XVIII. GREAT ORIGINS IN MUSIC.
In the chapter on the Great Latin Hymns a few words were said about one phase of the important musical development in the Thirteenth Century, that of plain chant. In that simple mode the musicians of the Thirteenth Century succeeded in reaching a climax of expression of human feeling in such chants as the Exultet and the Lamentation that has never been surpassed. Something was also said about the origin of part music, but so little that it might easily be thought that in this the century lagged far behind its achievements in other departments. M, Pierre Aubry has recently published (1909) Cent Motets du XIIIe Siècle in three volumes. His first volume contains a photographic reproduction of the manuscript of Bamberg from which the hundred musical modes are secured, the second a transcription in modern musical notation of the old music, and the third volume studies and commentaries on the music and the times. If anything were needed to show how utterly ignorant we have been of the interests and artistic achievements of the Middle Ages, it is this book of M. Aubry.
Victor Hugo said that music dates from the Sixteenth Century, and it has been quite the custom, even for people who thought they [{452}] knew something about music, to declare that we had no remains of any music before the Sixteenth Century worth while talking about. Ancient music is probably lost to us forever, but M. Aubry has shown conclusively that we have abundant remains to show us that the musicians of the Thirteenth Century devoted themselves to their art with as great success as their rivals in the other Gothic arts and, indeed, they thought that they had nearly exhausted its possibilities and tried to make a science of it. By their supposedly scientific rules they succeeded in binding music so firmly as to bring about its obscuration in succeeding centuries. This is, however, the old story of what has happened in every art whenever genius succeeds in finding a great mode of expression. A formula is evolved which often binds expression so rigorously as to prevent natural development.