THE NETHERLAND MASTERS
HE improvisatore nursed the infancy of both poetry and music. The latter did not grow to the stature of an art until the rude improvisations of its early guardians gave way to the systematic compositions of the Netherland masters. Systematic composition, however, presupposes the existence of three fundamental elements, none of which had assumed tangible form in the earliest days recorded in musical history. These elements are harmony, notation and measure. Huckbald, a Benedictine Monk of St. Armand in Flanders, is credited with being the first to formulate rules for harmony about 895 A. D. His ideas were crude and their results disagreeable to the modern ear. He used chiefly parallel fourths and fifths, but he employed another freer style in which a melody moved flexibly above a fixed bass—the earliest form of pedal point. Harmony was not invented by Huckbald, but he must be honored as the writer of the first treatise on the subject. The field once opened up was industriously cultivated, and by the time the era of the Netherland school began, had been productive of a rich harvest. Notation was also a plant of slow growth, but the employment of four lines in a staff, together with the spaces, was introduced by Guido of Arezzo, who died in 1050. The formulation of rules for measure was the work of Franco of Cologne, who flourished 1200 A. D. He adopted four characters to represent sounds of different lengths. These notes were the longa,
; the brevis,
; the duplex longa,