← catalogue

A Popular History of the Art of Music

by W. S. B. Mathews · English · Gutenberg #20293 · 769,091 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Popular History of the Art of Music
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: A Popular History of the Art of Music

Author: W. S. B. Mathews


        
Release date: January 5, 2007 [eBook #20293]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20293

Credits: E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Linda Cantoni, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POPULAR HISTORY OF THE ART OF MUSIC ***


E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Linda Cantoni, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/c/).
Thanks to Alex Guzman for help with the modern transcription of neume
notation.



Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
      file which includes the original 168 visual illustrations
      and 25 added audio files.
      See 20293-h.htm or 20293-h.zip:
      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/2/9/20293/20293-h/20293-h.htm)
      or
      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/2/9/20293/20293-h.zip)





A POPULAR HISTORY OF THE ART OF MUSIC

From the Earliest Times Until the Present.

With Accounts of the Chief Musical Instruments and Scales; the
Principles and Artistic Value of Their Music; together with
Biographical Notices of the Greater Composers, Chronological Charts,
Specimens of Music, and Many Engravings.

by

W. S. B. MATHEWS,

Editor of "Music" Magazine,

Author of "How to Understand Music," "Studies in Phrasing," "Twenty
Lessons to a Beginner," "Primer of Musical Forms," Associate Editor of
Mason's "Pianoforte Technics," etc., etc.







Chicago:
The "Music" Magazine Publishing Co.
1402-5 The Auditorium.
Copyright by W. S. B. Mathews, 1891.




TO

DR. FLORENCE ZIEGFELD,

_President of the Chicago Musical College_

THIS WORK IS

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.




PREFACE.


I have here endeavored to provide a readable account of the entire
history of the art of music, within the compass of a single small
volume, and to treat the luxuriant and many-sided later development
with the particularity proportionate to its importance, and the
greater interest appertaining to it from its proximity to the times of
the reader.

The range of the work can be most easily estimated from the Table of
Contents (pages 5-10). It will be seen that I have attempted to cover
the same extent of history, in treating of which the standard musical
histories of Naumann, Ambros, Fétis and others have employed from
three times to ten times as much space. In the nature of the case
there will be differences of opinion among competent judges concerning
my success in this difficult undertaking. Upon this point I can only
plead absolute sincerity of purpose, and a certain familiarity with
the ground to be covered, due to having treated it in my lectures in
the Chicago Musical College for five years, to the extent of about
thirty-five lectures yearly. I have made free use of all the standard
histories--those of Fétis, Ambros, Naumann, Brendel, Gevaert, Hawkins,
Burney, the writings of Dr. Hugo Riemann, Dr. Ritter, Prof. Fillmore,
and the dictionaries of Grove and Mendel, as well as many monographs
in all the leading modern languages.

I have divided the entire history into books, placing at the beginning
of each book a general chapter defining the central idea and salient
features of the step in development therein recounted. The student who
will attentively peruse these chapters in succession will have in them
a fairly complete account of the entire progress.

W. S. B. MATHEWS.

_Chicago, May 5, 1891._




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


                                           PAGE.

Chart of Greatest Composers                  11

Chart of Italian Composers                   12

Chart of German Composers                    13

Pianists and Composers for Piano             14

King David Playing the Three-stringed Crwth  24

Egyptian Representations, 4th Dynasty        28

Bruce's Harpers                              30

Harp and Musicians of 20th Dynasty           32

Lyres Found in Tombs                         33

Women, Street Musicians                      34

Shoulder Harps                               35

Kinnor                                       42

Larger Jewish Harp                           43

Assyrian Harps                               45

Assyrian Banjo                               46

Assyrian Psaltery                            47

Greek Lyres                                  64

Music to Ode of Pindar                       69

Hindoo Vina                                  71

Ravanastron                                  72

Chinese Ke                                   74

Japanese Ko-Ko                               76

Old Breton Song                              88

Old Welsh Song                               92

Welsh Song in Praise of Love                 94

Harp of Sir Brian Boirohen                   97

Facsimile "Sumer is Icumen In"              101

The Same Written out                        102

Saxon Harp                                  104

Saxon Harp                                  105

Crwth                                       107

Scotch Pentatonic Melody                    108

Arab Rebec                                  112

Arab Eoud                                   113

Arab Santir                                 114

Song by Thibaut, 13th Century               122

Reinmar, the Minnesinger                    124

Frauenlob                                   125

Minstrel Harps                              126

Gregorian and Ambrosian Scales              132

Hucbald's Staff                             141

Diaphony                                    141

Diaphony in Fourths                         142

Guido of Arezzo                             144

Table of the Schools of the Netherlands     162

Orlando di Lassus                           167

Music by Palestrina                         173 to 175

Roman Letter Notation of Guido              181

Neumæ of 10th Century                       181

Neumæ of 11th Century                       182

Neumæ with Lines                            183

Lament for Charlemagne                      184

Early Staff of Five Lines                   185

Lute                                        191

Tuning of the Lute                          192

Early Forms of Rebec                        195

Angel Playing Rebec, 13th Century           196

Viol da Gamba                               197

Barytone                                    198

Stradivarius Violin                         200

Old Organ                                   202

Portable Organ                              204

Bellows Bags at Halberstadt                 206

Concert of 7th Century                      208

Extract, Peri's "Eurydice"                  225

Aria, Monteverde's "Arianna"                230

Aria, Cavalli's "Erismena"                  231

Aria, Scarlatti's Cantata                   232

Aria, Lulli's "Roland"                      240

Heinrich Schütz                             246

Jean Pieters Swelinck                       251

Samuel Scheidt                              252

Johann Adam Reinken                         254

John Sebastian Bach                         266

Geo. Friedrich Händel                       274

Joseph Haydn                                286

The Mozart Family                           293

Mozart (Miss Stock)                         300

Mozart                                      302

Beethoven                                   311

Beethoven as He Appeared on the Street      314

Beethoven Autograph                         315

Facsimile Title Page Mss. Beethoven         318

Gluck                                       329

Grétry                                      340

Boieldieu                                   343

Purcell                                     350

J.L. Dussek                                 358

Hummel                                      362

Moscheles                                   363

Schubert                                    390

Spinet, 1590                                393

Ornamentation of Same                       394

Another View of the Same                    395

Mozart's Grand Piano                        396

Cristofori's Design of Action               397

His Action as Made in 1726                  398

Érard Grand Action                          399

Steinway Iron Frame and Over-stringing      400

Carl Maria von Weber                        407

Meyerbeer                                   412

Richard Wagner                              417

Mme. Schröder-Devrient                      420

Paganini                                    430

Paganini in Concert (Landseer)              431

Chopin                                      442

Liszt                                       452, 453

Hauptmann                                   460

Mendelssohn                                 462

Schumann                                    476

Rossini                                     480

Verdi                                       484

Auber                                       489

Gade                                        498

Sterndale-Bennett                           502

Rubinstein                                  506




CONTENTS.


                                                                 PAGE.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS                                                4

CHRONOLOGICAL CHART OF GREATEST COMPOSERS                           11

CHRONOLOGICAL CHART OF ITALIAN COMPOSERS                            12

CHRONOLOGICAL CHART OF PRINCIPAL GERMAN COMPOSERS                   13

CHRONOLOGICAL CHART OF PIANISTS AND COMPOSERS FOR PIANO             14

INTRODUCTION                                                     15-23

Music defined--general idea of musical progress--conditions of fine
art--qualities of satisfactory art-forms--periods in musical
history--difference between ancient and modern music.


BOOK FIRST--MUSIC OF THE ANCIENT WORLD.

CHAPTER I--MUSIC AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS                     27-39

Sources of information--antiquity of their development--instruments--uses
of music--their ideas about music and education--"Song of the
Harper"--kindergarten.

CHAPTER II--MUSIC AMONG THE HEBREWS AND ASSYRIANS                40-47

Music among the Hebrews--Jubal--kinnor--ugabh--musicians in the
temple service--psaltery--flute--larger harp--Miriam--liturgy of
the temple--musical ideal in Hebrew mind--music among the
Assyrians--types of instruments.

CHAPTER III--MUSIC AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS                      48-69

Importance of this development--extent of the time--date of Homeric
poems--epoch of Æschylus--extracts from Homer--Hesiod--patriotic
applications of music--choral song--festivals--lyric drama--début of
Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides--nature of the classic
drama--orchestic--Socrates--Aristoxenus--problems of Aristotle--Greek
theory of music--Pythagoras and ratios of simple consonances--devotional
use of music--Greek scales--Claudius Ptolemy--Didymus--the lyre and
cithara--magadis--flute--æsthetic importance--Plato on the noble
harmonies--loyalty to the true--Greek musical alphabet--notation--Ode
from Pindar.

CHAPTER IV--MUSIC IN INDIA, CHINA AND JAPAN                      70-77

Early beginning--use of the bow--national instruments--the
vina--theory--ravanastron--music exclusively melodic--saying of the
Emperor Tschun--the ke--Japanese ko-ko.


BOOK SECOND--APPRENTICE PERIOD OF MODERN MUSIC

CHAPTER V--THE TRANSFORMATION AND ITS CAUSES                     81-86

General view of the transformation to modern music--causes
co-operating--difference between ancient and modern music--harmony
and tonality--consonance and dissonance--three steps in the
development of harmonic perceptions--when were these steps
taken?--tonality defined--growth of tonal perception--unconscious
perception of implied or associated tones.

CHAPTER VI--THE MINSTRELS OF THE NORTH                          87-108

Importance of Celtic development of minstrelsy--origin of the Celts--the
minstrel--old Breton song--the druids--classification of
bards--degrees--Fétis on the Welsh minstrel--"Triads of the Isle
of Britain"--old harp music--"The Two Lovers"--Gerald Barry on
the Welsh--old Welsh song--the Irish--Sir Brian Boirohen's harp--English
and Saxon music--King Arthur as minstrel--organ at Winchester--Scandinavian
scalds--Eddas--"Sumer is Icumen in"--Anglo-Saxon harp--source of the
harp in Britain--the crwth--melody in pentatonic scale.

CHAPTER VII--THE ARABS, OR SARACENS                            109-114

The Arab apparition in history--their taste for poetry--competitive
contests of poetry and song--encouragement of literature--rebec--eoud;
santir.

CHAPTER VIII--ORIGIN OF THE GREAT FRENCH EPICS                 115-120

Period of the Chansons de Geste--social conditions of France as given
by M. Léon Gautier--"Cantilena of St. Eulalie"--subjects of the
Chansons de Geste.

CHAPTER IX--TROUBADOURS, TROUVÈRES AND MINNESINGERS            121-127

The troubadours--Count Wilhelm--varieties of their songs--melody
from Thibaut--Adam de la Halle--"Story of Antioch"--"Song of
Roland"--minnesinger Reinmar--Heinrich Frauenlob--minstrel
harps--Hans Sachs--influence of these minstrel guilds.

CHAPTER X--INFLUENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH                   128-133

Church not influential in the development of music as such--nature
of the early Christian hymns--St. Ambrose--the Ambrosian scales;
corruptions elsewhere--St. Gregory and his reforms--the Gregorian
tones--many later reforms--limitations of these reforms--incidental
influence of the Church through her great cathedrals.

CHAPTER XI--MUSICAL DIDACTIC FROM THE FIFTH TO FOURTEENTH
CENTURY                                                        134-147

Macrobus--Martinus Capella--Boethius--Cassiodorus--Bishop Isidore;
Venerable Bede--Aurelian--Rémi of Auxerre--Hucbald--examples--instruments
of music during the seventh and eighth centuries--Odon of Cluny--Guido
of Arezzo--staff--Franco of Cologne--Franco of Paris.

CHAPTER XII--THE RISE OF POLYPHONY; OLD FRENCH AND GALLO-BELGIC
SCHOOLS                                                        148-159

Origin and meaning of polyphony--monodic and homophonic--canonic
imitation--chords as incidents--variety and unity--early
French school--Coussemaker's researches--Léonin--descant--Pérotin--names
of pieces--Robert of Sabillon--Pierre de la Croix--Jean
of Garland--Franco of Paris--Jean de Muris--fleurettes--John
Cotton--Machaut--Gallo-Belgic school--Dufay--Hans de Zeelandia--Antoine
de Busnois.

CHAPTER XIII--SCHOOLS OF THE NETHERLANDS                       160-167

Wealth of the Low Countries--freedom of the communes--strength
of the burgher class--period of these schools--table of periods
and masters--Okeghem--Tinctor--Josquin--his popularity--Arkadelt;
Gombert--Willaert--Goudimel--Cypriano de Rore--Orlando de Lassus--his
Munich school--his genius.

CHAPTER XIV--POLYPHONIC SCHOOLS OF ITALY--PALESTRINA           168-178

Prosperity of Italy in fifteenth century--great cathedrals and public
works--conservatories founded at Naples--Willaert at St. Mark's,
Venice--Zarlino--his reforms in theory--Cypriano de Rore--Goudimel;
Palestrina--the council of Trent--Palestrina's music--Martin Luther.

CHAPTER XV--CHANGES IN MUSICAL NOTATION                        179-188

General direction of musical progress toward classification and the
establishment of unities of various kinds--early letter notation
of the Greeks and Romans--Roman notation as used by Guido of
Arezzo--neumæ--with lines--additional lines--"Lament for
Charlemagne"--notation employed by the French Trouvères--clefs--new
staff proposed by an American reformer.

CHAPTER XVI--MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS--THE VIOLIN AND ORGAN         189-207

Progress in tonal perceptions--influence of harp and lute--description
of the latter--system of stringing--locating the frets--the
violin--bow discovered in India--early forms of bowed instruments--rebec;
barytone--viol da Gamba--Amati--Stradivari--peculiarities of his
instruments--Maggini--Stainer--antiquity of the organ--early
forms--organ sent Charlemagne--organs at Munich--Malmesbury
Abbey--measure of organ pipes--portable organ--clumsiness of the old
keyboards--the organ in 1500 A.D.


BOOK THIRD--THE DAWN OF MODERN MUSIC.

CHAPTER XVII--CONDITION OF MUSIC AT BEGINNING OF EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY                                                        211-220

Justification of the name "apprentice period"--office of domestic
musicians in England in the reign of Elizabeth--great fondness
for music everywhere--casual influence of counterpoint in educating
harmonic sense--madrigal--multiplicity of collections of
this kind--absurd use of madrigals for dramatic monody--the
work of the seventeenth century, free melodic expression--the
new problem of the musical drama--the representative principle
in music--music last of the arts--Florence and Venice the
centers--statistics of books published from 1470 to 1500.

CHAPTER XVIII--FIRST CENTURY OF ITALIAN OPERA AND DRAMATIC
SONG                                                           221-234

Circle of the Literati in Florence--Galilei and his monody--Peri's
"Dafne"--Schütz's setting of the same--Peri's "Eurydice"--rare
editions--_Il stilo rappresentativo_--Cavaliere's oratorio "The
Soul and the Body"--second period of opera--Monteverde's
"_Arianna_"--orchestra of the same--new orchestral effects--scene
from "Eurydice"--director of St. Mark's--Legrenzi--Cesti--public
theaters--Alessandro Scarlatti--_recitativo stromentato_--Corelli--sonatas
for the violin--influence of the violin upon the art of
singing--origin of Italian school of singing--artificial sopranos--Porpora;
Selections from Monteverde, Cavalli and Scarlatti.

CHAPTER XIX--BEGINNINGS OF OPERA IN FRANCE AND GERMANY         235-243

Slow progress of opera to other parts of Europe--origin of French
opera--ballets of Boesset--Perrin--Cambert--their first opera--their
patent from the king--Lulli--his success and productivity--attention
to verbal delivery and the vernacular of the audience--foundations
of the French Académie de Musique--opera in Germany--Schütz--Hamburg
and Keiser--selection from Lulli--"Roland"--Mattheson.

CHAPTER XX--THE PROGRESS OF ORATORIO                           244-248

Oratorio invented simultaneously with opera--Cavaliere--mystery
plays--Carissimi--two types of oratorio--cantata--Händel's
appropriation from Carissimi--sacred oratorio--Schütz's Passions--"Last
Seven Words."

CHAPTER XXI--BEGINNINGS OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC                  249-260

Beginnings of instrumental music in seventeenth century--tentative
character of instrumental music of sixteenth century--Gabrieli
and organ pieces--imitations of vocal works--melodies not fully
carried out--Swelinck--Scheidt--Schein--Frescobaldi--Reinken--Pachelbel;
Muffat--Corelli--orchestra of the period--its defects.


BOOK FOURTH--FLOWERING TIME OF MODERN MUSIC.

CHAPTER XXII--MUSIC IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY                  261-264

The flowering time of modern music--complexity of developments
now taking place--principal actors--two main channels of improvement;
fugue--sonata--Bach and Händel as writers of fugue--people's
song makes its way into cultivated instrumental music--reference to
Mozart's sonatas--thematic and lyric as elements of contrast.

CHAPTER XXIII--JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH                             265-272

Bach as a composer--sketch--his clavier--attainments as virtuoso
upon the clavier and the organ--choral works--Passion oratorios--his
pre-eminence as writer of fugues--general sketch of the
form of a fugue--prelude--mutually complementary--Bach's concertos--his
rhythm.

CHAPTER XXIV--GEO. FRIEDRICH HÄNDEL                            273-281

The companion figure of Bach--early life--violinist at Hamburg--conductor;
composer--first opera--Italy--successes there--England--Italian
operas--oratorio "Messiah"--other oratorios--list of his works--Bach
and Händel compared--Händel's place in art--personalities.

CHAPTER XXV--EMANUEL BACH, HAYDN--THE SONATA                   282-291

The sons of Bach--Emanuel Bach as composer--difficulty of founding
a new form--Haydn--early years--conductor for Prince Esterhazy,
compositions--the visit to London--the money he made--"The Creation";
second visit to London--Haydn and the sonata form--"The Last Seven
Words"--his rank as tone-poet.

CHAPTER XXVI--MOZART AND HIS GENIUS                            292-304

Charming personality--childhood--early talent--concerts--Mozart
at Bologna and the test of his powers--Haydn's opinion--early
operas--"Marriage of Figaro"--success--accompaniments added
to Händel's "Messiah" and other works--call to Berlin--mysterious
order for the "Requiem"--death--general quality of Mozart's
music.

CHAPTER XXVII--BEETHOVEN AND HIS WORKS                         305-315

A worthy successor to Haydn and Mozart--early years--orchestral
leader--piano playing--his friends--Count Waldstein--his first
visit to Vienna--settled in Vienna--compositions--life--appearance--place
in art.

CHAPTER XXVIII--HAYDN, MOZART AND BEETHOVEN COMPARED           316-326

Their relation to symphony--refinement of Mozart--early age of
Mozart--Beethoven's independence--relation to sonata--Beethoven
more free--climax of classical art--Beethoven adagios--summing
up--tendency of progress.

CHAPTER XXIX--OPERA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY                  327-351

Three great names--Graun--Gluck--his reforms--his ideal--early
works--"Orpheus"--"Iphigenie"--Mozart's place in opera--Rameau--theoretical
writings--Rousseau--Phillidor--Monsigny--Grétry--Gossec--Méhul--Lesueur;
Boieldieu--French opera in general--Italian opera--Pergolesi--Jomelli;
Sacchini--Paisiello--Piccini--Zingarelli--opera in England--Purcell;
Dr. Arne.

CHAPTER XXX--PIANO PLAYING VIRTUOSI--VIOLINISTS--TARTINI AND
SPOHR                                                          352-369

Pianoforte established as domestic instrument--Scarlatti--Mattheson--Dr.
Blow--John Bull--Clementi--Dussek--Cramer--Berger--Hummel--Moscheles;
Tartini--Spohr.


BOOK FIFTH--EPOCH OF THE ROMANTIC.

CHAPTER XXXI--THE NINETEENTH CENTURY--THE ROMANTIC--MUSIC OF
THE FUTURE                                                     373-380

Classic and romantic defined--art in general--applied to music--illustrated
by Schubert--Schumann--development of virtuosity--Berlioz--"music of
the future"--how originating--the outlook.

CHAPTER XXXII--SCHUBERT AND THE ROMANTIC                       381-391

Early life of Schubert--compositions--first songs--"Erl King"--rapidity
of composition--unfinished symphony--industry--spontaneity--personal
characteristics.

CHAPTER XXXIII--STORY OF THE PIANOFORTE                        392-403

Origin of pianoforte--spinet--clavicembalo--Mozart's grand piano;
Cristofori's design of action--Érard action--iron frame--Chickering;
Steinway improvements.

