Chamber Music

Text extracted from opening pages of book: 2 CHAMBER MUSIC The chapters of this book will therefore treat only or for piano, stringed, and wind instruments used variously in combination, and deal more especially with the methods of writing employed in works cast in sonata form. The auth or makes no attempt to provide an abstract treatise on the develo p ment of this special branch of art, nor does he seek to tra Be the historical progress of Chamber Music to its present hit jh place as the most intellectual and the most fully perfected department of musical composition. Nevertheless, the stude recommended very strongly to approach the subject to t i certain extent from this standpoint. The history of the early beginnings of instrumental music has a very considerable bear ing upon the Chamber Music of the present age. t) nly those whose knowledge of the subject is very slight will need to be told thakmodern instrumental music arose in the first instance from a cfesire to support and assist voices in the performance of madrigals, and only by slow degrees attained to the dignity of an independent existence. The earliest instrumental com positions, therefore, differed little in form or treatment from the vocal works of the age in which they arose. The transition from this, through the period during which composers delighted in the construction of dance-measures, to the invention of the definite and important characteristics known as Sonata Form, may be studied from any dictionary or history of music, and ft is not the author's intention in the present work to cover a ground which has been trodden again and again in many excellent and valuable books. Pew writers, however, have > singled outChamber Music for a separate survey, and the information given under that heading in Grove's l) ietionary of Music and Musicians is unfortunately brief and inexhaus tive. Fuller particulars may be gained from a discursive, but bright and entertaining volume called The Story of Chamber Music, by Nicholas Kilburn ( The Walter Scott Publishing Co., 1904), which, while making no attempt at historical completeness or technical scholarship, sets forth an interest ing series of examples in music type accompanied by running commentaries upon the characteristic styles of the composers quoted, ranirinff from Philin Emamiel Barh INTRODUCTORY 3 aiid William Shield to Bruckner and the modern Bussian School. i, The important aspect of Form and its evolution, and other technical points, receive more attention in some extremely lucid lectures on The Development of Chamber Music delivered at South Place Institute by Mr. Richard H. Walthew, and published in a small sixpenny book by Messrs. Boosey & Co. There is also a chapter on Chamber Music to be found, most unexpectedly, in the' second volume of the late Professor Prout's valuable work The Orchestra, which deals briefly but ably with some of the main problems to be encountered by the student, but does not attempt any detailed teaching. To the last three sources the writer of the present volume is gratefully indebted for some valuable suggestions in many of hid lines of thought. The intended function of this book is, however, totally different. It is the author's chief aim to provide for the student who essays to embark upon the composition of Chamber Music a handbook which may be useful in the same way that a primer or treatise on instrumentation maybe helpful to a beginner desiring to compose orchestral. music. The art of writing music for restricted combinations is so separate from the art of treating large masses of instru ments that Hs-JajM& pr tharts-T& eim been devoted to the special exposition of the principles underlying the composition of true Chaifcber Music; more especially sur prising as the writing of such music is by no means neglected - by modern composers and cannot in any sense be regarded either as a dead art or a decaying industry. While it is necessary, with great emphasis, to impres