Songs like 'Tom o' Bedlam,' mad-songs they were called, were very commonly sung in England in the 17th century. The tune and words of the original 'Tom a Bedlam' are to be found in Chappell, Vol. I. p. 175. Its date is some time before 1626,[6] and verse 1 begins, 'From the hagg and hungrie Goblin,' and the whole is as full of ejaculations of 'Poor Tom' as Act III. of Lear.
The last sentence has yet another play on the double meaning of 'divisions.' A few lines further on Edmund explains what kind of 'divisions' he expects to follow the eclipses—namely, 'between the child and the parent ... dissolutions of ancient amities; divisions in state,' etc. But the very use of the word in the quoted lines brings its musical meaning into his head, for he promptly carries off his assumed blindness to Edgar's presence by humming over his 'fa, sol, la, mi.' [Burney, Hist., Vol. III. p. 344, has a sensible observation on this passage—that Edgar alludes to the unnatural division of parent and child, etc., in this musical phrase, which contains the augmented fourth, or mi contra fa, of which the old theorists used to say 'diabolus est.']
Guido d'Arezzo (or Aretinus), in his Micrologus (about 1024), named the six notes of the Hexachord (e.g., C, D, E, F, G, A), thus—Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La. These were the first syllables of certain words in the Hymn for the feast of St John Baptist, the words and tune of which are in Hawkins, p. 163.
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"Ut queant laxis Re-sonare fibris Mi-ra gestorum Fa-muli tuorum Sol-ve polluti La-bii reatum, Sancte Joannes." |
A rough translation of which is—
'That thy servants may be able with free hearts to sound forth the wonders of thy deeds; release us, O Holy John, from the guilt of a defiled lip.'
In the ancient tune of this verse, the notes assigned to the syllables in capitals were successively those of the scale, C, D, E, F, G, A, and these same syllables were still used in singing in the 16th century. It was noticed, however, that the scale could be easily expressed by fewer names, and accordingly we find Christopher Sympson (1667) saying, in his 'Compendium,' that Ut and Re are 'superfluous, and therefore laid aside by most Modern Teachers.' In his book, the whole scale of eight notes is named thus—Fa, Sol, La, Fa, Sol, La, mi, Fa. A modern Tonic Solfaist would understand this arrangement quite differently. C, D, E would be called Do (instead of Ut), Re, Mi; then would follow F, G, A, under the names Fa, Sol, La; and the 'leading note' [top note but one] would be called Ti (instead of Si); the octave C beginning once more with Do.
The reader will remember that the tonal relation of C, D, E is exactly the same as that of the next three notes, F, G, A—viz., C—D, a tone; D—E, a tone; and similarly with F—G, G—A. Therefore the two blocks of three notes (which are separated by a semi-tone) might have the same names—viz., Fa, sol, la. Thus we have the first six notes of the scale, Fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la. There only remains one note, the 'leading note,' the B; and this, in Sympson, is named Mi. So the principal thing in the sol-fa-ing of a passage was to 'place the Mi,' or, as we should now put it, to find 'what key' it is in. Thus, in the key of C, Mi is in B: in G, Mi is in F sharp: in F, Mi is in E, and so on, the remaining six notes being named Fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la, as explained above.
Edmund's 'Fa, Sol, La, Mi,' therefore, corresponds to F, G, A, B; or C, D, E, F sharp; or B flat, C, D, E, etc.; according to the pitch taken by the singer.