CHAPTER XXXIV--GERMAN OPERA--WEBER, MEYERBEER, WAGNER          404-427

Tendency of German opera--Weber--"Der Freischütz"--romanticism--innovations
in piano playing--Meyerbeer--early life--master works--place in art;
Wagner--early life--early operas--"Lohengrin"--Zurich--Schröder-Devrient,
"Nibelung's Ring"--peculiarities.

CHAPTER XXXV--VIRTUOSITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY--PAGANINI,
BERLIOZ, CHOPIN, THALBERG, LISZT                               428-454

Continuity of these appearances with those already recounted--Paganini--his
playing--inspiring effect--Berlioz--works--place in art--progress of
piano playing--virtuosi co-operating--Thalberg and his style--Parish
Alvars--Pollini--Chopin--place in art--Liszt--early appearances--rivalry
with Thalberg--style--Weimar--Bonn Beethoven monument--as teacher--as
composer.

CHAPTER XXXVI--MENDELSSOHN AND SCHUMANN                        455-477

Mendelssohn--personality--talent--early works--maturity--as
player Leipsic Conservatory--Hauptmann--"Elijah"--"St. Paul"--Schumann;
early education and habits--works--strength of the romantic tendency--his
"New Journal of Music"--music in Leipsic--Clara Wieck--larger works for
piano--technical traits--songs--general characteristics.

CHAPTER XXXVII--ITALIAN OPERA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY        478-487

Spontini--Rossini--Donizetti--Bellini--Verdi--Boito--Ponchielli.

CHAPTER XXXVIII--FRENCH OPERA AND COMPOSERS IN THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY                                                        488-496

Auber--Hérold--Adam--Gounod--Massé--Massenet--Saint-Saëns--Délibes,
Bizet--Ambroise Thomas.

CHAPTER XXXIX--LATER COMPOSERS AND PERFORMERS                  497-508

Gade--Brahms--Tschaikowsky--Svensden--Grieg--Bruch--Bennett--Macfarren;
Mackenzie--Nicodé--Moszkowsky--Dvorak--Henselt--Litolff--Wilmers--Heller;
Hiller--Rubinstein--Bülow--Reinecke.




CHRONOLOGY OF THE GREATEST COMPOSERS.

(_Copyright._)

EXPLANATION.--The heavy vertical lines are century lines. Light
vertical, twenty-year lines. Horizontal lines, the life of the
composer.

[Illustration]


CHRONOLOGY OF PRINCIPAL ITALIAN COMPOSERS.

(_Copyright._)

From Palestrina to Present Time. (See explanation, page 11.)

[Illustration]


CHRONOLOGICAL CHART OF THE MORE IMPORTANT GERMAN COMPOSERS.

(_Copyright._)

From Orlando Lassus to the Present Time. (See page 11.)

[Illustration]


CHRONOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF PIANISTS AND COMPOSERS FOR THE PIANOFORTE.

(_Copyright._)

From 1660 to the Present Time (1891).

[Illustration]




INTRODUCTION.


I.

The name "music" contains two ideas, both of them important in our
modern use of the term: The general meaning is that of "a pleasing
modulation of sounds." In this sense the term is used constantly by
poets, novelists and even in conversation--as when we speak of the
"music of the forest," the "music of the brook" or the "music of
nature." There is also a reminiscence of the etymological derivation
of the term, as something derived from the "Muses," the fabled retinue
of the Greek god Apollo, who presided over all the higher operations
of the mind and imagination. Thus the name "music," when applied to an
art, contains a suggestion of an inspiration, a something derived from
a special inner light, or from a higher source outside the composer,
as all true imagination seems to be to those who exercise it.

2. Music has to do with tones, sounds selected on account of their
musical quality and relations. These tones, again, before becoming
music in the artistic sense, must be so joined together, set in order,
controlled by the human imagination, that they express sentiment.
Every manifestation of musical art has in it these two elements: _The
fit selection_ of tones; and, second, the _use of them for expressing
sentiment and feeling_. Hence the practical art of music, like every
other fine art, has in it two elements, an _outer_, or technical,
where trained intelligence rules, and teaching and study are the
principal means of progress; and an _inner_, the imagination and
musical feeling, which can indeed be strengthened by judicious
experience in hearing, but which when wanting cannot be supplied by
the teacher, or the laws of their action reduced to satisfactory
statement.

3. There is no fine art which reflects the activity of spirit more
perfectly than that of music. There is something in the nature of this
form of art which renders it particularly acceptable to quick and
sensitive minds. If evidence of this statement were needed beyond the
intuitive assent which every musical reader will immediately give, it
could easily be furnished in the correspondence between the activity
of mind in general and in the art of music in particular, every great
period of mental strength having been accompanied by a corresponding
term of activity in music. Furthermore, the development of the art of
music has kept pace with the deepening of mental activity in general,
so that in these later times when the general movement of mind is so
much greater than in ancient times, and the operations of intellect so
much more diffused throughout all classes, the art of music has come
to a period of unprecedented richness and strength.


II.

4. The earlier forms of music were very simple; the range of tones
employed was narrow, and the habits of mind in the people employing
them apparently calm and almost inactive. As time passed on more and
more tones were added to the musical scales, and more and more
complicated relations recognized between them, and the music thereby
became more diversified in its tonal effects, and therein better
adapted for the expression of a more energetic or more sensitive
action of mind and feeling. This has been the general course of the
progress, from the earliest times in which there was an art of music
until now.

The two-fold progress of an education in tone perception, and an
increasing ability to employ elaborate combinations for the expression
of feelings too high-strung for the older forms of expression, is
observable in almost all stages of musical history, and in our own
days has received a striking illustration in the progress made in
appreciating the works of the latest of the great musical geniuses,
Richard Wagner, whose music twenty-five years ago was regarded by the
public generally as unmusical and atrocious; whereas now it is heard
with pleasure, and takes hold of the more advanced musical minds with
a firmness beyond that of any other musical production. The
explanation is to be found in the development of finer tone
perceptions--the ability to co-ordinate tonal combinations so
distantly related that to the musical ears of a generation ago their
relation was not recognized, therefore to those ears they were not
music. Wagner felt these strange combinations as music. The deeper
relations between tones and chords apparently remote, he felt, and
employed them for the expression of his imagination. Other ears now
feel them as he did. An education has taken place.

5. It is altogether likely that the education will still go on until
many new combinations which to our ears would be meaningless will
become a part of the ordinary vernacular of the art. Indeed, a writer
quite recently (Julius Klauser, in "The Septonnate") points out a
vast amount of musical material already contained within our tonal
systems which as yet is entirely unused. The new chords and relations
thus suggested are quite in line with the additions made by Wagner to
the vocabulary of his day.


III.

6. There are certain conditions which must be met before a fine art
will be developed. These it is worth while to consider briefly:

The state of art, in any community or nation, at any period of its
history, depends upon a fortunate correspondence between two elements
which we might call the internal and the external. By the former is
meant the inner movement of mind or spirit, which must be of such
depth and force as to leave a surplusage after the material needs of
existence have been met. In every community where there is a certain
degree of wealth, leisure and a vigorous movement of mind, this
surplus force, remaining over after the necessary wheels of common
life have been set in motion, will expend itself in some form of art
or literature. The nature of the form selected as the expression of
this surplus force will depend upon the fashion, the prevalent
activity of the life of the day, or, in other words, the environment.
Illustrating this principle, reference might be made to the condition
of Greek art in the flowering time of its history, when the wealth of
Athens was so great as to leave resources unemployed in the material
uses of life, and when the intellectual movement was so splendid as to
leave it until now a brilliant tradition of history. Only one form of
art was pre-eminently successful here; it was sculpture, which at that
time reached its fullest development--to such a degree that modern
sculpture is only a weak repetition of ancient works in this line. So
also the brilliant period of Italian painting, when the mental
movement represented by Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Lorenzo de
Medici, and the pleasure-loving existence, the brilliant fêtes, in
which noble men and beautifully appareled women performed all sorts of
allegorical representations, and the colors, groupings, etc., afforded
the painter an endless variety of material and suggestion. When Rubens
flourished in the Netherlands, a century later, similar conditions
accompanied his appearance and the prolific manifestations of his
genius. In the same way, music depends upon peculiar conditions of its
own. They are three: The vigor of the mental movement in general, its
strength upon the imaginative and sentimental side, and the suggestion
from the environment in the way of musical instruments of adequate
tonal powers. Such instruments never existed in the history of the art
until about the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The organ, the
violin and the predecessor of the pianoforte, the spinet, came to
practical form at nearly the same time. At the same time the
instruments of plucked strings--the guitars, lutes and other
instruments which until then had occupied the exclusive attention of
musicians--began to go out. Moreover, musical science had been worked
out, and the arts of counterpoint, canonic imitation, fugue, harmony,
etc., had all reached a high degree of perfection when Bach and Händel
appeared.

7. The entire history of music is merely an illustration of these
principles. Wherever there has been vigorous movement of mind and
material prosperity (and they have always been associated) there has
been an art of music, the richness of which, however, has always been
limited by the state of the musical ears of the people or generation,
and the perfection of their musical instruments. The instruments are
an indispensable ingredient in musical progress, since it is only by
means of instruments that tonal combinations can be exactly repeated,
the voice mastering the more difficult relations of tones only when
the ear has become quick to perceive tonal relations, and tenacious to
retain them--in other words, educated. Hence in the pages following,
the instruments peculiar to each epoch will receive the attention
their importance deserves, which is considerably more than that
usually allotted them in concise accounts of the history of this art.

8. The conditions of a satisfactory Art Form are three: Unity, the
expression of a single ruling idea; variety, the relief of the
monotony due to the over-ascendency of unity (or contrast, an exact
and definite form of variety); and symmetry, or the due proportion of
the different parts of the work as a whole. These principles,
universally recognized as governing in the other fine arts, are
equally valid in music. As will be seen later, all musical progress
has been toward their more complete attainment and their due
co-ordination into a single satisfactory whole. Every musical form
that has ever been created is an effort to solve this problem; and
analysis shows which one of the leading principles has been most
considered, and the manner in which it has been carried out. Ancient
music was very weak in all respects, and never fully attained the
first of these qualities. Modern music has mastered all three to a
very respectable degree.

9. The art of music appears to have been earliest of all the fine arts
in the order of time; but it has been longer than any of the others in
reaching its maturity, most of the master works now current having
been created within the last two centuries, and the greater proportion
of them within the last century. Sculpture came to its perfection in
Greece about 500 B.C.; architecture about 1200 to 1300 A.D., when the
great European cathedrals were built; painting about 1500 to 1600 A.D.
Poetry, like music, representing the continual life of soul, has never
been completed, new works of highest quality remaining possible as
long as hearts can feel and minds can conceive; but the productions of
Shakespeare, about 1650, are believed to represent a point of
perfection not likely to be surpassed. Music, on the other hand, has
been continually progressive, at least until the appearance of
Beethoven, about the beginning of the present century, and the
romantic composers between 1830 and the present time.


IV.

10. The history of music may be divided into two great
periods--_Ancient_ and _Modern_--the Christian era forming a dividing
line between them. Each of these periods, again, may be subdivided
into two other periods, one long, the other quite short--an Apprentice
Period, when types of instruments were being found out, melodic or
harmonic forms mastered; in other words, the tonal sense undergoing
its primary education. The other, a Master Period, when an art of
music suddenly blossoms out, complete and satisfactory according to
the principles recognized by the musicians of the time. In the natural
course of things such an art, having once found its heart, ought to go
on to perfection; but this has not generally been the case. After a
period of vigorous growth and the production of master works suitable
to the time, a decline has ensued, and at length musical productivity
has entirely ceased. Occasionally a cessation in art progress of this
kind may have been dependent upon the failure of one or other of the
primary conditions of successful art mentioned above, especially the
failure of material prosperity. This had something to do with the
cessation of progress in ancient Egypt, very likely; but more often
the stoppage of progress has been due to the exhaustion of the
suggestive powers of the musical instruments in use. The composers of
the music of ancient Greece had for instruments only lyres of six or
eight strings, with little vibrative power. After ten centuries of use
every suggestion in the compass of these instruments to furnish, had
been carried out. If other and richer instruments could have been
introduced, no doubt Greek music would have taken a new lease of life,
_i.e._, supposing that the material prosperity had remained constant.

The apprentice periods of ancient history extend back to the earliest
traces of music which we have, beginning perhaps with the early Aryans
in central Asia, whom Max Müller represents as circling around the
family altar at sunrise and sunset, and with clasped hands repeating
in musical tones a hymn, perhaps one of the earliest of those in the
Vedas, or a still older one. From this early association of music with
religious worship we derive something of our heredity of reverence for
the art, a sentiment which in all ages has associated music with
religious ritual and worship, and out of which has come much of the
tender regard we have for it as the expression of home and love in the
higher aspects.

All the leading types of instruments were discovered in the early
periods of human history, but the full powers of the best have been
reached only in recent times.

11. The art of music was highly esteemed in antiquity, and every great
nation had a form of its own. But it was only in three or four
countries that an art was developed of such beauty and depth of
principle as to have interest for us. The countries where this was
done were Egypt, Greece and India.

12. Modern music differs from ancient in two radical points: Tonality,
or the dependence of all tones in the series upon a single leading
tone called the Key; and Harmony, or the satisfactory use of combined
sounds. This part of music was not possible to the ancients, for want
of correctly tuned scales, and the selection of the proper tone as
key. The only form of combined sounds which they used was the octave,
and rarely the fifth or fourth. The idea of using other combined
sounds than the octave seems to have been suggested by Aristotle,
about 300 B.C. The period from the Christian era until about 1400 A.D.
was devoted to apprentice work in this department of art, the central
concept wanted being a _principle of unity_. After the beginning of
the schools of the Netherlands, about 1400, progress was very rapid.
The blossoming time of the modern art of music, however, cannot be
considered to have begun before about 1600, when opera was commenced;
or 1700, when instrumental music began to receive its full
development. Upon the whole, the former of these dates is regarded as
the more just, and it will be so used in the present work.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: KING DAVID, PLAYING ON THE THREE-STRINGED CRWTH.

(From a manuscript of the eleventh century now in the National
Library, Paris.)]




Book First.


THE

Music of the Ancient World.


PRIMITIVE TYPES OF INSTRUMENTS, AND AN ARTISTIC MONODY, WITHOUT REAL
TONALITY.




CHAPTER I.

MUSIC AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.


By a curious fortune we are able to form an approximately accurate
idea of the musical instruments in use in Egypt as long ago as about
4000 B.C. The earliest advanced civilization of which any coherent
traces have come down to us was developed along the Nile, where the
equable climate and the periodic inundations of the river raised the
pursuit of the husbandman above the uncertainties incident to less
favorable climates, while at the same time the mild climate reduced to
a minimum the demands upon his productive powers for the supply of the
necessaries of life. This interesting people had the curious custom of
depositing the mummies of their dead in tombs elaborately hewn out of
the rock, or excavated in more yielding ground, in the hills which
border the narrow valley of the Nile. Many of these excavations are of
very considerable extent, reaching sometimes to the number of twenty
rooms, and a linear distance of 600 feet from the entrance. The walls
of these underground apartments are generally decorated in outline
intaglio if the rock be hard; or in color if the walls be plaster, as
is often the case. The subjects of the decorations embrace the entire
range of the domestic and public life of the people, among them
being many of a musical character. One of the first discoveries of
this kind was made toward the close of the preceding century, when
Bruce, an English traveler, found in a tomb at Biban-El-Moulouk
representations of two magnificently decorated harps played by
priests. These have since generally been called "Bruce's Harpers." The
instruments have been represented in many ways by different writers,
the most curious perversion of the facts being found in Burney's
"History of Music," where they have the form of the modern harp.

[Illustration: Harps, pipe, and flute, from an ancient tomb near the
Pyramids.

Fig. 1.

EXPLANATION OF FIG. 1.--(1) Harper, with harp, bent, of seven cords;
over him is inscribed in hieroglyphs sqa em bents (_a_), "player
[literally "scraper"] on the harp." (2) Singer, seated; above him, hes
t (_b_) "singer." (3, 4) Similar harper and singer, and same
inscriptions (_c_, _d_). (5, 6) Singer and player on the direct flute
or pipe; before the former, hes (_h_) "singer"; before the latter, mem
t (_g_) "pipe." (7, 8) Singer and player on the oblique flute, seba
(_e_); before the former, hes (_f_) "singer."]

Several large works have been devoted to plates of the pictorial
discoveries in these ancient tombs, but not until the colossal work of
Lepsius, issued under the auspices of the German government, were we
in possession of data for the study of this civilization from the
standpoint of a progressive development.

The oldest of the musical representations are found in tombs near
Thebes, and already we find the art in an advanced state. The
preceding cut shows one of these pictures. A musical group is
represented, consisting of eight figures. Their occupations are
designated by the hieroglyphics above them. The harper is designated
as "harp scraper."

It is not possible to make out in the present state of these drawings
the exact number of strings upon the harps, but explorers agree that
it must have been either five or seven. From the length of the strings
and the structure of the instrument without a "pillar" in front for
resisting the pull of the strings, the tones must have been within the
register of the male voice. The long flute played by the figure
bearing the number 8 must also have produced low tones. It is not
plain whether these players are supposed to be all playing at the
same time, or whether their ministrations may have taken place
separately. Most likely, however, they all played and sang together.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.

BRUCE'S HARPERS.]

The most advanced harps found in Egypt were the elegantly colored and
ornamented priestly instruments which Bruce found in what was
afterward discovered to be the tomb of Rameses III, at Biban-El-Moulouk.
The black and white cuts give but a poor idea of the elaborate
structure and rich ornamentation of these fine instruments (Fig. 2).
The instruments are not playing together; each harper plays before his
own particular divinity. They occupy opposite sides in the same hall.
The players, by their white robes and positions, evidently belonged to
the highest order of the priesthood. The harp upon the right is
represented by some writers as having had twenty-one strings; whereas
the one upon the left has only eleven. This would be an interesting
fact if it were well founded. But, unfortunately, the truth is that
the painting was somewhat defaced after Bruce saw it, and it was only
within later years that a clever explorer discovered that by passing a
wet sponge over it the original lines could be made out. According to
Lepsius it has thirteen strings.

In the XXth dynasty, about 1300 B.C., there were harps having
twenty-one strings, of which a good example is shown in Fig. 3. This
instrument, also, is elaborately colored and ornamented in gold and
carving. The strings are shorter than those of Bruce's harpers, and
the pitch was most likely within the treble register. The second
figure clapping hands is marking time. The one upon the right is
playing upon a sort of banjo, of which mention will be made presently.

[Illustration: Fig. 3.]

Some time before the period of the Hyksos, the "Shepherd Kings" of
the Exodus, there is a scene of a procession of foreigners presenting
tribute to one of the sovereigns of Egypt. Among the figures is one
playing upon a sort of lyre. Later this instrument became the
established instrument of the higher classes, as it was afterward in
Greece and Rome. Several complete instruments have been found, which,
although dating most likely from a period near the Christian era, are
nevertheless sufficiently like the representations of ten centuries
earlier to make them instructive as well as interesting. Figs. 4 and 5
are from Fétis. One of these lyres had originally six strings, as is
shown by the notches in the cross-piece at the top. They were tuned
approximately by making the cord tense and then sliding the loop over
its notch. From the clever construction of the resonance cases these
instruments should have had a very good quality of tone. In some of
the later representations there are lyres of twenty strings.

[Illustration: Fig. 4.

LYRE AT BERLIN.]

[Illustration: Fig. 5.

FROM THE LEYDEN MUSEUM.]

[Illustration: Fig. 6.

A GROUP OF STREET MUSICIANS.

(1) Woman with tall light harp, of fourteen strings. (2) Cithara. (3)
Te-bouni, or banjo. (4) Double flute. (5) Shoulder harp. (6) Singer,
clapping hands.]

It will be observed that up to this point all the musicians
represented are men. In later representations women are more common.
Fig. 6 represents the entire musical culture of the later empire, this
particular representation belonging apparently to an epoch not more
than a few centuries before the Christian era. The harp in this case
is of a different construction, and lighter than those in the former
examples. It would seem to have been played while the player walked,
for we find it in what seems to be moving processions. The lyre
occupies here the post of honor next the harp. The banjo and double
flute come next, and then a curious instrument of three or four
strings, played while carried upon the shoulder. Several of these
instruments have been found in a very respectable state of
preservation. Their construction is better shown in the illustrations
following:

[Illustration: Fig. 7.]

