The final scale was the triumph of the mathematicians, they gained their ideal. Beyond this, however, nothing was accomplished,—nothing for actual Music. Harmony was not discovered, no great composer arose, certain lyrists and auloi-players we know of, whose deeds excited enthusiasm, but in what kind of display their art consisted no evidence exists, beyond the music to a few hymns, the melodic phrases of which do not commend themselves to us as examples of musical genius or talent. The irresistible charms exercised by the citharists upon the multitudes assembled to hear them, whether they sang by rule or improvised their melodies must be attributable in the main to the character of the singer’s voice, combined with the purport of the words sung. When with the modern knowledge of musical instruments we examine the nature of those which they had in their command, we have every reason to doubt the practical application of those fine distinctions of the pitches of the musical notes insisted upon by their learned theorists. The instruments simply could not give them, the exactness was beyond their staying and playing powers. The strings of a lyre had not the delicate permanence of pitch requisite for such claims, and certainly the flutes could not have rendered intervals so accurate. To set the intervals by bridges on the Kanon or monochords, by patient adjustment to marked divisions, was quite another matter, a mental recreation.
The trophy secured in the long march of music the thousand upon thousand years is the simple diatonic scale of five major tones and two semitones,—that is all. Up to the setting in of the Christian era that was the utmost attainment of the human race in the art of music, two formal tetrachords with a disjunct tone between; and if you will think of it this one fact has a mighty significance. What instinct of the race brought out this particular selection and arrangement, what in-dwelling demand of the ear impelled the choice, apparently from earliest impulses, we cannot tell,—there it is—the bed-rock upon which our system of harmony is founded; and the curiosity of the thing is that other races have for ages settled down upon a pentatonic system and still manifest an inborn aversion to harmony. We adjudge tones by means of calculated vibrations, ascertained by mechanism, the Greeks made their determinations by the measuring of strings, the artist is always satisfied by the verdict of the ear.
To have established a tetrachord, and after centuries of intellectual strife to have secured a double tetrachord forming merely a simple scale of one octave, and that, the scale of A minor, may seem a small matter as a record of human history and of mental achievement. There is a saying of Aristotle which will justify a more inspiriting estimate,—the philosopher wrote,—
“The true nature of a thing is whatsoever it becomes when the process of its development is complete.”
To use a familiar illustration, expressing potentiality,—As the oak lies in the acorn, so all the after developments of our European music, their beauty, grandeur, massiveness, lie in that little scale of A minor; repeat it in transpositions of pitch from each note, repeat it in duplications above and below, and we know that we have therein the whole range of tones comprehensible by the human ear. Mr. W. Chappell, it is true, shews that the Greeks had no major scale, yet all conceivable scales are there, that one being the plasmic germ of all.
The process of the development of music from the reed pipe and from the string of a bow may seem insignificant as a subject of enquiry, but the philosopher will not think so. There is an apt parallel or analogy in “wheat”—“the staff of life,” which I cannot omit reference to. Wheat was not found in the predynastic tombs of Egypt nor was it indigenous to that land, but was introduced into the Nile valley from the East. De Candole in his botanical researches, “The Origin of Cultivated Plants,” has shewn that the indigenous home of wheat was in the western slopes of the Persian mountains. Thence the cereal has spread in the course of ages over the whole earth. To this centre of human origin, to Iran and Media (now called Persia) the indications of my search all point for the source of music, here in this primal region the rude beginnings of the art of music were first heard, and the sounds thereof have gone out into all lands.
Greece, as was fitting, has occupied a large share of attention in these pages, her history seems a part of ours; her heroes are our heroes, her philosophers our philosophers, her poets our poets. The names of Homer and Pindar have come down the great highway of time, hailed and recognised as the names of chief Masters in Song, givers to whom the world is indebted; yet I think that to the man in the street who cares for music, there are two other names that would come to mind to stand first as the representatives of Greek song,—Sappho and Anacreon,—the man may not have known even the sound of the language in which they sung, yet English Song has made these names household words.
So when I see Sappho with her lyre pictured on the vases, and memory revives her story, or when, on an amphora, I see Anacreon depicted, trudging along, with his lyre slung on a stick across his shoulder, like a rustic traveller carrying his day’s provender, and with his dog following,—they appeal to me as familiar friends. Then, too, I remember how a Greek poet apostrophised Anacreon,—
O lover of the lovely lyre,
Who as thy sweet will sped,