The Art of Music

A Comprehensive Library of Information
for Music Lovers and Musicians

Editor-in-Chief

DANIEL GREGORY MASON

Columbia University

Associate Editors

EDWARD B. HILL LELAND HALL
Harvard University Past Professor, Univ. of Wisconsin

Managing Editor
CÉSAR SAERCHINGER
Modern Music Society of New York

In Fourteen Volumes
Profusely Illustrated

NEW YORK
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC
1915

From the Breviary of King René,
a 15th century manuscript in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal.

Department Editors:

LELAND HALL
AND
CÉSAR SAERCHINGER

Introduction by

C. HUBERT H. PARRY, Mus. Doc.

Director Royal College of Music, London.
Formerly Professor of Music, University of Oxford, etc.

BOOK I

THE PRE-CLASSIC PERIODS

NEW YORK
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC

Copyright, 1915, by
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC, Inc.
[All Rights Reserved]

CONTENTS OF THE SERIES

THE ART OF MUSIC

So many and varied are the paths of musical enjoyment and profit opened out in the following pages, so different and sometimes so conflicting are the types of art represented there, that the timid or inexperienced reader may well pause at the threshold, afraid of wholly losing his way in such a labyrinth. He may hesitate to trust himself in so unfamiliar a landscape without first seeing some sort of small-scale plan of the ground, which, omitting the confusing details, shows in bold relief only the larger and essential divisions—the ‘lay of the land.’ Such a plan it is the object of this introduction to furnish.

Of the two most general types of reader, the professional musician and the amateur or lover of music, the first is least in need of such assistance. His keen interest in his specialty will naturally determine the order of his reading; he will look first for all he can find about that, and later work out from that centre in various directions, and meanwhile the plan peculiar to this work of assembling all information on a given subject contained in any of the volumes under a name or subject word in the index volume will make this process as systematic and economical of time as it is fascinating to intellectual curiosity. Thus the index volume will serve as a sort of central rotunda, so to speak, making each room in this house of information accessible from every other, and it will matter little at what point we enter. The singer may go in by Volume V, the pianist by Volume VII, the organist by Volume VI: all will eventually penetrate the entire edifice.

[Pg x]

It is, then, the music lover unfamiliar with all musical technique, and quite unspecialized in his interest, who most needs the help that these preliminary suggestions may offer. The kind of help he will want will depend, of course, on what it is he chiefly wishes to gain by his reading. Now we shall probably not go far wrong in saying that such a reader will desire, first, that general knowledge of the most important schools and the greatest individuals of music history which is not only a powerful aid to the enjoyment of music, but is nowadays coming to be considered an essential part of a liberal education. Secondly, he will wish to gain sufficient familiarity with music itself, and sufficient understanding of the instruments by which it is produced and the ways in which they influence its structure and style, to afford him the basis for sound discrimination between good, bad, and indifferent music, to develop, in short, his taste. In the third place, he will justly consider that, however abstruse and involved the theory of music may be, its fundamental principles are nevertheless accessible to the layman, and that familiarity with such principles, especially those of musical structure, affording as it will an insight into the way music is put together, is an invaluable aid to that sympathetic understanding of it which comes only to the alert and attentive listener. In a word, the music lover will demand of his reading that it instruct him historically, that it refine his taste by developing his sense of style, and that it intensify his enjoyment by showing him how to listen.

Glancing now at the table of contents, we shall see that ‘The Art of Music’ naturally divides itself into three portions, each especially suited to subserve one of these three needs of the reader. The first four volumes, historical in character, are primarily instructive. Volumes V to IX, inclusive, deal with the practical side of the art—what is sometimes called ‘applied music’—and in describing the chief media by which it is produced, such as the voice, the organ, the piano, the string quartet, the orchestra, provide general notions of what is appropriate to each. The short essays on harmony and on form in Volume XII, and many passages of explanation of similar matters scattered through all the volumes, will acquaint the student with the fundamental principles of musical theory and the standard types of musical structure, thus affording him valuable aid to appreciative listening. The three portions of the work, historical, practical, and theoretical, are finally correlated and unified by Volumes XI and XII, the Dictionary and Index, and illustrated by the musical examples in Volumes XIII and XIV.

Let us examine a little more closely the ground covered by each of these three general sections, one after another, not yet in detail—that will come only with the actual reading—but with the idea rather of getting a bird’s-eye view of the whole field in its salient masses and divisions.

The history of music is like that of other arts in being divided into schools or epochs. These are of course to a certain extent arbitrary and artificial—marked off by critics for convenience of classification—and a composer may belong to two or more schools, as Beethoven, for example, is both ‘classical’ and ‘romantic,’ without being any more aware of it than we are when our train crosses the line, say, from New York State into Massachusetts. But they are also in part natural and real, because any fruitful idea in art—such as the ‘impressionistic’ idea of light in painting, for instance—is so much greater than any one man’s capacity to grasp it that a whole generation or more of artists is needed to develop its possibilities. Such a group of artists forms what we call a ‘school’ or ‘period,’ beginning usually with pioneers whose work is crude but novel, continuing with countless workers, most of whom are after a short time completely forgotten, and culminating with one or two greatly endowed masters who gather up all the best achievements of the school in their own work and stands for posterity as its figure-heads, or in some cases engulf it entirely in their colossal shadows. Pioneers, journeymen, geniuses—that is the list of characters in the drama we call an artistic school.

If we try to outline in the roughest way the half dozen or so most important schools we can find in the entire history of music we shall get something like the following. After the long groping among the rudiments that went on through Greek and early Christian times there emerged during the middle ages a type of ecclesiastical music which, after a development of several centuries, culminated in the work of Orlando de Lasso (1520-1594), Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1524-1594), and others. This music is as primitive, archaic, and severe to our ears as the early Flemish religious pictures are to our eyes. It can be described chiefly in negatives. It did not employ instruments, but only voices in the chorus. It had no regular time-measure, but wandered on with as little definiteness of rhythm as the Latin prose to which it was set. It employed no grating harsh combinations of tones (‘dissonances’) such as make our music so stirring to the emotions, partly because they are difficult for voices, partly because the science of harmony was in its infancy, partly because the kind of expression it aimed at was that of religious peace. Each group of voices had its own melody to carry, and as there were sometimes as many as sixteen groups an extraordinarily complex web of voices or ‘parts’ was developed, to which is due the name of polyphonic (many-voiced) applied to this school. Unsuited as it is to the restless temper of the modern man, it often attained within its own limits an exquisite beauty.

With the application of this general type of art, the polyphonic, to instruments, especially the organ, new developments supervened. Dissonances were perfectly easy, and most effective, on the organ, that would have been impossible for voices. Definite metre and rhythm were gradually introduced. Above all, the many melodies of the older style to some extent gave way to the massive detached chords more suitable to the organ (because the player could grasp them by handfuls instead of having to make his fingers play hide and seek among the keys), and thus was born another great type of style, the ‘homophonic’ (one main melody, accompanied by chords rather than by other melodies). At the same time the intellectual interest was vastly increased by the use of more and more definite and recognizable bits of melody, happily called the ‘subjects’ or ‘themes’ of the composition, which could be developed and marshalled just as a writer develops and marshals his thoughts. The fugue is the arch type of this kind of composition, with its style partly polyphonic and partly homophonic, its deep thoughtfulness, its ingenuity, and its surprising variety and depth of emotional expression. Its supreme master was Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).

Despite the mixture of styles in the fugue, however, the preponderant element was still the basket-like texture of winding melodies suitable especially to voices—hence it was only in the suite, a type which developed at the same time and of which also Bach was one of the supreme masters, that the homophonic style suitable to instruments was freely worked out. Instruments mark the rhythm much more strongly than voices, so that all sorts of dance movements are particularly appropriate for them. When the rhythm is so marked, comparatively short phrases of tune stand out sharply and balance each other like the verses in a couplet of poetry. Composers soon found out how further to group these phrases in definite parts or sections, so contrasted that the whole of the short piece or ‘movement’ presented a perfectly clear, sharp impression, had a definite beginning, middle, and end—a clear scheme of form. This clearness of impression was enhanced by making only one line of melody—the ‘tune’ or ‘air,’ as we say—prominent, either subordinating all the others or doing away with them entirely in favor of an accompaniment of detached chords such as we find in a modern waltz or march. The suite, then, as it is found in its golden age, the eighteenth century, is a series of short dance tunes of strongly marked rhythm, precise in phraseology and concise in form, in the homophonic style. Among its masters may be mentioned, besides the German Bach, Couperin and Rameau in France, Corelli (violin) and Scarlatti (harpsichord) in Italy, and Handel in England.

Closely allied with the suite, indeed an offshoot from it, is the sonata, originally any piece for instruments (from sonare, to sound or play) as distinguished from a cantata for voices (from cantare, to sing). The old sonatas are essentially suites. But the generation after Bach’s, of which one of his own sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, was a guiding spirit, hit upon one of those apparently simple but immensely fruitful ideas out of which whole schools are made. It was this: Instead of coming to a stop as soon as you have outlined a single musical idea or ‘theme,’ and then merely repeating or slightly elaborating it, as was done in all the movements of the typical suite, why not embrace in the span of your thought two contrasting ideas,[1] so characterized and arranged that each should serve as the effective foil of the other? Once this notion of making a piece of music out of two contrasting themes was tried out in practice it proved to have endless potentialities. In the two hundred years that have elapsed since C. P. E. Bach’s birth in 1714 its possibilities have not been exhausted; it has shown an elasticity which has enabled it to serve equally for the embodiment of such different ideas as those of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Tschaikowsky, Brahms; it has been applied to all branches of instrumental music, extending its sway quickly from the ‘sonata,’ specifically so called, for one, two or three instruments, to the quartet, quintet, etc., for a group, to the concerto for a soloist with orchestral accompaniment, and to the overture and the symphony for full orchestra.

The purest examples of the application of this scheme to orchestral music are to be found in the first movements of the symphonies of Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), of W. A. Mozart (1756-1791), and above all of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1821), the genius in whom the classical symphony culminated. The method adopted in such movements, of which the opening allegro of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony may stand as an unsurpassable model, was, first, to present two strongly individual and contrasting musical ideas (‘themes’), the first usually more vigorous in character, the second more tender and appealing; second, to let these thoughts germinate or develop in such a way as to bring clearly forth what was at first latent in them; and, finally, to draw together the threads and complete the musical action by a restatement of the root ideas in something like their original form. The variety, the power, the subtlety, the unfailing instinct for beauty, with which Beethoven worked out the almost limitless possibilities of such a scheme can hardly be realized even dimly save by a loving study of his masterpieces, phrase by phrase, almost note by note. His symphonies are like Greek statues of the great period in their infinite variety, their perfect unity. It may seriously be doubted whether music can ever a second time attain the harmony of all its elements that it found in this supreme master—that which one of his critics has happily termed ‘the perfect balance of expression and design.’

Certain it is that immediately after him, in large measure as a result of his own example, it took a pronounced turn toward picturesqueness, toward highly personal expression, toward all that is conveniently summed up in the vague word Romanticism. Just what romanticism means it is easier to suggest by examples than to define in general terms. Franz Schubert (1797-1828), emphasizing the lyric element in orchestral music, so that his symphonies have almost the personal expressiveness of songs, is romantic. Robert Schumann (1810-1856), with his vivid short piano pieces bearing such suggestive titles as ‘Soaring,’ ‘Whims,’ ‘In the Night,’ ‘Why,’ and with his musical portraits of friends, his quotations from his own works, and other ingenious devices for stimulating our imaginations, literary and pictorial as well as musical, is romantic. Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) is romantic with his orchestral canvases of the Hebrides islands bathed in sunshine and clamored over by sea-birds, and of the delicate dances of Shakespeare’s fairies in the ‘Mid-summer Night’s Dream’; and romantic is Frédéric Chopin (1809-1849), with his nocturnes and preludes. The composers of the romantic period, in fact, embodied in the types of design they inherited from Beethoven (but practised, as a rule, with far less mastery than he) a sort of poetic suggestion of all kinds of things outside of music. Their art is essentially an art of suggestion; and, while its purely musical beauty is often great, they wish us not to rest content with the music for itself, but to regard it as a symbol of something beyond.

Once composers had begun to label, so to speak, the musical expressiveness which the classicists preferred to leave free to act upon each hearer according to his temperament and associations, certain especially literary minds among them, notably Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) and Franz Liszt (1811-1886), naturally felt impelled to carry the process a step further, to amplify and edit the label into complete ‘directions for using.’ Such ‘directions for using’ are called ‘programs,’ and the school which affects them is named ‘programmistic,’ or, by analogy with a similar school in literature, ‘realistic.’ Your typical programmist, such as Berlioz, is not satisfied with the romanticist’s mere suggestion of a subject; he demands in advance a complete bill of fare of his musical feast. When Beethoven, a classicist, deals with a human emotion—love, for instance, as in the Fifth Symphony—he aims merely to stimulate in us the most general feeling and let each of us interpret for himself; when a romanticist like Tschaikowsky writes almost equally beautiful love music he gives a fillip to our imagination by naming it an overture to ‘Romeo and Juliet’; but when Berlioz conceives his Symphonie Fantastique he must have his lover killed on the guillotine—he must even hear the knife fall. Such a theory of musical æsthetics is evidently highly dangerous, since it tends to bind shackles on the free movement of the music, and also to distract the hearer’s attention from the music to something far less vital. Nevertheless in the hands of Richard Strauss in our own day (born 1864), who seems to be the genius in which this school is to culminate, it has led to remarkable results.

We have now reviewed in highly summary fashion some of the chief schools, with their most representative masters, that may be noted in a bird’s-eye view of the history of instrumental music. As for the other [Pg xi] great branch of the art, music associated with literature, and especially its most important manifestation, the opera, classification according to artistic principles is both more difficult and less necessary, since the opera can very well be studied by countries rather than by schools. The reader will at any rate find in his study of opera that one or two clear conceptions of the national or racial character of the three peoples who have done the most important work in the operatic field, the Italians, the French, and the Germans, will help him more than æsthetic standards difficult to apply to an æsthetic hybrid which is neither drama nor music. Thus the Italian sensuousness has been both the blessing and the curse of opera in Italy: the blessing by keeping it simple and tuneful, as in so much of Rossini (1792-1868), Bellini (1802-1835), Donizetti (1798-1848), the early Verdi (1813-1901), and even such moderns as Mascagni and Leoncavallo; the curse of opening the door to all sorts of absurdities on the dramatic side, and to the abuse of the power of the singers in meaningless virtuosity. Again, the keen dramatic sense of the French has helped to minimize such absurdities in works produced by their composers or at their national opera house under their national influence, as for instance those of Gluck (1714-1787), Cherubini (1760-1842), Meyerbeer (1791-1864), and others. Finally the warmth of sentiment of the Germans, their unrivalled faculty for getting at the emotional essence of a situation and expressing it in music, must be accorded a large part in the power of the romantic operas of the German Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) and the music dramas of Richard Wagner (1813-1883). In revenge the Teutonic deficiency of dramatic sense and tolerance of tedium are to some extent accountable for those long stagnations of the action in the Wagnerian dramas which the most ardent admirers of Wagner the musician no longer deny.

[Pg xii]

In all this historical study of the earlier volumes of ‘The Art of Music’ the reader will be primarily in quest of information, his interest will be that of the scientist in facts. Even here, however, he will soon find himself discriminating the good from the bad, or from the less good, setting up standards of comparison, in a word, mingling with his purely scientific interest in facts an artistic interest in values. In all periods he will find the great man distinguished from the little by nobility, depth, and variety of thought, and by purity of style. In all ages he will discover hosts of mediocrities for one genius. He will realize that there were as many routinists in the polyphonic school, as many dry-as-dusts in the classic, as many sentimentalists in the romantic, as there are uninspired scene-painters among the programmists. He will remark what may be called the double paradox of art: first, that cheap decorativeness, empty display of merely technical skill, ‘splurge’ of all sorts, while often making music popular in its own day, has always killed it early for posterity, as for example in the case of the over-ornamented arias of Italian opera or the equally over-ornamented piano pieces of Thalberg and other early nineteenth century pianists; second, that simplicity, directness, sincerity are always at first ignored or misunderstood, and only gradually take the supreme place which belongs to them, as we see in studying such otherwise dissimilar artists as Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner, Brahms, Franck. Such observations open up the path to a true, independent, and unconventional estimate of artistic values, to the development of real taste.

It is especially in amplifying, clarifying, and solidifying this taste that the second group of volumes, dealing with the media of musical production, will be useful to the unprofessional reader. A knowledge of the construction of instruments and of the style appropriate to each, as determined by its peculiarities and exemplified [Pg xiii] in its literature, is a great aid both to the appreciation of excellence and to the detection of shoddiness. A simple example will make this clear. Every one who has watched a pianist play a waltz knows how appropriate and convenient for the piano is that kind of accompaniment which has been called the ‘dum-dum-dum’—where the left hand first sounds the bass and then strikes twice a chord completing the harmony and at the same time marking the rhythm. This is an excellent piano device, because it does these three needful things in the simplest possible way. What shall we say, however, when laziness or incompetence, writing a waltz for orchestra, borrows this piano device without change, as it does constantly in the popular music of the day? Evidently enough, what was well fitted to the piano is ridiculous for an orchestra: for here it gives the bass instruments a series of detached notes without coherence or interest, and condemns the unfortunate players who provide the middle parts to repeat an endless ‘dum-dum, dum-dum’ which outrages all musical instinct.