The tonal relation of these instruments to the larger harps is
difficult to conceive. Wilkinson gives the dimensions of the most
perfect one in the British Museum as forty-one inches long, the neck
occupying twenty-two inches, and the body being four inches wide.

The instrument with the long neck and the short body, seen in Figs. 3
and 6, belongs to the banjo family. Its resonance body consisted of a
sort of hoop, or a hollowed out piece of sycamore, the sounding board
being a piece of parchment or rawhide. Some of these have two strings,
others one; three are occasionally met with. The name of this
instrument was te-bouni, and it was of Assyrian origin. It was
afterward known as the "monochord," and by its means all the ancients
demonstrated the ratios of the octave, fourth and fifth, as we will
later see.

We have no knowledge whatever of the tonal sound of the music which so
interested these ancient players and singers. There is, however, an
ancient poem, called "The Song of the Harper" found in a papyrus
dating from about 1500 B.C., which gives an idea of the sentiments the
music was intended to convey. Here it is, from Rawlinson's "History of
Ancient Egypt," p. 48:

     "THE SONG OF THE HARPER."

     (From a papyrus of the XVIIIth Dynasty.)

     The great one has gone to his rest
       Ended his task and his race;
     Thus men are aye passing away,
       And youths are aye taking their place.
     As Ra rises up every morn,
       And Tum every evening doth set.
     So women conceive and bring forth,
       And men without ceasing beget.
     Each soul in its turn draweth breath,
     Each man born of woman sees death.

     Take thy pleasure to-day,
       Father! Holy one! See,
     Spices and fragrant oils,
       Father, we bring to thee.
     On thy sister's bosom and arms
       Wreaths of lotus we place;
     On thy sister, dear to thy heart,
       Aye sitting before thy face.
     Sing the song, let music be played,
     And let cares behind thee be laid.

     Take thy pleasure to-day;
       Mind thee of joy and delight!
     Soon life's pilgrimage ends,
       And we pass to silence and night.
     Patriarch, perfect and pure,
       Neferhotep, blessed one! Thou
     Didst finish thy course upon earth,
       And art with the blessed ones now.
     Men pass to the silent shore,
     And their place shall know them no more.

     They are as they never had been
       Since the sun went forth upon high;
     They sit on the banks of the stream
       That floweth in stillness by.
     Thy soul is among them; thou
       Dost drink of the sacred tide,
     Having the wish of thy heart,
       At peace ever since thou hast died.
     Give bread to the man who is poor,
     And thy name shall be blest evermore.

All princely households appear to have had their regular staff of
musicians, at the head being the "Overest of Musicians," whose tombs
still furnish some of the most instructive information upon this part
of the ancient life. People of lower social grade had to be content
with the temporary services of the street musicians, such as those
represented in Fig. 6. They played and sang and danced for weddings
and festivities, and undertook the entire contract of mourning for the
dead, the measure being the production of a small vial full of tears,
under the immediate inspection of the relative of the deceased whose
grief might happen to need this official assistance.

For warlike purposes the Egyptians had a short trumpet of bronze, and
a long trumpet, not unlike a straight trombone. They had drums of many
kinds, but as none of these instruments have reference to the
development of the higher art of music, we do not delay to describe
them.

One thing which might surprise us in casting an eye over the foregoing
representations as a whole is the small progress made considering the
immensely long period covered by the glimpses we have of the music of
this far-away race. From the days of the harpers in our earliest
illustrations to those of the last is more than 2,000 years, in fact
considerably longer than from the beginning of the Christian era until
now. The explanation is easy to find. In the first place, the
incitations upon the side of sense perception were comparatively
meager. Neither in sonority nor in delicacy of tonal resource were the
Egyptian instruments a tenth part as stimulating as those of to-day.
Moreover, we have here to deal with childlike intelligences, slow
perceptions, and limited opportunities of comparison. Hence if these
were all the discouraging elements there would be but little cause for
wonder at the slow progress. But there was another element deeper and
more powerful. The Egyptian mind was conservative to reaction. Plato
in his "Laws," says: "Long ago the Egyptians appear to have recognized
the very principle of which we are now speaking--that their young
citizens must be habituated to the forms and strains of virtue. These
they fixed, and exhibited the patterns of them in their temples, and
no painter or artist is allowed to innovate upon them, or to leave the
traditional forms or invent new ones. To this day no alteration is
allowed in these arts nor in music at all. And you will find that
their works of art are painted or modeled in the same forms that they
were 10,000 years ago. This is literally true, and no exaggeration--their
ancient paintings and sculptures are not a whit better or worse than
those of to-day, but are with just the same skill." This, which Dr.
Draper calls the "protective idea," was undoubtedly the cause of their
little progress.

In another place Plato gives a very interesting glimpse of the
Egyptian method of education, and describes something having in it
much the spirit of the modern kindergarten. He says ("Laws," Jowett's
translation, p. 815): "In that country systems of calculation have
been actually invented for the use of children, which they learn as a
pleasure and amusement. They have to distribute apples and garlands,
adapting the same number to either a larger or less number of persons;
and they distribute to pugilists and wrestlers, or they follow one
another, or pair together by lot. Another mode of amusing them is by
taking vessels of gold, and brass, and silver, and the like, and
mingling them, or distributing them without mingling. As I was saying,
they adapt to their amusement the numbers in common use, and in this
way make more intelligible to their pupils the arrangements and
movements of armies and expeditions, and in the management of a
household they make people more useful to themselves, and wide-awake."
This, together with the well known expectation of the Egyptians to be
judged after death according to the "deeds done in the body," as our
sacred writings have it, affords a high idea of their serious and
lofty turn of mind, as well as of the great advance they had made
toward a true notion of the means of education.




CHAPTER II.

MUSIC AMONG THE HEBREWS AND ASSYRIANS.


Second in point of antiquity, but first in modern association, comes
the music of the Hebrews, and of the other allied nations of Assyria
and Babylon, from whom they learned a part of their art of music. The
place of music in the cult of the Hebrews was very large and
important, yet in spite of this fact they never elevated their music
into an art, strictly so called. There are no evidences of a
progressive development of instruments and a tonal sense among this
people. As they were when first we meet them, so they continued until
they pass out of the view of history as a nation, when the sacrificial
fires went out in the great temple at Jerusalem on the 11th of July,
A.D. 70, and the heathen Roman defiled the altars of God. In the
beginning Genesis tells us of one Jubal, who was the father of such as
handle the harp and the organ (kinnor and ugabh--the little triangular
harp of Assyria, and the shepherd's pipe, which here stands for all
sorts of wind instruments). In the course of the centuries the harp
changed its form somewhat, and perhaps had an increased number of
strings; the flute was multiplied into several sub-varieties, and the
horn was added. From Egypt they had the timbrel, a tambourine, to
which Miriam, the sister of Moses, intoned the sublime canticle, "The
horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." There were also the
sistra, those metallic instruments serving in the temple service the
same purpose that the bells serve in the mass at the present
day--that, namely, of letting the distant worshipers know when the
solemn moment has arrived.

Vast numbers of musicians were employed in the greater temple service,
4,000 being mentioned in I Chronicles xxiii, 5, as praising God with
the kinds of instruments appointed by David. According to Josephus,
this great number was vastly increased in still later times, the
numbers given being 200,000 trumpeters and 40,000 harpers and players
upon stringed instruments. Even if we take the figures as greatly
exaggerated, they show nevertheless that the art of music had a great
place among this people.

The instruments known were few in number, and their type underwent
little change from the earliest days. The principal instrument of the
older time was the _Kinnor_, or little triangular harp, which we find
in the record of the primeval Jubal, and which more than 1,000 years
later was played before Saul to defend him from the evil spirit. This
also was the instrument most prominent in the temple service, and this
again was hung upon the willows of Babylon. The name kinnor is said to
have been Phoenician, a fact which points to this as the source of
its derivation. It is not easy to see how this could well be, unless
we regard the name as having been applied to the invention of Jubal at
a later time, for Jubal lived many years anterior to the founding of
the great metropolis of the Mediterranean. The kinnor was a small harp
having from ten to twenty strings. The usual forms are shown in the
accompanying illustration. The strings were fastened upon a metal rod
lying along the face of the sounding board. The type of construction
is totally unlike that of the Egyptian harps, and its musical powers
were apparently considerably inferior. Its form was the following:

[Illustration: Fig. 8.]

Another instrument often mentioned in the English version of the Bible
is the psaltery, of which the form is somewhat uncertain, but is
thought to have been four-sided. Various ancient representations have
been supposed to be this instrument, but none of them satisfactorily,
at least not authoritatively. It was probably a variety of harp. The
nebel is also said to have been a psaltery, but its etymology points
to the Phoenician nabel, a triangular harp like a Greek delta. The
forms of the psaltery were four-sided or triangular. It was probably
the predecessor of the Arab canon, which again is much the same as the
santir. (See Fig. 25.)

There were two kinds of flute, both of them reed pipes, the smaller
being merely a shepherd's pipe. They were used for lamentations and
for certain festivals, as in Isaiah xxx, 29: "Ye shall have a song as
in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart as
when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, the
Holy One of Israel."

Many of the different names of musical instruments in the common
version of the Scriptures are merely blunders of the Septuagint
translators, who rendered the word kinnor by about six different
terms, where no distinction had been originally intended by the sacred
writers.

[Illustration: Fig. 9.]

Among the Hebrews we find the same progression from men alone as
musicians to women almost exclusively, and it is likely that the
Hebrews gained the idea from Egypt. Jubal was the discoverer of the
harp, according to the tradition in Genesis, and David manifested no
loss of manliness while playing before the Lord. Nevertheless when he
sang and danced before the ark his wife despised him in her heart.
Miriam, the sister of Moses, may well have been a professional
musician, one of the singing and dancing women, such as are
represented over and over again in the monuments. In the time of
Moses, and for some time later, women had no status in the public
service; but in the later days of the second temple the women singers
are an important element of the display. Ezra and Nehemiah speak of
them, and the son of Sirach, in the Apocrypha, recommends the reader
to "beware of female singers, that they entice thee not with their
charms."

According to the views of many writers, the Hebrews had a larger harp
than the small one represented in Fig. 8. It may have been something
like one which was found in Egypt, but the form is clearly Assyrian,
belonging to the same type as the small harps already given. It
certainly is not Egyptian. (See Fig. 9.)

The liturgy of the temple must have been singularly noble and
imposing. Never had a church so grand a body of poetry as this of the
Hebrews, which they heard in the very sonorous words of David, Moses,
Isaiah and Ezekiel, with all the subtle suggestion of a vernacular as
employed by minds of the first poetic order. The Hebrew parallelism
afforded exactly the kind of formula in which one congregation could
most effectively respond to another.

     "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof;
     The world and they that dwell therein;
     For He hath founded it upon the seas,
     And established it upon the floods.
     Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?
     And who shall stand in His holy place?"

When the priests had intoned one line, we may suppose that the whole
choir of Levites made answer in the second line, completing the
parallelism.

There are other psalms in which the people have a refrain which comes
in periodically, as, for instance, in the one: "O give thanks unto
the Lord; [refrain] for His mercy endureth forever." (Ps. cxxxvi.)

[Illustration: Fig. 10.]

The voice of these masses stood to the Hebrews' mind as the feeble
type of the great song which should go up from the entire Israel of
God when the scattered members of the cult were gathered in their time
of fullness and glory. For us also the same image stands. And while
the art of this venerable and singularly gifted people did not attain
a place of commanding influence upon the tonal side of music, it
nevertheless has borne no small part in affording a vantage ground for
later art in the line of noble conceptions, inspiring motives and
brilliant suggestions. It has been, and still is, one of the most
potent influences in the art-music of the world. Nor is it without
interest that the scattered representatives of this race have been
and continue to be ministers of art in all the lands into which they
have come. The race of Israel has made a proud record in modern music,
no less than that of the ancient temple.


II.

The Assyrians held music in honor, and employed it for liturgical
purposes, as well as those of social and private life. Among the
discoveries at Nineveh and Babylon are many of a musical character.
Strong bearded men are playing upon harps which are of a triangular
form, but of a different structure to any which we have thus far
given. (See Fig. 10.)

The one upon the left is a eunuch. In the following figure we have the
banjo-like instrument so constantly seen in the Egyptian
representations.

[Illustration: Fig. 11.]

There are several instances of some sort of an instrument, apparently
consisting of metallic plates or rods, played by means of a hammer.
Many have considered these to have been the original type of the
modern instruments of percussion, where metal plates are vibrated by
means of hammers or mallets. The following is one of this kind.

[Illustration: Fig. 12.]

The general appearance of these processions indicates that the
Assyrians were in the habit of massing a large number of players upon
important occasions. We have no idea what the effect of this music can
have been, but upon the tonal side it cannot have had any great
resonance or power. Enough if it satisfied the ears of the dignified
players and those who employed their services as a part of the pageant
of their great festivals.




CHAPTER III.

MUSIC AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS.


Upon several accounts the development of the art of music among the
ancient Greeks is both important and interesting. Our word "music" is
theirs; it carries within its etymology the derivation from the Muses,
the nine agreeable divinities who presided over the more becoming and
nobler activities of the Greek mind. By music the Greeks meant much
more than merely the tonal art itself. Under this term they included
pretty much all that they had of a liberal education; grammar,
history, rhetoric, mathematics, poetry and song--all were included in
this one elastic and comprehensive term. Music itself, the art of
tone-sequence, they called harmony.

Our information concerning the general course of the development of
music among this people is pretty accurate through a period of about
1300 years. The entire course of the Greek history of music may be
divided into four great divisions, each of which was principally
devoted to a certain part of the art. These divisions begin at a date
which we might take approximately at about 1000 B.C., when the Homeric
poems began to be chanted or sung by traveling minstrels called
Rhapsodists. The schools of rhapsodies lasted for about 250 years,
when choral and patriotic song began to be developed. In connection
with this part of the history, there was in the later portion of it a
more ornamental and fanciful development of the smaller and social
uses of song, represented by Sappho, Anacreon and others. This period
endured for about two centuries and a half, and by insensible degrees
passed into the Attic drama, which came to its maturity at the hands
of Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides about 450 B.C.

Here was the culmination of Greek musical art upon the purely artistic
and æsthetic side. Then followed a period of philosophizing, theory
and mathematical deduction, which extended to the end of the
Alexandrian schools, about 300 A.D. The limits of the present work do
not permit tracing this course of progress with the amplitude which
its relation to liberal education would otherwise warrant, or even to
the extent which its bearing upon the present ideals of the tonal art
would justify, were not the range of subjects indispensable to even a
summarized treatment of musical history so wide as it has now become.
But the general features of the different steps in the Greek music are
the following:

As already noticed, the earliest traces of music are those in the
Homeric poems, which are thought to have been composed about 1000 B.C.
In these we find the minstrel everywhere a central figure, an honored
guest, ready at call to entertain the company with some ballad of the
ancient times, or to improvise a new one appropriate to the case in
hand. The heroes themselves were not loth to take part in these
exercises. Ulysses, the Odyssey tells us, occasionally took the lyre
in his own hand and sang a rhapsody of his own adventures. Several
centuries later, Solon, one of the famed seven wise men of Greece,
composed the rhapsody of "Salamis, or the Lost Island," and sang it in
a public assembly of the Athenians with so much effect that an
expedition was organized, with Solon at its head, for its recovery,
which presently followed triumphantly.

Many passages in the Odyssey will occur to the classical reader in
illustration of the position of the minstrel in Argos in the earlier
times. For example (Odyssey I, 400, Bryant's translation):

                                     "Silent all
     They sat and listened to the illustrious bard
     Who sang of the calamitous return
     Of the Greek host from Troy, at the command
     Of Pallas. From her chamber o'er the hall
     The daughter of Icarius, the sage queen
     Penelope, had heard the heavenly strain,
     And knew its theme. Down by the lofty stairs
     She came, but not alone; there followed her
     Two maidens. When the glorious lady reached
     The threshold of the strong-built hall, where sat
     The suitors, holding up a delicate veil
     Before her face, and with a gush of tears,
     The queen bespake the sacred minstrel thus:
     'Phemius, thou knowest many a pleasing theme--
     The deeds of gods and heroes, such as bards
     Are wont to celebrate. Take, then, thy place,
     And sing of one of these, and let the guests
     In silence drink the wine; but cease this strain;
     It is too sad. It cuts me to the heart,
     And wakes a sorrow without bounds--such grief
     I bear for him, my lord, of whom I think
     Continually; whose glory is abroad
     Through Hellas and through Argos, everywhere.'

       "And then Telemachus, the prudent, spake--
     Why, O my mother! canst thou not endure
     That thus the well graced poet should delight
     His hearers with a theme to which his mind
     Is inly moved? The bards deserve no blame;
     Jove is the cause, for he at will inspires
     The lay that each must sing.'"

Later than the Homeric rhapsodists, the Hesiodic poems were composed
and sung similarly by wandering minstrels, who, although wandering,
were not on that account lowly esteemed. There were regular schools,
or more properly guilds, of rhapsodists, into which only those were
admitted as masters who were able to treat the current topics with the
light and inspiring touch of real poetry, and only those taken as
apprentices who evinced proper talent and promise. The training of
these schools was long, partly spent in acquiring technique of
treating subjects and the mastery of the lyre, and partly in
memorizing the Homeric and Hesiodic hymns. It is supposed that these
poems were transmitted for more than three centuries orally in this
way, before having been reduced to writing.

In Hesiod's poem of "The Shield of Hercules" (Bank's translation,
365), the general idea of the Greek festive processions is
illustrated:

     "There men in dances and in festive joys
     Held revelry. Some on the smooth-wheeled car
     A virgin bride conducted; then burst forth
     Aloud the marriage song; and far and wide
     Long splendors flash'd from many a quivering torch
     Borne in the hands of slaves. Gay blooming girls
     Preceded, and the dancers followed blithe:
     These, with shrill pipe indenting the soft lip,
     Breath'd melody, while broken echoes thrill'd
     Around them; to the lyre with flying touch
     Those led the love-enkindled dance. A group
     Of youths was elsewhere imaged, to the flute
     Disporting; some in dances, and in song;
     In laughter others. To the minstrel's flute
     So pass'd they on; and the whole city seem'd
     As fill'd with pomps, with dances, and with feasts."

So again in the same poem (274) there is a scene of a minstrel contest
among the immortal gods themselves, described by the poet from one of
the scenes upon the shield of Hercules.

     "And the tuneful choir appear'd
     Of heaven's immortals; in the midst, the son
     Of Jove and of Latona sweetly rang
     Upon his golden harp; th' Olympian mount,
     Dwelling of gods, thrill'd back the broken sound.
     And there were seen th' assembly of the gods
     Listening; encircled with beatitude;
     And in sweet contest with Apollo there
     The virgins of Pieria raised the strain
     Preluding; and they seemed as though they sang
     With clear, sonorous voices."

As early as 750 B.C. we find the famous rhapsodist, Terpander,
summoned to Sparta to sing patriotic songs, in the hope of preventing
a secession of this rather unruly state. He accomplished his mission,
a circumstance creditable alike to the talent of the poet-minstrel and
the high estimation in which the class was held.

The application of music to patriotic purposes was no novelty.
Plutarch, in his "Life of Lycurgus," says that "Thales was famed for
his wisdom and his political abilities; he was withal a lyric poet
who, under cover of exercising his art, performed as great things as
the most excellent lawgivers. For his odes were so many persuasions to
obedience and unanimity, and as by means of numbers they had great
grace and power, they softened insensibly the manners of the audience,
drew them off from the animosities which then prevailed, and united
them in zeal for excellence and virtue." Again, of the subject matter
of the Spartan songs, he says: "Their songs had a spirit which could
arouse the soul and impel to an enthusiastic action. The language was
plain and manly; the subject serious and moral. For they consisted
chiefly of praises of heroes who had died for Sparta, or else of
expressions of detestation for such wretches as had declined the
glorious privilege."

About this time the art of choral song began to be much cultivated in
Greece, particularly in connection with the cult of certain
divinities, especially Dionysos and Apollo. By the term choral song we
are not to understand anything resembling our singing of a chorus in
parts. There was no part-singing in Greece, but merely a singing, or
rather chanting, of national and patriotic songs in unison,
accompanied by the cithara, the national instrument.

Plato speaks of the imitative and semi-dramatic character of the
choral dance ("Laws," II, 655): "Choric movements are imitations of
manners occurring in various actions, chances, characters--each
particular is imitated, and those to whom the words, the song or the
dances are suited, either by nature or habit, or both, cannot help
feeling pleasure in them and calling them beautiful."

