‘art of notes’ is to ignore Plato’s logos; Grell argues that sound and musical notes are not in themselves capable of being music but are only the medium through which it can be represented. Grell perpetuates Zelter’s insistence that every artwork must express an idea, making the use of words with music ‘absolutely and completely essential’: ‘without the word there can be no communication of concepts, without concepts no thoughts are discernible, no understanding or feeling can burst out. . . . Whoever separates words from music has forgotten that man received his song, his music from the creator through the gift of speech.’ To a greater extent even than Zelter, Grell and Bellermann are dependent on the hellenized humanism of the Goethezeit, elevating a cappella choral music as a substitute for the music of antiquity. Grell adapts the ancient Greek division of the arts into two classes, the musical and the technical, assigning poetry, dance and song to the former category and architecture, sculpture and painting to the latter; the technical arts are considered inferior, since they can be practised only through the mediation of tools and materials. Under such an analysis, music for instruments alone must be ranked among the technical arts: Grell derides musical instruments as tools, utensils and machines, mediators that prevent the direct flow of music from the soul of man to the listener, comparing them to prosthetic limbs. Grell’s contempt for musical ‘tools’ reflects the neohumanist antipathy towards industry and technology: like Schiller and Goethe, Grell elevates ancient Greece as a paradigm of holistic simplicity, when the community was united in the cultivation of simple handicrafts rather than divided by the unnatural complexities of mechanization. Grell condemns his own age as ‘the friend of factories, products, machines, of the elimination of the direct employment and practice of man’s powers’; similarly, he inveighs against the industrial

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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and economic forces that control artistic production, lamenting that in recent times ‘art has been regarded more as a commodity than as a medium for the spiritual improvement of man’. For both Grell and Bellermann, ancient Greece provides the model of the true role of art in society, yet both approach Greek musical practices with ambivalence as a result of the importance of instrumental playing within them. As a consequence of this, and of the other limitations of Greek music as a model for modern singing, Grell and Bellermann elevate Palestrina as – in L¨uttig’s phrase – a ‘historical mutation’ of the Greek ideal; indeed, Palestrina emerges as more Greek than the Greeks, in that his music provides a more perfect realization of the Platonic ideal than the music of antiquity. In elevating a cappella music, Grell and Bellermann develop a further strand of thought inspired by German neohumanism: the idea that only this music can contribute to the improvement of the individual and of society. Invoking the role of music within the Greek polis, Bellermann argues that only through the propagation of singing can music regain its ancient glory, and become a medium for cultural improvement as in antiquity. The primacy of singing as a medium for Bildung is the result of its universal accessibility: it, alone among the arts, can be participated in actively by everyone, and only music in the ‘strict style’ (gebundene Styl ) makes possible the completely equal participation of every singer. Both Grell and Bellermann campaigned vigorously for a cappella singing to be placed at the heart of music education, while Grell envisaged a much enlargened Singakademie, whose ‘monster concerts’ (Monstre-Konzerten) – involving up to a hundred thousand singers – would entirely dissolve the distinction between participants and audience. Grell’s ethical conception of vocal music was commented on by his successor as director of the Singakademie, Martin Traugott Wilhelm Blumner (–); according to Blumner, he was ‘a counterweight of salutary influence at a time when the blinkered instrumental tendency that he opposed was dominant, and when virtuoso individualism and the purely sensuous element in music were increasingly gaining the upper hand and smothering the purpose of art: to have a cultivating and ennobling effect on the performers’. As is clear from these remarks, the activities of Grell – and of the Singakademie under him – constitute a counter not only to modern instrumentalism, but to the idea of aesthetic autonomy. In Grell’s conception of the purpose of art, the artwork has no intrinsic value as an object of passive contemplation; rather, its value stems from the beneficial effect of artistic activity on the participants: ‘in the

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

musical arts, the work of art consists more in the uplifting and cultivating of heart and spirit in the producer [i.e., performer] than in what is produced, which makes the work of art seem more the effect of art than the artistic product.’ Grell’s emphasis on the effect of vocal music on the performers entirely subjugates the aesthetic dimension of the work: his consequent rejection of aesthetic norms was fundamental in shaping his approach to composition. Grell’s advocacy of unaccompanied singing developed in tandem with the conviction that Renaissance music provided the sole exemplar of the true church style. As with Mendelssohn, his early views on the church style were shaped by Zelter and the Singakademie, but even in the s his stance was more extreme than that of his teacher. Attributing the decline of church music to the ‘sounding brass and tinkling cymbal’ of degenerate instrumentalism, and to the futile desire of composers to be new and original, Grell championed the unaccompanied performance of Renaissance music; Bellermann notes that even while singing teacher for the K¨onigliche Normalsingechor at the court chapel (a position he held from ), Grell insisted that the choir practise without instrumental support: In his later years he could not have praised more highly how much he himself had learned from this tuition, since with time it became more and more clear to him why the composers of the sixteenth century – Palestrina and Orlandus [Lassus] etc. – composed according to such strict rules, and that these rules must form the basis of composition teaching in the present time, and for as long as men sing in harmony.

It is clear from this description that Grell’s conception of Palestrina’s language was more complicated than that of most of his contemporaries, and was formed by more than just the simple homophonic works eulogized by the early Romantics. Rather, his conception of Renaissance church music was informed by an intense study of the rules of the Palestrina style, partly through the mediation of Fux’s Gradus. The composition teaching that both Mendelssohn and Grell had received from Zelter was centred around Kirnberger’s Die Kunst des reinen Satzes, a treatise orientated around the music of Bach rather than Palestrina and governed by the harmonic foundation of thoroughbass. While Bellermann notes that in Grell’s earliest vocal music the treatment of dissonance is still completely regulated by Kirnberger’s rules, Grell quickly came to believe that the contrapuntal techniques he had learned from Zelter did not provide a strict enough foundation in part-writing.

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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By the early s, he was convinced that ‘nobody can attain a free, independent leading of each voice through studying thoroughbass and the chordal theory of Kirnberger’s method’; when he finally encountered Fux’s Gradus, he lamented that he had not been exposed to it earlier by Zelter. Grell’s belief that thoroughbass is inadequate as a preparation for composing church music is evident in a memorandum from  concerning composition teaching at the K¨onigliche Institut f¨ur Kirchenmusik. Here, he argues that church music can be reformed only through tuition in the strenge Satz, since without the foundation of these rules, liturgical compositions are ‘doomed to failure and as a rule ridiculous’. Grell’s church music was shaped not merely by his expertise in Fuxian counterpoint, but by a thorough study of old Italian works. His study and performance of Renaissance music continued during his years as singing teacher for the K¨onigliche Normalsingechor, encompassing not only old Italian works, but also Flemish, Spanish, German and even English motets and masses. From  Grell was employed as singing teacher for the newly reformed Domchor, and it is in the years surrounding the introduction of the new liturgy that his activities in copying out and analysing Renaissance music were most intense: in the winter of  – he transcribed eighty-one motets from the sixteenth century and earlier, while by  he had copied out five books of motets for five to eight voices by Palestrina. This intense preoccupation with Renaissance music coincided with the composition of a substantial body of music for the new Prussian liturgy. The relation between Grell’s compositions for the Domchor and Renaissance music has frequently been oversimplified, in general as a result of the impulse to polarize his approach from that of Mendelssohn. This gambit is already evident in Hohenemser’s discussion from , which categorizes the relation between nineteenthcentury music and earlier styles into two types: the first, the legitimate combination of earlier material with a composer’s own style, is apparent in Mendelssohn’s late liturgical music, while the second, the epigonal reproduction of earlier styles, is epitomized by Grell’s F¨unf sechsstimmige Kirchenges¨ange op.  and Evangelisches Festgraduale op. . Hohenemser’s verdict on Grell was shared by a contemporary critic of these collections, in a review from . This review, which appears under the nom de plume ‘Wise’, dismisses Grell’s pieces as mere copies of earlier music, and consequently as superfluous and without value. Concerning op. , Wise writes: ‘These liturgical pieces prove the composer’s competence in the old, so-called Palestrina style, which in itself is commendable

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

and indispensable to the proficient composer but appears to us of little practical worth, inasmuch as we cannot appreciate copies, especially in music.’ When discussing op. , the idea of copies is again invoked: ‘The compositions collected here are worthily sustained, competently executed, and useful, and we would recommend them as exercises in this style if it were not for the Italian originals – such as, for example, those made readily available by Tucher – which must be preferred to copies.’ Grell’s Drei vierstimmige Motetten op.  are dismissed as ephemera which should never have been published, and were probably only printed because of Grell’s prominence in the musical life of Berlin: ‘Herr Grell, who is surely in the position to achieve something more proficient and worthwhile, should not be allowed to publish this sort of thing: he harms himself and art.’ It is clear that for Wise, liturgical music is not exempt from the requirement for originality: compositions for the church, as in other fields of music, are without value if they copy an earlier style and cannot be excused on functional grounds. Just as significant is Wise’s confusion concerning the double nature of the Palestrina-Stil, since this issue is fundamental to understanding Grell’s music and ideals. In commenting that the Palestrina-Stil forms an indispensable part of compositional training, Wise views it as a compendium of immutable rules that are not tied to any composer or period. But Wise sees the outcome of composing in this style as inevitably being the copying of old Italian music, compromising the aesthetic imperative of originality. This is paradoxical: a set of compositional techniques cannot be timeless norms and yet inevitably result in copies of the music of a specific period. Wise fails to differentiate between the aspects of Grell’s motets that reflect his adherence to the strenge Satz, and those elements that reflect his intense study of Renaissance works. These two stimuli must be distinguished carefully in exploring Grell’s compositions, not least because he and Bellermann relied in part on the bifurcated perception of the Palestrina-Stil as a means of legitimizing their practices. In discussing these collections, Bellermann explored the similarities and differences between their idiom and old Italian music. He notes that it is hardly surprising that Mendelssohn mistook Grell’s ‘Lasset uns frohlocken’ op.  no.  for a work by Palestrina: the part-writing is so strict and pure that only an expert could identify how Grell diverges from old Italian practices. These divergences are, according to Bellermann, restricted to rhythmic parameters: he draws attention to Grell’s (conscious) use of a greater degree of rhythmic freedom than is

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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present in Palestrina’s works (such as the use of tied notes in ratios other than : or :). More important, however, are the rhythmic divergences from Palestrina’s language that occur at a less localized level: the almost constant cultivation of rhythmic and melodic independence in the individual vocal lines. Although in most of Palestrina’s motets and mass movements, sections of homophonic writing, polyphony, and fugal imitation are alternated, the pieces in Grell’s opp.  and  collections evince what can be described as a constant ‘rhythmic polyphony’: a dense form of homophony in which all or the majority of voices exhibit rhythmic independence but are cast according to a framework that is vertically determined. Grell’s restricted use of fugal textures and preference for an intermediate texture between homophony and imitative polyphony was, like his rejection of the stricter rules governing tied notes, a matter of conscious choice. His preference for ‘coloured or florid counterpoint’ (buntigen oder blumigen Kontrapunkt) reflects not merely his desire for truly independent part-writing, but the context in which these pieces were first performed. Bellermann recalls that Friedrich Wilhelm IV was a great connoisseur of old Italian music, ‘and had a particular fondness for Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, which is, as is well known, composed for six voices in chiavette, so that nowadays it is best sung in A major’. The king’s command for a German version of this mass to be sung complete by the Domchor could not easily be heeded, since few of its movements could be accommodated within the Evangelical liturgy (only the Kyrie and Sanctus could readily be performed, although the Agnus Dei was included in the choir’s published repertory). In order to replace the movements omitted and to set to music the other parts of the liturgy, Grell composed his opp.  and  collections, noting that these pieces were ‘suitably arranged’ ( passend zusammengestellt) for Palestrina’s mass. As a consequence, Grell adopted not only the key and vocal configuration of the Missa Papae Marcelli, but also replicated its predominant musical characteristics, including rhythmic polyphony. In this way, a liturgical performance of this mass would have constituted a hybrid of sixteenthcentury Catholic and nineteenth-century Evangelical elements. The contrast between the textures present in the Missa Papae Marcelli and those in Palestrina’s earlier works was linked in the nineteenth century to its supposed role in the deliberations of the Council of Trent; the Catholic musicologist August Wilhelm Ambros (–), for instance, focused on the numerous devices deployed in order to animate its predominantly homophonic – and thus textually intelligible – texture.

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. Grell, ‘Alleluja’ op.  no.  bars  –

Ambros’s conception of a homophonic framework enlivened by rhythmically independent figuration is epitomized by the opening of the Sanctus, and it is with the textures of this movement that Grell’s collections have the greatest affinity. This can be seen in the ‘Alleluja’ op.  no.  (Ex. .). Both of these movements utilize rhythmic polyphony as a means of creating independence within vocal lines conceived according to a chordal framework; this is apparent in the harmonically functional bass lines

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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Example .. (cont.)

that Grell’s piece shares with Palestrina’s Sanctus, and in the frequent rhythmic pairing of the voices. While few of Grell’s pieces exhibit developed points of thematic imitation (in his view, imitation of both the rhythmic and melodic profiles of a point), they do contain recurring melodic and rhythmic motifs. With regard to dissonance treatment, Grell’s procedures generally observe the restrictions of the strenge Satz: he

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. (cont.)

rarely replicates aspects of Palestrina’s dissonance treatment whose use is historically circumscribed, such as the nota cambiata and consonant-fourth idioms. Grell’s combination of the dissonance techniques of the strenge Satz with the limited replication of sixteenth-century idioms contrasts his motets from Nicolai’s ‘Pater noster’, where the replication of these

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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Example .. (cont.)

idioms occurs without adherence to the stricter rules of contrapuntal theory. Grell’s deviations from Palestrina’s textures and dissonance treatment – where acknowledged – have been explained in two ways. Hohenemser attributes these divergences to the bungled copying of Palestrina, while Friedemann Milz argues that he deliberately cultivated a simplified version of Palestrina’s language, a ‘Palestrina-Stil for the masses’. Although the latter perspective is relevant to other aspects of Grell’s output, it seems that here he seeks to avoid the most antiquated elements present in Palestrina’s music. In spite of replicating many aspects of Palestrina’s language, the desire to approximate the idiom of the Missa Papae Marcelli cannot simply be equated with a selfconscious archaism. This impression is confirmed by the inclusion of some elements foreign to Renaissance music, the clearest example being the chains of parallel sixths in the lower voices in bars – of ‘Herr Gott, du bist unsre Zuflucht’ op.  no. . Grell’s opp.  and  pieces, like his Musica sacra psalms, have a modal basis. This is apparent not just in localized progressions of consecutive roots, but in the harmonic practice and cadential structure of these works throughout. Most of the pieces in these collections share the tonal restrictions present in the ‘Alleluja’, suggesting the replication of the modal practice present in the Missa Papae Marcelli and the use of the ionian mode on A. Although the handling of this mode in the shorter pieces in these

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

collections rarely suggests tonal ambiguity, the larger motets in op.  evince a dual tonal orientation, alternating between the mixolydian on E and ionian on A. This ambiguity can be related to the way in which the modal orientation of the model for these motets, the Missa Papae Marcelli, was defined by nineteenth-century theorists and historians: Baini, for example, assigned the mass to the eighth church tone on G (i.e., the hypomixolydian mode). Alternatively, Grell’s modal practice in these motets may suggest an intuitive realization that the mass in its entirety cannot be assigned to a single mode, but rather alternates between the ionian and mixolydian modes. While all the pieces in Grell’s opp.  and  contain substantial relationships to Palestrina’s language, it should not be assumed that this is true of all his church music. Another collection from this period, the Drei und dreissig vierstimmige Motetten op. , exhibits a more complex range of stylistic orientations. A small proportion of these short, functional pieces (intended not for the Domchor but for school singing and less competent church choirs) replicate Palestrina’s homophonic idiom, while all reflect the restrictions of the strenge Satz. The majority of the pieces, however, are in more recent idioms, while some even suggest the Liedertafel style. In general, it is the motets with penitential texts that evince close relationships with Palestrina’s language: Grell’s restricted cultivation of this language in op.  is puzzling, given that op.  and especially op.  (which consists of motets for all the feasts of the church year, not just for Holy Week and Bußtage) suggest that he viewed it as a universally applicable ideal rather than one whose practical application was seasonally limited. A solution to the contrasting stylistic orientations of these collections can be found in an autobiographical note from . Here, Grell identifies two contrasting styles in his church music: ‘choral music for the church a Capella’ and works that are ‘not liturgical [nicht ritual], but in stilo organico and often in entirely free modern manners of writing’. In this description, Grell adopts the Italian terms for differentiating stile antico works (stilo alla capella) from works with more modern elements (stilo all’organo, the Italian equivalent of Fux’s stylus mixtus); Grell would probably have been familiar with such terminology not only from his study of Fux’s Gradus, but from the writings of Baini and Winterfeld. It is clear from Grell’s autobiographical note that he would have considered only his works related to Palestrina’s language to be truly suitable for the church; those works in op.  in stilo all’organo and more modern styles were primarily intended for school singing and are ‘nonliturgical’ in character. Consequently, it is clear that while not all of Grell’s

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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motets evince significant relationships to Palestrina’s language, he viewed it – unlike any of the composers examined earlier – as a universally valid liturgical ideal. Bellermann’s Contrapunkt If Grell’s liturgical pieces reflect the competing ideals of Palestrina’s language and the Fuxian strenge Satz, the tension between them becomes all-pervasive in Bellermann’s textbook Der Contrapunkt. This work, in its original version and the extensively revised second edition (), was the standard textbook of the Palestrina style in Germany until the appearance of Knud Jeppesen’s Kontrapunkt (), and helped to perpetuate aspects of the beliefs underlying the Berlin Palestrina revival into the twentieth century. This success occurred in spite of – or perhaps, because of – the work’s curiously bifurcated concerns and ambiguity of focus: on the one hand, it presents a contribution to contrapuntal theory through its amplification of Fux’s Gradus, while on the other it attempts to define Palestrina’s language historically. Rather than subjecting one of these aspects to critique ( Jeppesen highlighted the work’s inadequacy as a representation of Palestrina’s language, while Heinrich Schenker performed a similar operation with regard to contrapuntal theory) it is necessary to explore how they interact. In particular, the aesthetic premisses underpinning this attempted synthesis require clarification, and we must explore their implications for the compositional practices of Grell and Bellermann. Bellermann’s elevation of the Palestrina-Stil as a paradigm for composition is inextricably linked to his views on the primacy of vocal music. Although his strictures on instrumentalism never equal the vehemence of his teacher’s, he shared Grell’s conviction that compositional methods orientated around the instrumental foundation of thoroughbass cannot provide a strict foundation in part-writing. Accordingly, the composition tutors of Kirnberger, Cherubini and Siegfried Dehn are rejected because of their basis in harmonic rather than true contrapuntal theory; in addition, the music of Bach and Handel is dismissed as a model of partwriting ‘because all their choral compositions are calculated around an instrumental bass’. It is the music of Palestrina and his contemporaries that provides strict instruction since it is written ‘only for pure voices’: ‘It is from this age that we must take up the study of part-writing and must arrange our practices according to the rules and laws which were in force at that time.’ Bellermann’s attitude towards these laws reveals

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

a dual conception of their worth. The contrapuntal laws that he outlines are regarded as universally valid rules of composition, but also provide the means to return to the spirit of the masterpieces of the sixteenth century by replicating their language. This dual position, as has been seen earlier, is paradoxical because of the contradictory nature of its components: both the historicist and the classicizing aspects of Bellermann’s textbook therefore need to be taken into account. Dahlhaus – in line with his view that nineteenth-century conceptions of the Palestrina-Stil reflect a classicizing rather than a historicizing tendency – sees Bellermann as presenting eternal truths rather than demonstrating the historicist desire to revivify a musical golden age. Certainly, much of the foreword to Der Contrapunkt confirms the view that Bellermann represents the Palestrina style as a codification of universally valid rules. The subtitle of Bellermann’s book, ‘instruction for part-writing in musical composition’, and his summary of the purpose of the study (to teach composers fluent and correct part-writing), emphasize the general applicability of the rules proposed rather than their historical basis. Bellermann confirms this by asserting that the study of his rules for part-writing will aid the composer of operatic and orchestral music, as well as church music; moreover, he writes that the rules should not substitute what can be learned from more recent compositions and that their observance will not, and should not, automatically bring with it other aspects of old music: By no means should our music, as a result of this, obtain again that old form [Gestalt]; we should only take from it what we cannot learn from studying presentday music. We should still strive for the flowing individual voices of the ancients, even though we are entitled in the present time to go beyond the narrow confines of their rules if our artworks are inspired by other ideas.

While Bellermann emphasizes the universal applicability of his rules and their classical, timeless value, this is not the whole story: his plea for musical renewal through historicist revival is less veiled than Dahlhaus suggests. Bellermann considers the faults in modern composing to stem from an unwillingness to learn from history, and views perfect part-writing as the preserve of Palestrina and contemporaries, the only composers of ‘truly sacred art’. Moreover, his rules provide modern composers with the means to regain the chief qualities of Palestrina’s music, his sublime simplicity and ‘purest sacred restraint’ (reinsten kirchlichen Keuschheit). Like Hoffmann and Thibaut half a century before, Bellermann explores the musician’s duty to learn from the past by a comparison with other forms of art: the only way for ‘bad, degenerate,

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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licentious modern music’ to be redeemed is through the immersion of modern composers in sixteenth-century music and the study of its strict rules. As with earlier critics and historians, Bellermann’s elevation of Palestrina is dependent on an organicist golden age emplotment. Accordingly, in spite of his expert knowledge of early sixteenth-century music, Bellermann dismisses it as overburdened with complex canons and too harsh harmonically to serve as a model. And, like the early Romantic commentators, he stresses the decline of church music in the early seventeenth century, attributing this to the forsaking of the strict rules of counterpoint. It is in the works of Palestrina himself that the strict rules reach their zenith: ‘A genius like Palestrina did not stand out from among his contemporaries through overturning the existing rules of beauty and of pleasing sound [Wohlklanges], but by virtue of the way in which he – master of these rules – created within these narrow limits masterpieces which we must still today admire after three centuries.’ It is Palestrina, not Fux, who is ‘master of these rules’, and – crucially – the validity of the techniques described in Der Contrapunkt is grounded in their use in the hands of Palestrina and his contemporaries. Bellermann seldom demonstrates the abstract validity of his rules, but rather appeals to their use in Renaissance music as their sole authority; where Fux and the practice found in sixteenth-century music are at variance, it is Renaissance methods that are recommended. Throughout Der Contrapunkt Bellermann defends his rules by means of mantras invoking the historical language of Palestrina and his contemporaries: aesthetic and technical judgements are apparently subjugated to historical criteria. Not only is the authority for Bellermann’s contrapuntal laws grounded in historicism, but the compositional effects of his universal rules of part-writing are also historically circumscribed. While he asserts that his technical rules are of use in all fields of composition and are not restricted to the replication of a particular musical language, the twelve music examples presented at the end of his book contradict his notions of general applicability. These works, given in full at the end of the  edition, circumscribe Bellermann’s rules to a particular historical period, and also implicitly restrict the use that the modern composer can make of them. Ten works by sixteenth-century composers are given to illustrate the principles of strict part-writing: four motets by Palestrina, three by Lassus, one each by Handl and Eccard, and a motet attributed to Goudimel (actually by Pietro Vinci [c. –]). The collection of examples culminates with two pieces by Bellermann himself, a Kyrie eleison and an eight-part motet ‘Wie der Hirsch schreiet’. Bellermann’s

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

pieces in the strict a cappella style – both of which are identified as actual compositions for the Evangelical service, rather than exercises conceived to demonstrate a technique – serve to contradict the universal applicability of his rules. For it is clear that while his technical rules are in part represented as universal norms, they are also conceived as a means of revivifying a historical ideal: both pieces are intended to replicate Palestrina’s language as well as to demonstrate the rules of the strenge Satz. In discussing these pieces, three factors need to be taken into account: their relation to the contrapuntal rules outlined in his treatise, the extent to which they replicate Palestrina’s language, and their relation to the pieces by Grell examined earlier. Although both of Bellermann’s pieces reflect his concerns with strict part-writing, they do not correspond with all the rules that he outlines in every detail. As in Grell’s opp.  and , Bellermann’s pieces evince a greater degree of rhythmic freedom than Palestrina’s music through their treatment of tied notes. More significantly, Bellermann’s handling of the individual melodic lines often contradicts his rules on successive melodic leaps, with the result that his bass lines sometimes reflect harmonic considerations rather than his concern for melodic independence. In other aspects of the strenge Satz, however, Bellermann’s pieces are stricter in their observation of his contrapuntal rules than those of Grell, and occasionally stricter than Palestrina’s. This is apparent in his treatment of unaccented dissonances, especially in his complete avoidance of an idiom present in the music of both Grell and Palestrina, the crotchet auxiliary note. Bellermann bans the use of this idiom on two occasions in Der Contrapunkt, commenting that while not uncommon in sixteenth-century music, it is not permissible in strict counterpoint. Bellermann’s prohibition of such dissonances did not come, as Jeppesen suggests, from an ignorance of sixteenth-century practices, but rather from a desire for stricter dissonance procedures in this regard than are present in the music of Palestrina. The assertion here of the rules of the strenge Satz over the language of Palestrina is reflected in both of Bellermann’s pieces, where such dissonances only occur in the context of the ornamental resolution to a suspension. In a previous discussion of ‘Wie der Hirsch schreiet’ (Ex. .), Peter L¨uttig identifies two aspects of the piece which distance it from Palestrina’s music. He sees Bellermann’s dense textures as exhibiting not the alternation of homophony and polyphony that is predominant in Palestrina’s music but rather the simultaneous presentation of both, arguing that ‘strictly speaking, Bellermann has not composed too little like Palestrina, but too much’. In discussing Grell’s motets, it has become evident that the use of rhythmic polyphony does not represent a hybrid

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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Example .. Heinrich Bellermann, ‘Wie der Hirsch schreiet’, bars –

fusion of two of Palestrina’s textures, but rather the exclusive cultivation of a texture that Palestrina himself used. Even so, L¨uttig is right to distance the textures of ‘Wie der Hirsch’ from Palestrina’s music, since Palestrina’s eight-part motets are arranged for two choirs, rather than the voices being treated as a single group. Bellermann himself recognizes this as the usual Renaissance practice, commenting that ‘normally movement in eight parts is arranged so that one encounters two equal

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. (cont.)

and complete four-part choirs . . . that in part alternate and in part sing together forming an eight-voice texture’. He seeks to demonstrate, however, that it is also possible to unite all the voices together in one choir; he cites Lotti’s ‘Crucifixus’ as an example of this practice but comments that this piece evinces a freer manner of writing. As a consequence,

The Protestant Palestrina revival

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‘Wie der Hirsch’ has a clear pedagogical function in the textbook: it provides an example of a practice for which Bellermann was unable to find a suitable sixteenth-century model (while this texture is common in Franco-Flemish music from earlier in the century, he would have dismissed the possibility of including such a work on the grounds of the defects he perceived in this repertory). Bellermann’s desire to include an example of truly polyphonic eight-part writing stems from his insistence on the necessity of strict and independent part-writing, no matter how many vocal parts are involved: ‘the ancients were always very strict in this. In their polyphonic movements every single voice, no matter how many there may be, was considered to be an independent entity whose individuality could and should not be confused with that of another.’ The second aspect of the piece which L¨uttig considers to disassociate it from the language of Palestrina is the chromatic-third relationship in bar  (F-D). This progression, while distancing the composition from Palestrina’s music, does not however contradict late Renaissance harmonic practice as evinced in the works of his contemporaries. The use of chromatic-third progressions (a topic explored more fully in Chapter ) contradicts neither earlier nineteenth-century representations of Palestrina’s language nor Bellermann’s own conception of it. In Der Contrapunkt, he advises that the chromatic melodic steps occasionally found in sixteenth-century compositions should not be imitated, but does not prohibit the use of chromatic progressions or the modification of the triad in successive chords based on the same root, so long as the chromatic modification occurs in a different voice. Bellermann’s acknowledgement of the legitimacy of chromatic-third progressions in sixteenth-century compositions suggests that the progression L¨uttig identifies would not have appeared ‘un-Palestrinian’ to him: its presence does not suggest anything other than an intention to replicate Palestrina’s language. L¨uttig’s concomitant view that this progression indicates the harmonic determinacy of the nineteenth century rather than a sixteenth-century concern with part-writing is more problematic. It cannot be ignored that Bellermann viewed sixteenthcentury harmony as being entirely governed by the interweaving of independent melodies: ‘the chordal combinations [Zusammenkl¨ange] resulting from the simultaneous sounding of different voices . . . were not accepted as something existing for itself, but only regarded as the consequence of such combining of voices [Zusammensingens].’ But while Bellermann’s progression may suggest chordal determination rather than the convergence of individual parts that he sees in Renaissance music, the use of

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

such progressions in the latter is no different in this regard: such progressions in themselves are evidence neither for nor against harmonic determinacy. For L¨uttig, Bellermann’s use of chromatic-third progressions and a hybrid texture fusing homophony and polyphony demonstrates that he sought to copy ‘the spirit and not the style of Palestrina’. It is clear, however, that these features do not justify this contention, since Bellermann regarded them as elements of sixteenth-century syntax: moreover, their presence does not prevent this motet from being one of the most literal nineteenth-century replications of Palestrina’s language. Although Bellermann’s ‘Wie der Hirsch’ and Kyrie were originally conceived for liturgical rather than pedagogical use, their stylistic orientation is by no means representative of all his output as a composer of church music. His compositions from the decade preceding Der Contrapunkt engage with a multiplicity of styles, ranging from old Italian homophony and the early eighteenth-century stile antico to modern idioms. Thus, while Bellermann and Grell were the most zealous Protestant exponents of the Palestrina ideal, and the most consistent emulators of his language in their liturgical works, even in their hands this language remains merely one option for the composition of religious texts. Grell’s Missa solemnis Alongside Der Contrapunkt, Grell’s Missa solemnis, given its first performance by the Berlin Singakademie in , is the greatest monument of the Berlin Palestrina revival. Grell’s mass, which uses the sixteen-part, four-choir a cappella texture previously employed for the Singakademie by Fasch and Mendelssohn, is written on a huge scale; at  bars it outweighs even Beethoven’s Missa solemnis ( bars). The significance of this work is not limited to it being the most substantial product of the a cappella revival and of the Protestant vogue for quasi-liturgical music. Rather, its importance for the present discussion derives from its complex stylistic orientation and controversial critical reception. These topics can be approached via a contemporary critique of the work – Otto Gumprecht’s review of the first performance – and Bellermann’s responses to it. Bellermann acclaimed the Missa solemnis as ‘the most perfect model of polyphonic movement’: an exhaustive compendium of the techniques of the strenge Satz, whose ‘consummate beauty, perfection of form and profundity of expression are surpassed by neither modern nor ancient masters in this manner of writing’.

The Protestant Palestrina revival



But for Gumprecht, Grell’s compositional mastery amounts to sterile academicism, betokening the ‘zealous diligence of the craftsman’ rather than the spontaneity of genius: while the technical virtuosity of the piece strives ‘to entangle us in its presentation of itself as the ideal religious art’, its arid formalism represents a throwback to an earlier stage in the evolution of music. Gumprecht’s Hegelian (or rather, Marxian) analysis concludes by countering the premisses underpinning the work and entirely dismissing it as a vehicle for Bildung: Grell’s mass is a late-born child of the Neapolitan school. It renounces not only the orchestra, which through the genius of our German masters has become an inexhaustible kingdom of heightened expressive possibilities, but in addition, the handling of melody, harmony and rhythm remains confined by the bounds which the distant past regarded as the eternal limits of art. Just as in all intellectual spheres there are those who view long outmoded forms and modes of expression as the peak of perfection, so our art will never lack theoreticians and practitioners who – like Thibaut and Grell – proclaim the rules observed by the old Italian masters as unique and inviolable truths.

Here we encounter a familiar problem: Gumprecht does not differentiate between adhering to the strict rules of counterpoint and engaging with successive old Italian styles. A similar vagueness is present in more recent descriptions of the work, which variously view it as being ‘in the style of Palestrina’, ‘exactly in the pure style of old Italian church music’, or in Neo-Palestrina-Stil. In contrast, Bellermann stresses the contemporaneity of the work, arguing that its success derives from the fusion of the strenge Satz with modern melodic and harmonic elements. Bellermann’s assessment provides a more accurate view of the work; indeed, only the Kyrie evinces a substantial relation to Palestrina’s language. Even here, while the sustained imitative writing evokes the sound world of Renaissance polyphony, Grell’s textures and harmonic practice do not replicate this language literally. The approach to harmony and dissonance treatment is much freer than in Grell’s opp.  and : while he was able to sustain modal harmonic parameters in some of his short liturgical pieces, he recognized that functional tonal harmony and large-scale tonal schemes were essential to sustaining the massive musical structures of this work. The remainder of the movements engage with a variety of earlier and contemporary styles, ranging from Bachian fugue (‘et vitam venturi’) to the Liedertafel style (strongly suggested by the lilting  rhythms of the ‘Quoniam’): all, however, are united by the concern for fluent and independent part-writing. This concern is apparent even in the most lyrical portions of the work, such as the Benedictus



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

and Agnus Dei; neither of these movements can in any sense be described as re-creating Palestrina’s language, but instead demonstrate the universal applicability of the procedures for part-writing that Grell advocated. While Gumprecht’s critique of Grell’s mass addressed its relation to old Italian music, the controversy surrounding it focused on another issue. The work was the subject of debate and polemicizing because of its perceived Catholic tendencies, marking an important shift from the aesthetic Catholicism among Protestants earlier in the century towards the political and cultural hostility towards Catholicism present in Bismarck’s Reich. In his biography of Grell, Bellermann defended his teacher’s patriotic and Evangelical credentials in the strongest terms; in Grell’s defence, he cites the composer’s response to a letter from a Catholic convert: ‘You are of the opinion that I have written a Catholic mass. That is not the case! I wished to make it as Evangelical as possible.’ These denials mark the decline of a key feature that facilitated the Protestant Palestrina revival, the view that the recovery of a naiv Catholic conception of church music was essential for artistic renewal. The decline of the north German vogue for Catholicism and its replacement, in the years surrounding the foundation of the Second Reich, with hostility to Catholicism as a factor hindering German unification (a hostility that reached its zenith in Bismarck’s Kulturkampf of the s) had a demonstrable effect on the reception of old Italian music. Concurrent developments in the south German Catholic Palestrina revival identified the reform of church music via old Italian models not with the ecumenicism of the restoration era, but with Catholic particularism and south German separatism; this identification rendered the explicit linking of the reform of Protestant church music with Palestrina politically suspect. L¨uttig has examined this development in relation to the differences between the  and  editions of Der Contrapunkt, noting that all Catholic overtones were removed in order to absolve it from denominational suspicion; for Bellermann – a state employee – to link his life’s work with Catholicism was to risk official censure. Not only Bellermann, but other authors seeking to perpetuate the Palestrina ideal, such as the liturgist Rochus Freiherr von Liliencron, had to defend themselves against the charge of Catholicizing. If, in Bellermann’s case, Palestrina’s marginalization is overtly linked to political nationalism, the more general decline in his prominence as a paradigm for Protestant church music reflects a weaker, more pervasive form of cultural nationalism. For Spitta, as for Winterfeld, the imperatives of objective historicism necessitated the elevation of German

The Protestant Palestrina revival



Protestant models of the church style: ‘whoever wishes to revitalize Protestant church music should therefore stick to that which in earlier times was actually Protestant church music.’ But while Spitta sought to elevate the cantatas of Bach as the paradigm of liturgical music, it was the increased interest in the music of Eccard and Sch¨utz that displaced Palestrina, or at least produced a situation where the concept of a Palestrina revival ceases to be meaningful. While Palestrina remained an important model for some Berlin composers throughout the century – such as Grell’s pupils Blumner and Reinhold Succo – it was German chorale settings and motets of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that were increasingly to supplant Palestrina as the paradigms for Protestant church music. ∗ In examining the works of composers associated with the Berlin Singakademie and Domchor, a complex variety of responses to the Palestrina ideal has emerged. Within this diversity, several constants are present, however. The two central factors that encouraged the emulation of Palestrina – Bildung through quasi-liturgical works and the renewal of liturgical music – led to a shared concern for simplicity: at the most basic level, the idealization of Palestrina prompted the renunciation of instruments and the suppression of elements of modern musical syntax. Deeper forms of compositional engagement with Palestrina’s language were dependent on three factors: the stance that composers took within the gamut of views on the nature of the church style, the extent of their knowledge of Renaissance music and the aesthetic notions informing their activities. For some of the composers discussed, engaging with this language was merely one option for the composition of liturgical music, an option confined by the continuing association of this language with the Holy Week services in the Sistine Chapel; for others, however, it was universally valid. And while the majority of composers responded to the homophonic works popularized by the early phases of the Palestrina revival, the compositions of Grell and Bellermann reflect a more extensive engagement with Renaissance music. The dialectical relationship between the homophonic language unearthed by the early Protestant revival and the Palestrina style attains a problematic synthesis in the works of Grell and Bellermann, since they alone among the Protestant composers examined possessed the necessary knowledge of both Renaissance music and the strenge Satz. While the literal replication of elements of Palestrina’s language was justified for Grell and Bellermann by their belief that the

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

criteria of originality and contemporaneity were subservient to higher concerns, other composers – especially Mendelssohn – were more troubled by the aesthetic implications of their activities. For Protestant composers, church music as a whole remained subject to the aesthetic criteria operative in other fields; the literal replication of Palestrina could be justified only through polemical engagement with these criteria (as with Grell and Bellermann), or through removing a piece from the aesthetic realm altogether by identifying it as a ‘study’ (in the case of Nicolai). The majority of compositions examined evince not the literal replication of Palestrina’s language, but rather an eclectic combination of old and new elements; as such they epitomize the tension between the claims of art and liturgy that underpinned Protestant church music in this period.



The Catholic Palestrina revival

TRADITION AND REFORM

In discussing the relation between the Palestrina revival and the composition of church music in Catholic south Germany and Austria, several distinctions must be borne in mind. Although the work of south German reformers was naturally stimulated by the ideas and activities of their north German counterparts, the Catholic Palestrina revival was sustained by significantly different historical, intellectual and ideological foundations. While the idealization and emulation of Palestrina by Protestant composers was a product of historicism, Catholic church music evinces a bifurcated orientation: in addition to the historicist revival of Palestrina’s music and language, Catholic music reflects Palestrina indirectly through the perpetuation of the Fuxian stylus a capella. As well as exploring the tension between historicism and tradition, it is necessary to confront the distinct ideological factors that shaped the Catholic Palestrina revival. While, as has been seen, the strengthening Catholic particularism in the early years of the Second Reich contributed to Palestrina being displaced as the paradigm for Protestant church music, this factor had the opposite effect in Catholic south Germany. Indeed, it is activities in this period, especially the reforms and music of the Allgemeine Deutsche C¨acilien-Verein (ACV ), that must form the focal point of an examination of the Catholic Palestrina revival. Even though the ACV was the most influential contemporary movement for church music reform, it would be mistaken to view the Catholic Palestrina revival as synonymous with its activities. This identification is encouraged by the subsuming of the Palestrina revival under the vague concept of Cecilianism (C¨acilianismus). This term originated in the late nineteenth century as a polemical description of the activities of the ACV; in modern usage it is however much less clearly defined, embracing not merely Catholic liturgical and musical reform but 



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

broader developments in nineteenth-century intellectual and cultural history. The rejection of this concept in the present discussion is not solely the result of its vagueness and of the misunderstandings that it has provoked: rather, three more important dangers are inherent in the term. It encourages the exaggeration of the impact of the ACV in the second half of the century, and helps to perpetuate the representation by this organization of events earlier in the century as somehow goal-directed and of importance only in so far as they corresponded with its reforms. In addition, the concept has helped to foster the idea that trends in Catholic church music are divorced from the wider currents of contemporary thought and from events in north Germany. The most harmful aspect of this concept is the idea – again, derived from the self-representations of the ACV – that relationships to Palestrina in Catholic compositions are solely the result of reform and not of the continuation of tradition. The perpetuation of the stylus a capella tradition in south Germany cannot be ignored in discussing activities earlier in the century, however, and even in examining the music and views of the ACV. The traditional cultivation of the stylus a capella adds an extra component to the two main elements present in the north German Palestrina revival – the historicist revival of the music of Palestrina in concerts, and the compositional emulation of it in liturgical and quasi-liturgical pieces – and gives the relation between Palestrina and early nineteenth-century Catholic music an extra degree of complexity. There is a clear divide and tension between the historicist revival of Palestrina’s language and the continuation of what Siegfried Gmeinwieser describes as the unbroken tradition of composition in the Palestrina-Stil. This continuing practice can be compared with the living influence of the spirit and tradition of Palestrina’s music that Baini perceived in the perpetuation of the stile antico in Italy. The only non-Italian to be included in Baini’s list of authors who furthered Palestrina’s teachings is Fux: it was his codification of the stylus a capella in the Gradus, rather than Palestrina’s works or Italian stile antico music, that did most to shape the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Palestrina tradition in south Germany and Austria. The Fuxian stylus a capella remained an important liturgical idiom until the early s and, although the use of its techniques was heavily in decline, it did not die out completely until the second half of the nineteenth century. This manner of composition was associated in particular with Lent, Holy Week and Advent; works in this idiom were performed either without accompaniment or with organ continuo and string bass (often supplemented by colla parte instruments), contrasting with the concerted

The Catholic Palestrina revival



music performed during the rest of the year. Composition in the stylus a capella was for early nineteenth-century composers, as for their predecessors, a continuously evolving practice which retained only tenuous links with the language of Palestrina. While Fux – or rather the teacher in his dialogue, Aloysius – exhorts his pupil to imitate Palestrina, the stylus a capella described by Fux and practised by German composers constitutes not the replication of Palestrina’s language, but the use of elements of his part-writing within a modern harmonic and tonal context. Fux distinguishes between the stylus a capella for voices alone and with organ and instruments, permitting a greater freedom in harmony, part-writing and structure in the latter type. While in both types the part-writing is in general harmonically determined, this is especially apparent in the freer style Fux describes through the use of figured bass, sequential writing, clearly defined cadences, and parts moving in chains of parallel thirds and sixths: in this way the composer is able, according to Fux, to maintain the rules of art while attuning his music to the age. From the second decade of the nineteenth century, the stylus a capella tradition coexisted with the revival and emulation of old Italian works by Catholic composers, and a campaign for the reform of church music developed which was closely related to the ideas of the north German Protestant commentators. The fluid exchange of ideas between denominations is apparent in an essay by C. W. Fr¨ohlich from , which explicitly acknowledges the essays of Hoffmann and Michaelis from six years earlier as important stimuli for the reform of Catholic church music. Fr¨ohlich’s discussion of the role that old Italian music has to play in modern reform entirely ignores the stylus a capella tradition and its seasonal associations: a fifteen-bar fragment of falsobordone attributed to Palestrina is quoted and recommended not for penitential seasons but for feast days throughout the year. In arguing that modern composers should adopt ‘the manner of the old church motets and choruses on the psalm Miserere by Palestrina, Allegri and Bai’ when setting the Kyrie, Fr¨ohlich reflects not only the views of Hoffmann and Michaelis but also the early Romantic enthusiasm for the music of the Sistine Chapel. Central to Fr¨ohlich’s campaign is not the strengthening of existing traditions but rather a return to the spirit of sixteenth-century church music, identified explicitly as the product of the golden age of Catholicism: ‘We must return again as far as it is possible to the simple, eloquent singing of the ancients, to their pure child-like sense.’ The viewing of old Italian music from the historicist perspective of the Protestant Romantics is apparent even in centres where its performance



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

was the product of tradition, not revival. This is evident in Vienna, despite a continuous performing tradition of the music of Palestrina and his contemporaries from the s onwards. A large proportion of the hymns from Palestrina’s  collection remained in use at the Hofkapelle from the mid-seventeenth century until at least the s, while all twentyseven of the responsories from Ingegneri’s Responsoria hebdomadae sanctae were a part of the Holy Week commemorations there. The presence of such a tradition may suggest that the idea of a Palestrina revival is not applicable to activities in Vienna; this view has recently been asserted by Theophil Antonicek: ‘Renaissance music did not need to be revived in Austria. Under Karl VI [Emperor from  to ] the repertory of church music at court had encompassed music from three centuries and the cultivation of old music and of new compositions in its style continued in this way.’ What is striking, however, is that early nineteenth-century musicians sought to redefine their activities in terms of revival and reform. Thus, while much of the repertory performed in the Hauskonzerte of the music historian Raphael Georg Kiesewetter (–) constituted the continuation of a local tradition rather than the reawakening of the works concerned, his views bear marked resemblances to those of the north German reformers. Kiesewetter acclaimed Thibaut’s ¨ Reinheit der Tonkunst as the best literary evocation of the spirit of Uber Palestrina’s works, while his prot´eg´e Franz Sales Kandler (–) presented a historicist manifesto for the revival of old music bolstered by quotations from Tieck and August Wilhelm Schlegel. It is clear from their views that the presence of a tradition of performing older works did not make Vienna immune to historicist perceptions of this music, or to the idea of artistic revival. The interaction between the stylus a capella tradition and the historicist revival of old Italian music is apparent in the activities and compositions of the Munich court organist Caspar Ett (–) and Kapellmeister Johann Kaspar Aiblinger (–). Both Ett and Aiblinger were allied to church music reform through the Munich C¨acilienb¨undnis der Hofmusiker, whose members were committed to the revivification of the true church style. A central factor in these reforms was the revival of the music of Palestrina and his contemporaries, initiated by a performance of Allegri’s Miserere in the Michaelshofkirche on Good Friday . The significance of this event for nineteenth-century church music reform has often been exaggerated. By this time, after all, concert performances of the Miserere were frequent in north Germany, and musicians

The Catholic Palestrina revival



were familiar with the long tradition of Viennese performances of the work. While this performance was thus not unprecedented in Germany, those involved considered it to mark a redefinition of church music in Munich: Karl Emil von Schafh¨autl (–), later to become one of the most virulent opponents of the ACV, commented in  that it marked the ‘reawakening’ of ‘the old masters of the th and th centuries’. Schafh¨autl notes that from  onwards Ett performed works not only by Allegri and Palestrina (the Missa Aeterna Christi munera was performed unaccompanied in ) but also by Giovanni Animuccia, Goudimel, Lassus, Senfl and Ockeghem (whose Missa cujusvis toni was sung in ). Significantly, the cultivation of Renaissance music was restricted by the traditional seasonal associations of the stylus a capella; even in Advent and Lent, Renaissance pieces were never predominant, being performed alongside stylus a capella pieces by Fux, Michael Haydn and Georg Joseph Vogler (–). During the rest of the year eighteenth-century and modern concerted works were performed, and from Easter Sunday to the first Sunday in Advent the repertory was dominated by the works of Joseph and Michael Haydn, Mozart, Hasse and Hummel. The liturgical music of Ett and his Munich contemporaries exhibits relationships both to the Fuxian stylus a capella and to the sixteenthand seventeenth-century pieces which they revived. In Ett’s output, aspects of the stylus a capella are juxtaposed with elements drawn directly from Renaissance church music and with modern idioms. In his Missa Laetare Jerusalem (, rev. ), the evocation of Renaissance falsobordone (inspired by the performance of Allegri’s Miserere) alternates with the strict part-writing and modern harmonic idioms characteristic of the stylus a capella; melodic restrictions and the strict treatment of suspensions are combined with rhythmic sequences and an unambiguously tonal context employing unprepared and diminished-seventh chords (see Ex. .). In contrast, other works draw solely on one of these two stimuli. While in Ett’s Miserere, modern melodic elements and harmonies are combined with old Italian cadential formulas, the part-writing and dissonance treatment in his Missa quadragesimalis (Lenten mass) reflects the stylus a capella tradition in its simplest form. While traditional and historicist elements stand side by side in Ett’s output, the tension between these two orientations is evident in two contemporary discussions of his music. In an unsigned appraisal of activities in Munich from , the reviewer shows a familiarity with



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. Caspar Ett, Agnus Dei, Missa Laetare Jerusalem ( version), bars –

the tradition of performing a cappella works in Advent and Lent, and a measure of enthusiasm for the revival of old music by Ett and Aiblinger. Nevertheless, the reviewer approaches Ett’s own compositions not as the perpetuation of a traditional idiom, but as copies of music from the distant past. Dismissing the views of those who believe that the sixteenth century possesses a ‘monopoly on skill and genius’, the review urges

The Catholic Palestrina revival



Example .. (cont.)

composers to unite the best of ancient and modern practices and thus to avoid slavish imitation and plagiarism. In responding to this review, Schafh¨autl defends Ett from the charge of historical imitation while simultaneously acclaiming sixteenth-century music as exemplifying the true church style: he paradoxically combines an explanation of Ett’s music in terms of the stylus a capella with a historicist manifesto for church music reform. Schafh¨autl argues that none of Ett’s compositions imitates



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

sixteenth-century forms: rather they combine an adherence to Vogler’s harmonic system (as set out in Tonwissenschaft und Tonsetzkunst []) with the ‘free contrapuntal style’, a phrase that seems synonymous with the Fuxian stylus a capella: ‘Even where he has chosen as a cantus firmus an unaltered chant melody, he recalls nothing of the old form of the contrapuntal style – none of its characteristic harmonic progressions and combinations, modulations and cadences, still less its melodic lines [Melodief u¨ hrungen] – at most the long notes and the wonderful simplicity and dignity of the style.’ While Schafh¨autl denies that Ett’s music bears a direct relation to Palestrina, he praises Renaissance music as the zenith of the church style and considers it to be the primary source of renewal for modern liturgical composition. In expounding this view, Schafh¨autl’s arguments and language are directly derived from the historicism of the Romantic circle and the ideas of the Protestant reformers. He concludes his article with a poem by A. W. Schlegel, and his elevation of Palestrina is couched in the language of Hoffmann and Herder: The venerable songs of Palestrina and others are the warmest outpourings of a soul burning for heaven, in forms that were created and shaped solely to proclaim the praise of God and not yet profaned in the service of life and pleasure; in contrast our charming church composers could scarcely dare to attempt to edify a Christian congregation with their common, effeminate, feeble and sensual melodies, harmonies and cadences.

