There is a story about a composer who meets a friend. After the exchange of greetings, the friend asks, “Did you compose anything new of late?” And the composer answers, “Oh, well, composing is bad business these days. When I’m walking in the street and I get an idea, I have no music paper handy to write it down. Having written it down at home at last, I cannot find a publisher for it. When I find a publisher after all, he does not pay me. When the composition has been published, no one will buy it. If someone buys it after all, he cannot play it; and if he can play it, he thinks it’s awful.”

Be this as it may, we obviously find ourselves in a new phase of music development. The exact date is a matter of opinion.

Was this period introduced by Schönberg and his school (the Second Vienna School)? Or was it in 1953, when the first academy for electronic music was inaugurated in Cologne?

I shall deal with that matter later on. The crucial moments of renovation in the past are easier to locate, even if there is no absolute unanimity about them either.

We shall try to examine the significance of those times of renovation for the relation between words and music—possibly also for church music. And can they teach us anything useful for our days?

We are concerned with three periods in the history of music: the early parts of the 14th, the 17th, and the 20th centuries, called successively Ars Nova, Nuove Musiche, and Neue Musik.

Ars Nova is the title of a pamphlet, written by Philippe de Vitry (first half of the 14th century). The designation recurs in several documents of that time. The theoretician of Ars Nova, Johannes de Muris, mathematician and astronomer in Paris, wrote a pamphlet entitled Ars novae musicae. Pope John XXII, in his papal bull of 1324, mentions the novellae scholae discipuli, and Jacobus van Luik, in his Speculum musicae, attacks the renovators, whom he calls moderni cantores and aliqui nunc novi. So it is reasonably certain that we find ourselves in the vicinity of a turning point in the history of music.

Now, that renovation was about the technique of composition and about notation in the first place. They are the subjects discussed by De Vitry in his pamphlet. He tells us about the place of the tempus imperfectum as against the tempus perfectum; about the instruction of the new smallest note value (the minima), about the use of notes put down in red, about the isorhythmic principle, and the prohibition of parallel fifths and octaves.

As to the practice of performing, the traditional mixed sound of vocal and instrumental voices remained, but the triplum (upper voice) was moved from the range of male voices to the range of boy singers. Also the instrumental voices were multiplied; although this resulted in a richer sound, the new art was not propagated.

While the Ars Antiqua already had produced a free combination of word and tone, particularly—as the word indicates—in the motet, this relation was kept up, or rather, secured, by the fact that there were poet-composers, such as Adam de la Halle in an earlier stage and after him Philippe de Vitry and Guillaume de Machaut.

The subjects of the art of word and tone in Ars Nova were different, however, from those in Ars Antiqua. Whereas Ars Antiqua had not only liturgical ties but also social ones (the circle of professionals and laymen in the music collegiums), Ars Nova presented different subjects: political or moral ones, topical controversies, or subjects related to festive occasions and famous persons. A composer like De Vitry served neither the church nor social life, but he created a free art of word and tone, on a high level and aesthetically autonomous with a new pretension; this art steps out of the circle of collegiums and into public life. Church music was abandoned to such an extent that the few works composed in this vein can be found in any textbook, such as the Mass of Doornik and the Coronation Mass for Charles the Fifth by De Machaut.

It is not my intention to examine the Ars Nova thoroughly now. I should only like to point out the remarkable fate of the prototype of the art of word and tone, the motet. Originally a liturgical form, it became a bizarre mixture of Latin liturgical and French secular texts. At first, the heterogeneous ingredients were kept together more or less by modal rhythms, but when the latter were abandoned completely in Ars Nova, it became a free-for-all. Prosody was threatened by complete arbitrariness.

Ars Nova presents a new structural principle: the isorhythm. In it, the long tenor notes (in a free rhythmical arrangement) returned after a number of bars, but in two different schemata: a series of pitches and a series of note lengths. As a rule the two did not coincide. They are called color and talea respectively. The same principle was applied, more or less strictly, to the other voices. In this way the text was subordinated to the structural plan of the musical composition.

