(Eng., Fr.).
A term used in England and France from the 16th century onwards, frequently and rather loosely as synonymous with ‘melody’, ‘tune’ or ‘song’.
2. The English ‘ayre’, 1597–1650.
3. The French operatic ‘air’, 1650–1800.
NIGEL FORTUNE/R (1), DAVID GREER (2), CHARLES DILL (3)
When Thomas Morley (A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, 1597) applied the term to all the secular vocal forms of his day except the madrigal, the most serious of them, he was following his Italian predecessors and contemporaries in using it to refer to light pieces in a simple, canzonetta-derived style (see Aria, §1). The term was also consistently used in England from the same year for published volumes of lute-songs, several of which, however, are serious. Here the spelling ‘ayre’ was often preferred. After the decline of the lute ‘ayre’, towards the mid-17th century, the form ‘air’ was often used again in its more general sense. By the 18th century it clearly denoted a simple, unpretentious song, quite different from the Italian or italianate aria, which in both operas and cantatas was often a complex, highly developed form.
English writers, again following the Italians, sometimes used the word ‘air’ in another, somewhat different way, denoting not a tune itself but the aesthetic quality of a piece of music that might be summed up as inevitable rightness – perfection, even – in which the various elements, especially melody and harmony, complement and enhance one another. This usage is doubtless not unconnected with two of the many everyday meanings of an unusually versatile word: general bearing, manner or outward appearance; and atmosphere or aura investing a person or object. Roger North wrote much about this aspect of air, notably in An Essay of Musicall Ayre (c1715; annotated excerpts in Wilson, 1959), whose title-page shows that it is concerned ‘chiefly to shew the foundations of Melody joyned with Harmony, whereby may be discovered the Native genius of good Musick’. In the 12th edition (1694) of John Playford’s An Introduction to the Skill of Musick, Purcell wrote of a music example that he had improved from earlier editions that it ‘carries more Air and Form’ in it.
The English use of ‘ayre’ to mean a particular kind of song was matched in France by the term air, with or without qualification. For some 80 years from 1571 the term Air de cour was regularly used for solo lute-songs and ensemble songs, again comprising light and serious pieces. Another specific term, Air à boire, subsequently came into being to denote lighter songs. By this time, the 1670s, the more serious type was generally called simply air. From now on, well into the 18th century and even beyond, the air held an important place in French stage works and cantatas.
From at least the early 17th century the word ‘air’ was also widely applied to instrumental pieces. Like many of their vocal counterparts, such pieces tend to be of the lighter type, and some are dance-like – witness the Courtly Masquing Ayres (1621) of John Adson. But the term is generally used for simple pieces which, like vocal airs, are of a predominantly melodic cast and can indeed be seen as instrumental songs rather than dances. The inclusion of such a piece in a suite may have been prompted by a desire on the composer’s part to offer contrast to the surrounding pieces in specific dance rhythms. Locke’s Little Consort of Three Parts can plausibly be seen to consist of ten suites all with the sequence pavan–air–courante–saraband, and airs figure prominently in comparable ways in all his other consort sets except the duos for bass viols. There are several instrumental airs by Purcell, notably in the stage works, and there are keyboard transcriptions of a few of them. The many melodic airs in suites by later Baroque composers include one of the most celebrated movements by Bach – the air in the Suite no.3 in D bwv1068 – and one of Handel’s too (the ‘Harmonious Blacksmith’ in Suite no.5 in E). Some airs at this period are faster and generally in bourrée rhythm.
Finally, the word ‘air’ is used of a signal, or more often a march, of clairons, and fifes or oboes, to which a drum batterie is usually attached; see Sonnerie (i), (1).
The vogue of the English lute ayre began in 1597 when Dowland published his First Booke of Songes or Ayres. This collection was highly successful and went through four more editions between 1600 and 1613 (more than any other English printed volume of that time). Dowland went on to publish three more collections of lute ayres, and other composers followed suit, notably Campion, Rosseter, Danyel, Robert Jones (ii), Pilkington and Alfonso Ferrabosco (ii). Dowland’s First Booke established the format for these songbooks: they were of large folio size, and composers tended to favour publishing multiples of seven songs, 21 being a common number. As well as the parts for solo voice and lute (the latter in tablature notation), composers generally provided an optional part for bass viol, and often extra vocal parts as well, for alto, tenor and bass. Thus the ayres could be performed as solo songs with instrumental accompaniment, or as partsongs for several voices; or, if desired, the extra vocal parts could be performed on instruments. Such flexibility in performance was characteristic of the time; moreover, at a time when music publishing in England was still in its infancy, and rather uncertain financially, it was an obvious advantage to provide music that could be adapted to suit the differing tastes and musical resources of amateur musicians. When extra parts were provided they were printed facing in different directions so that several performers seated round a table could read from a single copy.