It is only in exploring how modern composers may regain Palestrina’s qualities that Schafh¨autl’s ideas suggest the stylus a capella tradition. Rather than discussing how composers might emulate Palestrina’s homophony, Schafh¨autl’s solution to the problem of church music lies in the strict rules of counterpoint. Only through the revival of truly independent part-writing can church music be renewed: the dignity of the church style is threatened by the intrusion of any elements indicative of harmonic determinacy, such as the unprepared seventh chord which appears ‘like an evil spirit among the heavenly host’. Crucially Schafh¨autl does not elevate Fux and his followers as the source of contrapuntal mastery, but instead insists that this can be learned only from the sixteenth-century contrapuntists: the Kyrie from Palestrina’s Missa Aeterna Christi munera and the Sanctus and Benedictus from Lassus’s Missa super Qual donna attende are cited as models of contrapuntal church music. Thus, while counterpoint is represented as the road to the production of true church music, it is considered to be a skill attainable only through the emulation of Renaissance works, not via the traditional stylus a capella.

The Catholic Palestrina revival



Proske and Musica divina The commingling of tradition and historicism represented by activities in Munich is not an issue in Regensburg, where there was no immediately preceding tradition of performing music in the stylus a capella. Indeed, the meagre state of music in Regensburg cathedral in the early s led to an endeavour entirely to replace its traditional repertory with historical works exemplifying the true church style. It is the emphasis on the revival of Renaissance music that was to prove most significant in shaping the activities of the ACV later in the century. Just as in Berlin, the reforms instigated in Regensburg were intended as a model for activities elsewhere: the measures sanctioned by King Ludwig I in  were designed to ‘reestablish the old, good style for the improvement of the singing and music in our churches’, and by the end of the decade the traditional concerted repertory had been ousted from the cathedral. It was the practical challenge of reforming the cathedral’s music that provoked the activities of the antiquarian and editor Carl Proske (–), who – regarded by the king as the ‘best-founded hope for the complete restoration of choral singing’ – was appointed a canon at the Alten Kapelle in Regensburg in order to pursue this task. Proske’s solution to what he saw as the invariable degeneracy of modern church composition lay in the acquisition and publication of earlier music: three extended trips to Italy in the s cemented his views on church music and provided material for a series of publications, beginning with editions of Scarlatti’s Missa quatuor vocum and Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli. His most extensive projects were the editions Musica divina and Selectus novus missarum (the first volumes of which appeared, respectively, in  and ); these were to define Catholic perceptions of old Italian music for much of the second half of the century, and helped to create a climate for historicist reform rather than the continuation of tradition in liturgical music. Proske’s manifesto for reform was set out in the foreword to the first volume of Musica divina. The basis for his ideas is a combination of Romantic historicism and Catholic particularism: he seeks to reinstate ‘true Catholic music’ in the liturgy in place of modern works, which reflect ‘the profane attractions of an artistic dictatorship from outside the Church’. Proske’s views on the renewal of modern church music are derived from a complex variety of sources; he acknowledges the significance of Baini and Winterfeld in bringing about a recognition of the value of old Italian music, and alludes to Thibaut (writing that in recent times ‘we encounter men of great zeal who championed purity in music [Reinheit der Tonkunst] with fiery speech’). Just as significantly,

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

however, he acknowledges the significance of early Romantic literary critics in prompting the reevaluation of medieval and Renaissance art; indeed, Proske draws directly on the views of the Romantic circle in describing how modern artists have returned to older architecture and painting in order to obtain a religious foundation for their activities: Not only has the true Christian inspiration of these models been recognized, but there has become apparent a serious striving – crowned with living successes – to regain a sacred foundation and thus to guarantee the creative artist a great and communal wealth of faith as well as the contemplative soul of the Christian. How much more ought to have occurred a similar and long overdue renewal of Catholic church music.

Like Fr¨ohlich, Kandler and Schafh¨autl, Proske views the music of Palestrina and his contemporaries as the product of a golden age of Catholicism in which ‘genius and religious enthusiasm went hand in hand’. For Proske, the model for all liturgical music should be plainchant – ‘the holy scriptures of church music’ – and sixteenth-century polyphony achieves its primacy not only from the religious dedication of its composers, but by being a ‘miraculous transfiguration’ (wunderbare Verkl¨arung) of the chant. Palestrina’s absolute preeminence as the exemplar of the church style derives from his status as a reformer in a ‘conservative, truly Catholic sense’; for Proske, the style of Palestrina grew exclusively from the consecrated ground of the Church, and its innermost being is entirely governed by Catholicism. In arguing for a restitution of the music and thus the spirituality of the Renaissance, Proske borrows two further themes from the Protestant Romantics: an organicist conception of Palestrina’s place in music history, and the view that the repertory of the papal choir provides a model for modern reforms. Proske’s idealization of Baini and the papal choir is symptomatic of a conception of the church style centred firmly on Rome and Palestrina. Even so, the music of Lassus – acclaimed as a marriage of German and Roman art – provided a significant secondary focus for Proske’s proselytizing: in an oft-repeated comparison, he is elevated as Michelangelo to Palestrina’s Raphael. While Proske’s ideas on liturgical renewal are orientated primarily around the revival of sixteenth-century music, his views also interact with the south German stylus a capella. Proske uses the term Styl a` Capella almost exclusively to refer to the music of Palestrina and contemporaries, but he also employs it in describing the stile antico tradition: ‘even the greatest masters of later times, recognizing in the so-called Styl a` Capella

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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the most sublime standard and artistic practice of church music, have put their genius to the test in it.’ In commenting on the stylus a capella tradition, Proske praises composers for retaining elements of the true church style in their works, yet asserts the impossibility of combining satisfactorily the forms of sixteenth-century music – which are selfcontained and complete in themselves – with modern components. He describes how composers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ‘still possessing competent mastery of the true church practice, continued to write works with a similar basis but with obbligato instrumental accompaniment’; nevertheless, he considers that ‘as a rule, the pure sacred principles of the style have been cast aside’. Although Proske does not comment specifically on how modern composers should respond again to the Styl a` Capella, it is clear that more recent works cannot provide models of the church style: the distinction between ‘sacred gold and profane accretions [Beis¨atzen]’ can be learned only from the pure, original form of this style. While Proske’s conception of the true church style is not therefore orientated around the Fuxian stylus a capella, it is striking that he links the performance of Palestrina in part with the seasonal associations of the stylus a capella tradition. Unlike Schafh¨autl, however, he goes on to link the style with a wider range of occasions, noting that the Musica divina selection has given particular consideration not only to Advent, Lent and Holy Week, but to the most important feasts throughout the year. Proske’s Musica divina and Selectus novus missarum had, in his view, a double purpose, both monumental and practical. His primary concern was with serving the liturgy by producing, in the words of Valentin von Riedel, Bishop of Regensburg, ‘a collection of true church music for the use and needs of the entire church year’. The liturgical orientation of Proske’s editions is evident in his scrupulous concern for textual fidelity, which – as Bernhard Janz argues – more closely reflects the preoccupations of biblical research and exegesis than those of classical philology: his demand for ‘faithful, true and complete scores derived from original sources’ stems from his elevation of this music to a scriptural dignity. Proske’s conviction that liturgical needs were better served through the revival of old music than through the use of newly composed works is reflected in his most notorious statement: ‘The task of a music researcher is more important today than multiplying the number of musical works by composition.’ Indeed, he viewed the task of modern composers – seemingly without aesthetic qualms – as being to produce ‘worthy copies [w¨urdige Nachbildungen] of these pure, immortal models’, prohibiting any attempt to compromise the rules

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

and harmonic practice of this style through the inclusion of modern elements. Proske’s own activities as a composer were highly restricted and only two compositions by him survive, an ‘Et incarnatus est’ and a setting of ‘De profundis’. These pieces, and the liturgical music of his prot´eg´e Johann Georg Mettenleiter (–), embody Proske’s conception of true church music; slow-moving, root-position harmonies including chromatic-third progressions, falsobordone writing and carefully controlled dissonances. This music bears little relationship to the stylus a capella; it is symptomatic of Proske’s historical revival, not of tradition, and anticipates how composers later in the century would respond to the music unearthed and published by him. W I T T A N D T H E A L L G E M E I N E D E U T S C H E C A¨ C I L I E N - V E R E I N

While the activities of the reformers discussed above contributed significantly to the idealization of Palestrina, they made little immediate impact on the practical reform of Catholic church music and had little effect outside the centres and churches concerned. Furthermore, these efforts had failed to popularize the idea that Palestrina’s language was the most suitable medium for church music, and even those composers whose church music does exhibit relationships to Palestrina did not follow this ideal consistently. The demand for the reform of church music was nevertheless becoming more widespread, and the indignation of Cardinal Johannes von Geißel (–) at the state of church music led to the matter being discussed at the Cologne Provincial Council in ; his views were reflected in the council’s decree that ‘choir directors should revert to those works which are written in a sublime and devout style, of which the author in first place is Johannes Aloysius Praenestinus [Palestrina] and second is Orlandus Lassus’. But while activities in Munich, Regensburg and elsewhere had engendered a desire for church music reform in some quarters, this mentality had little significant practical effect even after the Cologne Council. It was through the work of the priest, composer and essayist Franz Xaver Witt (–) that the proponents of these ideals swelled to a mass movement. Witt had been inspired by Proske’s reforming ideals during his time as Musikpr¨afekt at the seminary in Regensburg, but criticized his impractical attitude as an obstacle to the propagation of his cause; dissatisfied that the liturgical revival of Renaissance music had not spread beyond the cathedral and Alten Kapelle in Regensburg, Witt sought to ‘reshape the entire world of church music’. He set out his reforming

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agenda in the pamphlet Der Zustand der katholischen Kirchenmusik zun¨achst in Altbayern () and through the foundation of two popular periodicals: Fliegende Bl¨atter f¨ur katholische Kirchenmusik () and Musica sacra (). These activities culminated in the foundation of the Allgemeine Deutsche C¨acilien-Verein, with Witt as general president, in  (known from  as the Allgemeine C¨acilien-Verein f¨ur die L¨ander deutscher Zunge, and since  as the Allgemeine-C¨acilien-Verband f¨ur die L¨ander der deutschen Sprache). The rapid growth and success of the ACV – whose membership numbered over  in  and quickly escalated into the thousands – were stimulated not only by the increasingly widespread desire for reform, but by wider social and political currents. The ACV has been linked to the numerous other Catholic movements that flourished in south Germany from the s onwards, such as the Katholische Arbeitervereine (founded in ) and the Pius-Verein f u¨ r religi¨ose Freiheit (founded in ); these societies have been seen as reflecting the militant spirit of the papacy of Pius IX (–), whose zeal in combating opposition to the Catholic church was manifested most clearly in the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary () and the declaration of papal infallibility (). The reforms of the ACV, which was accorded papal approbation in , were frequently linked by contemporaries to the dogmatic Catholicism of the period; hostile press reports described Witt as ultramontane and as the ‘Pope of the Cecilians’, while he obliquely compared himself with the leader of the Catholic Centrumspartei, Ludwig Windthorst. But another important ideological aspect of the society’s reforms was its role in preserving Bavarian cultural identity in the years surrounding Bavaria’s absorption into the Reich in , and in asserting the bonds between Bavarian and Austrian Catholics in opposition to the political realities of Imperial Germany. It is not difficult to trace the relation between the cultural mission of the ACV and the ideological concerns informing its reception of Palestrina and Lassus. The symbolic function assigned to these composers by Proske was extended in the writings of Witt, who similarly represents the music of Palestrina as the most perfect form of Catholic artistic expression: its supremacy derives from having been ‘conceived and written in a specifically Catholic spirit’, and being ‘entirely a property [Eigenthum] of the Catholic church’. If Palestrina provided a symbol for the transcendent and infallible laws of the Church, Lassus was emblematic of Bavarian self-assertion in the cultural sphere. For Witt, the importance of Lassus for modern Bavarian culture renders the propagation of his music a patriotic duty: while Witt never denies Lassus’s true national origins, he refers to the composer as

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‘our compatriot’, who owed his greatness in part to his propitious employment at the Munich court: ‘as a result of this, Lassus in truth became a Bavarian.’ The performance and compositional emulation of Palestrina and his contemporaries formed only one part of the reforming agenda of Witt and the ACV. In addition to a cappella choral singing, the ACV sought to reform and promote all aspects of church music, including plainchant and – albeit with ambivalence – concerted works and the Kirchenlied in the vernacular. Witt’s aims in all these areas were shaped by two basic convictions: that music is the most important form of art because it most intimately links man to God, and the humanistic idea that music is the foremost medium for the moral improvement of the masses. In outlining these two convictions in a speech to the second general assembly of the ACV, Witt asserts that the production of religious music remains the loftiest task of the composer: his concern that all liturgical music be worthy of its context reflects the view that it is the highest form of devotional expression for the church. Second, he emphasizes the contribution of church music to the ‘moral improvement of the masses’ (Bildung des Volkes), arguing that the church functions as the place of artistic nurture (Kunstschule) for those who have little other opportunity of experiencing the effects of art. Witt’s arguments here parallel those of Thibaut, whom he sometimes cites: the very power of music in shaping man’s morals makes it capable of abuse, and ‘unwholesome [schlechte] church music has the same malevolent influence as depraved dance music’. The power of music to stimulate the feelings is multifarious, and the moral quality of a piece of music is reflected precisely in its effect on the listener: ‘If church music is trivial, coarse, lascivious, this will be its effect, as with trivial, coarse and lascivious speeches and conversations; the listeners will be dragged down by the trivial. If the music is noble, sublime, pious, its effect will be like a noble, sublime, pious sermon, lifting and purifying the listener, filling his heart with feelings of piety.’ A prime source of immorality in church music comes from the use of instruments, since this is susceptible to the corrupting influence of secular music. Witt’s attitude towards concerted church music and instrumental music in general is less puritanical than that of some of his contemporaries; certainly it would be mistaken to view his position as similar to that of Grell. While some of Witt’s followers dismissed all concerted music as ‘pseudo-liturgical’ in character, he took pains not to censure all such works, differentiating between the ‘Pharisaism’ of Haydn and the

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titanic manner of Beethoven and Liszt. In condemning the concerted music of Haydn and Mozart, his arguments diverge little from those deployed by Hoffmann, Thibaut and other Protestant commentators. Witt’s criticisms of Haydn and Mozart are based on the congruity of their sacred and secular works: in a manner recalling Reichardt’s essays from eighty years earlier, he identified motivic similarities between The Seasons and the ‘Nelson’ Mass as a means of demonstrating the latter’s profane aura. And as with Hoffmann, Witt’s greatest condemnation is reserved for those nineteenth-century composers who continued to imitate the external forms of the Viennese classicists. As will become apparent, Witt’s basis for rejecting this music does not lie in the norms of the church style elevated by the Protestant early Romantics, but in the rigid application of liturgical criteria. In elevating the Palestrina-Stil – which here means the language of Palestrina and contemporaries, in particular Lassus – as the ideal form of church music, Witt emphasizes its basis in the chant and its fusion of aesthetic value and liturgical perfection. Like Proske, he represents its character as pure and objective, conceived in full accordance with the spirit of the church: The Palestrina-Stil is as good as approved by the church. The question as to whether all modern church music must be similar to this style in its manner of expression should be answered in the negative. On the other hand it cannot be doubted that in the Palestrina-Stil the spirit of the church is represented in such an artistic, sublime, pious and pure way that the modern composer trusting to produce the same must model himself and purify his contemplation on it.

Not all of the music of Palestrina and his contemporaries displays such unspoilt perfection. Accusing Proske of blind devotion to the Renaissance masters, Witt argues that many of their works are neither ideal for the liturgy nor of great artistic merit, and therefore cannot provide models for the modern composer. The Missa brevis, for example, is described as monotonous and weak in expression, while the polyphony present in other works amounts to little more than musical mental arithmetic; Witt condemns Palestrina and his contemporaries for indulging in ‘lyrical diffuseness’ (lyrische Breite), the imitative spinning out of a theme leading to latitude in the treatment of the text and a neglect of speech rhythms. Equally heinous in Witt’s eyes is the use of extensive cyclic repetition in the mass, since this leads to an incorrect conception of particular portions of the text (he especially condemned the Sanctus and Benedictus of Palestrina’s Missa Dum complerentur for their reiteration

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

of earlier material). Similarly, he viewed many works by Lassus as unsuitable for modern liturgical use, condemning the ‘Crucifixus’ from the Missa Puisque j’ay perdu on account of its mannerist concern for contrapuntal play. Many of these criticisms reflect Witt’s organicist conceptions of music theory and the history of church music: his dismissive attitude to music before Palestrina was shared by the majority of his contemporaries, who – as Ambros put it – erected ‘a great wall of China between the Missa Papae Marcelli and all earlier music through which passes not the smallest connecting door’. Importantly, Witt links the aspects of Palestrina’s works that he considers defective to the continuation of practices outlawed at the Council of Trent, identifying them as historically transient aspects of the Palestrina-Stil. He considers such defects, especially the excessively expansive treatment of short portions of text, to undermine the delicate balance between aesthetic and functional concerns: Witt condemned the Kyrie, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei of the Missa Hodie Christus natus est as too long and therefore ‘unliturgical, unpractical and unusable’, arguing that the most successful parts of Palestrina’s masses are in general the Gloria and Credo, ‘where the length of text compelled him to set it succinctly’. Accordingly, it is Palestrina’s simpler pieces and the homophonic portions of larger works that are elevated as exemplars. This can be seen in Witt’s appraisal of Palestrina’s Improperia and his settings of the ‘et incarnatus est’, which are acclaimed as the perfect fusion of aesthetic quality and liturgical suitability. In Witt’s writings, three works are consistently described as the summit of Renaissance church music: Palestrina’s ‘Stabat mater’ and Missa Papae Marcelli, and Lassus’s motet ‘Justorum animae’. Witt considered the ‘Stabat mater’ to be Palestrina’s most ideal composition, in which the demands of the Council of Trent found their most perfect realization: he argues, following Baini, that the pathos, textual clarity and ‘truly liturgical-dramatic flow’ of this work would alone suffice to make Palestrina eternal. His comments on Lassus’s ‘Justorum animae’ are just as effusive, since he claimed that its effect surpasses that of all later church music. His appraisal of the Missa Papae Marcelli is however more equivocal: he criticized the second ‘Kyrie’ for being inconcise and for contravening the mood of the text, but regarded the ‘Christe’ as one of the greatest musical masterpieces and the ‘Crucifixus’ as the finest setting of this text by a Renaissance composer. Crucially, Witt’s praise for this mass and Lassus’s motet focuses on the expressivity of their textures. Like Grell, Witt distinguishes between thematic polyphony (the strict imitation of a point) and freer yet more succinct ‘rhythmic

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polyphony’. In analysing the first ‘Kyrie’ from the Missa Papae Marcelli, he attributes its success to the interaction of the latter texture and homophonic writing: rather than presenting developed points of imitation, rhythmic polyphony – consisting of ‘a thousand little imitations in the voices’ – alternates with homophonic ‘falsobordone-like’ ( fauxbordonartigen) passages. Thus, for Witt – just as for Grell and Bellermann – it is Palestrina’s homophony and rhythmic polyphony that constitute the summit of church music. ‘What must modern church composers avoid?’ In discussing how modern composers should respond to this ideal, Witt’s arguments are complicated and inconsistent. In contrast to earlier Catholic commentators, Witt’s ideas on this question bear no relation to the Fuxian stylus a capella (a phrase he does not use), and he represents his reforms as compositional renewal from the past rather than the continuation of tradition. Indeed, it is clear that like other Cecilian commentators, he would have viewed the stylus a capella as a part of the decline of church music rather than as a source of renewal. Furthermore, he advocated a universal cultivation of the Palestrina-Stil, condemning the traditional use of stylus a capella music solely in Advent and Lent, and criticizing in particular practices in Munich. In advocating the use of Renaissance music as a model, Witt commented that the modern composer who was not aware of Palestrina and Lassus was like a preacher unfamiliar with the church fathers, describing the Missa Papae Marcelli as ‘my guiding principle, my foundations, and my starting point from which I build further’. Witt was adamant that his own compositional ‘building further’ did not amount to imitation, and he criticized Cecilian composers whose works he saw as being copies of Palestrina. Yet his own music has generally been dismissed in similar terms, and his discussions of the matter may seem – initially at least – to legitimize the replication of Palestrina’s language. Witt discussed how composers might legitimately respond to Palestrina in two essays: ‘Der Palestrinastyl und die modernen Kirchencomponisten’ () and ‘Was haben die modernen Kirchencomponisten zu meiden?’ (). As their titles suggest, these essays present distinct perspectives on this issue. In the first, Witt is more concerned with demonstrating the aesthetic and liturgical perfection of the Palestrina-Stil than with how modern composers should respond to it, with the result that he does not treat the question of copying with the seriousness evident in

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the second essay. Like Hoffmann, Witt considers that the highest praise should go to the composer in whose works ‘prevails and wafts the spirit of Palestrina’, but who is able to achieve this spirit through contemporary expression. He does not suggest how such a union might be achieved, and emphasizes that Palestrina’s superiority lies not only in the religious spirit of his works but in the magnificence of their external forms. His conception of the superiority of Palestrina’s language is reinforced throughout the essay, which concludes with what appears to be an open invitation for modern composers to replicate it: If a composer has the right stuff in him, he will never ask himself whether he writes like Palestrina; the text, the liturgy, the religious spirit working in him and his talent will make the correct expression for the church available to him, and if he then writes in the contrapuntal form and the modes of Palestrina, he will not in any way copy, but will only serve his individuality and therefore modern and contemporary thoughts and feelings, even though he thinks and feels in a Palestrinian manner.

Witt’s second essay provides an expansion and justification of this deceptively simple conclusion. As before, his ideas are developed pragmatically, with no reference to the writings of earlier commentators on this topic. While assessing the foundations of his thinking is difficult, given his unsystematic approach and casual use of language, a dependence on Hegelian oppositions of form and content is fundamental to his argument (although Witt does not refer to Hegel in his writings, he often cites the works of mid-century authors in the Hegelian tradition, such as Franz Brendel and Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl). Witt’s starting point is the continued possibility of composing for the church. He vigorously asserts the validity of modern composers’ efforts, rejecting the notion that modern feelings and mentalities are incapable of producing works with the same degree of religious devotion as the old masters. Yet there can be no doubt that the language of Palestrina is more intrinsically Christian than modern styles, and here lies the dilemma: the works of Palestrina and his contemporaries are the most suitable choral music for the liturgy, and the proper model for the efforts of present-day composers, but to copy these works would result in new compositions being superfluous. Witt concedes that, as a result of his reforming crusade he – in a ‘certain sense’ ( gewissen Sinne) – copied earlier music in some of his early pieces: ‘[I] formed the most one-sided opinions and allowed myself to become too anxious and followed the Renaissance masters [die Alten] too much, although I probably never or very seldom descended into being a copyist.’

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Although Witt condemns musical copying, his conception of it is so restricted and equivocal that his arguments cannot be taken at face value. His problematic notion of copying centres on three pairs of oppositions: he differentiates on the one hand between the observance of the rules of the Palestrina-Stil and the use of sixteenth-century forms, and on the other between the spontaneous and the reflective use of these forms, while further confusion is generated by the instability of his conceptions of form and content. Initially, he subsumes all legitimate uses of Renaissance techniques within the rules of the Palestrina-Stil, arguing that copying is not an appropriate description for an adherence to the strict rules governing melody and rhythm in Renaissance music: this would be as foolish, according to Witt, as condemning a writer for following the correct rules of sentence construction. Subsequently, however, it emerges that he considers a wider range of relationships to Palestrina’s language to be legitimate than just the use of the timeless rules of the strenge Satz: Yes, even if someone considered it necessary to keep to the modes of the Renaissance masters, he is still no copyist, for even these are only rules or limits within which everything can and should be independent thinking. I cannot change myself into a man of the sixteenth century; humanity has changed itself in its opinions, feelings, in its nerves. I cannot tear out my nerves and replace them with sixteenth-century ones. If, therefore, I think independently, it is now a pure impossibility to be a mere copyist solely by observing the rules of the ancients. I would become this if I no longer thought independently: if, while composing, I were to reflect [bes¨anne] on what Palestrina had created.

From this it is evident that, in addition to an elastic conception of the rules of the Palestrina-Stil, Witt’s notion of copying relies on a distinction between spontaneous and reflective production. This distinction is illustrated by a series of metaphors and comparisons; in the first, Witt compares the relation of the modern composer and Palestrina with a preacher for whom the ideal sermon is also to be found in the works of his precursors. Witt likens a modern rendition of a sixteenth-century sermon to that of a Palestrina mass; although literal, such acts are unconsciously penetrated by the modern spirit, and it is this process that continues to give validity to the performance of the music of the distant past. While the external presentation of the sermon and mass are to some extent modified through modern manners of expression, the content is not changed in such a performance; both sermon and mass do not through modern performance take on, as their essence, the ‘independent thinking’ of the performers. Conversely, the preacher seeking to create his own sermon may appropriate the external shape and

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

features of the works of old preachers, but unless there is an intent to copy, the content of his sermon will evince independent thought. The forms of these sermons may become second nature to him through study, but even if the external elements of his sermon are derived from the old preachers, this does not compromise his independent thought since the use of these forms was not a self-conscious or arbitrary choice. Similarly, the modern composer who, through profound immersion in the music of Palestrina, unconsciously uses elements of his language, is not a copyist, since this language has become second nature to him; he is not assuming the language of another but a form prompted solely by his own feelings. Witt’s position on what constitutes musical copying is thus seemingly clear: the use of old forms is artistically valid if it occurs spontaneously and flows directly from the feelings of the artist; only if the modern composer were to adopt old forms consciously, in the knowledge that their spiritual content did not correspond with his own beliefs, is the value of the artwork compromised. But Witt’s position is made more problematic by the instability of his notion of form and content. On the one hand, artistic form is the external presentation of the artwork, while the content is its spiritual basis and dimension: elsewhere, Witt expresses this distinction clearly in a paean to a cappella singing, where he asserts that this idiom provides the composer with ‘the most suitable form, the most supple body for his musical soul, so that the inner content [Gehalt] of his religious feelings tallies completely with the external musical form [¨außeren musikalische Form]’. On the other hand, he seems sometimes to identify form with structure and compositional rules, and content as the musical input that the composer pours into these frameworks. It is for this reason that he is suspicious of music that appears to copy Palestrina literally: because, whether the product of spontaneous or reflective creation, such pieces are related to Palestrina’s language in such a way that the presence of individual thought cannot be deduced from the finished work. Even though, according to the aesthetics of copying that Witt outlines, it is possible for a modern artwork without contemporary stylistic elements to be spontaneous and sincere, the presence of these elements acts as a reassurance that the work was the product of independent thinking: ‘as soon as he [the composer] intends to think independently he will pour his own spirit – of which he may possess a little or a lot – and therefore that of the nineteenth century into his musical forms . . . he will embody his ideal in notes.’ For Witt, questions of copying should not arise, since the ideal which he advocated, while based on the music of Palestrina, was not identical

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to it. Instead of anxiously attempting to reach the level of this model, the modern composer should remember that he can produce better music than Palestrina, by avoiding the unsatisfactory elements that Witt identified in his works: ‘we can learn to set liturgical texts in many ways more beautifully than Palestrina; we can avoid the faults which spoil so many old works.’ For Witt, the modern composer can marry his music to the text much more successfully than Renaissance composers, by paying more attention to speech rhythms. Modern composers can avoid the ‘lyrical diffuseness’ of the ancients through conciseness and the exclusion of lengthy points of melodic imitation. Lastly, modern composers could improve on Palestrina’s language by linking their works still more closely to the chant. The ‘Wittian style’ and the Raphaels-Messe As Witt’s comments indicate, his liturgical compositions present a variety of responses to the Palestrina ideal. His works can be divided into two broad categories: those that, to varying degrees, replicate Palestrina’s language but which seek to correct the defects that Witt perceived in it, and those that present a modernized version of this ideal. In exploring the second category, the nature of what Witt himself described as the ‘Wittian style’ needs to be established. Curiously, Witt reserved this term for a select group of his compositions, claiming that the style epitomized by them was initiated by him and was not modelled on earlier church music: ‘I have never wanted to copy. . . . My opp. –, , , b and similar pieces can be compared with nothing earlier at all. My style may not be perfect, but at least it is my own.’ The works that Witt, in this and similar lists, elevated as models of this idiom are varied in scope and style. Neither the Te Deum op.  nor the Preces stationum crucis op. , for example, bear a close relation to Palestrina’s language (although op.  no.  presents an allusion to the opening chords of the ‘Stabat mater’): although both works are grounded in the techniques of the strenge Satz, their chordal textures resemble chant harmonizations rather than Palestrina’s homophony. Other works in the ‘Wittian style’ engage much more closely with Palestrina, seeking to adapt his language to conform with modern expressive and liturgical requirements. Nowhere is this clearer than in Witt’s Missa in honorem S. Raphaelis Archangeli (Raphaels-Messe) op. , which – acclaimed as a compositional manifesto for the reforms of the ACV – ranks alongside Liszt’s masses as one of the most controversial liturgical works from the second half of

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

the nineteenth century. Witt viewed the work as an attempt to express the text of the mass and the spirit of plainchant more perfectly than had been achieved by Palestrina, while the contrapuntist and composer Franz Nekes (–) acclaimed it as a ‘logical further development’ (consequente Weiterentwicklung) of the Palestrina-Stil. But while some commentators compared the mass favourably to works by Palestrina, others inveighed against its eclecticism, complaining that morsels from Palestrina and Lassus were thrown together with elements derived from Wagner and the contemporary partsong style. The most significant critique of the work is that of the Austrian critic and reformer Johannes Evangelist Habert, who sought to demonstrate the absurdity of viewing it as a further development of Palestrina. Habert systematically explores the ways in which the Raphaels-Messe contravenes Palestrina’s practices, highlighting the frequent modulations and sequences, abrupt contrasts, stunted melodies and piecemeal construction that mar the work, and lamenting the absence of thematic development and contrapuntal elaboration. But while Habert considers these features to testify to Witt’s incompetence as a composer, it is more useful to explore how they reflect his reforming agenda. These issues can be clarified by examining the Kyrie of the work (Ex. .). Habert dismissed the notion that this movement could be viewed as a further development of Palestrina, contrasting its poverty of melodic invention and thematic disunity with the organic growth present in the Kyrie of Palestrina’s Missa brevis. From the perspective of Witt’s reforms, however, this movement represents the didactic reinvention of Palestrina’s language. In contrast to the diffuseness that Witt condemned in Palestrina’s Kyrie settings, the movement is concise, with imitative polyphony almost entirely avoided (the pithy rhythmic polyphony that Witt praised in the Missa Papae Marcelli is however re-created in the final section of the movement). Liturgical concerns are also apparent in the syllabic text declamation, while the aim of achieving Palestrina’s spirit through modern expression is apparent in the tonal orientation of the movement and its pithy melodic idiom: with these means, Witt sought to create a style that was readily accessible to choirs and congregations. The majority of the compositions by Witt that were published as supplements to his journals also represent attempts to combine the PalestrinaStil with modern expression. In line with Witt’s theoretical views, the use of chant and modality in these pieces rarely serves as a means of coming closer to Palestrina’s language. A common strategy is the imitative treatment of a theme derived from chant followed by a homophonic

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Example .. Franz Witt, Kyrie, Raphaels-Messe, bars –

presentation of the same point: while the imitation of a chant-based point recalls Palestrina, the change of texture and hymn-like treatment distances such pieces from his language. Similarly, Witt often combines elements of Palestrina’s modal practice with elements foreign to his music, such as two-bar phrases, choral unisons and rhythmic sequences. In its most common form, however, the ‘Wittian style’ is characterized by predominantly homophonic textures and a firm basis in tonal harmony.

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. Witt, ‘Salvos fac nos, Domine, op.  no. , bars –

The most interesting feature of these pieces is their frequent and sometimes abrupt stylistic shifts, and it is not hard to see why Witt’s critics inveighed against his eclecticism. A clear example of the contrast between rhythmically free, quasi-modal progressions and periodic, unambiguously tonal writing is present in ‘Salvos fac nos, Domine’ op.  no.  (Ex. .). In bars – Palestrina’s language is evoked through adjacent

The Catholic Palestrina revival



roots and secondary chords, while in bars – the modern elements of the ‘Wittian style’ such as rhythmic and harmonic sequences characterize the refrain. If the stylistic tensions present in the ‘Wittian style’ testify to an attempt to modernize the Palestrina ideal, other works come closer to the literal replication of his language. Indeed, contemporary critics condemned Witt’s works for their epigonal imitation just as often as for their eclecticism, seeking to demonstrate that they were merely an assemblage of reminiscences from the old masters. Habert, for instance, derided his Missa in Memoriam Concilii Oecumenici op.  () for being a ‘pale copy’ (Abklatsch) and slavish imitation of the ancients, demonstrating that the Kyrie was assembled from motifs borrowed from Claudio Casciolini, Lassus and Hassler; he even offers a recipe for composers seeking to emulate Witt: ‘take an idea from Palestrina, follow through with one by Lassus, tack on one by Lotti and you have finished the first Kyrie . . . ’ Although Witt himself conceded that some of his pieces were – in a ‘certain sense’ – copies of earlier music, it is clear that his intent was to improve on Palestrina’s language rather than to reproduce it. Two distinct factors motivated the production of these works: the impulse to create a purified version of this language free from the defects Witt identified in Renaissance compositions, and the need to provide simple exemplars of it that could readily be used within the liturgy. Witt’s motets in this idiom – which, in contrast to those in the ‘Wittian style’, are generally in white notation – vary widely in their responses to Renaissance techniques and textures. Many of the simplest consist of homophonic passages alternated with falsobordone psalm tone harmonizations, as a means of attaining Witt’s ideals concerning text declamation. The homophonic writing is often very stark, with little independent partwriting, and dissonance is restricted to unaccented passing notes and occasional suspensions. Contrast is achieved in several of the shorter motets through the use of a section in triple time, a gesture that while derived from Renaissance music rarely resembles it. Indeed, in Witt’s pieces and in Cecilian compositions in general, it is the handling of triple-time sections that most distances them from Palestrina’s music, as a result of their static part-writing, repetitive rhythms, regular phrases and chordal basis. Alongside simple homophony, the most common texture in these pieces is rhythmic polyphony. As in the music of Grell, this may be characterized as a rhythmically dense form of homophony, in which a chordal texture with mainly syllabic part-writing is enlivened through

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. Witt, ‘Locus iste’ op.  no. , bars  –

rhythmic independence in one or more of the parts. In its simplest form, Witt’s rhythmic polyphony exhibits little imitation except for the occasional repetition of short rhythmic motifs; elsewhere, Witt’s polyphony is characterized by constant rhythmic imitation and sometimes the imitation of short melodic motifs. Long points of imitation and fugal passages are rare; where fugal counterpoint is present the

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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Example .. (cont.)

entries of the parts are generally close, and Witt’s fugal polyphony sometimes has the appearance of a constant stretto. These types of polyphony can be seen in the gradual ‘Locus iste’ op.  no.  (Ex. .): in the opening five bars a short rhythmic motif permeates all five parts, while from bars – a four-note ‘thematic’ motif ensues, leading via a short passage of rhythmic polyphony to a more elaborate cadence.

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. (cont.)

Witt claimed that the polyphonic movement in Cecilian compositions was less stiff and more singable than in many sixteenth-century works. But Witt’s polyphony often contravenes these criteria, especially in passages of fugal imitation (among the motets in his Gradualiensammlung op. , this is particularly apparent in the two settings of ‘Benedicta et venerabilis’ nos.  and ): its stiffness is the result of repetitive rhythms in the points and their development in regular two-bar phrases.

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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As elsewhere in Witt’s ‘white-note’ output, the dissonance treatment in these pieces remains bound by the rules of the strenge Satz; nonetheless, the frequent use of upper auxiliary notes and chains of parallel thirds serves to distance this music from Palestrina’s language. And while Witt criticized other Cecilian composers for the stereotypical manner with which they approached the emulation of the Renaissance masters, his own approach to dissonance sometimes results in passages that resemble species counterpoint more than sixteenth-century polyphony. BROADER TRENDS IN COMPOSITION: PALESTRINIANISM

Witt’s views on the composition of church music, while highly influential during his lifetime, should not necessarily be seen as reflecting the opinions of other composers who were members of the ACV. For Witt – in theory if not always in practice – the renewal of modern composition centred on two factors: the emulation but not the literal replication of Palestrina, and the fusion of artistic quality and liturgical suitability. For a piece of church music to be worthy of its calling, Witt sought evidence of both contemporaneity and aesthetic value. Witt considered some music unworthy for the church even though it broke none of the Cecilian rules for liturgical composition: he condemned structural incoherence since this resulted in works that were ‘spiritual cripples’ (geistige Kr¨uppel), while mediocre themes resulted in ‘senseless nattering’ (sinnlos Zeug schw¨atzen). Witt classed as merely liturgical (blos liturgische) pieces which, while suitable for church performance, had no value aside from their functional use. These two central positions were however contradicted by other Cecilians, both in theory and in practice: it is necessary, therefore, to explore the factors that encouraged both the literal replication of Palestrina and a functional conception of church music. In surveying the music produced by members of the ACV, the Cecilian commentator Peter Griesbacher sought to distinguish Witt’s manner of emulating Palestrina from the ‘Palestrinianism’ (Palestrinismus) rampant among his contemporaries. He identifies Michael Haller (–) and Ignaz Mitterer (–) as the epitome of this tendency, alongside a host of lesser figures including Nekes, Peter Piel (–), and Witt’s successor as president of the ACV, Friedrich Schmidt (–). Of these, the most significant exponent of the more literal replication of Palestrina – and arguably the most distinguished Cecilian composer – was Haller, who served as Stiftskapellmeister at the Alten Kapelle in Regensburg from  to  and as composition tutor at the Kirchenmusikschule

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

(founded in ). Haller’s importance for the Palestrina revival derives not only from his compositions, but from his work as an editor and contrapuntal theorist: his composition tutor, Kompositionslehre f¨ur den polyphonen Kirchengesang (), rivalled Bellermann’s Der Contrapunkt as the most widely circulated codification of the Palestrina-Stil. In addition, Haller contributed to the Palestrina Gesamtausgabe, through the completion of works no longer extant in their original form. For Haller, as for Proske and Witt, the liturgical primacy of Renaissance church music derives from its close relation to plainchant. Haller argues that the works of Palestrina and contemporaries invariably reflect the spirit of the chant in their melodic and rhythmic aspects: it is for this reason that the rules of the Palestrina-Stil are inviolable in liturgical music. In outlining the implications of these twin ideals for modern church composition, Haller’s views are more rigid than Witt’s. He elevates diatonicism as an immutable, natural ideal for the church composer, invoking not only the practicalities of writing for voices but also the doctrine of the affections. The idea that chromatic intervals are unsuitable in principle for church music, although dismissed by Witt, was advocated vigorously by other contemporary reformers. Citing the views of Ambrosius Kienle, Haller banished chromatic intervals on the grounds of their detrimental effect on the listener and their unworthiness for religious worship; these intervals are forbidden because they serve ‘the representation and arousal of passionate feelings [Affekte]’ and deviate from the model of the chant: ‘Just as for the chalice only gold is befitting, so only the noblest tonal material [Tonmaterial ], only the most beautiful diatonic intervals are worthy for the praise of God.’ In addition to the use of solely diatonic intervals, Haller contends that the composer’s emulation of Palestrina must be grounded in the ideal of the chant in its rhythmic aspect. While Haller considers it inevitable that music for several voices be notated metrically (except in falsobordone), polyphonic music should attempt to re-create the rhythmic freedom and responsiveness to the text that is found in plainchant melodies. The composer must strive to mitigate the harshness of measured rhythm by entirely avoiding modern rhythmic conventions: ‘melodies with regularly recurring note groups or with divisions in the manner of the periodic structure of secular music by no means correspond with the archetype of all sacred melodies, the chant.’ While Haller, like Bellermann, emphasizes that the rules outlined in his counterpoint tutor are universally valid, his emphasis on the primacy of the chant serves to limit their applicability. Nowhere does Haller question the aesthetic implications of modern composition in the

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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Palestrina-Stil: rather, it is evident that contemporary aesthetic norms are irrelevant – indeed alien – to the composition of liturgical music. Haller directly contradicts Bellermann’s assertion that composers, if they are inspired by other ideas, are entitled to go beyond the confines of the sixteenth-century rules: Haller stresses that modern Catholics are inspired by precisely the same ideas as in Palestrina’s time, implying that these rules constitute immutable norms for liturgical music. Moreover, it is clear that he considers it a virtue, not a failing, for liturgical pieces to be entirely distant from other aspects of contemporary musical practice. Haller’s textbook serves as a means for the budding church composer, like Witt’s conjectured preacher in ‘Was haben die modernen Kirchencomponisten zu meiden?’, to become immersed in an older style to the extent that its forms become a valid alternative language. Haller encourages the young composer to study the works of Palestrina, Lassus and Victoria: ‘Such models should be studied diligently, often sung or played on an instrument attentively so that the type and manner of the melodic shapes are lived in [hineinzuleben], greatly encouraging the successful study of composition with independent voices.’ Through ‘living in’ the works of Palestrina and contemporaries, their language can become second nature to the modern composer, who may then compose in it successfully and unreflectively. The relation between Haller’s own compositions and Renaissance music is more complicated than this stance may suggest. While it is generally agreed that – as Witt put it – no other Cecilian composer followed the old masters more closely than Haller, the stylistic consequences of this have been interpreted differently. Witt viewed some of Haller’s works as excessively dependent on Palestrina, dismissing his Missa octava ‘O salutaris hostia’ op.  as ‘a good copy of the ancients’. In contrast, Haller’s obituarist Max Sigl acclaimed his works as progressive, since they present an updated, more comprehensible version of Palestrina’s style. And while August Scharnagl views his output as an eclectic fusion of Renaissance formulas and Haller’s individuality, other commentators have stressed the absolute stylistic unity of his music. In evaluating these claims, it must first be noted that Haller himself viewed some of his works as literal replications of Palestrina’s language. The preface to his three-voice Missa prima op.  () presents a justification for its adherence to the part-writing and diatonicism of the ancient school: Haller viewed the purpose of the piece as being to provide weaker choirs with an accessible introduction to Renaissance polyphony. Other works, in particular Haller’s motets and late masses, cannot be viewed merely as attempts to distil the idiom of Palestrina’s

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

masses into a simpler format. This can be seen from his Zw¨olf Motetten op.  () – the collection that established Haller’s reputation in the ACV – and its continuation, the  Motetten op.  (). The most striking aspects of the Missa prima and these motets are Haller’s approaches to rhythm and imitative polyphony. Haller’s treatment of rhythm comes much closer to that of Palestrina than Witt’s. For while Haller too occasionally employs rhythmic sequences and periodic phrases, his works rarely exhibit the square rhythmic movement that distances many nineteenth-century pieces from Palestrina’s language. The idea that mensural music, through the mediation of Haller’s rules of composition, could aspire to the rhythmic freedom of plainchant produces freely flowing lines with frequent syncopations: Haller himself described syncopation as ‘the most excellent means by which to establish an unforced [ungezwungene] rhythmic movement’. At a larger level, this concern for rhythmic freedom results in frequent changes of metre: eleven out of the eighteen op.  pieces contain contrasting sections in triple time. These serve a similar function to syncopation at a local level in eliminating any sense of regular periodicity. Haller’s concern with replicating Palestrina’s rhythmic practices is especially apparent in his handling of thematic imitation, which is more common as well as more successful than in Witt’s output. Even so, Haller’s imitative writing reflects his adherence to Witt’s concern for economy and conciseness. Although fugal points of imitation are common at the beginning of pieces, the subsequent textual points are seldom treated as strictly: in the interests of brevity, homophony or rhythmic polyphony displace thematic imitation. Given Haller’s conviction of the liturgical primacy of plainchant, it is not surprising that he sometimes follows Renaissance practice in deriving the themes of his motets from appropriate chants. But only a handful of the pieces in his opp.  and  are thematically related to specific chants, and such thematic derivations are restricted to the opening notes of the initial points. In ‘Factus est repente’ op. [a] no. , for example, the opening six pitches of the chant are employed in the cantus part, while in the offertory ‘Reges Tharsis’ op.  no.  only the opening three notes of the chant are adopted as a head motif (see Ex. .). In his Kompositionslehre, Haller discussed some of Palestrina’s methods of treating plainchant, especially praising the paraphrase techniques of the Missa Aeterna Christi munera, where the plainchant hymn serves as a thematic reservoir from which the points of the mass are drawn. In his own pieces, however, the subsequent points are seldom related to the respective chants; even so, Haller’s use of chant comes much closer to Palestrina’s practice than that

The Catholic Palestrina revival



Example .. (a) Michael Haller, ‘Factus est repente’ op. a no. , bars  –

found in Witt’s compositions. A further thematic principle that Haller derived from Renaissance church music is his resurrection of the parody mass. In his Kompositionslehre, Haller devotes considerable attention to the techniques deployed by Palestrina and Victoria in adapting material from their own motets, and his own Missa octava ‘O salutaris hostia’ op.  and Missa nona ‘O quam suavis est’ op.  (based on motets from his Laudes Eucharisticae op. ) follow similar procedures, albeit on a smaller scale.

