A Popular History of the Art of Music / From the Earliest Times Until the Present

by W. S. B. Mathews

HERE is very little in the Roman writers upon music that is of interest. Macrobus, an expert grammarian and encyclopedist living at Rome at the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century, wrote a commentary upon the song of Scipio, in which he quotes from Pythagoras concerning the music of the spheres: "What hear I? What is it which fills my ears with sounds so sweet and powerful? It is the harmony which, formed of unequal intervals, but according to just proportion, results from the impulse and movements of the spheres themselves, and of which the sharp sound tempered by the grave sound produces continually varied concerts." (Cicero, "De Republica," VI.) Commenting upon this passage, Macrobus says that Pythagoras was the first of the Greeks who divined that the planets and the sidereal universe must have harmonic properties such as Scipio spoke of, on account of their regular movements and proportions to each other. We find in the writings of Macrobus an advance upon the musical theories of Ptolemy. He shows that contrary to the doctrine of Aristoxenus there is not a true half tone, and that the relation 8:9 does not admit of being equally divided. In place of the three symphonies of the octave, fourth and fifth, mentioned by his predecessors, he makes five, including the octave and the double octave. "Such," he says, "is the number of symphonies that we ought to be astonished that the human ear can comprehend them."

Another of the Roman writers upon music was Martinus Capella. His work is called the "Nuptials of Philologus and Mercury" ("De Nuptiis Philologiæ et Mercurii"). The little upon music which the book contains was only an abridgment of the Greek treatise of Aristides Quintilianus.

The most important of the earliest treatises upon music, and by far the most famous, is that of Boethius, as it is also the most systematic. The following summary is from Fétis' "History of Music," Vol. IV:

"Born at Rome between 470 and 475, Boethius made at home classical studies, and went, they say, to Athens itself, where he studied philosophy with Proclus. He was of the age of about thirty-five when, in 510, he was made president of the senate. Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, called him to himself, on account of his reputation for wisdom and virtue; he confided to him an important position in the palace, and intrusted to him many important diplomatic negotiations. Boethius did nothing which was not to his credit, but this made him only the more hostile to the interests of the courtiers; he was therefore overthrown and cast into prison, where he composed his 'Consolations of Philosophy.' He was put to death 524 or 526."

Boethius' treatise on music is divided into five books. It is a vast repertory of the knowledge of the ancients relative to this art. Its doctrine is Pythagorean. The first book is divided into thirty-four chapters. In the first he develops the thought of Aristotle, that music is inherent in human nature. He there renders the text of a decree which the Ephori of Sparta rendered against Timotheus of Miletus, but which better critics have regarded as fictitious. The second chapter establishes that there are three sorts of music: the worldly, which is universal harmony; the human, which has its source in the intelligence, which reunites and co-ordinates the elements; finally, the third kind is artificial, made by instruments of different sorts. The chapters following treat of the voice as the source of music; of consonances and their proportions; of the division of the voice and its compass; of the perception of sounds by the ear; of the correspondence of the semitones; of the division of the octave; of tetrachords; of the three genera—enharmonic, chromatic and diatonic; of intervals of sounds compared to those of the stars; of the musical and different faculties.

All the second book, divided into thirty chapters, is speculative, and devotes itself to the different kinds and relations of intervals, according to the different systems of theoreticians. The third book, in seven chapters, is a continuation of the subject of the second. It is particularly employed in refuting the errors of Aristoxenus. The fourth book, in eighteen chapters, is entirely relative to the practice of the art, particularly to the notation. It is in this book that Boethius makes known the Latin notation of the first fifteen letters of the alphabet without preparation, without the slightest explanation, and as if he had done something which any one concerned with music at Rome would readily understand, as a matter of course. There is not one word to show that it was new, or that he claimed the invention. It was undoubtedly the usual notation.

The fifth book of this treatise has for its object the determination of intervals by the divisions of a monochord, and a refutation of the systems of Ptolemy and Archytas. We here find this proposition, remarkable if we recall the time when the author lived, that: "If the ear did not count the vibrations, and did not seize the inequalities of movement of two sounds resonating by percussion, the intelligence would not be able to render account of them by the science of numbers." After Boethius there is nothing in Roman literature concerning music. Notwithstanding that Italy fell under the dominion of the Goths and Lombards after 476, it preserved Greek traditions in music to the end of the sixth century.

Cassiodorus, who lived still in 562, aged almost 100 years, left a souvenir for music in the fifth chapter of his treatise on the "Discipline of Letters and Liberal Arts" (De Artibus ac Disciplinis Litterarum). He enumerates the fifteen modes of Alypius as not having been abandoned, and establishes them in their natural order, calling them tones. Here also we find the classification of six kinds of symphonies, about 300 years after this enumeration, first realized in notes by Hucbald. He gives a series of fourths and of fifths, occasionally for two voices, occasionally with the octave added. These are the most important of all the things concerning music to be found in that part of Cassiodorus' book dedicated to music.

In the seventh century the first, or perhaps the only author who wrote upon music was Bishop Isidore, of Seville. In his celebrated treatise on the etymologies or origins ("Isidori Hispaniensis Episcopi Etymologiarum, Libri XX") divided into twenty books, chapters XIV to XXII of the third book relate to music. These are the chapters published by the Abbé Gerbert, under the name of "Sentences de Musique," in the collection of ecclesiastical writers upon this art, after a manuscript in the imperial library at Vienna. While many of these chapters contain nothing more than generalities and pseudo historical anecdotes concerning the inventors of this art, this is not the case with the nineteenth chapter, the sixth in Gerbert's edition, for here he speaks "Of the First Division of Music, called Harmony." The definitions given by St. Isidore have a precision, a clearness not found in other writers of the Middle Ages. "Harmonic music," says he, "is at the same time modulation of the voice, and concordance of many simultaneous sounds. Symphony is the order established between concordant sounds, low and high, produced by the voice, the breath or by percussion. Concordant sounds, the highest and the lowest, agree in such way that if one of them happens to dissonate it offends the ear. The contrary is the case in diaphony, which is the union of dissonant sounds." Here we find St. Isidore employing the term diaphony in its original sense, as a Greek word, meaning dissonance—a sense exactly opposite to that of Jean de Muris.