The poetical meaning of the texts was doubly neglected because the Ars Nova rhythms were highly complicated and began to present obstacles through strict application of the isorhythm. So the fall of the isorhythmical motet—long after Ars Nova—should not be attributed to that other form of the art of word and sound originating in the 14th century, the ballad, but to the artificial, mechanical construction of musical form. For that matter, the French ballad style remained the principal form of secular polyphonic music until the days of Dufay.

Before concluding this first section, I should like to say two things. First, one used to speak of French and Italian Ars Nova. There is no point in that, as there was no Ars Antiqua in Italy. So in our days that Italian period is called Trecento.

Comparing Ars Nova with Trecento, we see that Trecento produces the real renovation. The Florentines, without the burden of a Gothic past, created a music that seemed to be far ahead of its time. Riemann even spoke of die begleitete Monodie im 14. Jahrhudert (“the accompanied monody of the 14th century”) and suggested that one might develop the lowest voice of madrigal and caccia as a thorough-bass accompaniment. Perhaps the fact that the stile recitativo was created in the same town (Florence) three hundred years later induced him to launch this doubtful thesis. But there is no point right now in going into the differences in style between De Vitry and De Machaut on the one hand and Jacopo da Bologna and Francesco Landini on the other. Let me just point out that Landini, too, was a poet-composer and that his was the art of the polyphonic Lied. Both Ars Nova and Trecento show countless examples of an unmistakably secular art of word and tone.

And in the second place, Ars Nova, on entering the Renaissance, showed a tendency to use texts, the words of which could be set to music in a significant, grammatically and syntactically correct way. Without a doubt, the effort was successful in the long run, isorhythm having been abandoned. So if we proceed now to the second period we want to discuss, the period of Nuove Musiche, it is not because the combination of words and music in itself arises here, but because it presents an overall revaluation of the relation between the two.

Nuove Musiche was the title of a volume of airs and madrigals (1602) by Giulio Caccini. The airs were written as strophic songs, whereas the madrigals (including the well-known Amarilli mia bella) were composed in a single movement. The style of Caccini and his contemporaries shows a definite shifting to the detriment of the balance between words and music that had been established during the Renaissance.

Among the characteristics of Nuove Musiche was the resistance to that balance. This phenomenon is expressed very convincingly in Monteverdi’s L'orazione sia padrona dell’ armonia e non serva (“The words should be the masters of music, not its servants”). One thought that the correct word accents in music had been badly neglected, and one also rejected as unintelligible the polyphonic method of notation, in which the same syllable did not sound in the various voices at the same time. In a pamphlet, Vincenzo Gallilei (father of the famous physicist and astronomer) speaks of the impertinenze ed abusi (“the impertinences and abuses”) of the counterpointists. Counterpoint was regarded as an invention of barbarians, which was proved by putting forward the names of Obrecht and Ockeghem.

We shall not dwell on the theories of the “Camerata” group, which produced Caccini, nor on the unsavory row about who really invented the new style—monody (accompanied solo song).

Much of Caccini’s aims is explained in the introduction to Nuove Musiche. Referring to Plato, he states that the essence of music is just words and rhythm, with sound in the very last place. “Since one cannot move the soul but by intelligibility of words,” he says, “I endeavored to find a way of speaking in music, as it were. To the singer and the composer in the new style, understanding the poet’s words is more important than counterpoint.”

As solo singing was increasingly popular in those days, Caccini (a singer himself) warns against injudicious use of the coloratura. He did not use coloraturas because the style required them (it did not), but to please the ear of those who did not understand the nature of expressive singing. He also gives the advice not to bother too much about measures. One can, without fear, halve the value of certain notes. By this he obviously means the free rendering of the recitativo, no doubt as a result of the study of speech. In time, the rules of rhetoric in all their details were transferred to music.

I think of a theoretician like Joachim Burmeister who, in his Musica poetica, gave a detailed exposition of the so-called rhetorical figures, and who, with this doctrine of figures, exerted a great influence—on Heinrich Schütz, for one.

The monodic style of Caccini and his contemporaries was the origin of many musical forms cultivated in the Baroque period: opera, oratorio, and cantata. But as the inventors of the air and the recitative, Caccini and the others were, first of all, milestones in the history of opera. However different the aesthetic ideals of the Nuove Musiche may have been from those of Ars Nova, the common characteristic of both trends was their preoccupation, far from the church, with a secular art of word and tone, by which church music let itself be influenced only much later.