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. (b) Haller, ‘Rages Tharsis’ op.  no. , bars  –

Haller’s status as the leading contrapuntal theorist of the ACV leads us to expect a strict control of dissonance in his music. Yet, as with Grell, there is a tension between the impulse to replicate sixteenth-century idioms and his adherence to the rules of the strenge Satz. This is evident in Haller’s treatment of nota cambiata formulas, which are common in his music. Haller identifies the cambiata as a historically circumscribed idiom, linking it specifically with the old Italian school. Yet this idiom can occur in contexts which in other respects depart from Palestrina’s language: this can be seen in the treatment of dissonance in bars  and  of ‘Gloria in excelsis’ op.  no.  (Ex. .). While Haller’s handling of dissonance in bar  of this piece contravenes the rules of his own textbook – and can thus be viewed as a conscious shift away from the literal replication of Palestrina – his deviations from Palestrina’s dissonance treatment elsewhere seem inadvertent. This is apparent in two quite different areas: his treatment of dissonance in triple time and in polychoral pieces (the issues raised by the latter are discussed subsequently in relation to Haller’s contributions to the Palestrina Gesamtausgabe). Haller’s handling of passing notes in triple-time sections often contravenes Palestrina’s practices, while adhering to the rules set out in his textbook. According to Jeppesen, each minim beat in  time (or semibreve in  ) must be consonant (except in a suspension); passing dissonance can only occur on the second half of each beat. In contrast, Haller – following Bellermann – argues that the second and third minims of a  bar are legitimate locations for dissonant passing notes in the Palestrina-Stil. This conviction has important consequences for Haller’s own compositions, since the use of

The Catholic Palestrina revival



Example .. Haller, ‘Gloria in excelsis’ op.  no. , bars –

such dissonances sometimes gives the impression of a modernization of Palestrina’s language (especially where they result in cadential dominant sevenths, as in the ‘Osanna’ from the Missa prima). But given Haller’s theoretical misconception, the use of such dissonances cannot be regarded as indicating an intent to depart from the literal replication of Palestrina. Elsewhere, too, the harmonies that result from Haller’s part-writing distance his pieces from Palestrina. Haller’s use of minim passing dissonances in duple time also creates tonally functional chords (most often second-inversion dominant sevenths), and the resulting progressions suggest that the part-writing is vertically determined. This impression is also created by the use of harmonic sequences and by the infrequency of partcrossing in Haller’s music. The presence of localized functional progressions and sequences has important implications for Haller’s replication of Palestrina’s modal practice. To varying degrees, modal restrictions inform the structural parameters and harmonic resources of Haller’s motets, and also determine the vocal ranges and treatment of imitative points. As with regard to imitation, however, the Cecilian demand for concision is largely responsible for the distance between Haller’s use of the modes and that of Palestrina: the requirement to treat each portion of text succinctly results in short phrases, sectional structures and very frequent internal cadences, whose progressions create a tonal impression

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

overall. The updating of the Palestrina-Stil that Sigl and Scharnagl perceive in Haller’s works is, therefore, a result in part of the primacy of liturgical concerns in Haller’s thinking, and in part of his misconception of Palestrina’s dissonance treatment. If Haller was able to justify the literal replication of Palestrina in theory, his own compositions diverge significantly from this paradigm. COMPLETING PALESTRINA: HABERL, HALLER AND THE GESAMTAUSGABE

The extent to which Haller was able to adopt the language of Palestrina is revealed more strongly in his contributions to the Palestrina Gesamtausgabe than in his own compositions. The publication of the complete edition of Palestrina’s works, issued from  by Breitkopf and H¨artel, had begun under the joint editorship of Theodore de Witt, J. N. Rauch, Franz Espagne and Franz Commer. The greatest contribution to the project was made however by Franz Xaver Haberl (–), Domkapellmeister in Regensburg from , founder of the Kirchenmusikschule there and successor to Schmidt as the third president of the ACV from . Haberl took over the editorship of the Gesamtausgabe in , founding a PalestrinaGesellschaft to provide the subscriptions necessary for its continuation. Haller’s contributions to the edition took the form of composing additional vocal parts for works which were no longer extant in their entirety; these are of interest not only because they show the extent to which he was able to replicate Palestrina’s language, but also because of the light that they shed on the historical and liturgical orientation of Haberl’s edition. While some of Haller’s interventions amount to no more than editorial hack work, others are far more significant: he supplied choir II parts for an incomplete eight-part setting of the sequence ‘Victimae Paschali laudes’ (PGA, vol. XXXII), while for volume XXVI, Haller composed choir III parts for six substantial twelve-part works. Haller’s role in these volumes forces us to view the Gesamtausgabe as a whole in a different light. The high editorial standards of the edition and its continued use today as the only complete edition of Palestrina’s music that preserves original clefs and note values, combined with its status as one of the greatest achievements of nineteenth-century musicology, can lead to it being viewed as the culmination of the tradition of objective historicism and positivistic musical scholarship that had its origins in Winterfeld’s Johannes Pierluigi von Palestrina (). But Haberl’s aims, like those of his greatest predecessor in the editing of old Italian music,

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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Proske, were primarily practical rather than musicological. While, in a modern critical edition an incomplete work or source would generally be transmitted in its defective form, Haberl’s concerns were orientated towards providing complete works that could be used liturgically rather than historically interesting torsos. In an article from  celebrating the resumption of the Gesamtausgabe, Haberl makes clear that a primary purpose of editing and propagating Palestrina’s works is to provide models for modern church composers. Haberl notes that his recent exposure to products of the English Gothic revival has convinced him that the renewal of religious art can be achieved only through reproduction: as a consequence, he viewed the Palestrina Gesamtausgabe ‘not only as a bounden duty to this eternal master but as an important resource for a durable and fundamental reform of Catholic church music’. These priorities are apparent in Haberl’s discussion of Palestrina’s incomplete twelve-part psalms ‘Ad te levavi’, ‘Beati omnes’, ‘Domine, quis habitabit’ and ‘Jubilate Deo’, the alleluia verse ‘O quam bonus’ and the antiphon ‘Salve regina’. Haberl explores the factors motivating his decision to ask Haller to complete these works: his concern as to whether these works should have been published in their defective form reveals the tension in his project between the objective historicism of erecting a scholarly ‘monument of music’ and the subjective historicism of providing a source for liturgical renewal. The status of the edition as a model for modern liturgical composition is clear in Haberl’s hope that other composers will learn to compose in the same style as Palestrina through the exercise of completing these works, and thus help to place modern church music back on the right track. Haller’s suitability for the task of completing these works is, according to Haberl, not only the result of his expertise as a contrapuntist and theorist but of the piety with which he approached this task; only through such piety can the modern composer deny his origins and return to the spirit of Palestrina. But Haberl is keen to stress that Haller’s versions are only an experiment in completion; his encouragement to other composers to make similar attempts stems perhaps from a fear that these versions might achieve the monumental, definitive status that the edition accorded for the first time to Palestrina’s complete works. Haller’s own comments on his completions do not suggest that he shared Haberl’s ethical and scholarly qualms, but rather focus on the technical problems posed by this task. Haller is keen to stress that his role as a composer of new material was minimal: since Palestrina’s compositional method excludes ‘unbridled fantasy’ (ungez¨ugelter Phantasie), the

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

third-choir parts could in general be compiled or deduced from the extant material. In exploring the nature of the clues present in this material, Haller notes that he deduced where the collaboration of the third choir was necessary not only from harmonic gaps and unconventional dispositions in the existing parts, but also from abnormalities in the part-writing. This points to a key distinction between Haller’s and Palestrina’s conceptions of polychoral dissonance treatment, a distinction that is apparent in Haller’s own compositions as well as in these completions. While each choir in Palestrina’s polychoral pieces is not necessarily harmonically complete (for example, a major or minor third present at a particular moment in one choir may as a consequence be omitted from the harmonies of the others), his technique requires that dissonances be calculated and correctly treated in relation to the lowest part of the choir that they occur in, rather than just in relation to the lowest voice in the full texture. But in Haller’s double-choir works, such as ‘Diffusa est gratia’ op.  no. , each choir is occasionally dependent on the other for the justification of its dissonances (fourths against the bass in one choir, for instance, are sometimes justified by being consonant with the bass of the other choir). Palestrina’s handling of three-choir textures also appears to require discrete dissonance treatment in each choir. Haller’s divergence from Palestrina’s procedures is most evident in his completion of the psalm ‘Jubilate Deo omnis terra’. Here, the lack of discrete dissonance treatment in Haller’s additional parts is apparent in most tutti sections and where Haller’s choir is combined with one of the other choirs. The resulting dissonances can be seen, for example, in bars – and –, where intervals of a fourth against the bass in the tenor parts which are arrived at and quitted by leap contravene Palestrina’s criteria for dissonance, despite being justified by the lowest voice in the entire texture. Haller’s divergence from Palestrina’s dissonance techniques reflects not only an inadequate knowledge of Palestrina’s polychoral works (a charge which, after all, could be levelled at most theorists of the Palestrina style, including Jeppesen) but also his desire for truly independent movement in all parts. In his article on the completion of these works and in his Kompositionslehre, Haller asserts the necessity for strictly independent part-writing even in polychoral pieces. Each choir must be regarded as an autonomous entity in which each voice maintains its independence and individuality; even in eight- and twelve-part textures, two voices should never move in unison with one another. This desire for truly independent part-writing leads Haller to avoid duplicating the bass parts of the other choirs in his completion. But in striving to achieve

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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Example .. Palestrina/Haller, ‘Salve regina’, bars –

his Palestrinian ideal of the weaving of independent chant-like melodies, Haller diverges from Palestrina’s actual practice. The recent rediscovery of the lost third-choir parts for three of these compositions – ‘Ad te levavi’, ‘Beati omnes’ and ‘Salve regina’ – permits a more specific consideration of the differences between the techniques of Palestrina and Haller. In addition to divergences in

Example .. (cont.)

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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terms of dissonance treatment, most noticeable in the concluding tutti section, Haller’s ‘Salve regina’ presents a more substantial deviation from Palestrina’s original. The structure of the ‘Salve regina’, in which the verses of the antiphon are presented alternately by each of the three choirs before a concluding tutti, produces a curious result. In the extant parts, the work was liturgically as well as musically incomplete, since the verse ‘Eia ergo . . . ad nos converte’ was presented originally by the third choir alone. As a result, in Haller’s completion an entire page of the Gesamtausgabe is given over to the music of a modern composer. Haller’s writing in this section (Ex. .) is intended not merely to replicate Palestrina’s language in a generalized way, but to respond to the characteristic elements of the previous two sections of the piece. Haller replicates the most unusual feature of the preceding sections: the combination of lengthy individual points with mainly syllabic word-setting involving few melismas. But Haller’s continuous texture and very sparing use of rests diverges markedly from the previous sections and from his own liturgical music: it suggests, rather self-consciously, that a modal impression can be sustained only through the complete avoidance of internal cadences. And while the preceding sections consist largely of imitative polyphony, the newly composed section evinces rhythmic polyphony with only fragmentary melodic imitation; in contrast, Palestrina’s texture for this section is predominantly imitative. Haller’s choice of rhythmic polyphony probably stemmed from the need to mediate between the imitative textures of the preceding section and the dialogic homophony of the following one; in employing rhythmic polyphony, however, Haller’s section serves to epitomize the more literal nineteenth-century responses to Palestrina’s language. This chorus thus comes closest among all Cecilian compositions to Witt’s idea of the musical copy, in which the composer has sought to remove all trace of independent thinking from his work. LITURGICAL FUNCTION AND AESTHETIC VALUE

If the members of the ACV disagreed on the question of how composers should respond to Palestrina’s language, the issue of functionality proved just as divisive. For Witt, modern composers should strive to attain not only Palestrina’s religiosity but also his combination of liturgical suitability and aesthetic value. Yet the primacy of functional concerns was to become an official policy of the ACV, enshrined in the statutes of the Vereins-Catalog (this publication, which first appeared in , assessed

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

old and new church compositions according to strict liturgical guidelines and listed approved pieces). Each submission to the catalogue was required to conform with a series of criteria, and was inspected by the president and two elected referees, whose comments were appended to the catalogue entry for each item. The liturgical legislation that these statutes represent is couched in wholly negative terms, since composers are merely told what to avoid in order to qualify their compositions for the catalogue: the mutilation of liturgical texts, use of brass instruments in the manner of a fanfare, extended vocal or instrumental solos, and so on. The subordination of aesthetic considerations to functional concerns is most apparent in paragraph five of these statutes: here, the complex bureaucratic procedures for the referees ensured that, for the Meistersinger of Regensburg, the rules of the liturgy took precedence over those governing ‘T¨on’ und Weisen’. A work of poor musical quality – which could only be rejected on the grounds of demonstrably defective compositional technique – required a two-thirds majority in order to be turned down, whereas a complex system existed to prevent the acceptance of works that were seen to contravene the rules or spirit of the liturgy. Witt justified the premisses of the Vereins-Catalog by arguing that the acceptance of pieces within it did not constitute a direct commendation of them, but merely signified that they were not unsuitable for liturgical performance. Indeed, in a comment appended to one of the earliest entries in the catalogue, Witt takes comfort that the majority of compositions recommended – mere padding in the catalogue (Ballast des Cataloges) – would soon be forgotten. Providing that a piece qualified on liturgical grounds, it was hard to reject it. Many reviews in the catalogue – such as Witt’s report on the Missa Dixit Maria by J. B. K¨umin – note explicitly that a piece has been accepted only because of its practicality and liturgical correctness, while Witt described the masses of Franz Sch¨opf as a necessary evil, suitable only for choirs incapable of singing anything better. The privileging of functional concerns over artistic quality led to frequent dissension among the referees of the catalogue: this is most clear in the conflict over the Kurz und sehr leichte Messe () by O. Joos, which was considered to be suitable for the liturgy despite having ‘absolutely no artistic value’. One of the factors provoking this conflict was the fear that the excessive production of these pieces – dismissed by critics as ‘catalogue compositions’ (Catalogkompositionen) – would obscure the primary task of the ACV: reviving the chant and Renaissance polyphony. This anxiety was voiced vehemently by Haberl, himself

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a long-serving referee for the catalogue, who argued that the flood of pieces composed under the aegis of the ACV would lead to the old masters being regarded as superfluous; Haberl commented presciently that posterity will dismiss this music as styleless and vacuous ephemera. The primacy of functional considerations received its most sustained justification from Witt in his tract Das k¨oniglich bayerische Cultus-Ministerium, die bayerische Abgeordneten-Kammer und der C¨acilienverein (). Here he responds to the criticisms of the ACV and of Cecilian music voiced by liberal newspapers, Bavarian parliamentary deputies and, chiefly, by Schafh¨autl, at that time adviser on church music to the ministry of education and culture. Schafh¨autl’s principal objections to the ACV were that it propagated an excessively narrow conception of church music and that its reforms were antithetical to art. In responding to the first of these criticisms, Witt argues that the ACV does not – as a result of the subjective tastes of its officials – promote an exclusive style of composing, but merely adheres to the objective rules of the church. While Witt emphasizes that the ACV is not and should not be regarded as an official church organization, he sees its mandate as deriving solely from the views of the hierarchy of the Catholic church as expressed at the Council of Trent and affirmed at later provincial councils: ‘The ACV exists only for true church music. Its highest principle is: not an iota other, not an iota more or less than the church wishes and commands.’ Witt argues that anyone involved in Catholic church music – whether as a composer or conductor – must entirely subjugate his muse to the will and rules of the church, an idea asserted in rigid terms by his biographer Anton Walter: ‘the church has taken music into the service of its liturgy: it has not abandoned itself to the idea of the artist, to arbitrary subjectivism, to the temper and taste of this or that time and its artistic trends, but has subordinated music to its spirit and will, its laws and ordinances.’ Witt rejects Schafh¨autl’s contention that this principle has been elevated at the expense of artistic quality and has led the ACV to foster mediocre and insignificant church music. For Witt, the observation of the needs and limits of the liturgy, and the production of what is truly suitable for it, does not have to result in the marginalization of aesthetic concerns: The sacred [kirchlich] liturgical rules do not exclude art. But art intended for the church must serve the church and its liturgy, otherwise it does not fulfil its purpose and inevitably becomes inartistic, just as music intended for the theatre

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misses its purpose if it does not correspond with the text being set. One must focus therefore on the standpoint of the church if one wishes to judge church music correctly.

But while the Cecilian guidelines do not exclude artistic worth, Witt emphasizes that it is not a primary factor since quality alone does not make a work suitable for the liturgy; he reverses the idea of what is ‘artistic’ by viewing the best art as that which most successfully fulfils its function. Importantly, Witt justifies the propagation of merely liturgical music by the ACV in terms of its mission to implement its reforms ‘down to the last village church’. Schafh¨autl’s criticisms of its publications ignore the fact that great masterpieces cannot be performed in rural churches; Witt sees it as a contradiction that Schafh¨autl requires that the ACV ‘should look after rural choirs, but also demands that everything should be “classical” and of high significance’. For Witt, music that may be performed easily by the weakest choirs can also possess value: this value is however not dependent on its artistic quality, but on the degree to which it obeys the liturgical rules and follows the twin ideals of the chant and the simplified version of Palestrina’s language that he advocated. The functional concerns of rural church music are explored further in Witt’s defence of the Vereins-Catalog. Witt responds in particular to criticisms of the inclusion within it of pieces with little artistic value, such as those of J. B. Molitor: although his masses are of meagre worth they are nevertheless suitable for performance in rural churches. The catalogue provides music suitable for cathedral, town and village choirs, and must serve their differing needs even if, in recommending extremely simple unison pieces, artistic concerns are entirely disregarded. Witt points out that in accepting works by Molitor into the catalogue, the referees have been frank about their merits; this is apparent in Witt’s appraisal of Molitor’s Missa Tota pulchra es Maria op. , Missa in honorem S. Fidelis a Sigmaringa Martyris op.  and Missa in honorem S. Angelorum custodum op. : ‘The artistic value of these three masses is slight. . . . There prevails in them such a poverty of melodic invention and of rhythmic life that one must hope that our choirs will not want to trail behind with such trifling exercises [Aufgaben] but use them only in cases of dire need.’ For Witt, these masses – despite being ‘exercises’ rather than artworks – are liturgically valid as a result of their suppression of worldly, frivolous and theatrical elements, and because they do not contravene any of the rules of the church. Moreover, Witt claims that these pieces are more effective in rural churches than poor performances of ‘art masses’ (Kunstmesse) by

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Palestrina or Rheinberger; similarly another referee for the catalogue, Friedrich Koenen (–), argued that in this context Molitor’s masses were more capable of achieving a beautiful and edifying effect than works of higher artistic value. Before considering the aesthetic implications of Witt’s arguments, it will be helpful to explore some examples of how members of the ACV responded to the Palestrina ideal in their functional compositions. Molitor’s masses, like the majority of such pieces, correspond with this ideal primarily through the suppression of aspects of contemporary musical syntax: the harmonic resources deployed are in general extremely restricted, and while root-position chords predominate, these are seldom arranged so as to create quasi-modal progressions. Renaissance church music is often suggested only by the treatment of cadential suspensions, the use of chromatic-third progressions and falsobordone writing. Some composers, however, cultivated modal writing even in their simplest threepart pieces: this is especially apparent in the motets of Koenen, Nekes and Piel. As in the music of Witt, such pieces often exhibit abrupt stylistic shifts in which the replication of Palestrina’s language is juxtaposed with modern stylistic elements. This can be seen in a falsobordone setting by Koenen included in Witt’s Gradualiensammlung, ‘Timete Dominum’, which is assigned explicitly to the mixolydian mode (Ex. .). While the first phrase of the extract seems intended to replicate Palestrina’s dissonance treatment and harmonic practice, the second phrase – through the resolution of a suspension onto a seventh chord and the free treatment of dissonance in bar  – suggests an impulse to update this idiom. It is the constant, seemingly arbitrary shifting of stylistic parameters in this and similar pieces that is perhaps the most puzzling aspect of Cecilian composition; to attribute this to defective compositional technique is too simple a solution to the problems it raises. Other falsobordone pieces from this collection present not merely the juxtaposition of different styles but of sixteenth- and nineteenth-century material. In the settings of P. Magnus Ortwein, falsobordone psalm-tone harmonizations from Viadana’s  collection are interspersed with newly composed passages intended to replicate their idiom (in replicating sixteenthcentury modal practice, Ortwein even includes false relations). Significantly, while Witt condoned these exercises in pastiche by publishing them, he was insistent that they be referred to as arrangements rather than compositions. This suggests that while some aesthetic norms could be suspended in relation to functional music, the fundamental issue of authorship remained inviolable.

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. Friederich Koenen, ‘Timete Dominum’, bars  –

Trivialmusik or kitsch? Up to this point, the implications of compositional historicism for artistic value have been discussed solely in historical terms. But in discussing the music of the ACV, it is impossible not to become entangled with the problems of critical value judgement, since the majority of discussions of this repertory are overtly or more insidiously judgemental. German

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discussions have examined Cecilian compositions in terms of Trivialmusik and even kitsch; the relevance of such critical concepts needs to be assessed in light of both the aesthetic stances assumed by the Cecilians and their compositions. The best-known discussion of the aesthetic value of Cecilian music is that of Dahlhaus, who seeks to explain how music that is technically faultless can nevertheless be aesthetically dubious or invalid. Dahlhaus argues that even if unimpeachable in terms of technique, Cecilian compositions exemplify ‘bad music’ as a result of violating aesthetic norms: in Dahlhaus’s view, no matter how successful an individual Cecilian piece may be, its relation to older music – which he sees only in terms of imitation and reproduction – necessarily prevents it from having aesthetic worth. While Dahlhaus considers Cecilian pieces to be exercises rather than compositions – music that is ‘trivial without denying it’ – others have viewed them as kitsch, considering them to be artificial, inauthentic and fraudulent as well as banal. Thus, for Hermann-Josef Burbach, the music of the ACV is kitsch because its artistic shallowness was accompanied by a ‘pretension of seriousness’ (Anspruch des Ernsthaften); its clich´ed progressions and sterile diatonicism represent a kind of devotional fabrication, the mere copying of sixteenth-century church music divorced from the mentality and convictions of that time. Absent from these diagnoses – and from most other discussions of Cecilian music – is a consideration of its liturgical function and of the implications of functionality for value judgement. While the intention of a composer in creating a historicist piece may be explained for Dahlhaus in terms of function, functionality cannot excuse such pieces from being subject to the norms of aesthetic judgement. He rejects the idea that nineteenth-century church music can be approached from a functional perspective because it does not constitute ‘pure functionality’: aesthetic criteria are still valid since a mass ‘is tied to nothing but the text and the agreed norms of the church style’ and its character is not wholly determined by its function. But while church music in its entirety was not and cannot be separated from aesthetic criteria, there is a difference between aesthetic/functional church compositions (and here, as Dahlhaus points out, it is not possible to defend in functional terms that which was conceived as art) and the purely functional or ‘merely liturgical’ music written for use in rural churches; it can be argued that in cases where the success of a composition was wholly dependent on its fulfilment of an extra-artistic role, aesthetic criteria are no longer relevant. For Dahlhaus, however, an attempt to liberate functional music from these

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

criteria can never be anything more than ‘an apologia for the musically banal’. Similarly, Burbach’s conception of Cecilian music as kitsch does not permit liturgical function to mitigate for a piece falling short of aesthetic criteria. In examining Molitor’s Missa in honorem S. Fidelis a Sigmaringa Martyris, Burbach acknowledges its intended performance context, and even describes as praiseworthy Molitor’s aim (outlined in his preface) that these pieces should provide village choirs with a simple introduction to choral music before they progress to greater things. Burbach does not, however, judge that these liturgical and pedagogical considerations render it exempt from aesthetic norms: accordingly, he censures its formulaic cadential figures and chromatic passing notes, while a chromatic-third progression is condemned for wretchedly striving for effect in its meagre surroundings. Unaware that chromatic-third progressions were commonplace in the compositions of the Palestrina revival, Burbach views their use as evidence of artistic pretensions: as a result of this, and of what he views – puzzlingly – as the piece’s religious pretension, he argues that it is kitsch rather than Trivialmusik. On the latter charge, the question of whether this mass successfully fulfilled its liturgical role could only be answered by a contemporary Bavarian Catholic who heard it being performed in a rural church; to judge this matter in any other way would amount to cultural prejudice. In any case, the category of kitsch is relevant only to aesthetic presumption, not to functional efficacy: even if it is conceded that the piece is banal, it is hard to see how it could be kitsch since it makes no claim to anything other than its liturgical function. Molitor’s mass was, after all, the one described by Witt above as of meagre worth; its publication and inclusion in the ACV catalogue were not related to its artistic quality or originality. In contrast to these critical approaches, Witt’s writings present a bifurcated response to the issue of aesthetic and functional value. In his articles and speeches, he puts forward two distinct agenda for modern church music: the first for compositions that aspired to the status of the work of art as well as that of ideal liturgical music, and the second for liturgical pieces with no artistic pretensions. In ‘Was haben die modernen Kirchencomponisten zu meiden?’ Witt is concerned with the ways in which modern composers for the church, seeking to create works of art, were able to reconcile their compositions with the Palestrina ideal without compromising aesthetic norms. But in discussing ‘merely liturgical’ pieces, Witt shows less concern for aesthetic criteria, provided that any faults in them are pointed out (and where possible corrected) in order to dissuade other composers from emulating them. This is evident in

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Witt’s attitude towards Haller’s ‘copies’ and Ortwein’s ‘arrangements’: their excessive dependency on earlier music makes them illegitimate as art but does not detract from their liturgical legitimacy. Significantly, Witt’s condoning of Ortwein’s arrangements stemmed in part from their genre. He noted elsewhere that the falsobordone idiom is purely liturgical and not a possible vehicle for art: ‘many people consider falsobordoni to have no validity as works of art. They are a peculiarity of our liturgy . . . [and] have no pretension to artistic value. They are taken up because there are too many choirs that can perform nothing of greater difficulty.’ But if Witt considered judgements made according to aesthetic criteria to be inapplicable for falsobordone pieces, the extension of such an exemption to other music by the Cecilians is less straightforward. He gives no further guidelines other than that easily performable music need not aspire to any conditions other than those of function, implying the corollary that pieces that are harder to perform become subject to aesthetic criteria (including the avoidance of ‘copying’) and must justify their performance difficulties by increased artistic quality. But his conception contains grey areas: it is unclear whether simple pieces are inevitably to be treated as merely liturgical, and whether the literal replication of Palestrina’s language is legitimate in a simple three-part motet, but illegitimate in a more complicated five-part mass. In spite of this ambiguity, Witt’s bifurcated conception of value cannot be ignored in discussing Cecilian music: acknowledging this plurality of stances provides a surer means of understanding this repertory, not only in terms of intention but of the broader aesthetic problem that it represents. LISZT, BRUCKNER AND THE PALESTRINA REVIVAL

The relationships between the two most significant German composers of Catholic church music in the second half of the nineteenth century – Liszt and Bruckner – the language of Palestrina, and the activities of the ACV have not been neglected by recent musicology. A number of papers have been dedicated to addressing the questions that these individual relationships raise, while the topic has also been discussed in broader studies. The aim of the present discussion is to supplement rather than to critique these earlier studies by approaching the works of Liszt and Bruckner from a perspective informed by the music and theories of Cecilian composers. As a consequence this discussion focuses primarily on the liturgical music composed in the years surrounding the foundation of the ACV.

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

The compositional engagement of Liszt and Bruckner with the music of Palestrina began significantly earlier than this, however, and pieces by both composers from the s evince relationships to Palestrina’s language or to the Palestrina style. Liszt’s attitude towards church music and his own compositions contains paradoxes that emerge right at the start of ¨ his career. On the one hand, Liszt’s early fragment ‘Uber die zuk¨unftige Kirchenmusik’ () presents a humanistic vision of church music ‘uniting, in colossal proportions, theatre and church’; on the other hand, he viewed the revival of earlier music as a means of reinvigorating the Catholic liturgy, acclaiming the ‘great revelations’ (großen Offenbarungen) of Palestrina, Handel, Marcello, Haydn and Mozart as sources for modern renewal. As has been seen earlier, this kind of eclectic list of ideal composers for the church was commonplace by the s (Liszt’s roll-call resembles those of Herder, Rochlitz and Michaelis, while his inclusion of Marcello can be related to the brief upsurge in popularity of his music in the s and s, a result in part of the activities of Thibaut and Kiesewetter). The all-inclusive nature of Liszt’s conception of ideal church music is graphically apparent in his piano arrangement A La Chapelle Sixtine (S /R ), in which free transcriptions of Allegri’s Miserere and Mozart’s ‘Ave verum’ are alternated. The dichotomy between Liszt’s historical enthusiasms and his vision of church music as a humanistic union of theatre and church, present in these early writings, remained a feature of Liszt’s attitudes to church music. It is the first of these strands that is reflected in Liszt’s earliest practical contributions to liturgical music. Aspects of the ‘Pater noster’ [II] (S /R ) and ‘Ave Maria’ [I] (S ./R a), both composed in , resemble contemporary perceptions of Palestrina’s language, but do not suggest an extensive first-hand knowledge of it (Liszt was later to claim that he had made a deep study of sixteenth-century church music in the late s). This is evident in the ‘Pater noster’ in the use of predominantly root-position chords (and adjacent roots in bars  –), dissonance being restricted to simple - suspensions, unaccented passing notes and auxiliary notes. In the longer and more elaborate ‘Ave Maria’, the approach to harmony is less restricted but the use of chains of root-position chords remains important, especially in bars –. The motet also contains short passages of imitative writing, yet these serve not as the presentation of thematic material, but merely as stylized gestures introducing the principal, more lyrical theme. The final section of the work contains the clearest references to Palestrina’s language (as perceived by the early nineteenth-century Catholic revival)

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through falsobordone writing for the words ‘nunc et in hora mortis nostrae’, suspensions, and chromatic-third progressions. Bruckner too became acquainted with the music of Palestrina and contemporaries early in his career. A. C. Howie comments that Bruckner would have been able to study manuscript copies of compositions by Palestrina in the library at the monastery of St Florian during his ten years there as assistant teacher and later organist (–). In addition, both Franz Xaver Sch¨afler, Regens chori at St Florian from  to , and his successor Ignaz Traumihler (–), choir director from  until his death, acquired editions of old Italian music published in Munich and Regensburg. Sch¨afler purchased and performed Ett’s arrangement of Palestrina’s Missa Aeterna Christi munera, while under Traumihler the monastery subscribed to Proske’s Musica divina series. Even though Bruckner was familiar with these products of the early Catholic Palestrina revival, it should not be assumed that Palestrinian elements in his compositions from this time are the result of a sympathy with, or even knowledge of, the activities of the Munich and Regensburg reformers. In short, while it is certain that Bruckner was familiar with the musical contents of the first volume of Proske’s Musica divina series, there is no evidence that he had read the historicist agenda for the reform of church music set out in its preface. Karl Gustav Fellerer has argued that the a cappella compositions of Bruckner and Liszt from the s reflect the impact of the views of Hoffmann and Thibaut. But while this is plausible in the case of Liszt’s ‘Pater noster’ and ‘Ave Maria’, Bruckner’s early liturgical compositions are more closely related to the traditional south German stylus a capella than to the music idealized and emulated in the historicist Palestrina revival. Of Bruckner’s liturgical compositions from the s, the only pieces to exhibit relationships to either Palestrina’s language or the Palestrina style are the masses written during Bruckner’s time as school assistant in Kronstorf – the Vierstimmige Choral Messe ohne Kyrie und Gloria f¨ur den Gr¨undonnerstag (WAB ), the Messe ohne Gloria or ‘Kronstorfer Messe’ (WAB ) and the incomplete Missa pro Quadragesima (WAB ) – and two settings of the antiphon ‘Asperges me’ (WAB ). As the subtitles of these pieces indicate, they were intended for performance during Lent, and thus reflect the continuing tradition of performing stylus a capella compositions in this season. Bruckner’s perpetuation of the Fuxian stylus a capella is most clearly apparent in the two settings of ‘Asperges me’. Both these pieces, scored – like the masses WAB  and  – for four-part choir and organ (with figured bass), suppress some elements of the musical

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

syntax present in contemporaneous pieces that were not intended for performance during penitential seasons, such as the two settings of the hymn ‘Tantum ergo’ (WAB  and ). In place of the chromatic passing notes, melodic dominance and four-bar phrases found in his settings of ‘Tantum ergo’, the two settings of ‘Asperges me’ are couched in a sober contrapuntal idiom in which dissonance is restricted to suspensions and unaccented diatonic passing notes. The opening section of the first of these settings contains imitative counterpoint: here, Bruckner makes use of the early contrapuntal training that he had received from Leopold von Zenetti between  and  to create a short stile antico fugue. The second setting of ‘Asperges me’ reflects the traditions of Austrian church music through the alternation of chant and simple homophony in the Fuxian stylus a capella; the stylistic orientation of this piece, if not its precise idiom, is closely related to Fux’s own settings of this text from over a century earlier. While these pieces are related to the traditional stylus a capella, their connection to Palestrina’s language and to the Palestrina revival is wholly indirect. Unlike Liszt’s ‘Pater noster’ and ‘Ave Maria’, Bruckner’s compositions from this period represent unreflective responses to the music and practices that surrounded him in his youth, rather than self-conscious manifestos for renewal through revival. Liszt, Bruckner and the ACV The presence of Palestrinian elements in the early liturgical compositions of Liszt and Bruckner may suggest that the use of similar elements in their later compositions (those written from the s onwards) has nothing to do with wider developments in Catholic church music, most importantly the activities of the ACV. It could be argued that the use of such elements in Liszt’s later church music was solely or primarily due to his own experience of the music of the Sistine Chapel and his increasing selfidentification with Palestrina. (Paul Merrick has emphasized the extent to which Liszt identified his task as a putative reformer of Catholic church music with that of Palestrina, even attributing Liszt’s decision to take minor orders as a consequence of his admiration for and empathy with him.) But while it is important to emphasize that Liszt’s compositional engagement with Palestrina began well before the foundation of the ACV, and was at least in part the result of his own studies of Renaissance music, this need not preclude the possibility that Cecilian activities influenced his later compositions. Many critical discussions seek however to distance Liszt’s church music from that of Witt and other Cecilian composers, to

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downplay the personal associations between Liszt and the hierarchy of the ACV, and to ignore the congruities between the views of Liszt and those of Witt and Haberl. As with the relation between Mendelssohn and Grell, the polarizing of Liszt and the ACV – while rhetorically effective – can lead to an oversimplification of the issues involved; it is dramatically at work in a description by Hermann Kretzschmar from : ‘While the masses of Mich. Haller, Ignaz Mitterer and Fr. Witt keep closely in whole and in part to the formal method, contrapuntal rules and harmonic foundations of the Palestrina period, Liszt preserves for himself all the freedoms and rights of the modern musician.’ Similarly, for Otto Ursprung, writing in : ‘Extremes come together once more in the efforts of Liszt and those of Cecilianism: a radical progressive principle and tightly constrained historicism, the most delicately intricate scores and primitive, almost columnar [s¨aulenm¨aßige] successions of chords, the most individual art of expression and colourless clich´es.’ The majority of modern discussions have also sought to distance Liszt’s approach to Palestrina from that of the members of the ACV, while most accounts minimize the extent of Liszt’s relations with Witt and Haberl and the impact that they had on his compositions. Liszt’s contact with the ACV, and in particular with Witt and Haberl, was nevertheless extensive from the society’s foundation until at least , while the congruity between some of Liszt’s views on liturgical music and those of the ACV lasted until his death. The contact between Liszt and Witt included the performance of each other’s church music, Liszt’s attendance at the ACV general assembly in Eichst¨att in , and the publication and recommendation of several of Liszt’s shorter pieces in Witt’s Fliegende Bl¨atter. The Missa choralis and ‘Ave maris stella’ (S ./R ) received entries in the society’s catalogue, while Liszt dedicated his ‘Tantum ergo’ (S ./R a) to Witt and his ‘O salutaris hostia’ (S /R a) to Haberl. The association of Liszt and Witt began in  following Witt’s dedication of his Litaniae Lauretanae to Liszt; in the same year Witt performed Liszt’s ‘Ave maris stella’, while Liszt reciprocated by conducting Witt’s Missa in honorem Sancta Caeciliae in . Liszt approved of the activities at the Eichst¨att general assembly at which his ‘Ave Maria’ [II] and ‘Tantum ergo’ were sung, writing to Witt that ‘under your leadership, religious music celebrated a truly great and edifying festival to the glory of God and the furtherance of his worship’. Although Liszt attended no further meetings of the ACV, his continued enthusiasm for the work of the organization in reviving Renaissance polyphony and the chant is apparent in a letter from  to Princess

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, which provides a short summary of the course of church music reform in Regensburg: The reintegration of Gregorian chant and the revival of the a cappella liturgical music of Palestrina, Lassus, Anerio and Victoria – that is the be-all and end-all [le hic et le hoc]. Following the example of Proske, who died in , Witt, Haberl and others devote themselves with Christian ardour to attain the goal of Musica divina, which must no longer remain buried like dead letters in libraries, but must really be sung, published anew, and resound through our churches.

Elsewhere it is clear that the revival of Renaissance music and the chant were not the only activities of the ACV for which Liszt felt sympathy. Like Witt, Liszt considered that the highest task of art was the service of the church – considering art to be ‘the formal incarnation of the true religion, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman’ – and shared Witt’s belief in the role of music in the moral education of man. Liszt also demonstrated some degree of interest and affinity with composers who cultivated Palestrina’s language far more literally than he himself did; responding to a composer who had submitted a volume of liturgical pieces for inspection, Liszt commended his use of the ‘old contrapuntal style, which remains uniquely valid and appropriate for unaccompanied liturgical music’. Similarly, in  Liszt praised the Cecilian composer J. B. Diebold, whose church compositions ‘keep faithfully to the great tradition of Palestrina and Lassus, without wretched bondage [leidige Knechtschaft ] to it’. It is clear that Liszt’s involvement with the ACV and sympathy with its composers cannot be ruled out as a factor in the stylistic orientation of his later church music. Similarly, although it could be argued that the increasing use of elements of Palestrina’s language in the liturgical works of Bruckner from  onwards – and especially from  – was the product of his earlier study of Renaissance music and of his arduous contrapuntal studies with Simon Sechter (–), Bruckner’s links with Cecilians may have helped to shape the idioms of his later liturgical pieces. As with Liszt, however, Bruckner’s relationships with the reformers of church music have been critically dismissed as a contributory factor to his style. Fellerer argues that the musical and liturgical orientation of Witt and the ACV was wholly foreign to Bruckner, while Michaela Auchmann has denied that the activities of the Cecilians had any impact on Bruckner’s music: ‘The conflict between the Cecilians and their opponents in Austria did not affect Bruckner. He stands in the Austrian tradition of viewing church music. He wrote his works in the style of his

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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time and of his character.’ A. C. Howie is similarly dismissive, arguing that works such as the Pange lingua et Tantum ergo () and ‘Os justi’ () reflect nothing other than Bruckner’s first-hand knowledge of chant and Renaissance polyphony, and cannot be seen as signifying sympathy with the aims of the ACV. In fact these two motets, out of all Bruckner’s liturgical music, have the closest connections to the ACV. ‘Os justi’ was dedicated to the Regens chori at St Florian, Traumihler, who served alongside Witt, Haberl, Koenen and eight others as one of the original referees of the Vereins-Catalog, while ‘Tantum ergo’ was first published in Witt’s Musica sacra. Witt regularly altered and sometimes recomposed the pieces published in his journals in order to enhance their suitability for the liturgy: in editing a mass by Ett, for example, he replaced the central section of the Credo with his own music, arguing that the original was ‘a monstrosity, a liturgical absurdity [Unding]’. Witt’s most notorious act of editorial emendation was however his correction of Bruckner’s Pange lingua et Tantum ergo; to the indignation of the composer, he tacitly removed a - suspension from the final bars of the piece. This incident is usually interpreted ideologically, as a conflict between Bruckner, the progressive composer and Witt, the conservative/historicist censor; Otto Biba for example writes that Witt made the alteration in order to make the work correspond with his strict Cecilian demands. Witt’s own description of why he made the alteration suggests however that Bruckner’s work was not censored for transgressing the stylistic norms of the ACV – Bruckner’s suspension was, after all, correctly prepared – but was altered for purely practical reasons: Correction. The composer of the ‘Tantum ergo’ appearing on p.  (), Herr Prof. A. Bruckner from Vienna, wishes that the note A in the alto in the third from last bar of the Amen be changed back to B, as it clearly stands in the manuscript. The suspended dissonance [Vorhalt (Dissonanz)] is certainly justified. This is because the alto previously sings the same B. I had altered the note because our alto singers would have found it very difficult to sing the dissonant B against the C entering above in the tenors. . . . Since now however the composer insists on the B, it is hereby corrected.

Before accepting Witt’s explanation at face value, it is necessary to take account of the other alterations that he made to the ‘Tantum ergo’, which have been ignored in previous discussions of this matter. In addition to the conversion of a dissonant suspension into a consonance in bar , Witt altered the note values in the soprano part in bar ,

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

added a passing note to the tenor line in bar , and, most significantly, doubled the note values in bars  and . None of these other alterations could be explained in terms of making the piece easier to perform but, conversely, none of them seems intended to make the work conform more readily to the Palestrina ideal; the doubling of the note values does however seem intended to improve the declamation of the text. What the alterations reveal is not Witt’s desire to make the piece conform with Cecilian requirements, but his treatment of the ‘Tantum ergo’ as a piece of functional music, alterable at will, rather than an inviolable artwork. It was of no concern to Witt whether the composer was a provincial choir director or organist at the imperial Hofkapelle in Vienna: short and simple contributions to his journals were all judged by the same functional considerations. The ‘Tantum ergo’ incident was Bruckner’s only direct contact with Witt. But Bruckner’s relationships with the church music reformers were just as extensive as Liszt’s, and more complicated. While Liszt only had contact with the hierarchy of the ACV, Bruckner was also acquainted with ¨ ¨ supporters and opponents of the Osterreichischer C¨acilienverein (OCV ) and ¨ of the later Ober¨osterreichischer Di¨ozesan C¨acilien-Verein (OOCV ). These organizations had been founded by Witt’s opponent Habert, municipal organist at Gmunden since , in order to provide a counterpart to the ACV whose reforms were better attuned to the traditions of Austrian church music; he condemned Witt’s reforms as excessive, arguing for the retention and propagation of concerted church music and for the ¨ requirements of the church to be balanced with those of art. The OCV was formed in order to provide an Austro-Hungarian equivalent of the ACV, serving the interests of church musicians who had no wish to align themselves with a German organization; Josef Moser has linked the struggle between the two organizations to the competing political ideals of klein- and großdeutschland. Bruckner’s friend Traumihler had been ¨ drawn into the conflict surrounding Habert’s foundation of the OCV in . Traumihler had been one of the most significant contributors to Habert’s Zeitschrift f¨ur katholische Kirchenmusik (founded in ), which ¨ served from  as the journal of the OCV. While initially Traumihler had advised Josef Rudigier, the Bishop of Linz, against granting episcopal approbation to the ACV, he experienced a change of heart during the ACV general assembly in Eichst¨att in  and as a consequence ¨ campaigned against the OCV. As the most senior Upper Austrian member of the ACV, Traumihler played a vital part in Witt’s repeated attempts

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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to strengthen his support there: in the increasingly vitriolic skirmishes between the two organizations, Habert represented Traumihler as a fifth columnist for ‘the foreigner Witt’, ridiculing his blinkered devotion to Palestrina and to Cecilian ‘school exercises’ (Sch¨ulerarbeiten). Given Traumihler’s role in the conflicts between the ACV and the ¨ ¨ OCV/O OCV, Bruckner’s dedication of several of his later motets to him has an additional significance. Even though it would be unwise to interpret such gestures as signs of Bruckner taking the side of the ACV in these disputes (although this would be in tune with his clericalism and pan-German sympathies), Bruckner’s dedication of the gradual ‘Os justi’ reveals an awareness of, and perhaps some measure of sympathy with, its aims: If I am not mistaken, Herr Regens [chori ] wished for an ‘Os justi’ from me. I have permitted myself to send you one, and was impertinent enough to dedicate it to Your Reverence (that is if you accept it). Is it the complete text? It would make me very glad if Your Reverence should gain pleasure from it. [ It is] without sharps and flats, without seventh chords, without  chords and without chords of four and five notes.

Bruckner’s summary of the elements of his musical discourse that he has deliberately suppressed undeniably shows a desire to correspond with Traumihler’s conception of true liturgical music. Whether or not Bruckner would have regarded this Cecilian composition as an isolated experiment or a part of the mainstream of his liturgical oeuvre is a more complex question, which will be addressed later. While Bruckner’s contacts with Witt and Traumihler represent his relationship with the ACV, his position at the Hofkapelle and continued contact with the clergy and musicians at Linz cathedral after his move to Vienna show his exposure to other strands of theory and practice in Austrian church music. Most of Bruckner’s acquaintances in Linz seem to have favoured Habert’s moderate reforms over those of Witt, allowing for the revival of sixteenth-century music and the chant but also for the continuation of the strong tradition of concerted music. The founda¨ tion of the OOCV, the result of the small membership, financial straits ¨ and lack of official recognition of the OCV, was spearheaded by four of Bruckner’s acquaintances from Linz: Dr Martin Fuchs, Domkapellmeister Karl Zappe (–), Domvikar Johann Baptist Burgstaller (–), and Bruckner’s chosen successor as cathedral organist, Karl Waldeck ( –). The relative success of this society was at least in part

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

a result of its patronage by Bishop Rudigier, with whom Bruckner also continued to correspond while in Vienna and who was the dedicatee of ‘Tota pulchra es’ (). In contrast, the musicians at the Hofkapelle in Vienna were more resistant to the ideas of the reformers. The lack of enthusiasm for such ideas is reflected in the performance statistics for the Hofkapelle for the second half of the nineteenth century, which show that the music of Palestrina and contemporaries was performed seldom and only in the traditional seasons of Lent and Advent rather than the more universal cultivation advocated by the ACV. During the rest of the year concerted music predominated in the Hofkapelle, and Cecilian compositions did not enter its repertory. The later liturgical compositions of Liszt and Bruckner In exploring the relation between the later liturgical music of Liszt and Bruckner, Palestrina’s language, and the music of the Cecilian reformers, this discussion focuses on the dozen or so motets produced by both composers in the decades surrounding the foundation of the ACV. Most of these motets evince elements of Palestrina’s language either in a literal form or in some kind of transformation. Significantly, however, two motets in each group do not: Liszt’s ‘Dominus conservet eum’ and ‘Tu es Petrus’ (Pro Papa I and II), and Bruckner’s ‘Locus iste’ and ‘Christus factus est’ [II] (WAB ); the ways in which these motets differ from the rest of the pieces being discussed and the reasons behind such differences will be explored later. While the rest of these motets contain some Palestrinian elements, these are rarely used in such a way as to suggest close relationships with Palestrina’s language; of these motets only Liszt’s ‘Pater noster’ [III] (S /R  a) and ‘Mihi autem adhaerere’, and Bruckner’s Pange lingua et Tantum ergo, ‘Iam lucis orto sidere’, ‘Tota pulchra es’, ‘Os justi’ and ‘Salvum fac populum’, can meaningfully be described as being related, in their totalities, to the language of Palestrina. Here, it is necessary to examine more generally the ways in which Palestrinian elements manifest themselves in the liturgical music of Liszt and Bruckner, since only a few of these works exhibit features that are clearly related to his language. Such relationships are usually to the language of Palestrina and his contemporaries in a generalized sense, rather than to specific works by Palestrina. Two recent discussions have however asserted the presence of relationships between motets by Liszt and Bruckner and particular pieces by Palestrina. Peter Ackermann has viewed Liszt’s ‘Cantantibus organis’ (S /R ) as containing

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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echoes of Palestrina’s five-part motet of the same name, while Wolfgang Witzenmann links Bruckner’s ‘Ave Maria’ [II] (WAB ) to four motets by Palestrina to which Bruckner would have had access: ‘Fratres, ego enim’, ‘Hodie Christus natus est’, ‘Salvator mundi’ and ‘Stabat mater’. For Ackermann, Liszt’s ‘Cantantibus organis’ – a quasi-liturgical piece written for the Palestrina festival of the Societ`a musicale romana in  – exhibits motivic similarities to Palestrina’s setting: these take the form of the prominence of leaps of fourths and fifths in the motifs of both pieces, constituting a possibly conscious reminiscence of the older piece. While the interval of a fourth is indeed prominent at the start of both pieces, this alone does not however suggest a close relationship between them and seems to be their only point of similarity (if Liszt’s motet echoes an earlier work thematically, it is his own ‘Der Einzug in Jerusalem’ from Christus). Similarly, if the relationships that Witzenmann identifies between Bruckner’s ‘Ave Maria’ and four motets by Palestrina are not convincing, it is because the elements in question are not exclusive enough to the pieces concerned to suggest that the posited relationships are significant. While Witzenmann is probably justified in suggesting that Bruckner’s handling of six- and seven-part textures in the ‘Ave Maria’ was derived to some extent from his study of Renaissance pieces, this does not necessarily imply, as he argues, that the motet was modelled on Palestrina’s ‘Hodie Christus natus est’ and ‘Stabat mater’. And the connections asserted between the harmonic and melodic profiles of the ‘Ave Maria’ and Palestrina’s motets are again in no way unique to these pieces. Especially unconvincing is the idea that the cadence in bars – of Palestrina’s ‘Stabat mater’ served as a model for that in bars – of Bruckner’s motet: not only are the cadences different (Palestrina’s is an open fifth, Bruckner’s a bare octave), but neither cadence is in any way exclusive to the pieces concerned (moreover, the open fifth cadence is characteristic not only of Renaissance music but of the stylus a capella). All the elements that Witzenmann identifies can be related in more general terms to the impact that Renaissance music had on Bruckner’s liturgical music; it does not seem helpful to link them to specific earlier models. But in one striking case, a short phrase by Palestrina did exercise a powerful and demonstrable effect on the liturgical music of Liszt and Bruckner: the opening three chords of ‘Stabat mater’, which for Liszt ‘grip and uplift the human soul’. This work was seen earlier to epitomize the language of Palestrina for Witt, as well as being Palestrina’s most ideal composition; Witt shared the sentiments but censured the expression of Alexander Dmitryevich Oulibischeff ’s evocation of the impact

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

of these chords: ‘How does this sound? Beautiful, sublime, godly! This music comes not from earth, but is an act of God’ (That vom Himmel ). A description by Liszt’s friend the historian Ambros from  emphasizes the role that the opening chords played in the work’s popularity: Completely apart and individual among Palestrina’s works is his ‘Stabat mater’ for double choir; its opening, with three successive unrelated major triads, A, G and F, contributed not least to its comparatively great popularity, and all who listened to it being intoned in the Papal chapel were full of astonishment but also admiration. . . . These three chords were and are considered to be not only a symbol of the style of Palestrina, but also to be unique.