Or, again, we sometimes hear piano pieces in which the harmonies are arranged in solid chords, as in the hymn-tune familiar in the protestant church. Why the effect should be so singularly vapid we do not know until we think of the peculiarities of the instruments involved. Voices, especially in large groups, as in congregational singing, move slowly, sustain well, and show their quality best when disposed in broad masses. Hence the appropriateness to them of these deliberate chords. But the piano, on the contrary, sustains very poorly, achieves fullness of volume only by means of rapid utterance, and is in short at its very worst in the hymn-tune style. Piano tone requires to be split up into many facets, to be carved, so to speak; but vocal tone is like those substances, such as colored marble, which show their texture best in the block. Recently[Pg xiv] there has been much controversy as to the appropriateness of organ transcriptions of orchestral works. No doubt the organ can render the notes of a symphony quite as well as the poor overworked piano, but a rudimentary knowledge of the mechanism of the organ will show us where lies its special capacity—in the sustaining and rolling up of great masses of tone, and not at all in that more intimate expressiveness through swelling and fading and through accent in which the violin is peerless. The organ is magnificent in a Bach fugue, unsatisfactory in a Beethoven symphony, ridiculous in a popular dance. Thus on all sides we see that style depends on the medium, and that a sensitive taste will no more detach a musical figure from its appropriate setting than it will transfer the costume of the logging-camp to the drawing-room, or vice versa.

What makes all study of this kind particularly necessary to the would-be intelligent music-lover of to-day is that our generation seems to be going through a period of unusual confusion in all matters of taste. Whether it be that our resources have accumulated faster than our powers of assimilation could develop, or that popular education, while increasing the amount of musical enjoyment, has lowered its quality, or that the ever-present commercialism has betrayed us—whatever be the causes, it is certain that almost all our standards have suffered from a false liberalism, that we have lost old lines and boundaries without getting anything to put in their place, and that much as we may boast of no longer starving our artistic instincts as did our puritan forefathers, we do not yet discriminatingly nourish them, but rather overeat ourselves sick. There is hardly any branch of music where this tendency to excess may not be discovered. The modern conception of the piano, for instance, as a rival of the orchestra in richness, variety, and power of sound has adulterated piano style in many respects. It has led directly to ‘un[Pg xv]grateful’ writing for the piano by composers, to pounding and other exaggerations by players. There are few musicians nowadays who show the fine self-control that made Schumann and Chopin models of how the piano should be treated. The rare intuition of Debussy in this respect is one of the true justifications of a vogue not perhaps altogether free from faddism.

In chamber music, notably the string quartet, where delicateness of sonority is even more vital to the style, since it is the condition of the clearness of the individual voices, and cannot be departed from without an immediate coarsening of the texture, there is the same tendency to imitate the orchestra. One hears many modern quartets in which all four instruments keep restlessly sawing away, often on two strings at once, as if they were taking part in a hurdle race or a debating society, rather than in a work of art. Special effects like harmonics and the use of the mute, appropriate enough in solos and at long intervals, are grossly abused. In striving to be something beyond its frame this most exquisite combination of four musical personalities loses all its intimateness, all its charm. Even orchestral music itself does not escape these perversions. There is a distinct cult at the present day, especially in France, for playing at concerts music originally written to accompany pantomimes or ballets, and even for composing pieces intended for concert according to the processes suitable for such illustrative music—with highly spiced sonorous effects, schemes of structure based on dramatic action, and little or no purely musical interest. Indeed, all thoughtful observers must sometimes ask themselves if this universal tendency to force things out of their natural fields, to make them do not what they can do best, but what they are least expected to do, is not a symptom of a grave disorder of our æsthetic sense, a preference of novelty to beauty, a debased fondness for the queer, an invasion of art by[Pg xvi] that low curiosity which draws a street crowd around any one who will stand on his head, or wear his clothes wrong side before. The reader genuinely fond of music will be glad to combat this tendency to the best of his power, and to that end will inform himself of those peculiarities of instruments by which appropriateness of style is so largely determined.

What the average reader can get from his study of the theoretical portions of ‘The Art of Music’ will depend largely on his instinctive sense of the larger bearing of technical facts. Studied with pedantic insistence of detail harmony is a dry subject; studied with an imagination eager for the light it throws on general æsthetic questions it proves unexpectedly illuminating. Harmony describes the material available to the musician; it is, we might say, the dictionary from which each composer chooses the words he needs to express his thought; and to study it is therefore for the lover of music much what it is for the lover of literature to study the vocabularies of his favorite authors—the derivations of the words, their ancient associations, the flavors which cling about them. Just as Sir Thomas Browne has his special words, noble-sounding, many-syllabled, and his special forms of sentence that roll grandly off the tongue, and as Keats finds in the same English a completely different instrument, capable of romantic utterance and full of elusive suggestion: so the harmony of Bach is not the harmony of Schumann, although it is made out of the same notes and even many of the same chords. Indeed, the very same chord is not the same in effect, in style, when used in the context of two composers, or even of one composer in two different moods; a chord is a chameleon that takes the color of its surroundings. How full of sadness, of infinite resignation, is the first B flat chord in the Adagio of the Ninth Symphony! How the very same B flat chord pulsates with energy in the Allegro of the [Pg xvii] Fourth! The study of the action and reaction of harmony and style is a fascinating one, in spite of its difficulty—one on which books might be written, as many have been on the choice of words in literature.

Easier, however, and much more directly helpful to appreciation, is the study of the chief principles of musical form or structure, as they affect, not the composer, but the listener. As one going into a foreign country provides himself with some guidance as to the main things he is going to see there, so the music lover to whom symphonic music remains to some degree a foreign region likes to find out before he hears it what he is to listen for. That knowledge in detail will be found in the essay on musical form in Volume XII. Here it is our business, as before, avoiding detail, to get such a bird’s-eye view as may be possible of the most general facts of musical form. Especially agreeable and useful would it be if we could show that, in music as elsewhere, form and formalism are two essentially different things, and that while formalism is the conventionalizing and stiffening that indicate lowered vitality or incipient death in a work of art, form [Pg xviii] is the necessary shape it takes because it is alive. The formless is not yet alive; the formal is dying or dead; only the formed truly lives. Therefore musical form is quite simple and natural, like the branching of trees or the crystallizing of salts, and the study of it is based on observation and common sense, and strives to determine how sounds have to be ordered to become intelligible.

Essentially there are but three processes concerned in musical construction—the announcement or exposition of the themes, their elaboration or development, and their recapitulation. These processes are the natural outcome of quite simple psychological facts, and are duplicated in literature and other arts. The announcement of a theme is the preliminary statement, [Pg xix] made as simple and as brief as possible, of the thought with which the composer proposes to occupy himself. For the listener, it is the presentation of a bit of melody of a particular rhythmic profile which he remembers by this profile, this characteristic combination of long and short, accented and unaccented notes, just as he remembers a person by the shape of his face. Careful attention to the main themes of a composition is of vital importance to appreciation, since the themes are the actors of the musical drama, and all the action is really only the working out of their latent characteristics.

This is what we mean by development. In no music worthy of the name is development an artificial, intellectual process; it is simply the germination of the theme-seeds. As it results, however, in constantly increasing complexity, it would quickly confuse the listener were it not judiciously combined with simple [Pg xx] repetitions of the original ideas, serving both to mark the completion of one cycle of development and sometimes to initiate a new one. The recapitulations insure the unity of the impression as a whole made by the work of art; the developments give it the richness and variety inseparable from all life.

[Pg xxi]

The many special musical forms of which the student will read are merely so many clearly defined combinations of these three processes. Thus in the minuet, for example, a comparatively primitive form, there is one theme, expounded, developed, and recapitulated, and [Pg xxii] in the second part called trio, a second theme treated exactly the same way. In the ‘Song form’ so called, used for slow movements of sonatas and symphonies, there is usually an exposition of a theme, a slight development, and an ornamented or otherwise varied repetition; then, without any complete stop, a contrasting theme, treated much the same way; finally, a return of the main theme, either treated as at first or somewhat [Pg xxiii] more briefly. Sometimes there is a short coda (concluding section) with further slight development of one or both themes.

The sonata form, as we have already seen, is distinguished from both these more rudimentary types by having two themes of almost equal importance—sometimes three. These contrast with each other in expression, rhythm, and what is called ‘key.’ Their development is extended and occupies the entire middle part [Pg xxiv] of the piece. They are regularly recapitulated much as at first, but now both in the same ‘key,’ and may be followed by a coda, which with Beethoven assumes sometimes almost the importance of a second development. In the rondo there is a constant alternation between a main theme and other secondary themes or sections of development.

Thus in all the special forms we find but different applications of the three fundamental processes of exposition, development, and recapitulation, much as all plants go through the necessary cycle of seeding, growth, and blossoming. The more the music of the [Pg xxv] great symphonic masters is studied the more marvellous will the reader find the mingling of ingenuity and simplicity with which they know how to marshal their thoughts. Such study makes listening no longer a passive or even wearisome process, but the most fascinating reliving of a spiritual life as many-sided, as infinitely various, as filled with beauty, as that of Nature herself.

Daniel Gregory Mason.

June, 1914.

FOOTNOTES:

A NARRATIVE HISTORY OF MUSIC
BOOK I

A NARRATIVE HISTORY OF MUSIC

INTRODUCTION

Musical art is the idealized art of the inner man as distinguished from the arts of painting and sculpture and their like which are the idealized expression of what is outside him. It is the result of the urgent impulses of certain peculiarly constituted human beings to express things which move them in ways which are favorable to permanence; which permanence proves attainable only through the controlling influence of the instinct for order.

The instinct for order and the impulse to gratify it in all directions seem to be present in all unperverted human beings; which is obviously the consequence of the fact that it has always ministered to the preservation of those who possessed it. The primitive savage who kept his weapons in some kind of orderly fashion, and knew where to lay his hands on them when wanted, easily survived the disorderly savage who could not find them soon enough to prevent being exterminated. The primitive savage who could dispose his means of existence in an orderly fashion was more likely to survive the savage who had no proper place for anything; and there were thousands of other ways in which this instinct favored its possessor; and favored him more and more as social and anti-social conditions progressed in complexity. Looked at from another point of view, that of experience, the lack of the sense of order betokens low mental power; and the possession of it in higher and higher degrees is a token of higher and higher capacities of mind.

The sense of order is the basis of organization; and out of organization comes permanence. The more perfect the organization the more lasting is the thing organized. What is well built is well organized for its purpose, and stands fast. What is ill built is badly organized for its purpose, and tumbles down. And so it is with a work of literature. It cannot be said that a noble thought ill-presented will soon be forgotten; but its being ill-presented makes it obscure. And it must be admitted that fascination is added to the utterance of a great thought by the perfect clearness and nicety with which it is expressed. The presentation is in that sense admirably organized and the mind welcomes it, and returns to it frequently with delight; whereas if it is clumsily expressed it gives the mind unnecessary trouble to understand what it means, and then there is a feeling of distaste and annoyance which prejudices the welcome that the great thought merits.

So it is with a work of art. Clumsiness and incoherence of structure beget discomfort, however great the intentions. Imperfections which may not be noticed at first grow more and more oppressive, till they become unbearable, and at last mankind is impelled to regard the good intentions as little better than opportunities wasted.

It may be justly argued that such imperfections are inevitable not only because art represents human efforts but because organization takes centuries to effect. It is also true that certain types of imperfection are pathetically attractive and afford a kind of interest in themselves where they suggest the kind of human condition and effort which is characteristic of the time and circumstances in which any individual work of art was produced. But in such case it is necessary that the motive shall be honorable. After ages will never be able to regard the deficiencies in modern church and chapel architecture, stained glass windows, modern tombstones and suburban villa residences with anything but disgust. Putting such aberrations aside for the present, it is pleasant to realize that one of the privileges of an instinct for style is to be able to recognize the stage of organization which has been reached, both in diction and structure, by the qualities of any work of art, and to locate the type of organization and balance its proportionate relation to what is expressed, and, more subtly still, to discern even the intention. Men who have any artistic instinct estimate the quality of a work of art by such an adjustment. They feel its nobility if it has any, even though the standard of organization is low, by estimating the quality of the thought in connection with the inevitable limitations of the means of expression. A work of art may inspire constant delight even though its form be obvious and its details crude, if the methods employed are sincere efforts to express with the best means available an inspiring idea. Limitations do not necessarily imply false construction. There is this to be remembered: that the progress of thought and the progress of organization proceed together and that a thought which clearly belongs to several generations ago will not be as complex or have to cover so much ground as the thought of later times of equal status; and that the limitation of the means of organization of the time to which the thought belongs will therefore be adequate and congenial to that thought, whereas, if a composer or artist use only the resources of diction and design of two hundred years ago to express a modern thought, the deficiency of the organization becomes at once apparent.

It is worth while to observe parenthetically that in primitive stages of art men did not attempt organization in order to give permanence to their artistic products. Their attitude was that of the unconscious child, and they merely sought to gratify their instinct for order, and arrived at the principle of organization in the process. So the beginnings of art were the direct result of the inevitable processes of the universe. Men found out the relation of organization to permanence long afterward, when they developed the capacity to analyze and consider what they were doing.

Mankind, like the individual, passes through three stages in his manner of producing and doing things. The first is unconscious and spontaneous, the second is self-critical, analytical, and self-conscious; and the third is the synthesis which comes of the recovery of spontaneity with all the advantages of the absorption of right principles of action. In the products of the first stage people delight in spite of crudity and clumsiness because they are fervent, genuine, essentially human. The products of the second are often ineffectual, occasionally suggestive, and for the most part more historically than humanly interesting. It is in the last phase that the greatest works of musical art are produced; and it is in such works of art that the approximation to perfection may be found, in which there is no part which has not some relation to every other part; nothing which does not minister to the fullness with which the inner idea of the artist is expressed; in which every curve of melody, every progression of harmony, every modulation, every rhythmic group, every climax and relaxation of stress, every shade of color, and every part of the inner texture at once ministers to coherent and cogent expression and at the same time fulfills its function in the general scheme of design or organization. From mere elementary orderliness art has progressed in such things to the very highest manifestations of the subtlest and most perfect organization which the human mind is capable of achieving. But it must be admitted that such an ideal is only reached in very rare cases, by masters whose complete absorption in the work of artistic creation is undisturbed by distracting influences; who can maintain their concentration through a prolonged and coherent effort; and who have the gift to apply their faculties and successfully call upon their minds to provide exactly the right methods and procedures whenever required, and at the same time to hold everything balanced by the requirements of proportionate relation which is indispensable to true artistic organization.

It is to such perfection that all true artists aspire, and it is only those who are absolutely true to themselves who can even approximate to it. In days when commercialism is rampant and the favor of such as are totally ignorant of the most elementary artistic principles is held to be the criterion of artistic worth, it practically becomes impossible.

There are two phases of organization. The first is the organization of terms, signs, methods, materials, some of which must be found before art begins, but most of which are found as it evolves. The second phase is the organization of the individual works of art. The parallel that springs to mind at the moment is the organization of units and supplies of an army, on the one hand, and, on the other, the organization of the campaign and the engagements for which the forces and their needs were organized. Upon the former kind of organization it is not necessary to dwell. It is an obvious necessity of art. But, though part of it, it does not illustrate or affect the quality of the art products except in a purely elementary and mechanical sense. Of the latter kind, which manifests itself inevitably in varying degrees in every musical work from the cheapest popular song to the highest instrumental symphony, it must be admitted that it is worth while to have some little understanding; especially of the relations to one another of the various branches and factors in the artistic scheme which the study of such things in detail is apt to miss.

At the outset the curious anomaly may be admitted that expression and organization appear to be antagonistic. This is only one way of recognizing that art, like everything else, is achieved by the accommodation of opposites. The very idea of human feeling being expressed in preconceived set terms sounds so preposterous as to be almost repugnant. Yet if it is not expressed in set terms how should it maintain its hold upon the mind? We know by experience that human feeling upsets organization (as, for instance, in the confusion of rhythm into which highly emotional performers and singers are driven), and that organization stifles human feeling (as, for instance, in the empty, inadequate words that are stuffed into poetry to make rhymes, and the ridiculous shams that are stuffed in architecture as in music to make a pattern complete). But, as a matter of fact, though language also might be described as antagonistic to feeling, yet feeling cannot definitely be conveyed to other beings without being formalized into words, and the words arranged according to the recognized rules of prosody. And, as a matter of experience, when language has become, as it does, a spontaneous means of expressing feeling, it very often intensifies the feelings that it is used to express. Many men are more excited by their own violent language than by the motives which caused them to give vent to it. So in art some men only begin to find out how strong their feelings are when they try to put them into shape. The mere fact of organizing effective climaxes according to settled principles causes them to believe in deep-set passion which they would not otherwise have suspected in themselves. Oratory is never in itself a proof of greatness or even sincerity of soul.

So it cannot be maintained that the appearance of antagonism is fully borne out by experience. But what is evident is that the human element represents instability and the constructive element stability; and the adjustment of the two keeps art alive. All art that has life in it must be in unstable equilibrium, for, indeed, all thought whatever induces instability. Stable equilibrium, if such a thing could be conceivable, is merely abeyance of activity. As a matter of fact there is no part of the universe which is in stable equilibrium, art as little as the rest of it. Art is, in the widest sense, man’s highest expression of the Spirit of the Universe; that is of the effects which are produced in his inner man by his personal experiences in it and his cogitations about it, and art’s life is governed by the same laws. In the universe all things seem to tend toward stable equilibrium, and yet of necessity when it seems to be approached some new direction of force disturbs it and sets up new systems of motions which may last for ages. So in art there has been a tendency to deal with the claims of feeling and the claims of form at different times. At certain periods in art’s history the human element predominated and the claims of organization were either ignored or overlooked. The result was incoherence, and the need of more circumspect procedure gave organization an excessive spell of attention. Convention then took the place of realities and art became the playground of ingenious dry-as-dusts, till the human element again asserted its claims and progress swayed in the direction of instability again; and so the great rhythm was maintained.

