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.
CCORDING 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.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MINSTRELS OF THE NORTH.
PON 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.
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.
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.
OLD WELSH SONG, IN PRAISE OF LOVE.
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:
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.
FAC SIMILE OF MSS. OF "SUMER IS ICUMEN IN."
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[View modern transcription (PDF)]
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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.
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.
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:
SCOTCH MELODY (IN THE PENTATONIC SCALE).
CHAPTER VII.
THE ARABS OR SARACENS.
PON 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."
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].)
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.
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.
NE 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."
CHAPTER IX.
THE TROUBADOURS, TROUVÈRES AND
MINNESINGERS.
O 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.
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 Cœur 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.
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.
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.
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].)
CHAPTER X.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
T 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:
[Listen: [Dorian] [Phrygian] [ Lydian] [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.
HERE 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:
![[Enlarge]](#6577505572528060384_hucbaldlg.png.id-4079877284335804848.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
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).
DECIPHERING OF ABOVE.
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:
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.
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 were still regarded as licenses in harmony to be explained or excused. The general principle that any dissonance is admissible when smoothly placed between two consonances is a fundamental law of modern counterpoint.
There was another Franco whose work has often been confounded with that of the celebrated master at Cologne. Franco of Paris was connected with the Sorbonne or with Notre Dame, and his writing had mostly to do with harmonic music. He classifies the consonances as—complete, the unison and octave; the incomplete, the major and minor thirds; the middle, the fourth and fifth. This is the first instance in musical theory where the third has been recognized as a consonance. Among the dissonances he classes the major and minor sixth as incomplete, and says concerning these two only that immediately before a consonance any incomplete dissonance goes very well. From the superior celebrity of the Cologne Franco the work of the Parisian master was overlooked for many years, and it is only through the investigation of Coussemaker that his real standing and importance have been ascertained.
CHAPTER XII.
THE RISE OF POLYPHONY. OLD FRENCH AND
GALLO-BELGIC SCHOOLS.
I.
E here enter upon one of the most interesting and important chapters in the history of music. The art of polyphony had its origin at the same period as the pointed arch and the great cathedrals of Europe, which our architects strive in vain to surpass. In the province of music it represents the same bounding movement of mind, filled with high ideality, which gave rise to the crusades, and poured out in their support such endless treasures of life and love. And in the same country, too, arose the Gothic arch, the beauties of the shrine of Notre Dame in Paris, and the involved and massive polyphony of music. Polyphonic is a term which relates itself to two others, as the leading types of all effort toward the expression of spirit through organized tones. They are Monodic and Homophonic. The musical art of the ancients was an art in which a single melodic formula was doubled in a lower or higher octave, but where no support of harmony was added, and where the only realization of variety could come through the province of rhythm alone; or, perhaps, to a very limited extent through changes in the mode or color of the scale from which the melody had been derived. Monodic art was an art of melody only, rhythm finding its explanation and source in the words, and so far as we understand the case, scarcely at all in the music. Our modern art of homophony is like that in having but a single melody at each moment of the piece; but it differs from the ancient in the important particular of a harmonic support for the melody tones composed of "chords in key." This harmonic accompaniment rules everything in modern music. It is within the power of the composer to confirm the obvious meaning of the melody tone by supporting it with the chord which would most readily suggest itself, within the narrowest limitations in the concept of key; or, second, it is within his reach to impart to any tone, apparently most commonplace, a deeper and a subtler meaning, by making it a peculiarly expressive tone of some related key. Instances of this use of harmonic accompaniment are numerous in Wagner's works, and form the most obvious peculiarity of his style, and the chief reason why the hearers to whom his works were first presented did not recognize the beauties and the novelties of poetic expression in them. Half way between these two types of musical art stands polyphony, which means etymologically "many sounds," but which in musical technique means "multiplicity of melodies." In a true polyphony not only has every tone of the leading voice a melodic character, but all the tones which sound together with it are themselves elements of other and independently moving melodies. Polyphony comprehends the most recondite elements of musical theory, but its essence consists of one leading concept—that of canonic imitation. The simplest form of this is furnished by that musical construction known as "round," in which one voice leads off with a phrase, and immediately a second voice begins with the same melodic idea at the same pitch, and follows after. At the proper interval a third voice enters and follows the procession at a corresponding distance behind. Thus, when there is only one voice singing we have monody; when the second voice enters we have combined sounds consisting of two elements; and when the third enters we have at each successive step chords of three tones. If there are four voices, as soon as the fourth enters, we have combined sounds of four elements. This form of musical construction was much practiced in England, as already noticed. A round, however, does not come to a close, but goes on in an endless sequence until arrested arbitrarily by the performers. Such a form is not proper to art, since it lacks the necessary element of completeness, for at whatever point it may have been arrested there was no innate reason why it might not have gone on indefinitely.
The polyphonic compositions of the schools in consideration in the present chapter go farther than this. While they consist of imitative treatment of a single subject carried through all the voices, or of several subjects which come together in such a way that the ear is not able to follow them as individuals, there is a conclusion, and the canonic imitation has a legitimate ending. Besides those compositions consisting of repetitions of the same subjects, these schools gave rise to other works in which several subjects are treated more or less in the same manner as a single subject would have been in a simpler composition. Nevertheless, in the earlier stages of the development, all the chords arose as incidents, and not as ends. The composer brought in his leading melodic idea at the interval prescribed or chosen. If crudities arose when all the voices were employed, he took no notice of them; the hearers, apparently, being too intent upon following the individual voices to notice the forbidden parallels of fifths or octaves, which inevitably arose until the composer had learned which intervals might be used without harmonic offense, and which not.
Before proceeding to the story of this chapter, the definition of a few terms may be advisable, in the interests of clearness. By "imitation," then, we mean the exact repetition of the melody of one part by another part, at the same or a different pitch. Such an imitation may be "strict," as when the intervals and progressions are exactly repeated; or "free," as when certain changes are made here and there in order to lead the imitation around better to the principal key. Canonic imitation is one in which the imitation is strict, the repeating voice exactly repeating the melody of the principal. By "counterpoint" we mean a second voice added to a melody already existing, the counterpoint having a strict relation to the leading melody, but a wholly independent movement. This conception had its origin in the art of extemporaneous descant, in which, while the choir and congregation repeated the melody of the plain song, a few talented singers performed variations to it, guided solely by ear and tradition, returning to the tone of the plain song at all the points of repose. We do not know when extemporaneous descant gave place to written composition, but it was probably early in the twelfth century. By "double counterpoint" is meant a counterpoint which, although written to be sung an octave lower than the principal song, can be transposed an octave and sung higher than the principal song without giving rise to forbidden progressions. This will be the case only when the original relations of the two voices have been restricted to certain prescribed intervals. By "fugue" is meant a form of composition in which every voice in turn enters with the leading melody of the piece, the same given out by the leading voice at first, called the "subject," responding alternately in tonic and dominant. This form comes later than the period we are now about to consider, but it grew out of the devices of polyphony, and accordingly is always to be kept in mind as the goal toward which all this progress was tending.
The art of polyphony is to be understood as an effort toward variety and unity combined. The unity consisted in all the voices following with the same melodic idea; variety, in the different combinations resulting in the course of the progress. The limitations of polyphony were reached when the true expression of melodic intervals was lost through their intermingling with so many incongruous elements.
II.
The beginnings of contrapuntal and polyphonic music have been traced to what is now known as the old French school, having its active period between about 1100 and 1370, or thereabouts. The principal masters known to us now by name, were all, or nearly all, connected with the cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, and several of them with the university of the Sorbonne. Paris, during the earlier part of this period, in fact during the greater part of it, was the most advanced and active intellectual center of the entire civilized world. When the French school had ceased to advance, as happened some time before the close of the history in 1370, as above assigned, it found a successor in what is known as the Gallo-Belgic school, which was active between 1350 and 1432. This, in turn, was succeeded by the Netherland school, extending from about 1425 to 1625. The removal of the star of progress from one location to another, as here indicated in the succession of these great national schools, was probably influenced by corresponding or slightly antecedent changes in the commercial or political relations of the countries, rendering the old locality less favorable to art than the new one. For questions of this sort, however, there is not now time or space. To return to the old French school—the recognition of the importance of this school is due to a learned Belgian savant, M. Coussemaker, who happening to discover in the medical library at Montpelier, France, an old manuscript of music, analyzed it, and found that it represented masters previously unknown, and, for the most part, belonging to the period under present consideration. In several monographs upon the history of "Harmony in the Middle Ages," he traced the steps through which polyphony had arisen, and was able to show that, instead of dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, as previously supposed, it had its beginnings more than three centuries earlier, and that Paris was the first center of this form of musical effort.