The immediate English antecedents of the lute ayre were the partsong and the consort song. Although the surviving repertory of partsongs is not large there is sufficient evidence to show that before the vogue of the madrigal and lute ayre in England there was a strong partsong tradition, examples of which can be seen in keyboard arrangements of mid-century partsongs in the Mulliner Book (GB-Lbl Add.30513; MB, i, 1951, 2/1954) and in Whythorne’s Songs for Three, Fower, and Five Voyces of 1571. Like the lute ayres these are generally strophic (i.e. the same music is repeated for every stanza), and the musical style covers a wide spectrum from simple harmonized tunes to quite elaborate contrapuntal compositions. The simpler partsongs in particular, like the anonymous I smile to see how you devise or Richard Edwards’s When griping griefs (both in the Mulliner Book), are the forerunners of many ‘light ayres’ by Campion, Rosseter and Ford. In such pieces as these, with their straightforward melodies and chordal texture, the accompaniment can be provided equally well by voices or by a chord-playing instrument, and so it is not surprising that there are arrangements of some of these partsongs for voice and lute.
The other important forerunner of the lute ayre, the consort song, was normally composed for solo voice accompanied by four viols. A substantial repertory of consort songs survives from the mid-16th century onwards by composers such as Richard Farrant, Robert Parsons and Byrd, and these provided a model for the more extended and contrapuntal lute ayres composed by Dowland, Cavendish and Danyel. Consort songs were also sometimes arranged for voice and lute, thus providing a direct link between the two media.
In addition to these English antecedents it seems clear that the French chanson, or air de cour as the lighter type came to be known, influenced the development of the English ayre. French chansons appear in two of the very few music books printed in England before 1588: the Recueil du mellange d’Orlande de Lassus (1570) and Adrian Le Roy’s Briefe and Plaine Instruction (1574). Moreover, Dowland had ample opportunity to become acquainted with this music during his sojourn in France in the early 1580s: an interesting sidelight on this is the fact that the music of the song ascribed to ‘Tesseir’ in the anthology A Musicall Banquet (1610), compiled by Dowland’s son Robert, first appeared in Guillaume Tessier’s Premier livre d’airs in 1582, while John Dowland was in France. The Tessiers seem to have had other English connections, for in 1597 – the same year as Dowland’s First Booke – Charles Tessier’s Premier livre de chansons et airs de cour was published in London by East. Several general parallels can be drawn between the French air de cour and the English ayre – strophic setting, a predilection for light homophonic textures, and the provision of alternative arrangements for solo voice and lute or vocal ensemble (though, in the French case, not within the same volume) – and it seems likely that some of the impetus for the English movement, and indeed for the term ‘ayre’, came from its French counterpart.
Finally, in considering the various factors that fused to give rise to the English lute ayre it should not be forgotten that the songbooks were important sources of lyric verse and were evidently valued as such, judging by the number of lutenist lyrics which found their way into printed and manuscript collections of poetry. From a literary point of view the songbooks of Dowland and his circle can be seen as a continuation of the sequence of Tudor poetical miscellanies that began with The Court of Venus (c1537) and included Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes (1557), A Handefull of Pleasant Delites (1566), The Paradyse of Daynty Devices (1576) and A Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions (1578). All these contain at least a proportion of poems that were evidently ‘verse for song’ and for which in some instances musical settings survive. Just as these volumes have been described as ‘songbooks without music’, so the lutenist’s folios may be considered as ‘poetical miscellanies with music’. The title of Jones’s last songbook, The Muses Gardin for Delights (1610), recalls the flowery titles of some of the earlier miscellanies.