But it would be absurd to pretend that the alternation proceeded regularly without yielding to external influences. The direction which art took was often influenced by social conditions external to itself. A chance whiff of fashion or a wave of impulse in favor of intellectual subtleties would naturally cause a phase[Pg xxix] of art in which human feeling would be crowded out by superfluity of organizing ingenuity. A state of society in which a few people enjoyed the results of their ancestors having annexed all the material advantages of the world and regarded the rest of humanity as merely provided by Providence to minister to their vanities, would be peculiarly favorable to the exuberance of conventional pattern-making and elegant futilities; while the successful overthrow of such a poisonous tradition and the general acceptance of the widest claims of humanity to common justice naturally brought an overwhelming impulse of human feeling into play. But the apparent derangement of the ebb and flow was not actually destructive of the principle, but only affected the length of the periods and the extent of the one influence on the other.

As a rule the instinctive discernment of humanity was so far just that it is far more easy to point to periods when human feeling predominated than to those when the organizing instinct predominated. This was natural because all artistic beings are, as far as the impulse is concerned, at the outset bent upon expressing feelings of some sort. Even those who have more aptitude for technical efficiency than mind are not actually aiming at producing supernaturally correct grammatical exercises. They are always much offended if such a thing is suggested. The unsophisticated lovers of music who have no technical knowledge to speak of are always concerned with the human side of it, they are moved by the sound, the color, the rhythm, the character of the melody, and, as far as they can get at it, by the idea the composer wants to express. It lies with the unsophisticated to maintain the claims of that side of art, as Wagner suggested when he said that he made his works for the not-musicians.

The fully instructed are inevitably inclined to over[Pg xxx]estimate mere workmanship. The wonder that is inspired by supremely masterly organization impels experts to be carried away by their admiration of it; and, moreover, it is practicable to discuss that aspect of art fully and clearly, whereas language is not apt to discuss the meaning and spirit of musical art, for the obvious reason that it is the business of music to express things that are beyond the reach of words. And it is pathetic to think how many thousands of people who have musical insight, and are really moved and inspired by it, are, through their very conscientious desire to understand it, misled into supposing that organization and dexterous use of the methods of art are the things that are of highest importance. This has been the bane of the greater part of theoretic writing about art and is the thing which arouses rebellion in ardent and aspiring minds against the stress that is laid on principles of form and grammatical orthodoxies. To such dispositions it seems preposterous to devote so much attention to the organization and to take so little count of the thing organized; and their antagonism is indeed very serviceable. For, however ridiculous the results their ardor often produces, they do help to keep art alive and to prevent its being stifled by conventions. And they do maintain the necessary protest against the paralyzing theory that has at times been propounded, that art is merely a special manifestation of clever mechanical ingenuity. Coherent organization is indeed a necessary condition of art, but the thing organized is of the foremost importance. The idea comes first and the organization is secondary. Yet the one is futile without the other; the idea cannot be conveyed without the organization, but organization without something to organize is mere superfluity. The idea without organization is mere incoherence; mere organization without meaning is empty puzzle making. Neither by itself has any claim to be distinguished as art.

[Pg xxxi]

The ways in which a work of art can be organized are practically innumerable; but in musical art they all have the simple structural basis of a departure from a given point to a point or many points of contrast and back home again. The infinite number of varieties depends on the manner in which the central point is established, and how the departure from it is made; how the contrasting middle portion is organized, and how the return home is established. The evolution of principles of form consists in the elaboration of the main divisions into subordinate contrasts, contrasts to contrasts, inner organic procedures, devices of structure which are linked and superimposed on one another, in which the steps that lead away from the main centre are successively distributed in subtle gradations, all of which are available to make the adaptation to the idea more perfect. The story of the evolution is perspicuously clear, as the vast amount of devoted and, latterly, intelligent labor which has been expended upon collecting folk-songs and specimens of quasi-musical phrases of savages has completed the story from the first appearance of the desire for some kind of orderliness up to the portentous elaborations of European music of the present day.

The way complication has been built upon complication may be easily grasped by observing the successive stages of art for which organization had to be provided. At first it had only to serve for a single melodic line; then, in the period of ecclesiastical choral music, for two or more combined melodic lines; then composers combined more and more melodic lines as they found out how it could be done, and this caused their minds to be almost monopolized by what may be called linear organization, which is a systematized relation of melodic parts which are quasi independent, but knit into unity by their subjection to the rules of melodic scales, which were called modes. The highest[Pg xxxii] outcome of long and concentrated thought in this direction was the type of organization known as the fugue, which is a linear principle of organization vitalized by the systematic distribution of recognizable melodic phrases. Fugue was the first form in which the musical idea was the most prominent factor in organization, and in the hands of genuine composers was developed to a high degree of perfection. But it left almost unrealized the problem of organization which dawned upon men’s minds as necessary when they began to feel the harmonies which were the result of combined melodious parts as entities in themselves. This problem was dealt with in the period when men devoted themselves to the classification of harmonies in key systems, which gave every harmony a definite function in artistic organization; and the capacity of the human mind was developed till it could recognize one succession of harmonies as representing one key centre and another succession of harmonies as representing another key centre, and this made an orderly succession of key centres the new basis of organization. Then the human mind grew to be able to discern these principles of order when composers dispensed with the sounding of the concrete harmonies and only represented them by ornamental procedures; through which the trained mind can perceive and infer the groups of harmonic successions which are implied and recognize the respective keys to which they belong. Complication yet further expanded the basis of organization as composers approached what may be called the extreme of sophistication, which became attainable by a reversion to the linear system, in which harmony was again suffused by polyphonic methods, and the individual notes of the ornamental formulas themselves are made to represent centres of activity and have their own harmonization; which harmonization subsists in spite of its apparent clashing with the harmonization of other ornamental notes, which the mind is able to endure because it intellectually segregates the notes which represent different systems and allots them to their respective centres and so keeps them apart from one another. The superimposition of device upon device is like a perpetual budding from a germ cell, with the additional analogy to things physical, that each generation is always consistent in its characteristics and identifiable. The quickness of the human mind at grasping the especial type of organization which it has to accept, in order to follow the idea of the composer, is one of its most extraordinary capacities; as is the development of the art which enables the adequately equipped composer to be sure that his most subtle sophistications are sure to meet with understanding from the auditors who are equally well equipped. When an ignoramus looks at a full score of any big modern work and sees there the hundreds of notes that are to be sounded in a few seconds, and sounded also for the fraction of a second and no more, most of which are not harmony notes but only suggest them by the way they are grouped, and yet convey to the qualified auditor a perfect sense of orderliness and coherence, it will either give him the sense of the amazing development of art and of human capacity to follow what is offered to it as art, or incredulity, in accordance with his temperamental bias.

[Pg xxxiii]

But it has to be remembered that, in order to find any method of organization serviceable, the auditor must have gone through some of the steps which enable him to follow the procedure. It is here that certain perplexing incapacities will find their explanation. It frequently happens that a person of considerable musical culture is amazed to find that some passage which he regards as one of the noblest and most moving in the whole range of art leaves the majority of average audiences entirely blank and unmoved—and this[Pg xxxiv] may happen with people who are constantly hearing music. It happens most frequently when a person who cultivates late phases of instrumental music is brought into contact with the finest choral music of the sixteenth century. The meaning and purpose of the several motions have not come under his attention and he has no clue whatever to the scheme of organization. The contempt with which the complacent classicist of the sonata period looked down upon the form of the fugue was owing to musicians having broken altogether for the time with organization of the fugal type and having become incapable of listening to and understanding the motions of two or three independent parts at once. For here it will be as well to observe that every step in the building up of art by the addition of notes to a scale, of new chords which were devised, and of methods and devices of all sorts had special functions when they were invented, just as much as every conceivable feature in architecture had a function. But mankind always forgot the original meaning very soon and applied the various features to other purposes, most of which were quite without meaning and merely served for barren show. And it is this forgetfulness which makes so many people totally indifferent to the finest artistic achievements. They are expressed in a language they do not understand.

It must be obvious that there is a very close connection between the type and complexity of organization and the standard of mental development of those for whom it is devised. The study of folk-music and the music of primitive savages is very enlightening in this respect; especially in respect of the organization, which is based in great part on musical phrases. As might be naturally supposed the earliest sign of awakening intelligence is found in mere reiteration of some melodic or rhythmic formula. This is essentially the primitive savage type and is met with in extraordinary per[Pg xxxv]sistency under varied conditions. It is a most remarkable fact that such undisguised reiteration is a conspicuous feature of the music of relatively undeveloped races in the present day, who have adopted the advanced methods of modern music with remarkable success. It is the more curious as the composers of the more developed races do not resort to such naïve reiteration except as a basis for presenting a phrase or passage in different lights by variation. And with the undeveloped races their reversion to a primitive practice, especially at points of great excitement, is an unconscious admission of the nearness of their temperamental average to that of their primitive ancestry. As a principle mere reiteration is hardly worthy of the name of organization, it might rather be called a preliminary procedure, or a means of keeping things going. It does not imply any mental development, it only implies some kind of definition and capacity of recognition. The first step toward real organization comes when a phrase or short passage of melody is alternated with another which serves as a contrast with it, and returns again to the first phrase to give the sense of completeness. Yet even such a simple principle of orderliness needed considerable progress in mental grasp before it could be attained. It might perhaps be regarded as the significant feature which distinguishes folk-music from savage music. Folk-music is indeed a very considerable advance on the music of primitive savages, and it shows the growth of power to attain to real orderliness, as the basis of art, by the employment of simple and clear forms of organization, which are evolved quite irrespective of any collusion or imitation between the races that resorted to it. As folk-music is always melodic it did not admit of great variety of elaboration in the organization of the tunes, yet there was sufficient to illustrate the average disposition toward intellectuality of the races which the[Pg xxxvi] songs represent. Races which are notable for the quickness of their intelligence and their delight in the exercise of it show it in the closeness and interest of the structure of their folk-music, as is the case with Scotch tunes, and those whom imagination, feeling, or sentiment are specially liable to dominate are represented by forms which are vaguer and less elaborately organized. On the side of character, also, it is parenthetically observable that folk tunes reflect the temperamental qualities of the races and localities to which they belong most truthfully—such as the vivacity and love of orderly design of the French, the pathos and pugnacity of the Irish, the sober simplicity and deliberation of the English, the sentimental reflectiveness of Germans, the spasmodic vehemence of Hungarians, and the love of elaborate ornamentation of Orientals. Slavonic folk-music is also most characteristic, but it is most difficult to define. It has in most cases a flavor of the playful unconsciousness of youth, simplicity of structure and a kind of pathetic gaiety. This close connection between a race or a geographical attitude of mind and its folk-music is really a foretaste of the connection which persisted throughout the whole story of art’s evolution. A people’s music so accurately represents its temperamental qualities that, if there was any doubt about a race’s character, the music they favor would solve it. In folk-music the element of rhythm figures very considerably; and, as it is a subject about which a great deal of confusion of mind seems to exist, it is advisable to give a little attention to it. It is a defining and vitalizing influence of the highest importance; for it is only through rhythm that the individual factors of organization become identifiable. It is through the grouping of beats into two, three, four, five, six, and so on that the nuclei which are the basis of organization are grouped into coherent and distinguishable factors. Inasmuch as a note is nothing by itself, and only becomes something when it has relation to another note, and, as these notes must succeed one another in time, it is necessary to have some means of defining the respective lengths of time which are to be relatively allotted to the respective notes; and rhythm is the process by which the progress of sounds in time is marked off and organized. Without it there would be mere vagueness and confusion.

[Pg xxxvii]

This is the aspect of rhythm from the point of view of organization. That was not its object in the beginning, but to minister to expression of feeling. All people who have not attained to an advanced stage of culture and intelligence delight in rhythm; and the sphere it occupies in folk-music is enlightening; for its preponderance varies considerably. In some folk-music it is always conspicuous, as in Hungarian and French folk-music; in some it is only moderately apparent and rarely aggressive, except when the words associated with it imply vigorous action, as in English and German folk-music. There are obvious implications which are suggested by the fact. The aggressively rhythmic music shows a predisposition for instrumental music, and the less rhythmic for vocal music. The former represents the music of action and the latter the music of inner feeling. The former secular feeling and the latter serious feeling associated with religion of some sort.

[Pg xxxviii]

Rhythm suggests bodily activity. Its essential function is to represent the expression of feelings by motions of the body, arms, legs, or any part that can move freely. This is verified by the fact that rhythmic music impels people to join in with hands and feet, and this is also the underlying basis of dance music; for the object of dance music is to inspire people to rhythmic activity, and its connection with expression is verified by the fact that so much dance music, even in the earliest times, has been mimetic. The position of rhythm in artistic music is strange, for it is undeniable that the preponderant impulse of serious composers is to hide it away in sophistications. Indeed, for many centuries it was, possibly unconsciously, kept at bay. Pure unsophisticated rhythm belongs to the primitives. It is not the form of expression congenial to self-respecting and developed races when they are taking anything serious in hand. This is partly because it does, as above remarked, represent physical expression, which is not the type to which intellectual people are prone. Developed minds want to convince by argument; primitive people by force. Moreover, rhythm is not progressive. In its direct forms it is probably much as it was with the cave dwellers. Its limitations are obvious; and its simple forms are indicative of a primitive state in those that use it.

As a matter of fact, it seems to be the ingrained impulse of composers whose feeling for their art is highly developed to disguise it, as though the frank use of it was commonplace and cheap. What appears to be progress in rhythm is indeed not in rhythm itself, but in that very sophistication. It is like the sophistication of metre in the blank verse of Shakespeare or Milton, or even in the lyric poetry of Shelley and Keats and later poets, which makes English lyrics so difficult for inefficient and unliterary composers to set. The parallel in poetry and verse is complete. For the jog-trot of those indifferent poets who make an appeal to the undeveloped minds of the herd is poetry of a low order, just as is the rhythmic commonplace of cheap-minded composers.

The higher type of composer deals with rhythm as with everything else. He uses the simple basis of a definite rhythm to build upon it something interesting. What would be commonplace and familiar is made worthy of the name of art by its presentation in rela[Pg xxxix]tion to other rhythms, or in combination with an independent grouping of strong and weak beats which gives it new significance. Such sophistication of rhythm was very difficult in the times when music was confined to one melodic part. But it became easy when choral music developed into contrapuntal treatment of melodic voice parts, and it attained in later days to the highest pitch of interest when the harmonic style was reinfused with polyphonic methods, and full opportunities were afforded for combining different rhythms at once, and ordinary rhythms in one part could be made quite interesting or amusing through their association with other parts which are purposely at variance with the essential rhythm. By such procedure composers succeeded in avoiding the use of common property and could enjoy the inestimable services of rhythm as a vitalizer and a definer without condescending from their high estate. The reticence of the higher type of composer in the matter of rhythm, and his tendency to refrain from such undisguised relaxation, is curiously confirmed by the history of sacred music. It is a very singular fact that, in the long period of over five centuries, during which church music was developed from the most primitive conditions till it manifested such wonderful perfection of spirit and workmanship at the end of the sixteenth century, composers, guided by instinct rather than conscious reasoning, always endeavored to suppress or hide the sense of rhythm. As music began to grow from the doubling of plain-song at the intervals of fifths and fourths and octaves (which was so convenient to the different calibres of the voices which had to sing it), by filling in the steps between one principal note and another with shorter notes, and so developed primitive counterpoint, composers soon began to aim at giving the effect of independence to human voices by making them move at different times and in different directions; by mak[Pg xl]ing use of syncopations, suspensions, dotted notes that overlapped one another, and all such procedures as obscured the rhythmic element. And even when, owing to special circumstances, they were driven to make parts move simultaneously, as in later harmonic procedure, they made the chords halt and move again, and even occasionally drop the principal accent, to obviate the sense of rhythmic lilt—as may be observed in some of the hymn tunes of Orlando Gibbons, which have had to be altered and made quite commonplace in modern times to suit the mechanical habits of modern congregations.

