Fig. 153.—Top of an Hour-Glass, engraved and gilt. (A French Work of the Sixteenth Century.)
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.
Music in the Middle Ages.—Musical Instruments from the Fourth to the Thirteenth Century.—Wind Instruments: the Single and Double Flute, the Pandean Pipes, the Reed-pipe, the Hautboy, the Flageolet, Trumpets, Horns, Olifants, the Hydraulic Organ, the Bellows-Organ.—Instruments of Percussion: the Bell, the Hand-bell, Cymbals, the Timbrel, the Triangle, the Bombulum, Drums.—Stringed Instruments: the Lyre, the Cithern, the Harp, the Psaltery, the Nable, the Chorus, the Organistrum, the Lute and the Guitar, the Crout, the Rote, the Viola, the Gigue, the Monochord.
About 384, St. Ambrose, who built the Cathedral of Milan, regulated the mode in which psalms, hymns, and anthems should be performed, by selecting from Greek chants those melodies he considered best adapted to the Latin Church.
In 590, Gregory the Great, in order to remedy the disorder which had crept into ecclesiastical singing, collected all that remained of the ancient Greek melodies, with those of St. Ambrose and others, and formed the antiphonary which is called the Centonien, because it is composed of chants of his selection. Henceforward, ecclesiastical chanting obtained the name of Gregorian; it was adopted into the whole of the Western Church, and maintained its position almost unaltered down to the middle of the eleventh century.
It is thought that originally the music of the antiphonary was noted in accordance with Greek and Roman usage—a notation known as the Boethian, from the name of Boethius the philosopher, by whom we are informed that in his time (that is, about the end of the fifth century) the notation was composed of the first fifteen letters of the alphabet.
The sounds of the octave were represented—the major by capital letters, the minor by small letters, as follows:—