V

Whether the musical theory of the ecclesiastical chants prior to the fifth century—apart from the Ambrosian hymns—was influenced more by Roman or Oriental traditions is a moot point. The question, however, is not vital, as the real founder of the church system of modes, the Pythagorean philosopher Boethius (fifth century), was professedly an imitator of the Greek theorists. Boethius speaks of the ancients with something like veneration, and takes pride in writing like a Greek, after the fashion of Plato, Aristotle, Aristoxenus, Nichomachus, Philolaus, and Ptolemy. He is a mathematician rather than a musician. He congratulates Ptolemy on having ignored the testimony of the ear and condemns the practice of music as interfering with the just and logical consideration of theory. Cassiodorus and Isidore of Seville speak in somewhat the same fashion. Boethius is the authority for a long line of church musicians, including Hucbald, Guido, Englebert, Jean de Muris, Adam de Fulda, and Alcuin. The mathematical view of music fathered by him gained such prevalence that in the curriculum of mediæval universities music was placed among the mathematical sciences.

We cannot do more here than briefly indicate the tone system used in the church after the liturgy had been definitely formulated, without going into the question of its earlier evolution. The system of modes was professedly founded on the tetrachordal species of the Greeks (see Chap. IV, p. 112), but with an obvious misunderstanding of the Greek system. At first only four forms were recognized, namely, the so-called authentic (from [Greek: ], to govern) modes of St. Ambrose. According to tradition St. Gregory added to these four ‘plagal’ (from [Greek: plagios], oblique). At any rate before the eleventh century there were eight accepted church modes, four ‘authentic’ modes, and four ‘plagal’ or derived modes. Later theorists taught the existence of fourteen different scales. Two of these were rejected as ‘impure’; the other twelve remained in use for centuries, and were known by the names of their Greek prototypes, but these names, too, were misapplied, as will be seen from the following table, where the octave D-d corresponding to the Phrygian species of the Greeks is named Dorian, and vice versa the octave F-f (Greek mixolydian) has become the Lydian, and so forth. The difference between authentic and plagal modes was chiefly one of range and emphasis. For example, in every mode two tones were considered, and were, as a matter of fact, of predominant importance; the final or note on which the piece ended, somewhat analogous to our tonic or key-note, and the dominant, the note most frequently touched in the course of the melody, the centre of gravity, so to speak, about which the melody moved. In the authentic modes the melody never sank below the final except in cadence, where it might take the note immediately below the final and rise by one step to the close; and the dominant was, like our dominant, in the middle of the scale. In the plagal modes, on the other hand, the melody wandered freely as low as a fourth below the final, which thus was near the middle of the melodic range; and the dominant was a third below the dominant of the corresponding authentic mode. Whenever the dominant fell on B, C was substituted (indicated by N.B. in the table) and in the rejected Locrian G was substituted for F.

Each authentic mode had its related plagal. The final of the ecclesiastical Dorian mode was D.[63] The range of a melody written in this mode was limited to notes which may be represented on the pianoforte by the white keys between D and d, including the two D’s and, for the cadence, the C below the lower. The melody would centre about A and come to end on D. The related plagal mode, called the Hypodorian, had the same final, D, but the range of a melody in this mode was from the A below to the A above the final, centering about the dominant, F. The so-called relaxed modes which are frequently met with varied likewise from the authentic modes in range which in such modes might be extended to a third below the final. The dominant remained the same and the slight extension of range hardly altered the ethos or character of the authentic mode from which it thus technically varied.

Authentic Modes. Plagal Modes.

The modes were in as far as possible strictly adhered to, but the occurrence of certain intervals difficult to sing and not wholly pleasant to the ear (notably the augmented fourth, or tritone,[64] from F to B), led to modifications or, as we should say, chromatic alterations. B-flat, for instance, was substituted for B whenever the interval from F to B occurred; and later, in the development of part singing, many other alterations were found necessary. Marks indicating such alterations were seldom written in the score, and singers were specially trained to alter intervals at sight, according to the elaborate rules of the practice called musica ficta, or ‘false music.’