For convenience of classification the entire duration of the old French school may be divided into four periods, of which the first may be taken to extend from 1100 to 1140, the great names being those of Léonin and Pérotin, both organists and deschanteurs at Notre Dame. The Montpelier manuscript contains several compositions by both these masters, and in them we find the germs of the most important devices of counterpoint.
Léonin was known to his contemporaries as "Optimus Organista," on account of his superior organ playing. He wrote a treatise upon the art, a manuscript copy of which appears to be in the British Museum, and its contents have been summarized by an anonymous observer, but never published in full. He is said to dwell mainly upon the proper manner of performing the antiphonary and the graduale. It is also stated that he noted his compositions according to a method invented by himself. If this work could be fully examined it might throw important light upon the point reached in the practice of church music in his day; his notation, also, would be a matter of interest and possibly of importance. Quite a number of compositions by Léonin have been discovered. The successor of Master Léonin, as director of the music at Notre Dame, was one Pérotin, who, besides being a capable deschanteur, was an even greater organist than his teacher, Léonin. He was also a very prolific composer, many of his compositions being still extant. He made additions to his predecessor's manual of the organ.
By descant in the foregoing account, reference is made to the practice of extemporaneous singing of an ornamental part to the plain song or a secular cantus fermus. This art had its origin one or two centuries earlier than the period now under consideration, in the secular organum of Hucbald (see [p. 142]), and all the more talented singers, who were also composers as well, were expert masters of it. Descant was the predecessor of counterpoint.
The chief forms of composition in vogue during this period were motette, rondo and conduit. The terms were rather inexactly applied, but in general the motette appears to have been a church composition, in which often the different voices had different texts, so that the words were wholly lost in performance. The rondo seems to have been a secular composition, and was sometimes written without words. The conduit was an organ piece, occasionally, if not generally, of a secular character. All of these forms were also distinguished as duplum, triplum and quadruplum, according to the number of voices. The harmonic treatment in them is still crude, occasional passages of parallel fifths occurring, after the manner of Hucbald, but in the works of Pérotin passages of this kind are softened somewhat by the device of contrary motion in the other parts. He made a beginning in canonic imitation, Coussemaker and Naumann, after him, giving examples from a composition of his called "Posuit Adjutorium." In these works of Pérotin, and in many others of that day, traces are to be seen of an amelioration of the musical ear, and a preference for thirds and sixths, such as but a short time previously had been unknown to musical theory. This influence was probably due to what was called "Faux Bourdon," a system of accompanying a melody by an extemporaneous second and third part in thirds or sixths.
This art, again, is clearly due to the influence of the round singing of the British isles. Thus we have already a beginning of at least three important elements of good music: The recognition of the triad, or, more properly, of the third and sixth, a beginning in imitation, and the contrapuntal concept of an independently moving melodic accompaniment to a second voice, which in turn had been the outcome of extemporaneous descant. The works of Pérotin were undoubtedly in advance of his time, having in them no small vitality, as is shown in their having formed a part of the repertory of Notre Dame for more than two centuries.
The second period of the old French school extended from about 1140 to 1170, and great improvements were made in the art of harmony meanwhile. The three great masters of this period were Robert of Sabillon, his successor in Notre Dame, Pierre de la Croix, and a theoretical writer named Jean de Garland. The first of these men was distinguished as a great deschanteur, in other words, a ready hand at extemporaneous counterpoint. Pierre de la Croix made certain improvements in notation, the nature of which, however, the musical historians fail to give us. Garland divided the consonances into perfect, imperfect and middle—a system which has remained in use, with slight alteration, to the present day. The thirds and sixths, however, still rank as dissonances. He also defines double counterpoint, and gives examples. The illustrations are crude, but the idea is correct.
The third period of the old French school is sometimes known as the Franconian period, from the two great names in it of Franco of Paris and Franco of Cologne, whose theories have already been noticed. (See [page 146].)
Another celebrated name of this period was that of Jerome of Moravia, also a theoretical writer, whose treatise has been published along with the others in Coussemaker's "Mediæval Writers upon Music." He was a teacher and a Dominican monk at Paris. He was contemporaneous with Franco of Cologne.
The fourth period of the old French school extended from 1230 to 1370. The three great names were Phillippe de Vitry, Jean de Muris and Guillaume de Machaut. They were regarded by their contemporaries as exponents of the ars nova, in contradistinction to the Franconian teaching, which was called ars antiqua. One of these differences was the use of a number of signs permitting singers to introduce chromatics in order to carry out the imitations without destroying the tonality. Jean de Muris was born in Normandy. He was a doctor in the Sorbonne, and from 1330 a deacon and a canon. He died in 1370. He was a learned man of an active mind. He speaks of three kinds of tempo—lively, moderate and slow. He says that Pierre sometimes set against a breve four, six, seven and even nine semibreves—a license followed to this day in the small notes of the fioratura. This kind of license on the part of the deschanteurs had been carried to a great length, the melodic figures resulting being called "fleurettes" ("little flowers"). John Cotton compared the singers improvising the fleurettes of this kind to revelers, who, having at length reached home, cannot tell by what route they got there. Jean de Muris reproved them in turn, saying: "You throw tones by chance, like boys throwing stones, scarcely one in a hundred hitting the mark, and instead of giving pleasure you cause anger and ill-humor." Machaut was born in Rethel, a province in Champagne, in 1284. He was still living in 1369. He was a poet and musician who occupied important positions in the service of several princes, and wrote a mass for the coronation of Charles V. Naumann thinks that Machaut was the natural predecessor of the style of Lassus and Palestrina. He says that the use of double counterpoint slackened from this time, whereby the music of the Netherland composers—Dufay, Willaert and Palestrina—is simpler and less artificial than that of Odington and Jean de Garland. Chords were more regarded. This also had its source in the north.
III.
The Gallo-Belgic school occupies an intermediate place between the old French and Netherlandish. Its time was from 1360 to 1460, and Tournay the central point for most of the time. The first great name in this school was Dufay, 1350-1432. The compositions remained the same as formerly, triplum, quadruplum, etc. One of the masters of this school, Hans Zeelandia, who died about 1370, is to be noticed on account of his part writing being more euphonious than that of his predecessors. He uses the third more freely, and he gives the principal melody in his chansons to the treble, and not to the tenor, as do the others. This also is in line with the British influence. Dufay was regarded by his contemporaries as the greatest composer of his time. The open note notation succeeded the black notes about 1400, or, according to Ambros, as early as 1370. Coussemaker dates Dufay 1355 to 1435. The introduction of popular tunes as a cantus fermus in masses and other such compositions is due to him; there are a large number of such works still in the library of the Vatican. He was the first, so far as we know, who introduced "L'Omme Armé," and the same subject was treated by several other composers after him. Naumann thinks that the most noticeable peculiarity of the work of Dufay is the interrupted part writing, the imitation not running through the whole composition, but appearing here and there, according to the fancy of the composer. Dufay is also credited with having written pure canonic imitations without descending to the level of the rota, with its endless phrases. Quite a number of his compositions are preserved at the Vatican and the Royal Library at Brussels. The other great name of the first period of this school was that of Binchois, born in Hennegau, died about 1465. A few of his compositions are preserved, but they hardly present important differences from those of Dufay. There were several masters intervening between those just mentioned and Busnois, who closed the school, but at this lapse of time their work hardly retains sufficient individuality to warrant burdening the memory with them. Antoine de Busnois was born in Flanders in 1440, and died in 1482. During a great part of his active life he was chapelain-chanteur in the household of Charles the Bold, and that of his successor, Maria of Burgundy. His salary in this position was extremely meager, ranging between twelve and eighteen sous a day, or, in our currency, between about twenty-five cents and forty-eight cents a day, but as the position carried provision for all the real needs of a man in the matter of food and clothing, perhaps the salary was not so insufficient, considering the greater purchasing power of money, which must have been at least three or four times as great as at the present. Busnois appears to have been on cordial terms with the duke, accompanying him in his travels.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SCHOOLS OF THE NETHERLANDS.