About 500 B.C. a room was rented upon the market place for the
practice of the chorus. Every town had its body of singers, who sang
and performed the evolutions of the representative dance appropriate
to the service of the particular divinity to whom they were devoted.
Presently competitive singing came into vogue, in connection with the
famous games, and the art of the poet was taxed, as well as the
musical and more purely vocal arts of the singers themselves, striving
in honorable competition for the glory of their native towns.

In some of the festival occasions the proceedings of the choral songs
were varied by the leader, who improvised rhapsodies upon topics
connected with the life of the divinity or upon national stories. At
proper points the chorus came in with the refrain, which remained a
fixed quantity, being put in, apparently, at whatever points the
inspiration or breath of the leader needed a point of repose. None of
these compositions have come down to us, but the allusions to them in
ancient writings give, perhaps, a sufficiently accurate idea of their
nature.

The added interest incident to the fresh improvisations of the leader
in this form of choral song presently opened toward a lyric drama.
Thespis is credited with having been the first to place the leader
upon a centrally located stage where he could be plainly seen and
heard by all concerned. Now the recitations became more dramatic, the
choruses more varied. The speaker illustrated by gestures the acts
which he described; he varied his style of delivery according to the
feeling appropriate to the incidents represented. The chorus meanwhile
was not upon the stage, but in a central location below, and during
their strophes they circled around the platform of the leader in a
sort of mystic dance, each man accompanying himself upon his cithara.
From this to adding a second speaker to the one already upon the stage
was but a short step. It was taken, and the result was a drama with a
chorus in connection. In the earlier plays the speakers represented as
many characters as necessary for carrying out the action. Later they
changed costume to some extent, the chorus meanwhile occupying the
time with their own songs, which generally had the character of a
comment upon the action as developed at the moment. The changes of
costume were extremely slight, merely a different head dress, a mantle
or some slight modification of appearance more or less symbolical in
character. All the dialogue was delivered in a musical voice, and, it
is thought, all accompanied by the cithara, which every player carried
in his hand. The instrument was sometimes played all the time, in the
same notes as those of the song or chant; at other, times the speaker
employed it for ritournelles, for affording breathing time or points
of emphasis. Once in a great while, it is thought, the instrument had
a note different from that of the song in connection with it. Upon
this point great uncertainty prevails.

At length, about 470 B.C., Æschylus, the great tragedian, made his
début as actor and author, and placed three speakers upon the stage.
Besides the three principals, each man had a suite, if his station
demanded such an appendage according to the ideas or customs of the
times. These, however, had the rank of supernumeraries, merely
following the speaker around, but never taking part in the dialogue.
The principals each represented more than one character, effecting
some slight change of costume for indicating the transformation. The
stage was simply an open platform, with three doors in the rear. The
actor entering by one door represented a prince at home; from another
a prince abroad; by another door he represented a common person. The
chorus occupied the central place in front of the stage, much in the
same location as the parquet is now. In the center of this space was
an altar, originally dedicated to Dionysos, and an offering was
probably placed upon it. Later the Choreagos, or leader of the chorus,
sat upon it and directed the movements of the singers, much as the
operatic director does now. The theaters were very large, being vast
amphitheaters, open to the sky, but with an awning available over the
more expensive seats. The seats were of stone, arranged exactly like
those in a modern circus. The theater in Athens is said to have held
25,000 persons. At first admission was free, the theater being
conducted by the state. The plays were mounted very expensively at
times, although with the absence of scenery or properties of an
elaborate character it is not easy to imagine what was the use made of
the vast sums reported to have been expended in different productions.
There was a rivalry of leading citizens, each taking upon himself the
expense of mounting a new play, and striving to outdo the last before
him upon the list.

There were three great dramatic authors whose names have come down to
us as the Shakespeares of the Athenian drama. They were Æschylus,
Sophocles and Euripides. All were great poets, the first perhaps the
greatest. Sophocles was a fine musician and an elegant poet, and for
many years he remained the popular idol. All these men wrote not only
the words of the plays, but the music as well, every phrase of every
character having been noted for musical utterance, and all the choral
effects carefully planned. Besides this he composed what was then
called the "Orchestic," whence we have our word orchestra. By
orchestic they meant an apparatus of mystical dancing or posturing and
marching and certain gestures. We do not know precisely what this
famous orchestic was, for no example of it has come down to us in
intelligible form. But from the descriptions of it by contemporary
writers, it seems to have formed the pantomimic complement of the
acting, with a certain added grace of art in grouping and posturing,
suited to attract and satisfy the eye of a public accustomed to
national games, and the beautiful conceptions of Phidias upon the
Parthenon frieze. Thus, as will be readily seen, this drama was
essentially opera. For reasons to be hereafter detailed, the music is
thought to have been of slight tonal value. This is inferred from the
compass of the instruments and the general deficiency of the Greeks
upon this side, although popular report assigns them a place entirely
different. This mystical drama, leaving so much to the imagination,
and supplementing its actual representation by the help of chorus and
a sort of sanctity derived from music, lasted but a few years. Other
causes were at work destined to bring it to a close.

Almost immediately after Euripides, appeared the great comedy writer,
Aristophanes, about 420 B.C. This great artist was not simply a
dramatist, but also a patriot and a philosopher. In several of his
plays he satirizes the classical dramas effectively, parodies their
effects, and in general pokes fun at them. He was, however, a well
accomplished musician, who might, if he had chosen, have gone on in
the steps of his predecessors. But the times were not favorable to
this. Previous to the time of Socrates, orators in addressing popular
assemblies, lawyers in pleading cases, and all public speakers, appear
to have made use of the cithara as a sort of accompaniment, if for no
other purpose than to assure themselves of securing a proper pitch of
the voice. But Socrates drew attention to verbal distinctions, made
words the image of exact concepts, and in general set in operation an
era of scientific classification and purely intellectual development,
into which music could not enter, especially in a form so poor upon
the tonal side as Greek art then was, and always remained. Then came
the great orators, of whom Demosthenes was the greatest, who seems to
have been the first to speak without musical aids; and Plato, with his
philosophy; and after him the great Aristotle, the father of
scientific classification and orderly knowledge.

To a disciple of Aristotle, Aristoxenus, we are indebted for the first
really musical work which has come down to us. It is true that the
so-called Problems of Aristotle contain many of a musical character,
showing that this great master observed tonal effects in a purely
musical spirit, but he did not make a scientific treatise upon the
art. In his Politics he has much admirable matter relating to music,
and its influence upon the feelings and its office in life has hardly
been better explained than by him. But music upon the practical side
remained a sealed book.

Among the lucid musical questions of Aristotle's Problems (which, if
not by Aristotle himself, are at least the product of his time or the
succeeding century) he refers to the phenomena of sympathetic
resonance; he asks further, why it is that when _mese_ (the keynote of
the lyre) is out of tune everything is out of tune; yet when any other
string is out of tune it affects only the particular string which is
not correctly adjusted. One of his most instructive, but also, as it
turned out, most misleading questions was why they did not magadize
(sing in) fourths and fifths as well as in octaves, since the
consonances of the fourth and the fifth are almost as well sounding as
those of the octave. This question appears to have led to the practice
of what Hucbald called "diaphony." This question, it may be remarked
incidentally, is conclusive that they did _not_ use the third as a
consonance in Aristotle's time, nor sing together in fourths, fifths,
or any other intervals than the octave.

In spite of the talk about music by the Greek writers, musical theory,
in an exact form, occupies but a small place in the volume of their
works. The earliest theorist of whom we have any account was
Pythagoras, who lived about 580 B.C. He was one of the first of the
Greek wise men to avail himself of the opening of Egypt to foreigners,
which took place by Psammeticus I in the year 600 B.C. Pythagoras
lived there twenty years in connection with one of the temples, where
he seems to have gained the confidence of the priesthood and learned
much of his philosophy and so-called musical science. He defined the
mathematical relation of the octave as produced by half of a given
string, the fifth produced by two-thirds and the fourth by
three-fourths. He also found the ratio of the major step by
subtracting the fourth from the fifth. This was the ratio 9:8. With
this as a measure he attempted to place the tones of the tetrachord,
or Greek scale of four tones, which was the unit of their tonal
system. This gave him two major steps, and a half step somewhat too
small, being equal to the ratio of 256:243.

The most important part of Pythagoras' influence upon the art of music
was of a sentimental character. From Egypt he acquired many ideas of a
musical nature, such as that certain tones represented the planets,
and that time was the essence of all things. It was one of the laws of
his religion that before retiring at night his disciples should sing a
hymn in order to compose their spirits and prepare them for rest. The
verses selected for this use were probably of a devotional character,
like what are now known as the Orphic hymns, of which the lines upon
the next page may be taken as a specimen. Ambros well remarks that
such hymns could only have been sung appropriately to melodies of a
choral-like character.

         "Thou ruler of the sea, the sky, and vast abyss,
     Thou who shatterest the heavens with Thy thunder peals;
     Thou before whom spirits fall in awe, and gods do tremble;
     Thou to whom fates belong, so wise, so unrelenting Thou;
          Draw near and shine in us."

Various musicians and theorists later are credited with having made
additions to the musical resources of the Greeks, and it was a
proverb, said of any smart man, that he "added a new string to the
lyre." This was said of Terpander especially; but it is pretty certain
that the lyre had six or seven strings some time before Terpander, and
that the form of expression was purely symbolical, as if they had said
of him "he set the river on fire." The first real contributions to
musical science after the Problems of Aristotle, already cited, are
the two works of his pupil Aristoxenus--one on harmony, the other on
rhythm. These give a full account of the Greek musical systems, and
are the source of the greater part of our information upon the
subject. From them it appears that the basis of their scale was the
tetrachord of four tones, placed at an interval of two steps and a
half step. The outside tones of the tetrachord remained fixed upon the
lyre, but the two middle ones were varied for the purpose of
modulation. The Dorian tetrachord corresponded to our succession mi,
fa, sol, la; the Phrygian re, mi, fa, sol; the Lydian from do. Besides
these modes, the Greeks had what they called genera, of which there
were three--the diatonic, to which the examples already given belong;
the chromatic, in which the tetrachord had the form of mi, fa, fi, la,
the interval between the two upper tones being equal to a step and a
half; and the enharmonic, in which the first two intervals were
one-quarter of a step and the upper one a major third. We are
entirely ignorant of the practical use made of these different forms
of scale. Whether the quarter tones were used habitually, or were
glided like appoggiaturas, or passing tones, has been vigorously
maintained on both sides by different writers. The evidence seems to
point to the enharmonic as having been the most ancient, and the
chromatic and diatonic gradually superseding it. In Plato, Aristotle
and many of the Greek writers, especially in Athenæus, much is said
about the characteristic expression of the different modes, but as
they are mutually contradictory, one saying of a given mode that it is
bold and manly, while another calls it feeble and enervating, we may
leave this for the antiquarians to settle for themselves.

After Aristotle, there were several Greek theorists who devoted
themselves to mathematical computations, the favorite problem seeming
to be to find as many ways as possible of dividing the major fourth,
or the ratio 4:3, into what they called super-particular ratios--that
is to say, a series of fractions in which each numerator differed from
the denominator by unity. They had observed that all the ratios
discovered by Pythagoras had this character, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 8/9, and
they attributed magical properties to the fact, and sought to
demonstrate the entire theory of music by the production of similar
combinations. The latest writer of the Greek school was Claudius
Ptolemy, who lived at Alexandria about 150 A.D. In his work upon
harmony he gives a very large number of tables of fractions of this
kind--his own and those of all previous Greek theorists, and it is to
his book that we principally owe all the exact knowledge of Greek
musical theory which we possess. Among other computations, Ptolemy
gives the precise formula of the first four notes of the scale as we
now have it, but as this occurred only as one among many of a similar
character, and is in no way distinguished from any of the others by
any adjective implying greater confidence in it, we can only count it
as a lucky accident. The eminence that has been awarded to Ptolemy as
the original discoverer of the correct ratio of the major scale,
therefore, does not properly belong to him.

This will more clearly appear from the entire table of the various
determinations of the diatonic mode made by Ptolemy, taken from his
work. (Edition by John Wallis, Oxford, 1682, pp. 88 and 172.) He gives
no less than five of his own forms of diatonic genus, as follows: (The
fractions give vibration ratios.)

     Soft diatonic, 8/7 × 10/9 × 21/20 = 4/3.
     Medium diatonic, 9/8 × 8/7 × 28/27 = 4/3.
     Intense diatonic, 10/9 × 9/8 × 16/15 = 4/3.
     Equable diatonic, 10/9 × 11/10 × 12/11 = 4/3.
     Diatonic diatonic, 9/8 × 9/8 × 256/243 = 4/3.

Among these there is no one that is correct or rational. The proper
ratios are given in the diatonic intense, but the large and small
steps stand in the wrong order. It is in Ptolemy's record of the
determinations of Didymus (born at Alexandria, 63 B.C.) that the true
tuning of the first four tones of the scale occurs. This is it:

     Diatonic (Didymus), 9/8 × 10/9 × 16/15 = 4/3.

Thus it appears that it was Didymus, and not Ptolemy, who proposed the
tuning of the tetrachord which is now accepted as correct. It is very
evident from the entire course of the discussion as conducted by
Ptolemy that his calculations were purely abstract. He is to be
reckoned among the Pythagoreans, who held that in time and number all
things consist. It was not until some centuries later that the happy
thought of Didymus came to recognition as the true statement of the
mathematical relation of the first four tones of the scale, and then
only through the ears of a race of musicians following the great
thesis of Aristoxenos, that in music it is always the ear which must
be the arbiter, and not abstract reasoning or calculation. The ratios
of the major and minor third also occur among the calculations of
Didymus; but here, again, they count for nothing in the history of
art, because these intervals derive their value and expressive quality
from their harmonic relation, while Didymus and all the Greeks
employed them as melodic skips only, and reckoned them in with a
multitude of other skips and progressions, without distinguishing them
in any way.

The one characteristic instrument of Greek music from the earliest to
the latest days was the lyre. In the oldest times, those of Homer and
Hesiod, it was called phorminx, which is believed to have been the
form so often represented on Greek vases of a turtle shell with side
pieces like horns, an instrument having but little effective
resonance. The later form was the so-called cithara, the most common
shape of which is that made familiar to all by the pedal piece of the
square pianoforte. This instrument rarely had more than six strings,
and as it had no finger board it could have had no more notes than
strings. Chappell, the English historian, attempts to demonstrate that
certain ones of these instruments had a bridge dividing the string
into two parts, thus largely increasing the compass, but the evidence
supporting this hypothesis is not satisfactory. Plato speaks of
instruments of many strings imported from Asia, which seem to have
been the fashion or fad in his day. He disapproved of them very
heartily, but the terms in which he speaks of them show that he cannot
have been very familiar with their appearance, for it is impossible to
make out what he is driving at.

[Illustration: Fig. 13.

LYRE.]

[Illustration: Fig. 14.

CITHARA.]

There is considerable doubt as to the extent to which the larger
instruments of Asiatic origin penetrated the general musical practice
of Greece. Athenæus, in his "Banquets of the Learned" (B. xvi, C),
quotes Anakreon as saying:

     "I hold my magadis, and sing,
     Striking loud the twentieth string,
     Leucaspis at the rapid hour
     Leads you to youth and beauty's bower."

Most certainly the lyre of Terpander had no twenty strings.

The so-called Greek flute was a very reedy oboe or clarinet, a pipe
played with a reed, the pitch determined by holes stopped by the
fingers. These instruments were so hard to blow that the players wore
bands over their cheeks because there were cases on record where, in
the contests, they broke their cheeks by the wind pressure. The flute
or aulos does not seem to have been used in connection with the
cithara at all, and the Greeks had nothing corresponding to what we
call an orchestra. The aulos was appropriate to certain religious
services and to certain festivals, and it had a moderate status in the
various contests of the national games, but the great instrument of
Greek music, the universal dependence for all occasions, public and
private, was the lyre.

In spite of the meager resources of Greek music upon its tonal side,
this development of art has had a very important bearing upon the
progress of music, even down to our own times. Opera was re-discovered
about 1600 in the effort to re-create the Greek musical drama, and the
ideal proposed to himself by Richard Wagner was nothing else than that
of a new music drama in which the severe and lofty conceptions of the
old Greek poets should be embodied in musical forms the most advanced
that the modern mind has been able to conceive. Upon the æsthetic side
musical theory is entirely indebted to the Greek. Nothing more
suitable or appropriate can be said concerning musical taste and
cultivation than what was said by Aristotle 300 years before Christ.
For example, he has the following (Politics, viii, C. Jowett's
translation, p. 245): "The customary branches of education are in
number four. They are: (1) reading and writing, (2) gymnastic
exercises, (3) music, to which is somewhat added (4) drawing. Of
these, reading, writing and drawing are regarded as useful to the
purposes of life in a variety of ways." He recommends the study of
music as part of the preparation of the fit occupation of leisure.
"There remains, then, the use of music for the intellectual enjoyment
of leisure; which appears to have been the reason of its introduction,
this being one of the ways in which it is thought that a freeman
should pass his leisure; as Homer says:

     'How good it is to invite men to the pleasant feast,'

and afterward he speaks of others whom he describes as inviting

     'The bard who would delight them all' (Od. xvii, 385);

and in another place he says that there is no better way of passing
life than when

     'Men's hearts are merry, and the banqueters in the hall
     Sitting in order hear the voice of the minstrel.'"

Plato is particular that only the noble harmonies shall be permitted
in his state. He says, "Of the harmonies I want to have one warlike,
which will sound the word or note which a brave man utters in the hour
of danger or stern resolve, or when his cause is failing and he is
going to wounds or death, or is overtaken by some other evil, and in
every such crisis meets fortune with calmness and endurance; and
another which may be used by him in times of peace and freedom of
action, when there is no pressure of necessity--expressive of entreaty
or persuasion or prayer to God, or of instruction to man, or again
willingness to listen to persuasion or entreaty or advice. These two
harmonies I ask you to leave; the strain of necessity and the strain
of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the
fortunate, the strain of courage and the strain of temperance; these,
I say, leave." These he explains will be only the Dorian and the
Phrygian harmonies. In another place Plato shows himself a disciple of
the Egyptian ideas of conservatism, already mentioned. "And therefore
when one of these clever and multiform gentlemen who can imitate
anything comes to our state, and proposes to exhibit himself and his
poetry, we will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and
wonderful being; but we must also inform him that there is no place
for such as he is in our state--the law will not allow him. And so
when we have anointed him with myrrh and set a garland of wool upon
his head, we shall send him away to another city." (Republic, Jowett,
iii, 398.)

In fact, upon the subject of music, Plato is one of the least
satisfactory of writers. He has many noble sentiments which might well
be printed in letters of gold and hung upon the walls of educational
institutions to-day, as ("Laws," Jowett's translation, 668): "Those
who seek for the best kind of song and music, ought not to seek for
that which is pleasant, but for that which is true." In another place,
however, he speaks of music as a kind of imitation. He says that music
without words is very difficult to understand. ("Laws," _ibid._, 668.)
All these inconsistencies disappear, however, as soon as we recognize
the limitations of the music which Plato knew, upon its tonal side.
All the richness of sense incitation, and all the definiteness of
expression which come into our modern music through the magic of
"tones in key," were wholly outside the range of Plato's knowledge.

The musical notation of the Greeks consisted of letters of the
alphabet placed over the syllables to which the tones indicated were
to be sung. The letters represented absolute pitch, and as, owing to
the variety of genera, modes and chroa, the total number of tones was
very large, parts of older forms of the alphabet were also employed,
the whole number of characters thus demanded being upwards of seventy.
There was little or no classification of tones, and the entire
twenty-four letters were applied in regular order to the diatonic
series of the Dorian mode. Tones in the chromatic or enharmonic modes
were named by other letters, and the system was extremely complicated.
The notes of the instrumental accompaniment were still different from
those of the vocal part. No genuine example of this music has come
down to us in reliable form, and curiously enough, no classical writer
gives any idea of the notation of music. All that we know of this
notation we derive from Alypius, who lived about 150 A.D. Athanasius
Kircher, a Jesuit of a monastery in Sicily, published in the last
century the text of what purported to be a fragment of the first
Pythic Ode of Pindar. (See page 69.) In the original the musical
characters stood in immediate proximity to the words of the text. At
the middle of the third line begins the chorus of Citharodists. As all
the musical characters of the Greeks indicated absolute pitch, the
student will discover the difference between the vocal and
instrumental notation by comparing the notes in the early part of the
ode with those of the same pitches noted for instruments later.