The striking character of the opening chords of ‘Stabat mater’ ensures that allusions to this passage in nineteenth-century works are generally easily discernable, while the work’s popularity and the emblematic status of these chords indicate that such references can generally be regarded as intentional, and are thus more significant than the vague echoes discussed above. One such reference was noted earlier in Witt’s Preces stationum crucis op.  no. ; although the chords occur here in a different key (E–D–C) this reference can be viewed as a relatively literal quotation since the progression occurs, uninterrupted, within a similar temporal frame. Liszt’s frequent references to the opening of the ‘Stabat mater’ are sometimes similarly literal but more often transformatory, while the two allusions by Bruckner discussed below are modified versions of Palestrina’s progression. The quotation and continuation of this progression that occurs in the coda of ‘Stabat mater dolorosa’ from Liszt’s Christus is well known and has been discussed relatively often (see Ex. .). The wider ramifications of this reference, in particular its problematic associative aspects, are explored in the next chapter; here it must be noted that this reference is, like Witt’s, relatively literal (the original tonality is preserved, but the duration of each chord is extended), and serves as the basis of the remainder of the movement (a transposed version of the progression, D–C–B
, occurs in bars – leading to the final cadence). While critical attention has focused on the ‘Stabat mater’ reference in Christus, similar progressions can be found in other works. Of these, the most obvious is at the opening of the Intro¨ıtus (S . /R a) for organ (there C–B
–A
), receiving a fortissimo statement later in the piece. And while Ackermann related Liszt’s ‘Cantantibus organis’ to Palestrina’s motet of the same name, it presents a much clearer reference to the ‘Stabat mater’; here the opening chordal progression occurs in a refrain at bars – in a relatively literal presentation and in a modified form at bars –.

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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Example .. Franz Liszt, ‘Cantantibus organis’ (S /R ), bars –

In both versions the duration of the individual chords is greatly extended, with changes of chord every four bars (see Ex. .). Elsewhere the references to this progression by Liszt and Bruckner are less literal; such progressions are frequent in Liszt’s choral music and the following are given only as examples of the forms that such less literal references take. Two are clear in the Messe f¨ur M¨annerchor (, rev. ),

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. (cont.)

perhaps in part prompting Liszt’s remark that ‘while writing it, Rome and Palestrina came back into my mind’. At the start of the Kyrie the first two chords refer to the progression relatively literally (c–B
) while in place of the expected A
chord there is a shift away from literality with a half-diminished chord; in bars – of the Gloria the progression is again transformed (D–c–b
instead of the expected D–C–B
). While

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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such references are rarer in Bruckner’s church music, three stand out in the antiphon ‘Tota pulchra es’. The first is particularly striking, since it occurs at the first entry of the organ and is marked fortissimo in contrast to a quieter preceding section; here the first two chords of the ‘Stabat mater’ progression represent a literal reference, while the third chord is altered (C–B
–A). The second reference to the progression occurs at bars –, coinciding with the second passage for full organ, and here too the third chord is altered (D–C–F); the organ breaks off dramatically after the first two chords making this swerve away from literal quotation even more emphatic. Finally, a third reference occurs at bars –, this time more literal (d–C–B
) providing a consummation, after two delays, of the chord progression and of the union between this motet and the ‘Stabat mater’. The significance of all these references is in itself limited; what is more important is how the ‘Stabat mater’ chords function more generally as a source for the harmonic language of the church music of Liszt and Bruckner. Chains of root-position chords, either with adjacent roots or utilizing secondary chords, are the most important element of Palestrina’s language deployed in the later motets of Liszt and Bruckner. In the motets by Bruckner which come closer to the literal replication of this language in other respects, such chains of root-position chords are particularly prominent; they can be found in their simplest form in bars – of ‘Os justi’. The preponderance of root-position chords is particularly noticeable elsewhere in Pange lingua et Tantum ergo, ‘Tota pulchra es’ and ‘Salvum fac populum’. In works that are in general more distant from Palestrina’s language, these progressions are sometimes deployed as a means of expressing a particular portion of text; this is particularly striking in ‘Christus factus est’ [III] (WAB ), where such a root progression (A
–b
–C, bars –), occurring after a short unison passage which places it in relief, accompanies the words ‘[obediens] usque ad mortem’ (‘[obedient] even unto death’). Such progressions are also common in the motets by Liszt under discussion, particularly ‘Pater noster’ [III] and ‘Mihi autem adhaerere’; elsewhere they are perhaps most striking in the revised version of ‘Ave Maria’ [I] (S ./R b). At first glance, such chords, especially in the opening and closing bars of the ‘Ave Maria’, might be viewed as a wholly progressive use of non-functional harmony. The links between such chord relationships and other compositional products of the Palestrina revival should not however be disregarded. In addition to chains of diatonic root-position chords, the use of chromatic-third root progressions can also be connected to the



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. Ingegneri, ‘Plange, quasi virgo’, Responsoria hebdomadae sanctae, bars  –

Palestrina revival and to the language of late sixteenth-century church music. Such chord relationships in music from the second half of the nineteenth century are usually subsumed within the concept of Wagnerian harmony, and indeed the best-known example of these progressions is the ‘sleep’ motif from Die Walk¨ure and Siegfried. Even in liturgical works, such chords are generally considered to be wholly progressive: in commenting on the bold, chromatic-third related chords in bars – of the Credo of Liszt’s Messe f¨ur M¨annerchor, Charles White writes that ‘the chromaticism is in advance of the kind of musical expression favoured so highly by Wagner’. But chromatic-third relationships are also present in sixteenth-century music. In describing the chord relationships at the opening of Ingegneri’s ‘Plange quasi virgo’ from the Responsoria hebdomadae sanctae, Jeppesen noted the similarity between sixteenth-century uses of chromatic-third progressions and the ‘over-ripe homophony’ of the Romantic era. He does not suggest, however, that in this regard some nineteenth-century compositions may have been informed directly by late sixteenth-century harmonic practice. While nineteenthcentury composers would have encountered similar progressions in other old Italian pieces, the popularity of Ingegneri’s collection (attributed to Palestrina until ) was such that these responsories, as has been seen earlier, played a key role in defining perceptions of Palestrina’s style. Although chromatic-third relationships are present in other pieces in this collection, the opening bars of ‘Plange quasi virgo’ provide the clearest example (Ex. .). The first of the pairs of chords is the most common type of chromatic-third relationship in sixteenth-century music, a common note being present in both chords (in this case, E). In the second, more striking progression there is no common note. Where chromatic-third progressions occur in the music of the composers discussed earlier – most notably, Grell, Bellermann, Witt and Haller – they are in general restricted to the first type (the more striking examples of such chords are linked by a common note but not at the same pitch). In the later liturgical music of Liszt and Bruckner, both

The Catholic Palestrina revival



Example .. Anton Bruckner, ‘Salvum fac populum’ (WAB ), bars –

types of progression can be found. Two clear examples are present in the Credo of Liszt’s Missa choralis (bars –: G–E; bars  –: A–F). Similar uses of such chords with a common note are present in bars – of Liszt’s ‘Mihi autem adhaerere’ and bars – of Bruckner’s Pange lingua et Tantum ergo, while in bars – of ‘Salvum fac populum’ a more arresting effect is produced by the chords being related by a common note but not at the same pitch (G–E
; see Ex. .). The use of



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. (cont.)

the second kind of progression is less common in the liturgical music of Liszt and Bruckner, but is particularly remarkable in Bruckner’s ‘Ecce sacerdos magnus’. Such chords occur at the opening of the piece and in the refrain ‘Ideo jurejurando’: here three pairs of chromatic-third chords without common notes (E–c, G–e
, B
–f) succeed one another, the sequence climaxing with two such chords with a common note (A–F). The use of diatonic and chromatic root progressions reflects the impact of the Palestrina revival on the harmonic practice found in the later liturgical music of Liszt and Bruckner at a local level. It is equally important to assess the extent to which their motets replicate Palestrina’s modal language, and whether modality is assigned a structural role in them. In most of these pieces, Renaissance modal practice is reflected only in short passages of quasi-modal progressions. The predominance of root-position chords often produces short quasi-modal passages in Liszt’s motets; the first eleven bars of ‘Anima Christi’ create a modal impression through the use of secondary chords alternated with the tonic. Similarly, the opening of ‘Ave verum corpus’ creates an aeolian impression through the use of flattened sixths and sevenths in the opening bars. Elsewhere, however, sections of Liszt’s motets, though never whole pieces, seem genuinely modal. The first half of ‘Pater noster’[III], bars  –, initially

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gives the impression of quasi-modality (the opening chord progression is I–vi–IV–vi–I), but it is more helpful to understand the first part of the piece as being in the mixolydian mode on F, because of the prominent flattened sevenths and since all the chords are accommodated within the framework of that mode. In Bruckner’s later motets, the handling of the modes is more sophisticated than in Liszt’s. Some exhibit only quasi-modality, such as ‘Ave Maria’ [II] (WAB ) and the opening bars of ‘Virga Jesse’. A significant number of the motets have however been described as modal in the critical literature: both ‘Tantum ergo’ and ‘Vexilla regis’, are usually labelled as phrygian, but Bruckner’s use of this mode is widely differentiated in these motets. In only one of these motets, ‘Os justi’, are the harmonic resources limited to triads formed on the degrees of the mode. As the description by Bruckner quoted earlier indicates, ‘Os justi’ is ‘without sharps and flats’, and as a consequence, the subdominant chord (which in the lydian mode is diminished) is entirely avoided. All the cadences in the piece are on the final and the second degree of the mode; Bruckner compensates for this restriction by using far more continuous textures than in his other motets. Despite such restrictions Bruckner’s use of the lydian mode does not resemble Palestrina’s, since the frequent flattening of the fourth degree in sixteenth-century lydian compositions makes it identical, in tonal material if not in cadential behaviour, to the transposed ionian mode. Bruckner’s use of the phrygian mode in ‘Tantum ergo’, ‘Iam lucis orto sidere’, ‘Tota pulchra es’ and ‘Vexilla regis’ resists generalizations. In ‘Iam lucis orto sidere’ the harmonies are largely restricted to triads formed on the degrees of the mode, with the important exception that the dominant chord of E minor replaces the phrygian chord on the fifth degree of the mode (which is diminished). ‘Tantum ergo’ contains two other deviations from sixteenth-century phrygian practice: in bar  a double suspension creates a half-diminished chord, which although justified by the suspension resolves onto a  chord, while a diminishedseventh chord whose bass note is approached by a tritone leap occurs in bar . Both features suggest freer harmonic parameters than those governing ‘Os justi’ and ‘Iam lucis’. More problematic are the divergences from phrygian practice in ‘Tota pulchra es’ and ‘Vexilla regis’. This is most apparent in the longer of the two motets, ‘Tota pulchra es’, since while it begins and ends in the phrygian mode on E, many of the harmonic events in the piece – including a perfect cadence in D
major – cannot be assimilated into this

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

framework. While in most nineteenth-century modal pieces the harmonic and melodic resources are drawn solely from the mode, or alternate between a mode and the parallel minor or major scale, ‘Tota pulchra es’ presents elements from three sources: E phrygian, E minor and a further strand of notes and chords foreign to both the above. In ‘Tota pulchra es’, as in ‘Vexilla regis’, Bruckner confronts the central problem of composition in the phrygian mode: the substitution of an alternative structural dominant, necessary since a phrygian chord based on the fifth of the scale is diminished. While in sixteenth-century phrygian pieces the fourth degree of the mode functions as the structural dominant, Timothy L. Jackson has argued that in ‘Vexilla regis’ the flattened subdominant (A
in E phrygian) fulfils this function. Bruckner confronts this problem differently in ‘Tota pulchra es’. All excursions outside the phrygian harmonic space are prompted by the intrusion of a triad on B
: the flattened supertonic present in the phrygian mode on A. The result of these intrusions is that the piece alternates between two tonal areas: E phrygian/E minor and A phrygian/F major. The substitute structural dominant, A, thus serves not only as the main cadence point but as the tonic of the secondary tonal area of the piece. Instead of simple shifts between a mode and its nearest major or minor key, Bruckner shifts from E phrygian to an alternative phrygian area a fourth apart (a similar alternation between the phrygian on E and A is present in the opening bars of the Finale from the Symphony no. ). The two central tonal areas and the tonal ambiguities of the rest of the work are presaged in the intonation at the opening of the piece, which although based on the third psalm tone (phrygian) revolves around its dominant, A. The harmonic complexity of ‘Tota pulchra es’ differs greatly from Bruckner’s treatment of the lydian mode in ‘Os justi’. But in neither of these works does Bruckner adopt Palestrina’s modal language literally. In these compositions – as in the motets by Liszt and Bruckner in which the modes play a far smaller melodic, harmonic and structural role – the use of the modes, while prompted by Palestrina’s language, rarely seems similar to it. In exploring the treatment of dissonance by Liszt and Bruckner, it is useful to return to the music of the ACV. Cecilian compositions present two distinct approaches to dissonance: those (for example, by Koenen and Schmidt) which evoke Palestrina’s sound world without adopting his restrictive dissonance treatment, and those (especially the music of Haller and Mitterer) in which elements of Palestrina’s language are used within

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the technical basis of the rules of the strenge Satz. This distinction is also important in examining the later motets of Liszt and Bruckner. Liszt’s early setting of ‘Pater noster’ was seen to evince a concern for strict dissonance treatment; here dissonances are limited to lower auxiliary notes, unaccented passing notes and - suspensions. His later motets rarely exhibit a similar concern for the strict dissonance treatment, and it is clear that the dissonances were conceived in chordal terms. Although in those compositions evincing prominent chains of roots and quasimodal passages – ‘Pater noster’ [III] and ‘Mihi autem adhaerere’ – dissonances are to some extent restricted to unaccented passing notes, neither contains Palestrinian suspension formulas. ‘Ave verum corpus’ and ‘Tantum ergo’ contain prominent - suspensions in their final bars, but in both cases these appear as isolated gestures, brief evocations of an idiom unrelated to the prevailing harmonic language and dissonance procedures of these works. For Bruckner, the dissonance procedures of the strenge Satz were not ineluctably linked to the replication of earlier styles, but rather were conceived as universal norms; this is clear in the text of his inaugural lecture as tutor at the University of Vienna, in which the rules of counterpoint are seen as laws of nature. But while all Bruckner’s later motets share certain dissonance procedures, their use is by no means always the same. These pieces can be divided into three groups: works evincing freer dissonance treatment (‘Ave Maria’ [II], ‘Afferentur regi’, ‘Inveni David’, ‘Locus iste’, ‘Virga Jesse’ and the two settings of ‘Christus factus est’); those in which, despite their harmonic freedom, the treatment of suspended dissonances is more closely related to Palestrina’s language (‘Ecce sacerdos magnus’ and ‘Vexilla regis’), and those in which strict dissonance procedures and a transformatory re-creation of Palestrina’s language are united (‘Pange lingua’, ‘Iam lucis orto sidere’, ‘Tota pulchra es’, ‘Os justi’ and ‘Salvum fac populum’). In the first group, the uses of elements of Palestrinian dissonance treatment appear as gestures divorced from the technical basis of the rest of the piece. This is suggested in bar  of ‘Ave Maria’ [II] by the use of a cadential - suspension with an ornamental resolution (the same suspension has a similar effect in bar  of ‘Inveni David’). In the motets in the second and third groups dissonance procedures are more closely linked to the re-creation of Palestrina’s language. This is clearest in ‘Salvum fac populum’ (Ex. .) where the forms of cadential dissonance, in addition to the work’s responsorial structure and use of falsobordone, seem to emulate



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Allegri’s Miserere and Palestrina’s Improperia (the latter was the sole work by Palestrina in Bruckner’s possession at the time of his death). Elsewhere Bruckner frequently uses chains of alternating - and - suspensions over sequential progressions of root-position chords; this is particularly clear in bars  – and – of ‘Os justi’. While the idea of chains of suspensions may recall species counterpoint, they have their basis in Palestrina’s language, where such chains rarely extend to more than two or three components. Bruckner’s use of continuous chains of suspensions in ‘Tota pulchra es’ (bars –) seems to serve a special function: that of placing into relief the two consonant references to ‘Stabat mater’ that surround this passage. As with the compositions of the ACV examined earlier, homophony and simple rhythmic polyphony are the predominant textures in these motets. In ‘Salvum fac populum’ passages of homophony, simple polyphony and falsobordone are alternated in a manner similar to Witt’s falsobordone compositions, but with a swerve away from literality in bars – (see Ex. .) produced – as in ‘Tota pulchra es’ – by the chromatic modification of a sequential chain of root-position chords. Bruckner’s use of falsobordone has been viewed by Leopold Nowak as a continuation of the idiom of his liturgical settings from the s. This is misleading, however, since none of Bruckner’s early liturgical works contains falsobordone passages, and the idiom was not part of the traditional stylistic palette of south German or Austrian church music. Occasionally Liszt too evokes Renaissance falsobordone, most clearly in the opening bars of ‘O salutaris hostia’ [II] and of ‘Ave maris stella’ (elsewhere it is used extensively, and more literally, in Crux! (S /R )). The dominance of homophonic textures in Liszt’s later motets generally precludes the use of imitation or even simple rhythmic polyphony, and where imitation does occur, it generally takes the form of one voice being separated from the rest of the texture to initiate an idea that is subsequently developed chordally, a procedure that does not suggest Palestrina’s language (for example ‘Ave verum corpus’ bars  – and ‘Mihi autem adhaerere’ bars –). Although several of Bruckner’s later motets present sections of imitative writing, only that in ‘Os justi’ is extended; the predominant texture is rhythmic polyphony. Earlier it has been seen that it is often the treatment of rhythm that most distances Cecilian compositions from Palestrina. In the later motets of Liszt and Bruckner, the use of repetitive rhythmic patterns, sequences and regular phrases has a similar effect. This is especially apparent in Liszt’s ‘Ave verum corpus’ and the opening of ‘Pater noster’ [III], where

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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the regular two-bar phrases are separated and emphasized by rests. Such regular periods are also present in ‘Ave maris stella’, where their effect is heightened by rhythmic sequences. A greater degree of rhythmic freedom, both at a local level and in terms of structure is evident in ‘O salutaris hostia’ [I] and ‘Tantum ergo’; in neither case, however, does this greater rhythmic freedom seem intended to emulate Palestrina. The majority of Bruckner’s later motets also move in regular phrases. While the exclusive use of four-bar phrases and rhythmic sequences contributes to the similarity between ‘Locus iste’ and Viennese Classical church music, the four-bar phrases of ‘Iam lucis orto sidere’ make it resemble, in contrast, the ‘Protestantizing’ modern Kirchenlieder condemned by the ACV. ‘Tantum ergo’, ‘Tota pulchra es’ and ‘Os justi’ exhibit more irregular phrasing and fewer rhythmic sequences, however; in ‘Tantum ergo’ it is the irregular phrases that most distance it from the numerous similar settings of this text published in Witt’s journals. It is in the imitative section of ‘Os justi’, however, that Bruckner is most successful in cultivating the rhythmic freedom of Renaissance polyphony; this alone serves to differentiate his fugal imitative writing from that of Witt. These motets, considered as totalities, present an extraordinary variety of responses to the Palestrina ideal. While several of the later motets of Liszt and Bruckner evince only a limited or localized engagement with Palestrina’s language, the stylistic orientation of other works resembles the compromise (though not the precise idiom) of the ‘Wittian style’. Only Bruckner’s ‘Tantum ergo’, ‘Iam lucis orto sidere’, ‘Tota pulchra es’, ‘Os justi’ and ‘Salvum fac populum’, however, are in their entireties informed by relationships to Palestrina’s language, while not replicating it literally. It is important to establish why the later motets of both composers present such a mixture of stylistic stances, why some are more closely related to Palestrina’s language than others, and whether it is those associated with the Cecilians that come closer to this language. In considering these questions with regard to Bruckner, it is important to establish whether the use of Palestrinian elements represents a continuation of the stylus a capella, or whether it reflects the reforms of the German and Austrian Cecilians. It was seen that the relationships to Palestrina present in Bruckner’s early liturgical music were derived not directly from the music unearthed and emulated by the Palestrina revival, but rather indirectly from the traditional cultivation of the Palestrina style. In general, such relationships in Bruckner’s later motets have been explained in similar terms: as a continuation and culmination of the Fuxian stylus a capella, unrelated to the historicist revival. But the



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

relationships discussed above are to the language of Palestrina, not to the stylus a capella. While the dissonance treatment found in Bruckner’s later motets is related in part to the traditions of Austrian church music, Bruckner’s use of chromatic-third relationships, adjacent and quasi-modal root progressions, modality and falsobordone reflects the historicist revival of Palestrina’s music and language. In addition, it was seen earlier that even in cases where relationships to Palestrina’s language were derived from the music popularized by the historicist revival, this language was still associated for early nineteenthcentury Catholic composers primarily with Advent and Lent; conversely, the works of members of the ACV that were intended for these seasons do not diverge stylistically from the rest of their liturgical output. This pattern of propagating Palestrina’s language universally rather than restricting it to penitential seasons is shared by Bruckner’s later motets. In fact, the pattern here represents a complete reversal of that seen in his early liturgical pieces, since of all the later motets, the only ones associated with these seasons – the two settings of the Maundy Thursday gradual ‘Christus factus est’ – exhibit the weakest connections to Palestrina’s language. Strikingly, however, while ‘Christus factus est’ [II] is not related to the language of Palestrina, it evinces strong affinities with the stylus a capella tradition. This is especially apparent in the contrapuntal sections of the work. The first such section, bars –, is a stile antico fugue that, like the fugal opening of ‘Asperges me’, resembles the contrapuntal idiom of Austrian Baroque church music. In addition, the use of successive imitative entries that occurs in bars – has been linked to Lotti’s ten-part ‘Crucifixus’ (a work that Bruckner performed repeatedly in the s with the Liedertafel ‘Frohsinn’), again reflecting the stile antico tradition rather than Palestrina’s language. While this piece, uniquely among Bruckner’s later motets, represents a continuation of the traditional stile antico, the remainder of these works – where related to Palestrina’s language – represent a break with tradition. This picture can be confirmed through a consideration of the dedicatees and intended performers of Bruckner’s later motets. As has been noted earlier, Bruckner’s ‘Pange lingua’ and ‘Os justi’ can be linked firmly with the ACV (though in the case of the former, this connection is not related to the origin of the piece) while ‘Tota pulchra es’ can be ¨ linked with the OOCV. The other motets that come closest to Palestrina’s language, ‘Iam lucis orto sidere’ and ‘Salvum fac populum’, cannot be associated with either organization (while it has been speculated that the

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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latter was intended as a contribution to one of Witt’s journals, there is no evidence for this). It is significant, however, that of the works composed from the s onwards, those associated with Cecilian institutions, Linz ¨ cathedral (OOCV) and St Florian (ACV ) – ‘Tota pulchra es’, ‘Os justi’, ‘Ecce sacerdos magnus’, ‘Virga jesse’ and ‘Vexilla regis’ – exhibit more substantial relationships to Palestrina’s language than those intended primarily for performance at the traditionalist Hofkapelle (the two settings of ‘Christus factus est’). In the light of this it no longer seems tenable to suggest that the stylistic orientation of Bruckner’s later motets was not ¨ affected by his acquaintance with members of the ACV and OOCV, or to assert that Palestrinian elements in these works simply reflect the continuation of the stylus a capella tradition. Although among Liszt’s Zw¨olf Kirchenges¨ange, ‘Pater noster’ [III] and ‘Mihi autem adhaerere’ contain the most substantial connections to Palestrina’s language, only the former is associated with the ACV (through its official publication by Pustet in ), while the latter may have been composed before Liszt’s friendship with Witt and Haberl developed. Neither ‘O salutaris hostia’ [I] (dedicated to Haberl), ‘Tantum ergo’ (dedicated to Witt), ‘Ave maris stella’ (which received an entry in the Vereins-Catalog), or ‘Ave Maria’ [II] (published alongside ‘Pater noster’ [III]) exhibit a significant number of Palestrinian elements, though this does not by itself divorce them from Cecilian composition. ‘Tantum ergo’, for example, while not resembling Palestrina’s language in any sense, would have been regarded as a wholly acceptable piece of reformed liturgical music due to its simplicity, sparing use of chromaticism, slow-moving homophonic textures, chant-like melodies and the avoidance of secular idioms. In ‘Tantum ergo’ the emulation of Palestrina led not to the inclusion of a significant number of Palestrinian elements, but to the suppression of elements of modern syntax. All six of the above pieces share this characteristic, as do most of the other pieces in the collection. Two pieces, however, depart substantially from this norm. ‘Dominus conservet eum’ and ‘Tu es Petrus’ (Pro Papa I and II), composed around , evince the unison textures and sparse accompaniment that characterizes Liszt’s problematic late works for the church, most notably the collections Rosario and Septem sacramenta. These works, and the church music from the final decade of Liszt’s life as a whole, present little relation to Palestrina, and this stylistic shift may be linked to his increasing misgivings concerning the tendency of the ACV; in , Liszt wrote:

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

My Via crucis, Septem sacramenta and Rosario will not be published by Pustet in Regensburg, the Catholic publisher whom I had wished for. He excused himself diplomatically, much to my displeasure, considering that the scope of these works goes beyond that of his numerous normal publications. Another, worse reason is to blame: my compositions of this sort do not sell, which will not prevent me from doing justice to those of Witt, Haberl, etc., and contributing as much as possible to the propagation of the ACV [Soci´ete allemande de S t e C´ecile]. But in some things my rule is fixed: ‘I will not do as you do.’

The latter comment indicates Liszt’s recognition of the increasing gulf between his compositions and the generality of those of the ACV. But while ‘Dominus conservet eum’ and ‘Tu es Petrus’ also represent a move further away from the music of the ACV by virtue of their lack of Palestrinian elements, they move even closer to the artistic views of the society in one important respect: their problematic functionality. The extent to which artistic and functional concerns vie for dominance in Liszt’s later liturgical music more generally, and to a lesser extent in the music of Bruckner, is seldom treated as an important or even pertinent question. But it is vital for the present discussion to consider the extent to which functional considerations shape the liturgical music of Liszt and Bruckner, and whether the Cecilian view of a primacy of function had an impact on their compositional practice. It has been seen that Witt posited two separate strands of judgement for church music: one set of criteria for music that aspired to both aesthetic and functional worth, and another for music that was merely liturgical. The ways in which these strands interact, and the interpretive problems that they create are also relevant to Liszt’s late church music. While the functional considerations that inform Bruckner’s ‘Salvum fac populum’ and the harmonizations of ‘Veni creator spiritus’ and ‘Ave Regina coelorum’ do not achieve primacy in the rest of his later liturgical music, Liszt’s later church output does not contain such a clear divide between artworks and functional music. Some earlier critics, most notably Peter Raabe, consider all the church music produced in Liszt’s final decade to be of merely functional worth. But Ernst G¨unter Heinemann considers the issue to be more complex, arguing that the problematizing of the divide between art and functional music is fundamental to Liszt’s religious compositions; the conflict between aesthetic and functional criteria is enacted and embodied in individual pieces. While this conflict characterizes Liszt’s output as a whole, it is most apparent in his later church music, the product of ‘aesthetic weariness and distrust of the very principles of art. . . . The resignation of the later Liszt, which he

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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vouched for only in occasional remarks, becomes effective in the compositions as the destruction of aesthetic norms.’ Heinemann’s contention that the conflict between art and function is thematic in Liszt’s liturgical music has not been treated with the seriousness that it deserves by American and British scholars. It has become clear, after all, that the notion of a conflict between functional and aesthetic concerns is no speculative conceit, but rather a fundamental aspect of church music of the second half of the nineteenth century. While Witt sought to divide church music into two discrete strands, the aesthetic and the purely functional, these strands meet and collide in Liszt’s later church music. In the Zw¨olf Kirchenges¨ange the eclecticism is not merely one of different styles, but of different aesthetic criteria. While it would be impossible to explain the functional aspects of Liszt’s church music solely in terms of the influence of the ACV, there can be little doubt that the functionality of church music resulting in part from the wider Palestrina revival affected not merely Liszt’s liturgical style, but also his aesthetic orientation. Liszt’s Missa choralis and Bruckner’s Mass in E minor Although the music that has been examined so far in this study has in general been restricted to single-movement motets and similar liturgical pieces, an exception has to be made for Liszt’s Missa choralis (, revised ) and Bruckner’s Mass in E minor (, revised , ,  and ), not least because these have been the works most often linked to the language of Palestrina and the Palestrina style in critical discussions. In addition, both masses have been viewed as strongly linked to the reforms of the Cecilians, even though both works predate the foundation of the ACV. Both masses were favourably reviewed by Cecilians: in the case of Liszt by Haberl, on behalf of the ACV, and in the case of Bruckner by ¨ Habert, later founder of the OCV. Liszt played over the Missa choralis to Haberl in Rome in June , an event recalled by Haberl in the entry for the mass in the Vereins-Catalog: The referee was fortunate enough to have heard the conception of the mass explained and performed by the author himself in Rome, and will never forget the deep religious impression that shone through this musical prayer: thus Liszt hears the Holy Mass. If therefore I am in favour of the acceptance of the work into the Vereins-Catalog, it is . . . because the chromatic element – that comes to the fore by the way only in the ‘Qui tollis’ and ‘Miserere’ of the Gloria and Agnus

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Dei and in the ‘Crucifixus’ – arouses here not ‘restlessness, painful agitation or world-weariness [Unruhe, leidenschaftliche Aufregung, oder Weltschmerz]’, but on the contrary brings thoughts to our souls of woe from deepest pity for the crucified saviour, and because this subjective conception appears not to go beyond the limits of the church.

The second basis for Haberl’s acceptance is that, by and large, the mass treats the liturgical text correctly (Liszt’s inclusion of the intonations of the priest at the beginning of the Gloria and Credo within his choral setting ought, according to the procedural rules of the catalogue, to have resulted in its exclusion). Haberl summarized his view of the work by stating that it does not ‘go beyond the limits of sacred-dramatic expression [kirchlich dramatischen Ausdruckes] or the liturgy, even if it touches them’. In , however, he was to reconsider his opinion of the mass, and it was stricken from the catalogue for going beyond the limits of the liturgy. Haberl argues that he mistakenly accepted the mass for the VereinsCatalog before having heard a liturgical performance of it; after listening to portions of the work at the seventh general meeting of the ACV in , he realized that his earlier judgement had been clouded by Liszt’s entrancing personality and playing. Haberl’s volte-face reflects the increased rigidity of the ACV in the years after Witt’s death: he cites another critic of the mass who considered it to be liturgically acceptable now only for the ‘most extreme left-wingers’ (¨ausserste Linke) of the ACV. Bruckner’s Mass in E minor also provoked an ambivalent response from the reformers. The first performance of the mass, in , received an unusually lengthy review by Habert, who over the next thirty years was to be one of the staunchest advocates of Bruckner and his music. Habert especially acclaimed the ‘Christe’ section of the Kyrie and the Sanctus for their contrapuntal mastery, and praised the ‘Et incarnatus’ and ‘Crucifixus’ for the powerful effect created by successions of simple triads. Even so, Habert condemned the Benedictus in terms resembling Haberl’s critique of the Missa choralis: he argues that its chromaticism arouses passions in contradiction with the text, considering it to create a ‘depressing, often painful [niederdr¨uckenden, oft peinlichen] impression’. The enthusiasm of Haberl and Habert for the masses is strongly dependent on their liturgical orientation: both works contrast strongly with the concerted masses of their composers, a contrast reflected in Liszt’s description of the Missa choralis as ‘a capella – sans accompagnement’ (despite the organ part) and Bruckner’s description of the E minor Mass as his ‘Vocal Messe’ (despite its wind-band accompaniment). While

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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both Haberl and Habert praise the liturgical orientation of the masses, they view the chromatic elements as problematic. Liszt, however, appears to have regarded these elements as the most characteristic aspect of the Missa choralis, as the key to the work’s authenticity and contemporaneity: ‘As for the Sistine, I doubt whether they would be willing to go to the trouble of rehearsing sufficiently in order not to mess up some of the modulations, which I could not abstain from without the risk of falling into an archaism devoid of the feeling to which I aspire!’ Conversely, both Haberl and Habert represent the chromatic passages in the works concerned as subjective departures from a prevailing objective, diatonic language. In this way, the Palestrinian elements in both masses are subsumed within the ascendant language, while the more chromatic passages – those parts of the works which most reveal their context and the personal style of these composers – are seen as deviations from this dominant language. This interpretation of the stylistic orientation of these masses is still prevalent, albeit in a weakened form. Recent critics have asserted that the masses embody a combination of sixteenth- and nineteenth-century styles, implying that ancient and modern elements are of equal significance: Manfred Wagner, for example, views them as attempts to synthesize the strictness of the old Roman style and modern harmonic resources. The result of this misconception is that scholars have been anxious to assert that this stylistic pluralism does not disturb the unity of these works: thus, in discussing Bruckner’s mass, Michaela Auchmann speaks of a ‘blending of styles in which “the diversities are joined together to form an organic unity”’, while Paul Merrick defends the Missa choralis from possible charges of disunity and eclecticism by viewing it as an act of homage. In examining the motets of Liszt and Bruckner, it has become clear that only a small number of them could be viewed as evincing a combination of sixteenth- and nineteenth-century styles. Similarly, in much of the Missa choralis and Mass in E minor, the use or evocation of Renaissance stylistic elements plays a restricted role. Both masses contain passages which evoke Renaissance falsobordone: bars – of the Gloria in the E minor Mass, and bars – of the Sanctus from the Missa choralis. Progressions of adjacent root-position chords are fairly common in Liszt’s mass, occurring for example in the Credo at bars – and the Sanctus at bars –; elsewhere, as seen earlier, Liszt’s use of chromaticthird relationships in the Gloria evokes late sixteenth-century practice. Both masses also present quasi-modal passages and cadences: this is

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

especially apparent in the final cadence of Liszt’s Credo and in Bruckner’s ‘Crucifixus’, where quasi-modal roots suggest the dorian mode on F. The presence of these elements of Palestrina’s language does not significantly effect the stylistic orientation of the movements concerned. But in the Kyrie and Sanctus of Bruckner’s mass, and in the Kyrie of the Missa choralis, these relationships are more significant. Even here, though, the extent of the importance of Palestrina’s language should not be exaggerated. In Liszt’s mass the language of Palestrina is most important in the opening twenty-four bars of the Kyrie, but even in relation to this passage it would be mistaken to claim that the imitative texture ‘precisely follows the manner of the old Italians’. Although Liszt employs fugal imitation in the dorian mode using a chant-based point, the regular entries of the voices create four-bar phrases, while the sequences in bars – and – also distance this passage from Palestrina’s language. Liszt’s handling of the dorian mode parallels Bruckner’s use of the lydian in ‘Os justi’, in that while the passage is undoubtedly modal, the total avoidance of accidentals does not produce a resemblance to Palestrina’s use of the modes (this is especially clear in the diminished fifth produced in bar ). Furthermore, the style of the opening twenty-four bars is not representative of the movement as a whole. In bar  a diminished chord initiates a shift away from the literal replication of Palestrina’s language, of the type seen earlier in the motets of Witt, Haller and Koenen and in Bruckner’s ‘Tota pulchra es’ and ‘Salvum fac populum’ (a diminished chord serves the same function in the introduction to Via crucis, bar ). While the imitative texture and harmonic restraint of the opening returns at bar , these diminished harmonies are sufficient to undermine the dominance of Palestrina’s language. If, in the first ‘Kyrie’, bars  –, it is therefore possible to talk of an equal combining of languages, Liszt’s voice is certainly dominant in the remainder of this movement and in the rest of the mass. In the Kyrie of Bruckner’s mass a similar combination of languages is effected, drawn together by the contrapuntal rules of the Palestrina style. The stylistic interaction is more complex than that in the first section of Liszt’s Kyrie, and only in the opening bars of the movement (with the quasi-modal I–VI–i progression), and bars – of the ‘Christe’, is Palestrinian diatonicism predominant. Bruckner’s harmonic language is asserted not merely in the passages where vertical harmonic considerations are paramount (such as the alternation of major triads and augmented-sixth chords in bars –, and the diminished chords

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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formed on chromatically descending basses in bars –) but is also apparent through the use of dissonant entries in the polyphonic sections and a characteristic pattern for delaying the resolution of suspensions (dissonance – downward leap of a perfect fourth or tritone – resolution) producing dissonant intensifications of Palestrina’s polyphonic and harmonic idioms. In terms of rhythm, much of the movement comes closer to Palestrina’s language than many of the motets examined: repetitive rhythmic patterns are only predominant in the climax of the second ‘Kyrie’, while frequent syncopations and irregular phrases help to lessen the impression of rhythmic regularity. Furthermore, in the Kyrie the shape of the individual melodic lines more closely resembles the chantbased points of Renaissance polyphony than in much of the rest of the mass. It is the use of eight-part vocal polyphony in the first twenty-seven bars of the Sanctus that provides the closest relationships to the language of Palestrina in the work. The opening point of imitation, presented initially in the alto I part, resembles the first point in the Sanctus from Palestrina’s Missa brevis, a work with which Bruckner would have been familiar through Proske’s Musica divina. Bruckner’s initial point is related to Palestrina’s not only in its opening motivic gesture, but through the shape of the rest of the point, with its upward leaps and scalic descents. The polyphonic treatment of this point combines canon, free imitation and rhythmic polyphony; the voice parts are paired for their canonic entries, which are initiated on adjacent minim beats at seven-bar intervals (at the same time the voices that are not canonically active present freer imitations). The exact nature of the relation between this passage and Palestrina’s language requires clarification, since the diatonic lines may suggest not only the suppression of elements of Bruckner’s discourse but an intention to replicate the earlier language. In relation to this passage, Auchmann speaks of a ‘dependence’ (Anlehnung) on the style of Palestrina, but the nature of Bruckner’s achievement does not suggest a passive reliance on an earlier musical language. Rather, the relation between the Sanctus and Palestrina’s music is one of continuation and supplementation: here, Bruckner cultivates a musical texture – canonic eight-part counterpoint – that Palestrina did not himself utilize. While the linguistic interaction in the Kyrie suggests the constant combination of the languages of Palestrina and Bruckner, each varying in dominance, in the first part of the Sanctus the voice of Bruckner achieves parity by transforming a point by Palestrina and treating it to a more complex

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

contrapuntal elaboration than he himself did. Here, Bruckner re-creates and supplements Palestrina, rather than replicating him. * Although the liturgical music of Liszt and Bruckner may not seem initially to exhibit a close relation to either Palestrina’s language or to the music of the Cecilians, it has become clear that their compositions engage, to varying degrees, with both the music unearthed by the Catholic Palestrina revival and the ideals of the reformers. Bruckner’s transition from the cultivation of the stylus a capella in the s, through the transformative re-creation of Palestrinian elements in the E minor Mass, to the employment of modality and falsobordone in his later motets – and Liszt’s progression from the limited evocation of Renaissance homophony in his earliest liturgical pieces, via the modality of the Kyrie from the Missa choralis, to the problematic functionality of his later church music – reflect wider developments in the Catholic Palestrina revival and the activities of the ACV. It is clear that the interaction of the declining stylus a capella tradition with the historicist revival is what most serves to differentiate the south German and Austrian Palestrina revival from activities in north Germany. In comparing the compositional products of the Protestant and Catholic revivals, this is the most important factor: while the cultivation of the strenge Satz in the liturgical music of Grell and Bellermann is the product of historicism, the use of elements of it in the music of Ett and the early motets of Bruckner – and to some extent in the music of the ACV – is the product of tradition. Similarly, while the linking of the Palestrina-Stil with Lent and Holy Week may seem a point of similarity between Catholic and Protestant activities, this connection points to a more fundamental difference. The use of Palestrinian elements in Protestant compositions for Holy Week and times of penitence reflects the north German Schw¨armerei for the music of the Sistine Chapel; in contrast, the early nineteenth-century Catholic linking of this music with penitential seasons was a result of the traditional associations of the stylus a capella. Despite these important differences, the compositional trajectories of both revivals exhibit strong similarities. While in the first half of the century, the early Romantic idealization of Renaissance homophony encouraged both Protestant and Catholic composers to emulate it, the increasing knowledge of a wider range of Palestrina’s works led composers from both confessions to cultivate the texture of rhythmic polyphony (it is clear that the use of this texture was not primarily due to a misunderstanding of the linear nature of Palestrina’s music, but rather to

The Catholic Palestrina revival

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an intentionally selective reading of it). In both Catholic and Protestant music, there is a similar distance between the limited use or evocation of Palestrinian elements and the replication of his language: for both Catholics and Protestants, the employment of historically circumscribed elements, such as nota cambiata and the modes, was restricted rather than the dominant practice. The majority of the composers examined sought to conform with contemporary aesthetic requirements, and although the literal replication of Palestrina’s language formed a limited component of both revivals, this could be justified only through the conscious distancing of church music from norms operative in other fields. While such replication was justified by Grell, Bellermann and Haller through polemical engagement with contemporary aesthetic criteria, Witt accorded musical copies legitimacy solely in functional terms and removed such pieces from the sphere of art. Finally, the institutional and political differences between the two revivals must briefly be addressed. It has become evident that the two revivals are aligned differently to the wider cultural and political trends of the age. Although both the Protestant and Catholic revivals in the first half of the century were encouraged by the Romantic vogue for Catholic Italian art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, developments in the decades surrounding the foundation of the second Reich fostered the Catholic revival while encouraging Protestant musicians to redirect their activities. While Prussian nationalism served ultimately to discourage the idealization of Italian music in north Germany, south German particularism encouraged such revival as an assertion of political and cultural difference. The institutional underpinnings of both revivals contributed just as significantly to their differing natures. Witt’s ACV provided the Catholic revival with an organized framework, a large membership and the official sanction with which to sustain the performance, publication and emulation of Renaissance music; no comparable organization or leader fostered activities in north Germany (although Karl Gustav Fellerer has asserted that Naumann provided a similar focus for the Berlin Palestrina revival, it is evident that his significance is by no means comparable to that of Witt). While activities in Berlin provided a model for churches and Singvereine elsewhere, it would be an exaggeration to speak of a cohesive movement for the revival of old Italian music in north Germany. It is these political and institutional differences, rather than the nature of the composers’ responses to the music of Palestrina, that most serve to distinguish the Protestant and Catholic Palestrina revivals.



Palestrina in the concert hall

PALESTRINA IN SECULAR AND NON-LITURGICAL MUSIC

So far, the relation between the Palestrina revival and nineteenth-century composition has been discussed in terms of liturgical music, and to a lesser extent quasi-liturgical works intended for secular choral societies. The idealization of Palestrina had a much broader impact, being reflected in a wide range of vocal and instrumental genres. The forms that such relationships take, and the significances that they have for the works concerned, are extraordinarily diverse. In exploring these relationships and the interpretive problems that they create, this discussion focuses on works by four composers – Mendelssohn, Loewe, Liszt and Wagner – providing examples of how nineteenth-century compositions exploit the associations of Palestrina’s music and language. In secular and non-liturgical religious compositions, relationships to the language of Palestrina and to specific works by him are seldom problematic in terms of originality or historicism: in general, such relationships consist of small-scale references and rarely effect the stylistic orientation of the works concerned as totalities. As a consequence, the concern here is not – as before – with how composers were able to justify the cultivation of historical styles in the light of contemporary aesthetic norms, but with exploring the associative significance of such references. Although delineating the individual configurations of such relationships remains important, the central task must be to reconstruct what the content or essence of Palestrina’s music was perceived to be in the nineteenth century, and thus to define the associations brought into play by the use or evocation of elements of his language. This is a reciprocal process, since while reconstructing the meanings assigned to Palestrina can help establish what such references are intended to signify, the reverse is also true: examining how the evocation of Palestrina functions in specific works can help to clarify what these meanings were more 

Palestrina in the concert hall

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widely perceived to be. As a consequence, the compositions examined here are restricted to vocal works and instrumental pieces with subtitles or similar verbal ‘clues’. And, as will become clear, even in cases where the function of references to Palestrina’s works or language is apparently signposted by verbal tags, the complex meanings generated by the recontextualization of earlier material can seldom be interpreted with any degree of certainty. In exploring the general and specific functions of such references, it is vital to bear in mind Andrew Bowie’s warning that ‘there cannot be a definitive account of what the mixture of existing, historically significant material and a new context “really means’”. An awareness of the difficulty of interpreting the significance of references to older works and styles should not encourage their associative aspects to be disregarded. It is not enough merely to chart the stylistic and technical dimensions of the appropriation of earlier material; nor does it suffice to view all such references as instances of the so-called trope of the sacred, signifying merely the evocation of a generalized form of religiosity. Rather, a distinction must be made between two types of references to earlier music: the use of elements of earlier church music as components in the construction of a generalized religious style, and the attempt to access – via allusion – the specific associations of the material concerned. In the first type, elements drawn from earlier sacred music, stripped of their original liturgical character but retaining a vestigial symbolism, are combined to create a vaguer form of religious expression. In seeking to create what Ulrich Konrad describes as a couleur religieuse, composers relied heavily on the use of elements taken from Renaissance church music, the Lutheran chorale, plainchant, and other, more recent musical symbols. The extent to which the religioso palette of nineteenth-century composers was dependent on old and more recent stock devices was recognized by contemporaries. Hanslick, for example, condemned the dependence of Liszt’s Missa solemnis on clich´es – derived in this case from contemporary operatic depictions of the miraculous, the sublime and the mystical – as a means of manufacturing a religious style: as a result, it is ‘brooding reflection’ (gr¨ubelnde Reflexion) rather than religious enthusiasm that characterizes every bar of the work. While elements of earlier church music can function as components within a religioso idiom, it would be unwise to approach all such references from this viewpoint. Such an approach may deprive these works of the complex layers of meaning that the use of earlier materials can help to create. Crucially, to consider all such references as signifying

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

a generalized religious expression has the result that, where several different kinds of church music are referred to, their potential for creating musico-dramatic oppositions is overlooked: this can only impoverish attempts to interpret the significance of such multiple references. Rather than being stripped of their historical and liturgical associations, these specific connotations can provide a vital key to understanding how such references function in their new context. The use of elements of Palestrina’s language as building blocks in the construction of a religioso idiom must therefore be distinguished from their use for allusive purposes; that is, their use as a means of accessing the associations that surrounded this language as the paradigm of naiv church music. Given the pervasive habit of polarizing reflective religious music and naiv church music, it is difficult to see how allusions to works by Palestrina and references to his style could, for nineteenth-century musicians, have expressed only a generalized religiosity. From Tieck and Hoffmann onwards, this polarization was fundamental to how Palestrina was perceived: even those with little or no enthusiasm for this music, such as Hanslick, sought to distinguish its lofty, serious character from the ‘reflective wit’ (reflectirendem Witz) of modern religious music. In addition to providing a symbol of naiv church music, allusions to Palestrina were able to access a complex web of further associations. While most of these have been encountered already, a useful condensation of them is presented in the peroration of the chapter on Palestrina in Ambros’s Geschichte der Musik (), a passage quoted with extraordinary frequency in the late nineteenth century: In the end, however, the original purpose of Palestrina’s music cannot be disregarded. By birth it is not music for the concert hall, for the Singakademie, for the soir´ees of refined art lovers; it is not a happy hunting ground for the brilliant artistic judgements and fancy remarks of those who comment on art and literature at garden parties; for Tieck-like fantasy societies luxuriating in Rhenish wine, Dante and Raphael; it is no vehicle for musical Sternbaldising [Sternbaldisieren]: it is music for the church, for the liturgy, for the religious year with its rich cycle of feasts, with its holy days, its days of mourning, consolation, rejoicing, consecration, thanksgiving, adoration. It is not an externally induced decoration for all these rich, varied liturgical ceremonies, but fits into these as an essential part. Yes, it even has local significance . . . it originated in Rome and for Rome. In the Sistine Chapel, where the sibyls and prophets of Michelangelo gaze down, where the beginning and end of things – the creation and the end of the world – stand before the eyes in tremendous images: this is its truest home. The notes span over the thunder of judgement like a rainbow of light: the titanic anger of the painter speaks of the righteousness of the living

Palestrina in the concert hall

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God, ‘into whose hands it is terrible to fall’, but the musician speaks of God’s love and mercy, and of the pure harmony of eternal bliss.