This curious persistence may be explained by the fact that devotional feeling is not demonstrative. Western people in really devotional frame of mind do not gesticulate or fling their arms and legs about to express their feelings, but are bowed down in spiritual ecstasy. The music was the true expression of the spirit; and, till secular music began to react upon religious music after the beginning of the seventeenth century, the music of the services of the church might fairly be described as anti-rhythmic. And it still remains a fact that whenever rhythm makes its appearance prominently in music which purports to be devotional it is a proof of its insincerity. But there are always many things which concur in achieving a big result, and it must be admitted that conjoined with the instinct which avoided rhythm in religious music was the fact that all the early religious music was essentially vocal; and vocal music in its purest simplicity is comparatively unrhythmic. It learnt definite and consistent rhythm from instrumental music when that came to be cultivated with vigor from the beginning of the seventeenth century onward. It is true that dance music was sung, and that the Balletti of such a delightful composer as Morley have wonderful rhythmic verve; but such compositions represent the time when musical[Pg xli] expansion was moving strongly in a secular direction and instruments were beginning to exert their influence. The greater madrigals of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries still illustrate the inherent peculiarity of pure choral music and give ample proofs of the composers’ endeavors to disguise the rhythmic element and represent the underlying principle of the grouping of strong and weak beats without adopting obvious rhythmic organization. Instrumental music, on the other hand, inevitably implies rhythm. In its most primitive phases it was probably nothing but rhythm, and that rhythm of a perfectly frank and undisguised description. In its early artistic, phases it was generally full of rhythmic life without obtruding the rhythm as a special means of appeal to the audience, as is the case in modern popular music. The deeply ingrained habits of counterpoint which still persisted in the eighteenth century made even suites of dance tunes so full of texture in detail that the rhythm was rather the basis of the definition of pulses than a factor in the effect. If the story of modern music were followed up with special reference to rhythm it would be found that the aim of all composers who took their art seriously has been to avoid the commonplaces and to sophisticate rhythm in such a way as to make it serve as an additional source of expression, instead of a mere mechanical incitement to movement. The increase of orchestral instruments offered ample opportunities to sophisticate rhythms in a manner analogous to the charming effects of early choral music, in which syncopation and cross-rhythms add a genuine interest to the fundamental rhythm and seem to play with the hearers by making them feel that one rhythm is superimposed on another. Even in actual modern dance tunes of the best kind the impulse to add something independent to the fundamental rhythm is found in such devices as tying over the[Pg xlii] last note of a group of three in a valse to the strong beat of the succeeding rhythmic group, while the essential rhythm is maintained by the bass or other instruments of the accompaniment, and composers have even successfully devised such attractive ingenuities as the effect of three long beats being superimposed on two groups of the three lesser beats of the established rhythm. The well-known combination in Mozart’s Don Giovanni of a minuet and a valse each in triple time and a country dance in 4/4 time is one of the most ingenious illustrations of such combined rhythms. The essential basis of all such devices is the sophistication of the obvious, which is the natural impulse of every true composer.

Such sophistication is, however, ultimately dependent on the development of harmony into its latest polyphonic phases, which represent the furthest progress of intellectual perception in the races which make use of it. The use of harmonies systematized on the basis of tonalities is the highest development in respect of expression that has been attained in art and it has become a means of widening the possibilities of organization which seems to be unlimited. It is said of a famous English philosopher, whose range of intellectual power was abnormal, that he wept because he thought that the range of melodic variety was exhaustible. He was possibly one of the many whose musical sense is not sufficiently developed to understand progressions of harmony. For, if he had known that every note of every melody is capable of being accompanied by an immense number of different harmonies, probably several dozens apiece, and that each different harmony is capable of altering altogether the expressive character of the melodic note in relation to other notes of the melody, and that the changes in expression not only apply to notes which are contiguous but to notes that are several steps removed,[Pg xliii] he need not have been distressed at the limitations of the musical scale as developed by European peoples. But this does not by any means exhaust the possibilities of expressive effect, because the same harmony will have a different effect if it is in close order or in open order; if it is in close order in a high part of the scale or a low part of the scale; and the melodic significance is also variable with the rhythmic treatment to which it is subjected. The full force of harmonies to minister to expression was dependent on the systematization of chords on a tonal basis. This had been in the air for a long time before composers definitely grappled with the problem, as may be observed in the splendid use J. S. Bach made of the expressive resources of harmony. But it was the classical masters of the sonata period who dealt with the matter effectually. They based their scheme of organization on the recognition of a complete classification of the harmonic contents of any key; which implied a recognition of the actual degrees of importance and of the functions of each individual chord. This scheme also required as its most essential guaranty a very strict recognition and observance of each key that became a factor in the form; and also the apprehension of chords as chords.

But when the true polyphonic spirit invaded the sacred precincts of the sonata type, and means were supplied to slip from diatonic chord to chromatic chord, and even for a composer to lead the pleasingly bewildered hearer into some unimaginable remote key and back, it began to dawn on people that the achievement of even such an admirable principle of organization as the sonata form had not landed musicians in their final haven, but that in reality the sonata period was merely one of transition—a kind of interim, like that of the aria form in opera, when men forebore for a time to address themselves to expression, and projected their minds to the solution of the essential problems of or[Pg xliv]ganization. The wonderful success which the sonata composers achieved in their devoted self-denial led to the unfortunate misconception that musical art was a thing which stood by itself and was self-sufficient and had no reference in its highest manifestations to anything outside itself. Two things corrected this strange aberration. One was that a race of composers sprang up who filled up the easily managed forms of the sonata type with correct and orthodox passages and deluged the world with utterly barren, empty, artificial and intolerably conventional rigmarole. This, indeed, the world could not put up with, and it turned with not unnatural eagerness to welcome the party who advocated program music. These aspiring people were quite on the right tack, but the resources of art were not as yet built up sufficiently for their purposes, and therefore a great part of their trivial and conventional imitations of scenes and impressions merely made them ridiculous. The necessary revolution came out of the heart of the old régime. The greatest masters of the sonata types of art had always been impelled to infuse their works of the sonata order with human meaning and to suggest a condition of feeling—mournful, cheerful, merry, mischievous, and the like; and Beethoven, the greatest of them all by far, after showing frequent signs of breaking away even as early as the slow movement of his Sonata in D, opus 10, No. 3, finally in his latest sonatas, quartets and symphonies produced some of the most wonderful human documents ever achieved by man, in which he expressed the workings of his own innermost feelings, the portrayal of his aspirations, his perplexities in face of the problems of life, his deep cogitations and moods, and his hopes for the destiny of humanity. Here, indeed, he had found the true sphere of musical expression. It was the expression of his innermost being; and his music rose to such unparalleled heights[Pg xlv] because he dealt with his own self, which he was bound to know better than most people know themselves because he was so shut off from the world by his deafness; and it may be added that the music is so profoundly interesting also because he was personally such an extraordinary and intensely interesting character.

Beethoven occupied the unique position of consummating the sonata type and giving the impulse to the artistic development which reëstablished the full vigor of human expression and feeling. He reëstablished the right of ideas to be expressed by music and indicated the manner in which it was to be done. His ardent nature rebelled against conventions. He sought to eliminate all dead and inert matter, to get rid of the formal types of accompaniment which were everybody’s property, and to make everything subserve to the expression of the idea. It was probably this which impelled him in his later works to revert to the fugue—that is, to the real fugue of the type of John Sebastian Bach, and not to the bastard form in which attempts were made to amalgamate it with the harmonic scheme of sonata form, which caused the introduction of the conventional passages of that form which were totally alien to the real fugue form. In the genuine fugue form, as illustrated by him and Bach, all the texture of the work is alive and there are no conventional formulas of accompaniment, and Beethoven’s point of view enabled him to go right back, as it were, beyond the historical episode of the sonata and bring the true fugue again to life and use it as a most concentrated means of expression. There is a further and very striking aspect of the question which is that Beethoven, in bringing the fugue form into the field again, anticipated and gave impulse to the revival of the polyphonic methods which is such a conspicuous feature of the most recent development in art: and yet further, his use of the fugue form illustrated that[Pg xlvi] gravitation of artistic development which was to find such splendid accomplishment in the later music dramas of Wagner, in which the polyphonic treatment and the use of the leit-motif form a gigantic expansion of the essential principles of the supremely elastic form of the fugue.

But even these significant facts do not exhaust the aspects in which Beethoven anticipated later artistic developments. It is a very strange fact that after his deafness was quite established his sense of tone color continued to expand. Even in comparatively early works he had shown gravitation toward romantically characteristic effects of instrumentation, as, for instance, in the familiar and supremely wonderful color scheme of the scherzo of the C minor symphony. But after he had quite lost his hearing his color sense grew in richness and depth and variety to a bewildering extent. His mind seemed to be specially occupied with finding tone colors which intensified the expression in quite a new way, as, for instance, in the huge slow movement of the sonata in B flat, opus 106, in the last movement of the sonata in C minor, opus 111, and in the slow movement of the Choral Symphony. Prior to his time there had been a great deal of inert matter in orchestral scoring. The functions of wind instruments were indeed defined, in so far as they were used either as actual solo instruments or more often to supply a pleasant continuity of tone in agreeable colors, while the strings did most of the actual talking. But the standard of execution of the players, as well as the technique of orchestration, was not advanced enough to bring the wind instruments fairly into the operation on an equality with the strings, and they were made to play what was definitely serviceable to the scheme, but had in itself no musical definition and purpose. The greater part of the advance that has since taken place in orchestration consists in making every member of[Pg xlvii] the orchestra contribute to the complex of polyphony by playing actual and apt musical passages. It implied the growth of texture toward vitality in every part of the artistic scheme, and a development of organization of the very subtlest description. For it must be kept in mind that the employment of instruments of diverse tone color in the modern manner does not imply their constant employment, but their apt employment only; which is so contrived by the genius of composers who can really think in orchestras that the tone qualities affect the sensibilities of the hearers to the utmost by their relations to one another. Even the feeblest intelligence would be capable of discerning the fact that great effects of color are made through juxtaposition. A very vivid piece of coloring is not vivid because the individual colors are vivid, but because various colors are disposed so as to give particular colors their utmost effect upon the sensibilities. A glowing red does not glow of itself but because the sensibilities have been so affected by other colors that they have become highly susceptible to red. Groups of nerves are affected in various ways by tone colors, and the secret of art is so to use the various tone colors that each shall minister in full measure to the effect of others. And the secret of expression in art in this particular department is that the composer who has that very highly organized faculty of perception of relations of colors uses just those relations in their various degrees which intensify the susceptibility of the human auditor to the quality of the ideas he wants to express.

[Pg xlviii]

In this field there is a very wide and interesting opportunity for special study, as the average of color tendencies is a very striking means of gauging the disposition and personality of composers. Thus the stern, almost ascetic, colors of Brahms, varied by touching gleams of tenderness and beauty, express his personality most exactly. Beethoven undoubtedly changed his average of color as he developed his personality. In his earlier works he was genial and bright, after the manner of the sonata composers, and made use of the cheerful coloring that suited a cultured and prosperous aristocracy. In his middle period he became warmer and more serious; in his latest period he was sometimes grim and fierce, sometimes deep and solemn, but often tender with the depth of longing and the earnestness of his aspiration. But who cannot read the character of a composer through his average color scheme? The flighty, empty-headed trickster with his sparkling piccolo and his gas-jet noises on violins, and the bombastic vulgarian posing as a man of great feeling with his roars of blatant brass; the oversensitized hedonist with his delicate subtleties, mainly in transparent pearl-grays; and so on. We are almost inclined to forget that it is all, or nearly all, a matter of relations; it is only not a matter of relations when the music is false. When the composer does try to make his effects by violence and what he supposes to be the intrinsic power of tone-quality nobody is permanently taken in. That the basis of color effect is relation is a thing man is learning every day in the infinite variety of a gorgeous sunset and in the luxuriant blaze of his own flowerbeds. Indeed, the principle of relativity in art is nowhere likely to be more readily felt than in the matter of color.

It is more difficult to apprehend in matters of form and organization. Yet it ought to be easy to perceive that the whole object of organization is to put things in their right places. It is just as in the color scheme: the effect of a work of art, as has been said before, does not depend upon intrinsic interest of individual moments, but on the relation of every moment to every other moment. If the relations are false the impression is marred and the idea fails to carry conviction.

[Pg xlix]

But it follows from this that there had to be a sweeping change in the generally accepted views of the universal applicability of the sonata forms. They were no doubt admirable as types of abstract design; they were examples of approximate perfection in musical organization; but, when the time came again after the sonata period to make music express ideas, it became evident, with the assistance of Beethoven’s insight, that special ideas required types of organization which were specially adapted to the ideas. Men humbly ventured on compositions which did not represent the august dignity of the sonata order. They tried in small ways to represent their feelings and ideas. They found the sonata forms much too big; the prescriptive rights of so aristocratic an organization entailing such a lot of formalities; and they had of sheer necessity to find some forms more apt and compact. The unique genius of Chopin led the way. Surrounded by an atmosphere of romanticism, and entirely free, as far as we can see, from the influence of the sonata spirit, his strange and subtle mind sought types of form which were quite independent of tradition. Very often the form seems to grow out of the musical ideas; at any rate it is easy to feel that form and utterance progressed simultaneously in his processes of inspiration. This attitude toward original methods of organization is perceptible in a very large range of his compositions—the ballads, the impromptus, the mazurkas, but in the finest and subtlest shape in the best of the preludes. There, indeed, can always be felt the underlying impulse to express some feeling or idea which is not purely and only musical, and also the exact aptness of the form in which it is expressed. Hardly any modern composers have excelled Chopin in this respect; it is his greatest contribution to the evolution of musical art. But even classical composers, composers essentially built up on the great traditions, tacitly admitted the[Pg l] gravitation of art back to its rightful position; Mendelssohn in his songs without words and symphonies, Schumann in vast numbers of movements of all calibres for pianoforte and even in movements of symphonies, such as the slow movement of the Rhenish and the whole of the D major; Brahms in his compact and well-considered piano pieces, and movements in his chamber music; and later on the host of experimentalizing composers in every branch of art, all bent on expressing something that stirs them, and all bent on finding special ways of organizing what they have to say. The most conclusive illustrations are naturally in the branch of song as cultivated by modern composers. Here the theories of the few faithful defenders of the old strongholds are obviously void; for it is impossible to imagine anyone being so preposterously idiotic as to try and write a song in sonata form. The scheme of organization must inevitably, in such a form of art, follow absolutely the meaning of the words and the course of the dramatic development. As a matter of fact, the same connection with words rules the situation as far as regards the artistic organization in all directions from anthems and church music up to the colossal scores of music dramas. The composer has now not only to provide diction, method, artistic texture, color, but also new types of form. It may, indeed, be said that the highest aim of the composer, after the discovery of something worth expressing, is to find some new scheme—some new distribution of the architectural elements of his musical work—which will present his ideas in forms which will attract the attention and keep the interest of the highest class of minds.

The situation may be said to round off the story of music’s development so far. For the colossal accumulation of resources and means of beautifying and vitalizing ideas serves not only for utterance but also to[Pg li] widen the scope and variety of schemes of artistic organization—and the individual composer becomes personally responsible in that respect as well as for the feeling and the artistic details.

But the indebtedness of latter-day composers to the devotion of those who went before is not exhausted by these accomplishments. For there are many features of art to which successive generations of composers have contributed in the fashioning, and which ought not to be overlooked, though they cannot be dealt with in detail in a summary. One of the subtlest and most interesting is the differentiation of various styles. The instinct which impelled composers in this connection was always to find the most perfect adjustment of resources to environment. In other words, to express what they had to say in the ways which were most convenient and effective for the instruments which had to play it, and most suitable to the audience to which it was to be addressed in the place where it had to be performed.

At first composers’ ingenuity was exercised in one style only, that of choral music, limited also mainly to sacred music. When that was more or less perfected in the space of some five centuries, instrumental secular style began to emerge; at first leaning on the methods and devices which composers had found out in choral music, and then by degrees, as instrumental music learned to stand alone, making it more completely apt for performance by instruments; which process has gone on till the present day and is still going on. Then, soon after instrumental style began to branch off from the parent stem of choral music, operatic style began to be laboriously devised, and is by degrees still being perfected in the sphere of music drama; then followed the distinct style for various solo instruments, as the style of organ music, the style for various kinds of orchestral music, for chamber music, for domestic[Pg lii] music, songs, concert-platform music, various types of modern church music—an ever-increasing variety, each style being the most perfect adaptation to the conditions of presentment and the qualities of instruments as time goes on.

Another development of great interest is that of thematic material. Such things as subjects were hardly thought of at first in artistic conditions, as choral music was not adapted to clear definition. That quality began to manifest itself when rhythm began to play its part in instrumental music. Then melodious passages, which were clearly recognizable in themselves, began to make their appearance in operatic arias, but they were for a long time defined more by the conventional periods indicated by cadences of various degrees of finality than by their individual character. This peculiarity of defining subjects persisted almost till the end of the sonata period in the latter part of Beethoven’s life, when he began to divine the possibility of subjects being identifiable for themselves without artificial conventions for marking their boundaries, and gave the impulse to that practice of concentrating interest in short phrases and figures which have intrinsic definition by reason of their characteristic intervals and rhythms, which has become the most universal trait of all later music, gathering force in the romantic period and being developed further by the latest representative composers, who use color, chord positions, even modulation, as well as melodic features, as factors in making their thematic nuclei stand out from their context, and serve the purpose of texts to their discourses—the said texts serving also to suggest as clearly as possible what the composer has in his mind, which he desires to convey to his audience in the most vivid and permanent forms.

It is inevitable that all this huge development of artistic resources, which has taken so many centuries[Pg liii] of patient and devoted concentration of faculties, should bewilder the ardent and eager latter-day composer who is longing to express himself at once.

In many cases his invention and spontaneity seem to be paralyzed by the amount there is to learn. On the one hand, it causes academicism in the more conscientious, and, on the other, it causes rebellion. All the ‘isms’ of contemporary art of all kinds are the result of a kind of indigestion which is the outcome of the superabundance of resources of all kinds. The highest manifestations of art can only be produced by those who have survived the long process of learning to understand the meaning and purpose of artistic procedures and still have some vitality left. But the public is by this time quite incapable of distinguishing between what is built upon genuine foundations and what is pure recklessness. They like recklessness, and the power to recognize the mind which builds so difficult an edifice of individuality on loyalty to his art requires too much education. So many contrive the appearance of originality by the easy process of merely doing what they have been advised not to do. They cry out against the soul-subduing labor of having to learn how to do the things that are worth doing in the best way. So artistic progress becomes mainly the process of learning from making mistakes, which brings it into line with all the ordinary forms of social progress. It becomes a wild hurly-burly of impetuous adventurousness, in which the ardent explorers do not even allow themselves time to find out whether the new country they propose to explore is worth exploring. But without doubt there is a residue of the real quality when the disposition of the composer is also of fine quality. The ‘new paths’ now entail the motive of the composer being more identifiable than ever. They betray themselves in spite of themselves. The pedant cannot escape from his pedantry, the conven[Pg liv]tional-minded from his conventions, the sentimentalist from his sentimentalities, the vain man from his vanities, the sensualist from his cravings, the insolent from his insolence, or the commercial from his advertisements. The general repudiation of standards leaves them all without disguise, and the man who understands music can identify the individual and his type of society and what it is worth through the music he puts forward as representing him.

