Polyphonic music was long in growing. To understand clearly, one must examine it from its very beginning in Greek magadizing, referred to in Lesson V. Music for many centuries was, in all its most important phases, entirely vocal. The ancients, probably because of the crude forms of their instruments, valued the human voice as the most suitable means of expressing the feelings through music, thus causing the peculiar phenomenon of the extremely late development of dissonances. While instruments can easily perform even the harshest of the dissonances, it is almost impossible for untrained voices to sing other than the more simple consonances. For this reason, the dependence on the voice as practically the only medium for the expression of musical ideas forced the cultivators of music to use the simple consonances of the octave, fourth and fifth. In its earliest stages music was entirely melodic and was limited to the use of one distinct melody, so that, no matter how many were singing, but one melody was employed. Soon arose the problem of accommodating the voices of boys and men to the same melody. It was manifestly impossible to have men and boys sing in unison, because of the difference in the compass of their voices; so the Greeks hit upon the plan of causing them to sing in octaves, a plan which science sanctioned, for had not Pythagoras proven that the octave, after the unison, was the most perfect consonance? This the Greeks called Magadizing. Why the Greeks, knowing as they did the other consonances, did not magadize in the fourth and fifth cannot be explained; the only argument that can be advanced is, that their melodies were so limited in range that the voice of any man, whether tenor or bass, could without difficulty reach the highest or lowest tones of a melody in unison. While magadizing among the Greeks cannot be counted as a great advance toward the realm of polyphony and harmony, yet it was the first important step in the evolution, and as such, is important. So far, the voices singing simultaneously, though at a different pitch, and moving together in similar time values, followed monophonic methods.
Organum the Next Step.—Further development did not take place until the destruction of Greek civilization had occurred and a sufficient lapse of time had allowed the Christian Church to establish itself: in a religious sense, in the hearts of the people, and in a permanent sense, by building churches and monasteries. In these monasteries we find the next great advance in magadizing, though now under the name of Diaphony or Organum. The musical learning of the time was painfully inadequate for the uses to which it was put. There remained in existence only a few of the Greek scientific scales, and those woefully distorted in form; no simple notation or musical literature; and in all probability, only a tradition in regard to the melodic construction and magadizing. Perhaps this was just as well, however, for the problem confronting these monks differed greatly from that solved by the Greeks. In the monasteries only men’s voices were used, and these without special regard to the compass. The problem was this: Given a melody to sing, using men’s voices of every range, from high tenor to low bass, without using independent parts. The difficulties were two in number: they had no conception of independent parts, and their melodies were of greater range than those of the Greeks, thus forbidding the practice of singing entirely in the octave or unison. The solution was reached in the following way, as indicated in the preceding lesson: If the octave, unison, fourth and fifth were consonances, why not sing in the fourth and fifth as well as in the unison and octave? They had as yet no idea of singing two distinct melodies at the same time, but thought only of singing the same melody in the most consonant or agreeable manner. The result was music which sounded like the following example; while it was crude and harsh, it gave every monk opportunity to sing simultaneously the same melody, no matter what the range of his voice:
About the close of the ninth century, as we learned in Lesson VI, at the time of Otger or Odo, an abbot of Provence, in France, organizing had so developed as to be written for as many as four parts, using, however, only the perfect consonances, as the next example will show. In reality there are but two parts, as the two lower voices double the upper.
Secular Organum.—The most remarkable advance is shown in a form called Secular Organum, probably because of some relation to the Folk-song and the common people. This form showed the use not only of perfect consonances but of the imperfect consonance of the third; and, wonderful to relate, of a second, though only in a passing sense. That such a discord should be used is a remarkable commentary on the inherent sense of harmony which seemed to exist naturally, even at that early day. This form may have had its germ in the drone bass supplied by the bagpipe, which figured in the music of the people.
