constitutes the whole fabric of 16th-century music; except where polyphonic device is dispensed with altogether, as in Palestrina’s two settings of the Stabat Mater, his Litanies, and all of his later Lamentations except the initials. A 16th-century mass, when it is not derived in this way from those secular melodies to which the council of Trent objected, is so closely connected with Gregorian tones, or at least with the themes of some motet appropriate to the holy day for which it was written, that in a Roman Catholic cathedral service the polyphonic music of the best period co-operates with the Gregorian intonations to produce a consistent musical whole with a thematic coherence almost suggestive of Wagnerian Leitmotif. In later times the Protestant music of Germany attained a similar consistency, under more complicated musical conditions, by the use of chorale-tunes; and in Bach’s hands the fugal and other treatment of chorale-melody is one of the most varied and expressive of artistic resources. It seems to be less generally known that the chorale plays a considerable though not systematic part in Handel’s English works. The passage “the kingdoms of the world” in the “Hallelujah Chorus” (down to “and He shall live for ever and ever”) is a magnificent development of the second part of the chorale Wachet auf (“Christians wake, a voice is calling”); and it would be easy to trace a German or Roman origin for many of the solemn phrases in long notes which in Handel’s choruses so often accompany quicker themes.
From the use of an old canto fermo to the invention of an original one is obviously a small step; and as there is no limit to the possibilities of varying the canto fermo, both in the part which most emphatically propounds it and in the imitating or contrasted parts, so there is no line of demarcation between the free development of counterpoint on a canto fermo and the general art of combining melodies which gives harmony its deepest expression and musical texture its liveliest action. Nor is there any such line to separate polyphonic from non-polyphonic methods of accompanying melody; and Bach’s Orgelbüchlein and Brahms’s posthumous organ-chorales show every conceivable gradation between plain harmony or arpeggio and the most complex canon.
In Wagnerian polyphony canonic devices are rare except in such simple moments of anticipation or of communion with nature as we have before the rise of the curtain in the Rheingold and at the daybreak in the second act of the Götterdämmerung. On the other hand, the art of combining contrasted themes crowds almost every other kind of musical texture (except tremolos and similar simple means of emotional expression) into the background, and is itself so transformed by new harmonic resources, many of which are Wagner’s own discovery, that it may almost be said to constitute a new form of art. The influence of this upon instrumental music is as yet helpful only in those new forms which are breaking away from the limits of the sonata style; and it is impossible at present to sift the essential from the unessential in that marvellous compound of canonic device, Wagnerian harmony, original technique and total disregard of every known principle of musical grammar, which renders the work of Richard Strauss the most remarkable musical phenomenon of recent years. All that is certain is that the two elements in which the music of the future will finally place its main organizing principles are not those of instrumentation and external expression, on which popular interest and controversy are at present centred, but rhythmic flow and counterpoint. These have always been the elements which suffered from neglect or anarchy in earlier transition-periods, and they have always been the elements that gave rationality to the new art to which the transitions led. (D. F. T.)
CONTREXÉVILLE, a watering-place of north-eastern France, in the department of Vosges, on the Vair, 39 m. W. of Épinal by
rail. Pop. (1906) 940. The mineral springs of Contrexéville
have been in local repute since a remote period, but became
generally known only towards the end of the 18th century; and
the modern reputation of the place as a health resort dates from
1864, when it began to be developed by a company, the Société
des Eaux de Contrexéville, and more particularly from about
1895. In the ten years after this latter date many improvements
were made for the accommodation of visitors, for whom the season
is from May to September. The waters of the Source Pavilion,
which are used chiefly for drinking, have a temperature of 53° F.
and are characterized chiefly by the presence of calcium sulphate.
They are particularly efficacious in the treatment of gravel and
kindred disorders, by the elimination of uric acid.
See Thirty-five years at Contrexéville (1903), by Dr Debout d’Estrées.
CONTROL (Fr. contrôle, older form contre rolle, from Med. Lat.
contra-rotulus, a counter roll or copy of a document used to check
the original; there is no instance in English of the use of “control”
in this, its literal, meaning), a substantive (whence the verb)
for that which checks or regulates anything, and so especially
command of body or mind by the will, and generally the power
of regulation. In England the “Board of Control,” abolished
in 1858, was the body which supervised the East India Company
in the administration of India. In the case of “controller,”
a general term for a public official who checks expenditure, the
more usual form “comptroller” is a wrong spelling due to a
false connexion with “accompt” or “account.” A “control”
or “control-experiment,” in science, is an experiment used, by
an application of the method of difference, to check the inferences
drawn from another experiment.
CONTUMACY (Lat. contumacia, obstinacy; derived from the
root tem-, as in temnere, to despise, or possibly from the root
tum-, as in tumere, to swell, with anger, &c.), a stubborn refusal
to obey authority, obstinate resistance; particularly, in law,
the wilful contempt of the order or summons of a court (see Contempt of Court). In ecclesiastical law, the contempt of the authority of an ecclesiastical court is dealt with by the
issue of a writ de contumace capiendo from the court of chancery
at the instance of the judge of the ecclesiastical court; this writ
took the place of that de excommunicato capiendo in 1813, by an
act of George III. c. 127 (see Excommunication).
CONUNDRUM (a word of unknown origin, probably coined in burlesque imitation of scholastic Latin, as “hocus-pocus” or “panjandrum”), originally a term meaning whim, fancy or ridiculous idea; later applied to a pun or play upon words, and
thus, in its usual sense, to a particular form of riddle in which
the answer depends on a pun. In a transferred sense the word
is also used of any puzzling question or difficulty.
CONVENT (Lat. conventus, from convenire, to come together),
a term applied to an association of persons secluded from the
world and devoted to a religious life, and hence to the building
in which they live, a monastery or (more particularly) nunnery.
The diminution “conventicle” (conventiculum), generally used
in a contemptuous sense as implying sectarianism, secrecy or
illegality, is applied to the meetings or meeting-places of religious
or other dissenting bodies.
CONVENTION (Lat. conventio, an assembly or agreement, from convenire, to come together), a meeting or assembly; an agreement between parties; a general agreement on which is based some custom, institution, rule of behaviour or taste, or canon of art; hence extended to the abuse of such an agreement, whereby the rules based upon it become lifeless and artificial. The word is of some interest historically and politically. It is used of an assembly of the representatives of a nation, state or party, and is particularly contrasted with the formal meetings of a legislature. It is thus applied to those parliaments in English history which, owing to the abeyance of the crown, have assembled without the formal summons of the sovereign; in 1660 a convention parliament restored Charles II. to the throne, and in 1689 the Houses of Commons and Lords were summoned informally to a convention by William, prince of Orange, as were the Estates of Scotland, and declared the throne abdicated by James II. and settled the disposition of the realm. Similarly, the assembly which ruled France from September 1792 to October 1795 was known as the National Convention (see below); the statutory assembly of delegates which framed the constitution of the United States of America in 1787 was called the Constitutional Convention; and the various American state constitutions have been drafted and sometimes revised by constitutional