In spite of Ambros’s Catholic slant, this passage mentions or alludes to most of the associations that Palestrina accrued over the course of the nineteenth century. The essence of this music is approached in normative and historical terms: it is a language of Christian spirituality that transcends its historical origins to constitute a timeless ideal, but also embodies the world-view and religious spirit of its age and the fervent spirituality of its composer. In further delineating these two positions, Ambros refers to a wider range of associations. The value and significance of Palestrina’s music derives in part from its ritual character: it is ineluctably linked with the liturgy rather than being merely a supplemental aid to devotion. Palestrina’s works, through the ‘Sternbaldising’ (a reference to Tieck’s novel Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen) of the Romantic circle, continued to be viewed as an expression of medieval Catholicism, as well as being the musical focus of Romantic ‘longing for the South’ alongside Dante and Raphael; in addition, Ambros’s reference to ‘Rhenish wine’ obliquely links Palestrina to the early Romantic enthusiasm for Cologne Cathedral and Gothic architecture in general. He also asserts the importance of the local significance of Palestrina’s works, providing a reminder of the continuing association of this music throughout the century with the Sistine Chapel and its services in Holy Week. Further, his comments on the performance of Palestrina in the Berlin Singakademie and similar societies recall another association of Palestrina’s music, its role in concert halls as a vehicle for moral improvement: it is the paradigm of musical asceticism. Ambros’s peroration reflects the association of Palestrina with the Romantic ideology of the sublime; Palestrina’s music is not only religious and liturgical, but provides a glimpse of the Christian infinite. Unlike Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, which symbolizes the terrifying dimension of the sublime, Palestrina’s works provide an intimation of ‘the pure harmony of eternal bliss’. Finally, the description of the role of this music in the cycle of Catholic feasts reminds us of further associations that must be considered when dealing with allusions to particular works by Palestrina: in such cases, the text of the original work and its specific liturgical associations may also be relevant. While all of these varied associations must be taken into account in discussing the significance of individual references to Palestrina’s language, it will become evident that – as in the liturgical music that has been examined – it is the conviction that Palestrina represents naiv Christianity

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

and provides a vision of the Christian infinite that is most important in allusions to his music and language. This is not, however, the sole association that is invoked in the music discussed below. The task of deciding which of the further associations of Palestrina’s music provides the focus for a particular allusion is complicated and often impossible. But these different associative layers cannot be ignored, and it should not be presupposed that a particular reference merely functions as a component in the expression of a generalized religious aura. These interpretative problems are immediately apparent in considering the role of small-scale allusions to earlier works and styles in Mendelssohn’s ‘Reformation’ Symphony op. . The earlier musical elements used in Mendelssohn’s symphony consist of the Lutheran chorale ‘Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott’ in the Finale; the so-called Dresden Amen, composed by Johann Gottlieb Naumann (–) for use at the Catholic court at Dresden, used in the first movement; and lastly, the slow introduction to the first movement bears some relation to early Romantic conceptions of old Italian church music. The title of the work at the time of its  premi`ere, ‘Symphony for the Celebration of the Reformation Festival’, may seem initially to simplify the task of understanding the function of these fragments of older music. Indeed, the assumption that Mendelssohn intended to transmit, via their historical associations, significant narrative or allusive messages to the listener has led to a variety of critical interpretations of the symphony. But more detailed scrutiny of these fragments renders problematic any attempt to define their function, and the work as a whole emerges as curiously ambiguous in character. Most scholars approach the symphony in one of two ways. Some view it as an occasional work for the Augsburg tercentenary that contains earlier musical material with religious associations simply to create a generalized religious aura. Others see it as a work with a definite programme, an attempt specifically to depict the Lutheran Reformation and to sustain such a narrative solely by musical means. In the second view, the allusions to older music do not fuse together to create a united evocation of religiosity, but stand diametrically opposed, providing a musical ‘battle’ between Lutheranism and Catholicism. Judith Silber Ballan has recently been the most energetic proponent of this second view of the work, arguing that it depicts ‘in order, the Catholic church, a struggle, and then the victorious emergence of the Protestants. . . . [It presents] an unmistakable historical event – in this case, the Protestant Reformation – without the use of words’.

Palestrina in the concert hall

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A closer examination of the materials used by Mendelssohn suggests other lines of inquiry. There can be little doubt that the two references to the Dresden Amen present in the last nine bars of the introduction are associated with Catholicism; a similar quotation in Spohr’s Nachkl¨ange einer Reise nach Dresden und in die s¨achsische Schweiz op.  (), for violin and piano, illustrates the linking of this fragment and Catholicism, since the movement in which it occurs is subtitled ‘Katholische Kirche’. On the other hand, the Dresden Amen would seem to have no obvious connection with pre-Reformation Catholicism. And it is by no means certain that Mendelssohn intended the opening bars of the introduction to evoke old Italian music, or that they constitute a ‘brilliantly orchestrated evocation of Renaissance polyphony’. For a start, these bars seem closer stylistically to the eighteenth-century stile antico (and, indeed, to Bach) than to Palestrina’s language (or to what Mendelssohn perceived that language to be), and in any case the musical material here could be considered to constitute merely a dissonant intensification and expansion of the I–vi–V progression of the Dresden Amen. Even if it is accepted that the opening bars of the symphony constitute an allusion to Renaissance polyphony, it is open to question whether Mendelssohn intended this evocation as specifically Catholic. The complex layers of associations that had accrued around Palestrina’s language by the late s indicate that Palestrina’s music was viewed not primarily as the expression of sixteenth-century Catholicism, but as a pan-confessional, timeless ideal of church music; it has already been seen that Mendelssohn regarded it as the most appropriate form of liturgical choral music. The identification of Palestrina not with Catholicism but with ideal church music is demonstrated clearly by the music that was used to celebrate the Berlin commemorations on  June  of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession (the first official codification of Lutheran belief ) to the Holy Roman Emperor: Latin a cappella motets by Grell. Such music would not have been used on this occasion – a Reformation celebration – if it had been regarded as fundamentally Catholic. In using polyphony at the start of this movement, Mendelssohn was surely alluding to nineteenthcentury music and ideals and not to Renaissance Catholicism. In addition, Mendelssohn’s use of the chorale ‘Ein’ feste Burg’ in the Finale raises questions about its historical associations. Mendelssohn’s version of the chorale is not derived from any of the historical versions available to him, such as Luther’s original or J. S. Bach’s arrangements, but is nineteenth century in origin and idiom. The initial manner of its presentation at the start of the movement, and the melodic version of

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

the chorale used, are perhaps derived from a setting by Mendelssohn’s organ teacher August Wilhelm Bach, published in his Choralbuch of  and almost certainly used as part of the Berlin Reformation festivities of that year. Bach’s Choralbuch is symptomatic of the broader desire for chorale reform; whether or not it was the source for the version of the chorale melody used in the symphony, Mendelssohn’s chorale uses the simplified musical language that the reformers advocated. The evocation of stile antico church music and use of the reformed chorale suggest that Mendelssohn intended his symphony not as a depiction of the events of the historical Reformation, but as a distillation of the German celebrations of . It is evident, however, that any interpretation of the significance of the fragments of earlier music in this work must necessarily be equivocal: not only are these fragments by themselves insufficient to transmit a programme, but it is impossible to be certain precisely which of their associations Mendelssohn intended to evoke. In the case of the ‘Reformation’ Symphony, interpreting the role of references to earlier church music is problematic on two levels: not only is the function of these fragments ambiguous, but the relation between the opening bars of the introduction and old Italian music is doubtful or – at most – oblique. The latter problem is also an issue in interpreting two works from the following decade – Mendelssohn’s St Paul () and Loewe’s Die Apostel von Philippi () – although here, the function of references to early church music seems more clear cut. It would be an exaggeration to claim that Palestrina’s language is directly alluded to in either of these oratorios. Nevertheless, in both works elements that reflect early Romantic perceptions of Palestrina’s music play a localized but important dramatic role. The evocation of old Italian homophony, alongside a range of other historical styles and idioms, serves as a means not merely of creating a religious aura but of differentiating between the dramatis personae and between different levels of religious expression. In both works, the limited evocation of Palestrina reflects the broader tension between the church style and the oratorio style. Elements of Palestrina’s language, paradigm of the church style, are drawn on in order to distinguish the representation of the divine from the religious tone pervading the remainder of the works. While Mendelssohn’s recreation of the styles of Bach and Handel provided an appropriate idiom for the generalized expression of religious sentiment – or, in Heine’s view, for the ironic construction of the spirit of Christianity – the evocation of Palestrina has a wholly different function: that of accompanying the words of God. Mendelssohn’s solution to the problem of representing

Palestrina in the concert hall

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divine speech was, alongside his incorporation of chorales, the aspect of St Paul most frequently discussed by contemporaries. While Rochlitz had earlier advised that, in an oratorio, the words of God should be set for chorus in the ancient church style (a conception dismissed by Moritz Hauptmann as laboured and artificial), Mendelssohn avoids the direct replication of Palestrina’s language. Instead, in the recitatives describing Paul’s conversion (no. ) and in which Ananias is instructed to restore Paul’s sight (no. ), the purity of Palestrina’s homophony is merely suggested through instrumental timbre (high woodwinds, in sharp contrast to the preceding passages) and chord repetitions in the manner of falsobordone. The second recitative is more closely related to early Romantic perceptions of Palestrina through the use, in addition, of simple root progressions and – suspensions. Mendelssohn’s evocation of this language serves not as a means of fashioning a religioso idiom, but of representing the unrepresentable. Here, his evocation is dependent on the continuing association of Palestrina with the sublime: only through reference to this sublime language could Mendelssohn represent, in the words of his librettist Julius Schubring, the voice of ‘the transfigured Lord of Heaven and Earth’. In Loewe’s oratorios, the evocation of old Italian music plays a greater variety of roles. In the unpublished oratorio Palestrina, a retelling of the legends surrounding the Council of Trent, Loewe quotes fragments from the Missa Papae Marcelli; in Die sieben Schlaefer op. , Renaissance falsobordone is evoked as a symbol of the miraculous, while in another period piece, Johann Huss op. , Loewe includes a -bar stile antico Kyrie as a means of providing historical colour. In Die Apostel von Philippi, the evocation of old Italian music serves a similar function to that in Mendelssohn’s St Paul, whose subject matter it shares. The text of Die Apostel is narrower in scope than that of St Paul, focusing on the events of Acts . Even so, the libretto offers greater opportunities for musical characterization, involving choruses of Greeks, Christians and Roman colonists in addition to soloists (the apostles Paul, Silas and Timothy, and assorted Roman officials). In differentiating between these groups, Loewe assigns them distinct musical characteristics, some of which make reference to historical styles and materials. This type of stylistic juxtaposition can be seen in the first movement (bars  –), where the music depicting the condemnation of the apostles by the Romans contrasts sharply with a hymn sung by the Christians from their prison cells. Here, the astringent two-part counterpoint of the Romans, accentuated by tritone leaps, is contrasted with the euphonious homophony of the Christians, whose

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

slow-moving chords – recalling falsobordone – freely evoke Palestrina’s language. Similar musico-dramatic oppositions are employed in the second movement, which depicts the terrifying effect of an earthquake – miraculously initiated by the singing of the Christians, whose chains it breaks – on the Roman officials. Loewe’s palette of Christian musical characterization draws not only on Palestrinian homophony, but also on the Protestant chorale (no. ) and the eighteenth-century stile antico (no. ). Importantly, the functions of these three idioms are differentiated. The chorale and stile antico are both associated with the faith of the apostles rather than with the supernatural dimension of Christianity; the chorale in no.  is a hymn of thanksgiving for the freeing of the apostles, while the stile antico fugue in no.  (whose subject resembles that of the second ‘Kyrie’ of Bach’s Mass in B Minor) is associated with matters of doctrine and dogma. In contrast, Palestrina’s homophony is evoked in order to provide an intimation of the sublime, depicting God’s intervention on behalf of the apostles. In Die Apostel, as in St Paul, it is therefore the linking of Palestrina’s language with the Christian infinite that is the primary association being invoked. WAGNER’S

‘STABAT

MATER’ AND THE POETICS

OF ARRANGEMENT

Before exploring the role of allusions to Palestrina in the works of Liszt and Wagner, it is necessary to make a digression. The nature of Wagner’s engagement with old Italian music, and the extent to which he sympathized with the activities of the church music reformers, need to be explored in order to provide a foundation for interpreting the significance of such references in his music. Wagner’s interest in old Catholic church music was stimulated during his time as Kapellmeister at Dresden (–), and he was later a subscriber to Proske’s two series Musica divina and Selectus novus missarum. While Wagner’s Paris essays already exhibit an interest in early church music, his ideas on reform and revival received their most substantial formulation in the ‘Entwurf zur Organisation eines deutschen Nationaltheaters f¨ur das K¨onigreich Sachsen’ (). Even though later in the century, this essay was approached by some commentators as one of the most significant contributions towards the reform of church music, it offered nothing new to this debate and is of interest only in that it reveals how close Wagner’s views are to those of Hoffmann, Thibaut and other earlier reformers.

Palestrina in the concert hall

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Like Hoffmann, Wagner constructs an organicist golden age of church music, representing Palestrina as having saved church music following the mathematical abstractions of his predecessors; Wagner follows Thibaut, however, in ascribing the subsequent decline of church music to the introduction of orchestral instruments and thus of secular expression. Church music can only return to its original state of purity if instruments are banished from churches: only the human voice, the ‘unmediated bearer of the sacred word’, is a suitable vehicle for liturgical music. Crucially, Wagner represents the masses of Beethoven and Cherubini as unworthy of performance in church; although as absolute music they have a religious content, he, like Hoffmann, considers them to be too wide in scope – in terms of both form and content – for liturgical performance: ‘These masterpieces do not belong to the pure church style, which for so many reasons it is high time to revive: they are absolute musical artworks, built admittedly according to a religious basis, but much more suitable for performance in spiritual concerts than during the church service itself.’ While modern concerted works are represented here as religious, but little more so than absolute instrumental music, Palestrina’s music is given an entirely different set of associations: it is the ideal liturgical music, free from sensuous secular expression, and the high point of Catholic music. Before accepting Catholicism as a primary association for the allusions to Palestrina in Wagner’s own works, it should be borne in mind that he revised this opinion later; in ‘Beethoven’ (), Palestrina’s ‘Stabat mater’ is elevated not as an ideal for the Catholic liturgy, but as a spiritual revelation that ‘brings to our consciousness the innermost essence of religion free from all dogmatic fictions’ (dogmatischen Begriffsfiktion). And it should also be borne in mind that Wagner’s perception of Palestrina continued to be defined by the homophonic works idealized by the early Romantics: in , on hearing the Berlin Domchor give an impromptu performance of a motet in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, Wagner acclaimed Palestrina’s slow-moving chords as ‘monoliths that defy the ages’ (Quadern die der Ewigkeit trotzen). Wagner’s sole practical contribution to church music reform was his arrangement of Palestrina’s ‘Stabat mater’, first performed in Dresden in , and published at Liszt’s behest in . The published arrangement was intended for Protestant churches and Singvereine as well as Catholic churches, as can be seen in the provision in many places of two alternative German translations of the text, the second of which replaces references to Mary with phrases more acceptable to Protestants (in bar , for example, ‘virgo virginum praeclara’ becomes ‘Heiland



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

hoch verkl¨art vor Allen’, while in bar  ‘Eja mater fons amoris’ becomes ‘Heiland, Quell der reinsten Minne’). But while the translation of the text (the work not of Wagner but of the classicist Wilhelm Reischl) may constitute a means of adapting the work to make it more compatible with the modern world-view – of, in Wagner’s words, liberating its essence from ‘all dogmatic fictions’ – the arrangement of the music cannot be understood simply to reflect a similar process. Rather, Wagner may initially have regarded it not as an adaptation of Palestrina’s motet to modern means of expression, but as an attempt to re-create the lost performance traditions of the work. For some of the authors and composers of the Palestrina revival, the (conscious) adaptation of earlier works to modern means of expression ¨ Reinheit der Tonkunst, Thibaut condemned was to be deplored. In Uber Mozart’s arrangement of Messiah, claiming that his instrumental additions went against Handel’s intentions: ‘In all of it there is overloading and recasting that the sublime creator of this eternal masterpiece would certainly have condemned as meddling.’ For Thibaut, the eternal masterpieces of music, just like their counterparts in the other arts, retain their validity for all time and do not require adaptation to modern means of expression, for ‘who would permit himself to prune and dress up [aufputzen] Homer, Dante, or Shakespeare?’ Rather, Thibaut sought to perform early church compositions ‘as purely as the master intended’, grounding his interpretations in a determined fidelity to the letter of the text and in an empathetic process akin to the notion of Einf¨uhlung in Romantic hermeneutics: a mystical process of self-identification with the composer. But for other nineteenth-century musicians, the performance of early music required a process of modification, corresponding with what Hegel described as ‘necessary anachronism’. Hegel does not advocate the wholesale modernization of historical artworks; nonetheless, he considers that historically transient material may legitimately be adapted to ensure the clarity of its essence, arguing that when the plays of Shakespeare or the Greek tragedians are performed, modern audiences have the right to demand the adaptation of those aspects of their appearance alien to modern culture: Even the most excellent things require adaptation in view of this. Admittedly, people could say that the truly excellent must remain excellent for all time; but the work of art also has a transient, mortal side, and it is this that requires alteration. For the beautiful appears for different people, and those for whom it is brought to appearance must be able to be at home in this external side of

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its appearance . . . The inner substance of that which is represented remains the same, but cultural change makes necessary a conversion of its expression and form.

The performance of early music was approached from a similar perspective by Hand, who argues that while the best works retain their value for all time, aspects of their formal execution can become antiquated and unpalatable. Citing the opera arias of Handel and Pergolesi’s ‘Stabat mater’ as examples, Hand contends that such works can be preserved for modern audiences only through ‘a renovation in accordance with contemporary taste’ (eine dem Zeitgeschmack gem¨aße Ausschm¨uckung). Similar arguments were put forward in relation to the performance of old Italian music. The composer and critic Heinrich Oberhoffer, seeking to justify his addition of string quartet accompaniments to stile antico compositions, argued that the colourless severity of the a cappella idiom alienated modern listeners: While the artistry and eminently sacred nature of the works of the old church composers from the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cannot be denied, these works – especially longer movements – are more or less monotonous in style and aural effect. Many believe that their revival is impeded because our ears and our feelings are accustomed to sharper contrasts and greater variation.

Wagner’s stance may initially seem more similar to that of Thibaut than to the views of Hegel, Hand and Oberhoffer. In , he described the act of ‘renovation’ (Wiederauffrischung) that conductors should undertake in performing the works of Palestrina and his followers: ‘Kapellmeister undertaking this task have therefore to restore the lost traditions of performance of such works according to their artistic judgement, to bring back to life these works in their full freshness and warmth of religious expression – as has already been proved to be entirely possible – and to ensure that they are rehearsed according to this spirit.’ While Wagner’s comments on the restoration of lost performance traditions suggest an approach closer to Thibaut’s Einf¨uhlung than to Hegel’s ‘necessary anachronism’, this is not borne out in an essay from eight years earlier, a review of a contemporary arrangement of Pergolesi’s ‘Stabat mater’ (). Here, Wagner seems in places to favour literalism in performance, demanding that ‘the artist must completely deny himself and step into the background in order to let the monumental genius whom he reverently preserves shine in all his radiance’. For the main, however, Wagner takes a view closer to that of Hegel, considering that Mozart’s revision of

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Messiah ‘adorns Handel’s work in accordance with its universal artistic significance’, brilliantly proving ‘how much the old masterpieces can be embellished with a vivacity and freshness of colour without losing their inner value’. This position is expressed most clearly when Wagner differentiates between the imperfect execution of the older masters and their profundity of content; while the works of the ancient school convey great and noble thoughts, ‘in the details of their execution can be discerned inexperience and the early strivings of an art’, and consequently the antiquated forms of such music must be adapted to ‘the demands of modern taste’. For Liszt, Wagner’s edition of ‘Stabat mater’ constitutes not an arrangement but merely a written exemplar of the expressive additions that an experienced conductor would introduce in performing it. In a letter to the publisher of Wagner’s edition, Christian Friedrich Kahnt, Liszt comments that ‘most conductors do not know where to begin with the well-known editions of Palestrina, Lassus, etc., because all indications of tempo and expression are missing’; Wagner’s version of ‘Stabat mater’ constitutes a model of the form that modern performing editions of Renaissance music should take: The contributions of the Reverend Father Canon Proske are certainly praiseworthy, and Pustet’s editions of Musica divina (in Regensburg) are most excellent, but nevertheless I consider that new, helpful, practical editions of the old masters of church music remain desirable and salutary. Over thirty years ago Richard Wagner gave an eminent example of this, by arranging Palestrina’s ‘Stabat mater’ for the Dresden Hofkirche with meticulous distribution between choir, semi-chorus, and soloists, and apposite details of nuances (crescendo, diminuendo, etc). Henceforth, may this example of the editing of the church father [kirchenv¨aterlichen] composers be taken to heart and followed.

It is significant that Liszt does not differentiate between Wagner’s addition of dynamic markings to the work and his alteration of the scoring; he represents both these processes as analogous to the activities of the informed conductor. But a differentiation between these modes of interpretation must be made. Matthias Buschk¨uhl comments that the abrupt dynamic contrasts in Wagner’s arrangement reflect an unabashed impulse to adapt the work to modern conceptions of expression. The dynamic indications do not, however, suffice on their own to justify this interpretation, since the introduction of bold contrasts and vivid text painting could have been motivated by reports of the Holy Week performances of the papal choir rather than by a modernizing impulse. But while Wagner’s addition of expressive markings can be seen as

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akin to the editorial procedures that Witt applied to this repertory, the nature of his changes in scoring must be interpreted differently. Wagner transforms the simple antiphonal structure of the original into complex alternations between two groups of soloists, two semi-choruses, and the two full choirs; he employs over a dozen different combinatory permutations, some of which vitiate the antiphonal scheme of the original. As with his dynamic indications, some of the alterations to the scoring reflect textual considerations: bars  to  are re-scored for women’s voices, a colouristic change seemingly motivated by the text ‘virgo virginum praeclara’. These modifications, when considered in tandem with the dynamic markings, must therefore be viewed as an attempt to attune the work to modern expressive expectations. As a consequence, Wagner’s arrangement can be seen as an adaptation in Hegel’s sense, a reclamation of the essence of the work through the modification of its form, in order to satisfy ‘the demands of modern taste’. Wagner’s arrangement of ‘Stabat mater’ was feted by the ACV, and received an entry in the society’s catalogue of approved works. Witt, like Liszt, played down the extent of Wagner’s intervention, describing it as an edition, rather than an arrangement: eager, nonetheless, to exploit the propagandist value of recruiting him to the cause of church music reform, Witt asserts that Wagner’s expressive markings ‘bear the stamp of his genius’, arguing that these are wholly in accordance with Palestrina’s intentions. By demonstrating that Wagner’s conception of ideal church music was similar to that of the ACV, Witt sought to gain a further stick with which to beat composers who sought to bring Zukunftsmusik into the Catholic liturgy. In reality, however, this arrangement – made twenty years before the foundation of the ACV – cannot be seen as evidence that Wagner sympathized with its aims, nor as a sign that his conception of Palestrina was primarily linked to the revival of Catholic church music. LISZT, WAGNER AND ALLUSION

Having discussed Wagner’s contact with the music of Palestrina and his relation to the broader movement for church music reform, allusions to the language of Palestrina in the music of Liszt and Wagner can now be examined and compared. It is not possible to discuss all such references in detail, especially in the case of Liszt in whose music they are particularly common, and the following discussion centres on three pairs of works: Liszt’s Harmonies po´etiques et religieuses and Wagner’s Rienzi, Die Legende von der Heiligen Elisabeth and Tannh¨auser, Christus and Parsifal. The rationale

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

behind this grouping is to some extent chronological but will be seen to owe more to the nature of the references and the associations that they evoke. Of the ten pieces in Liszt’s piano cycle Harmonies po´etiques et religieuses (S /R ), four works – no.  Ave Maria, no.  Pens´ee des morts, no. . Pater noster and no. . Miserere, d’apr`es Palestrina – can be linked to Liszt’s early preoccupation with the music of Palestrina and contemporaries. While two of these pieces are straightforward transcriptions of his motets, nos.  and  are of greater relevance to this discussion. The Miserere, d’apr`es Palestrina is based on a twelve-bar fragment of falsobordone, which is overlaid with the opening words of Psalm , ‘Miserere mei, Deus’ (‘Have mercy on me, God, according to your great kindness: according to [the multitude] of your mercies, obliterate my sins’). The composer and source of this falsobordone passage have hitherto been a mystery, since it bears no relation to Palestrina or to the other Miserere settings of the Sistine Chapel. Liszt’s source for this fragment, if not its composer, can be established with some certainty: it is a transposed version of the spurious ‘Miserere von Pal¨astrina’ published in the AmZ in  and  (Ex. .), where it bears a similar subtitle to that in Liszt’s  sketchbook. In interpreting the associative function of this fragment, it is necessary to examine its role within both this piece and Liszt’s cycle in its entirety. Considered in isolation, it may seem that Liszt’s Miserere is simply a theme with variations, and that this fragment generates only indefinite religious associations. Yet the contrast between its initial presentation in the lower register and its restatements – bars –, where the theme is presented two octaves higher in a halo of tremolandi, and bars –, where it is transfigured by upward moving arpeggios – suggests the evocation of two distinct associations of old Italian music: the earthly misery evoked by the connection of the Miserere with the Holy Week services in the Sistine Chapel (an association confirmed by the quotation of the text), and the linking of this music with the sublime. This vague internal programme, contrasting worldly misery and eternal bliss (or a similar pair of oppositions), is confirmed by the role of the fragment within the broader programme of the cycle, a programme suggested by the quotation from Alphonse de Lamartine’s Harmonies po´etiques et religieuses that prefaces it. The contrast between the initial presentation of the falsobordone theme and its seraphic restatements parallels Lamartine’s evocation of meditative souls, tormented by the griefs of earthly existence, who retreat into a contemplative world and whose thoughts turn irresistibly ‘towards thoughts of the infinite, that is towards religion’ (vers les id´ees infinies, c’est-`a-dire

Palestrina in the concert hall

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vers la religion). This programme is articulated more clearly in no.  of the cycle, Pens´ee des morts, which also draws on the associative potential of falsobordone. While the passage of falsobordone presented here is neither by nor attributed to Palestrina, it closely resembles that presented in no. ; moreover, the theme also receives a simple statement in the lower register before a varied restatement two octaves higher. In this case, the associations evoked by the falsobordone passage are more strongly coloured by its precise context and by the accompanying text: it succeeds a swirling brew of tritone chords formed on consecutive chromatic basses, a hellish vision concretized by the title and by the words from Psalm  (‘De profundis’) that accompany the falsobordone fragment (‘Out of the depths have I cried to you Lord: Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of supplications’). These musical and textual factors again suggest the double association evoked by Liszt’s Miserere: earthly misery and penitence but also an intimation of the infinite. In Pens´ee des morts, Liszt’s evocation of the music of the Sistine Chapel suggests a third association not previously encountered in this connection: the sublime not merely as a beatific vision of eternal bliss but as a presentiment of terror. The linking of old Italian church music with the terrifying aspect of the sublime has its roots in the early Romantic world of the Gothic novel, with its malevolent monks and sinister rituals. Liszt’s use of this fragment of falsobordone is comparable to the horror that such music creates in Heinrich von Kleist’s legend Die Heilige C¨acilie oder die Gewalt der Musik (). Here, the inexplicable power of an old Italian mass saves a Catholic convent from a group of Protestant brothers who are intent on razing it to the ground. The four brothers are overcome with an extreme religious fervour and committed to an asylum because of their terrifying nightly recollections of the mass: their singing ‘came as if from the lips of damned singers rising from the deepest pits of the flames of hell, full of pity in order that God should hear them’. Finally, when glancing through the score, the mother of the brothers realizes that it was the sublime power of old Italian church music that drove her sons insane: She looked at the unfamiliar, magic signs, which appeared to have been used by a terrible frightful spirit to mark a circle for himself, and thought she herself would sink to the ground when suddenly upon the opened page she saw the passage Gloria in excelsis. It seemed to her at that moment as if the whole horror of sound that had ruined her sons moved thunderously over her head and she believed that the mere sight of the words had made her lose her senses.

The status of old Italian church music as a vehicle for terror, while providing a plausible perspective for interpreting the falsobordone

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. Richard Wagner, Rienzi, Act IV, finale, bars  –

fragment in Pens´ee des morts, is more clearly invoked in the use of similar passages of falsobordone writing in Wagner’s Rienzi (). Here, the terrifying effect of the solemn music, sung by a choir of priests and monks, that announces the papal anathema on Rienzi is signalled unambiguously in the libretto (see Ex. .). Towards the end of the first part of the chant

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Example .. (cont.)

‘Woe! A curse on you!’, Rienzi exclaims ‘how horrifying! What a Te Deum!’, providing an explicit link between the evocation of old Italian falsobordone and the horror of the sublime. The allusions to the language of Palestrina in these works exploit its association with the penitential, minor-mode, falsobordone pieces performed in the Sistine Chapel in Holy Week. In Tannh¨auser and Die Legende von der Heiligen Elisabeth, the references to Palestrina’s language have a different form and take on different associations. The religious character of the music associated with Elisabeth and the pilgrims in Tannh¨auser, and with Lohengrin, the Grail and the swan in Lohengrin was recognized by contemporaries; Witt, for example, considered the prelude to Lohengrin to be ‘better and more serious church music [Kirchenmusik] than many of Mozart’s masses’. Assessing the extent to which Wagner’s exposure to Palestrina’s works shaped the religioso idiom of these operas is difficult, however, since few passages seem overtly linked to nineteenth-century perceptions of Palestrina’s language. This difficulty is apparent in the views of the Cecilian Johannes Hatzfeld-Sandebeck, who – while representing the composition of Lohengrin as a mere distraction from Wagner’s main task of reviving Palestrina – fails to identify any specific passages in the opera that use or evoke his language: ‘Lohengrin shows such a completely different character to the directly preceding Tannh¨auser and Fliegende H¨ollander, a character that in its perfection and individuality, in places in its rapturous glowing purity and modesty – despite all chromaticism – would not have been possible had Wagner not just beforehand walked in the garden of Palestrina.’

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

While it may be tempting to dismiss these comments as hyperbole, elements of Palestrina’s language (especially chains of quasi-modal roots) do play a limited part in Wagner’s construction of a mystical idiom with which to symbolize Lohengrin and the kingdom of the Grail. Although Wagner’s use of these elements never stands out in the way seen in Rienzi, and does not seem to be intended to recall old Italian church music and its associations, it nevertheless provides a means of delineating the sublime Christianity of Lohengrin from the mundane religious beliefs of the Volk (expressed in the chorale-like textures of many of the choruses with religious topoi) and the piety of Elsa (most apparent in the sentimental devotional music at the beginning of Act II Scene iv). In Tannh¨auser, the use of such elements serves a similar but more overt function. Contemporaries recognized the relation between Wagner’s use of adjacent root progressions and Renaissance music; Habert, for instance, connected the final bars of Act III Scene i (where Wolfram begins to play the harp) with the opening chords of Palestrina’s ‘Stabat mater’. The first use of chains of root-position chords occurs slightly earlier in this scene, at the conclusion of Elisabeth’s prayer, following her final plea that the Virgin intercede for the forgiveness of Tannh¨auser’s sin (bars  –); these chords accompany the stage direction ‘she remains for a long time in a devout reverie’ (sie verbleibt eine Zeitlang wie in and¨achtiger Entr¨ucktheit). Similar progressions recur after Elisabeth’s Assumption (bars –) and it is only here that the chains of roots with consecutive basses that Habert describes can be found. None of these references constitutes an exact quotation of the ‘Stabat mater’ chords, nor are they similar enough to have been intended to function allusively; the nearest approximations occur in the opening bars of Scene ii, bars – (d–C–B) and – (D–c–b). The localized role that these progressions play in Tannh¨auser delineates their musico-dramatic function more precisely than in Lohengrin. Here, they serve solely to accompany Elisabeth’s death, to chart her development from pious maiden to saint. Again, it is the association of Palestrina’s language with the Christian sublime that is evoked. In Liszt’s Die Legende von der Heiligen Elisabeth, the use of material derived from early church music is much more prevalent, as is evident from the motivic register that Liszt included in the original publication of the work. Of the four themes derived from church music, two have clearly defined associations as a result of their localized roles: no. , a seventeenth-century German Kirchenlied, functions as an emblem of communal religious faith, whereas no. , a Hungarian hymn to St Elisabeth, symbolizes the response of Hungarian peasants to her acts of

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charity. Liszt’s use of elements of Palestrina’s language is also localized: as in Tannh¨auser, it is only in the movements surrounding Elisabeth’s death that they become significant. In no. (c), the Chorus of the Poor that precedes Elisabeth’s death, Liszt employs suspension formulas, quasimodal progressions, falsobordone, chromatic third-related roots and even false relations; here, these elements contribute towards the construction of a quasi-liturgical idiom. Only in the final bars of no. , following the Chorus of Angels that marks Elisabeth’s death, does the use of elements of Palestrina’s language function allusively. This is particularly apparent in a striking truncated reference to the ‘Stabat mater’ chords (the first two chords are quoted in their original key at bars –, and the final bars of the movement repeat a similar progression, b–a–G). This allusion, like the weaker echoes of ‘Stabat mater’ in Tannh¨auser, seems intended to mark Elisabeth’s elevation to sainthood. While it is likely in both cases that these chords are intended to evoke the more general association of Palestrina with the Christian infinite, Liszt’s allusion serves to elevate Elisabeth to a Marian dignity (an illusion shattered by the bathos of the final movement). In Christus (completed in ) and Parsifal (completed in ), elements of Palestrina’s language play a more important part in the construction of religioso and quasi-liturgical idioms; in addition, the use of the ‘Stabat mater’ chords as associative devices is more significant than in Tannh¨auser and Elisabeth. The task of identifying and interpreting the relation between Palestrina’s language and Parsifal is nevertheless difficult, not least because the importance of this relation has often been exaggerated. In reality, it may seem that the affinity between Parsifal and Palestrina amounts to little more than the use of chains of diatonic roots as constituents of a generalized mode of religious expression, since few passages in the drama bear a clearer resemblance to Romantic perceptions of Palestrina’s language. There are two exceptions to this, however, both of which suggest that the use of Palestrinian elements also functions associatively. The clearest example of the use of Palestrinian elements in Parsifal occurs in the communion scene in Act I Scene ii, in particular the unaccompanied passage for boys’ choir (‘Der Glaube lebt, die Taube schwebt’), sung from the dome of the Hall of the Grail. This passage has frequently been linked to old Italian church music; in , Hohenemser noted that it ‘definitely has something of the style of Palestrina in its triadic progressions and generally in its manner of harmonization’. In interpreting this passage, it is important not to exaggerate the extent of what

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

he describes as Wagner’s ‘dependence’ (Anlehnung) on Palestrina: nevertheless, its a cappella idiom, diatonicism, root progressions and imitative writing reflect nineteenth-century perceptions of Palestrina’s language. It is however the melismatic writing present in this passage that signals its allusive function. Extended vocal melismas are rare in Wagner’s later works, and this rarity makes their occurrence both musically and dramatically significant (the clearest example of this is Beckmesser’s trial song in Die Meistersinger). Here the use of such word-setting – the only extended melismatic writing in the entire opera – highlights the referential character of this passage: it serves, albeit fleetingly, to imbue the ritual with the authenticity and conviction associated with Palestrina, accentuating the absence of these qualities from Amfortas’s own performance of his sacramental duties. Before exploring the further implications of treating this passage – or even the leitmotif from which it is derived – as allusive, the role of allusions to Palestrina’s ‘Stabat mater’ must be discussed. The linking of different passages of Parsifal to the opening chords of ‘Stabat mater’ is, again, not unprecedented, and some of the posited connections have been far from convincing. Hans Redlich argues that a direct connection exists between the ‘Stabat mater’ chords and the so-called Toren-Motiv (‘Pure Fool’ motif ), while Karl Gustav Fellerer links these chords with the Karfreitagszauber (Good Friday magic) of Act III Scene i. Of the three more plausible echoes of this progression identified by Elmar Seidel, the second two were noted by Karl Weinmann in  (it is likely that he was not the first to do so); these echoes occur in Act III at bars  –, – and – (see Ex. .). Interpreting the significance of these allusions (they are not quotations since the initial triad is minor) may seem straightforward: Weinmann considers them to constitute an orchestral answer to Gurnemanz’s questions, while Seidel similarly considers that they provide a musical symbol for Good Friday. This interpretation is seemingly confirmed by the texts of the passages: bars  –, ‘[How different her (Kundry’s) step is from before!] Did the holy day bring about the change?’; bars –, ‘Don’t you know what holy day it is?’; bars –, ‘[Among what heathens have you dwelt, not to know] that today is the holy of holies, Good Friday?’ But while these allusions coincide with textual references to Good Friday, they do not seem to be intended to represent it; this day is after all signposted by the Karfreitagsmotiv that ensues after these chords in each case. Rather, the status of these references as variants of the Grail motif (they retain the rhythmic profile of the Grail motif while replacing its root progressions in descending thirds

Palestrina in the concert hall



Example .. Wagner, Parsifal, Act III, Scene i, bars –

with adjacent roots) suggests other associations. This is confirmed in a fourth reference to the ‘Stabat mater’ chords in this scene that neither Weinmann nor Seidel mentions. At bars – the ‘Stabat mater’ chords (this time f–E–D), this time in augmentation, succeed a presentation of the Grail motif itself (bars  –), with the text ‘[I sense he still has a great work to perform today,] to preside over a sacred service’. While the



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Grail motif is here connected with Good Friday, the related ‘Palestrina motif ’ is linked to the sacred service over which Parsifal has to preside. In this way, the Palestrina motif is twice associated not only with Good Friday, but specifically with Catholic ritual: a ‘sacred service’ (Amt) is also a mass, and the ‘holy of holies’ (allerheiligste) mentioned in the text at the third occurrence of the chords is ineluctably associated with the Blessed Sacrament (Allerheiligste). In assigning these chords an ambiguous double association – and in arguing that the Faith motif, at its kairos in the communion scene, represents an allusion to Palestrina’s language – it is not my intention to contribute towards a Catholic or even Christian interpretation of Parsifal. Recognizing that these references have Catholic associations does nothing to lessen the complexities of the work as a whole. The musical references to Palestrina and textual references to Catholic ritual are only one ingredient in the synthesis of a multiplicity of mythologies (in Schlegel’s sense), and cannot be represented as an indication of the mythical basis of the work in its totality. Although the ideational basis of Christus is less complex than that of Parsifal, elements of Palestrina’s language serve a more diverse range of functions. On one level, as in Parsifal, they contribute to the construction of a religioso idiom: Cornelia Knotik argues – in terms that echo Hanslick – that the use of chant and Palestrinian homophony provided a means to guarantee a religious tone. This aspect is most apparent in the portions of the work that Liszt considered capable of being performed independently as part of the liturgy: no.  ‘Stabat mater speciosa’, no.  ‘Die Seligkeiten’, no.  ‘Pater noster’ and no.  ‘O Filii et Filiae’. In these movements, the limited use of Renaissance materials and techniques (including the evocation of falsobordone in no. ) serves merely to help to create a quasi-liturgical aura. In the movements for choir and orchestra, however, elements of Palestrina’s language acquire a more complex, associative role. The mixolydian harmonies and root-position chords in the first part of no.  (bars –), for example, do not merely reflect the status of Palestrina’s language as the paradigm of church music. Rather, they depict a chorus of angelic voices announcing the birth of Christ: here the association of Palestrina’s language with the language of the saints is unambiguously evoked, an association also elicited by the root progressions at the end of the movement. Similarly, the echoes of the ‘Stabat mater’ chords that occur throughout the work (see, for example, no.  bars – and no.  bars –, –) appear to function allusively.

Palestrina in the concert hall



The most significant reference to these chords is the quotation and continuation of this progression at the conclusion of no.  ‘Stabat mater dolorosa’. Before discussing the associative function of this reference, it is useful to explore the allusions to these chords elsewhere in Liszt’s output. In the Messe f¨ur M¨annerchor, as in the tenth movement of Christus, these chords accompany textual references to Christ as king of heaven, and appear to function as a musical symbol of the divine. In ‘Cantantibus organis’, however, the allusion to these chords – in an antiphon for St Cecilia – elevates the ‘Stabat mater’ as an emblem of the moral and spiritual power of music itself (a similar association is evoked by the progression of third-related and adjacent roots at the conclusion of the symphonic poem Orpheus). The reference most similar to that in Liszt’s ‘Stabat mater dolorosa’ is the allusion to and continuation of this progression at the conclusion of the ‘Dante’ Symphony (completed in ). Although Liszt heeded Wagner’s advice to abandon plans to represent paradise in a third instrumental movement, the Magnificat appended to the second movement, ‘Purgatorio’, seems to fulfil the function of representing Dante’s ‘Paradiso’. Liszt’s employment of the ‘Stabat mater’ progression as part of this evocation of paradise was described by him in a letter to Julius Sch¨affer: ‘At the close of my Dante Symphony I was tempted to bring in the liturgical intonations of the Magnificat. Perhaps the whole-tone scale of triads [Dreiklangs-Scala in großen T¨onen] there will also interest you, which (to my knowledge, at least) has not been used in its entire range hitherto.’ Here Liszt represents his use of these nonfunctional chords as wholly innovative, without mentioning Palestrina. Their link to the ‘Stabat mater’ is clear however, especially since the disposition of the voices in the initial three chords of the harmonium part is identical to that in Palestrina’s work. Liszt’s continuation of the ‘Stabat mater’ progression can be viewed as an act of remodelling akin to that presented in Wagner’s arrangement of this work: an attempt to update this progression in the light of modern expressive parameters, in order to produce the same effect on modern listeners that Palestrina’s bold progression must have had on his contemporaries. Before accepting this explanation, the analogous use of the chords at the conclusion of Liszt’s ‘Stabat mater dolorosa’ must be considered (Ex. .). Here the chords occur at the last line of the hymn: ‘[Quando corpus morietur, fac ut animae donetur,] paradisi gloria’ (‘[ When my body dies, let my soul be granted] the glory of paradise’). The ‘Stabat mater’ chords occur first at their original pitch (A–G–F), and then in a transposed version (D–C–B). While the references here are



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

Example .. Liszt, ‘Stabat mater dolorosa’, Christus, no. , bars  –

undoubtedly allusive, their manner of presentation and the transformation that it involves suggest an ambivalence; Seidel comments that while the use of this progression is undoubtedly an act of homage, Liszt seems to wish both to emphasize and to conceal the quotation. Seidel does not speculate on the cause of this ambivalence, but the nature of this reference, if considered in combination with that in the ‘Dante’ Symphony,

Palestrina in the concert hall



Example .. (cont.)

becomes clear. In the symphony Liszt is able to evoke the music of paradise through the ‘Stabat mater’ with few qualms. But at the end of ‘Stabat mater dolorosa’ – his greatest movement for choir and orchestra, in what he regarded as his most significant work – to depend on the work of an earlier composer at the peroration of the movement seems



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

like an admission of defeat. But Liszt has no choice: as has become clear, the use of Palestrina’s language is not merely one way of evoking a naiv vision of the infinite, but the sole means for the modern composer to attempt to convey such a conception. Here, as in much of the liturgical music discussed earlier, the composer is torn between using a historical language to represent the Christian infinite, and using his own language which is inadequate to this task. His solution is to speak with Palestrina; only in this way can a language of Christian spirituality be combined with modern expression.



Interpreting the secondary discourse of nineteenth-century music

Up to this point, I have taken a largely pragmatic approach in discussing the relationships between individual works and Palestrina’s language. This approach does not reflect a belief in the possibility of neutral, objective interpretation, but rather the need to explore the individual configurations of such relationships without the drawback of an a priori theoretical framework: I have sought to describe these relationships without either exaggerating their significance for the pieces in question, or misrepresenting their nature in order to satisfy preconceived views. A variety of different critical concepts can now be applied as a means of enhancing our understanding of them. It is necessary, however, for two provisos to be taken into account. First, it is clear that the nature of the engagement of nineteenth-century German composers with Palestrina is unique to this period: the aesthetic matrices that sustained this engagement are very different from those operative in other periods and contexts. To explore these relationships through the norms of analytical aesthetics, or from the viewpoint of critical conceptions formulated around entirely different repertories, may lead to a distortion of what has already been established: any attempt to understand the relation between nineteenth-century composition and the music of the distant past must therefore be historically grounded. Second, and by extension, the complex nature of the nineteenth-century Palestrina – a construct consisting of the essence and appearance of his works, mediated through the multifarious conceptions of the Palestrina-Stil – must therefore be taken into account in interpreting these relationships. With these provisos in mind, the following discussion approaches the compositional products of the Palestrina revival in terms of imitation and historicism, irony and critique, and translation. The term imitation is often encountered in nineteenth-century discussions of these compositions and can also be found in modern musicological appraisals of them. It does not, however, provide a helpful means 



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

of approaching this music, either as a description of the relationships seen in the majority of the pieces examined or as an explanation of the intentions of their composers. In particular, the common musicological use of this term in relation to the activities of the ACV has been seen to oversimplify the issues involved. Moreover, the status of imitation as a normative category limits its pertinence, even in cases where it seems appropriate as a description of the relation between a particular piece and Palestrina’s language. As a universally applicable concept – which, for the Romantics, served as a description of modern responses both to works from the immediate past and to the masterpieces of classical antiquity – it is too amorphous to be of use: it does not distinguish the most significant aspect of the relationships under discussion, the ‘warping’ of history that they represent. Finally, imitation, as a historical category associated with Winckelmann’s monumental classicism, must be rejected as an explanation of intention. It has been seen that for most nineteenth-century musicians (the most notable exception being Proske), the continuation of Winckelmannian concepts of technical imitation was not compatible with the production of artworks: art and the imitation of earlier styles and techniques were mutually exclusive. For the majority of composers, the cultivation of Palestrina’s language was not legitimized by this outmoded aesthetic criterion, and imitation is not appropriate as a description of intention. In contrast to imitation, the concept of historicism provides a means of exploring the warping of history embodied by these pieces. Earlier, I have used the phrase ‘compositional historicism’ to encompass the totality of ways in which nineteenth-century pieces engage with the music of the distant past (excluding localized allusion). But the pejorative sense in which the term is still often used serves to limit its applicability, and – more importantly – it proves inadequate as a means of delineating the types of relationship involved. It would be overly restrictive to consider historicism to be synonymous with the literal replication of earlier styles; even so, the term and the constellation of issues and tensions that it signifies may seem to imply the preponderance of a historical idiom. While nineteenth-century compositions that are modelled on works by Palestrina or use an idiom abstracted from them may be characterized as historicist, such a characterization must take account of the degree to which the newer work utilizes elements of the older work or language. Only a small minority of these compositions fit in with Dahlhaus’s notion that ‘such musical experience moves in a twilight zone between the dead past and the denied present’, or with Wiora’s view that historicism

Interpreting the secondary discourse of nineteenth-century music



involves the imitation of the old outweighing the invention of the new. Rather, the compositional engagement with Palestrina represents a continuum, ranging from works in which the older element plays a restricted role, to ‘pure’ historicism, ‘copies and musical cul-de-sacs’. Few of the compositions that have been discussed exhibit such ‘pure’ historicism, either because the composer did not intend to replicate Palestrina’s language or, less often, because his intention to produce a literal copy was frustrated by an inadequate knowledge of it. Most of the works discussed present a mixture of musical styles, in which Renaissance elements are juxtaposed with nineteenth-century idioms. This dual nature is emphasized in some German discussions of historicism, in the idea of eclecticism. But the very duality of these works may seem to render the term historicism inadequate, since by its nature it downplays the modern aspects of a piece. What is important in this eclectic repertory is its difference from its models, not just its points of similarity: a critical concept is needed that emphasizes the dialogue between old and new present in such pieces. Such a concept may seem to be provided by Romantic irony and modern critical ideas that are related to and indirectly derived from it. The freedom of the Romantic ironist to range over artistic materials from different periods and places, and to incorporate a variety of historical materials and stances within his discourse, may seem to provide a key to interpreting those products of the Palestrina revival in which historical and modern musical languages are juxtaposed or combined. In assessing the relevance of irony as a critical perspective, it must be established whether the dialogic compositions of the Palestrina revival evince the combination of spontaneity and reflection, critique and selfcritique, that characterizes ironic literature. It should not be ignored, however, that the reflection and caprice of the Romantic ironist are very distant from the strategies of legitimization deployed by the composers of the Palestrina revival. In the writings of Mendelssohn and Witt, irony – while not mentioned by name – represents an abhorrent deviation from (Hegelian) aesthetic norms. Mendelssohn’s insistence that his church compositions were the products of sincerity and conviction, and his assertion that they were spontaneous rather than reflective creations, have been seen to represent not only a denial of the intent to imitate but an attempt to distance his activities from the irony of the early Romantics. Similarly, Witt’s demand that a composer’s style be the product of his conviction and world-view, being prompted solely by his feelings rather than through the conscious replication of Palestrina, cannot be



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

concomitant with Friedrich Schlegel’s assertion that the artwork be the product of both inspiration and reflection. But while Mendelssohn, Witt, and other composers whose works and views have been examined represented their intentions as diametrically opposed to the reflection of the Romantic ironists, this does not nullify the value of irony as a critical tool; rather – since these works undeniably embody reflection as well as spontaneity – irony may provide a means of coming closer to their covert aesthetic basis. Schlegel’s idea that the literal imitation of ancient art is impossible – since authors inevitably include modern elements and as a consequence produce parodies – and his conception of the ironic artwork as an act of criticism of an earlier work, may provide a means of understanding the dialogic nature of the products of the Palestrina revival. In particular, Schlegel’s notion that portions of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister constitute a critical interpretation of Hamlet, serving to supplement and rejuvenate the earlier work, seems to provide a useful means of approaching the analogous processes at work in re-creations of Palestrina’s language. In addition, the abrupt stylistic shifts that have been noted in the music of Witt, Koenen, Bruckner and Liszt, can be linked – provisionally at least – to the more disjointed ironic juxtapositions produced by Heine’s use of the Stimmungsbrechung, the sharp parodic twist that undermines the prevailing mood and style of a neomedieval Volkslied, and in doing so asserts the presence of the spirit of modernity within a poem. Analogous ideas from modern literary theory may also provide a fruitful means of interpreting the dialogism present in the compositions of the Palestrina revival. The notion of the artwork functioning as a critique of an earlier text is, for instance, an important part of Linda Hutcheon’s consideration of linguistic multiplicity in postmodern art. For Hutcheon, the postmodern artist’s engagement with earlier art represents a stylistic confrontation, in which this material is submitted to critical reassessment, ‘a modern recoding which establishes difference at the heart of similarity’. As with Romantic irony, the emphasis that Hutcheon places on difference provides a useful corrective to the emphasis on similarity present in both imitation and historicism. But to transfer these or similar ideas to nineteenth-century works that are related to historical musical languages is not unproblematic. The dangers of this approach are apparent in a recent discussion of St Paul by Peter Mercer-Taylor, who argues that Mendelssohn’s intent was not merely to appropriate earlier materials, but to make the act of appropriation the ‘subject matter’ of the work. Quoting the literary theorist Patricia Waugh, he asserts that

Interpreting the secondary discourse of nineteenth-century music



Mendelssohn’s purpose was ‘simultaneously to create a fiction and to make a statement about the creation of that fiction. The two processes are held together in a formal tension which breaks down the distinction between “creation” and “criticism” and merges them into the concepts of “interpretation” and “deconstruction”’. The notion that St Paul combines both critical reflection on earlier musical material and self-critique closely resembles Romantic conceptions of irony. As with irony, the idea that either Mendelssohn or the composers of the Palestrina revival sought to create religious works that critique their own premisses is questionable. The problem with these concepts is not their dissonant relation to the avowed intentions of the composers, but that they exaggerate the stylistic tensions within the works themselves. The question whether critique, either as a Romantic or (post)modern conception, can be accepted as a valid critical tool for interpreting the relationships between nineteenth-century works and earlier church music must be resolved by considering the nature of this dialogism. Heine’s use of the Stimmungsbrechung, while an extreme form of Romantic irony, highlights the problems involved in transferring it as a broader concept to the Palestrina revival, problems that increase in appropriating analogous modern critical ideas. While Heine’s Stimmungsbrechung and the stylistic shifts present in the dialogic compositions of the Palestrina revival are comparable in effect, they do not seem similar in function. These shifts of register are in both cases revelations of the presence of modernity, and serve to highlight the reflective character of the works concerned: in both cases the possibility of naiv composition in a reflective age is tested empirically. But the dialogism of the works of the Palestrina revival provides a different response to this problem than that given by Heine’s abrupt parodic twists or the linguistic confrontations of postmodern art. Although Heine’s poetry and the dialogic products of the Palestrina revival evince the combination of spontaneity and reflection characteristic of irony, and both deny the possibility of resurrecting the naiv art of earlier periods solely through repetition, the assertion of modernity within the compositions of the Palestrina revival does not constitute critique or self-critique. Heine’s irony not only undermines the external form of the medieval Volkslied, by violently juxtaposing it with modern stylistic elements, but also subverts the spiritual content of it, emphasizing that for the reflective modern artist, such naiv world-views are no longer capable of recovery. In contrast, the music of the Palestrina revival constitutes the resistance of self-critique and an attempt at such a recovery. The dialogic compositions of the Palestrina revival seek to assert the continued possibility of



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

naiv composition, through re-expressing Palestrina’s spiritual content via elements of his language and interweaving these elements with components of modern musical syntax. While such pieces constitute reflective essays on the problem of church music, they seek to deny their own reflectivity. Such denial cannot be accommodated within the self-awareness of irony, and a concept must be found that emphasizes the coexistence of languages without the presence of critique or self-critique. The dialogic compositions of the Palestrina revival are clearly ‘music about music’ in some sense, if not in the sense of critique. They do not represent a commentary on Palestrina’s form, but reinterpret this form as a means of retrieving and re-expressing its spiritual content. A comparable process, clearly differentiated from critique, is described in a fragment that appeared in both Friedrich Schlegel’s ‘Athen¨aum Fragmente’ and Novalis’s ‘Vermischte Bemerkungen’: ‘I can only show that I have understood an author if I can act in his spirit, if I can translate and change him in a variety of ways without diminishing his individuality.’ For Schlegel, all such translation involves ‘transplantation or metamorphosis or both. . . . Every real translation must be rejuvenation’. Exploring the music of the Palestrina revival in terms of translation – of how nineteenthcentury composers transplanted and rejuvenated Palestrina’s language – emphasizes the dialogic nature of these works and allows us to approach them in a more sophisticated and sympathetic way than the monologic conceptions of imitation and historicism. In addition to providing a means of interpreting the interaction of languages present in these works, translation theories offer a means of exploring the attempted reclamation of Palestrina’s spiritual content that they enact. The following discussion – while centred around the ideas of Schleiermacher and the Romantic circle – is not restricted to theories from the Romantic tradition, but instead represents a pragmatic translation of a variety of useful approaches from literary and linguistic theory, and from the burgeoning discipline of translation studies. The meaning of translation in a musical context can be clarified through a recent description of the translating process by Eve Tavor Bannet; she describes translation as ‘that mixture of chance and necessity by which the translator finds a means of transmitting the signs s/he has received from an other in such a way that the other can be heard afresh at her/his date’. Central to translation is therefore the idea of recovery: the recovery of meanings or truths from a text or body of texts and the subsequent re-expression of this essential content in a new text. The relevance of such an idea to music is immediately obvious.