It is good to point this out expressly: in the history of music, the church has never pioneered; it always could afford to wait for the new forms to crystalize. In popular words: the church quietly waits for the cat to jump. Do you want two striking examples?

Guillaume Dufay, the great master from the Burgundian school, after having been strongly influenced by Ars Nova and the English school (John Dunstable), did not reach his summit until he said good-bye to isorhythm and wrote (among other works) the brilliant festive music for 4 voices, for the inauguration of the Florence cathedral (1436): the motet Nuper rosarum flores.

And my second example: Heinrich Schütz, who studied the stile concertante as well as the monodic style at their source, in Italy, but whose work cannot be explained by that alone. We must also see Schütz in the light of the northern German Kantorei and organ practices. I already mentioned Joachim Burmeister’s Musica poetica as an indispensable source for the knowledge of Schütz’s art of composing. After Ars Nova it took time for Dufay to set to work. After Nuove Musiche it took time for Heinrich Schütz to take his place in the history of church music.

Now we take another step of three centuries and find ourselves in our own time. And again we are facing words like Neue Musik, “New Music.”

It is not so easy to say exactly what that new music is. In the past, new ideas resulted in new musical forms. When about the year 1300 a new musical expression takes shape in Ars Nova against the background of Ars Antiqua, the isorhythmic motet, the French ballad and virelai develop, and the conductus and organum of the Notre Dame school disappear. When about the year 1600 polyphony is abandoned, the new forms of opera, oratorio, and cantata are created, followed by the instrumental forms of the sonata, the concerto grosso, and the solo concerto. The artistic ideal of the day is reflected not only in a different use of the sound material but also in the forms.

In our day, there is a syndrome of all kinds of principles, ideas, and traditions. To begin with: the trend was antiromantic. In addition, traditional tonality was abolished, even if the name “atonal music” is a contradictio in adjecto (Blume). But, twelve-tone technique and serial techniques presented new problems related to the forms, although one should not take the word “new” too stringently. In the isorhythmical music of the 14th century, “series” were known already—series of pitches and note lengths, as we indicated.

So, might the advent of electronic music be the turning point? I do not think so. As a matter of fact, drilling a new “well of sound” by no means implies that the sound is fit for immediate musical use. When technicians in Cologne took over this new source of sound, we had every reason to keep our fingers crossed. There had been musical anarchy before (between 1918 and 1925), but then at least the strings were pulled by composers.

After this short period of disintegration, there followed a time of integration, for example in German church music, but it did not seem to be the prelude to another era as great as the Gothic and Baroque periods. It was—and still is—a time of transition. By the way, every period boasting a new art is a time of transition: Ars Nova ended in the Renaissance; 300 years later, the Nuove Musiche principles ended in Baroque.

But let us not worry about a problem, the full significance of which we cannot yet comprehend. We are concerned in the first place with the combination of word and tone in our days. The process is in full swing; last month (September) it was the main theme of a conference of European broadcasting stations—that is, of those of their staff members engaged in experimental radio-phonics. In the circle of these renovators (poets, literary men, composers, and radio engineers) Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire is regarded as the beginning of a trend, in which a new balance between words and music is studied and put down in experimental forms.

In Melos (a periodical for new music) one of the German delegates to the conference I just mentioned, Hans Helm, wrote: “Pierrot Lunaire is rightly regarded as a turning point in the musical treatment of speech, although Wagner and Mahler paved the way. Schönberg’s technical renovations introduce a process that might result in a way of composing, in which language spoken and sung, words and music, would be one. In Pierrot, spoken language and music function as the extremities of a scale, with the Sprechgesang as a mediator in between. The idea is that the Sprechgesang steals as many musical values as possible from the linguistic creations, without their being transformed completely into music. The Sprechgesang permits weaving the text into the musical structure without giving up its grammatical-semantic nature.”

Pierre Boulez used this technique—considerably modified—superbly in his Marteau sans Maitre. Luciano Berio, too, experimentally investigated the possibility of combining the rendering of a poetical text with the music, without favoring any of the two systems of expression. He aims neither at a confrontation between words and music nor at a mixture of the two but at a relation of continuity as in his Omaggo a Joyce.