We have already adverted to the gradual decline in the use of the Greek language at Rome and the incidental passing from the minds and the memories of men of the alphabetical system of notation which had been inherited from the Greeks. It is not quite clear, however, how the Oriental church, which used Greek until a comparatively late period and even introduced that language into the liturgy of the Latin church, could have absolutely ignored the Greek system of notation. Yet such appears to be the case. As far as we can discover, the early chants of the church, both in the East and in the West, were handed down viva voce, and not until about the eighth century do we find traces of any attempt to devise a system of graphic aids to musical memory. This system, as we first find it, was of a most elementary sort and consisted merely of a few strokes and dashes placed above the text of the song and serving apparently no other purpose than to indicate in a general way the rising and falling inflections of the melody. These signs are known as neumes, and from them gradually developed our modern system of notation. The origin of the neumes is quite obscure. It would appear that at first they consisted merely of the acute and grave accents borrowed from the Byzantine grammarians and designed to indicate the occurrence of a rising and falling inflection respectively. To them were gradually added dashes, strokes, curves, and hooks in various combinations which in time became a fairly complete and precise system of musical writing. Their evolution into the square and diamond-shaped Gothic notation of the middle ages can be followed with sufficient clearness.

Specimen of Notation in Neumes, Tenth and Eleventh Century.

These signs, though representing definite turns and embellishments in the melody, gave no exact indication of pitch. The first sign of anything approaching a staff occurs in the tenth century, when one or two lines were drawn across the page to mark the place of certain tones or pitches. The first line was used for the tone F and the second for the tone C. Other lines were later added for the other tones, and each line was marked with the letter of the tone to which it was assigned. Though all the letters of the scale were used in this fashion, F, C, and G were the ones most commonly employed and from the Gothic characters for these were developed our modern clef signs, as may be seen from the following illustration:

Genesis of Clefs from Gothic Letters.

A system of letter notation seems to have grown up contemporaneously with the neumatic system. Its invention has been ascribed to Gregory the Great and to Boethius, without much authority in either case. The first instances of its practical use are found in the writings of Notker Balbulus and Hucbald. Originally fifteen letters were used to designate the tones of two octaves; this number was afterward reduced to seven, repeated in successive octaves. The letters ran from A to G, but none of them had a definite tone meaning, as they have with us. A was merely the tone taken as a starting point and the series was always counted upward from it. In the system as it was finally completed the lowest G was added and called gamma to distinguish it from the G in the regular series. It is of interest to note here that the introduction of B flat necessitated the use of two differently shaped B’s. The B durum was angular

and the B molle was rounded

. From the former was derived our natural sign (♮) and from the latter our flat sign (♭). Our sharp is merely a variation of the natural. The system of letter notation was originally devised chiefly for instruments, particularly the organ, though its use gradually became universal. It belongs, however, more properly to a period later than the one we have been discussing.

One other item may justly find a place in this chapter, namely, the early history of the organ. The instrument has virtually since the beginning of our era been associated with the church, and was already a factor in the service during the plain-song period. We shall presently see how one of the earliest forms of polyphony—of music that was not merely plain chant—received its name from the instrument. The organ is of ancient origin; according to Riemann, its ancestors are the bagpipe and the Pan’s pipe. Already in the second century B. C. there existed a true organ, in which air pressure was generated by pumps (bellows) and compressed by means of water pressure and the manipulation of a keyboard. The invention of this so-called water-organ (organum hydraulicum, hydraulic organ) was ascribed to Ktesibios (170 B. C.) by his pupil Heron of Alexandria, whose writings have come down to us. Water was, it seems, not a necessary accessory to this instrument and organs were soon after constructed without the hydraulic principle, in Greece and Italy.

The Organ in the Middle Ages.

1. Pneumatic organ, 4th century.
2. The famous Winchester organ, 951, A. D.
3. German organ, 11th century.

The instrument was known in the occident long before King Pepin received one as a present from Emperor Constantine Copronymos in 757 A. D. A Greek description of an organ belonging to Julian the Apostate (fourth century) and others mentioned by Cassiodorus and St. Augustine furnish valuable details. These instruments usually consisted of from eight to fifteen pipes (one to two octaves of the diatonic scale) which were constructed in the same manner as the flue pipes of modern organs. Throughout the ninth century organs were assiduously manufactured by monks, especially in France and Germany, and their compass was made to coincide with the middle range of the human voice (c to c´) so as to be used in connection with vocal instruction. The names of the tones were inscribed on the ‘keys,’ which were small wooden plates in vertical position. The player was obliged to pull this shutter away to allow the wind to enter the pipes, which would sound continuously till shut. By 980 there existed organs of considerable size, such as the famous one at Winchester, consisting of 400 pipes and two keyboards, requiring two players. A special form of notation, known as tablature, grew up for organ playing which coincides in general with our modern staff notation.