Interpreting the secondary discourse of nineteenth-century music



A performance of a piece of notated music can be seen as an act of translation, an interpretation and transmission of signs so that they can be ‘heard afresh’. As has been seen, the validity of nineteenth-century performances of Palestrina’s music was dependent for Witt on such an act of translation; while Palestrina’s essential content remained unchanged in performance, the external form of the work is modified since ‘our spirit penetrates it and lets our singers perform it with our accents and our manner of expression’. Not only nineteenth-century performances of Palestrina, but also works that in some way use his language resemble translations; attempts to recover and adapt the meanings, the spiritual content, of his works for the modern age. In addition, translation offers a means of exploring how composers came to terms with the new awareness of the multiplicity of earlier musical styles and of the foreign and contingent nature ascribed to them by historicism. Translation represents an attempt to create unity from plurality, to ‘abolish multiplicity and to bring different world-pictures back into perfect congruence’: this perspective is relevant not only to early Romantic visions of a universal literature (Universalpoesie) but to the attempts of contemporary composers to reconcile the past with the present. In addition, the desire to appropriate Palestrina’s language resembles the cultural imperialism of contemporary German translation theorists (for example, A. W. Schlegel and Wilhelm von Humboldt) for whom the verbs u¨ bersetzen (to translate) and verdeutschen (to ‘Germanize’) were interchangeable. The attitudes of the composers of the Palestrina revival towards Renaissance works could be regarded as mirroring the nineteenth-century view of translation as a master/servant relationship, in which the translator attempts to improve and civilize his source texts. Before developing these broader interpretive perspectives, the primary relevance of translation to the Palestrina revival must be discussed: its use as a method of approaching the dialogism, the combinations of languages present in these works. A translation is not simply the product, the end result, of the complex interaction of languages but is rather the embodiment of it, a conglomerate of semantic content and forms derived from two different linguistic systems. Two different models have recently been applied in translation theory for dealing with the combination of voices, the authorial and the translating, that a translation embodies. In the first, the interaction of texts and languages results in interpretive ‘undecidability’; when reading (or hearing) a translating text, ‘one cannot always be sure just whose voice, translator or source writer, one is hearing at any given moment’. Such an approach views a



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

translation as a series of fluctuations between translator dominance and original author dominance, the importance of each voice continuously changing. The second model considers a translation to be a polyphonic text combining two acts of communication, author–text–receiver and translator–text–receiver. Here the contributions of author and translator are not confused but form two separate strands or envelopes of communication, both presented simultaneously. The parallels between the linguistic interaction described in these models and the dialogic products of the Palestrina revival can be seen by returning to Bruckner’s ‘Tota pulchra es’. This motet can be compared with a translating text, in which the authorial and translating voices – those of Palestrina and Bruckner – alternate in dominance. The interplay of these voices can be seen at a localized level. While the opening sixteen bars can be regarded as exemplifying original author dominance, Bruckner’s voice is asserted in the truncation of the ‘Stabat mater’ reference, and in the static harmonies and ensuing sequential patterns in bars –. A similar shift from original author dominance to translator dominance is exemplified in bars  –, in the movement away from phrygian harmonies culminating in a perfect cadence in D
. Alternatively (or additionally), following the second model outlined above, the motet could be viewed in terms of the continuous presentation of both languages, since syntactic elements of both are present throughout. The combination of restrictive dissonance treatment and predominantly rootposition harmonies in ‘Tota pulchra es’ could be viewed as a continuous signalling of the presence of the original author ‘envelope’, while again the translator’s continual presence is asserted in the periodic and tonal structures of the work. The limitations of this provisional comparison, and the broader problems involved in viewing the interaction of musical styles in terms of translation, are already becoming evident. Before exploring these problems (which in themselves shed light on the nature of the stylistic pluralism in the music of the Palestrina revival), it is necessary to refine these models of linguistic interaction: in particular, translation provides a means of enhancing our understanding of the difference in degrees of similarity of nineteenth-century representations of Palestrina’s language. Translation theorists have tackled such problems of similarity, and since the s have tended to divide translations into three broad types: literal (wordfor-word) translation, free translation (in Dryden’s words, ‘translation with latitude, where the author is kept in view by the translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense’),

Interpreting the secondary discourse of nineteenth-century music



and a rogue third category, re-creation (often confusingly labelled, as with Dryden, ‘imitation’, ‘where the translator . . . assumes the liberty, not only to vary from the words and sense, but to forsake them both as he sees occasion; and taking only some general hints from the original, to run division on the groundwork, as he pleases’). A similar conceptual scheme is outlined in Schleiermacher’s speech ‘Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des Uebersezens’ (), which, more than any other German Romantic discussion of translation, addresses the problems provoked by the ways in which ‘a language can absorb products of another language that has been dead for many centuries’. Like Dryden, Schleiermacher proposes a scheme that encompasses literal and freer translation, and also asserts the existence of looser re-creations that belong outside the concept. For the genuine translator, two methods are possible: Either the translator leaves the author in peace as much as possible and moves the reader towards him, or he leaves the reader in peace as much as possible and moves the author towards him. Both methods are so completely different from one another that it is necessary that one or the other be followed as strictly as possible, since an extremely unreliable result would necessarily be produced by any mixing.

Importantly, in Schleiermacher’s scheme translation occupies a conceptual space midway between, on the one hand, paraphrase, copying (Nachbildung), or free imitation in the target language and, on the other hand, creative expression and communication in the source language. The paraphrast or free imitator attempts to provide a reflection of a foreign work without its language being implicated within his production; his aim is not to bring together the author and reader, but ‘merely to give the latter a similar impression to that received from the original in its own language by its contemporaries’. Such a goal is illusory: paraphrases ‘completely relinquish the impression made by the original, since the living speech has been killed and is irretrievable’. At the opposite end of Schleiermacher’s continuum of linguistic interaction from monolingual communication in the target language is another form of monolingualism: comprehension and communication in the source language. He notes that some authors become immersed in a foreign language to the extent that their native tongue becomes alien to them, with the result that in comprehending works in this language ‘there is no longer a trace of the influence of their mother tongue’. But those who are able to comprehend a source language in such a manner do not offer a model for the process of translation, and original works written in a language



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

which is not that to which the author was born rarely rise above pastiche: ‘only seldom does something originate in this way that has genuine value aside from its mimic accuracy . . . [if ] contrary to nature and cus¨ aufer] from his mother tom, someone formally becomes a deserter [Uberl¨  tongue and offers himself to another’. True translation lies between these two extremes; as a mode of communication and linguistic interaction it represents neither monolingual paraphrase in the target language, nor monolingual expression in a foreign language, but rather – if not bilingualism – at least a mode in which formal elements from the source language are sedimented in the translating text. Just as paraphrase in the target language and expression in the source language represent two extremes, translation can incline towards either the one or the other. Freer translation – closest to paraphrase on Schleiermacher’s continuum – brings the work effortlessly towards the reader, striving entirely to prevent the form of the source language insinuating itself into the target language. Schleiermacher rejects this approach. Translation requires not merely the transference of the textual content, but also of the higher meaning of a work, ‘the musical element of language’; if this is not present in translations then the highest magic in the originals is lost. Freer translation proves inadequate as a means of re-expressing this higher meaning since this cannot be detached from its form of expression and represented afresh in a new language: Could anyone who is convinced that thought and expression are essentially and inwardly completely the same, and the entire art of all understanding of speech and therefore also of translation is based on this conviction . . . presume to break speech down to its innermost element in order to eliminate from it the constituent of language, and make, through a new chemical process as it were, that innermost element combine with the essence and power of another language?

Schleiermacher’s answer is a resounding no: the freer translation inevitably distorts the original at the most fundamental levels of its being, and for a translator to claim that he had rendered a book ‘just as the author would have written it if he had written it in German’ would amount to the same as providing the reader with ‘a portrait of a man just as he would have looked if his mother had conceived him with a different father’. Rather, in translating a work from the target language to the source language, the translator must transfer elements of the form of the original as well as the textual content. In addition to re-expressing this content and the musical element of the source language, translators must

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also transfer the ‘sense of the strange’ (Gef¨uhl des fremden) that they feel upon reading the work in its original language, a feeling of estrangement that is present regardless of how fluently they read this language. The task of bending the target language towards ‘a resemblance of the foreign’ (einer fremden Aehnlichkeit) is probably the hardest task for the translator: Who would not prefer to allow his mother tongue to appear everywhere in the most popular and appropriate beauty of which each genre is capable? Who would not prefer to conceive children in whom the father’s line is reflected purely, rather than half-breeds [Blendlinge]? Who would readily be published when appearing in less fluent and graceful movements than he is capable of, from time to time seeming at the very least abrupt and stiff, in order to be as objectionable to the reader as is necessary so that he does not become unaware of the nature of the thing? Who would readily abandon himself to attempting to keep as close to the foreign language as his own permits, so that people reproach him – like parents who hand their children over to circus performers [Kunstspringern] – for introducing his mother tongue to foreign and unnatural contortions instead of skilfully exercising it in its native gymnastics [heimischen Turnkunst]! . . . These are the renunciations [Entsagungen] which every translator must necessarily undertake, these are the perils to which he exposes himself, if he does not observe the finest line in striving to keep the tone of the language foreign.

Schleiermacher places the translator in a double bind; he must convey foreignness in his translation, making his work in the target language reflect the form and musical element of the source language, but must draw a line between this and the production of linguistic Blendlinge (halfbreeds, bastards, hybrids, hermaphrodites). The result of this dilemma is that translation requires a separate sub-language – a linguistic field [Sprachgebiet]–in which transplantations and innovations are legitimate which could not be condoned in an original work. It is clear that Schleiermacher’s conception of linguistic orientation and interaction (however problematic as a theory of literary translation) offers much that is of relevance to stylistic pluralism in music. In addition, Schleiermacher’s speech provides a means of situating texts which fall outside the concept of translation proper, resulting in a continuum: paraphrase/free imitation in the target language (monolingual), freer translation (monolingual), ‘translationese’ (bilingual), and foreign creation in the source language (monolingual). Such a continuum parallels the relation between the dialogic and monologic products of the Palestrina revival (pieces that emulate the Palestrina ideal solely through the use of modern musical syntax, or which replicate Palestrina’s language to such

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

an extent as to be monologic in the source language). This progression can be refined by mapping onto it the two modern models of linguistic interaction discussed earlier; in this way the different categories of translation can also represent the alternations in linguistic dominance within a single text (and within its individual parameters). The following scheme accounts for all attempts to meet the Palestrina ideal, whether dialogic or monologic: (i) modern language works or moments (monolingual) (ii) suppression, where elements of contemporary syntax are suppressed in order to meet with the ideal that the earlier language represents, but which includes no formal elements of the earlier language (monolingual) (iii) suppressive translation, where in addition to the suppression of some modern elements, constituents of the earlier language are included, but insufficient to suggest re-creative translation (bilingual) (iv) re-creative translation, where both languages are bound together forming two separate and simultaneous strands of communication of varying dominance (bilingual) (v) more literal translation, where the earlier linguistic strand predominates (bilingual) (vi) the literal replication of Palestrina’s language (monolingual). Approaching these compositions from the perspective of translation does not merely offer a descriptive vocabulary, but a way of exploring the complex linguistic interactions present within them. Crucially, it provides a key to interpreting the fluctuations in stylistic orientation present in most of the pieces discussed, and also a means of understanding the shifts of register that earlier proved similar, though less drastic stylistically, to Heine’s Stimmungsbrechung. In the majority of the dialogic products of the Palestrina revival, fluctuations of style generally resemble moves to another consecutive stage on the continuum presented above: a move from re-creative translation to suppressive translation in, say, Bruckner’s ‘Tota pulchra es’, or a move from more literal translation to the monolingual replication of Palestrina’s language in the case of a piece by Grell or Haller (this last category is of course no theoretical conceit, but is exemplified by Haller’s completion of Palestrina’s ‘Salve Regina’). The puzzling, abrupt stylistic shifts in other works by Bruckner and in the church music of Witt, Koenen and Liszt are different in nature. While a fluctuation in linguistic orientation constitutes a consecutive move along the continuum, and while Heine’s Stimmungsbrechung signifies a leap from replication to a modern stylistic moment, these shifts of register in general suggest

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

a change of orientation midway between the two: a ‘leap-frogging’ shift that misses out a link in the chain. This is evident from Witt’s ‘Salvos fac nos, Domine’ (Ex. .), which exemplifies the nature of the ‘Wittian style’ as a mode of translation. Here the linguistic shift is from the re-creative translation of the bilingual ‘Wittian style’ to monolingual translation in the target language. While in bars –, quasi-modal progressions and freer rhythms suggest linguistic parity, the abrupt shift in bar  to tonal harmony, repetitive rhythms and harmonic sequences asserts the dominance of the translator’s language (while remaining in dialogue with the Palestrina ideal through the suppression of undesirable elements of modern syntax). These shifts are symptomatic of Witt’s ambition to recast Palestrina’s style in a form more accessible to modern listeners; they parallel what Schleiermacher considered to be the result of trying to move the author towards the reader: ‘It is evident therefore that if this formula is followed completely in this field it will lead to either pure [free] imitation or to a still more strikingly repugnant and bewildering mixture of translation and free imitation, in which the reader is bounced back and forth like a ball between his own and a foreign world, between the invention and wit of the author and that of the translator.’ These shifts of register do not therefore constitute an intentional dualistic confrontation of the old and new, as is the case with Heine’s Stimmungsbrechung; rather they represent merely the most visible signs of a more pervasive bilingualism. Before pursuing this comparison further, it is necessary to confront the major stumbling block to viewing these works as musical translations. The fact that the compositions of the Palestrina revival are in general responses not to individual Renaissance works but to groups of works (or to a picture abstracted from this repertory as a totality) distances them from literary translation, where the concept usually refers to a relation between two texts. Certainly, only a small minority of these pieces can be regarded as musical translations: those that engage with a specific old Italian work, seeking to recover and adapt its content and form in order that it may function more successfully within the target culture. In the case of such pieces, a work by Palestrina (or by one of his contemporaries) provides not merely a limited point of reference, but is rather the premiss for its composition and a constant background within the finished work. The clearest examples of this are Grell’s opp.  and , composed in order to supplement and replace movements from the Missa Papae Marcelli in a liturgical performance, and Naumann’s Psalm  (a re-creative translation of Allegri’s Miserere). This perspective

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

is also relevant to nineteenth-century adaptations and arrangements of Renaissance works. Bunsen’s adaptation of the Improperia, for instance, represents an attempt to make it function in the target culture in a manner similar to how it functioned in its original context. The resulting conglomerate of Catholic Italian and Protestant German material, if considered from the perspective of Schleiermacher, inclines more closely towards free transposition than to translation (in replacing the Greek responses at the centre of the original with a Lutheran chorale, Bunsen mitigates the alienation effect that would have been felt by its original receivers). If the majority of the dialogic products of the Palestrina revival cannot be described as musical translations, it is because composers sought to recover the generic meanings of Palestrina rather than the content of particular works. Even so, translation theories offer a useful means of exploring this process. For nineteenth-century composers, the chief motivation for engaging with Palestrina was the desire to reclaim not his forms but his spiritual content. The wide variety of theories as to how this might be achieved is paralleled in Romantic translation theory, by a divergence in opinions as to whether the content of a work in one language can fully be expressed through the form of another. For Wilhelm von Humboldt, all contents are expressible in every language: ‘everything – the most lofty and the most earthbound, the strongest and most delicate – can be expressed in every language, even in the dialects of very primitive peoples. It is merely that these notes slumber, just as in an unplayed instrument, until the nation understands how to coax them out.’ For Humboldt, a content and the expression adequate to that content exist, dormant, as pure possibility in a language until the need to employ them acts as a catalyst for their awakening. Such a position is strikingly similar to those advocated by Hoffmann and Witt. For Hoffmann, as has been seen, the exposure of a young composer to the products of the golden age of church music will aid the revelation of the spiritual style latent within himself; he will not adopt the language of Palestrina, but find that through a miraculous process of sublimation the language of church music within himself will be revealed to him. Similarly, the ideal of modern church composition outlined in Witt’s essay ‘Der Palestrinastyl’ is for the composer to produce works in a contemporary musical language in which, by an analogous process, ‘prevails and wafts the spirit of Palestrina’. For other translation theorists, Humboldt’s contention that the content of one language can be expressed through the form of another is

Interpreting the secondary discourse of nineteenth-century music

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unfeasible. It has been seen that for Schleiermacher, it is not possible ‘to break speech down to its innermost element in order to eliminate from it the constituent of language’, in order to re-express this element, through a ‘chemical process’, in another language. The translator must deal with the problem of expressing concepts in the source language that lack identical or even proximate equivalents in the target language by retaining the original form of the concept within his translation. Similarly, Schopenhauer notes that certain foreign words precisely capture nuances that are unavailable in other languages; as a result, anyone wishing to access these nuances in expressing their thoughts ‘will use the foreign word and ignore the barking of pedantic purists’. For the nineteenth-century composer, however, Palestrina’s language provides more than just a precise form of a concept that would otherwise have to be expressed periphrastically in the target language. Rather, it represents that which can no longer be expressed. Palestrina’s language represents a primary, naiv vision of the infinite translated into material form; the modern composer can represent the infinite only through secondary discourse, a further process of translation. No substitutes can be found for this language in modern speech; it is a concept that can no longer be represented in a purely contemporary musical language. Hoffmann’s ideal of a spiritual language being latent within the modern composer is clearly rejected by those composers whose music represents secondary discourse, since for them the suppression that he advocates, while being capable of producing music that is suitable for the church, cannot reestablish the tenuous link to the Christian infinite that translating Palestrina provides. Furthermore, to engage with Palestrina’s language – just as to translate a foreign work of literature – constitutes a gesture towards the negation of the multiplicity and disunity of languages. For nineteenth-century composers, Palestrina’s effortless and assured command of his material epitomized not merely the inspiration of genius, but represented a unique musical lingua franca: unlike modern religious composers, artists and architects, Palestrina did not have to choose an orientation from a range of earlier styles, nor was he aware of their historicity and contingency. And in idealizing the Palestrina-Stil, musicians and critics created a musical equivalent to a pre-Babelian language that transcended geographical and temporal boundaries. The idea of Babel in literature is as old as civilization itself, reinforced by the daily difficulties of interlingual communication. But Babel’s equivalent in music is a nineteenth-century development: for the first time, a wide array of historical musical languages seemed equally accessible – and equally valid. It is the heightened



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

awareness of these musical languages, a product of the rise of historicism, that produced anxiety about the validity of the native tongue (a concept that in itself was increasingly unstable in the nineteenth century). A composer who responds to such languages monolingually, through literal replication, does nothing to reduce the apprehension that their existence causes. The composer who attempts to restore literally a pure, pre-Babelian musical language, by replicating the form and taking on its spiritual content, neglects to re-create in his work the double content that he perceives in that language: its universal spiritual content and its specific historicity. Only by asserting contemporaneity within his form can he give historicity to his own product; only then can a re-creation of that language speak validly to the present. By establishing, through translation, a kinship between his language and the earlier language, the composer can assert that his own language, while not capable of expressing that which the earlier language expresses, is at least capable of coexisting with it, of being akin to it. For this reason alone, translation is an issue in music as well as literature. It may seem as if the idea of translation can have no relevance for music, simply because nineteenth-century audiences and congregations had access to the music of Palestrina in its original guise. As has become evident, the refrain ‘what are copies for when we can have the originals?’ was voiced throughout the century by critics and composers alike. But the premiss behind this complaint – the notion that Renaissance compositions were readily accessible – was unrealistic, even in the late nineteenth century. Only a small number of Palestrina’s works were available in print in the first half of the century, while the numerous editions published from the s onwards were in general comprehensible only to cognoscenti. Haberl, it will be recalled, lamented that the flood of Cecilian compositions would lead to Renaissance compositions being dismissed as superfluous. But he, alongside other editors from Proske onwards, was in part responsible for this development: as Griesbacher noted, the desire to distance these works from modern music by retaining old clefs and other baffling hieroglyphics rendered their notation as impenetrable as Sanskrit. Modern compositions that translated this language were not, however, intended simply as substitutes for the originals. A striking parallel to this can be seen in the field of literary translation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the flood of translations of Latin works into European vernaculars, despite the fact that most of the receivers of these translations were capable of reading them in the source language. Similarly, in the nineteenth century, translation from

Interpreting the secondary discourse of nineteenth-century music



German into Czech provided a means of asserting the possibilities of the Czech language, even though ‘very often the Czech language (hoch B¨ohmisch) was less understandable to the average Czech reader than German’. For Vladim´ır Macura, the function of literary and scientific translations from German into Czech was ‘not to mediate a foreign text, which was usually easily accessible in German’; rather the cultivation of the Czech language itself ‘was regarded as the aim, the acme of the national endeavour’. Similarly, the presence and continued validity of Palestrina’s music did not, in the eyes of composers at least, render the attempt to translate that language superfluous. Although the literal replication of his language was artistically redundant, to translate it provided a means of proving the capabilities of a composer’s own discourse by asserting the continued possibility of religious composition. In addition, re-creating Palestrina through modern composition generated versions of his forms that were better attuned to modern German culture, omitting and reworking those aspects of the originals that were surplus to requirements. Similarly, for early Romantic theorists translation was not primarily a means to carry over passively the cultural products of foreign lands and distant periods, but rather provided an opportunity to ‘Germanize’ them. A. W. Schlegel noted that the Romantic desire to encounter the literature of other lands, while initially characterized by an indiscriminate lust for the strange, was becoming more discriminating: it often degenerates into a ‘mania for imitation and a foolish predilection for the foreign, but it also always moves steadily towards a free appropriation of the best’. Similarly, the composers of the Palestrina revival did not passively receive and transmit the works of Palestrina, but ‘broke up the foreign form’, retaining only what they considered to be ‘the best and most profound of it’. In striving to recover Palestrina’s spiritual content, composers discarded those elements of his language that they considered inessential or undesirable. As has been seen, the homophonic ideal that dominated early Romantic representations of Palestrina’s language constituted a highly selective reading of his works (a reading that continued to be perpetuated despite the increasing knowledge of his music). By a similar process of selective interpretation, Witt contended that modern composers could surpass Palestrina by discarding the defective aspects of his form. Given the double content perceived in Palestrina’s music – universal spiritual content and historically determined content – those formal elements considered undesirable could be linked to the latter, be viewed as merely historical (the transient aspect of Palestrina’s forms), and consequently could be



Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

considered unnecessary to a restitution of his spiritual content. Again, the best example of this is the way Witt describes the aspects of Palestrina’s language that he considered inessential to represent a merely historical aspect of his works, a continuation of tendencies outlawed by the Council of Trent. For the majority of translation theorists, both Romantic and modern, the omission of formal elements considered inessential has been represented as true fidelity to the original text. In discussing the benefits and drawbacks of metrical translations of poetry, A. W. Schlegel argued that ‘literalness is a long way from fidelity: fidelity means that the same or similar impressions are produced, because these are the essence of the matter’, while for Wilhelm von Humboldt, ‘fidelity must be directed towards the true character of the original and not rely on its accidentals [Zuf¨alligkeiten]’. In a similar way, Witt dismissed as incidentals those features of Palestrina’s language that he sought to omit in his re-creations of it; in this way his filtered representation of Palestrina can be portrayed as true fidelity. In the products of the Palestrina revival that resemble dialogic translating texts, the Palestrinian linguistic ‘envelope’ generally constitutes such a partial representation of the earlier language. But fidelity to this language cannot, as has been seen, be produced by such distilled replication alone; a modern linguistic envelope is also required to make the translating text function in the target culture in the way that the source text functioned in its original context. Only through the combination of historical and modern forms (and consequently of universal spiritual content and the spirit of modernity) can true fidelity to Palestrina’s works be achieved. Even in such cases, however, the compositions of the Palestrina revival have a tentative, provisional character; like translations, they represent interim solutions to the problems that they were intended to redress. Here it is useful to compare the utopian dimension fundamental to nineteenth-century visions of new golden ages of church music and literature. In Romantic literary theory, translation represents a crucial factor in the creation of a German world literature: this goal is fundamental to Schleiermacher’s translation theory, which is predicated on the belief that the German nation and language are destined to unite all the treasures of art and scholarship into one ‘great historical whole’. Similarly, for Friedrich Schlegel, the translation and appropriation of older forms is crucial to the emergence of a universal and progressive literature, whose possibility represents the realization of the ‘absolute identity of ancient and modern in the past, present and future’. In

Interpreting the secondary discourse of nineteenth-century music

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Schlegel’s writings, translation is a category of thought encompassing not only the revival of old forms and entire genres, but even the reconstruction of lost classical works: incredibly, Schlegel envisaged a future in which the appropriation of ancient Greek culture would have progressed to the extent that it would be possible for lost texts to be reinvented, as original works that were simultaneously German and Greek. Crucially, however, both Schlegel and Schleiermacher distance their utopian visions from the present state of translation. While translation provides an intimation of a future golden age and a path towards it, the works of contemporary translators are merely initial attempts. The chasm between translation as an ideal and as a reality is particularly evident in a fragment by Novalis, in which the traditional three subdivisions of translation theory receive a visionary reworking: A translation is either grammatical, or transformatory, or mythical. Mythical translations are translations in the loftiest style. They represent the pure, perfect character of the individual artwork. They do not give us the actual artwork, but the ideal of it. I believe that no complete model of them exists yet, but one encounters clear traces of them in the spirit of many critiques and descriptions of works of art. . . . Greek mythology, in part, is such a translation of a national religion. The modern Madonna is a similar sort of myth. Grammatical translations are translations in the ordinary sense. They require very much learning, but only abilities in discourse. Genuine transformatory translations require the highest poetic spirit in order to be authentic. . . . The true translator of this type must be an artist himself and be capable of conveying the idea of the whole, in this way or that as he wills; he must be the poet’s poet and be able to speak according to both his idea and that of the poet at the same time. Not only books, but everything can be translated in these three ways.

This passage has a peculiar resonance with the ideals and music of the Palestrina revival. Novalis’s conception of mythical translation provides a picture of the nineteenth-century Palestrina in his totality: an ideal transplanted from the distant past and translated to serve modern needs. And his description of transformatory translation may seem applicable to those compositions that are the product of the ‘highest poetic spirit’ (i.e., poiesis, not mimesis), works in which the languages and ideals of Palestrina and the modern composer are united. But in pursuing this comparison, it is vital to appreciate the disjunction between present and, so to speak, future perfect translation that underpins Novalis’s scheme. As with Schlegel, Novalis’s mythical translation points to a Utopian vision of literary re-creation and inter-cultural transference, contrasting this

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Palestrina and the German Romantic imagination

ideal with the restricted, compromised and makeshift nature of modern ‘grammatical translations’. The disparity between the ideal forms of a future golden age and modern attempts to move closer to it has a clear parallel in the Palestrina revival: here the early Romantic visions of a revivified church music – of poetic transformatory translations of Palestrina – were distant from most practical attempts to realize this goal. And what Andreas Huyssen describes as the ‘chiliastic-eschatological’ dimension of Novalis’s mythical translation is paralleled in the Messianic resonances of visions of a future musical golden age. For figures as disparate as Mendelssohn and Witt, the salvation of church music was dependent on the emergence of a new Palestrina who would unite ancient ideals and modern resources: ‘If it is in our power and if God were to grant us a new, a modern Palestrina, let us bring about a new epoch of modern Catholic church music still more brilliant than that of the sixteenth century.’ In the interim, translating the original Palestrina provided a provisional solution to the problem of church music: no mere return to origins but a constructive response to the past, preparing the way for a Messiah who did not and could not come.

Notes

INTRODUCTION

 See PK, PK; Peter L¨uttig, Der Palestrina-Stil als Satzideal in der Musiktheorie zwischen  und  (Tutzing, ).  A fuller survey of recent literature is given in Winfried Kirsch, ‘Aspekte der Palestrina-Rezeption’, PK, pp. –, and in the excellent bibliography given at the end of that volume.  The wide use of this phrase is readily apparent in some of my translations from nineteenth-century critical writings. Where it has been necessary to translate der Palestrina-Stil as ‘Palestrina’s language’ or ‘Renaissance music’, this is necessitated by the flexibility of the term and is not an attempt to manipulate sources to fit preconceived ideas.  The Palestrina revivals in Germany, France, Italy and elsewhere in Europe were sustained by significantly different intellectual, confessional and political foundations; hitherto, comparative discussions have tended to approach this problem uncritically (see, for example, Thomas Day, ‘Palestrina in History: A Preliminary Study of Palestrina’s Reception and Influence since his Death’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Columbia (); and Richard Boursy, ‘Historicism and Composition: Giuseppe Baini, the Sistine Chapel Choir, and stile antico Music in the First Half of the th Century’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Yale ()).  Kevin Korsyn, ‘Brahms Research and Aesthetic Ideology’, Music Analysis  (),  (internal quotation Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist (Austin, ), p. ).  Ibid. ¨ vol. I, p. .  HA, 

HISTORICISM IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ART, AESTHETICS AND CULTURE

 Edward Young, Conjectures on Original Composition (London, ; repr. Leeds, ), p. .  Leonard B. Meyer, Style and Music: Theory, History, and Ideology (Philadelphia, ), p. . 



Notes to pages –

 Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt ald Wille und Vorstellung (), translated by E. F. J. Payne as The World as Will and Representation,  vols. (New York, ), vol. I, p. .  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespr¨ache mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gespr¨ache, ed. Ernst Beutler (Zurich, ), vol. XXIV, p. .  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Maximen und Reflexionen’, no. , Goethes Werke, ed. Erich Trunz and Hans Joachim Schrimpf (Munich, ), vol. XII, p. .  Eckermann, Gespr¨ache, p. .  Ibid., pp. –.  Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London, ), p. .  See Stephen Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History (New York, ), p. .  Walter Wiora, ‘Grenzen und Stadien des Historismus in der Musik’, HW, p. .  Bann, Romanticism, p. .  Philipp Spitta, ‘Kunstwissenschaft und Kunst’, Zur Musik: Sechzehn Aufs¨atze (Berlin, ; repr. Berlin and New York, ), pp. , , .  Ibid., p. .  Friedrich Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie f¨ur das Leben, Unzeitgem¨asse Betrachtungen, , Nietzsche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin, ), ser. III, vol. I, p.  (all translations are based on On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, trans. Peter Preuss, Indianapolis and Cambridge, ).  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp. , .  Ibid., p. .  Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (Vienna, ), p. .  Ibid., p. .  Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil, p. .  Johann Gottfried Herder, Denkmahl Johann Winkelmanns (), HSW, vol. VII, pp. –.  Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil, p. .  Ibid., p. .  Winckelmann, Geschichte, pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .

Notes to pages –



 Ibid., p. .  Johann Joachim Winckelmann, ‘Gedanken u¨ ber die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst’, J. J. Winckelmanns kleine Schriften und Briefe, ed. Hermann Uhde-Bernays (Leipzig, ), vol. I, pp. , .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp. , .  Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley, ), pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Italienische Reise, Goethes Werke, ed. Erich Trunz and Herbert von Einem (Munich, ), vol. XI, p. .  Johann Gottfried Herder, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (), HSW, vol. V, pp. , .  Herder, Ueber die neuere deutsche Litteratur: Fragmente, zweite Sammlung (–), HSW, vol. II, pp. –, , .  Herder, ‘Shakespear’, Von deutscher Art und Kunst (), HSW, vol. V, pp. –.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘Von deutscher Baukunst’, Goethes Werke, vol. XII, p. .  Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil, p.  (internal quotation Goethe, ‘Von deutscher Baukunst’, p. ).  Ibid., p. .  Ibid.  Theodore Ziolkowski, German Romanticism and its Institutions (Princeton, ), p. .  Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil, p. .  Herder, Denkmahl Johann Winkelmanns, p. .  Herder, Auch eine Philosophie, pp. , .  Ibid., pp. , .  Goethe, ‘Maximen und Reflexionen’, no. , p. .  Goethe, unsent draft of a letter to the architect Ludwig Friedrich Catel, April , Goethes Briefe, ed. Karl Robert Mandelkow,  vols. (Hamburg, ), vol. III, pp. –.  August Wilhelm Schlegel, as quoted in ‘Pellisov’ (Karl Emil Schafh¨autl), ‘Ueber die Kirchenmusik des katholischen Cultus’, AmZ  (), .  Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil, p. .  W. Jackson Bate, The Burden of the Past and the English Poet (Cambridge, MA, ), p. .  Ibid.  Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil, p. .  Ibid.  Heinrich Heine, Die romantische Schule (), HSA, vol. VIII, pp. –.  Ibid., pp. , .



Notes to pages –

 Ibid., p. .  Friedrich Schlegel, Gespr¨ach u¨ ber die Poesie, KFSA, vol. II, p. ; all translations are based on Friedrich Schlegel, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, ed. Ernst Behler and Roman Struc (London, ).  F. Schlegel, Gespr¨ach, p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Ideen’, no. , KFSA, vol. II, p. .  F. Schlegel, Gespr¨ach, p. .  August Wilhelm Schlegel, Vorlesungen u¨ ber dramatische Kunst und Literatur, erster Teil, Kritische Schriften und Briefe, ed Edgar Lohner (Stuttgart, ), vol. V, p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Vom Raffael’ (), KFSA, vol. IV, p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Nachricht von den Gem¨alden in Paris’ (), KFSA, vol. IV, p. ; ‘Vom Raffael’, pp. –.  F. Schlegel, ‘Nachricht’, pp. –, ‘Raffael’, p. . ¨  F. Schlegel, ‘Uber die deutsche Kunstausstellung zu Rom, im Fr¨uhjahr , und u¨ ber den gegenw¨artigen Stand der deutschen Kunst im Rom’ (), KFSA, vol. IV, p. .  Heine, Die romantische Schule, pp. , . This epigram apparently originated with Schlegel himself: ‘Der Historiker ist ein r¨uckw¨arts gekehrter Prophet’ (‘Athen¨aum Fragmente’, no. , KFSA, vol. II, p. ).  Heine, Die romantische Schule, p. .  Ibid., p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Athen¨aum Fragmente’, no. , p. .  A. W. Schlegel, Vorlesungen, p. .  Jean Paul, Kleine Nachschule zur a¨ sthetischen Vorschule, Werke, ed. Norbert Miller (Munich, ), vol. V, p. .  Ibid. ¨  Jean Paul, Vorschule der Asthetik, Werke, p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Lyceum Fragmente’, no. , KFSA, vol. II, p. .  Jean Paul, Vorschule, pp.  –.  F. Schlegel, ‘Lyceum Fragmente’, no. , p. .  Ibid., no. , p. .  Ibid., no. , p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Athen¨aum Fragmente’, no. , p. .  Ibid., no. , p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Lyceum Fragmente’, no. , p. .  Ibid., no. , p. . ¨  F. Schlegel, ‘Uber Goethes Meister’ (), KFSA, vol. II, p. .  Heine, Die romantische Schule, pp. , .  Ibid., p. .  See Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Toward a Reappraisal of Heine’, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main, ), vol. XX/ii, pp. –.  Joseph von Eichendorff, Zur Geschichte der neuern romantischen Poesie in Deutschland (), S¨amtliche Werke, ed. Wolfgang Mauser (Regensburg, ), ser. VIII, vol. I, p. .

Notes to pages –



 Heinrich Heine, Selected Verse, ed. Peter Branscombe (London, ), pp. –.  Adorno, ‘Toward a Reappraisal’, p. .  Ludwig Schorn, ‘Originalit¨at’ (excerpt from Ueber die Studien der griechischen K¨unstler (Heidelberg, )), AmZ  (),  –.  Ibid., .  Ibid., .  Ibid.  All translations from HA¨ are based on G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox,  vols. (Oxford, ); and Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, ed. Michael Inwood, trans. Bernard Bosanquet (London, ). ¨ vol. I, pp. , .  HA,  Ibid., p. .  The way in which these dialectics interact is explored more deeply in Stephen Bungay, Beauty and Truth: A Study of Hegel’s Aesthetics (Oxford, ), pp. –. ¨ vol. I, p. .  HA,  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp. , .  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp. , .  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp.  –.  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid.  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp.  –.



Notes to pages –

 See Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsche W¨orterbuch (Leipzig, ), vol. IV/i, pt. ii, pp. –; Felix Fl¨ugel, Allgemeines Englisch-Deutsches und Deutsch-Englisches W¨orterbuch (th edn, Braunschweig, ), vol. II, p. . ¨ vol. I, p. .  HA,  Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil, pp. , , –.  Ibid., p.  (internal quotation Franz Grillparzer, Werke [Berlin and Darmstadt, ], vol. II, pp. –). 

ROMANTICISM AND THE PROBLEM OF CHURCH MUSIC

 E. T. A. Hoffmann, ‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’, AmZ  (), –, –,  –; all references are to E. T. A. Hoffmanns Werke, ed. Georg Ellinger (Berlin, n.d. []), vol. XIV, pp. –; all translations are based on ‘Old and New Church Music’, in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings: ‘Kreisleriana’, ‘The Poet and the Composer’, Music Criticism, ed. David Charlton, trans. Martyn Clarke (Cambridge, ), pp. –; all other translations from Hoffmann are my own. Hoffmann included portions of this essay, and of his earlier review () of Beethoven’s Mass in C Major in the second volume of Die Serapionsbr¨uder (), E. T. A. Hoffmann: Poetische Werke, ed. Walter Wellenstein (Berlin, ), vol. VI, pp. –.  Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. .  Stephen Rumph, ‘A Kingdom Not of This World: The Political Context of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Beethoven Criticism’, th-Century Music  (), .  Johann Gottfried Herder, Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend, vierter Theil (), HSW, vol. XI, p. ; Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Musikalisches Kunstmagazin,  vols. (Berlin, , ; repr. in  vol., Hildesheim, ), vol. I, p. ; vol. II, p. .  Ludwig Tieck, Phantasus, erster Theil (), Ludwig Tieck’s Schriften (Berlin, ; repr. Berlin, ), vol. IV, p. .  Ferdinand Hand, Aesthetik der Tonkunst,  vols. (nd edn, Leipzig, ), vol. II, p. .  Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. .  Herder, ‘Vorrede’, Zerstreute Bl¨atter, f¨unfte Sammlung (), HSW, vol. XVI, p. .  Glenn Stanley, ‘The Oratorio in Prussia and Protestant Germany: –’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Columbia (), p. .  Carl Gottlob Horstig, ‘Ueber alte Musik’, AmZ  (), ; Friedrich Rochlitz, ‘Raphael und Mozart’, AmZ  (), .  Reichardt, Musikalisches Kunstmagazin, vol. I, pp. –; vol. II, pp. –, –, , –.  Herder, ‘C¨acilia’, Zerstreute Bl¨atter, p.  (cf. Briefe zu Bef¨orderung der Humanit¨at, siebente Sammlung, HSW, vol. XVIII, p. ).  Rochlitz, ‘Feyer des Andenkens der heiligen C¨acilia’, AmZ  (), . Rochlitz’s  list is the first to include J. S. Bach; presumably this inclusion

Notes to pages –

       

    

 

    



is a response to the publication of Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s biography of Bach in the preceding year (Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke. F¨ur patriotische Verehrer echter musikalische Kunst (Leipzig, )). Anon., ‘Messe a`  voix . . . comp. par Joseph Haydn. No. V.’, AmZ  (), ; Christian Friedrich Michaelis, ‘Ueber das Alte und das Veraltete in der Musik’, AmZ  (), –. Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. . ¨ Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut, Uber Reinheit der Tonkunst (), ed. Raimund Heuler (Paderborn, ), pp. –. Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. . ¨ Reinheit, p. . Thibaut, Uber Reichardt, Musikalisches Kunstmagazin, vol. I, p. . Ibid., vol. II, pp. , , . ¨ Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, Ideen zu einer Asthetik der Tonkunst, ed. Ludwig Schubart (Vienna, ; repr. Hildesheim, ), p.  (the relevant portion of Schubart’s book appeared earlier as ‘Aus der Geschichte der italienischen Musik bis auf Jomelli’, AmZ  (),  –). Philipp Spitta, ‘Palestrina im sechzehnten und neunzehnten Jahrhundert’, Deutsche Rundschau  (), . Tieck, Phantasus, p. . Ibid. Friedrich Rochlitz (ed.), Sammlung vorz¨uglicher Gesangst¨ucke (Mainz, n.d. []), vol. I/ii, p. . Anon., ‘Briefe u¨ ber die Musik in Kassel’, AmZ  (), . The inclusion of the Miserere in two important collections published outside of Germany helped to encourage its popularity there: Alexandre Choron (ed.), Collection g´en´erale des ouvrages classiques de musique (Paris, n.d. []); Charles Burney (ed.), La musica che si canta annualmente nelle funzioni della settimana Santa, nella cappella pontificia (London, ). A reprint of Burney’s collection was published in Leipzig in : Musica sacra quae cantatur quotannis per hebdomadam sanctam Romae in sacello pontificio. Schubart, Ideen, p. . Herder, ‘C¨acilia’, p. ; Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders (), trans. Mary Hurst Schubert, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder’s ‘Confessions’ and ‘Fantasies’ (University Park and London, ), p. . Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. . Reichardt, Musikalisches Kunstmagazin, vol. II, p. . Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. . Michaelis, ‘Ueber das Alte’, . The collection of twenty-seven responsories for Holy Week from which this movement was taken was attributed to Palestrina until , when Franz Xaver Haberl rediscovered an original print of the collection (Venice, ). The responsories were previously published by Haberl, alongside other doubtful works, in PGA, vol. XXXII.



Notes to pages –

 Ibid., p. v. Lists of the works by Palestrina available in print in the second decade of the nineteenth century are given by Gerber and by Choron and Fayolle: these are restricted to Burney’s Musica sacra collection and to isolated motets and excerpts published in the writings of Reichardt, Hawkins, Burney, and earlier historians (Ernst Ludwig Gerber, Neues historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonk¨unstler (Leipzig, ), vol. III, p. ; Alexandre Choron and Fran¸cois Fayolle, Dictionnaire historique des musiciens (Paris, ), vol. II, p. ).  Friedrich Rochlitz, ‘Miserere von Pal¨astrina (wie es in der Sixtinischen Kapelle in Rom gesungen wird)’, AmZ  (),  –.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italienische Reise, Goethes Werke, ed. Erich Trunz and Herbert von Einem (Munich, ), vol. XI, pp. , .  Tieck, Phantasus, pp. –.  In May , Breitkopf & H¨artel sent Hoffmann copies of the responsories, the Missa Papae Marcelli, and part five of Reichardt’s Musikalisches Kunstmagazin () which contains the ‘Gloria Patri’ from the Magnificat tertii toni. (Friedrich Schnapp (ed.), E. T. A. Hoffmanns Briefwechsel (Munich, ), vol. I, p. .) The extent of Thibaut’s knowledge of Palestrina’s music can be gauged from two sources, though it is impossible from these ¨ to be sure precisely which compositions he knew at the time of Uber Reinheit: a chronological list of the works performed by Thibaut’s Heidelberg Singverein from autumn  to spring  is given in Eduard Baumstark, Ant. Friedr. Justus Thibaut. Bl¨atter der Erinnerung f¨ur seine Verehrer und f¨ur die Freunde der reinen Tonkunst (Leipzig, ), pp. –; a table listing the contents and sources of the music collection of Johann Georg Behagel (one of the participants in Thibaut’s choir) can be found in Wilhelm Ehmann, ‘Der Thibaut-Behagel-Kreis: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der musikalischen Restauration im . Jahrhundert’, Archiv f¨ur Musikwissenschaft  (), –.  Peter L¨uttig, ‘Das Palestrina-Bild bei Hawkins und Burney’, PK, pp. –; Charles Burney, A General History of Music, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period,  vols. (nd edn, London, ), vol. I, p. .  Burney, A General History, vol. III, p. .  Reichardt, Musikalisches Kunstmagazin, vol. I, p. ; vol. II, pp. –. ¨ Reinheit, p. .  Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. ; Thibaut, Uber  Reichardt, Musikalisches Kunstmagazin, vol. II, pp. –; F. Schlegel, ‘Nachricht von den Gem¨alden in Paris’, KFSA, vol. IV, p. .  Anon. ( Johann Gottfried Hientzsch), ‘Haupt¨ubersicht des ganzen Streites’, Der Streit zwischen der Alten und der Neuen Musik, ed. Hientzsch (Breslau, ), p. .  Hans Georg N¨ageli, ‘Beurtheilung der Schrift: die Reinheit der Tonkunst’, Der Streit, ed. Hientzsch, p. .  Ibid., p.  (N¨ageli refers to the poetic evocation of these composers in Tieck, Phantasus, pp. –).  Ibid., pp. –, .