HE wealth and commercial activity of the Low Countries, known as Flanders, Brabant and Hainault, had now become greater than that of any other part of Europe, Italy perhaps excepted. The organization of the Communes, which began, indeed, in France as early as the tenth century, naturally reached a greater extent during the crusades, when so many of the higher and more energetic nobility were absent in the Holy Land, since the defense and order of the people at home had to be maintained by those who were left behind. Under these circumstances, the power naturally drifted into the strongest hands available, which quite as naturally were those of the capable merchants and manufacturers of the burgher class. Hence the condition of society, while much hampered by the restrictions of the guilds requiring children to be brought up to the occupation of the parents, was nevertheless more favorable to the freedom of the individual than at any previous period. These social elements combining with the wealth aforesaid, and the public spirit which has always distinguished the mercantile classes engaged in foreign commerce upon a large scale, united to form an environment favorable to the development of art; and, as music was the form of art which happened to be most in demand at the time, the effects of the stimulating environment were immediately seen. It was perhaps partly in consequence of the burgher character of the classes most engaged in music in Flanders that the form music there developed should have been so exclusively vocal. All the work of this school, extending over two centuries, was either exclusively vocal, or written with main consideration for the voice, the instrumental additions, if any, having never taken on a descriptive or colorative character.
The schools of the Netherlands came into prominence about 1425, and endured, with little loss of prestige, for two centuries, or until 1625. During this period there was a succession of eminent names in music in these countries, and a great progress was made in polyphony, and a transition begun out of that into harmony (which was in part accidental, owing to their outdoing themselves, as we shall see). Moreover, in the later times, quite a number of eminent men emigrated to foreign countries, and there kindled the sacred fires of the art, and set new causes in operation, leading to the development of national schools of great vigor. The three most eminent names in the category last referred to were those of Tinctor, who founded the school of Naples shortly before 1500; Willaert, who founded that of Venice soon after 1500, and Orlando Lassus, who founded that of Munich a trifle later. The great Palestrina himself was an outcome of these schools of the Netherlands, and, aside from the independent musical life in Spain, there was no strong cultivation of music anywhere in Europe during this period, which did not have its source in these schools of the Netherlands. The entire relation of these schools is perhaps better shown in the following table taken from Naumann, than is possible in any other manner:
THE NETHERLAND SCHOOL. (1425-1625 A.D.)
| Belgian School. | Dutch School. |
| First Period—1425-1512. | First Period—1430-1506. |
| OKEGHEM, Compère, Petrus, Platenis, Tinctor. | Hobrecht. |
| Second Period—1455-1526. | Second Period—1495-1570. |
| JOSQUIN DES PRÈS, Agricola, Mouton. | ARKADELT, Holländer. |
| Third Period—1495-1572. | Third Period—1440-1622. |
| GOMBERT, WILLAERT,
Goudimel, Clemens (non papa), Cyprian de Rore. | SCHWELINCK. |
| Fourth Period—1520-1625. | |
| ORLANDO LASSUS, Andreas Pavernage, Phillippus de Monte, Verdonck. |
The first composer of the Belgian branch of the Netherlandish school was Joannes Okeghem, who was a singer boy in the choir of the Antwerp cathedral in 1443, and is supposed to have been a pupil of Binchois. Directly after the date just mentioned he gave up his place at Antwerp, and entered the service of the king of France. For forty years he served three successive kings, having been in especial favor with Louis XI. He resigned his position at Tours soon after 1490, and lived in retirement until his death in 1513, at the age of nearly 100 years. Okeghem was a very ingenious and laborious composer, who carried the art of canonic imitation to a much finer point than had been reached before his time. He is generally credited with having composed a motette in thirty-six parts having almost all the devices later known as augmentation, diminution, inversion, retrograde, crab, etc. The thirty-six parts here mentioned, however, were not fully written out. Only six parts were written, the remainder being developed from these on the principle of a round, the successive choruses following each other at certain intervals, according to Latin directions printed with the music. The other composers belonging to this period were comparatively unimportant, with the exception of Johannes Tinctor, who was born about 1446 and died in 1511. Tinctor, after being educated to music in Belgium, emigrated to Naples. In early youth he studied law, and took the degree of doctor of jurisprudence, and afterward of theology; was admitted to the priesthood, and became a canon. He then entered the service of Ferdinand of Aragon, king of Naples, who appointed him chaplain and cantor. He founded a music school in Naples, and published a multitude of theoretical works of the nature of text books. He is entitled to the honorable distinction of having published the first musical dictionary of which we have any record. This book is without date, but is supposed to have been printed about 1475. None of the compositions of Tinctor have been printed, and his importance in music history ranks mainly upon the theoretical works which he composed, and his relation as founder of the Naples school.
The second period of the Belgian school has the great name of Josquin des Près, who was born about the middle of the fifteenth century, probably at St. Quentin, in Hainault. He was a pupil of Okeghem; was chapel master in his native town, and in 1471 was a musician at the papal court of Sixtus IV. This great master is to be remembered as the first of the Netherlandish school whose works still have vitality. He was a man of genius and of musical feeling. Martin Luther said of him that "Other composers make their music where their notes take them [referring to their canonic devices]; but Josquin takes his music where he wills." Baini, the biographer of Palestrina, speaks of him as having been the idol of Europe. He says: "They sing only Josquin in Italy; Josquin alone in France; only Josquin in Germany; in Flanders, in Hungary, in Bohemia, in Spain—only Josquin." ("Si canta il solo Jusquino in Italia; il solo Jusquino in Francia; il solo Jusquino in Germania," etc.) Josquin was a musician of ready wit, and many amusing stories are told of the skill with which he overcame obstacles. Among others it is told that while he was at the French court the courtier to whom he applied for promotion always put him off with the answer, "Lascia fare mi." Weary of waiting, Josquin composed a mass upon the subject la, sol, fa, re, mi, repeated over and over in mimicry of the oft repeated answer. The king was so much amused that he at once promised Josquin a position, but his memory not having proved faithful, Josquin appealed to him with a motette: "Portio mea non est in terra viventium" ("My portion is not in the land of the living"); and "Memor esto verbi tui" ("Remember thy words"). Another anecdote of similar readiness is that of the motette which the king, who was a very bad singer, asked Josquin to write, with a part in it for the royal voice. Josquin composed a very elaborate motette, full of all sorts of canonic devices, and in the center of the score one part with the same note repeated over and over, the one good note of the king's voice—the inscription being "Vox regis" ("voice of the king"). It will be too much to claim Josquin as a composer of expressive music. The mere fact of his having written motettes upon the genealogies in the first chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke sufficiently defines the importance he attached to the words. Speaking of Josquin's treatment of effects, it is recorded of him that a single word is sometimes scattered through a whole page of notes, showing that he attached no importance to the words whatever. One of the most beautiful of his pieces was a dirge written upon the death of Okeghem. Owing to the good fortune of the invention of music printing from movable types, in 1498, when Josquin was at the height of his powers, a large number of his works have come down to modern times.
In the corresponding period of the Dutch school the name of Jacob Arkadelt is to be remembered, who, although not a composer of the first order, was nevertheless a man of decided power, and is known to us through a number of his works still existing in considerable freshness. Arkadelt was a singing master to the boys in St. Peter's in Rome in 1539, and was admitted to the college of papal singers in 1540. About 1555 he entered the service of Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, duke of Guise, and went to Paris, where probably he died. Besides a large number of motettes and masses, he was one of the most famous of the Venetian school of madrigal writers, a form of composition of which it will be in order to speak later. One of the most pleasing of Arkadelt's compositions is an Ave Maria which is often played and sung at the present day.
The third period of the Netherlandish school embraced four very eminent names—Gombert, Willaert, Goudimel and Cyprian de Rore. The three latter were successively chapel masters at the cathedral of St. Mark's in Venice, and were eminent lights of the Venetian school. It is a significant indication of the commercial decadence of the Netherlands, which had now set in, that all the composers of this period distinguished themselves in foreign countries. Nicholas Gombert, a pupil of Josquin, became master of singers, and afterward directed the music at the royal chapel in Madrid from 1530. He was a prolific composer of masses, motettes, chansons and other works. Of the remaining members of this period mention will be made in connection with the account of the music in St. Mark's, where they all distinguished themselves.