At first sight, it may not seem so difficult to arrive at a “sonic working method” (the technical term, meaning the creation of structures at which poets and composers cooperate as equal partners), but in reality there are plenty of problems.

Luigi Nono presents interesting efforts to build up a new relationship between words and music, such as in his Il canto sospeso. In it he uses the serial technique but also a remarkable splitting of syllables, which are divided among the various voices, to be absorbed in an extreme rhythmical and dynamical differentiation.

There are more examples, but I just want to point out another development, that of auditive poetry. This poetry refuses any setting to music, but it is designed by means of musical outlines. It wants to sound, but only through the human voice, in every possible style. Henri Chopin discusses this matter more thoroughly. François Dufrêne goes even further; he envisages a poetry au-delà de toute écriture, directement au magnétophone.

An estrangement between poetry and music is apparent here like never before. Yet there is a way out, if the composer is prepared to do without the score. But then an important question arises—the question about a common basic system for the acoustic scene. And that is not all: a closed circuit, working by a code which is only understood by the poet and the composer, leads to the excommunication of the listener. So it is important to use signs and signals insuring the communication with the listener. By using, for instance, different languages, and by changing the phonetic structure of the words, one may compose complex combinations of words, which may cause the meaning of the separate words to merge with a new meaning of combined words.

In trying to keep track of this development, we find it completely irrelevant to find out when exactly this contemporary Musica Nova began. We only realize that we are right in the middle of it. And comparing the present events with the former periods of renovation, we are surprised by the similarities. Not only is it surprising that once again it took three times three generations to produce real renovations (I only allude to that rule, without going into it) but also that the experiments involve both a new use of the sound material and the form, and that the relation between words and music is a lively topic again.

There is yet another resemblance: the development proceeds outside the church, outside the liturgy. We already saw that this is quite natural and in itself by no means disquieting. Once again: it is wise for the church to wait and see what will come of the present synchronism of integration and disintegration.

One might fear that these considerations of mine would lead to a certain apathy within the church, to a passive resignation to fate. I do not think there is any reason for such an attitude. It is wrong, however, to judge contemporary church music by all sorts of experiments; nor are we justified in propping ourselves up on a few sensational works, such as Penderecki’s Passion of St. Luke, and Ligeti’s Requiem. They are not church music, and therefore there is no place for them in our discourse.

It was my intention to point out that the great style periods in the history of music were preceded, every time, by times of transition, in which fierce movements arose. Time and again those movements produced the renovators, and time and again the renovators themselves did not live to make their ideals come true in a grand style. That, of course, does not detract from their merits.

My last remark is about the fact that two kinds of music developed in the history of the church: the higher forms, such as motet and cantata, and the simpler forms, like hymn tunes, the development of which in the churches of the Reformation was started by Luther.

Luther considered the “Chorale” one of the most important pillars of his reform movement and played a very active part in the building of a repertory of text and melodies for his purpose. The principle of congregational participation was of extreme importance in those efforts. Now the strange thing is that the development of the Protestant chorale—just like folk music and all sorts of utility music—followed quite different lines from those of the music of the great masters which we have been discussing. It may be a modern necessity for the church to pay special attention to the music of the “second class,” music for congregational participation.

In an article on Die Explosion des Materials (“The Explosion of Matter”), Hans-Wilhelm Kulenkampff presents a picture of the music lover of the future, which gives me (and you, perhaps) the shivers. The social element of music, which makes many people get together in many kinds of relationships to play it or to listen to it, will be superseded by a completely different function. Music will be more like a plastic art; thought up on tape and put down on tape, it will be available for private use whenever desired. It will not be necessary any longer to get together with other people, to listen to recordings that one already has at home.

Such music, totally estranged from its social function, is completely opposed to the art-mindedness of Luther and his contemporaries. To them, music was not a thing to be indulged in passively but a thing people themselves could make, to be entertained, influenced, taught, and inspired by. May the church of today watch the avant-garde experiments with some detachment and some reservation, and may it honor, above all things, the human voice, of which Luther said that, compared with it, alle anderen Gesänge, Klang und Laute gar nicht zu rechnen sind (“all other chants, sounds, and tones are negligible”).