Three other pieces of similar apocryphal character have come down to
us. It is likely that these melodies, if not really genuine, as
related to the composition of Pindar, nevertheless belong to a period
a little anterior to the Christian era.


FRAGMENT OF THE FIRST PYTHIC ODE OF PINDAR,

According to the musical notation given by Athanasius Kircher, (F.A.
Gevaert's "_La Musique dans l'Antiquité_.")

[Greek: PINDAROU PYTHIONIKAI A'] (I're PYTHIQUE DE PINDARE)[1].

[Music illustration:

     (Greek: Chry-se-a phor-minx, A-pol-lô-nos kai i-o-plo-ka-môn
     syn-di-kon Moi-san kte-a-non, tas a-kou-ei men ba-sis
     ag-la-ï-as ar-cha, pei-thon-tai d' a-oi-doi sa-ma-sin,
     ha-gê-si-cho-rôn ho-po-tan pro-oi-mi-ôn
     am-bo-las teu-chêis e-le-li-zo-me-na. Kai[2] ton
     ai-chma-tan ke-rau-non sben-nu-eis.)]

[Footnote 1: KIRCHER, _Musurgia universalis_, I, p. 541.]

[Footnote 2: Le savant jésuite, ne connaissant que les notes du ton
lydien, aura probablement changé [Greek music symbol] (si [flat]_2) en
[Greek music symbol] (_si_ [flat]_2), signe inusité dans le trope
phrygien.]

     NOTE.--The amateur unfamiliar with the C clef, will obtain
     the true tonal effect of the above fragment from Pindar, by
     considering the clef to be G, and the signature five flats.
     This will transpose the piece one degree lower than above
     written, but the melody will be preserved. In other words,
     read it exactly like the treble part of any piano piece,
     only considering the signature to be five flats.




CHAPTER IV.

MUSIC IN INDIA, CHINA AND JAPAN.


I.

Very important developments of the art of music took place in India
from a remote period, but dates are entirely uncertain. When the hymns
of the Rig-Veda were collected into their present form, which appears
to have been about 1500 B.C., music was highly esteemed. It was in
India that the art of inciting vibrations of a string by means of a
bow was discovered; and our violin had its origin there, but the date
is entirely unknown. The primitive violin was the ravanastron, which
the Ceylonese claim to have been invented by one of their kings, who
reigned about 5000 B.C. The form of this instrument is given in Fig.
16. It must have been some time before the Mohammedan invasion, for
they brought a rude violin back to Arabia, from whence it came into
Europe after the crusades. They had many forms of guitar, instruments
of percussion, and the varieties of viol, as well as trumpets and the
like. The national instrument was the vina. This was a sort of guitar,
its body made of a strip of bamboo about eight inches wide and four
feet long. Near each end a large gourd was fixed, for reinforcing the
resonance. In playing, it was held obliquely in front of the player,
like a guitar, one gourd resting upon the left shoulder, the other
under the right arm. It was strung with six strings of silk and wire,
and had a very elaborate apparatus of frets, much higher than those of
a guitar, many of them movable, in order to permit modulation into any
of the twenty-four Hindoo "modes." The instrument had a light, thin
tone, not unpleasing. A fine specimen is figured in "Hipkins' Plates
of Rare Instruments" in the South Kensington Museum, a copy of which
may be seen in the Newberry Library.

[Illustration: Fig. 15.

JIWAN CHAH.

(Portrait of Jiwan Chah, one of the latest masters of the vina. He
died about 1790.)]

The Hindoos carried the theory of music to an extremely fine point,
having many curious scales, some of them with twenty-four divisions in
an octave. Twenty-two was the usual number. The pitch of each note in
every mode was accurately calculated mathematically, and the frets of
the vina located thereby, according to very old theoretical works by
one Soma, written in Sanskrit at least as early as 1500 B.C. When this
work first became known to Europeans, its elaboration led it to be
regarded as a purely theoretical fancy piece, and it was thought to be
impossible that practical musicians could have been governed by
theories apparently so fine-drawn. A study of the structure of the
vina, however, perfectly adapted to these theories, set all doubts at
rest. None of the intervals of the Hindoo scale exactly correspond to
our own. Harmony they never conceived. Well sounding chords are
impossible in their scales. All their music was monodic--one-voiced.

[Illustration: Fig. 16.]

There was a curious development of the musical drama in India about
300 B.C., having certain of the traits of modern opera. Several of
these ancient pieces have come down to us, but without the musical
notes. They are long, consisting of as many as eleven acts, part of
them sung, part spoken. Curiously enough, the different acts are not
all in the same dialect. The musical acts are in Sanskrit, which had
then ceased to be a spoken language for at least 500 years; the spoken
acts were in Pakrit, a dialect of Sanskrit, which likewise had ceased
to be spoken for several centuries. A fuller account of the Hindoo
drama is given in Wilson's "Theater of the Hindoos." The curious
circumstance of the drama of the Hindoos of this epoch is that it was
contemporaneous with another very celebrated development of musical
drama in Greece.

Besides the primitive form of the bowed instrument, the ravanastron
(Fig. 16), many forms more advanced are figured among the instruments
from India in European museums, but as they are all of absurd and
impossible acoustical conception, besides being most likely of
comparatively modern origin, we do not present them at this point.
Later, in the history of the violin, one or two of the most curious
will be given.


II.

China has had an art of music from extremely remote periods, and
singularly sagacious ideas concerning the art were advanced there very
long ago, at a time when Europe and most other parts of the world were
still in the darkness of barbarism. For example: There is a saying of
the Emperor Tschun, about 2300 B.C., "Teach the children of the great;
thereby reached through thy care they will become mild and
reasonable, and the unmanageable ones able to receive dignities
without arrogance or assumption. This teaching must thou embody in
poems, and sing them therewith to suitable melodies and with the play
of instrumental accompaniment. The music must follow the sense of the
words; if they are simple and natural then also must the music be
easy, unforced and without pretension. Music is the expression of
soul-feeling. If now the soul of the musician be virtuous, so also
will his music become noble and full of virtuous expression, and will
set the souls of men in union with those of the spirits in heaven."
(Quoted by Ambros.)

[Illustration: Fig. 17.]

The principal instruments of Chinese music are the Kin and the Ke. The
former is a sort of guitar, of which no illustration has come to hand.
The main instrument of their culture-music is the ke, a stringed
instrument entirely unlike any other of which we have accounts, saving
the Japanese ko-ko, which was most likely derived from it. The ke is
strung with fifty strings of silk. Originally it had but twenty-five,
but in the reign of Hoang-Ti, about 2637 B.C., it is said to have been
enlarged to its present dimensions and compass. The appearance of the
ke and the arrangement of its bridges are shown in Fig. 17. The
strings were plucked with the fingers.

In the earlier times the Chinese had the pentatonic scale,
approximately the same as that of the black keys of the piano. Later
it was enlarged to seven notes in the octave, and it is claimed by
some that long before the Christian era they had a complete chromatic
scale of twelve tones in the octave. The evidence upon this point,
however, is insufficient. And even if they had this musical resource
at so early a period the fact counts very little to their credit,
since at best the chromatic scale is only an impure harmonic
compromise, which they have never learned to use understandingly.
Chinese music has always been monodic, and they use a great variety of
melodic shadings composed of intervals of small fractions of a step.
These they call lu. There are movable bridges which can be placed in
such way as to divide the strings of the ke at proper proportions of
its length for producing the lu. The places for the fingers upon the
finger board are marked by small brass points. Besides the intonations
due to stopping the strings, the players upon the ke are in the habit
of adding expression in a manner analogous to that of the _tremolo_ of
the modern violinist. With the left hand he touches the string beyond
the bridge and pulls it slightly, thus imparting to the tone a sliding
intonation upward or downward, familiar to all who have experimented
with strings. This habit the Japanese still have in playing their
ko-ko, and the results are said to be not unpleasing. The volume of
tone in the ke is very light, but the quality is sweet.

As a natural consequence of the long existence of this nation and
their commercial relations to the other parts of the world, which with
all their care they have never been able wholly to avoid, the Chinese
have many other varieties of instruments, including many trumpets; an
unexampled wealth of instruments of percussion, and a few of the
ruder types of the violin kind, which seem to have come in from India
or Thibet by the way of the Buddhist monks. The ravanastron is a
common instrument with the mendicant friars of this order. The
characteristic instrument of the Chinese, however, the one which
stands as the representative of all their higher musical culture, is
the ke.

In common with all other nations of antiquity, and with some of the
present day, the Chinese have always held strong conservative
opinions. The principle has been held among them from the earliest
times that the pattern of a good thing, whether a religion, an art or
a mechanism, having once been found satisfactory, should be made
official and never afterward changed. This principle, taken in
connection with the limited powers of their chief instrument, accounts
for the small progress they have made in music within the past 2000
years. It must be remembered, however, that our knowledge of the music
of this country is still far from perfect, the travelers and
missionaries from whom it has reached us not having been practical
musicians, nor having had sufficiently long opportunities for
mastering musical systems so different from what they had previously
known, and so contrary to all their inherited percepts of tone.

[Illustration: Fig. 18.]

The Japanese are a very musical people in their way. The chief
instrument of their culture is the ko-ko. (See Fig. 18.)

In structure it much resembles the Chinese ke. They have also many
other instruments, especially various kinds of imperfect guitars, a
few rude violins, and the usual outfit of trumpets, reed pipes and
instruments of percussion. Like all the other barbarous nations, they
have never had harmony until since they began to learn it from the
Europeans.

[Illustration]




Book Second.


THE

Apprentice Period of Modern Music.


THE DEVELOPMENT OF HARMONY, TONALITY, CANONIC IMITATION AND POLYPHONY.
THE GENERAL POPULARIZATION OF THE ART OF MUSIC IN EVERY DIRECTION.




CHAPTER V.

THE NATURE OF THE TRANSFORMATION, AND THE AGENCIES EFFECTING IT.


According to the division of the subject in the beginning of this
work, the period from the Christian era to that of Palestrina, A.D.
1600, is one of apprentice work, in which the details of art were
being mastered, but in which no music, according to our acceptation of
the term, was produced. The history of this period is somewhat
obscure, the writers who throw light on it averaging scarcely more
than one to a century, scattered about in different parts of Europe.
Nevertheless, the most important changes in the history of music took
place during this period. The monody and empyrical tonality of the
ancients gave place to polyphony and harmonized melodies resting upon
the relations of tones in key. New instruments came in, and the entire
practice of the art of music was deepened, ennobled and immeasurably
enlarged in every direction. There were four causes co-operating in
this transformation of the art, and it is not easy to say of any one
of them that this one was the chief. First of these, in the Roman
empire, or in the south of Europe more particularly, for about 800
years the Greek principles remained more or less in force. The Church
is here the foremost influence, and its part in the transformation
already noted will be considered presently. In the north of Europe the
Goths, Celts and Scandinavians built mighty empires and impressed
their enthusiastic and idealistic natures upon the whole form of
modern art. The Saracens conquered a foot-hold in the south of France
about 819, and remained there for twenty years. Their influence was
very important in the development of music, and became still more
active after the crusades, where the armies of the west came again in
contact with this peculiar civilization. Besides these three sources
measurably unprofessional and outside of music, or amateur, as we say
now, there was the work of the professional musicians strictly
so-called, who, from about 1100 in the old French school, commenced
the development of what is now known as polyphony, which culminated in
the hands of the Netherlanders, about 1580, Palestrina himself being
one of the latest products of this school. These influences reacted
upon each other, and all have entered into modern art, and have
imparted to it their most essential elements.

All modern music differs from the ancient in two important
particulars--_Harmony and Tonality_. Harmony is the use of combined
sounds. These may be either dissonant, inharmonious in relation to
each other, or harmonious, agreeable. All points of repose in a
harmonized piece of music must be consonant; or, to say it
differently, the combined sound (chord) standing at the beginning or
end of a musical phrase must be harmonious. All the elements in it
must bear consonant relations to all the others. Between the points of
repose the combined sounds may or may not be consonant. Under certain
conditions dissonances make an effect even better than consonance--better
because more appealing. The law of the introduction of dissonances is
that every dissonance must arise out of a consonance, and subside into
a consonance. When this law is observed there is hardly any
combination possible in the range of music which may not be employed
with good effect. Here already we have a progress in perception of
tones, in the ability to discriminate between those which harmonize
and those which dissonate. All consonance and dissonance are purely
relative. There is no such thing as a dissonant tone in music, by
itself considered; a tone becomes dissonant by being brought into
juxtaposition with some other tone with which it does not agree. This
part of the development of a tonal sense had its beginnings in Greece,
but only reached the point where the most elementary relations were
regarded as agreeable. The octave, the fourth and the fifth, were the
only consonances which they knew, and of these they used in the
combined sounds of their music only the octave. The third, which with
us is the most agreeable part of a pure harmony, because it adds so
many elements of agreement to the combined sound into which it enters,
was not only regarded as a dissonance by them, but actually _was_ a
dissonance as they tuned their scale.

The entire course of harmonic perception in modern music may be
roughly divided into three steps: First, the recognition of
consonance, especially of the most fruitful consonance of all--that of
the thirds, and the differentiation between consonance and dissonance.
A second step involved the recognition of dissonance as an element in
musical expression, on account of the motion it imparts to a harmonic
movement. Third, the establishment of these materials of music in the
mind in such depth and fullness that their æsthetic implications
became realized as elements of expression, so that when a composer had
a certain feeling to express, the proper combination of consonance and
dissonance immediately presented itself to his mind. The first of
these steps was taken by the minstrels of the north, somewhere between
the Christian era and the tenth century. The second was the particular
work of the old French school, the Netherlanders, and of all who
composed music between about 1100 A.D. and the epoch of Palestrina,
about 1600. The third, the spontaneous application of musical material
to the expression of feeling, had in it another element, that of
tonality, concerning which it is proper to say something at this
point.

By "tonality" is meant the dependence or interdependence of all the
tones in a key upon some one principal tone called the Key-tone. The
tonality of the music of the ancients was wholly artificial and
unreal. A mode and a point of repose for the melody were chosen
arbitrarily; the beginning was here made, and still more the ending
was conducted to this point of repose. Between the beginning and the
ending the same tones were employed, whether the melody proposed to
repose upon re, upon fa or do. The usual points of repose in Greek
music were mi, fa and re; never upon do, the real key tone, and rarely
upon la, the natural tonic of the minor mode.

One of the chief elements of modern musical expression, particularly
in the expression of melody, is the unconscious perception of the
"relation of tones in key." With every tone sung the singer conceives
not only that tone, its predecessor and its follower, but all other
tones in the entire course of the melody; and the expression of every
tone in the series rests upon its place in rhythm, and still more upon
its "place in key." Change a single tone in a melody, as, for
instance, to make fa a half step sharp, and the expression of the
entire melody is thereby changed, until such time as the hearer has
forgotten the change of key effected by the introduction of the
foreign tone. It is not at all unlikely that what little of melodic
expression the music of the Greeks had, may have rested to some extent
upon an unconscious perception of these relations, which, although
foreign to their musical theory, may nevertheless have made their way
into the ears of these acute minstrels. The discovery of simple
tonality seems to have been due to the northern minstrels, for it is
here that we find the earliest melodies purely tonalized. But the
natural bounds of a melodic tonality as established by these northern
harpers have been very much exceeded in modern times, so that now
there is hardly a chord possible which might not be introduced in the
course of a composition in any key whatever, without effecting a
digression into the new key suggested by the strange chord. Not only
all the natural or diatonic notes are regarded as belonging to a key,
but also all the chromatics, the sharps and flats, and the double
sharps and double flats.

All this implies a growth of tonal perception on the part of the
hearers, and especially of the ability to co-ordinate tonal
impressions over a wide and constantly increasing range. For the
hearer has in mind not only the particular tone which at the moment
occupies his ear, and the others which preceded it, and a sort of
inner feeling of the tone which will follow the present one, but also
all the other tones over which the singer would pass in going from one
tone to another. And unless he has this he cannot realize the true
place of the melody tone in key, and therefore rests unconscious of
its real expression. It is, indeed, possible for him to make a mistake
in regard to the tones which he unconsciously associates with the
tones actually heard--as, for example, when one hears an E followed by
a C higher, and one thinks of the four white keys of the piano between
them, while the melody may be thinking of the black keys between them.
In the one case the melody would be in the key of C, in the other of C
sharp minor. And the expression of the melodic skip would be
enormously changed thereby. This larger education of the faculties of
tonal perception and tonal co-ordination has been the work mainly of
the last century and a half, and more particularly of the present
century itself. During this period the progress has been more rapid
than within any other in the entire course of the history of our art,
and it is to the successive steps preparing for this that we now
address ourselves.

[Illustration]




CHAPTER VI.

THE MINSTRELS OF THE NORTH.


Upon many accounts the development of minstrelsy by the Celtic singers
and harpers was one of the most important of all the forces operative
in the transformation of the art from the monody of the ancients to
the expressive melody and rich harmony of modern music. As it is to a
considerable extent one side of the direct course of this history,
which hitherto has dealt largely with the south of Europe, the present
is the most convenient time for giving it the consideration its
importance deserves. I do this more readily because English influence
upon the development of music has generally been underrated by
continental writers, the erudite Fétis alone excepted; while their own
national writers, even, have not shown themselves generally conscious
of the splendid record which was made by their fathers.

The Celts appear upon the field of history several centuries before
the Christian era. Cæsar's account of them leaves no doubt of the
place which music held in their religion, education and national life.
The minstrel was a prominent figure, ready at a moment's notice to
perform the service of religion, patriotism or entertainment. There is
a tradition of one King Blegywied ap Scifyllt, who reigned in
Brittany about 160 B.C., who was a good musician and a player upon the
harp. While we have no precise knowledge of the music they sang in the
oldest times, it was very likely something like the following old
Breton air, which is supposed to have come down from the Druids. It is
full of a rude energy, making it impressive even to modern ears. By
successive migrations of Angles, Danes and Northmen, the Celts were
crowded into Wales, where they still remain. The harp has always been
their principal instrument, and for many centuries a rude kind of
violin called the crwth, of which there will be occasion to speak in
connection with the violin, at a later period in this work.

[Music illustration: OLD BRETON SONG.

     Da-ik mab gwenn Drouiz, o-re;
     Da-ik pe-tra fell d'id-de? pe-tra gan-inn-me d'id-de?--
     Kan d'in euz aeur rann,
     Ken a ouf-enn bre-man;--
     Heb rann ar Red heb-ken:
     An-Kou, tad ann an-ken;
     Ne-tra kent ne tra ken.--
     Da-ik mab gwenn Drouiz, o-re;
     Da-ik pe-tra fell d'id-de? pe-tra gan-inn-me d'id-de?--
     Kan d'in euz a zaou rann,
     Ken a ouf-enn bre-man.]

According to the best authorities the bards were divided into three
great classes. The first class was composed of the historians and
antiquaries, who piqued themselves a little upon their sorcery, and
who, upon occasion, took up the rôles of diviners and prophets. The
second class was composed of domestic bards, living in private houses,
quite after the custom of ancient Greece. These we may suppose were
chiefly devoted to the annals and glories of their wealthy patrons.
The third class, the heraldic bards, was the most influential of all.
They wrote the national annals. All these classes were poet-bards as
well as musicians.

The musical bards were divided into three classes. In the first were
the players upon the harp; they were called doctors of music. To be
admitted into this class it was necessary that they should perform
successfully the three Mwchwl--that is, the three most difficult
pieces in the bardic repertory. The second class of musical bards was
composed of the players upon the crwth, of six strings. The third
class were the singers. From the wording of the requirement it would
seem that these must have had the same qualification as the first
class, and therefore have been true doctors of music. For, in addition
to being able to accord the harp or the crwth, and play different
themes with their variations, two preludes and other pieces "with
their sharps and their flats," they had to know the "three styles of
expression," and accent them with the voice in different styles of
song. They had also to know the twenty-four meters of poetry as well
as the "twenty-four measures of music." Finally, they must be able to
compose songs in many of these meters, to read Welsh correctly, to
write exactly, and to correct an ancient poem corrupted by the
copyists.