The most gifted of all these Netherlandish masters was Orlando de Lassus, who was born in Belgium, educated at Antwerp, spent some time in Italy, and finally settled at Munich, where he lived for about forty years, as musical director and composer. The compositions of this great man fill many volumes. He distinguished himself in every province of music, being equally at home in secular madrigals—quite a number of which are heard even at the present day with satisfaction—masses and other heavy church compositions, and instrumental works. He was a cultivated man of the world who held an honored position at court and made a great mark in the community. He founded the school at Munich which, with rare good fortune, has occupied a distinguished position ever since, and has been, and still is, one of the most important musical centers in Europe, as all who are acquainted with the history of Richard Wagner, or the reputation of the present incumbent, the Master Rheinberger, will readily see. In Lassus we begin to have the spontaneity of the modern composer. The quaintness of the Middle Ages still lingers to some extent, and learning he had in plenty when it suited him to use it, but he was also capable of very simple and direct melodic expression and quaint and very fascinating harmony. While the tonality is still vague, like that of the church modes, the music itself is thoroughly chordal in character, and evidently planned with reference to the direct expression of the text. A large number of madrigals have come down to us from this great master; among them is the one called "Matona, Lovely Maiden," which is one of the most beautiful part songs in existence. The life of Lassus was full of dignity and honor. He was extremely popular in Munich and in all other parts of Europe. He is to be considered the first great genius in the art of music.
Fig. 30.
ORLANDO DE LASSUS.
[From a contemporary print by the French engraver Amelingue.]
CHAPTER XIV.
POLYPHONIC SCHOOLS OF ITALY.
PALESTRINA.
TALY in the fifteenth century was in a highly prosperous condition. The great commercial cities had a profitable commerce with all parts of the then known world, and great public works had been under way for more than two centuries. The beginning of the Renaissance was marked by the great cathedrals, of which St. Mark's at Venice was a little earlier than Pisa, Siena, Florence and Milan. All these were built before 1300. Vast public works were undertaken in all parts of the country, such as the canal that supplied Milan with water, and irrigated a large part of the plain of Lombardy; the great sea wall of Genoa; roads, bridges, municipal buildings, fortresses and the like. By the beginning of the sixteenth century the art of painting had reached a very high eminence; the master Raphael was already at work, as was also that remarkable genius, Leonardo da Vinci—the most universally gifted artist who ever appeared. Michael Angelo was at work in the Sistine Chapel, and his plans for St. Peter's were partly being carried out. It was in this time that Johannes Tinctor, the Netherlandish composer, founded a music school at Naples. The school itself was short-lived, but it was presently succeeded by four others of a different kind which eventually produced a large number of eminent musicians, several of whom will occupy our attention later. Tinctor's music school appears to have been a private affair. Those which followed it were charitable institutions, taking poor boys from the streets, furnishing them with a living, the rudiments of an education, and musical training enough to make them available in the service of the Church. The founding of these schools took place some time later than the period under immediate discussion. Santa Maria di Loreto was founded in 1535, by a poor artisan of the name of Francisco, who received in his house orphans of both sexes, and caused them to be fed and clothed and instructed in music. He was assisted by donations from the rich, and presently a priest named Giovanni da Tappia undertook to raise a permanent endowment by begging alms from house to house. At the end of nine years he had accomplished his task. The building was called the Conservatorio, and in 1536 received certain government allowances. The pupils reached the number of 800, and among the illustrious musicians produced by this school were Alessandro Scarlatti, Durante, Porpora, Trajetta, Sacchini, Gugliemi and many more. The second school of this kind organized was that of San Onofrio a Capuana, in 1576. It received 120 orphans, who were instructed in religion and music. In 1797 the pupils of this school were transferred to Santa Maria. The third school of this kind was that of De Poveri di Gesu Cristo, established in 1589, for foundlings. In 1744 this conservatory was made into a diocesan seminary. The fourth of these schools was that of Della Pieta di Turchini, which originated about 1584. Quite a number of eminent composers were produced in this school. All of these conservatories were consolidated in 1808 as the Reale Collegio di Musica (Royal College of Music). The example of Naples was followed with more or less rapidity in the other principal Italian cities. The most important musical center of Italy during this time was Venice, where Adrian Willaert became musical director in the cathedral of St. Mark's, in 1527. Here he remained until 1562. The church of St. Mark's had already held a prominent position as a musical center at least two centuries of the four which it had been in existence. The recently published history of the music in St. Mark's extends back to 1380, from which time to the beginning of the present century there has been a succession of eminent musicians as organists and musical directors. There were two organs in this church, standing in galleries on opposite sides of the chancel. This circumstance had an important influence on the development of music in the cathedral, as will hereafter be seen. It was in this church, according to Italian tradition, that pedals were first applied to the organ. It is probable that these appliances were very rude at first, and few in number, but they served to supplement the resources of the hands of the organist, and enabled him to produce effects not otherwise obtainable. The existence of the two choirs and two organs, and no doubt the habit of antiphonal singing in the Plain Song of the Church, led Willaert to invent double choruses, and finally to divide his choir into three or more parts. Willaert is regarded by many as the founder of the madrigal, of which there is more to be said presently. He was also the teacher of two very eminent musicians who succeeded him in his position at St. Mark's—Zarlino and Cyprians de Rore. To go on with the story of St. Mark's from this point, the most important successor of Willaert was Gioseffo Zarlino, who spent his youth in studying for the Church, and was admitted to minor orders in 1539, and ordained deacon in 1541. He was a proficient scholar in Greek and Hebrew, in mathematics, astronomy and chemistry. After studying for some years with Willaert he was elected in 1555 first Maestro di Capella at St. Mark's. In this position his services were required not alone as director of music in the church, but also as a servant of the republic, and it was his duty to compose or arrange music for all of the public festivals. After the battle of Lepanto, October 7, 1571, Zarlino was appointed to celebrate the victory with appropriate music. When Henry III visited Venice, in 1574, he was greeted by music by Zarlino. This same composer is also credited with having composed a dramatic piece called Orpheo, which was performed with great splendor in the larger council chamber. Again, in 1577, Zarlino was commissioned to compose a mass for the commemoration of the terrible plague which devastated Italy and carried off Titian, among other great men. His ecclesiastical standing was so good that in 1583 he was elected bishop, but his accession to the see was so strongly opposed by the doge and the senate that he consented to retain the appointment of St. Mark's, where he remained until his death in 1590. Zarlino was very famous as a composer, in his own day, but few of his works have come down to us. He is best known by certain works of his on harmony and the theory of music, of which the most important was the Institutioni Armoniche (Venice, 1558), and his Demonstrationi Armoniche (Venice, 1571). Zarlino's distinction rests upon his having restored the true tuning of the tetrachord to that of 8:9, 9:10, 15:16, as opposed to the Pythagorean tuning of 9:8, 9:8, 256:243. He was the most important scientific authority in the music of the new epoch. His discoveries in harmony were afterward supplemented by those of Tartini, almost two centuries later. Among other strong points of Zarlino was his demonstration of equal temperament, which came into general use about 100 years later. Cypriano de Rore, whose name was mentioned above in connection with St. Mark's, held a position as master in that eminent cathedral only one year, his tenure of office falling between the death of Willaert and the appointment of Zarlino. He was a very prolific composer of motettes and madrigals, and after resigning his position at St. Mark's went to the Court of Parma, where he died at the age of forty-nine. The later eminent masters holding positions in this church will come into view in the next book, in connection with the opera, for Monteverde was director of the music here during the greater part of his career as a dramatic composer.
The most eminent development of the polyphonic school, and at the same time the dawn of a better era in church music, took place in Rome, where the influence of the Netherlandish composer is noticeable. Claude Goudimel, whose name appears in the [table] of the Netherlandish school in the [preceding chapter], opened a music school in Rome in the early part of the sixteenth century, and among his pupils was the name of Palestrina. Goudimel's residence in Rome was not very long. He afterward returned to Paris, and in some way was connected with Calvin in preparing psalm books for the Calvinists. He was killed finally at Lyons in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 1572.
