But up to this time all the notes were the same; no difference in length was indicated, and no one who had not heard the melody could sing it from them. Presently the breve, semibreve, and dot, as shown in Fig. 6, began to appear, and thus, little by little, our own system of notation was approached. In 1600 an Italian named Franco de Colonia established a system of time, and in or about 1600 the first idea of a score originated.
Fig. 6.
Do you know what a score is? I was at a concert rehearsal in Paris one day, when a very knowing-looking young person of about fourteen, with a great deal of fur and velvet on, and a large roll of music, came in with her governess, and sat down near me. The orchestra were going to give part of Faust, with some singing, and this pert young lady turned to her governess, saying,
"Don't you want the score, Miss ——," and forthwith she handed her the programme.
Now I think it would have been much wiser for this small person to have first been sure what a score was before she talked of it. The origin of the score was in 1600. A composer named Peri published his Euridice, and he put the instrumental accompaniment below the vocal part. Then he scored bars through the stave, connecting the words and music. Hence we call the music and words together the score of the work.
As music began to progress—as oratorios, masses, and operas were written—it became necessary to establish a definite system of time. It was done gradually; but at last, in Bach's day, it was a carefully arranged science; so many beats to the bar, so much value to each note.
Here we have finally a whole well-disciplined little army of crotchets and quavers and minims and semibreves, and all the big and little notes.
A grand science has come from those first queer little attempts at written music, which we find it so hard to understand to-day, and yet how grateful we ought to be to the patient people of the seventh and tenth centuries who tried to record some of their musical feelings!
When you sit down to your first harmony lesson, try to remember what a wonderful story those little black notes could tell. It is not dull or colorless work. Listen to the word "allegro," which comes in your first piece, I am sure. What does it make you think of? Some long-ago Christmas-tide, when all music was written to glorify God, when out upon the night in the dim cathedral aisles were poured forth the praises of the Infant Lord.