Berlioz, who overlooks this passage in Handel, enumerates among the early instances of the employment of its distinctive qualities, the passage in 'Iphigenia in Aulis,' where Orestes, overwhelmed with fatigue and remorse, and panting for breath, sings 'Le calme rentre dans mon cœur'; meanwhile the orchestra, in smothered agitation, sobs forth convulsive plaints, unceasingly dominated by the fearful and obstinate chiding of the Tenors. The fascination, the sensation of horror, which this evokes in the audience, Berlioz attributes to the quality of the note A on the Tenor's third string, and the syncopation of the note with the lower A on the basses in a different rhythm. In the overture to 'Iphigenia in Aulis,' Gluck employs the Tenors for another purpose. He assigns them a light bass accompaniment to the melody of the first violins, conveying to the hearer the illusion that he is listening to the violoncellos. Suddenly, at the forte, the basses enter with great force and surprising effect. Sacchini uses the Tenors for the same effect (pour préparer une explosion) in the air of Œdipus, 'Votre cœur devient mon asyle.' (This effect, it may be observed, is also to be found in Handel.) Modern writers have often used the Tenor to sustain the melody, in antique, religious, and sombre subjects. Berlioz attributes its use in this way to Spontini, who employs it to give out the prayers of the Vestal. Méhul, fancying that there resided in the Tenor tone a peculiar aptitude for expressing the dreamy character of the Ossianic poetry, employed Tenors for all the treble parts, to the entire exclusion of violins, throughout his opera of 'Uthal.' It was in the course of this dismal and monotonous wail that Grétry exclaimed 'Je donnerai un louis pour entendre une chanterelle!'
Berlioz, in 'Harold en Italie,' and Bennett, in his Symphony in G minor, have employed the Tenor with great effect to sustain pensive melodies. When melodies of a similar character are entrusted to the violoncellos, the tone acquires great roundness and purity if reinforced by the Tenors—witness the Adagio of Beethoven's Symphony in C minor. In chamber music, the Tenor executes sustained and arpeggio accompaniments, occasionally takes up melodic subjects, and employed in unison is a powerful supporter of either of its neighbours. Mozart's Trio for piano, clarinet, and viola, one of the most beautiful and effective works in the whole range of chamber music, affords admirable illustrations of its general capacities when used without a violoncello.
Brahms's Quintet in B♭, and one of his string quartets, will afford good examples of the prominent use of the viola, and the special effect produced by it. It is interesting to observe that the modern chamber string quartet, of which the Tenor is so important a member, is based, not on the early chamber music, but on the stringed orchestra of the theatre. Corelli, Purcell, and Handel employed the Tenor in their orchestral writings, but excluded it from their chamber music; nor was it until the orchestral quartet had been perfected for theatrical purposes by Handel, Gluck, and Sacchini that the chamber quartet settled into its present shape in the hands of Haydn, Abel, J. C. Bach, and their contemporaries. Mozart marks the period when the Tenor assumed its proper rank in both kinds of music.
The Tenor is essentially an ancillary instrument. Played alone, or in combination with the piano only, its tone is thin and ineffective: and the endeavours which have been made by some musicians to create an independent school of tenor-playing, and a distinctive class of tenor music, are founded on error. It is simply a large violin, intended to fill up the gap between the fiddle and the bass; and except in special effects, where, as we have seen, it is used for purposes of contrast, it imperatively demands the ringing tones of the violin above it.
Competent musicians, who are masters of the piano, attracted by the simplicity of the tenor part in most quartets, often take up the Tenor with but little knowledge of the violin. This is a mistake: it is usually found that the Tenor can only be properly played by a practised violinist. The Violin and Tenor make an effective duet; witness the charming works of Haydn, Mozart, and Spohr, and the less known but very artistic and numerous ones of Rolla, by the aid of which any competent violinist will soon become master of the Tenor. Mozart wrote a concerto for Violin, Tenor, and Orchestra. The trios of Mozart and Beethoven for Violin, Tenor, and Violoncello are too well known to need more than mentioning.
Owing, probably, to the structural peculiarities that have been explained above, what is the best model for the violin is not the best for the Tenor. It would seem that the limitation which necessity imposes upon its length ought to be compensated by an increase in height: for Tenors of high model are undoubtedly better than those of flat model, and hence Stradivari Tenors are kept rather to be admired than played upon. The best Tenors for use are certainly those of the Amati school, or old copies of the same by good English makers: in this country the favourite Tenor-maker is undoubtedly Banks. New fiddles are sometimes fairly good in tone: but new Tenors are always intolerably harsh, from the combined effect of their newness and of the flat model which is now universally preferred. If, however, makers of the Tenor would copy Amati, instead of Stradivari, this would no longer be the case.
Mr. Hermann Ritter, a Tenor-player resident in Heidelberg, in ignorance of the fact that the large Tenor was in use for more than a century, and was abandoned as impracticable, claims a Tenor of monstrous proportions, on which he is said to play with considerable effect, as an invention of his own.[1] If all Tenor-players were of the herculean proportions of Mr. Ritter, the great Tenor might perhaps be revived: but human
- ↑ See 'Die Geschichte der Viola Alta, und die Grundsätze ihres Baues, Von H. Ritter' (Leipzig, Weber, 1877); 'Hermann Ritter und seine Viola Alta, Von E. Adema' (Würzburg, Stuber, 1881). The practical violin-maker may estimate the value of instruments constructed on Mr. Ritter's rules from the fact that he takes as his guide the 'calcolo' of Bagatella!