The culmination of the contrapuntal school and the dawn of the new era in church music came about through the labors of the pupil of Goudimel, the great Palestrina. This master, whose name was Giovanni Pierluigi (English, John Peter Lewis), was born of humble parents at Palestrina, a small town in the vicinity of Rome. The date is uncertain, but it was probably about 1520. As early as 1540 he came to Rome to study music, where he made so good progress that in 1551 he was appointed musical director at the Julian chapel in the Vatican. He then commenced the publication of a series of remarkable musical works, the first of which were in the style prevalent in his day. There was much learning of every sort; all the devices of polyphony were freely and luxuriantly employed, but along with them were other passages of true expression. The dedication of some of these books to the pope secured for him certain small preferments, which, in his most profitable condition, aggregated about thirty scudi a month (perhaps equal to $20 of our money). On this miserable pittance he supported his wife and four children. In 1556 he was discharged from his place as a pontifical singer, on account of his marriage, a fact which had been ignored by the pope who appointed him. He then held the post of chapel master at the Lateran. In 1561 he was transferred to Santa Maria Maggiore, where he remained ten years at a monthly salary of sixteen scudi, until 1571, when he was once more elected to his old office of master at the Vatican. It would take us too long to speak of his various works in detail, although his numerous publications during this period demonstrate his claim to mastership of the first order. The best of his pieces had already been adopted in the apostolic chapel, and his reputation was now greater in Italy than that of any other musician. But the taste for elaboration in church music had reached a point where reform was imperatively demanded. Not content with having secular melodies employed as canti fermi in the music sung to the words of the mass, the words of these secular songs themselves were often written in and sung by a majority of the singers in the choir, only those in the front rows singing the solemn words of the ecclesiastical office. The Council of Trent (1545-1563) commented upon this state of things with great severity, and appointed a commission to inquire into the abuse and decide upon a remedy. It was contemplated to entirely do away with elaborate music in the Church, and sing only the Gregorian songs. A few of the music-loving cardinals succeeded in preventing so sweeping an order, and a commission was appointed to take the matter in hand. Two of the most active of these were Cardinals Borromeo and Vitellozzi. The former reported of the singing in the pontifical chapel, to the following effect: "These singers," said he, "count it for their principal glory that when one sings sanctus, another sings Sabbaoth and another gloria tua, and the whole effect of the music is little more than a confused whirring and snarling, more resembling the performance of cats in January than the beautiful flowers of May." At the same time Palestrina was desired to write a mass in a style suitable for the sacred office. Too modest to rest the case upon one work, he wrote three, which were performed with great care at the house of Cardinal Vitellozzi, and all were much admired, but the third, known as the mass "Papæ Marcelli," in memory of the pope who had appointed Palestrina to one of his positions, was recognized as of transcendent excellence. It was copied in the collection of the Vatican, and the pope ordered a special performance of it in the Apostolic chapel. At the end of it he declared that it must have been some such music as this that the apostles of the Apocalypse heard sung by the triumphant hosts of angels in the New Jerusalem. Palestrina continued to write masses, motettes and other works during the remainder of his life, but during the entire time lived in the extremely limited condition already mentioned, and was subject to much enmity from jealous singers and composers. The most pleasing incident of his later life happened in 1575, when fifteen hundred singers from his native town came to Rome in two confraternities of the Crucifix and the Sacrament, making a solemn entry into the city, singing the music of their great townsman, who conducted at their head. The long and active life of this great master came to an end January 22, 1594. Among his greater works are ninety-three masses, a very large number of motettes, forty-five hymns for the whole year, sixty-eight offertories, and a large number of litanies, magnificats and madrigals.
It is not unlikely that reform in Catholic Church music had been very largely influenced by the Protestant music of Germany. Martin Luther (1483-1546) in arranging music for the Protestant Church, invented the chorale and added to the best melodies from the Plain Song some wonderfully fine ones of his own, such as "Eine Feste Burg," and caused many others to be written by the best composers of the Netherlandish school. The chorale was the exact opposite of the motette of the Netherlands. In the chorale all of the voices moved together. The same music was invariably sung to the same words, whereby an association was created, intensifying the effect of the music and the words respectively.
As examples of Palestrina's music are not common I have thought best to allow space for the following from his music for Holy Week. The pieces will produce a much better effect if sung by good voices than when played upon an instrument. They are written for the voice.
"TENEBRÆ FACTÆ SUNT," BY GIOVANNI PIERLUIGI DA PALESTRINA.
CHAPTER XV.
THE CHANGES IN MUSICAL NOTATION.
HE entire movement of musical thought since three or four tones began to be put together into scales, melodies and unities of various kinds, has been in the direction of classification. This is shown very conclusively in the history of musical notation, which, at the end of the period just now under consideration, had reached a form nearly the same as we now have it. The early notation regarded tones as individual, and wholly without classification of any kind. The first musical notation of which we have any authentic knowledge was that of the Greeks already noted in [chapter III]. Their scale consisted of two octaves and one note, their so-called "greater perfect system," and the tones were named by the first fifteen letters of the Greek alphabet. This, however, was only a beginning of their system, for the variety of pitches required in their enharmonic and chromatic scales, and in the various transposition scales was so great that they required sixty-seven characters for representing them. These characters were written above the words to which they applied, and they had additional marks for duration, especially in the later periods of Greek music. Besides this they had an entirely different set of characters for the same tones played upon the cithara, so that a word to be sung without accompaniment had one mark above it for the pitch of the note, while if accompanied even by the same tone upon the instrument, a second character was written for the instrumental part. The system was wholly without classification, except that the letters were applied from the lowest notes upward, the same as we now have them. There was nothing to assist the eye in forming an idea of the movement of the melody, and as the forms of the letters were very similar in some cases there is no doubt that mistakes of copyists were numerous. This, however, is a matter of little concern to us, since no authentic melodies of the classical period have come down to us. The example of Greek characters given on [p. 69], in connection with the Ode of Pindar, sufficiently illustrates the nature of this notation, although the interposition of the staff between the musical notes and the words deprives the illustration of a part of its value.
The Romans had also a notation consisting of letters written above the words to which they applied; they made use of the first fifteen letters of the alphabet in the same manner as the Greeks, but we do not know whether they employed the same characters for the instruments and the voices, or had different ones. The only example we possess of the Roman notation from classical times, or in close tradition from classical times, is that in "Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy." From the fact of this being the only place where the Roman notation is illustrated, certain writers have concluded that Boethius invented it—a supposition which is utterly improbable. Boethius mentions the Roman notation, and employs it, as also does Hucbald in certain of his examples, but neither one of them explains it or gives any account of its origin. We have simply to take it for granted that the Romans transferred the letter notation of approximate pitch to their own characters instead of using Greek letters. The following example from Guido's book illustrates the appearance of the Roman notation as he uses it:
Fig. 31.
LETTER NOTATION OF GUIDO OF AREZZO, WITH DECIPHERING.
The most curious notation of which we have a record was that of the neumæ, or neumes, which were employed by the ecclesiastical writers mostly from about the sixth century to the twelfth. This writing, as will be seen from the examples hereafter given, very much resembled the curves and hooks of the modern shorthand. The learned Fétis thinks that the characters were derived from the Coptic notation, and these again from the hieratic notation of the ancient Egyptians. The neumes signified mostly intonations, upward or downward slides of the voice, and not absolute pitch.
Fig. 32.
NEUME NOTATION OF THE TENTH CENTURY.
There are no clefs or other indications of the key, and it is little better than sheer guesswork to attempt to decipher one of them, for want of some one single base mark to reckon from. Accordingly, the various commentators have rendered the old pieces in a variety of ways. It is probable that the imperfections of this notation were helped out, when it was in current use, by tradition, which appropriated certain keys to each of the principal hymns of the Church; this being understood, the singer found himself able to make something intelligible out of a notation which, without the help of traditions, would have been meaningless. From about the eleventh century the supposed meanings of the various signs of the neumes are easily to be ascertained, because tables are given by a number of writers of that period; but the earlier examples are practically undecipherable. This notation came into use partly through ecclesiastical influence, and partly owing to its being easy to write, while at the same time it occupied little space upon the page. The earlier examples, as already said, were without clefs or any means of ascertaining the key note. After a while we find them with one line representing do or fa, and the signs arranged above, below, or upon the line, at intervals approximately representing the pitch intended. Still later we find a colored line for fa, a thumb nail line traced on the parchment, but not colored, for re, and a different one for la.