The above will, we believe, suffice to give a clear account of the musical activities of the period which we have called the Age of Plain-song. Among music-loving people in general there is a lack of interest in plain-song, due partly to religious reasons, but chiefly born of a tendency to regard it as a dry and spiritless formula, an insipid sort of recitative designed to lend solemnity to devotional exercises. Complete lack of sympathy and imagination could alone excuse such an impression in the minds of those who have ever had the opportunity of hearing it sung in a sincere and reverent spirit. Unlike the pedantic, mathematical art that music came to be in the middle ages, plain-song was preëminently a form of emotional expression. Further, it was the expression of emotions most poignant and profound. It came from the hearts of men who were conscious actors in a gigantic drama. The inexpressible tortures of eternal fire, the ecstatic wonders of a golden heaven, the ineffable mystery of the Godhead, the awful panoply of the Judgment, the wrath and agony of a wronged and insulted Deity who yet offered Himself as a bloody holocaust for the sins of men—all the esoteric spiritual symbols of Christianity had for these early believers a real and literal significance. To them was vouchsafed the simple faith, the naïve wonder of childhood. Their souls were possessed with a great awe, with an intense longing, with profound humility and passionate remorse, with fiery zeal and ardent love, with the joyous ecstasy of anticipated salvation and the nameless horror of ever-threatening damnation. All this wealth of deep and keen emotion is conveyed to us in the songs of the early church with the direct simplicity of Greek drama. No one, listening to the mournful strains of the Dies Iræ, could escape the vague awe, the blood-congealing sense of that tremendous drama set for ‘the day of wrath, that awful day when heaven and earth shall pass away’; nor could any one hear the serene melody of the Veni sancte spiritus without feeling some suggestion of the ineffable peace that follows the descent of the Spirit Paraclete. Understanding and sympathy—difficult perhaps for a scientific and rationalistic age—are essential to the appreciation of these poets of the ecstatic vision; but for any one who can bring imagination and sensibility to the study of plain-song the results of the task will prove well worth the labor.

W. D. D.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] ‘Auctoritatem ... in Ecclesia cantandi causa devotionis traxit a canta religiosorum antiquorum tam in novo quam in vetere testamento.’—John de Muris, Sum. Mas.

[44] Cf. Strabo, De Bello Punico, Livy, Bk. xxxix.

[45] Fr. Aug. Gevaert: La Mélopée antique dans le chant de l’église latine.

[46] See Bellermann and Vincent: Anonymi scriptio de musica, Berlin, 1841.

[47] Book v, Chap. 4.

[48] For a fuller discussion of Græco-Roman music see Fr. Aug. Gevaert, La mélopée antique dans le chant de l’église latine (Ghent, 1895); Combarieu, Histoire de la musique, Vol. I, Chap. XIII (Paris, 1913); Charles Burney, ‘History of Music,’ Vol. I.

[49] See Gevaert: Op. cit.

[50] Hugo Riemann: Handbuch der Musikgeschichte, I².

[51] For a detailed discussion of the metrical forms of ecclesiastical hymnody see Riemann: Handbuch der Musikgeschichte, I².

[52] Prudentius was the author of two collections of hymns, the Kathemerinon and the Peristephanon, which were first adopted by the Spanish church and later introduced to Rome.

[53] De init. cler., in Migne, Patr. Lat., cvii, 362.

[54] See Paul I; Cor. xiv. 7; John Apocal., v. 8, xiv. 2, xv. 2.

[55] A typical example is the recurrence of the phrase ‘Quoniam in æternum misericordia ejus’ in the 135th psalm.