It entails a change in the position of musical art which took place in the painting art centuries earlier, and shows what a modern thing music is. Men no longer expect music to be the expression of noble and exalted thoughts only, but accept it as the expression of all kinds of moods, emotions, feelings and aspirations, whether they be little and intimate, satyric and strange, wildly extravagant, genially humorous, pugnacious, pacific, pastoral, even uproariously domestic. It is a new kind of differentiation in which there is inevitably a new kind of waste. But the ideal public, which is infinitely longer than it is broad, will ultimately apply the judgment based on the experience of generations, and will sift out the products of the genuinely artistic beings from the follies of the heedless ones. The purists are in despair, but those whose optimism is invulnerable can look forward in the unshaken belief that art will go on expanding healthily, in spite of the confusion of tongues, through the inextinguishable passion of true composers to find the most perfect and complete expression of their own personalities.

C. Hubert H. Parry.

October, 1914.

[Pg lvi]

CONTRIBUTORS AND COLLABORATORS

FOR VOLUMES I, II AND III

[Pg lvii]

CONTENTS OF VOLUME ONE

[Pg lix]

[Pg lx]

[Pg lxi]

ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME ONE

[Pg lxiii]

Music is coeval with the human race. In all probability it precedes spoken language. For music is primarily the expression of emotion; articulate language is the expression of definite thought. And in the process of evolution emotion precedes thought. The beginnings of music are to be found in Nature herself. The howling of the winds, the humming of insects, the cries of animals, the songs of birds must all be considered as elemental music, inasmuch as they contain the two fundamental elements thereof: ‘rhythm’ and ‘tone.’

Rhythm is the more or less regular division of time by beats or strokes. The heart beats in a regular rhythm; there is the rhythm of the raindrops; man walks with a rhythmic stride; the waves beat upon the shore in a solemn and impressive rhythm; the drumming of the partridge; the chirping of the crickets; the tapping of the woodpecker; the muttering of distant thunder, etc.—all these are rhythms, more or less regular divisions of time, marked off by beats or accents.

Now ‘tone’ is merely a noise which persists at a certain pitch. When we cry out in fear we usually produce a noise, but should we be careful to maintain a steady and equal emission of breath we should produce a tone. In other words, a ‘noise’ is produced by a rapid and irregular change in the rate of vibration of the[Pg 2] sounding body, whereas a ‘tone’ is produced by the steady maintenance of a certain rate of vibration for a long enough time for the ear to appreciate its definiteness. That this time need not be very long is proved by the ease with which we grasp as tones certain very short notes used in music; grace notes, for instance. Many noises, in fact, upon analysis appear to be collections of heterogeneous tonal fragments which succeed each other with such rapidity and eccentricity as to preclude the recognition of their tonal elements, as such.

Such animal cries as the roaring of lions, the baying of wolves, the screeching of parrots, or the barking of dogs must be classed as mere noises. While they are frequently of rhythmic interest, they contain too little of the tonal element to be regarded musically. On the other hand, the humming of certain insects, which produces a definite tone, the whistling and singing of many birds, the musical cries of certain monkeys as related in Darwin, and even on occasion the crying of the wind, must all be regarded as ‘natural music.’

The wind with its fitful and irregular howling usually produces mere noise, but there are times when it blows with such a steady intensity through the forest that a definite tone is produced. One reads with interest and sympathy in the memoirs of a certain naturalist how he, while listening to the ethereal singing noises produced by myriads of small insects, imagined that he caught but the lower notes of some elfin symphony, too refined for mortal ears to hear. The songs of the singing birds are very notable examples of ‘natural music,’ for here the tones are in many instances quite perfect, while the rhythms of many bird-songs are sharply defined and easily noted.

But it is savage or primitive man who claims our greatest interest. Untouched by learning, simple of mind and direct and naïve in his conduct, he is at the same time a part of nature and the ancestor of civilized[Pg 3] man—a being not only endowed with strong rhythmic sense, but with vocal powers far superior in possible variety of inflection to those of any of the animals. His love cries, war songs, and savage laments are as much natural music as are the songs of birds or the cries of animals, and contain, even though crudely, the elements from which civilized music has subsequently been developed. It is with him that our story really begins.

Thus we see that the fundamental elements of music are to be found in nature herself. Man, in his upward and wonderful course from barbarism to civilization, has but cunningly combined these elements, with ever-increasing intellectuality, until there has come to development the glorious art of music as we know it to-day; an art which ‘hath the power of making Heaven descend upon earth,’ as it is written in the Chinese annals.

When we contemplate the life of the savage we are to all intents and purposes observing the lives of our own primitive ancestors. As we see them to-day they without doubt portray for us a phase through which we ourselves passed on our way upward to civilization. No tribe of savages has yet been discovered who have not possessed some elemental fragments of music. No matter how barbaric the people, how rude their manners, or how savage their dispositions, music of some sort plays a vital and significant part in their lives. Most savage tribes have their war cries, songs, and dances; their playful or ceremonious dances; their love or marriage songs, their funeral songs; and lastly, their mysterious and pantheistically religious incantations: prayer songs, appeals to unseen powers, either diabolical or beneficent; to effect the deliverance of[Pg 4] some person from a dread disease, or to bring rain, or abundance of game, etc. All these are to be regarded as primitive music—music which has hardly as yet attained the dignity of an Art.

The collection and study of these fragments has been of great interest to ethnologists and philosophers and has given rise to numerous theories regarding the origin of music. Herbert Spencer gives a physiological explanation of its origin, claiming that intense emotion acts in a particular manner on the vocal and respiratory organs, thereby causing the person thus affected to emit sounds; either high or low, loud or soft, according to the kind of emotion with which he is filled. Beginning with the proposition that ‘All music is originally vocal,’ he goes on to say: ‘All vocal sounds are reproduced by the agency of certain muscles. These muscles, in common with those of the body at large, are excited to contraction by pleasurable and painful feelings.’ And again: ‘We have here, then, a principle underlying all vocal phenomena, including those of vocal music, and by consequence those of music in general. The muscles that move the chest, larynx, and vocal cords, contracting like other muscles in proportion to the intensity of the feelings; every different contraction of these muscles involving, as it does, a different adjustment of the vocal organs; every different adjustment of the vocal organs causing a change in the sound emitted; it follows that variations of voice are the physiological results of variations of feeling.’

Charles Darwin attempts to explain the existence of primitive music by considering it as a secondary sexual manifestation. He asserts that primitive song was used as a method of charming the opposite sex; that the first songs were love songs, and that from these all others were developed. In the ‘Descent of Man’ he says: ‘The male alone of the tortoise utters a noise, and this only during the season of love. Male alligators[Pg 5] roar or bellow during the same season. Every one knows how much birds use their vocal organs as a means of courtship; and some species likewise perform what may be called instrumental music.’ And later: ‘Women are thought to possess sweeter voices than men, and so far as this serves as any guide, we may infer that they first acquired musical powers in order to attract the other sex.’

Spencer’s explanation is pure theory, based as it is not upon observation of particular facts, but upon a knowledge of certain physiological laws. Darwin’s explanation, on the contrary, is evidently based on very careful observations of particular instances of the manifestation of the primitive musical faculty. Nevertheless, however interestingly Darwin writes concerning the origin of music, Spencer’s explanation must seem to us the broader, more inclusive and satisfying of the two, inasmuch as it bases the origin of music in a variety of emotional experiences rather than in only one (the love emotion). Darwin, however, says that the emotion of love may give rise to many other emotions of a quite different character, such as rage, jealousy, and triumph; and proceeds to indicate the possible development of various kinds of primitive songs from primitive love songs. It is, however, difficult for us to conceive of the development of war songs, incantations, or howls of grief for the dead as having been developed from primitive love songs.

According to Grosse, music arose from the play instinct. It is one of the forms in which superabundant energy is spent. Most animals, including man, are endowed with more than enough energy than is absolutely necessary to supply their physical needs. This superabundant energy is expressed in different kinds of play. The leaping and diving of the porpoise, the gambolling of dogs, the running of races, and the playing of games among primitive men are examples of the working of[Pg 6] the play instinct. Our modern sports, tennis, football, etc., are also examples of it. According to this theory, singing and dancing first arose as means of diversion from the monotony of existence, as a means of whiling away the time and making life pleasant. This is a most important theory, and while it probably is not wholly true, it contains a large percentage of truth. It is upheld by a great number of writers besides Grosse, and has great significance concerning the origin of all the Arts, including music.

Another theory of the origin of music is that it arose through the imitation by primitive man of bird-songs and other sounds in Nature. It is true that in a collection of the music of many savage tribes there are numerous songs which are certainly imitations of certain bird calls and other animal cries. Particularly are these to be noted in the music of the North American Indians. They have ‘Pelican,’ ‘Crane,’ ‘Elk,’ and ‘Buffalo’ songs, and even songs imitating the wind in the pines. Their animal songs are to a large extent but slight developments of the cry of the animal himself. This cry was probably first used by the primitive hunter as a decoy, and eventually through frequent use became a recognized song. Although many primitive songs have undoubtedly arisen in this way, the theory of imitation considered as an explanation of the origin of music is somewhat in discredit with ethnologists and philosophers. It is much too partial and there are too many cases to which it certainly cannot apply.

In his study Arbeit und Rhythmus Karl Bücher advances the idea that through regular ‘work’ of any kind ‘song’ as an accompaniment is naturally induced. The regularity of the ‘work,’ be it walking, driving a stake, or grinding corn in a hollowed-out stone, supplies one element of music; i. e., rhythm. One element of a tune being present, what more natural than an attempt on the part of the worker to supply the other element and[Pg 7] thus lighten the labor? Especially is this likely to happen if the task require several workers who are obliged to work together, somewhat in unison. Bücher says ‘Song is the offspring of labor. It is a means employed to discipline individual activities to the accomplishment of a common task.’

Leaving out of consideration, however, all external stimuli which may or may not have had a determinative influence in the development of primitive music, we cannot but think of the remark of Karl Böckel, which strikes the note of truth: ‘Song has its origin in the cry of joy or sorrow; in the need of expression inborn in all peoples in a state of nature.’

From the foregoing it is easily to be seen that the first music was vocal. Vocal music has its origin and cause in the elemental urge of Nature, whereas musical instruments, even of the most primitive description, are a subsequent development and spring from the inventive faculty of man. The most elemental cries of primitive peoples consist of a succession of sounds beginning on a high tone and descending by means of a gliding or slurring effect, to a low tone. Such are the cries of the Caribs, and of the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia. Sometimes the gliding of the voice takes an upward turn, as it is said to do among the Polynesian cannibals when gloating over a victim about to be sacrificed. Definite musical tones cannot be recognized in these primitive cries, hence they cannot be accurately written down in the musical notation of civilization. In such simple and elemental cries as these, although no definite musical intervals are to be recognized, it is not long before they appear. In fact, it is easily to be seen in the most primitive music that the production of definite tones, and more or less of a[Pg 8] definite melodic design, is the object toward which the savage mind unconsciously gropes. It must not be supposed that the intervals in use in civilized music are wholly the invention of man. Many of the intervals, such as thirds, fifths, and octaves, are found to be quite perfect in certain animal cries and particularly in bird-song. Consider the two following bird-songs collected by the writer in Massachusetts:

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Civilized man has arranged these tones and intervals in diatonic sequences called scales. The scales are his invention, but the majority of the intervals composing them were undoubtedly in frequent use by primitive man from prehistoric times. As Gilman truly observes, ‘Definite successions of tones were in use long before they became regular systematic scales.’[2] The following cry of grief from the southeastern coast of Africa illustrates both the falling inflection of the voice already alluded to as a primitive characteristic and also the use of definite musical intervals. It was noted by Henri A. Junod:

Ô ma mè-re Ô ma mè-re Tu m’as quit-tée, où es-tu al-lóe

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Here is another ‘lament’; this one being from New Zealand. The tonal range is somewhat more extensive but the falling inflexion of the voice is well illustrated. The usual savage downward howl occurs at the end:

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In the ‘Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition’ by Captain Wilkes the following song is [Pg 9] noted. It comes from the island of Arnheim in Polynesia:

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The most primitive musical utterances are usually confined to a narrow range. Seconds and thirds are the intervals most frequently used. The songs of the Terra del Fuegians, for instance, do not usually exceed the limits of a third. The song just quoted from Arnheim is, it will be noted, with the exception of the ornamental quirks, confined to the range of a second. The most limited songs in regard to range of intervals, however, appear to be the songs of the Andamanese Islanders. M. V. Portman in a paper on Andamanese music published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, says: ‘The only notes in use in their songs are the following, and in this order: The leading note 1/4 sharp, the tonic, the tonic 1/4 sharp. The whole range of notes is therefore not equal to a superfluous second.’[3]

The savage mind, being incapable, for the most part, of the development of a musical idea, is satisfied by an incessant repetition of the same phrase. Here is a song of the Caribs as noted by Théodore de Bry. While it is comprised within the interval of a small second, it was repeated sometimes for an hour at a time, with what monotonous effect we can well imagine:

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Another Carib song, comprised within the interval of a fourth, is here given. A similar song from Polynesia is also given for purposes of comparison. The two songs are remarkably similar; in fact, almost identical.

[Pg 10]

The geographical separation of the Caribs and the Polynesians is so great as to have made intercommunication almost beyond the bounds of possibility. How, then, can the similarity be accounted for? Apparently only by assuming that peoples who live in similar conditions, and whose minds are in a similar state of development, may express themselves in a similar manner:

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Germs of the principle of contrast may be found in both the above songs. A second phrase or musical motive has been invented which is sung alternately with the first, thereby relieving the sense of monotony. This was certainly a great step in the development of primitive music. The invention of a second musical phrase, and the contrasting of it with the first, was the unconscious beginning of musical form. For contrast is the basic principle of form in music. The following song from Samoa shows this principle of the contrasting of musical motives very clearly. The two motives are sung by different groups of persons:

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The above is a tune in which the contrasting phrases are of equal length, and recur with great regularity, but many tunes are found in which the contrasting motives, or melodic particles, follow each other with[Pg 11] whimsical irregularity, their relative position and recurrence following no law but the feeling of the singer at the moment. Such is this tune of the Macusi Indians of South America:

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But in this Eskimo tune, noted by Dr. Kane, one of the earliest Arctic explorers, while the motives follow each other with regularity and are of equal length, each motive is given twice before the contrasting motive occurs:

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Two little tunes from Africa may serve as final illustrations of this contrasting phrase principle. These tunes are also interesting inasmuch as both contain a germ of ‘ragtime.’ The sources of ragtime are to be found in the songs of the American negro slaves, and it is significant to find these hints also present in the songs of the parent African race.

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Both the above are taken from ‘Up the Niger’ by Captain A. F. Mockler-Ferryman.

Music and the dance developed side by side. Music is rhythm plus tone; the dance, rhythm plus gesture. In savage life they are well-nigh inseparable. The[Pg 12] dance among civilized peoples is merely a diversion; a form of amusement. Among savages it is much more rarely so. Nearly all ceremonies, whether of a joyful, sorrowful, or religious character, were accompanied by appropriate dances. Many of these dances were of a very elementary character, consisting merely of certain postures, swaying of the body, or leaping into the air. Some dances were imitated from the motions of certain animals, even as some of the primitive songs were imitative of animal cries. Of such nature is the Kangaroo dance of the aborigines of Australia. The men who indulge in the dance imitate the postures and leaps of the kangaroo, and also imitate with their voices the sounds made by that animal. Meanwhile the women sing the following simple tune over and over again, and furnish a rhythmical accompaniment by knocking two pieces of wood together:

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Similarly, the North American Indians have eagle dances, dog dances, etc., while the natives of Kamtschatka have a bear dance in which, says Engel,[4] ‘they cleverly imitate not only the attitude and tricks of the bear, but also its voice.’ There were also war dances, love dances, funeral dances, and various ceremonial dances. In a sense, all primitive music may be considered as dance music. All primitive songs were accompanied by gestures or dances and, naturally, there was no dance without its accompanying music. The head-hunting Dyaks of Borneo have a dance in which the gestures indicate the cutting off of heads. The North American Indians have a scalp dance, celebrating the victorious exploits of a war [Pg 13]party. The Maoris of New Zealand have a war dance in which all thrust out their tongues at once, a gesture which may indicate contempt of the enemy.