Fig. 33.
NEUME NOTATION OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY, DECIPHERED BY MARTINI IN "GREGORIAN" NOTATION.
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Still later four lines were used. There were many varieties of forms of the neumes employed by the different copyists and by different nationalities, the heaviest marks of this kind being those of the Lombard-Gothic represented in [Fig. 35]. These marks were afterward written upon a four-line staff, and the note heads were derived from them.
Fig. 34.
NEUME NOTATION OF GUIDO OF AREZZO.
There were no marks whatever for duration or measure in the neumes notation, and its persistence through so long a time signifies very plainly that it was not in the line of the musical life of the world, but was a special hieratic notation made to answer for ecclesiastical purposes by the help of carefully transmitted traditions.
Fig. 35.
DECIPHERED NEUME NOTATION OF THE LATEST PERIOD.
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One of the oldest forms of this notation is that of the lament for the death of Charlemagne, an extract from which is here presented, together with its translation as given by Naumann.
Incidentally this illustration gives a fair specimen of mediæval melody of the earlier period. It dates from the tenth century.
The earliest suggestion of the staff that we have is that in the work of Hucbald already mentioned, in which he proposed to print the words in the spaces of the staff of eleven lines, placing each syllable according to its pitch ([p. 141]). The staff, in connection with neumes, as given above in [Fig. 34], probably came into use about the same time as that when Hucbald's book was written, but it was not until the days of Guido of Arezzo that the staff was employed in anything like its modern form, nor is it certain that Guido had anything to do with introducing it. In one of the manuscripts of his book letters are written upon the lines and spaces, and in another the neumes are given. The note head was not invented until some little time after his death, probably about fifty years.
Fig. 36.
NOTATION OF THE FRENCH TROUVÈRES.
By the time of Franco of Cologne, the four-lined staff with square notes had come into use, the notes having the value already assigned them in the chapter upon Franco of Cologne. (See [p. 145].) The place of fa was marked by a clef, and with some few exceptions all the musical notation from this time forward is susceptible of approximate translation. The term approximate is used above by reason of the fact that no sharps or flats were written until long after this period, but it is thought that they were occasionally interpolated by the singers quite a long time before it became customary to put them into the notation. In this way, for example, a piece of music beginning and ending on the degree appropriate to fa might be brought within the limits of the key of F by the singer changing B natural to B flat wherever it occurred. Our information in regard to this practice is extremely limited, and, in fact, rests upon two or three detached hints. The signature was not employed until some centuries later.
As already mentioned in [chapter XI], there was no measure notation for a long time after Franco's death. The data are uncertain concerning the exact time when the bar began to be used to mark the measure. Its earliest use was that of marking the end of the music belonging to a line of poetry. This is the same use as now made of the double bar in vocal music. In fact, everything points to the progressive development of music in all respects, and the development of what we might call self-consciousness in musicians, whereby each succeeding generation sought to place upon record a greater number of particulars concerning their music, and to leave less and less to accident or tradition. This progress has gone on until the present time, when two particulars of our music are exactly recorded—the pitch and the rhythm. The exact relation of every tone to the key note is ascertainable from our musical notation, and the precise degree of rhythmic importance appertaining to each tone according to its place in measure and in the larger rhythms. We are still lame in the matter of expression, and in pianoforte music also in regard to the application of the pedals. Here our notation affords only a few detached suggestions. If the master works of the modern school could be noted for expression as completely as for pitch and rhythm, the labor of acquiring musical knowledge would be very greatly diminished.
The four-line staff has remained in use in the Catholic Church until the present time, and with it the square notes. It is generally called Gregorian, and by many is supposed to have been invented by Gregory the Great; but as a matter of fact, about six centuries elapsed after his death before this square-note notation came into use. The five-line staff came into use about 1500. Information is wanting as to the causes which led to its adoption in preference to the four-line notation so long in use. The clef for do (C clef) remained in use until very lately, and is still used by many strict theorists, being written upon the first line for the soprano, the fourth line for the tenor, the third line for the alto. The G clef, also, when first introduced, was often written upon the third or the first line; the F clef, moreover, was not definitely established on the fourth line until toward 1700. In the scores of Palestrina's work, now published in complete form, there are pieces written with the soprano in the G clef upon the first line, the alto in the C clef upon the second line, the tenor in the C clef upon the fourth line, and the bass in the F clef upon the third line. This, while affording the eye two familiar clefs, the treble and the bass, places them in such a way as to practically make it necessary for the modern reader to transpose every note of the composition in all the parts, and, in fact, to effect a transposition for each part upon principles peculiar to itself.
The progress of classification is distinctly seen in the use of seven letters instead of fifteen, affording a tacit recognition of the most essential underlying facts of harmony—the equivalence of octaves. The staff, however, affords the eye no assistance at this point, since the octaves of notes occupy relatively entirely different positions upon it, the octave of a space being invariably a line, and the octave of a line a space. Moreover, the octave of a bass line is always very differently located when it falls upon the treble staff, and, vice versa, the octave of a treble note falling in the bass is very differently placed. If a notation had to be made anew it would no doubt facilitate matters to make use of a staff so planned as to bring out the equivalence of octaves more perfectly. A recent American designer, Mrs. Wheeler, has proposed a double staff of six lines, divided into two groups of three, for the treble and bass, thus presenting for the piano score four groups of three lines each, separated by smaller or larger intervals. Upon such a staff every tone would fall in the same place upon the three lines in every octave, the octave of the first line of the lower three would be the first line of the second three, and so on.
This, however, is to anticipate. The smaller rhythmic divisions of the measure were very little used in the old music which, if not sung in slow time, was at least written in long notes, and the smaller varieties of notes are the invention of a period perhaps rather later than that at which we have now arrived. They belong to the elaborate rhythmic construction of the music of Händel, Bach, Scarlatti and Haydn.
CHAPTER XVI.
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. THE VIOLIN,
ORGAN, ETC.
I.
URING the entire period covered by the division of the story with which we have been now for some time dealing, the influences operating upon the tonal sense in the direction of harmonic perception had also been highly stimulative to the sense of melody. All the devices of counterpoint, with their two, three and four tones of the moving voice against one of the cantus fermus, were so many incitations in the direction of melodic cleverness. This influence was still further strengthened by the constant effort of the composer to impart to each voice as characteristic an individuality of movement as possible. Hence there is a distinct gain in smoothness of melody, and there are occasional appearances of truly expressive quality in this part of the music, even in the most elaborate of the contrapuntal compositions. Meanwhile the various forms of popular minstrelsy, whose general course we have already traced, were powerfully appealing to this part of the musical endowment of the hearers. But the great means of cultivating an ear for melody, both in players and hearers, was the violin, which, contemporaneously with the present point of our story, had reached its mature form and nearly all of its tonal powers. In fact, the tonal education of the mediæval musicians had been carried forward in several directions by the instruments in use. The harp and its influence upon the development of chord perceptions have already received attention, but there was another instrument which, during the period subsequent to about 1400, exerted even a more powerful influence—I mean the lute. The lute and the violin appear in crude forms at nearly the same time in Europe. The violin was the instrument of the north, the lute of the south. Later they move together geographically, sharing the popular suffrages. By the time of Palestrina the lute had come to its full powers and most complete form. Within twenty years after the death of Palestrina orchestral music started upon the career which has never since stopped, the violin at the head of the forces, thanks to the insight of the great musical genius, Monteverde.