Notes to pages –



 Ibid., p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Philosophische Fragmente [ V ]’, no. , KFSA, vol. VIII, p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Philosophische Fragmente [II]’, no. , p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Philosophische Fragmente [ VI ]’, no. , p. .  See especially Novalis, Die Christenheit oder Europa (), Werke, Tageb¨ucher und Briefe Friedrich von Hardenbergs, ed. Hans-Joachim M¨ahl and Richard Samuel (Munich and Vienna, ), vol. II, pp. –.  Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. .  Ibid.  Eduard Kr¨uger, Beitr¨age f¨ur Leben und Wissenschaft der Tonkunst (Leipzig, ), p. .  Tieck, Phantasus, p. ; Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. .  Michaelis, ‘Ueber das Alte’, –.  Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, trans. Richard Crouter (Cambridge, ); Friedrich Schlegel, Gespr¨ach u¨ ber die Poesie, KFSA, vol. II, p. .  Friedrich Schlegel, ‘Briefe auf einer Reise durch die Niederlande, Rheingegenden, die Schweiz und einen Theil von Frankreich’ (), KFSA, vol. IV, pp. –.  These paintings are discussed in greater detail in Keith Andrews, The Nazarenes: A Brotherhood of German Painters in Rome (Oxford, ), pp. –; and Winfried Kirsch, ‘“Nazarener in der Musik” oder “Der Caecilianismus in der bildenden Kunst”’, CU, pp. –.  Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Dritter Nachtrag alter Gem¨alde’, KFSA, vol. IV, p. .  Joseph von Eichendorff, Zur Geschichte der neuern romantischen Poesie in Deutschland, S¨amtliche Werke, ed. Wolfgang Mauser (Regensburg, ), ser. VIII, vol. I, pp. ,  –.  Ibid., pp. –, .  Heinrich Heine, Die Stadt Lukka, HSA, vol. VI, pp. , ; this translation is based on ‘The Town of Lucca’, Heine, Selected Prose, trans. Ritchie Robertson (London, ), p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Zweiter Nachtrag alter Gem¨alde’ (), KFSA, vol. IV, pp. , ¨ ; ‘Uber die deutsche Kunstausstellung zu Rom, im Fr¨uhjahr , und u¨ ber den gegenw¨artigen Stand der deutschen Kunst im Rom’ (), KFSA, vol. IV, p. .  Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, pp. –.  Tieck, Phantasus, pp. , .  Hoffmann, ‘Sinfonie . . . par Louis van Beethoven . . . no.  des Sinfonies’, Werke, vol. XIII, p. ; ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. .  Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. .  Ibid., p. .  Tieck, Phantasus, p. .  Ibid., p. ; Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. .



Notes to pages –

 Hoffmann, ‘Messa a quattro voci coll’ accompagnamento dell’ Orchestra, composta da Luigi van Beethoven’, Werke, vol. XIII, p. .  Hoffmann, ‘On a Remark of Sacchini’s’, Charlton (ed.), Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, p. .  Friedrich Schleiermacher, Vorlesungen u¨ ber die Aesthetik, S¨ammtliche Werke, ed. Carl Lommatzsch (Berlin, ; repr. Berlin and New York, ), series III, vol. VII, p. . (Schleiermacher’s earlier discussions of this relation probably influenced Tieck and Hoffmann; see Schleiermacher, On Religion, p. .)  Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. .  Ibid.  Thomas Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence (Baltimore and London, ), p. .  Hoffmann, ‘Sinfonie’, p. .  Ibid., p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Nachricht’, pp. –.  Ferdinand Hand was later directly to compare the sublimity of Winckelmann’s oldest style with the music of Palestrina and his predecessors (Aesthetik, vol. I, p. ).  F. Schlegel, ‘Nachricht’, p. ; Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. .  Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. .  Ibid.  AmZ  (),  (footnote).  Hoffmann, ‘Messa a quattro voci’, p. .  Ibid.  Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. .  Ibid., p. ; see also ‘Briefe u¨ ber Tonkunst in Berlin. Erster Brief ’, Werke, vol. XIV, pp. –. ¨  Gottfried Weber, ‘Uber das Wesen des Kirchenstyls’, C¨acilia  (), ff., repr. in Hientzsch (ed.), Der Streit, p. .  Friedrich Rochlitz, ‘Neu-Altes’, F¨ur Freunde der Tonkunst (Leipzig, ), vol. III, p. .  Ibid., p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Kunstausstellung’, p. .  Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. ; F. Schlegel, ‘Kunstausstellung’, p. .  F. Schlegel, ‘Kunstausstellung’, p. .  Ibid., p. .  Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, p. .  Ibid.  Hoffmann, ‘Messa a quattro voci’, p. .  Hoffmann, ‘Kirchenmusik’, pp. , . ¨  Weber, ‘Uber das Wesen’, p. .  Anon., ‘Friedrich Schneider, Missa solis vocibus humanis’, AmZ  (), ; anon., ‘Die heilige C¨acilia. Geistliche Lieder, Oden, Motetten, Ch¨ore und andere Ges¨ange’, AmZ  (), .

Notes to pages –



 Hoffmann’s own earlier compositional essays on church music are discussed in Winfried Kirsch, ‘“Wahrhaft frommer Sinn und Selbstverleugnung”: E. T. A. Hoffmanns Canzoni per  voci alla Capella’, Studien zur Kirchenmusik im . Jahrhundert–Friedrich Wilhelm Riedel zum . Geburtstag, ed. ChristophHellmut Mahling (Tutzing, ), pp. –.  Eichendorff, Zur Geschichte, p. . 

THE PROTESTANT PALESTRINA REVIVAL

 Carl Friedrich Zelter, ‘Zweite Denkschrift’ (c. ), as presented in Georg Sch¨unemann, Carl Friedrich Zelter, der Begr¨under der Preussischen Musikpflege (Berlin, ), p. .  Wilhelm von Humboldt, ‘Denkschrift’ (), as presented in Sch¨unemann, Carl Friedrich Zelter, pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  Zelter, ‘Vierte Denkschrift’ (), as presented in Cornelia Schr¨oder (ed.), Carl Friedrich Zelter und die Akademie: Dokumente und Briefe zur Entstehung der Musik-Section in der Preußischen Akademie der K¨unste (Berlin, ), p. ; Friedemann Milz, A-cappella-Theorie und musikalischer Humanismus bei August Eduard Grell (Regensburg, ), p. . ¨  Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut, Uber Reinheit der Tonkunst, ed. Raimund Heuler (Paderborn, ), p. .  Grundriß der Verfassung der Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, den Mitgliedern im Entwurf mitgetheilt von der jetzigen Vorsteherschaft (Berlin, ), p. , facsimile edn in Sing-Akademie zu Berlin: Festschrift zum  j¨ahrigen Bestehen, ed. Werner Bollert ¨ Reinheit, p. . (Berlin, ), p. ; Thibaut, Uber ¨  Thibaut, Uber Reinheit, p. ; Thibaut, letter of  June  to Bernhard Klein, Wilhelm Ehmann (ed.), ‘Musikalische Briefe von A. F. J. Thibaut’, Neue Heidelberger Jahrb¨ucher. Neue Folge (), .  A critical report from  perfectly illustrates the first of these points: ‘the church music which fills our high feast days is normally so meagre in quality that it is not worth mentioning. If one wants to obtain a truly artistic experience in Berlin, the only way to receive it is to gain entry to the Singakademie founded by the worthy Fasch.’ (Anon., ‘Ueber den Zustand der Musik in Berlin’, AmZ  (), .)  Eduard Baumstark, Ant. Friedr. Justus Thibaut. Bl¨atter der Erinnerung f¨ur seine Verehrer und f¨ur die Freunde der reinen Tonkunst (Leipzig, ), p. .  Zelter, ‘Zweite Denkschrift’, p. . ¨ Reinheit, p. .  Ibid., pp. , ; Thibaut, Uber ¨  Thibaut, Uber Reinheit, pp. , .  Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (), trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis, ), pp. – (§ ).  Zelter, ‘Erste Denkschrift’ (), as presented in Schr¨oder (ed.), Carl Friedrich Zelter, p. .  Zelter, ‘Dritte Denkschrift’, as presented in Schr¨oder (ed.), Carl Friedrich ¨ Reinheit, p. . Zelter, p. ; Thibaut, Uber

               

      



  

Notes to pages –

¨ Reinheit, pp. , . Thibaut, Uber Martin Blumner, Geschichte der Sing-Akademie zu Berlin (Berlin, ), p. . ¨ Reinheit, pp. , . Thibaut, Uber Blumner, Geschichte, p. . The historical grounds behind this usage of the term a cappella are explored in Chapter . ¨ Monika Lichtenfeld, ‘Zur Geschichte, Idee und Asthetik des historischen Konzerts’, HW, pp. –. Baumstark, Ant. Friedr. Justus Thibaut, p. . Ibid., pp. , . ¨ Reinheit, p. . Thibaut, Uber Ibid., p. . Ibid., pp. , . Thibaut, letter of  December  to Klein, Ehmann (ed.), ‘Musikalische Briefe’, . ¨ Reinheit, p. . Thibaut, Uber Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Richard Hohenemser, Welche Einfl¨usse hatte die Wiederbelebung der a¨ lteren Musik im . Jahrhundert auf die deutschen Komponisten? (Leipzig, ), p. ; Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford, ), pp. –. ¨ vol. I, p. . HA, Ibid. Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. ; compare Friedrich Schleiermacher, Vorlesungen u¨ ber die Aesthetik, S¨ammtliche Werke, ed. Carl Lommatzsch (Berlin, ; repr. Berlin and New York, ), ser. III, vol. VII, p. . ¨ Reinheit, p. . Thibaut, Uber Ibid. Philipp Spitta, ‘Die Wiederbelebung protestantischer Kirchenmusik auf geschichtlicher Grundlage’ (), repr. in Zur Musik: Sechzehn Aufs¨atze (Berlin, ; repr. Hildesheim and New York, ), p. ; Eduard Hanslick, ‘Verdi’s Requiem’, Musikalische Stationen (Berlin, ; repr. Farnborough, ), p. . Grundriß der Verfassung, p. . Well known in this connection is Beethoven’s assertion, in a supplicatory letter to Zelter, that his Missa solemnis could be performed by a cappella forces (i.e., voices and keyboard). See Blumner, Geschichte, p. . Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, letter to Zelter of  February , Goethes Briefe, ed. Karl Robert Mandelkow,  vols. (Hamburg, ), vol. III, pp. –. Although the Singakademie practised Spohr’s mass from –, only the Sanctus was performed in public, and not until . Louis Spohr, Lebenserinnerungen, ed. Folker G¨othel,  vols. (Tutzing, ), vol. II, p. . Otto Nicolai, ‘Brief an den Vater’, Musikalische Aufs¨atze, ed. Georg Richard Kruse (Regensburg, []), pp. –, .

Notes to pages –



 Nicolai, ‘Ueber die Sixtinische Kapelle in Rom’ (), Musikalische Aufs¨atze, pp. , .  Spohr, Lebenserinnerungen, vol. I, p. .  Ibid.  Nicolai, ‘Ueber die Sixtinische Kapelle’, p. .  Spohr, Lebenserinnerungen, vol. II, p. .  Nicolai, ‘Brief an den Vater’, pp. –.  Spohr, Lebenserinnerungen, vol. II, pp.  –.  Ibid., p. .  Ulrich Konrad, ‘Der Beitrag evangelischer Komponisten zur Messenkomposition im . Jahrhundert’, KJb  (), .  Spohr, Lebenserinnerungen, vol. II, p. .  Otto Biba, Preface to Louis Spohr, Messe f¨ur f¨unf Solostimmen und zwei f¨unfstimmige Ch¨ore (Alt¨otting, ).  Spohr, Lebenserinnerungen, vol. II, p. .  Spohr’s commitment to Bildung through choral music can be seen in an essay from the same year as the mass: ‘Einige Bemerkungen u¨ ber die deutschen Gesang-Vereine, nebst Ank¨undigung eines neuen f¨ur sie geschriebenen Werkes’, AmZ  (), –.  Sergio Lattes, ‘Baini, Giuseppe’, NG, vol. II, p. ; see also Richard Boursy, ‘Historicism and Composition: Giuseppe Baini, the Sistine Chapel Choir, and stile antico music in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Yale ().  Franz Sales Kandler, Ueber das Leben und die Werke des G. Pierluigi da Palestrina . . . . Nach den Memorie storico-critiche des Abbate Giuseppe Baini, ed. Raphael Georg Kiesewetter (Leipzig, ), p. .  Nicolai, ‘Ueber die Sixtinische Kapelle’, pp. –.  Nicolai, diary entry of  March , in W. Altmann (ed.), Otto Nicolais Tageb¨ucher (Regensburg, ), p. , as quoted in Ulrich Konrad, ‘Otto Nicolai und die Palestrina-Renaissance’, PK , p. .  Ulrich Konrad, Otto Nicolai: Studien zu Leben und Werk (Baden-Baden, ), p. ; a catalogue of the old Italian works in Nicolai’s music collection is presented in Konrad, ‘Otto Nicolai’, pp. –.  Kandler, Ueber das Leben, p. .  See, for example, Heinrich Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt (rd edn, Berlin, ), p. .  Friedrich Rochlitz, ‘Neu-Altes’, F¨ur Freunde der Tonkunst (Leipzig, ), vol. III, p. .  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  See Konrad, Otto Nicolai, pp. –; Martin Geck, ‘Richard Wagner und die a¨ ltere Musik’, HW, p. .  Programme note for the planned concert of  April , as quoted in Konrad, ‘Otto Nicolai’, p. .



Notes to pages –

 Hermann H¨ubsch, In welchem Style sollen wir bauen? (Karlsruhe, ). This pamphlet, and other contributions to the debate that it stimulated, have been translated in Wolfgang Herrmann (ed.), In what Style should we build? The German Debate on Architectural Style (Santa Monica, ).  Alan Barfour, Berlin: The Politics of Order – (New York, ), pp. –.  Robert Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften u¨ ber Musik und Musiker (rd edn, Leipzig, ), vol. III, p. .  Abraham Mendelssohn, letter of  March , Felix Mendelssohn, Briefe aus den Jahren  bis , ed. Paul and Carl Mendelssohn Bartholdy (Leipzig, ), p. .  Letters of  April,  March and  April , New York Public Library, as quoted in Susanna Großmann-Vendrey, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy und die Musik der Vergangenheit (Regensburg, ), pp. , .  Letter of  September , Felix Mendelssohn, Letters, ed. G. Selden-Goth (London, ), pp. –.  Wulf Konold, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy und seine Zeit (Regensburg, ), p. ; Judith Silber, ‘Mendelssohn and the “Reformation” Symphony: A Critical and Historical Study’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Yale (), p. .  Rauol Meloncelli, ‘Palestrina e Mendelssohn’, BR, pp. –, .  Annemarie Clostermann links these double-choir echoes to Gabrieli and Sch¨utz, but this relation is unlikely, ten years before the publication of Carl von Winterfeld’s Johannes Gabrieli und sein Zeitalter (). (Mendelssohn Bartholdys kirchenmusikalisches Schaffen: Neue Untersuchungen zu Geschichte, Form und Inhalt (Mainz, ), p. .)  Susanna Großmann-Vendrey, ‘Mendelssohn und die Vergangenheit’, HW, p. .  Georg Feder, ‘Zu Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdys geistliche Musik’, RW, p. .  Abraham Mendelssohn, letter of  March , Mendelssohn, Briefe, p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp. , .  Peter Sutermeister, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Lebensbild und Briefe (Zurich, ), p. , as quoted in Clostermann, Mendelssohn Bartholdys kirchenmusikalisches Schaffen, p. ; letter of  November , Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Reisebriefe aus den Jahren  bis , ed. Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy (th edn, Leipzig, ), p. .  Letter of  December , Mendelssohn, Reisebriefe, p. . ¨ Reinheit, pp. , .  Thibaut, Uber  Hohenemser, Welche Einfl¨usse, p. .  Mendelssohn, Reisebriefe, p. .  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., pp. , .  Mendelssohn, Briefe, pp. –.  Ibid., p. .

Notes to pages –



 Wolfgang Dinglinger, Studien zu den Psalmen mit Orchester von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (Cologne, ), p. ; see also Feder, ‘Zu Felix Mendelssohn’, pp. –; David Brodbeck, ‘A Winter of Discontent: Mendelssohn and the Berliner Domchor’, Mendelssohn Studies, ed. R. Larry Todd (Cambridge, ), p. .  Friedrich Schleiermacher, Die praktische Theologie nach den Grunds¨azen der evangelischen Kirche, S¨ammtliche Werke, ed. Jacob Frerichs (Berlin, ; repr. Berlin and New York, ), ser. I, vol. XXX, pp. –.  Friedrich Adolph Strauß (ed.), Liturgische Andachten der k¨oniglichen Hof- und Dom-Kirche f¨ur die Feste des Kirchenjahres (nd edn, Berlin, ), p. .  Mendelssohn, letter of  February , Wolfgang Dinglinger (ed.),  Jahre Staats- und Domchor Berlin: unbekannte und unver¨offentliche Briefe und Dokumente (Berlin, ), pp. –.  Sebastian Hensel, Die Familie Mendelssohn (nd edn, Leipzig, ), vol. II, p. , as quoted in Großmann-Vendrey, Felix Mendelssohn, p. .  Judith Silber Ballan, ‘Mendelssohn and his Reformation Symphony’, Journal of the American Musicological Society  (), ; Moritz Hauptmann, The Letters of a Leipzig Cantor, ed. Alfred Sch¨one and Ferdinand Hiller, trans. A. D. Coleridge,  vols. (London, ), p. . Hauptmann’s comments are quoted (and endorsed) in Brodbeck, ‘A Winter of Discontent’, p. .  Hohenemser, Welche Einfl¨usse, p. ; Hans-Elmar Bach, ‘Mendelssohn als Komponist geistlicher a cappella-Musik’, MS  (), ; Meloncelli, ‘Palestrina e Mendelssohn’, p. .  Eduard Kr¨uger, ‘F. Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Drei Psalmen (. . .) Opus ’, Neue Berliner Musikzeitung  (), –.  Mendelssohn, Reisebriefe, p. .  Ibid., p. .  Heinrich Heine, ‘Rossini und Felix Mendelssohn’ (), Lutezia. Berichte u¨ ber Politik, Kunst und Volksleben (), HSA, vol. XI, pp. , .  Ibid., p. .  Heinrich Heine, ‘Musikalische Saison in Paris’ (), Lutezia, p. .  Eduard Devrient, Meine Erinnerungen an Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy und seine Briefe an mich (Leipzig, ), p. , as quoted in Friedhelm Krummacher, ¨ ‘Bach, Berlin und Mendelssohn: Uber Mendelssohns kompositorische Bach-Rezeption’, Jahrbuch des staatlichen Instituts f¨ur Musikforschung preußischer Kulturbesitz (), .  Mendelssohn, Reisebriefe, pp. –.  Friedrich Nietzsche, Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie f¨ur das Leben, Unzeitgem¨asse Betrachtungen, , Nietzsches Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin, ), ser. III, vol. I, p. .  Philipp Spitta, ‘Palestrina im sechzehnten und neunzehnten Jahrhundert’, Deutsche Rundschau  (), .  Alfred Einstein, Music in the Romantic Era (New York, ), p. .



Notes to pages –

 Carl von Winterfeld, Johannes Pierluigi von Palestrina. Seine Werke und deren Bedeutung f¨ur die Geschichte der Tonkunst. Mit Bezug auf Baini’s neueste Forschungen (Breslau, ), pp. , , iv–v.  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp. , , .  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp. –.  Winterfeld’s most significant contribution to the revival of choral music from the age of the Reformation is Der evangelische Kirchengesang und sein Verh¨altniß zur Kunst des Tonsatzes,  vols. (Leipzig, –); the implications of this study for contemporary liturgical practice receive greater empha¨ Herstellung des Gemeine- und Chorgesanges in der evangelischen Kirche: sis in Uber Geschichtliches und Vorschl¨age (Leipzig, ).  Spitta, ‘Die Wiederbelebung’, p. ; Georg Feder, ‘Decline and Restoration’, trans. Reinhard G. Pauly, Protestant Church Music: A History, ed. Friedrich Blume (London, ), p. ; Adolf Nowak, ‘Johannes Eccards Ernennung zum preußischen Palestrina durch Obertribunalrat von Winterfeld’, Studien zur Musikgeschichte Berlins im fr¨uhen . Jahrhundert, ed. Carl Dahlhaus (Regensburg, ), pp. –; Heiner Wajemann, ‘Caecilianische Bestrebungen auf evangelischer Seite’, CU, p. .  Eduard Kr¨uger, ‘Die Wiederbelebung des evangelischen Kirchengesanges’, AmZ  (), .  Winterfeld, Der evangelische Kirchengesang, vol. I, p. vi.  Ibid., pp. , .  Ibid., vol. II, p. ; vol. I, p. .  Ibid., vol. I, pp. vii, viii. ¨ Herstellung, pp. –.  Winterfeld, Uber  Winterfeld’s influence became more direct following his appointment in  as Extraordinary Commissioner for Prussian church music (see Arthur Pr¨ufer (ed.), Briefwechsel zwischen Carl von Winterfeld und Eduard Kr¨uger (Leipzig, ), pp. xxi–xxii).  Heinrich Bellermann, August Eduard Grell (Berlin, ), pp. –.  Otto Strauß, ‘Allgemeine Bemerkungen u¨ ber den musikalischen Theil der liturgischen Andachten’, in F. A. Strauß (ed.), Liturgische Andachten, pp. , .  Three volumes in this collection are of particular interest in this connection: August Neithardt (ed.), Sammlung religi¨oser Ges¨ange a¨ lterer und neuester Zeit zum bestimmten Gebrauch f¨ur den K¨onigl. Berliner Domchor, Musica sacra (Berlin, [–]), vols. V, VII and XII.  Neithardt was director of the Domchor from  until ; during the short periods for which Mendelssohn and Nicolai held the position of

Notes to pages –

    

         

           



Generalmusikdirektor, he was demoted to deputy director (see Max Thomas, ‘Heinrich August Neithardt’, Ph.D. thesis, Free University of Berlin (), pp. –; Dinglinger,  Jahre, pp. –). Contemporary reactions to the reforms are discussed in Dinglinger, Studien, p. . ¨ Reinheit, p. . Thibaut, Uber ¨ Herstellung, p. . Winterfeld, Uber Ibid., pp. –. Bunsen’s adaptation was first published in a supplement to Die heilige Leidensgeschichte und die stille Woche (Hamburg, ); it was reprinted in two of Neithardt’s collections: Sammlung kirchlicher Chorges¨ange zu den liturgischen Andachten, in Strauß (ed.), Liturgische Andachten, and Sammlung religi¨oser Ges¨ange, vol. V. Mendelssohn, Reisebriefe, p. ; Nicolai, ‘Brief an den Vater’, p. . Schleiermacher considered such responsorial singing to be ‘the healthiest element in the Evangelical liturgy’ (Die praktische Theologie, p. ). Kr¨uger, ‘Die Wiederbelebung’, . O. Strauß, ‘Allgemeine Bemerkungen’, pp. –. Nicolai’s appointment is discussed in Thomas, ‘Heinrich August Neithardt’, pp. –. ¨ Herstellung, pp. , –. Winterfeld, Uber Emil Naumann (ed.), Psalmen auf alle Sonn- und Fest-Tage des evangel. Kirchenjahres . . . . Zum Gebrauche des K¨onigl. Domchores so wie aller evangelischen Kirchench¨ore, Musica sacra, vols. VIII, IX and X (Berlin, []). Naumann (ed.), Psalmen, vol. VIII, preface. August Neithardt (ed.), Sammlung kirchlicher Chorges¨ange zu den liturgischen Andachten (), in F. A. Strauß (ed.), Liturgische Andachten, pp. –. Heinrich Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt (rd edn, Berlin, ), p. viii (see also Otto Schneider, Heinrich Bellermann: Ged¨achtnisrede (Berlin, ), pp. –); Eduard Grell, Aufs¨atze und Gutachten u¨ ber Musik, ed. Heinrich Bellermann (Berlin, ), p. . Grell, Aufs¨atze, p. . Ibid., pp. –. Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Eduard Grell, ‘Emser Aufzeichnungen’ (), as quoted in Milz, A-cappellaTheorie, p. ; Grell, Aufs¨atze, p. . Grell attempted, nonetheless, to demonstrate that Greek musical instruments merely served the function of modern tuning-forks (Aufs¨atze, p. ). Peter L¨uttig, Der Palestrina-Stil als Satzideal in der Musiktheorie zwischen  und  (Tutzing, ), p. . Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt ( edn), p. ix. Grell, Aufs¨atze, pp. , . Ibid., pp. –. Blumner, ‘Ged¨achtnißrede auf Eduard Grell’, Geschichte, p. . Grell, Aufs¨atze, p. .

       

              

        

Notes to pages – Bellermann, August Eduard Grell, pp. , . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., pp. , . Milz, A-cappella-Theorie, pp. –. See, for example, Eric Werner, Mendelssohn: A New Image of the Composer and his Age, trans. Dika Newlin (New York and London, ), p. ; Feder, ‘Zu Felix Mendelssohn’, p. ; Wajemann, ‘Caecilianische Bestrebungen’, p. ; and James Garratt, ‘Mendelssohn’s Babel: Romanticism and the Poetics of Translation’, Music and Letters  (), , . Hohenemser, Welche Einfl¨usse, pp. , –. ‘Wise’ ( Julius Schladebach), ‘Kirchenmusik’, AmZ  (), –. Ibid., . Ibid. (the review refers to Gottlieb Freiherr von Tucher’s collection Kirchenges¨ange der ber¨uhmtesten a¨ lteren itali¨anischen Meister,  vols. (Vienna, n.d. [])). Ibid., . Bellermann, August Eduard Grell, p. . Grell, Aufs¨atze, p. . Bellermann, August Eduard Grell, pp. –. Ibid., p. . August Wilhelm Ambros, Geschichte der Musik, vol. IV, ed. Hugo Leichtentritt (rd edn, Leipzig, ), pp. –. Hohenemser, Welche Einfl¨usse, p. ; Milz, A-cappella-Theorie, p. . Kandler, Ueber das Leben, p. . See Knud Jeppesen, ‘Problems of the Pope Marcellus Mass: Some Remarks on the Missa Papae Marcelli by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’, in Palestrina: Pope Marcellus Mass, ed. Lewis Lockwood (New York, ), p. . Bellermann, August Eduard Grell, p. . Knud Jeppesen, The Style of Palestrina and the Dissonance (nd edn, London, ), Counterpoint: The Polyphonic Vocal Style of the Sixteenth Century (New York, ; repr. ); Heinrich Schenker, Counterpoint: A Translation of ‘Kontrapunkt’, ed. John Rothgeb,  vols. (New York, ). Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt ( edn), p. ix. Ibid., pp. ix–x. ¨ Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Geschichte als Problem der Musiktheorie: Uber einige Berliner Musiktheoretiker des . Jahrhunderts’, Studien zur Musikgeschichte Berlins im fr¨uhen . Jahrhundert, ed. Dahlhaus (Regensburg, ), pp. –. Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt ( edn), p. vii. Ibid., pp. xiv–xv, x. Ibid., p. v. Ibid., p. . Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt ( edn), pp. vii–viii, ( edn), pp.  –. Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt ( edn), pp. viii–ix.

Notes to pages –               

          



Ibid., p. . Ibid. Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt ( edn), pp. , . Jeppesen, Counterpoint, p. ; The Style of Palestrina, p. . Peter L¨uttig, ‘Zwischen Theorie und Praxis–Die Motette “Wie der Hirsch schreiet” von Heinrich Bellermann’, PK, pp.  –. Ibid., p. . Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt ( edn), p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . L¨uttig, ‘Zwischen Theorie und Praxis’, p. . Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt ( edn), p. . Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt ( edn), p.  ( edn, pp. –). L¨uttig, ‘Zwischen Theorie und Praxis’, p. . Some of Bellermann’s homophonic quasi-liturgical pieces, such as the Drei Motetten op. , suggest a conception of old Italian music little different from that of Hoffmann or Zelter. While the spelling of the title of this work on its first publication is different– Missa sollemnis [sic] senis denis vocibus decantanda auctore Eduardo Grell (Berlin, ), the customary version has been retained, since this form is used in all references to this mass by Bellermann and by modern musicologists. Bellermann notes that the first performance lasted two hours fifteen minutes (‘A. E. Grell’s sechzehnstimmige Messe’, AmZ  (), ). Bellermann, August Eduard Grell, pp. – (Gumprecht’s review appeared in the Berlin Nationalzeitung on  February , and Bellermann’s discussion of it was first published in ‘Grell’s sechzehnstimmige Messe’, –). Bellermann, Der Contrapunkt ( edn), p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid. Reinhold Brinkmann, ‘Grell, (August) Eduard’, NG, vol. V, p. ; Gottfried Eberle,  Jahre Sing-Akademie zu Berlin (Berlin, ), p. . Bellermann, August Eduard Grell, pp. –. Ibid., pp. –. L¨uttig, ‘Zwischen Theorie und Praxis’, p. . Rochus Freiherr von Liliencron, Ueber den Chorgesang in der evangelischen Kirche (Berlin, ), p. . Spitta, ‘Die Wiederbelebung’, pp. –. 

THE CATHOLIC PALESTRINA REVIVAL

 Unfortunately, the origins of this term are not discussed in the most recent definition of it: Winfried Kirsch, ‘Caecilianismus’, MGG, Sachteil, vol. II, pp. –. See also Otto Biba, ‘Der C¨acilianismus’, Bruckner Symposion: Anton Bruckner und die Kirchenmusik, ed. Othmar Wessely (Linz, ), p. .  Siegfried Gmeinwieser, ‘Zum Palestrina-Stil in M¨unchen’, PK , p. .



Notes to pages –

 Franz Sales Kandler, Ueber das Leben und die Werke des G. Pierluigi da Palestrina . . . . Nach den Memorie storico-critiche des Abbate Giuseppe Baini, ed. R. G. Kiesewetter (Leipzig, ), pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  See Helmut Loos, ‘Alter Stil und Fastenzeit – Zur Komposition von Quadragesimalmessen’, PK, p. .  Susan Wollenberg (trans.), ‘Johann Joseph Fux, Gradus ad Parnassum (): Concluding Chapters’, Music Analysis  (), .  Ibid., .  Ibid., .  C. W. Fr¨ohlich, ‘Ueber die musikalische Feyer des katholischen Gottesdienstes u¨ berhaupt; und die Art einer dem Zeitbed¨urfnisse gem¨assen Einrichtung und Verbesserung derselben’, AmZ  (), .  Ibid., .  Ibid., .  Ibid., , .  Friedrich W. Riedel, Kirchenmusik am Hofe Karls VI. ( –): Untersuchungen zum Verh¨altnis von Zeremoniell und musikalischen Stil im Barockzeitalter (Munich and Salzburg, ), pp.  –, .  Theophil Antonicek, ‘Biedermeierzeit und Vorm¨arz’, Musikgeschichte ¨ Osterreichs, vol. II: Vom Barock zum Vorm¨arz, ed. Gernot Gruber (nd edn, Vienna, ), p. .  The repertory of Kiesewetter’s concerts is discussed in Herfrid Kier, ‘Kiesewetters historische Hauskonzerte: zur Geschichte der kirchenmusikalischen Restauration in Wien’, K Jb  (), –, and ‘Musikalischer Historismus in vorm¨arzlichen Wien’, HW, pp. –.  Raphael Georg Kiesewetter, Geschichte der europaeisch-abendlaendischen oder unsrer heutigen Musik (nd edn, Leipzig, ; repr. Walluf, ), p. ; Kandler, Ueber das Leben, pp. ii–v.  Siegfried Gmeinwieser, ‘Die altklassische Vokalpolyphonie Roms in ihrer Bedeutung f¨ur den kirchenmusikalischen Stil in M¨unchen: Eine Untersuchung u¨ ber die Best¨ande des Musikarchivs der Theatinerkirche St. Kajetan in M¨unchen’, Acta Musicologica  (), .  See Richard Hohenemser, Welche Einfl¨usse hatte die Wiederbelebung der a¨ lteren Musik im . Jahrhundert auf die deutschen Komponisten? (Leipzig, ), p. ; Otto Ursprung, Restauration und Palestrina-Renaissance in der katholischen Kirchenmusik der letzten zwei Jahrhunderte: Vergangenheitsfragen und Gegenwartsaufgaben (Augsburg, ), p. ; and Udo Wagner, Franz Nekes und der C¨acilianismus im Rheinland (Cologne, ), p. .  See ‘Briefe u¨ ber die Musik in Kassel’, AmZ  (), . The Miserere had entered the Hofkapelle during the reign of Leopold I and remained an important part of the Holy Week services throughout the eighteenth century (Riedel, Kirchenmusik am Hofe, pp. –).  ‘Pellisov’ (Karl Emil Schafh¨autl), ‘Ueber die Kirchenmusik des katholischen Cultus’, AmZ  (), .

Notes to pages –    

         

 

              



Ibid., –; Ursprung, Restauration und Palestrina-Renaissance, p. . ‘Pellisov’, ‘Ueber die Kirchenmusik’, . Ibid., , . Johann Caspar Ett, Missa in F, ed. Leo S¨ohner (Mainz, ). The two versions of this mass are compared in Siegfried Gmeinwieser, ‘Caspar Etts Missa Laetare Jerusalem und ihre Bedeutung f¨ur die kirchenmusikalische Restauration in M¨unchen’, PK, pp. –. Caspar Ett, Busspsalm Miserere f¨ur gemischten vierstimmigen Chor (Straubing, n.d.); Missa quadragesimalis. Messe f¨ur vierstimmigen Chor f¨ur die Advents- und Fastenzeit mit einem Bl¨asersatz ad libitum, ed. Bernd Dudek (Munich, ). Anon., ‘M¨unchen’, AmZ  (), –. Ibid., . Ibid., . ‘Pellisov’, ‘Ueber die Kirchenmusik’, . Ibid., , . Ibid., –. Ibid., , . Ibid., . Georg Jakob, ‘Dr. Karl Proske: Lebensskizze’, CK  (), ; Raymund Schlecht, Geschichte der Kirchenmusik. Zugleich Grundlage zur vorurtheilslosen Beantwortung der Frage: ‘was ist echte Kirchenmusik?’ (Regensburg, ), pp. –. Karl Weinmann, Karl Proske: der Restaurator der klassischen Kirchenmusik (Regensburg, ), pp. –. The first volume of Musica divina contains Palestrina’s Missa brevis, Missa Dies sanctificatus, and Missa Iste confessor, alongside works by Lassus, Gabrieli, Hassler, Giammateo Asola, Lotti and Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni, while the two volumes of the Selecta novus missarum edited by Proske contain his Missa Assumpta est Maria, Missa Veni sponsa Christi and Missa Dum complerentur. Carl Proske (ed.), Musica divina, ser. I, vol. I (Regensburg, ; repr. New York and London, ), pp. xviii, vi. Ibid., pp. xxi, xx. Ibid., pp. xx, v. Ibid., pp. l, xxii. Ibid., pp. xxvi, v. Ibid., pp. li, xviii. Ibid., pp. xviii–xix. Ibid., p. lii. Ibid., p. xix. Ibid., p. xxx. Ibid., p. xxxii. Ibid. Ibid., p. vi. Ibid., p. xxxii. Weinmann, Karl Proske, p. .



Notes to pages –

 Bernhard Janz, ‘Das editorische Werk Carl Proskes und die Anf¨ange der kirchenmusikalischen Reformbewegung’, PK , p. ; Proske (ed.), Musica divina, p. xxii.  Carl Proske, ‘Musikalische Aphorismen’, CK  (), .  Carl Proske, letter of  May  to Mettenleiter, as presented in Georg Jakob, ‘Johann Georg Mettenleiter. Eine Skizze seines Lebens und Wirkens’, CK  (),  –.  Proske’s ‘De profundis’ was later published in CK  (), –; excerpts from both pieces are presented in Weinmann, Karl Proske, pp.  –.  Acta et decreta Conc. Prov. Col.  (n.p., ), p. , as quoted in Karl Gustav Fellerer, ‘Das K¨olner Provinzialkonzil  und die Kirchenmusik’, KJb  (), .  Franz Xaver Witt, ‘Caspar Ett’, FB  (), ; Witt, ‘Die erste Generalversammlung des allgemeinen “deutschen C¨acilien-Vereines”’, FB  (), , DC , p. .  Karl Gustav Fellerer, ‘Grundlagen und Anf¨ange der kirchenmusikalischen Organisation Franz Xaver Witts’, KJb  (), .  DC, p. .  See Edmund Langer, ‘Zur territorialen Abgrenzung von Unternehmungen idealer Tendenz’, MS  (), –.  Franz Witt, ‘Der Palestrinastyl und die modernen Kirchencomponisten’, C¨acilia. Organ f¨ur katholische Kirchenmusik  (), .  Letter of  February  to Ludwig II of Bavaria, as presented in Franz Witt, ‘Die (.) Vereinsgabe des C¨acilien-Vereines pro ’, FB  (), –.  Franz Witt, ‘Die zweite Generalversammlung des allgemeinen deutschen C¨acilien-Vereins zu Regensburg am ., . und . August ’, FB  (), ff., DC , pp. –.  DC , pp. , .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Joseph Jungmann, Aesthetik (Freiburg am Breisgau, ), pp.  –; Wilhelm B¨aumker, ‘Die Alten und die Neuen’, MS  (),  (editorial fn.).  Franz Witt, ‘Messe Nr. III von Jos. Haydn und . Messe von E. Horak’, MS  (), , DC, p. .  Franz Witt, ‘Ueber den Palestrinastil’, MS  (), –, in Franz Witt, Ausgew¨ahlte Aufs¨atze zur Kirchenmusik, ed. Karl Gustav Fellerer (Cologne, ), p. .  Witt, ‘Die zweite Generalversammlung’, p. .  Franz Witt, ‘Was haben die modernen Kirchencomponisten zu meiden?’ MS  (), –, DC , p. .  Franz Witt, ‘Witt’s Raphael’s-Messe’, MS  (), , DC, p. ; ‘Was haben die modernen’, p. .

Notes to pages –



 Witt, ‘Was haben die modernen’, p. .  Franz Witt, ‘Crucifixus’, FB  (), , DC , p. .  August Wilhelm Ambros, Geschichte der Musik, vol. II, ed. Heinrich Reimann (nd edn, Leipzig, ), p. xii.  Witt, ‘Was haben die modernen’, p. .  CVC, nos.  – (nd edn, Regensburg, ), no. ; Witt, ‘Was haben die modernen’, p. .  Witt, ‘Die zweite Generalversammlung’, p. .  CVC, nos. – (Regensburg, ), no. .  Witt, ‘Ueber den Palestrinastyl’, p.  (cf. ‘Der Palestrinastyl’, ).  Franz Witt, ‘Sammlung ausgezeichneter Compositionen f¨ur die Kirche’, FB  (), , .  DC, p. .  MS  (), , DC, p. .  Schlecht, Geschichte der Kirchenmusik, pp. –.  Franz Witt, ‘Was soll in der heiligen Advent- und Fastenszeit beim Gottesdienste zur Auff¨uhrung kommen?’ FB  (), –; Witt, ‘Die zweite Generalversammlung’, pp. –; DC, p. .  Franz Witt, ‘Aufgaben des Generalpr¨ases’, FB  (), , DC , p. .  Witt, ‘Der Palestrinastyl’, .  Ibid., –.  Witt, ‘Was haben die modernen’, p. .  Ibid., pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  Ibid.  Ibid., pp. –.  Anon. (Franz Witt), ‘P. Gall Morel und die Instrumentalmusik in der Kirche’, MS  (), , DC , p. .  Witt, ‘Was haben die modernen’, pp. , .  Ibid., p. .  CVC, no. ; Anton Walter, Dr. Franz Witt, Gr¨under und erster Generalpr¨ases des C¨acilienvereines. Ein Lebensbild (Regensburg, ), p. , as quoted in Winfried Kirsch, ‘“Wir k¨onnen den liturgischen Text vielfach sch¨oner und besser darstellen lernen, als Palestrina” – Zu den Messen-Kompositionen Franz Xaver Witts’, PK, p. . A catalogue of Witt’s compositions is presented in KJb  (), –.  Franz Nekes, Witt’s Raphael’s-Messe auf den zehnten Generalversammlung des Di¨ozesan-C¨acilienvereins in K¨oln (Regensburg, ), p. , as quoted in Johannes Evangelist Habert, ‘Die Raphaels-Messe von Witt’, ZkK  (), .  B¨aumker, ‘Die Alten’, –; Franz Xaver Haberl, as quoted in Habert, ‘Die Raphaels-Messe’, .  Habert, ‘Die Raphaels-Messe’, –.  Ibid., .  These pieces were reprinted in two collections: Gradualien, Alleluja und Tractus, Hymnen, Sequenzen und Motetten des ganzen Kirchenjahres f¨ur  -, -, -, - und



                        

Notes to pages –  stimmigen M¨anner- und gemischten Chor (Witt’sche Gradualiensammlung) op. ,  vols. (Regensburg, –); and Offertoria totius anni. F. X. Witt’s Sammlung mehrstimmiger Offertorien f¨ur das ganze Kirchenjahr op.  (Regensburg, ). Johannes Evangelist Habert, ‘Die Fuge in der katholischen Kirchenmusik’, ZkK  (), –, . Franz Witt, ‘Bericht an den Cardinal-Protektor’, FB  (), , DC , p. . Franz Witt, ‘Liturgie und Kunst’, MS  (), , DC, p. . Peter Griesbacher, Kirchenmusikalische Stilistik und Formenlehre, vol. IV: Reaktion und Reform (Regensburg, ), pp.  –. The compositions of Nekes and Piel are discussed in Wagner, Franz Nekes; and Gabriela Krombach, ‘Die kirchenmusikwerke von Peter Piel und der Palestrina-Stil’, PK, pp. –. A full catalogue of Haller’s works is given in Heinrich Kammerer, ‘Michael Haller (–)’, KJb  (),  –. Michael Haller, Kompositionslehre f¨ur polyphonen Kirchengesang mit besonderer R¨ucksicht auf die Meisterwerke des . Jahrhunderts (Regensburg, ), p. . Ambrosius Kienle, Choralschule. Ein Handbuch zur Erlernung des Choralgesanges (Freiburg im Breisgau, ), as quoted in Haller, Kompositionslehre, p. . Haller, Kompositionslehre, p. . Ibid., p. . Heinrich Bellermann, Der Contrapunct oder Anleitung zur Stimmf¨uhrung in der musikalischen Composition (Berlin, ), p. x; Haller, Kompositionslehre, p. . Haller, Kompositionslehre, p. . Ibid., p. . Franz Witt, ‘Die f¨unfte Generalversammlung des deutschen C¨acilienVereins in Regensburg’, FB  (), . CVC nos. – (Regensburg, ), no. . Max Sigl, ‘Michael Haller als Kirchenkomponist und die kirchenmusikalische Gegenwart’, MS  (), , as quoted in Peter Ackermann, ‘Klassische Vokalpolyphonie im Werk Michael Hallers’, PK, p. . August Scharnagl, ‘Haller, Michael’, MGG, vol. V, p. ; Hohenemser, Welche Einfl¨usse, pp. –. Michael Haller, Missa prima ad tres voces inaequales op.  (rd edn, Regensburg, ), p. . The expanded second edition of the Zw¨olf Motetten has been consulted:  Motetten op. [a] (Regensburg, ). Haller, Kompositionslehre, p. . Ibid., pp. –, –. Ibid., p. . Knud Jeppesen, The Style of Palestrina and the Dissonance (nd edn, London, ), p. . Haller, Kompositionslehre, p. . Haberl described the foundation of this society and the resumption of the edition in his preface to PGA, vol. X; see also Franz Xaver Haberl, ‘Die Gesammtausgabe der Werke Palestrinas’, CK  (), –.

Notes to pages –



 All of Haller’s additions are clearly labelled, even where trivial: see ‘O gloriosa Domina’ (PGA, vol. XXX, p. ) and ‘Ecce nunc benedicite’ (PGA, vol. XXXI, p. ).  The edition does however contain some fragments of this kind; some of the pieces deemed beyond completion, such as those for which only single vocal parts were known to survive, are included in PGA, vol. XXXIII.  Haberl, ‘Die Gesammtausgabe’, , –, .  The third-choir parts of these six compositions had been believed to be no longer extant since the early eighteenth century, because only eight partbooks (for the eight voices of choirs I and II) survived in the Vatican archive; in  Baini commented that the existing parts indicate that the complete compositions must have been masterpieces, and described a remarkable earlier completion of ‘Ad te levavi’ by Giovanni Biordi ( –). (Kandler, Ueber das Leben, p. .)  PGA, vol. XXVI, p. iv.  Ibid.  Michael Haller, ‘Motivierung des neukomponirten III. Chores in sechs stimm. Compositionen Palestrina’s’, KJb  (), .  Ibid., , .  See, for example, the three-choir motets in POC, vol. XXXII.  Haller, ‘Motivierung’, –; Kompositionslehre, p. .  A set of twelve partbooks for these three pieces has been rediscovered in the Biblioteca Nazionale, Rome (Mss. Mus. –). See Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Three Pieces for Triple Choir, ed. Noel O’Regan (Edinburgh, ), preface.  A useful (and entertaining) survey of some of the referees’ comments is presented in Eberhard Kraus, ‘Die Referenten des Caecilienvereins-Katalogs und der von ihnen in ihren Beurteilungen vertretene kirchenmusikalische Standpunkt’, CU, pp. –.  ‘An die S. T. Mitglieder des allgemeinen deutschen C¨acilien-Vereines (Gesch¨aftsordnung bei Herstellung eines Vereinskataloges)’, FB  (),  –.  DC, p. .  CVC no. .  CVC nos. , .  MS  (), .  Griesbacher, Kirchenmusikalische Stilistik und Formenlehre, p. .  Haberl, ‘Die Gesammtausgabe’, .  DC, p. .  Anton Walter, ‘Der katholische Kirchengesang in seiner Bedeutung und Aufgabe’, FB  (), , DC, p. .  DC, p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid.

         

    





Notes to pages – Ibid. Ibid., p. . Ibid.; CVC no. . Witt, Gradualiensammlung, vol. II, preface; CVC no. . Carl Dahlhaus, Analysis and Value Judgment, trans. Siegmund Levarie (New York, ), pp. –. Ibid., p. . Hermann-Josef Burbach, ‘Das “Triviale” in der katholischen Kirchenmusik des . Jahrhunderts’, Studien zur Trivialmusik des . Jahrhunderts, ed. Carl Dahlhaus (Regensburg, ), p. . Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Trivialmusik und a¨ sthetisches Urteil’, Studien zur Trivialmusik, ed. Dahlhaus, pp. –. Ibid., p. . A problem arises in considering the status of quasi-liturgical pieces written for Singvereine. It could be argued that through being allied to functional church music, and because of the primacy placed on value for Bildung rather than aesthetic worth, these works too cannot be subject to aesthetic criteria. Dahlhaus, ‘Trivialmusik’, p. . Burbach, ‘Das “Triviale”’, pp. –. Ibid., pp. –. Franz Witt, ‘Die . General-Versammlung des allgemeinen deutschen C¨acilien-Vereines zu Eichst¨att’, FB  (), ff., DC , p. . ¨ Elmar Seidel, ‘Uber die Wirkung der Musik Palestrinas auf das Werk Liszts und Wagners’, Liszt-Studien , ed. Serge Gut (Eisenstadt, ), pp. –; Michael Saffle, ‘Liszt and Cecilianism: The Evidence of ¨ Documents and Scores’, CU, pp. –; Peter Ackermann, ‘Asthetische und kompositionstechnische Aspekte der Palestrina-Rezeption bei Franz Liszt’, PK , pp. –; Raffaele Pozzi, ‘L’ immagine ottocentesca del Palestrina nel rapporto tra Franz Liszt e il movimento Ceciliano’, BR, pp. –. Karl Gustav Fellerer, ‘Bruckners Kirchenmusik und der ¨ C¨acilianismus’, Osterreichische Musikzeitschrift  (), –; Otto Biba, ‘Der C¨acilianismus’, Bruckner Symposion: Anton Bruckner und die Kirchenmusik, ed. Othmar Wessely (Linz, ), pp. –; Wolfgang Witzenmann, ‘Echi Palestriniani nei mottetti di Anton Bruckner’, BR , pp. –. Franz Liszt, ‘De la musique religieuse’, Revue et Gazette musicale,  August , as presented in Paul Merrick, Revolution and Religion in the Music of Liszt (Cambridge, ), pp. –; Franz Liszt, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Lina Ramann,  vols. (Leipzig, –), vol. II, p. , as quoted in Ernst G¨unter Heinemann, Franz Liszts Auseinandersetzung mit der geistlichen Musik: zum Konflikt von Kunst und Engagement (Munich and Salzburg, ), p. . All catalogue numbers appended to pieces by Liszt refer to the work lists in Humphrey Searle, ‘Liszt, Franz’, NG, vol. XI, pp.  ff., and Peter Raabe, Liszts Schaffen (Stuttgart, ; nd edn, Tutzing, ), pp.  ff. Bruckner’s pieces are numbered according to Renate Grasberger, Werkverzeichnis Anton Bruckner (WAB) (Tutzing, ).