[56] Gerbert says of him: ‘Illud sacrorum hymnorum in Ecclesia genus, quod antiquissimus in Ecclesiæ temporibus in usu fuit, in Oriente præsertim a S. Ephrem, inter Latinos a S. Ambrosio excultum, unde et Ambrosiani dicti sunt hymni ... non cantum alternum, vel populi concentum primu(s) indux(it) in ecclesiam Mediolanensem S. Ambrosinus, sed cantum modulatum antea insuetum in ecclesia occidentali.’—De Cantu et Musica Sacra, I, p. 199. The writings of the Fathers are full of fugitive, grateful references to the musical achievements of Ambrose. Nor is his fame based on tradition, as in the case of St. Gregory. Some of his most devoted admirers are near contemporaries. The references to his work are not usually inspired by a clear understanding of just what he did for church music, but all together they create a vivid impression that St. Ambrose is the biggest single figure in the history of liturgical song.

[57] According to some musical historians, Celestine introduced the antiphonal psalmody from Poitiers.

[58] Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, Jeffe, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1881.

[59] Vita S. Gregorii Magni, in Mabillon, Acta sanctorum ordinis benedicti, Paris, 1668.

[60] Les origines du chant liturgique de l’église latine.

[61] The Alleluja is not really a word but a sort of shrilling effect of great antiquity among the Hebrews and other people of the Orient. It was produced by choruses of women in triumphal processions and other joyous celebrations, and seems to have been about half way between a song and a cheer. The early Christians used it in songs of joy and praise, and perhaps sang it to take the place of the instrumental prelude of the psalms. ‘Laudes, hoc est alleluia canere, canticum est Hebræorum,’ says Isidore of Seville. (De off., I, 13.)

[62] See ‘History of Irish Music,’ W. H. Grattan Flood, Dublin, 1906. Notker was the author of the famous Antiphona de Morte, beginning Media vita in morte sumus (In the midst of life we are in death), which was quickly adopted as a funeral anthem throughout Europe. Miraculous effects were attributed to it, and its use was so much abused that the council of Cologne (1316) forbade anybody to sing it who was not specially authorized by a bishop.

[63] Here should be noted one of the ways in which the Christian theorists misapplied the system of the Greeks. In Chapter IV we have seen that the Greeks did not consider pitch as in any way related to the character or ethos of the modes. This ethos was determined solely by the arrangement of the steps in the scale. The Christian theorists, on the other hand, though they still recognized the variety of character obtained by varying the distribution of steps in the scale, evidently allotted to the different modes a different final or pitch, and thus pitch came to influence the character of the modes. The modes might, however, still be transposed and sung at any pitch.

[64] This dreaded interval was called by churchmen diabolus in musica, and as such studiously avoided.

CHAPTER VI
THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONY

The third dimension in music—‘Antiphony’ and Polyphony; magadizing; organum and diaphony, parallel, oblique—Guido d’Arezzo and his reputed inventions; solmisation; progress of notation—Johannes Cotto and the Ad organum faciendum; contrary motion and the beginning of true polyphony—Measured music; mensural notation—Faux-bourdon, gymel; forms of mensural composition.

In the preceding chapter we have tried to trace the perfecting of a form of melody called plain-song. We have seen how the mass of the Catholic Church was set to solo music. Apart from the highly expressive quality which the music inevitably acquired because of the reality and life of the new emotional religion, the plain-song of the mass did not differ from the artistic music of the Greeks and the Romans, that is to say, it brought forward no new means of effect or of expression. We may say it was the adaptation of old and tried methods to new ends. We can hardly suppose that the technique of composition had been advanced by the early Christian composers beyond the point to which the Greeks had brought it, nor that the art of music had been expanded during the first centuries of the Christian era to greater proportions than the Greeks had developed it. The theorists of the first nine centuries made blunders in trying to systematize Christian song according to the remnants of Greek theory which had been preserved; yet the Greek scales were still in use, though misnamed by the theorists, and composers for the church still conformed to them. But about the beginning of the ninth century a new element appeared in music for the church which the Greeks had left practically untouched and which was probably the contribution of the barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe, either the Germans or the Celts, namely, part-singing. To the single plain-song melodies of the ritual composers added another accompanying melody or part. The resultant progression of concords and discords was incipient harmony, the practice of so weaving two and later three and four melodies together was the beginning of the science or art of polyphony.