The lute belongs to the same class of instruments as the guitar, differing from that, however, in important details of construction. It has a pear-shaped body, composed of narrow pieces of bent wood glued together; the sounding board is flat, and of fir. The neck is longer or shorter, according to the variety of lute. It was strung with from eight to eleven strings, which in the east were of silk, but in Europe were catgut down to the end of the seventeenth century, when spun strings were substituted for the bass. The finger board was marked by frets, indicating the places at which the strings should be stopped. There were four or more of the longest strings which were not upon the finger board, and were never stopped. They were used for basses. Melodically the instrument had little power, although its tone was gentle and sweet. Its influence, like that of the guitar of the present time, was in the direction of simple harmony, mainly restricted to the nearest chords of the key. The essential point in which the construction of the lute differed from that of the guitar, was in the back, which in the latter is flat, so that ribs are indispensable for preserving the rigidity of the body against the pull of the strings. The lute body is very solid, from the mode of its construction involving an application of the principle of the arch. The standard appearance of the lute was the following:
Fig. 37.
THE LUTE IN ITS STANDARD FORM.
[From Grove's Dictionary.]
The stringing and tuning varied much in different periods. According to Prætorius, the lute had four open strings tuned according to the scale in a below. Later, a G was added above and below, and the tuning was that at b.
Another authority—Baron—gives a tuning for an "eleven-course" lute, as follows:
The F below the bass staff had ten frets, G eleven, and each of the highest six strings twelve frets. The instrument thus had a compass of three octaves and a half from the C below the bass. All the strings were in pairs, two to each unison, excepting the upper two, which were single. The instrument was a very troublesome one to keep in order. Mattheson, who wrote in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when the lute was still cultivated, said that a lutist of eighty years must have spent nearly sixty in tuning his instrument. The pull of the strings broke down the sounding board or belly, which had therefore to be taken off and righted once in every two or three years. The lute was derived from an Arabian or Persian instrument, of which the Arab eoud, [Fig. 24] ([p. 113]), was the latest representative.
The problem of locating the frets accurately upon the finger board was one of the causes which led to close investigation into the mathematical relation of the tones in the scale; and the directions given for placing them by various Arab and other writers afford precise and valuable information concerning their views of intonation. The lute was made in a great variety of sizes, the largest being what was called the arch lute, which was more than four feet long from bottom to the end of the neck. This was employed by Corelli for the basses of his violin sonatas, and Händel made similar use of it. A diminutive lute has come down to our own days under the name of Mandolin. It is strung with metal strings, however, and played with a plectrum, whereas the mediæval lute was played with the fingers. Monteverde employed still another variety of the lute in his orchestra, called the Chitarrone, whence our word guitar. This was a very large lute, with many strings, which were wire, and played, therefore, with a plectrum. The chitarrone in the collection at South Kensington has twelve strings upon the finger board, and eight bass strings tuned by the pegs at the top of the long neck. It was used mainly for basses. The guitar, of which a figure is omitted on account of the familiarity of the instrument, was the Spanish form of the lute, or the Spanish form which the Moorish lute took in that country.
The essential feature of the violin is the incitation of the vibration by means of the bow. We do not know when or where this art was discovered, but it is supposed to have been in the remote east, at a very early period. The argument of Fétis, that since the Sanskrit has four terms for bow, according to the material of which it was made, therefore the art of the bow must have been known before the Sanskrit ceased to be a spoken language, has little weight. For while it is true that Sanskrit was not a spoken, or, more properly, a living, language in ordinary life after about 1500 B.C., it is true, on the other hand, that it remained in use as a language of religion and of the learned down to times very recent. In that case there would necessarily be additions made to it from time to time, as new concepts came up for expression, in the same manner as additions were made to Latin during the Middle Ages, and even in modern times. Still, all the nations around Hindostan have the tradition that the art of playing music by means of a bow is very old, the Ceylonese attributing the invention to one of their kings who reigned about 5000 B.C. Their ravanastron is very crude. (See [page 72].) A similarly simple instrument is in use to the present day in many parts of the east. The Arab form of it, known as the rebec, is represented on [p. 113], [Fig. 23]. It has two strings of silk, and is played with the point downward, like a 'cello. It is not possible after this lapse of time to determine which was the original form of the violin in Europe. Very early we find the crwth in the hands of the Celtic players, as noticed in [chapter VI]. The form given in [Fig. 22] ([p. 107]) is rather late, most likely, and somewhat of a degradation, since many of the elements of the violin are wanting in it. The clumsy resonance body is of the same width all the way, preventing the depression of one end of the bow in order to avoid sounding adjacent strings. As the bridge of the crwth was nearly flat, the adjacent strings were octaves, or related in such a way that when sounding together chords were produced. Many have supposed that all the strings were sounded together at each drawing of the bow. This is not impossible, for in one of the sculptures on a capital in the old church at Boscherville in Normandy a stringed instrument is represented in which the tone is produced by a revolving bow, on the principle of the hurdy-gurdy, whereby chords must have been produced continually. (See [p. 208].) The same carving has two stringed instruments of the violin family, one held like a violin (No. 6), the other bass downward, like a 'cello (No. 1). These two figures are fragments of the same carving. They are supposed to date from about the eleventh century. Many similar representations occur, such as the following from old manuscripts.
Fig. 38.
These oval instruments had the same deficiency as the crwth, in respect to indentations at the side of the instrument, for permitting the depression of the bow. The oldest type of this instrument in use appears to have been the form known as the rebec, the Arab form, which came into Europe in the time of the crusades. According to certain authorities this was the primitive type from which our violin was derived. The form is better shown in the cut on [page 196], which is from an Italian painting of the thirteenth century.
The body of the rebec was pear-shaped. It was contemporaneous with many other forms partaking of the shape of the guitar. From this came the family of viols, which were very popular in England during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The viol differed from the violin family proper in having a flat back like a guitar, and rounded corners. The only individual of the viol family which attained to artistic development was the viol da Gamba, or bass viol, which was tuned like a lute, having six strings. This instrument was a favorite with many amateurs until late in the eighteenth century. (See [p. 197].)
Fig. 39.
ANGEL PLAYING A REBEC.
[From an Italian painting of the thirteenth century.]
Still more curious was the form of viol known as the barytone, which, in addition to an outfit of six catgut strings upon the finger board, was furnished with twenty-four wire strings, stretched close under the sounding board, where they sounded by sympathetic vibration. This was the instrument which Prince Esterhazy, Haydn's patron, so much admired, and for which Haydn wrote more than 150 compositions. Its form is shown in [Fig. 41].
Fig. 40.
VIOL DA GAMBA.
[From Reissman's "History of German Music.">[
Fig. 41.
THE BARYTONE.
It is not easy within present limits to apportion the various steps by which the violin reached its present form. The first eminent master of violins, as distinguished from small viols, was the celebrated Gaspar da Salo, who lived and worked at Brescia during the latter part of the sixteenth century. The model varies, and the sound holes are straight and flat. His violins are small and weak of tone, but his tenors and basses are much sought for. His model was followed some time later by Guarnerius. The real mastership in violin making was attained at Cremona, in Lombardy, where were many religious houses with elaborate services, and a surrounding population of wealth and artistic instinct afforded the mechanic an appreciative public. It was here early in the sixteenth century that we first find the Amati family in the person of the oldest known violin maker, Andrea, from whom Fétis quotes two instruments dated 1546 and 1551. One of them is a rebec with three strings; the other is a small violin. They are a distinct advance over the violins of the western school, but they stop very far short of the modern instrument. The tone of his instruments is clear and silvery, but not very powerful. The most eminent of the Amatis was Nicolo, 1596-1684, a son of Geronimo and grandson of Andrea. The outline is more graceful, the varnish deeper and richer, and the proportions of his instruments better calculated. His instruments have greater power and intensity of tone, and his tenors and 'cellos are very famous. But the Cremona school came to a culmination in the works of the pupil of Nicolo Amati—Antonio Stradivari, 1649-1737. This great master of the violin pursued the principles of the Amati construction down to about 1700, having then been making violins for upwards of thirty-three years. After 1700 he changed his principles of construction somewhat, and developed the grand style distinguishing his later works. He marks the culminating point of the art of violin making. It was he who perfected the model of the violin and its fittings. The bridge in its present form, and the sound holes, are cut exactly as he planned them, and no artist has discovered a possibility of improving them. His main improvements consisted (1) in lowering the height of the model—that is, the arch of the belly; (2) in making the four corner blocks more massive, and in giving greater curvature to the middle ribs; (3) in altering the setting of the sound holes, giving them a decided inclination to each other at the top; (4) in making the scroll more massive and permanent. Every violin of Stradivari was a special study, modified in various details according to the nature of the wood which he happened to have, sometimes a trifle smaller, a trifle thicker in this place or the other, or some other slight change accounted for not by pre-established theory, but by adaptation to the peculiarities of the wood in hand. According to Fétis, his wood was always selected with reference to its tone-producing qualities—the fir of the belly always giving a certain note, and the maple of the back a certain other note. These peculiarities are not regarded as fully established. The tone of the Stradivarius violin is full, musical and high-spirited. The small number now in existence are held at extremely high prices. The usual pattern is that represented in the following figure.