The classification of new bards was made at an Eisteddfod once in
three years. It was a public contest, after the custom of the Greeks.
The degrees were three, conferred at intervals of three years
respectively. The organization of the bards existed until the
sixteenth century; it was suppressed under Queen Elizabeth. The
Eisteddfod has been maintained until the present time. The learned
musical historian, J.J. Fétis, attended one in 1829, of which he has
left an interesting account. The performances of the blind minstrel of
Caernarvon, Richard Robinson, excited his admiration beyond anything
else that he mentions. He says: "His skill was something
extraordinary. The modern harp of Wales has no pedals for the
semitones in modulations. It is supplied with three ranks of strings,
of which the left and right give diatonic notes, those in the middle
the half-tones. Nothing more inconvenient could be imagined; in spite
of his blindness, this minstrel, in the most difficult passages,
seized the strings of the middle ranks with most marvelous address.
The innate skill of this musician of nature, the calm and goodness
painted upon his visage, rendered him an object of general interest."

Independently of the minstrels of this high class, they had also
wandering minstrels who played the crwth of three strings, and who
made themselves useful in the customary dances and songs of the
peasants and the common people.

There exists an old manuscript, supposed to have been begun in the
third or fourth century, _Y Trioeddy nys Prydain_ ("The Triads of the
Isle of Britain"). It contains the traditions from the ancient times
until the seventh century. Among the famous triads of this book are:
The three bards who bore the cloth of gold, Merlin Ambrosius, Merlin,
son of Morvryn, and Taleisin, chief of the bards. There were three
principles of song: Composition of poetry, execution upon the harp,
and erudition. In the sixth century we see the bards playing the harp
and singing their stirring songs with inspiring effect in animating
the hearts of their compatriots again in their successful combats
against the Saxons. Edward Jones, bard of the Prince of Wales in the
last part of the eighteenth century, preserved the names of
twenty-three bards who lived in the sixth century. The principal were
Taleisin pen Beirrd, Aneurin Gwawrydd, Gildas ab Caw, Gildas Badonius.
Taleisin was bard of Prince Elphin, then of King Maelgwin, and in the
last place of Prince Urien Reged. He lived about 550; a number of his
poems remain, but no fragment of his melody. Aneurin was author of
"Gododn," one of the best Welsh poems that has come down to us.

In the British Museum there is a manuscript supposed to have been
begun in the eleventh century, containing much music for the harp.
Among it are exercises in the curious notation of the Welsh, in which
chords are freely used, and in positions suggesting the immediate
occasion of their introduction--that, namely of supplementing the
small power of the instrument by sounding several tones together,
which, as octaves were impossible outside the middle range or pitch,
were necessarily chords. Among the songs given are several which
betray the transition period of tonality, when chords had come into
legitimate use, but the true feeling for a tonic had not yet been
acquired. The preceding, for instance, proceeds regularly in the key
of G in all respects but the very ending of each strain, which takes
place in the key of C. Or to speak tonically, the melody and
accompaniment after being written nearly all the way in the key of Do,
suddenly diverge to the key of Fa, and there close.

[Music illustration: DADLE DAU--THE TWO LOVERS.

     Mae nhw'nd'wedyd na chai fa-wr, gid-a gwawr o gow aeth;
     Bod-lon yd-w-i, os-cai'r. Fun, fod heb yr un gein-iog-w rth
     Hwi daeew hi! Hwi daeew hi! a hwi daeew hi'rlan E-neth.
     Hwi daeew hi! Hwi daeew hi! a hwi daeew hi'rlan brydferth.]

     This old song was a great favorite with Henry V, while he
     was yet Prince of Wales, and with his jolly companions he
     used to shout it vigorously at the Bear's Head tavern, about
     1410. (Edward Jones' "Relics of the Welsh Bards," p. 176)

Another (p. 94) is quite modern in spirit and treatment. It is a
vigorous love song, and there is a boisterous chorus of bards which
comes in with the refrain. A curious feature of this melody is the
full-measure rest, immediately following the strong chorus of the
bards. During the rests we seem to hear the chorus repeated.

[Music illustration: OLD WELSH SONG, IN PRAISE OF LOVE.

     SOLO.

     Car-u'm hell a char-u'n ag-os,

     CHORUS of Bards.

     Hob y de-ri dan-do:

     SOLO.

     New-id car-iad pob py-thef-nos

     CHORUS of Bards.

     Dy-na gan-u et-to
     Er hyn i gyd ni all fy nghal-on Sian fw-yn Sian.
     Lai na char-u'm hen gar-iad-on, o'r brw-yn,
     Der-e, der-e'r Ilwyn; ni sonia i fwy am Sian-tan fwyn.]

In the eleventh century, Gerald Barry, an entertaining writer, made a
tour of Britain, and his account of the people in different parts of
the country is still extant and full of interest. Of the Welsh he
says: "Those who arrive in the morning are entertained until evening
with the conversation of young women, and the music of the harp, for
each house has its young women and harps allotted to this purpose. In
each family the art of playing the harp is held preferable to any
other learning."

He adds (chapter XIII, "Of their Symphonies and Songs"): "In their
musical concerts they do not sing in unison, like the inhabitants of
other countries, but in many different parts, so that in a company of
singers, which one very frequently meets with in Wales, you will hear
as many different parts and voices as there are performers, while all
at length unite with organic melody in one consonance, and in the soft
sweetness of B-flat. In the north district of Britain, beyond the
Humber and on the borders of Yorkshire, the inhabitants make use of
the same kind of symphonious harmony, but with less variety, singing
in only two parts, one murmuring in the bass, the other warbling in
the acute or treble. Neither of the two nations has acquired this
peculiarity by art, but by long habit, which has rendered it natural
and familiar; and the practice is now so firmly rooted in them that it
is unusual to hear a single and simple melody well sung, and what is
still more wonderful, the children, even from their infancy, sing in
the same manner. As the English in general do not adopt this mode of
singing, but only those to the north of the countries, I believe it
was from the Danes and Norwegians, by whom these parts of the island
were more frequently invaded, and held longer under their dominion,
that the natives contracted this method of singing." In further token
of the universality of music among these people, Gerald mentions the
story of Richard de Clare, who a short time after the death of Richard
I, passed from England into Wales, accompanied by certain other lords
and attendants. At the passage of Coed Grono, at the entrance into the
woods, he dismissed his attendants and pursued his journey undefended,
preceded by a minstrel and a singer, the one accompanying the other on
the fiddle. ["_Tibicinem præviens habens et precentorem cantilenæ
notulis alternatim in fidiculare respondentem._"]

Similar devotion to music he found in Ireland. He says: "The only
thing to which I find this people to apply commendable industry is
playing upon musical instruments, in which they are incomparably more
skillful than any other that I have seen. For their modulation on
these instruments, unlike that of the Britons, to which I am
accustomed, is not slow and harsh, but lively and rapid, while the
harmony is both sweet and gay. It is astonishing that in so complex
and rapid a movement of the fingers the musical proportions can be
preserved, and that throughout the difficult modulations on their
various instruments the harmony is completed with so sweet a velocity,
so unequal an equality, so discordant a concord, as if the chords
sounded together fourths and fifths. They enter into a movement and
conclude it in so delicate a manner, and play the little notes so
sportively under the blunter sounds of the bass strings, enlivening
with wanton levity, or communicating a deeper internal sense of
pleasure, so that the perfection of their art appears in the
concealment of it. From this cause those very strains afford an
unspeakable mental delight to those who have skillfully penetrated
into the mysteries of the art; fatigue rather than gratify the ears of
others, who seeing do not perceive, and hearing do not understand, and
by whom the finest music is esteemed no better than a confused and
disorderly noise, to be heard with unwillingness and disgust. Ireland
only uses and delights in two instruments--the harp and tabor.
Scotland has three--the harp, the tabor and the crowth or crowd.
Wales, the harp, the pipes and the crowd. The Irish also used strings
of brass instead of catgut."

The brilliant time of Ireland was the reign of Sir Brian Boirohen, in
the tenth century. After his victory over the Danes, and their
expulsion from the island, he opened schools and colleges for indigent
students, founded libraries, and encouraged learning heartily. He was
one of the best harpers of his kingdom. His harp is preserved in the
library of Trinity College, Dublin, and a well made instrument it is,
albeit now somewhat out of repair. It is about thirty inches high;
the wood is oak and arms of brass. There are twenty-eight strings
fixed in the sounding table by silver buttons in copper-lined holes.
The present appearance of the instrument is this:

[Illustration: Fig. 19.]

The Anglo-Saxons also were great amateurs of music. Up to the sixth
century they remained pagan. Gregory the Great sent missionaries to
them, and more than 10,000 were baptized in a single day. The
Venerable Bede represents St. Benoit as establishing the music of the
new church, substituting the plain song of Rome for the Gallic songs
previously used.

While few remains of the literature of the early English have come
down to us, we have enough from the period of the Venerable Bede and
the generation immediately following to give an idea of the vigor and
depth of the national consciousness here brought to expression. From
the seventh to the tenth centuries there was in England a movement
more vigorous, more productive and consequently more modern, than
anything like it in any other part of Europe for three centuries
later. The Saxon poets Cædmon, the Venerable Bede, Alcuin, the friend,
teacher and adviser of that mighty genius Charlemagne, were minds of
the first order.

King Arthur the Great was an enthusiastic and talented minstrel. It is
told of him that in this disguise he made his way successfully into
the Danish camp, and was able to spy out the plans of his invading
enemies. The incident has also a light upon the other side, since it
shows the estimation in which the wandering minstrel was held by the
Danes themselves. King Alfred also established a professorship of
music at Oxford, where, indeed, the university, properly so-called,
did not yet exist, but a school of considerable vigor had been
founded. All the remains of Anglo-Saxon poetry are full of allusions
to the bards, the gleemen and the minstrels; and the poems themselves,
most likely, were the production of poet-musicians classed under these
different names. Many additional reasons might be given for believing
that the art of music was more carefully cultivated in England at this
time than in any other European country. For instance, at Winchester,
in the year 900, a large organ was built in the cathedral--larger than
had ever been built before. It had 400 pipes, whereas most of the
organs previously in use had no more than forty or fifty pipes. There
is reason to believe that among the other musical devices here
practiced that of "round" singing was brought to a high degree of
popular skill. Apparently also they had something like what was
afterward called a burden, a refrain which, instead of coming in at
the end of the melody, was sung by a part of the singers continually
with it.

Nor was musical cultivation confined to England. In the eighth and
ninth centuries the Scandinavians had a civilization of considerable
vigor. The minstrels were called Scalds, polishers or smoothers of
language. Fétis well says: "As eminently poets and singers as they
were barbarians, they put into their songs a strength of ideas, an
energy of sentiment, a richness of imagination with which we are
struck even in translations, admittedly inferior to the originals. Not
less valiant than inspired, their scalds by turns played the harp,
raising their voices in praise of heroes, and precipitated themselves
into the combat with sword and lance, meeting the enemy in fiercest
conflict. Most that remains from these poet-minstrels is contained in
the great national collections called Eddas, of which the oldest
received their present form early in the eleventh century. The sagas
contained in the Eddas form but a mere fragment of this ancient
literature. More than 200 scalds are known by name as authors of
sagas. These warriors, so pitiless and ferocious in battle, show
themselves full of devotion to their families. They were good sons,
tender husbands and kind fathers. The Eddas contain pieces of singular
delicacy of sentiment." Their songs, when compared with those of other
races, are more musical, the sentiment is richer and more profound,
and the rhythms have more variety. The melodic intervals, also,
indicate a more delicate sense of harmony than we find in other parts
of Europe at so early a date. Their instrument was the harp. Iceland
was the foremost musical center of the civilized world in the ninth
century, and it is said that kings in other parts of Europe sent there
for capable minstrels to lead the music in the courts.

A very highly finished English composition, a round with strict canon
for four voices, with a burden of the kind already mentioned, repeated
over and over by two other voices has been discovered. It is the
famous "Summer is Coming In," composed, apparently, some time before
the year 1240.

On page 101 is given a reduced _fac simile_. It is written on a staff
of six lines, in the square notes of the Franconian period. The clef
is that of C. The asterisk at the end of the first phrase marks the
proper place of entrance for the successive voices, each in turn
commencing at the beginning when the previous one has arrived, at this
point. Below is the _pes_, or burden, which is to be repeated over and
over until the piece is finished. The complete solution is reproduced
in miniature from Grove's Dictionary, on pages 102 and 103. The
elaborateness of this piece of music led the original discoverers to
place it much later than the date above given, but more careful
examination of the manuscript justifies the conclusion that it was
written some time before 1240. It is by far the most elaborate piece
of ancient part music which has come down to us from times so remote.
It indicates conclusively that early in the thirteenth century, when
the composers of the old French school were struggling with the
beginnings of canonic imitation, confining their work to
ecclesiastical tonality, English musicians had arrived at a better art
and a true feeling for the major scale and key. Following is the
manuscript, the original size of the page being seven and
seven-twelfths inches by five and five-twelfths inches. The reduced
page before the reader represents the original upon a scale of about
two-thirds. The Latin directions below the fourth staff indicate the
manner of singing it.

[Illustration: FAC SIMILE OF MSS. OF "SUMER IS ICUMEN IN."]

[Music illustration: "SUMER IS ICUMEN IN."

     Sum-er is i-cu-men in, Lhud-e sing cuc-cu.
     Grow-eth sed and blow-eth med and springth the wod-e nu.
     Sing cuc-cu.
     Awe blet-eth af-ter lomb, lhouth af-ter calv-e cu.
     Bul-luc stert-eth, buck-e vert-eth, mu-rie sing cuc-cu.
     Cuc-cu, cuc-cu.[3]
     Wel sing-es thu cuc-cu, ne swik thu nau-er nu.
     Sum-er is i-cum-en in, Lhud-e sing cuc-cu.
     Grow-eth sed and blow-eth med, and springth the wod-e nu.
     Sing cuc-cu.[4]

     Per-spi-ce X[=p]-i-co-la[5] que dig-na-ci-o.
     Ce-li-cus a-gri-co-la Pro vi-tis vi-ci-o.
     Fi-li-o,
     Non par-cens ex-pos-u-it, Mor-tis ex-i-ci-o,
     Qui cap-ti-vos se-mi-vi-vos A sup-pli-ci-o.
     Vi-ta do-nat, et se-cum co-ro-nat in ce-li so-li-o.
     Per-spi-ce X[=p]-i-co-la que dig-na-ci-o.
     Ce-li-cus a-gri-co-la Pro vi-tis vi-ci-o.
     Fi-li-o.]

[Footnote 3: Burner and Hawkins have both mistaken this note
(Transcriber's Note: referring to an A) for G. It is quite certainly A
in the original MS. In the four bars which follow, the words and music
are incorrectly fitted together in all previous editions.]

[Footnote 4: Antiently, each voice ceased at the end of the _Guida_,
which is here denoted by the sign *. The present custom is for all the
voices to continue until they reach a point at which they may all
conveniently close together, as indicated by the pause.]

[Footnote 5: Abbreviated form of _Christicola_. (Transcriber's Note:
The original lyrics use a Greek chi and a rho with a line over it,
represented above as X[=p].)]

     [cross symbol] This sign indicates the bar at which each
     successive Part is to make its entrance.

[Illustration: Fig. 20.

SAXON HARP.

(From manuscript in the library of Cambridge University.)]

The harp was the principal instrument of these people, and their songs
and poems contain innumerable references to it. Sir Francis Palgrave
says in his "History of the Anglo-Saxons": "They were great amateurs
of rhythm and harmony. In their festivals the harp passed from hand to
hand, and whoever could not show himself possessed of talent for
music, was counted unworthy of being received in good society. Adhelm,
bishop of Sherbourne, was not able to gain the attention of the
citizens otherwise than by habilitating himself as a minstrel and
taking his stand upon the bridge in the central part of the town and
there singing the ballads he had composed." One of the earliest
representations of the English harp that has come down to us is found
in the Harleian manuscript in the British Museum. It is presumably of
the tenth century.

[Illustration: Fig. 21.

KING DAVID.

(From Saxon Psalter of the tenth century.)]

The harp was three or four feet in height. It had eleven strings. It
was held between the knees, and was played with the right hand. In the
thirteenth century it appears to have been played with both hands.

Two circumstances in this account may well surprise us; nor are there
data available for resolving the questions to which they give rise.
The presence of two such instruments as the harp and the crwth in this
part of Europe is not to be explained by historical facts within our
knowledge. The harp does not appear in musical history after its
career in ancient Egypt until we find it in the hands of these bards,
scalds and minstrels of northern Europe. The Aryans who crossed into
India do not seem to have had it. Nor did the Greeks, nor the Romans.
We find it for a while in Asia, but only in civilizations derived from
that of Egypt, already in their decadence when they come under our
observation. Inasmuch as there are no data existing whereby we can
determine whether these people discovered the harp anew for themselves
or derived it from some other nation, and greatly improved it, either
supposition is allowable. Upon the whole, the probabilities appear to
be that this instrument was among the primitive acquisitions of the
Aryans. All of them were hunters, to whom the clang of the bow string
must have been a familiar sound. As already suggested, it seems that
the harp must have been the oldest type of stringed instrument of all.
The Aryans who crossed the Himalayas into India may have lost it, in
pursuit of some other type of instrument of plucked strings.

The crwth presents still more troublesome questions, which we must
admit are still less hopeful of solution. (See Fig. 22.)

In this case we find an instrument played with a bow in northern
Europe, far one side the course of Asiatic commerce, at a time when
there was no such instrument elsewhere in the world but in India.
Whence came the crwth? The rebec was not known in Arabia until nearly
two centuries after we find the crwth mentioned by Venance Fortunatus.
We have seen that the Sanskrit had four words meaning bow, a fact
affording presumptive evidence of the knowledge of this mode of
exciting vibrations, while the Sanskrit was still a spoken language.
It is possible that the bow was a discovery of the Aryans in their
early days, ere yet the family had begun to separate. The crwth may
have been a survival of this primitive discovery, still cherished
among a people not able to employ it intelligently, and not able to
develop its powers. For while the crwth was in Europe two centuries
before the violin, the improvement of this instrument was due to
stimulation from quite another quarter. It was the Arab rebec that
afforded the starting point for the modern violin, and this instrument
was not known in Europe until it came in by way of the crusaders or
the Spanish Arabs.

[Illustration: Fig. 22.]

Another popular instrument of music in all parts of Britain from the
earliest of modern times, was the bagpipe, a reed instrument generally
of imperfect intonation, the melody pipe being accompanied by a
faithful drone, consisting of the tonic and its octave, and
occasionally the fifth. It was the witty Sidney Smith who described
the effect as that of a "tune tied to a post." This instrument was
common in all parts of Britain until driven out by better ones. It
still survives in Scotland. Its influence is distinctly to be traced
in the Scotch melodies founded upon the pentatonic scale, of which the
following is a specimen:

[Music illustration: SCOTCH MELODY (IN THE PENTATONIC SCALE).

     The law-land lads think they are fine:
     But O they're vain and wondrou' gawdy!
     How much unlike that grace-fu' mien,
     And man-ly looks of no High-land Lad-die!
     O my bon-ny, ben-ny High-land Lad-die,
     O my hand-some High-land lad-die!
     when I was sick, and like to die,
     he row'd me in his high-land plai-die.]




CHAPTER VII.

THE ARABS OR SARACENS.


Upon many accounts the influence of the Arab civilization was
important in this quarter of the musical world, and it may here well
enough engage our attention, since its most important aspects are
those in which it operates upon the European mind, awakening there
ideas which but for this stimulus might have remained dormant
centuries longer.

From the standpoint of the western world and the limited information
concerning the followers of Mahomet which enters into our educational
curricula, the Arab appears to us an inert figure, picturesque and
imposing, upon the sandy carpet of northern Africa, but a force of
little influence in the world of modern nineteenth-century thought.