One of the most curious of primitive dances is the Corroberie Dance of the natives of Australia. It is thus described by Carl Engel: ‘Twenty or more men paint their naked dark bodies to represent skeletons, which they accomplish by drawing white lines across the body with pipe-clay to correspond with the ribs, and broader ones on the arms, legs, and the head. Thus prepared they perform the Corroberie at night before a fire. The spectators, placed at some distance from them, see only the white skeletons, which vanish and reappear whenever the dancers turn around. The wild and ghastly action of the skeletons is accompanied by vocal effusions and some rhythmical noise which a number of hidden bystanders produce by beating their shields in regular time.’ Here is the melody of one of these Corroberie dances. This melody is from New South Wales and has been noted with slight variations by Wilkes, Field, and Freycinet. The version of Field is given:

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But it is, perhaps, among the American Indians, of all savage peoples, that the dance assumes its greatest importance. The very term ‘dance’ often means a ceremony covering several days; the whole consisting of many individual dances, recitations, and songs, and forming a ritual of a quasi-religious or pantheistic character. Their ceremonies are usually appeals to[Pg 14] the gods for rain, abundant crops, luck in hunting, or good fortune in war. Thus there is the Great Rain Dance of the Junis; the Sun Dance of the Cheyennes; and the Snake Dance of the Hopis. The Snake Dance is an elaborate ceremony of several days’ duration, during which live rattlesnakes are on occasion carried in the hands and even held between the teeth while a dignified and ‘stamping’ sort of dance goes forward. It is primarily an invocation to the gods for rain.

Two melodies used in the Snake Dance are here given, as noted by Benjamin Ives Gilman:

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All primitive dances are accompanied by hand clapping, stamping of the feet, the beating of stones, the knocking of two sticks of wood together, or something of this nature to keep the time regular and to accentuate the rhythm. Among the Andamanese Islanders thigh-slapping alternates with hand-clapping, and among some tribes the snapping of the fingers is used. From snapping the fingers to rattling a handful of pebbles was an easy and natural step. This rattling of pebbles in the hand constituted a kind of rude ‘castanets.’ These pebbles were soon put into a seashell or a gourd and thus the first rattles came into existence. Rattles were made by putting pebbles into gourds or other dried, hollow fruits, into tortoise shells, or seashells, and even into human skulls, as is the case in New Guinea. In the Snake Dance mentioned above[Pg 15] gourd rattles are used, imitating the sound of the rattlesnake when angry. The rattle is supposed to be the remote ancestor of the bell. In the place of two sticks, two bones were frequently beaten one upon the other, or struck together while being held between the fingers of one hand. Long mussel shells were also used as clappers. The beating of slabs or plates of stone constituted a rude gong. Finally it was discovered that by stretching the skin of an animal tightly over the end of a hollow log and striking it energetically a sharper and more resonant and penetrating noise could be produced than in any other way. Thus the first drums were made.

The rudest form of drum on record is evidently that in use among the Andamanese Islanders. It is called the Pukuta Yemnga and consists of a ‘shield-shaped piece of wood which is placed with the narrow end in the ground and struck with the foot. The convex side of it follows the shape of the tree from which it has been cut. When in use the convex side of the Pukuta is uppermost’ (Portman). It is evidently a kind of sounding board, or foot-drum.

The drum, roughly speaking, is the oldest musical instrument. It is of great interest to us inasmuch as it still holds a place of honor in the modern orchestra. It is the king of the group of percussion instruments whose object it is, not to produce a tone, but an accent.

No tribe of savages has been discovered but what is possessed of a drum of some sort. The most usual form of construction of the primitive drum has been that of a section of tree trunk, hollowed out, and covered with skin at each end. Certain trees, such as the bread-fruit tree or the bamboo, render this peculiarly feasible. But drums have been found made from gourds, cocoanuts, calabashes, and many melon-like fruits. Primitive drums range in size from very small hand drums, which can be held in one hand and struck with the[Pg 16] other, up to those whose heads are several feet in diameter and require the use of a good stout club as a drumstick.

The ancient Mexicans possessed a drum which gave forth two distinct tones of definite pitch. It is thus described by Carl Engel in his work on Musical Instruments: ‘They [the Mexicans] generally made it of a single block of very hard wood, somewhat oblong square in shape, which they hollowed, leaving at each end a solid piece about three or four inches in thickness, and at its upper side a kind of sound-board about a quarter of an inch in thickness. In this sound-board, if it may be called so, they made three incisions, namely, two running parallel some distance lengthwise of the drum, and a third running across from one of these to the other just in the centre. By this means they obtained two vibrating tongues of wood which, when beaten with a stick, produced sounds as clearly defined as those of our kettledrums.’ In some of these wooden drums the two tongues on being struck at the same time produced a third; in others a fifth; in others a sixth, and in some even an octave. The difference in pitch was obtained by making the two tongues of a different thickness, and naturally the greater the difference in thickness the larger was the interval produced.

A curious instance of drums which give forth a sound of a definite pitch is the bamboo drums, still to be found in some of the islands of the Pacific. These drums were first described in the account of Captain James Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific ocean. The whole passage is of exceeding interest, giving as it does a picture of purely primitive musical development untouched and uninfluenced by any civilized suggestion. The date, as far as I have been able to ascertain, was May 18, 1777, and the place Hapace (Hapai) in the Tonga Island group. The account is as follows:

[Pg 17]

‘A chorus of eighteen men seated themselves before us in the centre of the circle composed of numerous spectators, the area of which was to be the scene of the exhibitions. Four or five of this band had large pieces of bamboo, from three to five or six feet long, each managed by one man, who held it nearly in a vertical position, the upper end open, but the other end closed by one of the joints. With this closed end the performers kept constantly striking the ground, though slowly, thus producing different notes according to the different lengths of the instruments, but all of them of the hollow or bass sort; to counteract which a person kept striking quickly, and with two sticks, a piece of the same substance, split and laid along the ground, and by that means furnishing a tone as acute as those produced by the others were grave. The rest of the band, as well as those who performed upon the bamboos, sang a slow and soft air, which so much tempered the harsher notes of the above instruments that no bystander, however accustomed to hear the most perfect and varied modulations of sweet sounds, could avoid confessing the vast power and pleasing effect of this harmony.’

Captain James King, who was with Captain Cook during his last voyage, also writes concerning these bamboo drums as follows: ‘In their regular concerts each man had a bamboo which was of a different length and gave a different tone. These they beat against the ground, and each performer, assisted by the note given by this instrument, repeated the same note, accompanying it with words, by which means it was rendered sometimes short and sometimes long. In this manner they sang in chorus, and not only produced octaves to each other, according to their species of voice, but fell on concords such as were not disagreeable to the ear.’

[Pg 18]

The latter part of this quotation from Captain King raises the interesting question of the existence of harmony in primitive music. This question has been much discussed. Travellers have certainly brought back wonderful tales of part singing among primitive peoples. Unfortunately most of these travellers have not possessed any very accurate musical knowledge, hence their statements cannot for the most part be regarded as of scientific value. Especially does this apply to statements concerning harmony or the harmonic intervals. The appreciation of a melody or ‘tune’ is about as much as the man of average intelligence is capable of. But the determination of the relation of the notes of this tune to other sounds produced at the same time requires a more special or technical knowledge.

At a first consideration of the subject one is led, somewhat hastily, to conclude that when definite harmonic intervals occur in savage music they are entirely the result of accident, and not of design. In his description of a dance, native to the bushmen of Australia, Elson says: ‘The music to this odd performance is not in unison; the dancer sings one air, the spectators another, and the drum gives a species of “ground bass” to the whole.’ To have arranged these two ‘airs’ so that they, on being sung simultaneously, would have produced a concordant and musical result would have required a degree of mental development of which the bushman is not to be suspected. In this, and many similar instances, we may safely assume that such harmonic intervals as may have been produced were purely the result of accident. There are, however, so many instances on record, and of undoubted authenticity, in which it is seen that certain savages have consciously striven to produce concords, both in their singing and[Pg 19] in their rude instruments, that these cannot be disregarded in an impartial consideration of the question.

Of great interest in this connection is the following song, which was obtained by G. Forster at the Tonga Islands about the year 1775:

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It will be seen that this song ends with a chord of three tones; a triad, in other words. It will also be seen that each of the tones in the triad (with the exception of e) has been sounded more than once in the preceding melody. In fact, with the exception of d, all the tones of the melody are constituent tones of the triad. After singing these tones in melodic sequence, or one after the other, it was surely a most natural procedure to sing them at the same time, so that they should sound together. Thus the triad was quite naturally produced. Drayton, who visited the Tonga Islands some seventy years after Forster, also mentions the fact of their ending some of their songs with a well-defined triad. But whereas the triad in the song noted by Forster is minor, that spoken of by Drayton is a major triad. In either case the fact is sufficiently remarkable.

In the narrative of the Wilkes exploring expedition we find a song noted in which use is made of the harmonic intervals in the accompaniment of a melody. The song was obtained at the Tonga Islands about 1840. In its use of harmony it is one degree in advance of the song collected by Forster, although not so interesting melodically:

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[Pg 20]

At first the bass note makes a fifth with the principal melodic note. Later the third is added, making the complete major triad. It is also worth noting that these harmonic bass tones are in a slightly different rhythm from the melody and preserve an independent character as an accompaniment to the melody. Perhaps the most striking instance, however, of the conscious use by savages of concordant musical intervals is afforded by the following little song noted by the traveller Forster as having been sung by the original inhabitants of New Zealand:

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To have sung this melody in thirds, to have ended it in unison, and then to have gone back to the thirds again was certainly a most remarkable feat for the savage mind to accomplish, and decidedly points to conscious intention rather than mere accident.

While the knowledge and the development of the science of harmony is one of the fruits of European civilization, and as a science is well-nigh confined to Europe exclusively, we still must admit that whereas primitive man had no knowledge of harmony he had a feeling for it, and that this feeling led him, though somewhat blindly, to the attainment of certain fundamental harmonic intervals. These intervals he evidently valued and used consciously. It is certainly of interest to note that a germ or suggestion of harmony existed in the primitive mind; that this element, as well as the other elements of music, has a natural basis.

We have seen how naturally the percussion instruments were developed; how they sprang into being, as it were, in response to an innate necessity for rhythmic[Pg 21] expression, an inevitable accompaniment of the dance and the dance-song. Almost at the same time wind instruments of a simple and rude kind were fashioned. Whistles were made from the bones of animals with the marrow removed. Pipes were made from hollow reeds, while conch shells and the horns of deer-like animals furnished the first trumpets. These primitive whistles, pipes, and deer-horn trumpets[5] when blown were capable of giving forth but one tone. However, it is highly probable that, as their makers grew more familiar with the effect of the varying pressure of the lips, certain partials of the fundamental tone were produced, such as the octave, the fifth, and even the third. Eventually a series of holes were pierced in them, thus making it possible by means of stopping and unstopping these holes with the fingers to produce a rude scale of tones. But the first whistles were evidently of the one tone variety. An interesting relic of this description has recently been exhumed by N. Lartet in the department of Dordogne, France. It consists of a small bone, probably of the reindeer, about two inches in length. Through this bone near one end a small hole has been bored, probably by a sharp piece of hard stone, like flint. By applying the lips to this hole and blowing strongly a shrill whistling sound is produced. This was no doubt used in hunting, or as a call. In a cave at Lombrive in the department of Ariège several dog-teeth with similar holes for whistling have likewise been discovered.

To construct an instrument of the whistle variety which should produce more than one tone was the next step. On whistles or pipes of different lengths tones of different pitches can be produced, low tones from long pipes, higher tones from shorter pipes. So different lengths of whistles were rudely bound together, the longest at one end, the shortest at the other [Pg 22]end, and the intermediate ones arranged in a sequence according to their relative lengths. Thus an instrument was made from which it was possible to obtain a succession of rising tones, a primitive scale. As with the drum among percussion instruments, so this instrument among wind instruments occupies a place of honor. The invention of the drum sums up for us all previously existing rhythmic musical impulses, and this collection of whistles gives us an instrument on which the production of a sequence of different tones or musical scale is possible. It has been given the poetical name of ‘Pan’s Pipes.’ These ‘Pan’s Pipes,’ of more or less primitive construction, are found quite generally among the savage tribes of the world. Specimens have been found in South America consisting of but two flutes or pipes, a kind of double flute, as it were; while specimens with a variable number of pipes, from six or seven up to fifteen, have been found among the inhabitants of the various islands of Polynesia. Stumpf, in Die Anfänge der Musik, reproduces a photograph taken in southwest Africa, showing an orchestra of Pan’s Pipes. There are eleven performers, each holding a set of pipes. The instruments are of several sizes; the smallest being about six inches and the largest five or six feet in length. Archæological discoveries in the ancient tombs or burial places of barbarous or semi-civilized peoples bring many curious specimens to light.

In the British museum there is a Pan’s pipe consisting of a double row of reeds bound together exactly opposite each other; a sort of double Pan’s Pipes. Each series consists of seven reed pipes, and while one series of pipes remains open, allowing the free passage of air through them, all the pipes of the second series have been closed at the lower end. Now, to stop a pipe at the bottom has the effect of raising its pitch an octave. It was evidently the intention that two of these pipes should be blown at once and when this is done through the whole series the following succession of tones is produced:

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This is a five-toned or pentatonic scale, the last two tones being merely duplicates in octave of the first two. The scale of five tones, arranged in varying sequence, is a primitive form of scale. While not so primitive as some (scales of three or four tones, for instance), it is still much more so than the scales on which our modern art of music is based.

Another specimen of ancient Peruvian ‘Pan’s Pipes,’ at present in the New York Museum of Natural History, gives the following scale:

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This is a scale of eight tones and bears some slight relation to the minor scale in use at the present day.

Among the Tahitians Captain Cook observed that the raising or lowering of the pitch of a single flute or pipe was accomplished by rolling up a leaf in tubular form, inserting this improvised tube into the bottom of the flute and pushing it in or drawing it out until the required pitch was obtained. Some such device as this quite probably suggested the obtaining of different tones from the same pipe. The rolled-up leaf itself was used as a pipe capable of giving forth a true musical tone.

One of the natives of the Sandwich Islands, on being questioned in regard to their primitive musical instruments, stripped a leaf from the ti plant and, rolling it up somewhat in the shape of an old-fashioned lamp-lighter, blew through it, producing a tone of pure reedlike quality. Emerson says: ‘This little rustic pipe,[Pg 24] quickly improvised from the leaf that every Hawaiian garden supplies, would at once convert any skeptic to a belief in the pipes of the god Pan.’[6]

Among the inhabitants of New Guinea a flute or pipe is in use in which the tones are varied by means of a slide which is pushed into the tube or withdrawn in much the same manner as the rolled-up leaf mentioned by Captain Cook, but evidently on a much more extensive scale. This is in effect a primitive trombone.

Finally, flutes or pipes which are pierced with holes are found among many savage tribes, who have discovered that the effect of lengthening or shortening the tube could be obtained by boring holes in it and stopping them or unstopping them with the fingers. Simple as this may appear to us, it was a great discovery for the savage mind to make, and must have been the culmination of many groping attempts to attain this end extending through long ages.

On the most primitive instruments of this nature the finger holes were but two or three in number, but flutes or pipes are now found among nearly all savages capable of giving scales of from five to eight tones. Fétis figures and describes an instrument made from the horn of a stag, which was found in an ancient sepulchre, near Poitiers, France. This instrument, which is a sort of trumpet or flute-à-bec,[7] is pierced with three holes and gives a series of four diatonic tones. The lowest with all the holes stopped; the next higher with one finger raised, and so on. It is described as being made with great care and precision, the holes having been placed with an exactitude which would seem to indicate a considerable knowledge and appreciation of certain facts of acoustics.

In the sepulchre where this instrument was found [Pg 25]there were arms and other implements made of stone. This musical instrument, therefore, almost surely dates from the later period of the stone age, which age preceded in point of time the age in which man discovered and made use of the metals. It is therefore prehistoric and undoubtedly of very great antiquity. In the New York Museum of Natural History there is a collection of ancient bone flutes from Peru. These flutes are pierced with finger holes and give various scales of four, five, and six tones. The four-toned scale , sounds entirely rational and is in accordance with our modern ideas of diatonic succession; also this five-toned scale and this six-toned scale . But certain other scales given by these flutes appear to be more or less freakish in character and consist of a somewhat hit-or-miss collection of tones, indicating either a very crude musical sense among the ancient Peruvians, or very little skill on the part of the makers of the flutes:

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A ‘cane’ flute in the collection gives this scale:

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Nose flutes are found at the present day among many tribes. These are made from a section of bamboo or other cane-like wood from which the pith has been removed. The top end is left closed by the joint and a hole pierced on the side very near the top. Finger holes from two to four in number are bored in the tube of the flute. In playing the flute is pressed firmly against the lips, taking care that the little hole near the top end is covered by one nostril. Music of an ex[Pg 26]tempore kind is now produced by breathing into the instrument and covering and uncovering the finger holes in the usual manner; the length of the piece of music being determined by the breath of the performer. The following specimen of nose-flute music was collected by Miss Jennie Eisner in Hawaii:

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The development of these primitive wind instruments is usually ascribed to a slightly later period than that of the development of the first percussion instruments. The construction of wind instruments is considered to represent a slightly higher degree of mental development in man, and hence they are not regarded by ethnologists as being so primitive as the percussion instruments. Nevertheless Wallaschek insists that the first instruments to be developed were wind instruments, alleging in proof the discovery of some Egyptian flutes which he asserts antedate any other musical instruments of which we have any record. It is certainly true that the physical organism of man contains in itself the prototype of all wind instruments, i. e., the voice. But it is equally true that hand clapping and the stamping of the feet are also native to him, and these are undoubtedly the prototypes of all percussion instruments. The isolated fact of the discovery of these flutes is not of sufficient weight, to our mind, to justify the belief that wind instruments were developed anterior to percussion instruments.

