at seemed blinding.

XIX

ON THE LIVES AND ART PRINCIPLES OF SOME SEVENTEENTH AND
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY COMPOSERS

There is much of value to the student to be derived from a
study of the lives and art principles of the composers of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To go back to an earlier
period would hardly be worth while, as the music composed in
those days is too much obscured by the uncertainty of tradition
and the inevitable awkwardness of expression that goes with
all primitiveness in art.

The first whom I would mention are Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince
of Venosa, and Ludovico Viadana.

The former was a nephew of the Archbishop of Naples, was born
in 1550, and died in 1613. His name is important from the fact
that he went boldly beyond Monteverde, his contemporary, in the
use of the new dissonant chords (sevenths and ninths) which
were just beginning to be employed, and adopted a chromatic
style of writing which strangely foreshadowed the chromatic
polyphonic style of the present century. He wrote innumerable
madrigals for a number of voices, but his innovations remained
sterile so far as the development of music is concerned, for
the reason that while his music often acquired a wonderful
poignancy for his time by the use of chromatics, just as often
it led him into the merest bramble bush of sound, real music
being entirely absent.

Viadana (1566-1645) has been placed by many historians of
music in the same category as Guido d'Arezzo (who is credited
with having invented solmization, musical notation, etc.),
Palestrina, Monteverde and Peri, who are famed, the one for
having discovered the dominant ninth chord, and the other
for the invention of opera. Viadana is said to have been the
first to use what is called a _basso continuo_, and even the
figured bass. The former was the uninterrupted repetition of
a short melody or phrase in the bass through the entire course
of a piece of music. This was done very often to give a sense
of unity that nowadays would be obtained by a repetition of
the first thought at certain intervals through the piece. The
figured (or better, ciphered) bass was an entirely different
thing. This device, which is still employed, consisted of
the use of figures to indicate the different chords in music.
These figures or ciphers were written over or under the bass
note on which the chord represented by the figures was to be
played or sung. A 5 over or under a bass note m