Notes to pages –



 See Merrick, Revolution and Religion, p. .  A. C. Howie, ‘The Sacred Music of Anton Bruckner’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester (), p. .  Witzenmann, ‘Echi Palestriniani’, p. . Witzenmann considers it likely that Bruckner accompanied the choir’s performances of the Missa Aeterna Christi munera.  Fellerer, ‘Bruckners Kirchenmusik’, . ¨  See Johann Joseph Fux, Motetten I, Denkm¨aler der Tonkunst in Osterreich, ed. Johannes Evangelist Habert, ser. II/i, vol. III (Graz, ).  Merrick, Revolution and Religion, pp. –.  Hermann Kretzschmar, F¨uhrer durch den Concertsaal, part II, vol. I: Kirchliche Werke (Leipzig, ), p. , as quoted in Franz Xaver Haberl, ‘Ueber Liszt’s “Missa choralis” und prinzipielle Fragen’, MS  (), .  Ursprung, Restauration und Palestrina-Renaissance, p. . ¨  See, for instance, Seidel, ‘Uber die Wirkung’, p. ; Merrick, Revolution and Religion, p. ; Charles White, ‘The Masses of Franz Liszt’, Ph.D. thesis, Bryn Mawr University (), p. .  Michael Saffle discusses Liszt’s personal relationships with Witt and Haberl in ‘Liszt and Cecilianism’ (pp. –), but minimizes the impact these had on Liszt’s music. Liszt’s effusive response to Witt’s dedication of the Litaniae Lauretanae can be seen in a letter of  February ; see ‘Vierzehn Original-Briefe Liszts an Witt’, MS  (), .  Saffle, ‘Liszt and Cecilianism’, p. ; Alan Walker, Franz Liszt, vol. II: The Weimar Years – (London, ), p. .  Franz Liszt, letter of September , which appeared in FB in  (DC , p. ).  Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara (Leipzig, ), vol. VII, p. .  Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara (Leipzig, ), vol. VI, p. , as quoted in Heinemann, Franz Liszts Auseinandersetzung, p. .  Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara, vol. VIII, p. ; see also Briefe, vol. VII, p. .  MS  (), .  Often quoted in this connection are three assessments of Witt and the Cecilians attributed to Bruckner; these aphorisms are disregarded here since, in addition to being dubious, they present a contradictory picture. (See Winfried Kirsch, ‘Zwischen Kunst- und Liturgieanspruch: die Kirchenmusik Anton Bruckners’, Bericht u¨ ber den internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Bayreuth  , ed. Christoph Hellmut Mahling and Sigrid Wiesmann (Kassel, ), p. .)  Fellerer, ‘Bruckners Kirchenmusik’, ; Michaela Auchmann, ‘Anton Bruckners Messe Nr.  E-Moll ( WAB ). Zur musikalischen Gestaltung, Wirkungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Vienna (), p. .  Howie, ‘The Sacred Music’, pp. iv, . See also A. C. Howie, ‘Traditional and Novel Elements in Bruckner’s Sacred Music’, The Musical Quarterly  (), –.



Notes to pages –

 Traumihler’s role as a referee for the Vereins-Catalog is discussed in Kraus, ‘Die Referenten’, pp. , .  Franz Witt, ‘Ett’s achtstimmige Messe in A-Dur’, MS  (), –.  Biba, ‘Der C¨acilianismus’, p. .  MS  (), , DC , p. .  These changes are listed in Anton Bruckner, Kleine Kirchenmusikwerke –: Revisionsbericht, ed. Leopold Nowak, S¨amtliche Werke ( Vienna, ), vol. XXI, p. . ¨  The relationships between the short-lived OCV and its successor the ¨ OOCV (founded in ) are explored in August Scharnagl, ‘Die kirchenmusikalische Reformbestrebung von Johannes Evangelist Habert ¨ in Osterreich’, CU, pp. –; and in Josef Moser, ‘Zum Thema Kirchenmusik: C¨acilianische Bestrebungen in der Di¨ozese Linz’, Ober¨osterreichische Heimatbl¨atter  (), –.  Johannes Evangelist Habert, ‘Aufruf zur Gr¨undung eines “Oesterreichischen C¨acilien-Verein”’, ZkK  (), –.  Moser, ‘C¨acilianische Bestrebungen’, .  Johannes Evangelist Habert, ‘Oesterreichischer C¨acilien-Verein’, ZkK  (), –; Habert, ‘W¨urdige Kirchenmusik’, ZkK  (), .  Anton Bruckner, letter to Traumihler of  July , Briefe: Band I –, ed. Andrea Harrandt and Otto Schneider, S¨amtliche Werke (Vienna, ), vol. XXIV/i, p. .  ZkK  (), , .  Moser, ‘C¨acilianische Bestrebungen’, .  A table listing all performances of sixteenth-century compositions in the Hofkapelle from  to  is presented in Gabriela Krombach, ‘Auff¨uhrungen von Werken Palestrinas am Wiener Hof in der zweiten H¨alfte des . Jahrhunderts’, PK , pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  The most substantial contemporary collection of liturgical pieces by Liszt is the Neun Kirchenchorges¨ange (Leipzig, ), expanded a decade later as the Zw¨olf Kirchenchorges¨ange mit Orgelbegleitung (). In Bruckner’s case, the motets under consideration are those composed from  onwards – the year in which his counterpoint tuition with Sechter ended – excluding revisions of earlier works.  Ackermann, ‘Palestrina-Rezeption’, pp. –; Witzenmann, ‘Echi palestriniani’, pp. –.  Ackermann, ‘Palestrina-Rezeption’, p.  (Palestrina’s ‘Cantantibus organis’ can be found in POC, vol. VIII).  Witzenmann, ‘Echi palestriniani’, pp. , .  Ibid., pp. –.  Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara, vol. VIII, p. .  Alexander Dmitryevich Oulibischeff, Mozarts Leben (Stuttgart, ), vol. II, p. , as quoted in Witt, ‘Der Palestrinastyl’, –.  August Wilhelm Ambros, Geschichte der Musik, vol. IV, ed. Hugo Leichtentritt (rd edn, Leipzig, ), p. .

Notes to pages –



¨  See Seidel, ‘Uber die Wirkung’, pp. –; Ackermann, ‘PalestrinaRezeption’, pp. –; and Merrick, Revolution and Religion, pp. –. The significance of this reference has even been discussed in the liner notes to recordings of the work: see Hermann Wilske, ‘Franz Liszt und seine sp¨ate Kirchenmusik: Zur Werkidee und Wirkungsgeschichte des ChristusOratoriums’, Christus, cond. Helmuth Rilling (H¨anssler-Verlag, ), pp. –.  Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara, vol. VIII, p. .  Prominent references also occur at the opening of Liszt’s Kirchenlied ‘Christus ist gebornen’ (S . /R a) and in Septem sacramenta, no. , bars –.  See also the Kirchenlied ‘Ave Maria’ [III] (WAB ), bars –.  See Richard Cohn, ‘Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-Romantic Triadic Progressions’, Music Analysis  (), .  White, ‘Masses of Franz Liszt’, p. .  Jeppesen, The Style of Palestrina, p. .  Outside of this collection, however, some movements by Liszt can be considered modal, most notably the eighth movement of Christus, ‘O filii et filiae’ and the organ piece Salve Regina (S ./R b). Both these pieces are discussed in Serge Gut, ‘Die historische Position der Modalit¨at bei Franz Liszt’, Liszt-Studien , ed. Wolfgang Suppan (Graz, ), pp. –.  Timothy L. Jackson, ‘Bruckner’s Metrical Numbers’, th-Century Music  (), –.  Anton Bruckner, ‘Antrittsvorlesung als Lector der Wiener Universit¨at’, Gesammelte Briefe. Neue Folge, ed. Max Auer (Regensburg, ), pp.  –.  See Witzenmann, ‘Echi Palestriniani’, p. .  Leopold Nowak, ‘Stile und Ausdruckselemente in Anton Bruckners Kirchenmusik’, Bruckner Vortr¨age. Rom . Anton Bruckner e la musica sacra, ed. Othmar Wessely (Linz, ), pp. –.  Witt described the difficulties involved in introducing falsobordone to Bavarian churches in his speech to the third general assembly of the ACV in  (DC , pp. –). Traumihler’s reforms at St Florian presumably also included the introduction of falsobordone; it is likely that this is what Bruckner’s successor as organist, Josef Seiberl (–), was referring to in complaining to Bruckner that the ‘most liturgical’ (liturgischsten) pieces were being introduced to the services there (Bruckner, Briefe, ed. Harrandt and Schneider, p. ).  See, for example, Biba, ‘Der Caecilianismus’, p. .  Imogen Fellinger, ‘Die drei Fassungen des “Christus factus est” in Bruckners Kirchenmusikalischen Schaffen’, Bruckner Symposion, ed. Wessely, pp. –.  See Hans Bauernfeind and Leopold Nowak, ‘Anmerkungen’, Kleine Kirchenmusikwerke, p. ; Auchmann, ‘Anton Bruckners Messe’, p. .  Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara, vol. VII, p. .  See, for instance, Merrick, Revolution and Religion, p. ; Fellerer, ‘Bruckners Kirchenmusik’, , .

         

        

Notes to pages – Raabe, Liszts Schaffen, pp. –. Heinemann, Franz Liszts Auseinandersetzung, p. . Ibid., p. . See, for example, Saffle, ‘Liszt and Cecilianism’, pp. , . CVC no. . Ibid. Haberl, ‘Ueber Liszt’s “Missa choralis”’, . Ibid., . Johannes Evangelist Habert, ‘Die Auff¨uhrung der Bruckner’schen Fest-Messe bei der feierlichen Einweihung der Votivkapelle des Mari¨aEmpf¨angniss-Domes in Linz am . September d.J.’, ZkK  (), . Ibid., . Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara, vol. III, p. , as quoted in Heinemann, Franz Liszts Auseinandersetzung, p. ; Bruckner, Gesammelte Briefe, ed. Auer, p. . Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara, vol. VI, p. , as quoted in Heinemann, Franz Liszts Auseinandersetzung, p. . Manfred Wagner, ‘Liszt und Bruckner – oder ein Weg zur Restauration sakraler Musik’, Liszt-Studien  , ed. Suppan, p. . Auchmann, ‘Anton Bruckners Messe’, p.  (internal quotation, Nowak, ‘Stile und Ausdruckselemente’, p. ); Merrick, Revolution and Religion, pp. , . Hohenemser, Welche Einfl¨usse, p. . Auchmann, ‘Anton Bruckners Messe’, p. . See Peter Phillips, ‘Reconsidering Palestrina’, Early Music  (), . Karl Gustav Fellerer, ‘Das deutsche Chorlied im . Jahrhundert’, Gattungen der Musik in Einzeldarstellungen: Gedenkschrift Leo Schrade, ed. Wulf Arlt, Ernst Lichtenhahn and Hans Oesch (Bern and Munich, ), p. . 

PALESTRINA IN THE CONCERT HALL

 Andrew Bowie, From Romanticism to Critical Theory: The Philosophy of German Literary Theory (London, ), p. .  Ulrich Konrad, ‘Klassische Vokalpolyphonie in den Oratorien Carl Loewes’, PK, p. ; see also Winfried Kirsch, ‘Religi¨ose und liturgische Aspekte bei Brahms und Bruckner’, RW, pp. –.  Eduard Hanslick, ‘Die “Graner Messe” von Liszt’, Aus dem Concertsaal: Kritiken und Schilderungen aus den letzten  Jahren des Wiener Musiklebens (Vienna, ), p. .  Hanslick, ‘Die “Graner Messe”’, p. .  August Wilhelm Ambros, Geschichte der Musik, vol. IV, ed. Hugo Leichtentritt (rd edn, Leipzig, ), p. .  See, for example, Eric Werner, Mendelssohn: A New Image of the Composer and his Age, trans. Dika Newlin (London, ), pp. –.

Notes to pages –



 Judith Silber Ballan, ‘Marxian Programmatic Music: A Stage in Mendelssohn’s Musical Development’, Mendelssohn Studies, ed. R. Larry Todd (Cambridge, ), p. .  Spohr’s piece is quoted and discussed in Ulrich Konrad, ‘Der Beitrag evangelischer Komponisten zur Messenkomposition im . Jahrhundert’, KJb  (), –.  Judith Silber Ballan, ‘Mendelssohn and his Reformation Symphony’, Journal of the American Musicological Society  (), . See also Silber Ballan, ‘Mendelssohn and the “Reformation” Symphony: A Critical and Historical Study’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Yale (), pp. –.  These celebrations are described in Silber Ballan, ‘Mendelssohn and his Reformation Symphony’, –.  Martin Witte has also linked the ‘Reformation’ Symphony to Lutheran rather than Catholic ideals, but does so by entirely denuding the polyphony at the opening of the movement and the quotations of the Dresden Amen of their Catholic associations. For Witte, the opening is reminiscent only of old church music, while the Dresden Amen citations merely evoke generalized liturgical associations, and thus symbolize the Protestant service. (Witte, ‘Zur Programmgebundenheit der Sinfonien Mendelssohns’, Das Problem Mendelssohn, ed. Carl Dahlhaus (Regensburg, ), pp.  –.)  See Silber Ballan, ‘Mendelssohn and the “Reformation” Symphony’, pp. –.  See, for example, Robert Schumann, ‘Fragmente aus Leipzig’, Gesammelte Schriften u¨ ber Musik und Musiker,  vols. (rd edn, Leipzig, ), vol. I, pp. –; Ferdinand Hand, Aesthetik der Tonkunst,  vols. (nd edn, Leipzig, ), vol. II, p. .  Moritz Hauptmann, The Letters of a Leipzig Cantor, ed. Alfred Sch¨one and Ferdinand Hiller, trans. A. D. Coleridge,  vols. (London, ), vol. I, p. .  Julius Schubring, ‘Reminiscences of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’, Musical World (), as presented in Mendelssohn and his World, ed. R. Larry Todd (Princeton, ), p. .  See Arnold Schering, Geschichte des Oratoriums (Leipzig, ; repr. Hildesheim, ), pp. –; Konrad, ‘Klassische Vokalpolyphonie’, pp. –.  See Martin Geck, ‘Richard Wagner und die a¨ ltere Musik’, HW, p. .  See, for example, Joseph Jungmann, Aesthetik, rev. edn of Die Sch¨onheit und die sch¨one Kunst (Freiburg im Breisgau, ), pp. ,  –.  Richard Wagner, ‘Entwurf zur Organisation eines deutschen Nationaltheaters f¨ur das K¨onigreich Sachsen’, Richard Wagners Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Julius Kapp (Leipzig, n.d.), vol. XII, p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Richard Wagner, ‘Beethoven’, S¨ammtliche Schriften und Dichtungen. VolksAusgabe, ed. H. von Wolzogen and R. Sternfeld (th edn, Leipzig []), vol. IX, p. .  Josef Lewinsky, ‘Bei Richard Wagner. Ein Domchor-Erinnerung’, Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung  (), –, as presented in Wolfgang Dinglinger (ed.),





               

  



Notes to pages –

 Jahre Staats- und Domchor Berlin: Unbekannte und unver¨offentlichte Briefe und Dokumente (Berlin, ), p. . Nineteenth-century attitudes towards the performance and adaptation of Renaissance music are explored more extensively in my ‘Performing Renaissance Church Music in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Issues and Challenges in the Study of Performative Reception’, Music and Letters  (), –. ¨ Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut, Uber Reinheit der Tonkunst, ed. Raimund Heuler (Paderborn, ), p. . Ibid., p. . Eduard Baumstark, Ant. Friedr. Justus Thibaut: Bl¨atter der Erinnerung f¨ur seine Verehrer und f¨ur die Freunde der reinen Tonkunst (Leipzig, ), pp. –. ¨ vol. I, p. . HA, Ibid., pp. , . Hand, Aesthetik, vol. II, pp. , . Ibid., p. . Giuseppe Antonio Bernabei, Missa Ad regias agni dapes, ed. Heinrich Oberhoffer (Leipzig, ), preface, as quoted in Franz Witt, ‘Cantus divinus’, FB  (), . Wagner, ‘Entwurf zur Organisation’, pp. –. Richard Wagner, ‘Stabat mater von Pergolese. Arrangiert f¨ur großes Orchester mit Ch¨oren von Alexis Lwoff ’, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. VII, p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Franz Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara (Leipzig, ), vol. VII, pp. –. Matthias Buschk¨uhl, ‘Richard Wagners Bearbeitung von Palestrinas “Stabat mater” ’, Wagneriana: eine Ausstellung der Universit¨atsbibliothek Eichst¨att zum . Geburtstag von Wolfgang Wagner, ed. Buschk¨uhl (Tutzing, ), p. . CVC nos. – (Regensburg, ), no. . In addition, the quasi-modal harmonies in bars – of no.  Hymne de l’enfant a` son reveil could be associated with the Palestrina revival. A useful discussion of relationships to a wider range of older religious music in Liszt’s instrumental works, especially the piano music, is given in Klaus Wolfgang Niem¨oller, ‘Zur religi¨osen Tonsprache im Instrumentalschaffen von Franz Liszt’, RW, pp. –. ¨ Peter Ackermann, ‘Asthetische und kompositionstechnische Aspekte der Palestrina-Rezeption bei Franz Liszt’, PK , p. . Franz Liszt, Neue Ausgabe s¨amtlicher Werke, ed. Imre Sulyok and Imre Mez¨o (Kassel and Budapest, ), ser. I, vol. IX, p. . Heinrich von Kleist, Die Heilige C¨acilie oder die Gewalt der Musik, S¨amtliche Erz¨ahlungen und Anekdoten, ed. Helmut Sembdner (Munich, ), p.  (translations based on ‘Holy Cecilia and the Power of Music’, in Linda Siegel (ed.), Music in German Romantic Literature: A Collection of Essays, Reviews and Stories (Novato, CA, )). Ibid., pp. –.

Notes to pages –



 FB  (), DC , p. .  Johannes Hatzfeld-Sandebeck, ‘Richard Wagner und die katholische Kirchenmusik’, MS  (),  –.  Johannes Evangelist Habert, Beitr¨age zur Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition (Leipzig, ), vol. I, p. , as quoted in Peter L¨uttig, Der Palestrina-Stil als Satzideal in der Musiktheorie zwischen  und  (Tutzing, ), pp. –.  Franz Liszt, Die Legende von der Heiligen Elisabeth. Oratorium von Franz Liszt (Leipzig, ; repr. Farnborough, ), pp.  –.  Richard Hohenemser, Welche Einfl¨usse hatte die Wiederbelebung der a¨ lteren Musik im . Jahrhundert auf die deutschen Komponisten? (Leipzig, ), p. .  Hans Redlich, Parsifal (Bonn, ), p. ; Karl Gustav Fellerer, Palestrina: ¨ Leben und Werk (nd edn, D¨usseldorf, ), p.  (see Elmar Seidel, ‘Uber die Wirkung der Musik Palestrinas auf das Werk Liszts und Wagners’, Liszt-Studien , ed. Serge Gut (Eisenstadt, ), p. ). ¨  Seidel, ‘Uber die Wirkung’, pp. –; Karl Weinmann, Karl Proske: der Restaurator der klassischen Kirchenmusik (Regensburg, ), p. .  Cornelia Knotik, Musik und Religion im Zeitalter des Historismus: Franz Liszts wende zum Oratorienschaffen als a¨ sthetisches Problem (Eisenstadt, ), p. .  Liszt, Briefe, ed. La Mara, vol. VIII, p. . ¨  Seidel, ‘Uber die Wirkung’, pp. , . 

INTERPRETING THE SECONDARY DISCOURSE OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY MUSIC

 Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Geschichtliche und a¨ sthetische Erfahrung’, HW, p. ; Walter Wiora, ‘Grenzen und Stadien des Historismus’, HW, p. . Cf. Friedhelm Krummacher, ‘Historismus’, MGG, Sachteil, vol. IV, pp. –.  Erich Doflein, ‘Historismus in der Musik’, p.  (‘Eine Geschichte des reinen Historismus in der Komposition w¨are eine Geschichte der Kopien und musikalischen Sackgassen’).  See Walter Kolneder, ‘Das Wiederfinden vergessener Grundwahrheiten. Ein wichtiger Aspekt des sogenannten Historismus’, HW, p. .  Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms (London, ), p. .  Peter Mercer-Taylor, ‘Rethinking Mendelssohn’s Historicism: A Lesson from St Paul’, The Journal of Musicology  (), –.  Patricia Waugh, Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction (New York, ), p. , as quoted in Mercer-Taylor, ‘Rethinking Mendelssohn’s Historicism’, .  Friedrich Schlegel, ‘Athen¨aum Fragmente’, no. , KFSA, vol. II, p. ; Novalis, ‘Vermischte Bemerkungen’, Werke, ed. Gerhard Schulz (Munich, n.d. []), p. .  Friedrich Schlegel, ‘Philosophische Fragmente [IV]’, no. , KFSA, vol. VIII, p. .



Notes to pages –

 Eve Tavor Bannet, Postcultural Theory: Critical Theory after the Marxist Paradigm (London, ), p. .  Franz Witt, ‘Was haben die modernen Kirchencomponisten zu meiden?’ MS  (), –, DC , p. .  George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (Oxford, , rev. edn, ), p. .  See Andr´e Lefevere, Translating Literature: The German Tradition from Luther to Rosenzweig (Amsterdam, ), p. .  See Susan Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies (London, ), p. xv.  Ibid., p. .  Bannet, Postcultural Theory, pp. –; see Gary E. Aylesworth, ‘Deconstructing Translation: Preliminary Remarks’, The Textual Sublime: Deconstruction and its Differences, ed. Hugh Silvermann and Gary E. Aylesworth (Albany, ), pp. –.  See Barbara Godard, ‘Theorizing Feminist Discourse/Translation’, Translation, History, and Culture, eds. Susan Bassnett and Andr´e Lefevere (New York, ), pp. –.  Bannet, Postcultural Theory, p. .  John Dryden, Preface to Ovid’s Epistles (), as quoted in Reuben Brower, Mirror on Mirror: Translation, Imitation, Parody (Cambridge, MA, ), p. .  Friedrich Schleiermacher, ‘Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des Uebersezens’, S¨ammtliche Werke, ser. III, vol. II (Berlin, ), pp. –, as ¨ presented in Das Problem des Ubersetzens, ed. Hans Joachim St¨orig (Darmstadt, ), pp. – (p. ).  Ibid., pp. , .  The useful terms ‘source language’ and ‘target language’ are not of course Schleiermacher’s, but are borrowed from late twentieth-century translation theory.  Schleiermacher, ‘Methoden des Uebersezens’, p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp. , .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp. –.  The role of Blendlinge in Schleiermacher’s essay is discussed in Anthony Pym, ‘Schleiermacher and the Problem of Blendlinge’, Translation and Literature  (), –.  Schleiermacher, ‘Methoden des Uebersezens’, p. .  Ibid., pp. –.

Notes to pages –



 Wilhelm von Humboldt, Preface to Aeschylos Agamemnon metrisch u¨ bersetzt von Wilhelm von Humboldt (Leipzig, ), as presented in St¨orig (ed.), Das Problem ¨ des Ubersetzens, p. .  Franz Witt, ‘Der Palestrinastyl und die modernen Kirchencomponisten’, C¨acilia. Organ f¨ur katholische Kirchenmusik  (), . ¨  Arthur Schopenhauer, ‘Uber Sprache und Worts’, Parerga und Paralipomena ¨ (), as presented in St¨orig (ed.), Das Problem des Ubersetzens, p. .  Franz Xaver Haberl, ‘Die Gesammtausgabe der Werke Palestrina’s’, CK  (), .  Peter Griesbacher, Kirchenmusikalische Stilistik und Formenlehre, vol. II: Polyphonie (Regensburg, ), p. .  Vladim´ır Macura, ‘Culture as Translation’, Translation, History, and Culture, ed. Bassnett and Lefevere, p. .  Ibid., pp. , .  August Wilhelm Schlegel, ‘Homers Werke von Johann Heinrich Voss’ (), translated by Douglas Robinson as ‘A. W. Schlegel on the German Homer’, Translation and Literature  (), .  Karl Vossler, Geist und Kultur der Sprache (Heidelberg, ), as presented in Lefevere, The German Tradition, p. .  A. W. Schlegel, ‘Geschichte der klassischen Literatur’ (), as presented in Lefevere, The German Tradition, p. ; Humboldt, Preface to Aeschylos Agamemnon, p. .  Schleiermacher, ‘Methoden des Uebersezens’, p. .  Friedrich Schlegel, ‘Athen¨aum Fragmente’, no. , KFSA, vol. II, p. . ¨  Andreas Huyssen, Die fr¨uhromantische Konzeption von Ubersetzung und Aneignung: Studien zur fr¨uhromantischen Utopie einer deutschen Weltliteratur (Zurich and Freiburg im Breisgau, ), pp. –.  Novalis, ‘Vermischte Bemerkungen’, no. , Werke, p. . ¨  Huyssen, Ubersetzung und Aneignung, p. .  Franz Witt, ‘Die erste Generalversammlung des allgemeinen “deutschen C¨acilien-Vereines”’, FB  (), , DC , p. . Cf. Felix Mendelssohn, Briefe aus den Jahren  bis , ed. Paul and Carl Mendelssohn Bartholdy (Leipzig, ), p. .

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Index

absolute, , , , –,  absolute music, –, ,  academicism,  a cappella ideal, –,  , –, , , , , , –, , , , , ,  performance, –, , –, , –, , ,  n. see also stylus a capella Ackermann, Peter, – aesthetics of feeling (Gef u¨ hlsaesthetik), , , , , , ,  affections, doctrine of the (Affektenlehre),  Aiblinger, Johann Kaspar, ,  Allegri, Gregorio,  Miserere,  –, , , , , , –, , , , , , , ,  n.,  n. Allgemeine Deutsche C¨acilien-Verein (ACV ), , , –, , , , , –, –,  music of , –, –, –, –, , , –, , , ,  Vereins-Catalog, –, , , , , ,  allusion and quotation, , –, –, – Ambros, August Wilhelm, –, , , – anachronism, , –, – Anerio, Felice, , ,  Anerio, Giovanni Francesco,  Anglican chant,  Animuccia, Giovanni,  antiquity,  art of, , , –, , , , , – music of, , – poetry of, , ,  Antonicek, Theophil,  Apelles, 



appropriation, , , , , – archaism, , , , , , , ,  architecture, –, , , , ,  Ariosto, Lodovico,  arrangement and adaptation, , , –,  art and artificiality, , , ,  vs. craft, ,  decline of, , , , , –, , , –, , – for the masses, , , –, ,  vs. nature, , , , ,  see also painting Auchmann, Michaela, –, ,  Augsburg Confession,  authenticity, ,  –, , , ,  in composition, , , –, , , ,  see also conviction, artistic authorship,  autonomy, aesthetic, –, , , ,  – Bach, August Wilhelm, ,  Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel, ,  Bach, Johann Sebastian, , , , ,  –, , , , , , ,  n. chorales, , ,  Mass in B Minor, ,  St Matthew Passion, ,  Bai, Tommaso, ,  Baini, Giuseppe, , -, , ,  Memorie storico-critiche, , –, , , , , ,  n. Bann, Stephen,  Bannet, Eve Tavor,  Bate, W. Jackson,  Bauer, Ernst Friedrich, ,  Baumstark, Eduard, 



Index

Bavaria, cultural politics of, –, –,  see also Munich; Regensburg Bayreuth, Festspielhaus,  Beethoven, Ludwig van, ,  and absolute music, –,  Missa solemnis, , ,  n. Bellermann, Heinrich, , –, , –, , ,  –, , ,  n. Der Contrapunkt,  –, , , ,  Benevoli, Orazio,  Berlin, , ,  Domchor; Hof- und Domkirche, , –, , –, , , ,  Institut f u¨ r Kirchenmusik,  K¨oniglicher Normalsingechor,  Nikolaikirche,  Singakademie, , , –, –, , , , , , , , , , ,  n. Biba, Otto,  Bildung see cultivation Bismarck, Otto von, ,  Blumner, Martin Traugott Wilhelm, ,  Bonn,  Bowie, Andrew,  Brahms, Johannes,  Brendel, Franz,  Brotherhood of St Luke see Nazarenes, The Bruckner, Anton, , , –, –, –, , , ,  n.,  n. Mass in E Minor, , – Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias Freiherr von, , , , , , , ,  Burbach, Hermann- Josef, ,  Burgstaller, Johann Baptist,  Burney, Charles,  Buschk¨uhl, Matthias,  C¨acilienb¨undnis der Hofmusiker,  Calder´on de la Barca, Pedro,  caprice, –, , , ,  Caracci, Agostino, Annibale and Ludovico,  Casciolini, Claudio,  Catholicism aesthetic,  –, , , ,  Catholicizing,  clericalism,  conversions to, , , ,  as foundation for art, , , , –, , , ,  medieval and Renaissance, , , –, –, –, , ,  particularism, , , , 

vs. Protestantism, , , –, –, , ,  Cecilianism (C¨acilianismus), –,  n. Cecilian Society see Allgemeine Deutsche C¨acilien-Verein Centrumspartei,  Cherubini, Luigi, , ,  chorale, , , , , , ,  motet,  reform, , , , , – choral societies, ,  –, –, , , , , , , , ,  chromaticism, , , , , , –,  church style, –, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  classicism, , , , ,  Cologne, ,  Cathedral,  Commer, Franz,  concerts, historical, ,  contemporaneity, , ,  –, , , –, , , , , , ,  content see form and content conviction, artistic, , , , , , , – copy, copying, , , , , , –, –, , –, , –, , , ,  Correggio, ,  Cortona, Pietro da,  counterpoint,  theory of,  critique, , , , , – cultivation, improvement (Bildung), –,  –, , , ,  culture, ills of modern, , –, , –, –, – Dahlhaus, Carl, , , , , –,  Dante Alighieri, , , , , , , ,  Dehn, Siegfried,  Devrient, Eduard,  dialogue, dialogism, , , , –, – diatonicism, , , , , ,  Diebold, J. B.,  dilettantism, ,  Dinglinger, Wolfgang,  Dresden, Hofkirche, , ,  Dryden, John, ,  Durante, Francesco, , ,  D¨urer, Albrecht, ,  D¨usseldorf, 

Index Eccard, Johannes, , , , , ,  eclecticism and stylistic pluralism, –, , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , –, , , –,  ecumenicism, ,  Eichendorff, Joseph von, , ,  Eichst¨att, ,  Elberfeld,  emulation, ,  Enlightenment, the, , , ,  in France, ,  in Germany, , , , ,  Espagne, Franz,  Ett, Caspar, –, ,  Evangelical Church, Prussian see also liturgy falsobordone, , , , , , , , , , , , ,  –, , , , –, ,  n. Fasch, Carl Friedrich Christian, , , , ,  Feder, Georg,  Fellerer, Karl Gustav, , , ,  Feo, Francesco,  F´etis, Fran¸cois- Joseph,  Fichte, Johann Gottlieb,  folksong, , , ,  formalism,  form and content, –, –, , , ,  –, –, , –, –,  Foucault, Michel,  Franck, Melchior,  Frescobaldi, Girolamo, ,  Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, , , , ,  Froberger, Johann Jacob,  Fr¨ohlich, C. W., ,  Fuchs, Martin,  function, functionality, , , –, , , , , , –, , , –, –, –, ,  Fux, Johann Joseph, , ,  Gradus ad Parnassum, , , , , , , , , , ,  see also stylus a capella Gabrieli, Andrea,  Gabrieli, Giovanni, , ,  n. Gaehrich, Wenzel,  Gasparini, Francesco,  Geißel, Johannes von, 



genius, , ,  genre, –, , , , ,  see also style Gmeinwieser, Siegfried,  Gmunden,  Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, –, , , , , , , , , ,  Italienische Reise, , –, , ,  ‘Von deutscher Baukunst’, –,  golden age,  of church music, –, , –, –, –, –, , –, , , , ,  of Greek art,  of painting, , , , , –, –, , – Gothic architecture, –, , , , ,  novel, ,  revival, , –, ,  Goudimel, Claude, , ,  Graun, Carl Heinrich,  Greece, ancient see antiquity Grell, (August) Eduard, , , , , –, –, , , , , , , , , , , , ,  n. Missa solemnis, –,  n. Griesbacher, Peter, ,  Gumprecht, Otto, , ,  Haberl, Franz Xaver, , –, –, , , , , –, ,  n. Habert, Johannes Evangelist, , , , , , –,  Haller, Michael, , , , –,  –, , , , , ,  Kompositionslehre, –, , , ,  Hammerschmidt, Andreas,  Hand, Ferdinand, ,  Handel, Georg Friedrich, , , , , , , , , ,  Messiah, , , , – ‘Utrecht’ Te Deum, ,  Handl, Jakob, ,  Hanslick, Eduard, , , ,  Hasse, Johann Adolf,  Hassler, Hans Leo, ,  Hatzfeld-Sandebeck, Johannes,  Hauptmann, Moritz, ,  Haydn, Joseph, , , , , , , ,  ‘Nelson’ Mass,  Seasons, The,  Haydn, Michael, , 



Index

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, , –, –, , –, , –,  influence of, , , , , ,  Heidelberg Singverein, , –, , , , , , ,  n. Heine, Heinrich, , , ,  – and irony, –, –, , , –,  Heinemann, Ernst G¨unter, – Hensel, Fanny, , ,  Herder, Johann Gottfried, , , , –, , , ,  ‘C¨acilia’, , ,  Hientzsch, Johann Gottfried,  historicism antiquarian, , –, – critical, ,  –, –,  and determinism,  monumental, , –, , , , , , ,  objective, –, , –, , –, – origins of, –,  relativism, , –, , , ,  as return to origins, , –, , ,  subjective, –, , ,  vs. tradition, –, , , –, , –, , , , –, , –,  history abuse of, –, fictionalization of, –,  and narrative emplotment, , –, –, –, , , , –,  philosophy of,  and progress, , –, , –, –, ,  principle of non-repetition,  warping of,  –, ,  Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus,  n.,  n. ‘Alte und neue Kirchenmusik’, , –, , –, , , , , –, , , , –, ,  influence of, , , , , ,  Hohenemser, Richard, , , , – Holbein, Hans,  Holy Roman Empire,  Homer, ,  Homilius, Gottfried August,  Howie, A. C., ,  humanism, , –, , ,  Humboldt, Wilhelm von, , , , ,  Hummel, Johann Nepomuk, ,  Hutcheon, Linda,  Huyssen, Andreas, 

imitation, , , , , , , , , , , ,  –, , , , , , ,  –,  and mass production,  theories of, –, , – see also copying; emulation; replication industrialization, – Ingegneri, Marc’ Antonio Responsoria hebdomadae sanctae, –, , ,  n. inspiration, instinct, , –, , , , , ,  irony, –, , , –, , , – Jackson, Timothy L.,  Janz, Bernhard,  Jean Paul ( Richter), , , ,  Jeppesen, Knud, , , , ,  Jommelli, Nicol`o, ,  Joos, O.,  Kahnt, Christian Friedrich,  Kandler, Franz Sales, ,  Kant, Immanuel, ,  Karl VI, Emperor of Austria,  Kassel,  Katholische Arbeitervereine,  Kienle, Ambrosius,  Kiesewetter, Raphael Georg, ,  Kirchenlied, reform of, ,  Kirnberger, Johann Philipp, , –,  Kirsch, Winfried,  kitsch, – Klein, Bernhard,  Kleist, Heinrich von,  Knotik, Cornelia,  Koenen, Friedrich, , , , , ,  Konold, Wulf,  Konrad, Ulrich, ,  Korsyn, Kevin,  Kretzschmar, Hermann,  Kronstorf,  Kr¨uger, Eduard, , ,  K¨uhnast, Eduard,  Kuhnau, Johann,  Kulturkampf,  K¨umin, J. B.,  Lamartine, Alphonse de, – language, historicity of,  Lassus, Orlande, , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , ,  ‘Justorum animae’, 

Index Missa Puisque j’ay perdu,  Missa super Qual donna attende,  Leipzig, ,  Leo, Leonardo, , ,  Leonardo da Vinci,  Le Sueur, Jean-Fran¸cois,  Lichtenfeld, Monika,  Liedertafel style, , , , ,  Liliencron, Rochus Freiherr von,  Linz, , –,  Liszt, Franz, , , ,  –, –, –, –, –, –, , , , –, –, , ,  n. Christus, , , –,  n. Missa choralis, , , –, Missa solemnis,  liturgy,  Catholic, , –, , , –, , , , , –, , , ,  Evangelical, , , –, , , –, , , ,  reform of, , –, , – Loewe, Carl, , , ,  – Lotti, Antonio, , , ,  ‘Crucifixus’, ,  Ludwig I, King of Bavaria,  L¨uttig, Peter, , , , , , , ,  Luther, Martin,  Lutheranism,  Lyssipus,  Macura, Vladim´ır,  mannerism, , , , , , ,  Maratta, Carl,  Marcello, Benedetto, , , , ,  Marx, Adolph Bernhard,  mask, form as a,  Mass, Protestant settings of,  medievalism, , ,  Meloncelli, Rauol, ,  Mendelssohn, Abraham, , , ,  Mendelssohn, Felix, , , –, , , , , , , , , ,  Drei Psalmen, , –,  ‘Reformation’ Symphony, –,  n. St Paul, –, –, – Mercer-Taylor, Peter, – Merrick, Paul, ,  Mettenleiter, Johann Georg,  Meyer, Leonard B.,  Michaelis, Christian Friedrich, , , , ,  Michelangelo, , , ,  Last Judgement, The, , , 



Milz, Friedemann,  Mitterer, Ignaz, , ,  modality, modes, –, , –, , , –, , , –, , , , –, ,  quasi-modality, , , –, –, , ,  modelling, –, , , ,  modernism,  Molitor, J. B., –,  Monteverdi, Claudio,  Morales, Crist´obal,  moralism, , , –,  Moser, Josef,  Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, , , , , , , , , –,  Requiem, –,  M¨uller, Wilhelm,  Munich, ,  Hofkapelle, , ,  Michaelshofkirche, – museum,  mythology, new, –, , –, –, , , –,  N¨ageli, Hans Georg, – naivety, the naiv, , , , –, , , , –, –, ,  naiv vs. sentimental, , , –, ,  Napoleon I, Emperor of France, , ,  nationalism Austrian, – German, , , , –, ,  pan-German,  Prussian, , ,  see also Bavaria, cultural politics of Naumann, Emil, , –, , –, ,  Naumann, Johann Gottlieb,  Nazarenes, The, , , , , , ,  Neithardt, (Heinrich) August, , , , , –, ,  n. Nekes, Franz, , , – neo-classicism, , , , , , , ,  Nicolai, Otto, , –, –, , , , , –, ,  n. Nietzsche, Friedrich and objective historicism, –,  and subjective historicism, , , –, –,  –, , ,  Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenburg), , , , – novelty, , , ,  Nowak, Leopold, 



Index

Oberhoffer, Heinrich,  Ober¨osterreichischer Di¨ozesan C¨acilien-Verein ¨ (OOCV ), , , – Ockeghem, Johannes,  Olivier, Johann Heinrich,  opera, theatrical style, , , , ,  oratorio, oratorio style, –, , , , , –, – organicism, , , ,  and historical narrative, –, , –, , –, , , –, , , ,  and music theory, – originality, , –, , –, , , , ,  Ortwein, P. Magnus, ,  ¨ ¨ Osterreichischer C¨acilienverein (OCV ), –,  Oulibischeff, Dmitryevich,  – Overbeck, Friedrich, ,  painting German Romantic, , , , ,  medieval Italian, , ,  Renaissance Italian, , , , , , –, , , , ,  Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da ‘Ad te levavi’, ,  ‘Beati omnes’, ,  ‘Cantantibus organis’,  ‘Domine, quis habitabit’,  ‘Fratres, ego enim’,  Gesamtausgabe, , , , – ‘Hodie Christus natus est’,  Improperia, , , , , , , , , ,  ‘Jubilate Deo’, , – Lamentations,  Miserere, , ,  Missa ad Fugam,  Missa Aeterna Christi munera, , , ,  Missa brevis, , ,  Missa Dum complerentur, – Missa Hodie Christus natus est,  Missa Papae Marcelli, , , , –, , , , , ,  ‘O Domine Jesu Christe’,  ‘O quam bonus’,  ‘Pater noster’,  ‘Salvator mundi’,  ‘Salve regina’, ,  –,  ‘Stabat mater’, , , , , ,  –, , –, – ‘Stabat mater’ progression, , ,  –, , , , –, –, ,  n. ‘Victimae Paschali laudes’, 

Palestrina-Stil, , , , , , ,  meanings of, –, –, –, , , , ,  n. see also counterpoint; stile antico; strict style; stylus a capella Palestrinianism (Palestrinismus),  pantheism, ,  papal choir, , ,  Holy Week performances and repertory, , –, , –, –, –, , , , , , , , ,  parody, , , , ,  mass,  Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, , , ,  Pforr, Franz,  Phidias,  Piel, Peter, ,  Pius IX, Pope,  Pius-Verein f¨ur religi¨ose Freiheit,  plagiarism,  plainchant, –, –, , , , , , –, , , , , , , ,  harmonization of, , ,  Plato, ,  pluralism, stylistic see eclecticism; style Poesie, , ,  poetry, , , , , ,  polyphony, rhythmic, –, –, –, , –, , , ,  Porpora, Nicola,  postmodernism, , ,  Praetorius, Michael, , ,  Praxiteles,  Pre-Raphaelite movement,  see also Nazarenes, The programme music, – Proske, Carl, –, , , , , , , , , ,  Pustet, Friedrich, , ,  quasi-liturgical music, , , –, –, –, , , ,  n. Raabe, Peter,  Racine, Jean,  Ranke, Leopold von, , ,  Raphael, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Rauch, J. N.,  reception, aesthetics of, – Redern, Friedrich Wilhelm Graf von,  Redlich, Hans,  reflection, , , , , –, , , , , , –,  –, , , –

Index Reformation, , , , , , , , – Regensburg,  Alten Kapelle, , ,  Cathedral, , ,  Kirchenmusikschule,  –,  Reich, Second, , , ,  Reichardt, Johann Friedrich, , , , , , ,  Reinthaler, Karl,  Reischl, Wilhelm,  religioso idiom, –, , , ,  replication, stylistic, , , , , , , –, , , , , , –, , , , , –, , , , , , , , , –, , , –,  –,  Rheinberger, Joseph,  Riedel, Valentin von,  Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich,  Rochlitz, Friedrich, , , , , –, ,  Romano, Giulio,  Romantic circle, , , , , , , –, , –, , , , , , , –, , ,  Rome, , , , ,  Prussian legation, ,  Sistine Chapel, , , , –, , –, , –, , , , , , , , , , , ,  St Peter’s, ,  see also papal choir Rousseau, Jean- Jacques,  Rudigier, Josef, ,  Rumph, Stephen,  Sayn-Wittgenstein, Princess Carolyne von, – Scarlatti, Alessandro, ,  Sch¨affer, Julius,  Schafh¨autl, Karl Emil von, , –, , , – Sch¨afler, Franz Xaver,  Scharnagl, August, ,  Schenker, Heinrich,  Schiller, Friedrich von, ,  Schinkel, Karl Friedrich, – Schlegel, August Wilhelm, , , , , , , , ,  Schlegel, Friedrich, , –, , , –, , , –, –, , –,  and irony, –, , –,  and translation, , –



Schleiermacher, Friedrich, , , , , , –, , , , , ,  n. Schmidt, Friedrich, , ,  Schneider, Friedrich,  Schopenhauer, Arthur, , , ,  Sch¨opf, Franz,  Schorn, Ludwig, –,  Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel, ,  Schubring, Julius,  Schumann, Robert,  Sch¨utz, Heinrich, , , ,  n. sculpture, , , ,  Sechter, Simon,  secularization, –, , , – Seidel, Elmar, –,  Senfl, Ludwig, ,  Shakespeare, William, , , , ,  Sigl, Max, ,  Silber Ballan, Judith, –, ,  simplicity, , , , , , –, , , –, –, , , , , , , , , , ,  sincerity see authenticity; conviction Singvereine see choral societies Societ`a musicale romana,  Sophocles,  Soriano, Francesco,  spirit of the age, world spirit, , , , –, , , ,  Spitta, Philipp, , , , , , – Spohr, Louis, , –, , ,  n.,  n. spontaneity, , , , , , , , , , – Stanley, Glenn,  Stein, Friedrich Karl Freiherr von,  Steinbach, Erwin von,  St Florian, , , ,  n. stile antico, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , ,  Stimmungsbrechung, , –,  St¨olzel, Gottfried Heinrich,  Strasburg, Minster, –,  Strauß, Friedrich Adolph,  strict style (der strenge Satz), , , , –, , , , , –, , –, ,  –, , , , , , , , , ,  style historicity of, –, , , –, –, , 



Index

style (cont.) lofty vs. beautiful, , ,  purity of, –, , , , –, , –,  stylus a capella, , , , , –, , , , , –, , , –, , –, ,  sublimation, , ,  sublime, the, –, , , , , , –,  Succo, Reinhold,  suppression, –, , , , , , , , , –, , , , ,  Thibaut, Anton Friedrich Justus, –, , , , , , , ,  n. ¨ Reinheit der Tonkunst, , , –, –, Uber –, –, , , , –, , , , , –,  influence of, , , , , ,  Tieck, Ludwig, , , , , ,  Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen, , ,  Phantasus, , , , , , , , – Titian,  translation, , ,  linguistic interaction in, –, – recovery of content in, –, , – Romantic theories of, , , –, , –, – transubstantiation,  Traumihler, Ignaz, , , – Trent, Council of, , , , , ,  Trivialmusik, – trope of the sacred,  Tucher, Gottlieb Freiherr von,  Universalpoesie, , , – Ursprung, Otto,  value aesthetic vs. functional, , , , –, , , , , –, , –, –, –,  n. judgements of, , , – see also originality; authenticity van Eyck, Jan, – Veit, Philipp,  Venice, ,  Viadana, Ludovico,  Victoria, Tom´as Luis de, , ,  Vienna, ,  Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, 

Hofkapelle, , , –, ,  n. University,  Vinci, Pietro,  virtuosity and instrumentalism, –, , , –, , , – Vogler, Georg Joseph (Abb´e), ,  Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich, , , , , , ,  Wagner, Manfred,  Wagner, Richard, , , , –, –, –,  Waldeck, Karl,  Walter, Anton,  Waugh, Patricia, – Weber, Gottfried, ,  Weinmann, Karl, – Weiskel, Thomas,  Werner, Zacharias,  White, Charles,  Willaert, Adrian,  Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, , –, , , , , , –, –, , , , ,  Windthorst, Ludwig,  Winterfeld, Carl Georg Vivigens von, , –, , , , , , , ,  n.,  n. Wiora, Walter, , – ‘Wise’ ( Julius Schladebach), – Witt, Franz Xaver, , , –, –, , , , , –, –, –, –, , , , , , , , , , , –, , , –,  Raphaels-Messe, – ‘Wittian style’, the, –, ,  Witt, Theodore de,  Witzenmann, Wolfgang,  word-painting, ,  work-concept, , ,  see also autonomy, aesthetic world-view, modern, , , , , , , , ,  vs. medieval, , – vs. Renaissance, –, , , , , , ,  Zappe, Karl,  Zelenka, Jan Dismas,  Zelter, Carl Friedrich, –, , , , , , , , ,  Zenetti, Leopold von,  Ziolkowski, Theodore, 