As the appreciation of the fact of definite musical tones being obtainable on instruments took root and grew in the human mind, and especially as these tones[Pg 27] began to be arranged in definite series or scales, another instrument of a remarkable nature was developed. It was a percussion instrument, but one on which could be produced not only a tone having a definite pitch, but a whole series or scale of tones. Hence it was as capable of reproducing a melody as some of the primitive pipes or flutes. This was the xylophone. This instrument, having its far distant origin in the two sticks of wood which were struck together to produce a rhythmical noise by the most primitive savages, has been brought to its greatest perfection by the Africans and the Guatemalans. Its principle of construction is similar to that of the Pan’s Pipes; a series of sticks or bars of wood arranged according to their relative lengths; the longer giving forth the lower tones, and the tones growing higher in pitch as the sticks grow shorter. The series of sounding sticks of wood are in Africa usually fixed over a gourd, a series of gourds, or a drum-like instrument which acts as a sounding-board, thus giving the pieces of wood greater sonority. This instrument, as it is found among many of the African tribes, has a compass of from one to two octaves and gives approximately the tones of our usual diatonic scale. It aroused the admiration of Junod to such an extent that he refers to it as the ‘African piano,’ not an inapt name, by the way. The marimba of the Guatemalans, while not exactly a xylophone, is a percussion instrument which is capable of giving a scale of definite tones. According to Wallaschek ‘it consists of a number of gourds (as many as sixteen) covered with a flat piece of wood, beaten with a stick, and produces different tones according to the size of the gourd.’ The tone is said to resemble very much that of our modern piano.

The development of drums, such elementary wind instruments as have been noted, the xylophone, a suggestion of harmony and the rude idea of a scale, make[Pg 28] up the sum of the musical accomplishment of primitive man. It is true that the precursor of the stringed instruments is to be found in the hunting bow, and a few cases are found where this is used as a sort of one-stringed harp, the string being either struck with a stick or plucked with the fingers. Mention must also be made of the African goura, a sort of a primitive Æolian harp. It has but one string, and is similar in shape to the child’s small bow for shooting arrows. It has a quill affixed to one end in such a way that the string may be vibrated by blowing through the quill. The fingers are then lightly touched to the string, and a few faint harmonic-like sounds are produced. But, generally speaking, the development of stringed instruments is not to be looked for among savage peoples, it coincides with the rise of man from barbarism to some degree of civilization.

It is impossible to trace the progress of music in unbroken sequence from its primitive beginnings to its development as an art by civilized nations. The record is far too fragmentary. There are too many missing links, too many isolated and well-nigh inexplicable facts. Thus, among semi-civilized peoples like the Malays, the Bedouins, and the people of Africa, we find music of a comparatively high order and sophisticated nature. It is inconceivable that these people should have developed this music by their own initiative. The only reasonable explanation is that it has been acquired to a certain extent from educated travellers and explorers. In this process it has been unconsciously modified so that it usually reflects both elements—the barbaric and the civilized. The following melody, which is a song in use by the ‘medicine men’ of southeastern Africa for the exorcising or ex[Pg 29]pelling of an evil spirit from a person supposed to be possessed by it, is a case in point:

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While this melody has an undoubted barbaric character as a whole, it shows traces of civilized influence. It is quite definitely in the key of G, even though it contains no F-sharp, and the passages for chorus sound anything but barbaric. From the same district comes the following war song. While structurally, especially in regard to the use of the musical intervals, it exhibits considerable musical sophistication, the general effect is wild and primitive. This war song was in actual use in 1895.

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Among many of the semi-civilized tribes of Africa harps are found to be in use, some having as many as sixteen strings. The oboe, an instrument of a much higher type than the primitive pipe, is also found. It is conjectured that the Africans derived the harp from ancient Egypt, as many of those in use at the present day much resemble in form certain harps which we find represented in ancient Egyptian sculptures and bas reliefs. As for the oboe, it was almost certainly introduced by Arabian traders.

Among several tribes, but particularly the Ashantees, is to be found a rude sort of stringed instrument which in construction is somewhat midway between a harp and a banjo, and has some of the characteristics of each. It is called a sanko. It has eight strings, the[Pg 30] lowest of which is tuned to middle ‘C’ and the highest an octave above. The intermediary strings fairly represent the tones of the usual diatonic scale. The origin of the sanko is known to be Arabian, but its construction has undoubtedly undergone some modification in the hands of the Africans. It is capable of giving forth incipient harmony, and its negro players make frequent use of thirds, sixths and even chords of three tones (triads). Here are two specimens of music played upon the sanko, both collected and transcribed by T. E. Bowdich in Ashantee:

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The first of these tunes is claimed by the natives of Ashantee to be their oldest traditional tune. It certainly seems to possess all the crudity of true primitive music. The second tune is far more highly and rationally organized and shows more decidedly the effect of external influence. Quite free from the possible modification of European imitation, however, are the following fragments, recently taken down on the phonograph by Sir Harry Johnston in Uganda. It is to be regretted that the notation is not more exact.[8]

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Algernon Rose has described a peculiar kind of xylophone which he saw in South Africa. It consists of a series of ten or more pieces of bamboo of different lengths. All are fastened tightly at one end to a board, leaving the other end free. This other end is plucked with the thumb or fingers, after the manner of a harp string. The pieces of bamboo being plucked in this manner, each gives forth a sound, and as they are of different lengths it is possible to produce a series of different sounds; a rudimentary musical scale. Rose refers to the instrument as a ‘clicker’ and finds it to be in use among the Kaffirs. T. E. Bowdich also mentions an instrument which seems to be, from his description, almost identical with the instrument described above. This he found to be in use in Ashantee before 1819. He gives the following air as having been played upon it:

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This certainly sounds quite natural to civilized ears. Bowdich also mentions a one-stringed instrument called the bentwa, which seems to have been played much in the manner of a jew’s-harp. He says:

‘The Bentwa is a stick bent in the form of a bow, and across it is fastened a very thin piece of split cane which is held between the lips at one end and struck[Pg 32] with a small stick, while at the other it is occasionally stopped, or rather buffed by a thick one; on this they play only lively airs, and it owes its various sounds to the lips.’ He also gives this tune as having been played upon this instrument. Its resemblance to certain Irish jigs in 6/8 time is worthy of remark.

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There also exists among one of the lesser known tribes (the Empoongua) an instrument having five strings, said to be made of the filaments of the palm tree. Bowdich describes this instrument as being made of pieces of bamboo, which being bound together form a species of sounding board over which the strings are stretched lengthwise and held up by means of bridges at the ends. He gives the following tune as having been played on this instrument:

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While the study of some of the musical instruments of semi-civilized peoples is of ethnological interest the music itself is questionably so, inasmuch as it is more or less of a jumble of two elements—the barbaric and the civilized. Hence it is not of real significance in tracing the natural rise and evolution of the art. Much of the music of semi-barbarous peoples does not consist of what they have themselves developed during their rise from savagery, but consists more frequently of diluted, distorted and malappropriated bits of melody which have by devious routes reached them from civilization.

[Pg 33]

Of especial interest to Americans is the music of the North American Indians. It is difficult to characterize this music by a few general remarks, as there are, or rather were, over fifty different tribes, each of which had its own peculiar music. The whole mass of tunes presented many interesting varieties, both in structure and rhythm.

Music among the Indians did not occupy the place of an art. Song was not indulged in for the sake of giving pleasure, and music can hardly be said to have been developed among them in response to a love of melody for its own sake. There can be no doubt that among the Africans and other semi-barbarous peoples music, however rude, gives a genuine æsthetic pleasure, even though of a primitive sort. But among the Indians music was too closely bound up with ritual to have much of an independent existence as music. Song was the inevitable accompaniment of every important act or ceremony in tribal or individual life. Each prayer, incantation, tribal or individual ceremony had its own appropriate song, and it was considered unlawful to sing this particular song except in accompaniment of this particular prayer or ceremony. Certain songs having to do with ceremonies which occurred at certain seasons of the year could only be heard at these seasons. The song, as a song, had no existence apart from the ceremony. It is true that gambling songs, and songs of labor, such as corn-grinding songs, are to be found among many of the tribes, but these are apparently variations of the general rule, and that they were indulged in for the sake of æsthetic pleasure is very doubtful. Between certain tribes on the Pacific coast there were indeed singing contests, but it is learned on investigation that these contests were largely trials of[Pg 34] memory, their object being to ascertain who could remember accurately the greatest number of songs.

In general it may be said that the melodies of the northern tribes, such as the ‘Iroquois,’ ‘Algonquin,’ or ‘Kwakiutl,’ are much ruder and present more rugged characteristics than those of the southern tribes, such as the ‘Zunis’ or ‘Navahoes.’ These southern Indian melodies are much more graceful. This difference is well shown by the two following melodies. The first is from Dakota; the second from New Mexico:

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A peculiarity of the Dakota melody is the downward leap of a fourth to be seen in the second measure. The use of the interval of the fourth as a prominent melodic interval is quite a general characteristic of Indian music, and is noticeable in the music of many different tribes. The following Scalp Dance from Minnesota illustrates this:

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Again, it may be said that the larger number of Indian tunes have a falling melodic inflection. True to the most primitive characteristic of savage music, that of beginning on a high tone and descending gradu[Pg 35]ally to the bottom of the voice, the melodic course of the great majority of Indian tunes is ever downward. It is not an unusual thing for an Indian tune to end on a tone an octave and a half lower than that on which it began. The following dance song, also from Minnesota, illustrates this:

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Among the Indians the drum is naturally the instrument most frequently in use. There are but few songs or ceremonies in which it does not play a vital part. It is almost always used to accompany a singer, apparently to mark the time; but curiously enough the rhythm of the drum is sometimes at variance with the rhythm of the song. The rhythmic values of the vocal melody, on the one hand, and the different rhythm of its drum accompaniment, on the other, are so persistently independent that the effect is very evidently intentional. Rattles are sometimes used instead of the drum, as is the case in the Snake Dances of the Hopis already referred to.

The only other musical instrument deserving the name which is in widespread use is the so-called flute. This flute, pierced with six holes and blown through the end (not across the side) is used as a courting or love-making instrument on which to serenade the loved one. The fragments of melody which are played upon[Pg 36] it are largely extempore and are understood by the Indian maiden as a declaration of love. The following is a sample of one of these flute love-calls:

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With the exception of the flute and its love-calls, instrumental music can be said not to exist among the Indians. With them music is almost entirely song. And, as the most important element of their songs is not primarily their strictly musical value, this paucity of their instrumental music is only what might be expected. It is interesting to note, however, that practically in the only case in which music occurs divorced from ritual in Indian life, it appears as an expression of the love emotion. This is significant when considered in connection with Darwin’s theory of the origin of music cited above.

Even though the music of the Indians is almost entirely a by-product of ritual it would be wrong to conclude that as music it is lacking in character. While many of their ritualistic songs are merely a sort of recitative in which the melody is much distorted and drawn out to accommodate the words, others are quite perfect in their form and general melodic organization, and of a truly distinctive and forceful character; as, for instance, the following ‘Song of the Wolf,’ which was collected by Dr. Boas among the Kwakiutl tribe in the northwest:

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[Pg 37]

Nothing like a scientific study of Indian music was attempted until 1880. In that year Theodore Baker lived a while on the Seneca reservation, in the state of New York, and collected and studied such Indian melodies as he could there obtain. The results of his studies were embodied in a pamphlet and published under the title, Über die Musik der nordamerikanischen Wilden. This little book first drew the attention of ethnologists and others to the hitherto unsuspected existence of a large and important native musical culture among the Indians. Before 1880 investigators of the Indian and his native culture had entirely ignored his music, considering it to be mere barbaric noise not worthy of attention. Even Schoolcraft, in his great work published in 1854, said: ‘Indian music is very simple. It consists of about four notes.’ Since the publication of Baker’s essay, however, the subject has not lacked investigators. The application by Prof. Fewkes, of Harvard University, of the phonograph to the accurate recording of Indian melody has been used with brilliant success by investigators. Through the efforts of such workers as Alice C. Fletcher, Frederick R. Burton, Franz Boaz, James Mooney, Natalie Curtis, Frances Densmore, and others, thousands of Indian songs of many different kinds have been collected, written down, and published, forming a library of American primitive music of great completeness and inestimable value to students of the subject.

In collecting and studying the music of primitive peoples great difficulty is experienced in obtaining trustworthy data. Almost all the savage and semi-barbarous peoples of the world at the present day have been in contact more or less with civilized man for so long that they have acquired by imitation many of his[Pg 38] manners, customs, and ideas. Thus the savage’s original development has been overlaid as it were with a varnish of culture, which is foreign, not native, to him. The first civilized men to come in contact with a savage tribe have not as a rule been intent upon observing their manners and customs nor upon recording their primitive music or folk-lore. These first men have usually come as discoverers and as conquerors. They have been followed by missionaries, who in their zeal to perpetuate the doctrines of Christianity have been ever anxious to divert the minds of the people from their ancient traditions, by substituting for them stories from Bible history. Their ancient songs and barbarous-sounding incantations, however interesting to the ethnologist, have been in most cases tabooed by the missionaries as impious, who substituted for them the hymns of the church. This thing has happened in Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia, Africa, and particularly in America, the Indian tribes having been so inoculated with musical ideas, hymns, and scraps of folk song, that it is frequently only with great difficulty that the character of their own primitive music can be determined.

A collection of the music of the Hopi tribe, who dwell in seven naturally fortified hill towns in the desert of Arizona, reveals to a large extent Spanish influence. Many of their melodies have the grace and movement of Spanish dances. This is quite explicable, however, when it is remembered that the Spanish held dominion over these towns from 1580 to 1680. Spanish influence is also apparent in the music of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Philippine Islands, and in the traditional music of the Mexicans and Peruvians. Brasseur de Bourbourg has translated into French from the Quinche, the former Mayan tongue, an ancient manuscript called ‘Rabinal-Achi.’ It is an immense dramatic ballet accompanied by music and danced and acted by[Pg 39] hundreds of performers. But when we come to examine this music it is only to find that it has an unmistakably Spanish character.

From the fascinating histories of Francis Parkman it is plainly seen with what zeal the early Jesuit missionaries strove to Christianize the Canadian tribes of Indians. At the present day it is not an unusual thing to find turns of melody and even whole tunes which resemble to a large extent certain hymns of the Catholic Church. Frederick R. Burton, who has investigated the Ojibways’ music, says that, while on one of his trips in the vicinity of Lake Huron, he fell in with a particularly isolated tribe of these Indians. He asked them to sing one of their old choruses. The Indians complied and—sang a garbled version of ‘Old Hundred.’

The innate love of music among the African blacks has been remarked. Their imitative powers are likewise well known. We are told by Theophilus Hahn of an instance in which not only the music but the words of certain Dutch hymns, the latter being entirely unintelligible to the negroes, were remembered and repeated almost exactly, after being heard but once by them. Noirot,[9] after calling attention to the great resemblance existing between certain African airs and English jig tunes, or French vaudeville songs, says: ‘It is necessary, however, to make an exception of those slow and monotonous phrases which are sung by the young women to accompany dancing, and of the airs played on the Bambara flute. In these we again perceive the savage aspect of this music; the chant inspired by the patriarchal life of the blacks.’ A specimen of one of these airs is here given:

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The first collectors of the music of the various savage tribes naturally were obliged to write it down in ordinary musical notation. But savages in their primitive melodies, like certain animals in their quasi-musical cries, continually use intervals of less than a semi-tone. In writing down these primitive melodies in our notation it has been necessary to disregard these small intervals and to treat them as accidental happenings, a mere out-of-tuneness, as it were. The note written down has always been assumed to represent the tone which the primitive singer was trying unsuccessfully to produce. But instances of these variations from the tones of the orthodox chromatic scale finally became so numerous as to give rise to the belief that savages consciously made use of quarter tones in their songs. This belief has had many learned and eloquent defenders, among whom may be mentioned James A. Davies[10] and Benjamin Ives Gilman.[11] The truth of this theory is, however, very doubtful. The conscious use of the quarter tones or intervals smaller than those in use in European music would indicate a much more refined perception of tones and their relations, a much more delicate musical ear, than is possessed by civilized Europeans. And this is hardly to be reasonably expected of savages. Moreover, during recent years the writer has examined some hundreds of Indian songs as recorded by the phonograph. Many repetitions of single songs have been examined by him. As a general rule the repetitions fail to agree in length, rhythm, or accuracy of intonation. Frequently they agree only in general contour. Any single tone is liable to vary up or down at least a quarter of a tone, and in some cases the variation is as much as a full tone. Now if the Indians consciously use quarter tones in their songs, one would expect to find a regular recur[Pg 41]rence of these small intervals at the same place in each subsequent repetition of the song. But as such is very far from being the case, one is led to conclude that while these fractional intervals do really occur, their occurrence is much more the result of accident than of conscious intention. These conclusions in regard to North American Indian music apply, we believe, to the music of all savages.

The characteristics of that which is primitive are undoubted strength, directness of expression, and consequent effectiveness, but this elemental strength is coupled with crudity, inaccuracy, and an apparent lawlessness or impatience of restraint. No matter how charming, how effective, or how interesting many of these strains of primitive music may seem to us from an ethnological point of view, it is apparent that the mind of man has not yet grasped and moulded this tonal material. Primitive music does not show the effect of thought. It is merely the wild and wayward expression of emotion.

It was when the rudimentary successions of tones known to primitive man were gathered up and scientifically arranged in definite and unalterable scales that our modern art of music began. And at this point our survey of primitive music properly ends.