Nevertheless, there was a time when this picturesque figure became
seized with an activity which shook Europe and Christendom to its very
center. The voice of the prophet Mahomet awakened the Arab from his
slumber. He aroused himself to the duty of proselyting the world to
the doctrine of the One God and the Great Prophet. With sword in hand
and the rallying cry of his faith he went forth, with such result that
a vast proportion of the inhabitants of the globe at this very hour
profess the tenets of his religion. Once awakened into life, he
penetrated the distant east, and brought back thence the foundation of
our arithmetic, the predecessor of our greatest of musical
instruments, the violin, and discovered for himself the productions of
the greatest of the Greek minds, the works of the philosopher
Aristotle. He established a new state in Spain, and for several
centuries confronted Christendom with the alternative of the sword or
his faith. One of the best characterizations of this people upon the
musical-literary side is that of the eminent M. Ginguène, who in his
"History of Italian Literature," remarks as follows, concerning the
points under immediate consideration:

"In the most ancient times the Arabs had a particular taste for
poetry, which among almost all people had opened a way to the most
elevated and abstract studies. Their language, rich, flexible and
abundant, favored their fertile imagination; their spirit lively and
sententious; their eloquence natural and artless, they declaimed with
energy the pieces they had composed, or they sang, accompanied with
instruments, in a very expressive chorus. These poems make upon the
simple and sensitive auditors a prodigious effect. The young poets
receive the praises of the tribe, and all celebrate their genius and
merit. They prepare a solemn festival. The women, dressed in their
most beautiful habits, sing a chorus before their sons and husbands
upon the happiness of their tribe. During the annual fair, where
tribes from a distance are gathered for thirty days, a large part of
the time is spent in a contest of poetry and eloquence. The works
which gain praise are deposited in the archives of the princess or
emirs. The best ones are painted or embroidered with letters of gold
upon silk cloth, and suspended in the temple at Mecca. Seven of these
poems had obtained this honor in the time of Mahomet, and they say
that Mahomet himself was flattered to see one of the chapters of the
Koran compared with these seven poems and judged worthy to be hung up
with them. Almansor, the second of the Abassides, loved poetry and
letters, and was very well learned in laws, philosophy and astronomy.
They say that in building the famous town of Bagdad he took the
suggestions from the astronomers for placing the principal building.
The university at Bagdad was honored and very celebrated. Copious
translations from the Greek were made, and many original treatises
produced in other parts of Arabia, but the most brilliant development
of Arabic letters was in Spain. Cordova, Grenada, Valencia were
distinguished for their schools, colleges and academies. Spain
possessed seventy libraries, open to the public in different towns,
when the rest of Europe, without books, without letters, without
culture, was sunk in the most shameful ignorance. A crowd of
celebrated writers enriched the Spanish-Arabic literature in all its
parts. The influence of the Arab upon science and literature extended
into all Europe; to him are owed many useful inventions. The famous
tower at Seville was built for the observatory. It is to be noticed,
however, that the Arabs, while taking much from the Greeks, did not
take any of their literature, properly so-called--neither Sophocles,
Euripides, Sappho, Anacreon, nor Demosthenes. The result is that their
own literature preserved its original character; they preserved also
in all purity the peculiarity of their music--an art in which they
excelled and in which the theory was very complicated. Their works are
full of the praises of music and its marvelous effect. They
attributed very powerful effects not alone to music sung, but to the
sound of certain instruments and to certain instrumental strings and
to certain inflections of the voice."

[Illustration: Fig. 23.

THE ARAB REBEC.]

The modern world is indebted to the Arab for at least three of its
most important instruments of music. The ravanastron he brought home
with him from India, and under the name Rebec it found its way into
Europe, where in an appreciative soil it grew and expanded into that
miracle of sonority and expression, the modern violin. The instrument
of the south of Europe during the latter part of the Middle Ages was
the lute, which had its origin in the Arab Eoud. (See Fig. 24.)

[Illustration: Fig. 24.

THE EOUD.]

Still more familiar to domestic eyes is that descendant of the Arab
santir, the modern pianoforte. This, under the name of psaltery,
begins to figure in manuscript as early as the ninth century. The Arab
canon, which is commonly taken as the immediate predecessor of the
pianoforte, had the important difference of being strung with catgut
strings. The essential foundation of the pianoforte was the metal
strings, necessitating hammers for inciting the vibrations, and
affording in the superior solidity incident to metal support a
firmness and susceptibility to development. This is the santir. It has
survived in Europe as the dulcimer, or the German hackbrett.

[Illustration: Fig. 25.

THE SANTIR.]

Yet while the Arab wrote so abundantly upon the subject of music, and
while it filled so prominent a part in his social and official life,
and in spite of his sagacity in seizing perfectible types of
instruments, there is very little in his treatment of the art which
need delay us in the present work. His music belongs entirely to the
ancient period of monody. He never had a harmony of combined sounds,
nor a scale with intervals permitting combined sounds. He was
sufficiently scientific to carry out the intonations of the
Pythagorean theory, and when he went beyond this and formed a scale
for himself he devised one which did not permit the association of
sounds into chord masses; and, more fatal still, he not only invented
such a scale, but carried it into execution so exactly that the ear of
the race was hopelessly committed to monody, and has remained so until
this very day. The scale of the Arabs in the latter times contained
twenty-two divisions in the octave, of which only the fifth and fourth
exactly correspond with the harmonic ratios. The place of the Arab in
music, therefore, is that of an unintentional minister to a higher
civilization and to the art of music.




CHAPTER VIII.

ORIGIN OF THE GREAT FRENCH EPICS.


One of the earliest developments of popular music on the continent was
that of the _Chansons de Geste_ ("Songs of Action"), which were, in
effect, great national epics. The period of this activity was from
about 800 to 1100 or 1200, and the greatest productions were the
"Songs of Roland," the "Song of Antioch," etc., translations of which
may be found in collections of mediæval romances. The social
conditions out of which these songs grew have been well summarized by
M. Léon Gautier, in his "_Les Épopées Françaises_": "If we transport
ourselves in imagination into Gaul in the seventh century, and casting
our eyes to the right, the left, and to all parts, we undertake to
render to ourselves an exact account of the state in which we find the
national poetry, the following will be the spectacle which will meet
our gaze: Upon one hand in Amorican Brittany there are a group of
popular poets who speak a Celtic dialect, and sing upon the harp
certain legends, certain fables of Celtic origin. They form a league
apart, and do not mix at all in the poetic movement of the great
Gallo-Roman country. They are the popular singers of an abased race,
of a conquered people. Toward the end of the twelfth century we see
their legends emerge from their previous obscurity and conquer a
sudden and astonishing popularity, which endured throughout all the
remainder of the Middle Ages. But in the seventh century they had no
profound influence in Gaul, and their voice had no echo except beyond
the boundary straits among the harpers and singers of England, Wales
and Ireland.

"Upon another side, that of the Moselle, the Meuse and the Rhine, in
the country vaguely designated under the name of Austrasia, German
invasions have left more indelible traces. The ideas, customs and even
the language have taken on a Tudesque imprint. There they sing in a
form purely Germanic the '_Antiquissima Carmina_' ["Most Ancient
Songs"] which Charlemagne was one day to order his writers to compile
and put in permanent form. Between these two extreme divisions there
was a neutral territory where a new language was in process of
forming--that of the 'Oc' and 'Oil.' Here the songs were neither
German nor Gallo-Roman, but Romance. And here were the germs of the
future epics of France."

Out of this combination of contrasting spirits of race, the movement
of awakened national life, arose, first, what were called
Cantilenas--short songs of a ballad-like character. The language is a
mixture of German, Latin and French, intermingled in a most curious
manner. For example, consider the following verses from the cantilena
of St. Eulalie, as given by M. Gautier, p. 65:

     "Buona pulcella fût Eulalia;
     Bel avret corps, bellezour anima.
     Voldrent la vientre li Deo inimi,
     Voldrent la faire diaule servir.
     Elle n'out eskoltet les mal conselliers
     Qu'elle Deo raniet chi maent sus en ciel."

Which being somewhat freely rendered into English, it says that:

     "A good virgin was Eulalia;
     She had a beautiful body, more beautiful spirit;
     The enemies of God would conquer her,
     Would make her serve the devil;
     But never would she understand the evil ones who counsel
     To deny God, who is above all in heaven."

And so the ballad goes on twenty-three verses more to narrate how she
withstood the exhortations of the king of the pagans, that she would
forsake the name of Christian; and when they threw her into the fire
the fire would not burn her, for the fire was pure; and when the king
drew his sword to cut off her head the _demoiselle_ did not contradict
him, for she wished to leave the world. She prayed to Christ, and
under the form of a dove she flew away toward heaven. These charming
verses of the ninth century were probably sung to music having little
of the movement which we now associate with the term melody, but which
was more of a chant-like character.

Of similar literary texture were a multitude of songs, of which many
different ones related to the same hero. Hence in time there was a
disposition on the part of the cleverer minstrels to combine them into
a single narration, and to impart to the whole so composed something
of an epic character. Thus arose the famous _Chansons de Geste_
already mentioned, the origin and general character of which have been
most happily elucidated in the work of M. Gautier, already referred
to. He says:

"The great epics of the French had their origin in the romantic and
commanding deeds of Charlemagne and the battles against Saracens in
792. The fate of civilization trembled in the balance at Ville Daigne
and at Poitiers. It is the lot of Christianity, it is the lot of the
world, which is at stake. The innumerable murders, the torrents of
blood, these thousands of deaths have had their sure effect upon
history. The world has been Christian in place of being Arab. It
appertains to Jesus instead of Mahomet. This civilization, of which we
are so proud, this beauty of the domestic circle, this independence of
our spirit, this free character of our wives and children it is to
Charles Martelle, and above all to William of Orange, that we owe
them, after God. We possess only a limited number of these primitive
epics, the _Chansons de Geste_, and are not certain that we have them
in the second or even the third versions. At the head of the list we
place the 'Song of Roland,' the Iliad of France. All the other songs
of action, however beautiful and however ancient they may be, are far
inferior. The text of the 'Song of Roland' as it has come down to us
cannot have been written much before 1100. Besides this there is the
'_Chanson de Nimes_,' '_Ogier le Danois_,' '_Jour de Blaibes_,' all of
which were written in the languages of Oc and Oil. All these have
something in common; the verse is ten syllables, the correspondences
are assonances and not rhymes. In style these _Chansons de Geste_ are
rapid, military, but above all dramatic and popular. They are without
shading, spontaneous, no labor, no false art, no study. Above all it
is a style to which one can apply the words of Montaigne, and it is
the same upon paper as in the mouth. Really these verses are made to
be upon the living lip, and not upon the cold and dead parchment of
the manuscript. The oldest manuscripts are small, in order that they
may be carried in the pocket for use of traveling jongleurs and
singers. They have Homeric epithets. The style is singularly grave.
There is nothing to raise a laugh. The first epics were popular about
the end of the eleventh century. The idea of woman is purer in the
early poems. There is no description of the body; there is no
gallantry. The beautiful Aude apprehends the death of Roland; she
falls dead. In the second half of the twelfth century our poets would
have been incapable of so simple and noble a conception. We find, even
in '_Amis et Amelis_,' women who are still very German in physiognomy,
and alluring, but they are Germans, so to say, of the second manner.
They have a habit of throwing themselves into the arms of the first
man who takes their fancy.

"Each one of the races which composed France or Gaul in the sixth or
seventh century, contributed its share toward the future epics. The
Celts furnished their character, the Romans their language, the Church
its faith; but the Germans did more. For long centuries they had the
habit of chanting in popular verse their origin, their victories and
their heroes. Above all they penetrated the new poetry with their new
spirit. All the German ideas upon war, royalty, family and government,
upon woman and right, passed into the epic of the French.

"Our fathers had no epics, it is true, but they had popular chants,
rapid, ardent and short, which are precisely what we have called
cantilenas. A cantilena is at the same time a recitation and an ode.
It is at times a complaint and more often a round. It is a hymn, above
all religious and musical, which runs over the lips and which, thanks
to its brevity, mainly, is easily graven upon the memory. The
cantilenas were a power in society; they caused the most powerful to
tremble. When a captain wished to nerve himself up against a bad
action he said, 'They will make a bad song about me.'

"The heroes and the deeds which gave birth to French epics are those
of the commencement of the eighth century to the end of the tenth.
France is then more than a mere land; it is a country; a single
religious faith fills all hearts and all intelligence. Toward the end
of the tenth century we see the popular singers arresting crowds in
all public places. They sing poems of 3,000 or 4,000 verses. These are
the first of the _Chansons de Geste_. Out of the great number of
cantilenas dedicated to a single hero it happened that some poet had
the happy thought of combining them into a single poem. Thus came a
suite of pieces about Roland or William, and from these, in time, an
epic. The latest of the epic cycles was that concerning the crusades.
The style is popular, rapid, easy to sing. It recalls the Homeric
poetry. The constant epithets, the military enumerations, the
discourses of the heroes before combat, and the idea of God, are
simple, childlike, and superstition has no place. The supernatural
exists in plenty, but no marvels."

[Illustration]




CHAPTER IX.

THE TROUBADOURS, TROUVÈRES AND MINNESINGERS.


To the full account of the origin of the _Chansons de Geste_ in the
foregoing chapter, it remains now to add a few notes concerning the
_personnel_ of the different classes of minstrels through whose
efforts these great songs were created.

The first of these singers were the troubadours, who were traveling
minstrels especially gifted in versification and in music. Their
compositions appear to have been short, on the whole, and of various
kinds, as will presently be seen. The earliest of the troubadours of
whom we have definite account was Count Wilhelm of Poitiers,
1087-1127. Among the kind of songs cultivated by these singers were
love songs, canzonets, chansons; serenade--that is, an evening song;
auberde, or day song; servantes, written to extol the goodness of
princes; tenzone, quarrelsome or contemptuous songs; and roundelays,
terminated forever with the same refrain. There was also what was
called the pastourelle, a make-believe shepherd's song.

The so-called chansonniers of the north, who flourished toward the end
of the twelfth century, were also troubadours. Among them the name of
Count Thibaut of Champagne, king of Navarre, stands celebrated--1201-1253.
He composed both religious and secular songs. The following is one of
his melodies unharmonized. Its date is about the same as that of
"Summer is Coming In." Another celebrated name of these minstrels was
Adam de la Halle, of Arras in Picardy--1240-1286. Upon many accounts
the music of this author is of considerable interest to us. He was a
good natural melodist, as the examples in Coussemaker's "Adam de la
Halle" show. He is also the author of the earliest comic opera of
which we have any account, the play of "Robin and Marion." We shall
speak of this later, in connection with the development of opera in
general.

[Music illustration:

     L'autrier par la ma-ti-né-e,
     En-tre un bois et un ver-gier
     U-ne pastoure ai trou-vé-e
     Chantant pour soi en-voi-sier,
     Et di-soit un son pre-mier
     'Chi me tient li maus d'amor.'
     Tan-tost ce-le part m'entor,
     Ka je l'oi des rais-ner;
     Si li dis sans de-la-ier.
     Bel-le Diex vous doint bon-jor.]

Immediately following the troubadours came the trouvères, who were
simply troubadours of nobler birth, and perhaps of finer imagination.
There were so many of these singers that it is quite impossible here
to give a list of their names. Among the more celebrated, forty-two
names are given by Fétis, the most familiar among them being those of
Blondel, the minstrel of Richard Coeur de Lion, and the Châtelaine
de Coucy (died about 1192), from whom we have twenty-three chansons.

It was the trouvères who invented the _Chansons de Geste_ already
mentioned--songs of action; in other words, ballads. One of the most
celebrated of these was the "Story of Antioch," a romance of the
crusades, extending to more than 15,000 lines. This poem was not
intended to be read, but was chanted by the minstrels during the
crusades themselves. One Richard the Pilgrim was the author. The song
is, in fact, a history of the crusade in which he took part, up to a
short time before the battle in which he was killed. Another very
celebrated piece of the same kind, the "Song of Roland," the history
of a warrior in the suite of Charlemagne, is said to have been chanted
before the battle of Hastings by the Jongleur Taillefer. Other pieces
of the same kind were the "Legend of the Chevalier Cygne"
("Lohengrin") "Parsifal" and the "Holy Grail." Each one of these was
sung to a short formula of melody, which was performed over and over
incessantly, excepting variations of endings employed in the episodes.
A very eminent author of pieces of this kind was the Chevalier de
Coucy, who died 1192, in the crusade. There are twenty-four songs of
his still in the Paris Library.

[Illustration: Fig. 26.

REINMAR, THE MINNESINGER.

(From a manuscript of the thirteenth century, in the National Library
at Paris.)]

A similar development of knightly music was had in Germany from the
time of Frederick the Red--1152-1190. These were known as
minnesingers. Among the most prominent were Heinrich of Beldeke,
1184-1228, an epic writer; Spervogel, 1150-1175; and Frauenlobe,
middle of the twelfth century. The forms of the minne songs were the
song (_lede_), lay (_lerch_), proverb (_spruch_). The song rarely
exceeded one strophe; the lay frequently did. A little later we
encounter certain names which have been recently celebrated in the
poems of Wagner, such as Heinrich von Morungen, Reinmar von Hagenau,
Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strassburg, Walther von der
Vogelweide, Klingsor, Tannhäuser, etc. All of these were from the
middle of the thirteenth century. A portrait of Reinmar, the
minnesinger, has come down to us with a manuscript now contained in
the National Library at Paris. The last of the minnesingers was
Heinrich von Meissen, 1260-1318. His poems were always in the praise
of woman, for which reason he was called Frauenlob ("Woman's Praise").
An old chronicle tells us that when he died the women of Mayence bore
him to the tomb, moistened his grave with their tears, and poured out
libations of the costliest wines of the Rhineland. The following
illustration is supposed to be a representation of this minstrel,
although the drawing is hardly up to the standard of the modern
Academy.

[Illustration: Fig. 27.

MASTER HEINRICH FRAUENLOB.

(From a manuscript in the Manesse collection at Paris.)]

The work of the minnesingers was succeeded in Germany by a class of
humbler minstrels of the common people, known as the Mastersingers,
the city of Nuremberg being their principal center. A few of these men
were real geniuses--poets of the people. One of the most celebrated
was Hans Sachs, since represented in Wagner's "Meistersingers." Sachs
was a very prolific poet and composer, his pieces being of every kind,
from the simpler songs of sentiment and home to quite elaborate plays.
About nine volumes of his poems have been reprinted by the Stuttgart
Literary Union.

[Illustration: Fig. 28.

MINSTREL HARPS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.]

The principal influence of these different classes of popular minstrel
was temporary, in keeping alive a love for music and a certain
appreciation of it. The most of their music was rather slow and
labored, and it is impossible to discover in the later development of
the art material traces of their influence upon it. In this respect
they differ materially from the Celtic and English bards mentioned in
the previous chapter. Although the productions of those minstrels have
all passed away, they have left a distinct impress upon musical
composition, even to our own day, in certain simple forms of diatonic
melody of highly expressive character. The troubadours, trouvères and
minnesingers, on the other hand, never acquired the art of spontaneous
melody, and as for harmony, there is no evidence that they made any
use of it. Their instrument of music was a small harp of ten or twelve
strings, but no more--a much smaller and less effective instrument
than the Irish harp of the eleventh century, or the Saxon of the
tenth. (See Fig. 28.)

[Illustration]




CHAPTER X.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.


It is not easy to define the influence of the Christian Church in this
transformation, for the reason that upon the technical side it was
slight, although upon the æsthetic side it was of very great
importance. From the circumstance that all the early theoretical
writers from the sixth century to the thirteenth were monks or
ecclesiastics of some degree, and from the very important part played
by the large cathedrals in the development of polyphonic music, many
historians have concluded that to the Church almost this entire
transformation of the art of music is due. This, however, is wide of
the truth. The Church as such had very little to do with developing an
art of music through all the early centuries. The early Christians
were humble people, for the most part, who had embraced a religion
proscribed and at times persecuted. Their meetings were private, and
attended by small numbers, as, for instance, in the Catacombs at Rome,
where the little chapels in the dark passage ways under ground were
incapable of holding more than twenty or thirty people at a time.
Under these circumstances the singing cannot have been essentially of
more musical importance than that of cottage prayer meetings of the
present day. In another way the Church, indeed, exercised a certain
amount of influence in this department as in all others, an influence
which might be described as cosmopolitan. The early apostles and
bishops traveled from one province to another, and it is likely that
the congregation in each province made use of the melodies already in
existence. The first Christian hymns and psalms were probably sung to
temple melodies brought from Jerusalem by the apostles. As new hymns
were written (something which happened very soon, under the
inspiration of the new faith and hope), they were adapted to the best
of these old melodies, just as has been done continually down to
nearly our own time. Our knowledge of the early Church, in this side
of its activity, is very limited. It is not until the time of St.
Ambrose, who was bishop of Milan in the last part of the fourth
century, that the Church began to have an official music. By this time
the process of secularization had been carried so far that there was a
great want of seriousness and nobility in the worship. St. Ambrose,
accordingly, selected certain melodies as being suitable for the
solemn hymns of the Church and the offices of the mass. He himself was
a poet of some originality. He composed quite a number of hymns, of
which the most famous is that noble piece of praise, _Te Deum
Laudamus_, a poem which has inspired a greater number of musical
settings than any other outside the canon of the Scriptures. The
melodies which St. Ambrose collected were probably from Palestine, and
he selected four scales from the Greek system, within which, as he
supposed, all future melodies should be composed. This was done, most
likely, under the impression that each one of the Greek scales had a
characteristic expression, and that the four which he chose would
suffice for the varying needs of the hymns of the Church. In naming
these scales a mistake was made, that upon re being called the Dorian,
and all the other names being applied improperly. The series upon mi
was called Phrygian, upon fa Lydian; upon sol Mixo-Lydian. The
melodies of St. Ambrose were somewhat charged with ornament, a fact
which indicates their Asiatic origin. It is probable that a part of
the melodies of the Plain Song still in use are remains of the
liturgies of St. Ambrose. The Church at Milan maintains the Ambrosian
liturgy to the present date. In this action of St. Ambrose we have a
characteristic representation of the influence which the Church has
exerted upon music in all periods of its career. Upon the æsthetic and
ethical sides the Church has awakened aspirations, hopes and faith, of
essentially musical character, and in this respect it has been one of
the most powerful sources of inspiration that musical art has
experienced. But upon the technical side the action of the Church has
been purely conservative and, not to say it disrespectfully, politic.
The end sought in every modification of the existing music has been
that of affording the congregation a musical setting for certain
hymns--a setting not inconsistent with the spirit of the hymns
themselves, but in melody agreeable to the congregation. The question
which John Wesley is reported to have asked, "Why the devil should
have all the good tunes," has been a favorite conundrum with the
fathers of the Church.

