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Scan 61
Grove's Dictionary of music and musicians, 1927
11 lines. Read by computer on 5 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 19. See the scan on archive.org.
1From Accompaniment to Ensemble.—In the Italian opera of the 18th century the singer was accompanied by basso continuo only in recitative, but with one or more instruments, playing from fully written out parts, in addition to the continuo, in arias. These are generally spoken of as obbligato parts and were so in the sense that the composition would be incomplete without them. They were not, however, really more obligatory than the continuo which now formed the groundwork of accompaniment. The greater composers elaborated these parts to such an extent that they can hardly be regarded as accompaniment. They become instrumental solos combining in duet fashion with the voice. This was particularly the case when the aria was transferred from the theatre to the concert room by Handel in his oratorios, or to the church by Bach in his cantatas. The 'Laudamus Te' of the latter's Mass in B minor (soprano voice and violin solo) marks the acme of the style. Use was also made of orchestral instruments, chiefly the strings, in the purely subsidiary capacity of accompaniment by these composers, and as the constitution of the orchestra became more settled and the abilities of players more dependable, composers paid closer attention to the texture of accompaniment, until in the operas of Gluck and Mozart we find the whole available orchestra used as a background to the individual voice. What Bach had done with his obbligato instruments composers of the 19th century, more especially Wagner, did with the orchestra as a whole; they brought it from the background forward and made it a prime vehicle for the expression of their ideas. Here, however, was a difficulty not felt by Bach when he combined a solo violin with the voice—the inequality of volume. Wagner, and practically every composer since him, has been accused, not without some justice, of 'drowning the singer.' one of two readings
2ACCOMPANIMENT one of two readings
4FROM ACCOMPANIMENT TO ENSEMBLE.—In the Italian opera of the 18th century the singer was accompanied by basso continuo only in recitative, but with one or more instruments, playing from fully written out parts, in addition to the continuo, in arias. These are generally spoken of as obbligato parts and were so in the sense that the composition would be incomplete without them. They were not, however, really more obligatory than the continuo which now formed the groundwork of accompaniment. The greater composers elaborated these parts to such an extent that they can hardly be regarded as accompaniment. They become instrumental solos combining in duet fashion with the voice. This was particularly the case when the aria was transferred from the theatre to the concert room by Handel in his oratorios, or to the church by Bach in his cantatas. The 'Laudamus Te' of the latter's Mass in B minor (soprano voice and violin solo) marks the acme of the style. Use was also made of orchestral instruments, chiefly the strings, in the purely subsidiary capacity of accompaniment by these composers, and as the constitution of the orchestra became more settled and the abilities of players more dependable, composers paid closer attention to the texture of accompaniment, until in the operas of Gluck and Mozart we find the whole available orchestra used as a background to the individual voice. What Bach had done with his obbligato instruments composers of the 19th century, more especially Wagner, did with the orchestra as a whole; they brought it from the background forward and made it a prime vehicle for the expression of their ideas. Here, however, was a difficulty not felt by Bach when he combined a solo violin with the voice—the inequality of volume. Wagner, and practically every composer since him, has been accused, not without some justice, of 'drowning the singer.' one of two readings
6Another landmark in the history of accompaniment is found in the last quarter of the 18th century, when the pianoforte began to supersede the harpsichord. The latter could never be satisfactory as a means of accompaniment because of its insensitiveness to the player's touch. The piano, with its almost infinite gradations of volume and its comparative power of sustaining soft sounds by means of the pedal, quickly became the chief instrument of accompaniment for purposes of domestic or chamber music. At first composers wrote tentatively for it, employing only obvious figures such as broken chord passages of the Alberti Bass type as a support to the voice. Mozart's delightful little song, 'Das Veilchen' (1785), is a fair specimen of 18th-century piano accompaniment, and Beethoven's accompaniments to Lieder are not technically much more advanced. Schubert, however, made the figures of his piano accompaniments contribute definitely both to the emotional content and to the pictorial suggestions of the poems sung. See, for example, the whirr of the spinning-wheel in 'Gretchen am Spinnrade', and the leaping figure of 'Die Forellen.' While masters of song-writing such as Schumann and Brahms advanced the essential importance of the piano part further, they, in common with their contemporaries or immediate successors in other countries, Franck and Fauré in France, Sterndale Bennett, Parry and Stanford in England, preserved more or less the relationship between voice and piano parts which is characteristic of Schubert. Such a song, however, as Cornelius's 'Ein Ton,' in which the voice maintains a monotone through a fantasia played on the piano, is indicative of a reversal of attitude which has become typical of certain phases of modern song composition. This attitude regards the piano as the chief speaker, the singer as commentator. The later 19th-century songs of what may be called the more sophisticated countries, particularly Germany and France, give countless instances. The songs of Max Reger's opus 75 beginning with 'Merkspruch' afford a sufficient case in point. But the greater song-writers of the last generation, Hugo Wolf, Moussorgsky, Debussy, to take men whom in all other respects are widely contrasted in style, came to regard the song with piano as Wagner had regarded the song with orchestra and Bach the song with obbligato instruments, not as a combination of chief-speaker with accompaniment, but as a piece of ensemble music.
8The upshot of this evolutionary process is that in modern music accompaniment strictly so called cannot be said to belong exclusively to any one part of a composition. The piano or one department of the orchestra or the single voice may be momentarily in a position of accompanying the other parts of the ensemble, but will not permanently take up a secondary position. What has come out of the development through the centuries from mediævalism to to-day is the realisation of what may be called 'perspective' in music. Parts in a musical ensemble may occupy not only the foreground, the background, or the middle distance, but innumerable gradations in between them.
10The art of accompaniment, then, at the present day, whether it is the art of the conductor in directing his orchestra in combination with singers and solo instrumentalists, or of the pianist collaborating with a singer in a recital of Lieder, is the same. The conductor or pianist cannot be content to 'follow' the soloist. His function is really to control the ensemble, to preserve the right relation of all the parts which make up the whole, in quality and volume of tone, in rhythm and in tempo.
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