The ayres of the lutenists cover a wide stylistic spectrum from extended contrapuntal compositions to short harmonized tunes. The former extreme is represented at its best by some of Dowland’s ayres, such as the three magnificent songs with obbligato viol parts in his Pilgrimes Solace (1612). In these the influence of the consort song is particularly evident, the expressive phrases of the vocal line, punctuated by rests, being supported by a continuous polyphonic accompanying texture. Other composers who wrote in this vein were Cavendish, Morley and Danyel. Dowland frequently used touches of chromaticism to heighten the expression, but the most extreme of the lutenists in this respect was Danyel, notably in Can doleful notes. In ayres like these, especially where strophic form is abandoned in favour of new music for each stanza (or where just one stanza is set), the composer often paid close attention to details in the text, and the result is reminiscent of the work of the madrigalists; but more generally, the lutenists were content to express the general mood of the lyric rather than to depict the details.
At the other extreme is the ‘light ayre’ advocated by Campion. Campion is notable among the lutenists as having been a poet as well as a composer, and the lyrics he set to music are all generally taken to be his own work. He was the only songwriter to express in print any views on the subject of word-setting in songs, and the prefaces to his own songbooks and the one that he shared with Rosseter are also interesting. As a poet he was naturally concerned that the music should not obscure the words, and for this reason he insisted that complicated polyphony had no place in the ayre, which should be short, simple and ‘well seasoned’ like an epigram (he himself wrote Latin epigrams). He also ridiculed madrigalian word-painting. In ayres like Shall I come, sweet love, to thee and When to her lute Corinna sings he achieved a refined and eloquent simplicity, as did his friend (and possibly teacher) Rosseter in ayres like What then is love but mourning. One of Campion’s ayres, Come let us sound with melody, reflects his interest in reviving classical prosody. The poem is written in Sapphic metre, and the melody matches the long and short syllables with minims and crotchets respectively, like the musique mesurée of some French chanson composers.
In between the two extremes represented by the contrapuntal ayres of Dowland and Danyel and the light ayres of Campion there is a great variety of styles. One genre specially cultivated by Dowland was the dance ayre, a song written in the form and style of a dance such as the pavan or galliard. The most famous of all his ayres, Flow, my tears, is a vocal pavan. Many instrumental versions of it survive entitled Lachrimae, and it seems certain that in this and some other instances the work was first composed as an instrumental piece and words added later. Some ayres by Jones and Cavendish reflect the influence of the canzonet and ballett. Cavendish’s single volume, like that of Greaves, contains madrigals as well as ayres, and some of the items printed as ayres (e.g. Say, shepherds, say) are really canzonets or madrigals with the lower vocal parts intabulated for lute.
The most important stylistic development during the vogue of the lute ayre was the rise of the declamatory style. Once again Dowland led the way; he had visited Italy in 1595 and was almost certainly acquainted with the work of Caccini and other Italian monodists. In Come, heavy sleep (1597) and Sorrow, stay (1600) he used declamation momentarily for special expressive effect, but in later songs, such as Tell me, true love and Welcome, black night (1612), it is much more pervasive. Some of these later declamatory songs were written for masques, and it seems that in England as in Italy the new style was associated with theatrical entertainment. Another composer whose airs show this tendency was Alfonso Ferrabosco (ii), who collaborated with Ben Jonson in a number of masques; others are Coprario, Mason and Earsden.
The last lutenist to publish a printed songbook was John Attey in 1622, only 25 years after Dowland had inaugurated the movement. But in addition to the printed songbooks there are a number of manuscript collections, such as GB-Lbl Add.15117, 15118, 24665 and 29481 and manuscripts at Ob, Och, Ckc and US-NYp. Some of the ayres in these sources are elaborately embellished, sometimes apparently just for embellishment’s sake, but sometimes to heighten the expression, after the fashion of the Italian monodists. In many cases they are provided only with an unfigured bass accompaniment, but they are essentially the same as the lute ayres, and in fact many printed lute ayres reappear in manuscripts with only a bass accompaniment. Nevertheless the provision of a simple bass accompaniment which could be realized on any chord-playing instrument was a sign of a decline in the prestige of the lute itself. In the manuscripts one finds the work of a younger generation of songwriters – men like Nicholas Lanier (ii), Robert Johnson (ii), John Wilson and William and Henry Lawes; in fact, these manuscripts afford the clearest evidence that the ayre did not die with Attey’s songbook of 1622 but continued to evolve with undiminished vitality.
For editions of English ayres see EL (1959–); MB, vi (2000) and liii–liv (1987–9).