Fig. 42.
THE STRADIVARIUS VIOLIN.
[From Grove.]
Stradivari established his own factory about 1680, and continued to make instruments up to 1730. The violin of 1708 weighs three-quarters of a pound. Besides making violins, this eminent artist also made guitars, lutes, 'cellos and tenors. It is wholly uncertain to what extent the peculiarities of the Stradivari instruments were matters of deduction and how far accidental. But there can be no question that the average excellence of his instruments, judging from the specimens still in existence, was much greater than that of any other violin maker.
Many other eminent artists made good violins in the century and a half from the time of Andrea Amati and Gaspar da Salo to Stradivari, among the most eminent being Maggini, of Brescia, whose violins are very highly esteemed. Still, inasmuch as the finishing touches were put to the instrument by Stradivarius, we need not linger to discuss the minor makers.
II.
Before 1600 the organ had attained its maturity, and had become furnished with its distinctive characteristics as we have it at the present time. As this instrument, from the nature of its tone qualities and its peculiar limitation to serious music of grave rhythm, is naturally suited to the service of the Church, it has remained till the present day in the province where it had already firmly established itself at the time now under consideration. The origin of the organ is very difficult to ascertain. There are traces of some sort of wind instrument before the Christian era. The so-called hydraulic organ was probably one in which water was used to perfect the air-holding qualities of the wind chest, in the same manner as now in gas holders. One of the earliest mediæval references to organs is to that sent King Pepin, of France, father of Charlemagne, in 742 by Constantine, emperor of Byzantium at that time. This instrument, says the old chronicler, had brass pipes, blown with bellows bags; it was struck with the hands and feet. It was the first of this kind seen in France.
Prætorius says that the organ which Vitellianus set in church 300 years before Pepin, must have been the small instrument of fifteen pipes, for which the wind was collected in twelve bellows bags.
According to Julianus, a Spanish bishop who flourished in 450, the organ was in common use in churches at that time. In 822 an organ was sent to Charlemagne by the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, made by an Arabian maker. This instrument was placed in a church at Aix-la-Chapelle. There were good organ builders in Venice as early as 822, and before 900 there was an organ in the cathedral at Munich. In the ninth century organs had become common in England, and in the tenth the English prelate, St. Dunstan, erected one in Malmesbury Abbey, of which the pipes were of brass. The instruments of that time were extremely crude.
Fig. 43.
[From Franchinus Gaffurius, "Theorica Musica," Milan, 1492.]
From this time on there are many authentic remains in the way of treatises on organ building and description of organs. The essential elements of this instrument consist of pipes for producing sound, of which a complete set, one pipe for each key of the keyboard, is called a stop; bellows and wind chest for holding the wind, sliders or valves for admitting it to the pipes, and keys for controlling the valves.
In his studies for a history of musical notation, Dr. Hugo Riemann quotes an extract from an anonymous manuscript of the tenth century, in which the author gives directions for a set of organ pipes. "Take first," he says, "ten pipes of a proper dimension and of equal length and size. Divide the first pipe into nine parts; eight of these will be the length of the second. Dividing the length of this again into nine parts, eight of these will be the proper length of the third; dividing the first pipe into four parts, three of them will be the length of the fourth; taking the first pipe as three parts, two of them will be the length of the fifth; eight-ninths of this again will give the proper length of the sixth; eight-ninths of this, the length of the seventh; one-half the first, the length of the eighth, or octave." This gives a major scale, with the Pythagorean third, consisting of two great steps, which was too sharp to be consonant. The semitone between the third and the fourth is too small, as is also that between the seventh and eighth. The modern way of making the pipes of smaller diameter as they become shorter, had evidently not been thought of. Nevertheless, these directions are very important, since they throw positive light upon the tuning of the various intervals, the pipe lengths and proportions affording accurate determinations of the musical relations intended.
Fig. 44.
PORTABLE ORGAN FROM THE PROCESSION IN HONOR OF MAXIMILIAN I.
[From Prætorius' "Syntagma Musica," about 1500 A.D.]
The early organs were furnished with slides which the organist pulled out when he wished to make a pipe speak, and pushed back to check its utterance. The date of the invention of the valve is uncertain, but it must have been about as soon as the power of the instrument was increased by the addition of the second or third stop. Before this, however, and perhaps for some little time after, there were many organs in use, which were committed to the diaphony of Hucbald, having in place of the diapason three ranks of pipes, speaking an octave and the fifth between. Each of these combined sounds was treated in the same way as simple ones are on other instruments, and if chords were attempted upon them the effect must have been hideous indeed; but it is probable that at this time the notes were played singly, and not in chords, or at most in octaves. We do not know the date at which this style of organ building ceased, but it is probably before the thirteenth century. There is a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the Royal Library at Madrid, stating that the clavier at that epoch comprised as many as thirty-one keys, and that the larger pipes were placed on one side, and small pipes in the center, the same as now. The earliest chromatic keyboards known are those in the organ erected at Halberstadt cathedral in 1361. This instrument had twenty-two keys, fourteen diatonics and eight chromatics, extending from B natural up to A; and twenty bellows blown by ten men. Its larger pipe B stood in front, and was thirty-one Brunswick feet in length and three and a half feet in circumference. This note would now be marked as a semitone below the C of thirty-two feet. In this organ for the first time a provision was made for using the soft stop independently of the loud one. This result was obtained by means of three keyboards. The keys were very wide, those of the upper and middle keyboards measuring four inches from center to center. The sharps and flats were about two and a half inches above the diatonic keys, and had a fall of about one and a quarter inches. The mechanical features of the organ were very greatly improved during the next century, but it was not until the old organ in the Church of St. Ægidien in Brunswick that the sharps and naturals were combined in one keyboard in the same manner as at present. The keys were still very large, the naturals of the great manual being about one and three-quarters inches in width. It was to the organ at Halberstadt that pedals were added in 1495, but no pipes were assigned to them. They merely pulled down the lower keys of the manual.
Fig. 45.
BELLOWS BAGS IN THE ORGAN AT HALBERSTADT, AND METHOD OF BLOWING.
[Prætorius.]
Some time before the beginning of the seventeenth century the organ had acquired nearly the entire variety of tone that it has ever had. The mechanism was rude, no doubt, and the voicing perhaps imperfect. The tuning was by the unequal system, throwing the discords into remote keys as much as possible. In Michael Prætorius' "Syntagma Musica," the great source of information upon this part of the history (published at Wolfenbüttel, 1618), he describes a number of large organs. Among them he mentions the organ in the Church of St. Mary at Danzig, built in 1585, having three manuals and pedal; there were fifty-five stops. The balance must have been very bad, since there were in the great organ three stops of sixteen feet, and only three of eight feet. There was a mixture having twenty-four pipes to each key, besides a "zimbel" in the same manual, having three ranks.
Prætorius also gives many other specifications of large organs of three manuals, some with dates, some without. They belong mostly to the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the number indicates unmistakably the interest awakened in this part of the musical furnishing of the large churches. Many points in these organs were imperfect, but the foundation had been laid, and the general character of the subsequent building settled. There was also a beginning of virtuosity upon the organ, but this will come up for consideration at a later point in the narrative.
Fig. 46.
SCULPTURED HEAD OF COLUMN, FOUND IN THE RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF ST. GEORGE, AT BOSCHERVILLE, IN NORMANDY.
ELEVENTH CENTURY.
(1) Three-stringed viol or rebec. (2) Two persons playing the organistrum, a stringed instrument vibrated by means of a circular bow or wheel, like the hurdy-gurdy. (3) Pandean pipes. (4) Apparently a small harp. (5) Psaltery. (6) Rotta or crwth. (7) Acrobat. (8) Harp. (9), (10) Instruments of percussion, perhaps bells.