I should like you to listen to a number of musical illustrations now. To begin with, two works by Guillaume de Machaut (of the Ars Nova): the secular motet Pour quoy me bat mes maris? followed by an excerpt from the Coronation Mass (better known to us as Messe de Nostre Dame), namely, the beginning of the Sanctus. It is part of a long motet, and it follows the isorhythmic principle. But you cannot hear that; at best, you can see it in the score.

1. Guillaume de Machaut
Motet Pour quoi me bat mes maris?
The Collegium Musicum of the University of Illinois
Conductor: George Hunter

2. Guillaume de Machaut
Messe de Nostre Dame, Sanctus
Deller Consort, London (Harmonia Mundi)

After Ars Nova, there was the development—through some intermediate links—of the Burgundian school. This is an excerpt from a Mass by Dufay, the Gloria ad modum tubae.

3. Gillaume Dufay
Gloria ad modum tubae
Capella antiqua München
Conductor: Konrad Ruhland (Das alte Werk)

Three hundred years after Ars Nova, Nuove Musiche was born in Italy. Listen to Caccini’s air O che felice giorno.

4. Giulio Caccini
O che felice giorno
Hugues Cuenod, tenor
Herman Leeb, luit (Westminster)

I already pointed out that Heinrich Schütz discovered the monodic style in Italy. You are now going to hear a movement from his Symphoniae Sacrae, part one, Venite ad me (Matt. 11:28–30).

5. Heinrich Schütz
Venite ad me (Symphoniae Sacrae, I, 2)
Solisten en instrumentaal ensemble o. 1. v.
Helmuth Rilling (Musicaphon)

Another three hundred years later, Arnold Schönberg composes his Pierrot Lunaire, on texts by Albert Giraud (translated into German by Otto Hartleben). You will hear a performance of the first part of these “melodramas” by Helga Pilarczyk, who is not announced as a singer, but as a reciter. With Pierre Boulez as conductor, she probably gives the correct interpretation of the form between Gesangton and Sprechton, as Schönberg indicates it.

6. Arnold Schönberg
Pierrot Lunaire, text by Albert Giraud
(German by Otto Erich Hartleben)
1.Mondestrunken
Helga Pilarczzyk, reciting with flute, viola, cello, and piano
Conductor: Pierre Boulez (Adès)

Your attention is now directed to Omaggio a Joyce by Luciano Berio. It is not surprising that the name of James Joyce crops up repeatedly in the latest musical products. In literature, his Ulysses has become as much of a catchword as Pierrot Lunaire in music.

7. Luciano Berio
Omaggio a Joyce
Production: Pierre Henty
(Philips: Panorama of experimental music)

Now a short intermezzo. The strange ways of musical development are strikingly evident in a recent work, which suddenly leans towards church music, being, as a matter of fact, a kind of retroaction towards the Oriental-orthodox choir style. Listen to Pater noster. I shall tell you the composer’s name afterwards.

8. Igor Stravinsky
Pater noster
Ned. Kamerkoor
Conductor: Felix de Nobel (Philips)
Now you will finally hear five very new examples.

9. A text of John Cage (the composer, who is also a poet) with music of the Dutch composer Joep Straesser.

10. A curious effort to play with the language. Here the language isn’t used for information in the normal sense. It’s a play with vowels of the Dutch poet Jan Hanlo.

11. Now the Belgian poet Gust Gils. Here also the verbal pretension of language has been abandoned. You will hear a play with consonants in a strong rhythm.

12. A masterpiece of sound-poetry or voice-acting (as it is named): a French poem by the Englishman Peter Greenham, performed by his wife, Lily Greenham.

13. One of the prominent poet-composers in Germany is Hans Helms. He wrote a poem Fa: m’ Ahmiesgow. Here you will listen to the art of complex combinations of separate words in different languages, which may cause the meaning of the separate words to merge with a new meaning of combined words.

And here we are in the midst of the experiments of today: word and tone in our own Musica nova. Will the church use the possibilities of this Musica Nova? I can’t tell you. Time will tell. Or perhaps already this church music seminar will give the answer.

From The Musical Heritage of the Church, Volume VII (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1970). Copyright Concordia Publishing House. Printed by permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Concordia Publishing House.