The French operatic air originated in the mid-17th-century ballet de cour. Lully's Ballet d'Alcidiane (1658), for example, contains airs by Lully and Antoine Boësset in the style of the popular Air de cour. During the following decade, Lully developed the form, first in subsequent court ballets and then in the comédies-ballets on which he collaborated with Molière. With his first tragédie en musique, Cadmus et Hermione (1673), the three categories of French operatic air became established as the air à chanter or sung air; the air de mouvement or dance air, which sometimes used a singer; and the air à jouer or instrumental air. The distinctions between the categories are based less on stylistic criteria than on performing forces, the presence of dance styles, and, most important, location within the act. Airs à chanter appeared in scenes devoted to dramatic action, whereas airs de mouvement and airs à jouer appeared in divertissements.
‘La chaine de l'hymen m'étonne’ from Act 1 scene ii of Armide (1686) is a good example of the basic Lullian air. From the air de cour Lully drew a modest, largely unadorned form of text-setting. It supports the anapestic scansion typical of French poetry at this time, and apart from a short, illustrative melisma on ‘chaine’ is syllabic. From his own Italian background he drew a preference for straightforward variants of binary form, as found in the operas and cantatas of such composers as Luigi Rossi. The first part is repeated literally, ending on a half-cadence; the second repeats the texts of its two verses, but uses two different musical phrases. Other favoured forms include the rondeau and variants of ternary form. Lully could also create more complex musical structures reflecting dramatic content. In one famous example, ‘Atys est trop heureux’, from Act 1 scene ii of Atys (1676), an air-like refrain with ground bass for Sangaride is interspersed with recitative for her confidante Doris.
These kinds of air remained a staple of French opera for the life of the tragédie en musique, and were readily taken up by composers of newer French genres such as the opéra-ballet. Such stylistic changes as occurred were a matter of degree rather than kind, designed to accommodate changing tastes. The most extreme example of this shift is seen in the operas of Rameau. His airs à chanter, while more complex than those of his predecessors, are still recognizable in terms of the Lullian tradition. Some of his airs de mouvement and airs à jouer challenged the traditional forms, however; examples include the metrically complex use of gavotte rhythms in the first instrumental air in Act 1 scene iii of Hippolyte et Aricie (1733), and the virtuoso ornamentation in the sung version of the first dance air from Act 4 scene iii.
Embedded in entire scenes devoted to recitative, the air à chanter often resembled the surrounding music to an extent that makes it difficult to identify. The Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni complained in his Mémoires (1787) that on his first visit to the Académie Royale de Musique he was unable to detect the presence of airs. This was further aggravated by the variety of features that could constitute an air. Musically, it might or might not use regular metre (in contrast to the shifting metres of French recitative), instrumental accompaniment, literal or allusive repetition and authentic tonal closure. Dramatically, it could be determined by such diverse elements as plot, conventional speeches, narrations (récits) and maxims. In staging, it could support individual characters in dialogue, two characters in dialogue or single characters in monologue. The terminology used in writings of the time also varied considerably, and the notational specification of airs was inconsistent, as were later indexes of performable pieces included in published scores. From a historical standpoint, then, there is value in thinking of the air à chanter as a form of musical inflection within an ongoing pattern of recitative. This is supported by the fact that anthologies and excerpts printed passages of pure recitative as easily as airs.
As quarrels over the relative merits of French and Italian opera became more common during the 18th century, opponents fixed on such ambiguities. Proponents of French opera praised this music for its emphasis on poetic text, while critics attacked its lack of variety compared with the Italian numbers format (clearly, understanding the position of the writer is important when reading sources from this time). Terms that were intended to describe Italian opera, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau's expression récitatif mesuré, have crept into modern discussion of the French air, further confusing the distinction between it and recitative.
With the increased performance of ballet, comic opera and Italian opera during the second half of the 17th century and the related decline in the importance of the French tragedy, the significance of the air dwindled. Vestiges are detectable, however, in the flexible scene structure of Gluck's reform tragedies. In Orphée et Euridice (performed in Paris in 1774), for example, the composer interspersed declamatory passages between recurring musical strophes (‘Objet de mon amour’) and between refrains (‘J'ai perdu mon Euridice’). In post-revolutionary opera, spoken dialogue, adopted from older forms of opéra comique, replaced both recitative and air.
See also Aria, §5(ii).
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AnthonyFB
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