Notwithstanding the firmness with which the Church at Milan maintained
the Ambrosian liturgy, in other provinces this conservatism failed;
and within the next two centuries very great abuses crept in through
the adoption of local secular melodies not yet divested of their
profane associations. St. Gregory the Great (540-595), who was elected
pope about 590, set himself to restore church music to its purity, or
rather to restrict the introduction of profane melodies, and to
establish certain limits beyond which the music should not be allowed
to pass. St. Gregory himself was not a musician. He therefore
contented himself with restoring the Ambrosian chants as far as
possible; but the musical scales established by Ambrose he somewhat
enlarged, adding to them four other scales called plagal. These were
the Hypo-Dorian, la to la; Hypo-Phrygian, si to si; Hypo-Lydian, do to
do; Hypo-Æolian, mi to mi. I do not understand that the terminal notes
of these plagal scales of St. Gregory were used as key notes, but only
that melodies instead of being restricted between the tonic and its
octave, were permitted to pass below and above the tonic, coming back
to that as a center; for we must remember that in the ancient music
the tonality was purely arbitrary, and, so to say, accidental. While
all kinds of keys used the series of tones known by the names do, re,
mi, fa, so, la, si, do, it was within the choice of the composer to
bring his melodies to a close upon any one of these tones, which,
being thus emphasized, was regarded as the tonic of the melody.
Whatever of color one key had differing from another was due therefore
to the preponderance of some one tone of the scale in the course of
the melody. The Plain Song of the Roman Church, and of the English
Church as well, has been called Gregorian, from St. Gregory, and the
majority of ecclesiastical amateurs suppose that the square note
notation upon four lines was invented by St. Gregory. This, however,
is not the case. The melody, very likely, may have come down to us
with few alterations. The notation, however, has undergone several
very important changes, of which there will be more particular mention
in chapter XV. The Gregorian notation of the sixth century was
probably the Roman letters which we find in Hucbald, as will be seen
farther on. Several of the tunes well known to Protestants have been
arranged from the so-called Gregorian chants. They are "Boylston,"
"Olmutz" and "Hamburg." The eighth tone, from which "Olmutz" was
arranged, has always been appropriated to the _Magnificat_ ("My Soul
doth Magnify the Lord").

The following are the ecclesiastical scales and names, as established
by St. Gregory:

[Music illustration:

_Dorian._

_Hypo-Dorian._

_Phrygian._

_Hypo-Phrygian._

_Lydian._

_Hypo-Lydian._

_Mixo-Lydian._

_Hypo-Mixo-Lydian._]

With the labors of St. Gregory the influence of the Church upon the
course of musical development by no means ceased. At various epochs in
its history synods, councils and popes have effected various reforms,
every reform consisting in barring out a certain amount of novelty
which had crept in, and in a supposed "restoration" of the service to
its pristine purity. The restoration, however, has never been
complete. Church music, like every other department of the art, has
gone on in increasing complexity from the beginning until now. The
main difference between the Church and the world in any century
consists in drawing the line of the permissible at a different point.
One of the latest reforms was that begun by Pope Marcellus and the
Council of Trent, which ordered from Palestrina an example of church
music as it should be.

Incidentally, in another direction, the Church has been of very great
influence upon the course of musical development. The great cathedrals
of the commercial centers of the world, in the effort to render their
service worthy of the congregation, have afforded support to talented
composers in all ages, and some of the most important movements in
music have been made by ecclesiastics or officials deriving support
from these sources. More extended particulars of this part of her
influence will be given later. It may suffice to mention the
cathedrals of Westminster and St. Paul in England, of Notre Dame in
Paris, to which we owe the old French school and the beginning of
polyphony; the cathedral at Strassburg, which supported important
musicians; Cologne, where the celebrated Franco lived; St. Mark's, at
Venice, where, from about 1350 to the end of the last century, an
extremely brilliant succession of musical directors found a field for
their activity.




CHAPTER XI.

THE DIDACTIC OF MUSIC FROM THE FIFTH CENTURY TO THE FOURTEENTH.


I.

There is very little in the Roman writers upon music that is of
interest. Macrobus, an expert grammarian and encyclopedist living at
Rome at the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century, wrote
a commentary upon the song of Scipio, in which he quotes from
Pythagoras concerning the music of the spheres: "What hear I? What is
it which fills my ears with sounds so sweet and powerful? It is the
harmony which, formed of unequal intervals, but according to just
proportion, results from the impulse and movements of the spheres
themselves, and of which the sharp sound tempered by the grave sound
produces continually varied concerts." (Cicero, "_De Republica_," VI.)
Commenting upon this passage, Macrobus says that Pythagoras was the
first of the Greeks who divined that the planets and the sidereal
universe must have harmonic properties such as Scipio spoke of, on
account of their regular movements and proportions to each other. We
find in the writings of Macrobus an advance upon the musical theories
of Ptolemy. He shows that contrary to the doctrine of Aristoxenus
there is not a true half tone, and that the relation 8:9 does not
admit of being equally divided. In place of the three symphonies of
the octave, fourth and fifth, mentioned by his predecessors, he makes
five, including the octave and the double octave. "Such," he says, "is
the number of symphonies that we ought to be astonished that the human
ear can comprehend them."

Another of the Roman writers upon music was Martinus Capella. His work
is called the "Nuptials of Philologus and Mercury" ("_De Nuptiis
Philologiæ et Mercurii_"). The little upon music which the book
contains was only an abridgment of the Greek treatise of Aristides
Quintilianus.

The most important of the earliest treatises upon music, and by far
the most famous, is that of Boethius, as it is also the most
systematic. The following summary is from Fétis' "History of Music,"
Vol. IV:

"Born at Rome between 470 and 475, Boethius made at home classical
studies, and went, they say, to Athens itself, where he studied
philosophy with Proclus. He was of the age of about thirty-five when,
in 510, he was made president of the senate. Theodoric, king of the
Ostrogoths, called him to himself, on account of his reputation for
wisdom and virtue; he confided to him an important position in the
palace, and intrusted to him many important diplomatic negotiations.
Boethius did nothing which was not to his credit, but this made him
only the more hostile to the interests of the courtiers; he was
therefore overthrown and cast into prison, where he composed his
'Consolations of Philosophy.' He was put to death 524 or 526."

Boethius' treatise on music is divided into five books. It is a vast
repertory of the knowledge of the ancients relative to this art. Its
doctrine is Pythagorean. The first book is divided into thirty-four
chapters. In the first he develops the thought of Aristotle, that
music is inherent in human nature. He there renders the text of a
decree which the Ephori of Sparta rendered against Timotheus of
Miletus, but which better critics have regarded as fictitious. The
second chapter establishes that there are three sorts of music: the
worldly, which is universal harmony; the human, which has its source
in the intelligence, which reunites and co-ordinates the elements;
finally, the third kind is artificial, made by instruments of
different sorts. The chapters following treat of the voice as the
source of music; of consonances and their proportions; of the division
of the voice and its compass; of the perception of sounds by the ear;
of the correspondence of the semitones; of the division of the octave;
of tetrachords; of the three genera--enharmonic, chromatic and
diatonic; of intervals of sounds compared to those of the stars; of
the musical and different faculties.

All the second book, divided into thirty chapters, is speculative, and
devotes itself to the different kinds and relations of intervals,
according to the different systems of theoreticians. The third book,
in seven chapters, is a continuation of the subject of the second. It
is particularly employed in refuting the errors of Aristoxenus. The
fourth book, in eighteen chapters, is entirely relative to the
practice of the art, particularly to the notation. It is in this book
that Boethius makes known the Latin notation of the first fifteen
letters of the alphabet without preparation, without the slightest
explanation, and as if he had done something which any one concerned
with music at Rome would readily understand, as a matter of course.
There is not one word to show that it was new, or that he claimed the
invention. It was undoubtedly the usual notation.

The fifth book of this treatise has for its object the determination
of intervals by the divisions of a monochord, and a refutation of the
systems of Ptolemy and Archytas. We here find this proposition,
remarkable if we recall the time when the author lived, that: "If the
ear did not count the vibrations, and did not seize the inequalities
of movement of two sounds resonating by percussion, the intelligence
would not be able to render account of them by the science of
numbers." After Boethius there is nothing in Roman literature
concerning music. Notwithstanding that Italy fell under the dominion
of the Goths and Lombards after 476, it preserved Greek traditions in
music to the end of the sixth century.

Cassiodorus, who lived still in 562, aged almost 100 years, left a
souvenir for music in the fifth chapter of his treatise on the
"Discipline of Letters and Liberal Arts" (_De Artibus ac Disciplinis
Litterarum_). He enumerates the fifteen modes of Alypius as not having
been abandoned, and establishes them in their natural order, calling
them tones. Here also we find the classification of six kinds of
symphonies, about 300 years after this enumeration, first realized in
notes by Hucbald. He gives a series of fourths and of fifths,
occasionally for two voices, occasionally with the octave added. These
are the most important of all the things concerning music to be found
in that part of Cassiodorus' book dedicated to music.

In the seventh century the first, or perhaps the only author who wrote
upon music was Bishop Isidore, of Seville. In his celebrated treatise
on the etymologies or origins ("_Isidori Hispaniensis Episcopi
Etymologiarum, Libri XX_") divided into twenty books, chapters XIV to
XXII of the third book relate to music. These are the chapters
published by the Abbé Gerbert, under the name of "_Sentences de
Musique_," in the collection of ecclesiastical writers upon this art,
after a manuscript in the imperial library at Vienna. While many of
these chapters contain nothing more than generalities and pseudo
historical anecdotes concerning the inventors of this art, this is not
the case with the nineteenth chapter, the sixth in Gerbert's edition,
for here he speaks "Of the First Division of Music, called Harmony."
The definitions given by St. Isidore have a precision, a clearness not
found in other writers of the Middle Ages. "Harmonic music," says he,
"is at the same time modulation of the voice, and concordance of many
simultaneous sounds. Symphony is the order established between
concordant sounds, low and high, produced by the voice, the breath or
by percussion. Concordant sounds, the highest and the lowest, agree in
such way that if one of them happens to dissonate it offends the ear.
The contrary is the case in diaphony, which is the union of dissonant
sounds." Here we find St. Isidore employing the term diaphony in its
original sense, as a Greek word, meaning dissonance--a sense exactly
opposite to that of Jean de Muris.

The Venerable Bede was the light of the eighth century, and the glory
of the Anglo-Saxons. His treatise upon music, however, deals in
theories and generalities, throwing no light upon the music of his
day. The elevation of his ideas may be seen in the following sentence,
with which he introduces his subject: "It is to be remarked that all
art is contained in reason; and so it is that music consists and
develops itself in relations of numbers." ("_Notandum est, quod omnis
ars in ratione continetur. Musica quoque in ratione numerorum
consistit atque versatur._")

Only two treatises upon music have come down to us from the ninth
century. The first is by a monk, named Aurelian, in the abbey of Réomé
or Montier-Saint-Jean, in the diocese of Langes, who appears to have
lived about the year 850. His book, called "_Musicæ Disciplina_," in
twenty chapters, is a compilation of older anecdotes and theories,
throwing no light upon the actual condition of the art in his day. The
sole remaining work of this period was by Rémi, of Auxerre, who had
opened the course of theology and music at Rheims in 893, and
afterward at Paris in the earlier years of the tenth century. His
book, like the preceding, is wholly devoted to the ideas of the
ancients.


II.

This brings us to the first writer on music, during the Middle Ages,
whose work throws any important light upon the actual practice of the
art in the period when it was written, namely, Hucbald, a monk of the
convent of St. Armand, in the diocese of Tournay, in French Flanders.
Gerbert gives two treatises upon music, as having come down to us from
this author. Nevertheless there is reason to doubt the genuineness of
one of them--whereof presently. The first of these, the so-called
"Treatise," from a manuscript in the library of the Franciscan convent
at Strassburg, collated with another from Cesene, bears this title:
"_Incipit Liber Ubaldi Peritissimi Musici de Harmonica Institutione_."
The other is called "_Hucbaldi Monachi Elonensis Musica
Enchiriadis_," or "Manual of Music, by the Monk Hucbald." The former
work is of little interest, and if a genuine production of Hucbald's,
probably belongs, as M. Fétis suggests, to his earlier period, when he
was still teaching at Rheims, along with his former classmate, Rémi,
of Auxerre.

The manual of Hucbald is not to be regarded as a complete treatise
upon music. It has three principal subjects, namely: The formation of
a new system of notation, the tonality of plain song, and symphony, or
the singing of many voices at different intervals--in other words,
harmony.

In treating the scale he divides it into tetrachords, precisely
according to the Greek method, as far as known to him, and he nowhere
appears to perceive the inapplicability of this division to the
ecclesiastical modes. For representing the sounds of the scale,
divided into four tetrachords, Hucbald proposed the Greek letters,
which in effect, would have been a notation of absolute pitch, with
the farther disadvantage of ignoring the harmonic principles of unity
already discovered, and in fact involved in his own method of
enlarging a two-voice passage by adding a third at the interval of an
octave with the lowest.

He recognizes six kinds of symphony; in reality he employs only three,
the others being reduplications. His symphonies are those of fourths,
fifths and octaves. In all parts of his work but one he uses the term
diaphony as synonymous with symphony; _there_ he gives its ancient
meaning of dissonance.

He proposed a sort of staff notation, upon which all the voices could
be represented at once. The following illustration represents his
staff and his diaphony, or harmony:

[Illustration: POLYPHONIC NOTATION OF HUCBALD.]

The initial letters, T and S, at the beginning of the lines in the
preceding staff indicate the place of the steps (tones) and half steps
(semitones).

[Music illustration: DECIPHERING OF ABOVE.

     Sit glo-ri-a Do-mi-ni in sae-cu-la lae-ta-bi-tur
     Do-mi-nus in o-pe-ri-bus su-is.]

M. Fétis gives a two-voice parallelism in fifths, which is
progressively enlarged to three voices by adding an octave to the
lower voice; and then to four by doubling the original upper voice in
the octave above. Thus:

[Music illustration: Tu pa-tris sem-pi-ter-nus es fi-li-us.]

In addition to mechanical progressions of parallel motion in this way,
Hucbald in another place gives an account of a so-called "roving"
organum, in which, while parallel progressions of fourths and fifths
still are found, there are also other intervals, while the beginning
and the end must be in unison. This form of the harmony of
simultaneous sounds has in it much of the character of counterpoint,
especially in the restriction that the voices must begin and end in
unison. This roving organum, or free organum, was also known as
"profane" or "secular" organum, in contradistinction to the "sacred
organum" already given, upon the sweetness of which Hucbald greatly
prided himself.

Fétis has well said that Hucbald must be considered as one of those
superior spirits who impress upon their epoch a movement in an art or
science. Besides this, he merits particular mention in the history of
music because his works are the first since those of Boethius--a
period of four centuries--in which the art of music is treated
systematically and without obscurity.

In the "_Epistola de Harmonica Institutione ad Rathbodum Episcopum
Trevinesem_" ("Letter to Rathbodum, Bishop of Treves"), there is
mention of the instruments of music during the seventh and eighth
centuries. They are the cithara and harp as the stringed instruments;
musetts, syrinx and organ among the wind instruments; cymbals and
drums, instruments of percussion. In the tenth century there was a
methodical treatise upon music in dialogue form, published by Odon,
abbot of Cluny, who died in this monastery November 18, 942. This
work, which was wrongfully attributed to Guido of Arezzo, contains a
number of analyses of intervals showing an understanding of the exact
dimensions of the various kinds of fourths, fifths, thirds and sixths.
According to his doctrine, the intervals of the fourths, fifths and
octaves are more natural for the voice than the others called thirds
and sixths, because the former are invariable, while the latter may be
larger or smaller by a half step. He makes a summary of ecclesiastical
chant, mentioning the modes as established by St. Gregory,
illustrating each of them by a selection from the "Plain Song." It is
a fact significant of the unsettled condition of musical theory and
the complete unconsciousness of musical amateurs that any essential
change in the art was being undergone, that as late as 1000 or 1020
Adelbold, Bishop of Utrecht, published a treatise upon music in which
the proportions of the tetrachords are calculated carefully according
to the Greek theories, and demonstrated upon the monochord.


III.

The most important writer upon music in the eleventh century, and one
of the most famous in the history of the art, was a monk named Guido,
living at Arezzo, in Tuscany, a Benedictine in the abbey of Pontose.
He was a remarkably skillful teacher of ecclesiastical singing, both
in his own monastery and at Rome, and in the effort to systematize the
elements of music he introduced a number of important reforms, and is
credited by later writers with many others which he did not himself
originate, but which grew out of some of his suggestions. He is
generally credited with having invented the art of solmization, the
introduction of the staff, the use of the hand for teaching intervals,
and the introduction of notes. He was not the first who introduced the
staff. Hucbald, as we have already seen, employed the spaces between
the lines for designating pitch. Between his time and that of Guido,
one or more lines were introduced in connection with the neumæ, as
will be more particularly illustrated in chapter XV. Guido, however,
employed both the lines and the spaces, but instead of notes he wrote
the Roman letters upon the lines and spaces according to their pitch.
The notes were invented shortly after his time. For determining the
correct pitch of the notes of the scale he explains the manner of
demonstrating them upon the monochord. He mentions organum and
diaphony, and remarks that he finds the succession of fifths and
fourths very tiresome. The last treatise of the thirteenth century was
written by John Cotton, an English monk, whose entire theory of music
is made up from the Greek works.

[Illustration: Fig. 29.

GUIDO OF AREZZO.]

This summary of the didactic writers between Boethius and Franco at
Cologne fully confirms the justice of the remark, in the chapter
previous, concerning the influence of the Church upon music. At the
very time when a well marked beginning was being made in counterpoint
by the old French school at Paris, and when the English, Welsh and
Scandinavian musicians were in possession of an art of expressive
melody resting upon a simple harmonic foundation, these writers can
find nothing to say but to repeat over and over again their tedious
calculations concerning the intonations of _nete hypate_ and the other
Aristoxinean notes in the enharmonic and chromatic genera, which had
been dead names in the art of music for more than ten centuries.

With the appearance of Franco at Cologne, there is something new in
music. Late in the twelfth century he wrote a treatise upon measured
music, the first one in all the history of the art, so far as we know,
in which musical measure is treated independently of verse, and a
notation given for representing it. He recognizes two kinds of
measure--triple or perfect, and duple or imperfect. He gives four
kinds of notes--the shortest being the _brevis_, an oblong note having
twice the value of a whole note; a short stem affixed to this note
doubled its value. It was then called the _longa_. A note head twice
as long represented a still longer duration, called the _maxima_ or
longest. There was also a _semibreve_, a diamond-shaped note which was
used when two or more tones were sung to one syllable. There were no
bars for indicating the place of the strong pulse in the measure, but
a bar was used to show the end of the musical phrase belonging to a
line of verse. The notation was made still more uncertain by the
license of the breve in triple time being equal to three semibreves,
and so in general each long note in triple measure being equal to
three of the next class shorter. In short, the time notation was of
the most crude and imperfect description, but it was at least a
beginning, and all the theoretical writers upon music for the next two
centuries rest in the precepts of Franco of Cologne, as a sure
stronghold, where no false doctrine can find admission. Franco
remarks, concerning the dissonances, that the imperfect dissonances,
the thirds and sixths, go very well between two consonances, showing
that in his time the third and sixth we

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/20293