H. F. G.

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No history of music can pretend to completeness that does not give some account of the various musical systems that have developed before or outside of the influence of European civilization, though in truth music, in comparison with the other arts in Europe, has assimilated astonishingly little from the peoples of the Orient or from ancient civilization, for European music is based essentially upon harmony, and harmony, taking the word in its accepted meaning, was unknown to ancient nations, and is unknown to-day in countries of the Orient. We must admit that tricks of rhythm and melody came from the Orient into Spain at the time of the Moorish Conquest, were even brought back to Europe by the Crusaders returning from their distant wanderings. Furthermore the lute and perhaps the violin, both of which have held an important place in the development of European music, came from Arabia. But that the technique or structure of our music has been considerably influenced by the music of other races is quite out of the question. On the other hand, composers have, from time to time, enlivened their music by touches of Oriental color. They have experimented with Oriental melody and rhythm, they [Pg 43]have sometimes used strange instruments foreign to Europe. We may cite, for instance, Goldmark’s Sakuntala Overture; Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles; Félicien David’s symphonic ode, Le Désert; Rimsky-Korsakov’s glowing Oriental Scheherezade; Balakirev’s Islamey, etc. These experiments cannot but call our attention to those elaborate exotic systems of music which were flourishing in India, in China, in Japan, in Siam and Java, in Arabia and Persia centuries before the age of Bach and Handel. While Europe was still slowly emerging from the barbarism of the Middle Ages music had reached a high state of development in these countries. Strange instruments of many kinds were in use; there was an art of composition, frequently some form of notation; there was a musical profession and ‘much discussion of musical acoustics and æsthetics.’ An authority[13] on musical ethnology says of the Arabs: ‘At this day, when the decadence of the Arab civilization has been entirely consummated it still retains enough traces of its former splendor to enable us to claim without fear that at the time of its greatest florescence it was certainly as rich, probably even richer, than European art at the same epoch.’

As a foundation for all understanding and estimation of the so-called exotic systems of music we must bear in mind that beneath the differences from our own music in scale structure often as a matter of practice more apparent than real, in lack of harmony and in predominance of rhythm, lies the fundamental difference that music has never been cultivated for itself alone in China, in Hindustan, or among ancient nations [Pg 44]to anything like the same extent as in the Occident. Though in the Mohammedan Orient, at the height of the Saracen civilization, it was highly esteemed as a social diversion, in general it figures, not as an independent art, but rather as an auxiliary one. This, of course, applies to art-music, not to popular or folk song, of which, just as in other lands, there is a rich literature in the East. On the rivers of China, in the bazaars of Hindoo cities, under the Bedouin tent-roof, the people sing their songs. But the art of music was developed by these peoples only in connection with dancing, sacred or secular, with ceremonial functions, plays or pantomimes. If this fact be borne in mind, it is perhaps easier to comprehend an art so strikingly different from our own.

Exotic music, or, broadly speaking, the music of the semi-civilized races, may be considered under four heads; that of the Aztecs and Peruvians (nations whose civilizations, though they have been destroyed, are of too recent date to be classed with those of the ancients, yet the scant musical record of which should not be overlooked); the music of India; the music of the Chinese, Japanese, and Indo-Chinese peoples, including the Siamese, Javabese, Cambodians, Annamites; and the music of the Mohammedan Orient.

There is but little known of the music of the Aztecs or Peruvians. The fact that the Aztec language was sweet and harmonious to the ear and had no sharp or nasal sounds justified the fondness with which both lyric and dramatic poetry were cultivated in ancient Mexico. But the music of the Aztecs seems to have been unworthy of so cultivated a people. It was the only art that remained in its infancy among them. Still, the mention of ballads sung by the people, court-odes and the chants of temple choirs, show that they must have cultivated a form of vocal music distinctly above that of drums and horns, pipes and whistles. Moreover,[Pg 45] music played an important part in connection with religious and secular dancing, as it did also in India. It has been conjectured that the Aztec tonal system resembled that of the Arabs. Their songs generally began with deep sounds, rising in pitch and accelerating with the increase of pleasurable emotion on the part of the singer. De Solis speaks of the funeral processions in which the bodies of the dead were brought to the temples to be received by the priests swinging their censers of burning copal ‘to the hoarse sound of dissonant flutes and singing various hymns in a melancholy mode.’

Among the Peruvians the beautiful Quichua dialect, like the melodious language of the Aztecs, encouraged the haravecs or poets to compose the verses which were sung at religious festivals and at the table of the Inca. And, as in Mexico, music was intimately associated with religious dancing and ceremony. It played its part in the elaborate ritual of the Incas’ sun worship. However, little information is available concerning the development of the Inca music or that of the Aztecs before the Conquest. The Quichua and Aimara Indians of the present day are still passionately fond of music, singing and dancing to the accompaniment of the quena (Peruvian flute) and guitar; and phrases of the traditional minstrelsy of the Inca haravecs may ‘have been borne down the tide of rustic melody to these later generations.’ Their songs are in the ancient five-tone scale known as the pentatonic, which they have probably inherited from their proud ancestors, together with a fondness for triple rhythm, sole traces of the music of that brilliant state which sank before the power of Spain.

Concerning the music of China, of Hindustan, and of the Mohammedan Orient we have definite information. The people of these countries have not been, like the Aztecs of Mexico or the Incas of Peru, either swept[Pg 46] from the face of the earth or thrown back into a drowsy barbarism. Their own civilizations live on beneath a surface decay. They have ideals of tradition, of permanence, of racial habit, quite different from those accepted by our standards of progress and original development, which have fenced in their music from all Occidental influences. Only a few hardly noticeable variations in instrumentation and choreography mark the touch of time. Notation, rhythm, and design have remained for ages immutably the same.

It is supposed in China that Ling-Lenu, minister of the Emperor Honang-Ty, chosen to fix the laws of musical sound, retired to a bamboo-grove, near the source of the Yellow River, and there cut twelve bamboo tubes whose varying lengths yielded the sounds of our present-day chromatic scale. In reality, however, the pentatonic scale is used. The tones b and e (omitted in this scale as we have written it), the fourth and seventh tones in our scale, which are not found in the normal pentatonic scale, are given a special name, pien; and the union of the five tones and the two pien constitute what the Chinese call the ‘Seven Principles’ in music. But the five-tone scale is the one commonly employed in practice and constitutes the basis of all music in the Indo-Chinese countries.[14] In Java, Siam, Burmah, and Cambodia, both five-tone and seven-tone (heptatonic) scales are in use; [Pg 47]but the musical system of Japan, which was originally borrowed from China, is built up wholly on a five-tone scale, with the important difference from the Chinese that it has a minor third, and not a major: . This difference gives Japanese music a certain individual character of its own.

The Hindoos have a system of seven-toned scales differentiated from each other by variable quarter-tone steps. But the theory of music is developed in India with an over-elaboration of subtleties, as it is in China, and of almost a thousand varieties of scale theoretically possible in the Hindoo system no more than twenty are in actual use. Many of these resemble our own.

What may be called Mohammedan music is a complex type. It has resulted from the spread of Mohammedanism along the Mediterranean coast and Northern Africa, and in Central Africa and Southern Asia. It includes features from many sources—Persian, Byzantine Greek, Mediæval Christian, and purely local—and is historically a puzzle. Like the Hindoo scales, the scales which are used in distinctly Mohammedan countries are heptatonic; but the theoretical division of the octave is into seventeen steps (each equal to about one-third of a whole step) instead of the twenty-two srutis of the Hindoos. There are some eighteen of these seven-tone scales in use, varying from each other in the location of their shorter steps.

The five and seven-tone scales on which these musical systems are based are analogous to our own. It is the manner in which they are employed and modified by other factors that makes their music strikingly different from ours. The Chinese, in the first place, have many melodies similar to old Scotch songs, but they are[Pg 48] primarily interested, not in the flow of the melody, but in timbre, in the quality and character of sound. Whereas we, as soon as we have defined a sound, pass to the consideration of intonation, duration, etc., the Chinese theoreticians, with rare keenness of perception, have worked out an elaborate division of the quality of sound, according to the phenomena governing its production, classifying it according to eight sound-producing materials provided by Nature—skin, tone, metal, baked clay, silk, wood, bamboo, and gourd. Harmony means to the Chinese what it meant to the ancient Greeks, a purely æsthetic combination of sound and dance. Duple rhythm predominates. Both Chinese melodies and the melodies of the Indo-Chinese are continuous, admitting neither interruption nor repetition. The refrain is very rare, and occurs only in popular songs. Noisy, shrill, and harsh effects abound, disagreeable to our ears. Berlioz said: ‘The Chinese sing like dogs howling, like a cat screeching when it has swallowed a toad.’ But Berlioz could not listen with an understanding ear. No more can we. Such wholesale condemnation must be tempered with respect before the feeling of the illustrious Chinese musician, Konai, who said, ‘When I strike the sonorous stones, either softly or with force, savage beasts leap up with joy and concord reigns between high dignitaries.’

In ancient China music was a privileged amusement of the higher classes, and it has always been under imperial supervision. With the passing of the centuries it has been largely turned over to the vulgar, in street and theatre; and the ancient rules governing its production and performance (there are sixty volumes of classic works alone on the subject) have fallen into disuse. A letter notation is still employed.

The music of Indo-China hardly differs in essentials from that of China, and presents much the same peculiarity in comparison with our own. On the other[Pg 49] hand, the music of India is quite distinct, and presents only a few surface similarities to the Mongolian. Hindoo music, according to Captain Day,[15] has lost the primitive purity of Aryan times. The theoretical division of the octave into twenty-two quarter-tones, recorded in Sanscrit books, finds no practical application in modern usage. As in Chinese music, harmony is non-existent; for Hindoo music is purely melodic, and the Vina, the seven-stringed lute used as an accompanying instrument, merely doubles the voice part. But Hindoo music is built, as we have said, upon a system of seven-tone or heptatonic scales which offers far greater opportunity for effect than the pentatonic system of the Chinese. It has, moreover, infinitely more rhythmic variety and its rhythms are triple rather than duple, as is the case with the Chinese. They are capricious and elastic (this due, in part no doubt, to Mohammedan influences), and are usually strongly marked. One of the most characteristic features in Hindoo music, which has no counterpart in Chinese, is the Raga,[16] or traditional type-melody to which texts of varying character are sung. Some of the ragas are especially consecrated to gods and heroes. In general Hindoo airs are marked by long melodic passages, often of no definite design. There are three general divisions: gana (vocal music), vadya (instrumental music), and nytria (dance music). The Hindoos divide all instruments into four classes: quite unlike the Chinese classification: stringed instruments; those with membranes sounded by percussion; those struck in pairs; and those which sound when blown. A Sanscrit notation (characters for notes and signs or words for other details) indicates pitch and duration.

[Pg 50]

Music in Mohammedan countries has peculiarities which differentiate it quite distinctly from music in China and in India. In India music has always been largely associated with religion, especially in connection with the dance. Mohammedanism has never encouraged religious music. It is true that the chanting of the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer from the minarets; but except this the music which accompanies the dances of the whirling dervishes of Cairo, Bagdad, and Constantinople offers practically the only example of Mohammedan religious music.[17] Nevertheless in the brilliant days of the Abbaside caliphs and the Moorish kings of Spain music was a passion with the Saracens. Haroun-al-Raschid lavished rewards of gold and lands on his musicians and the ‘Thousand and One Nights’ proves in what esteem music was held throughout the Mohammedan Orient at the time of the Caliphate. There was a rich and elaborate musical literature, but the decadence of the Arab civilization brought with it entire oblivion of the many treatises and writings of these glorious days. The old science is forgotten, just as in China the musical wisdom of ancient times has fallen into neglect. Yet throughout the wide territories in which Mohammedanism established itself, that peculiar and distinctive type which more than any other represents Oriental music to us, a type resulting from a mixture of Persian and Arabian styles, complicated with Christian and other influences, has been traditionally handed down to the present day. As in the other systems we have discussed, harmony is practically non-existent. The scales are seven-toned and there are some eighteen theoretical modes. Both duple and triple rhythms are employed with greatest variety. In fact, one of the most striking characteris[Pg 51]tics of Mohammedan musical art is the variety and complexity of its sharp rhythms. The melodies are excessively adorned with every sort of flourish and ornament, slides, turns, grace-notes, shakes, and arabesques of every description not pleasing to our ears. Popular songs and professional musicians are to be found throughout all the Mohammedan Orient. The love song in particular is held in high esteem in all Mohammedan countries, and the following example may illustrate its charm:

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Villoteau mentions his regret at not having been able to note down ‘the accent of yielding abandonment with which the singers express the voluptuous melancholy which fills the majority of these songs.’ Some of the present-day Persian love-songs are said to be sung to poems of Hafiz. The occupational popular song is also found everywhere. In general, the standpoint taken by the Arab proverb, ‘Who does not hunt, does not love, is not moved by the sound of music nor raptured by the fragrance of blossoms is no man,’ is that of the Mohammedan Orient as regards the art of sound.

Though, strange to say, Arab music at the time of its greatest florescence possessed no system of notation, an elementary alphabetical notation has since been invented and is now in use.

In the main, the differences between Oriental music and our own may be summed up in the words of Saint-Saëns: ‘Oriental musical art is another art. The musical art of antiquity is founded on the combination of melody and rhythm. To these our art adds a third[Pg 52] element—harmony.’ And, however much they differ from our own, it should always be borne in mind that ‘the subtly ingenious mathematical subdivisions of the Persians and Arabs, the excessive modal elaboration of the Hindoos, the narrow and constrained stiffness of the Chinese, the ambiguous elasticity of the Japanese, and the truly marvellous artificiality of the Javanese and Siamese systems are all the products of human artistic ingenuity working instinctively for artistic ends.’

An account of the uses of such music and the rôle it plays in customs far different from our own calls for some description of the instruments employed. Every nation had its own peculiar instruments. Those of percussion seem to us particularly characteristic. Such Oriental coloration as has been applied to our modern music has been usually in the way of rhythm emphasized by strange instruments of percussion. Drums, tam-tams, gongs, etc., do not fail to suggest at once the spirit of barbarous or outlandish peoples. The Peruvians and Aztecs had a variety of drums. The Aztecs used the huehuetl and the teponastle; the one, a drum struck by the fingers, a wooden cylinder three feet high, with a deer-skin head which could be loosened or tightened at will; the other a hollow closed cylinder of wood, having two longitudinal parallel slits close together, the strip of wood between which was struck with two drumsticks whose ends were covered with rubber. This instrument is still used by the Mexican Indians. It sounds a melancholy note, and one audible at a great distance. The Aztecs also used an enormous rattle, the axacaxtli, in place of castanets. It was a gourd pierced with holes and filled with small stones.

The most characteristic Chinese instrument of percussion is the king, a set of graduated plates, stones,[Pg 53] or bells, hung in a frame and played with a mallet. The tone produced is smooth and sonorous. In addition, the Chinese, Japanese, and Indo-Chinese have a quantity of metal gongs and cymbals, bells, tambourines, castanets, and drums of all kinds. In Siam and Burmah there is the ranat, a set of wooden or metal bars played with a mallet, in reality a xylophone; and in Java the anklong, of the same family, the bars of which are of bamboo. The Hindoos and Mohammedan Orientals also have a great number of drums, tam-tams, gongs, etc., which is not surprising in view of the predominant part rhythm was given in their music.

The stringed instruments are not less numerous. They appear to have been unknown to the Aztecs, and the Peruvians used only the tinya, a guitar with six strings. But the Chinese had a great number of them, among which the kin, a small lute with seven strings, held a peculiar place. It was long an object of veneration. Sages alone might venture to touch its strings; ordinary mortals should be content merely to regard it in silence with the most profound respect. An elaborate psaltery or zither called che, with twenty-five strings, was much in use, and there were several bowed instruments in the viol family, of uncertain ancient descent. The Cambodians, too, have instruments of the viol family, notably the tro-khmer, a three-stringed viol held like the 'cello when played. The Siamese, Coreans, and Annamites all use instruments of the guitar and mandolin family with a varying number of strings. In Burmah the favorite instrument is a queer harp with thirteen strings called the soung. In Japan there are the koto, which is a pleasing-toned zither with thirteen strings; the samisen, a small guitar associated with the Geisha girls, the buva, a type of lute, and the kokin, a primitive violin. One finds in India the sarindas or sarungis, viols with sympathetic wire strings; the vina, most generally popular of Hindoo stringed[Pg 54] instruments, a sort of lute with two gourd resonators; and the tambura, a long slender guitar with three or more strings. But of all the stringed instruments of the Orient el’ud of Arabia is most famous. It is no other in name or fact than the lute, with broad, pear-shaped body, short neck bent back at the head, and four or more strings. Introduced by the Moors into Spain about 800 A. D., it became the favorite instrument of all Europe, was developed and improved with every care, was beautified with finest art and workmanship. From Arabia, too, may have come to Europe the first primitive violins. The Arabian rebab and the Persian kemangeh are almost identical in principle with our violin. The Arabian santirs and kanoons, zithers with many strings, played with plectra adjusted like thimbles on the finger-tips, have remained Oriental.

Wind instruments are common to all races. Flutes and fifes were known both to the Aztecs and Peruvians, and flutes, flageolets, oboes, horns, bagpipes, and trumpets are in constant use among the others. With the Aztecs conch-shells took the place of trumpets of metal. Deserving of special mention are the Chinese cheng, a set of small bamboo pipes with free reeds, precursor of the modern organ; the Hindoo tubri, a popular form of bagpipe used by the snake charmers of India; and the Arab zamr, a particularly shrill variety of oboe.

Thus we find in use among ancient semi-civilized peoples and among the Oriental races of the past and present the three great families of musical instruments; instruments of percussion, string instruments, and wind instruments, from which we have chosen and developed our orchestra. We are recalled to the remark of Saint-Saëns, already quoted, that all the musical systems of these peoples were products of human artistic ingenuity, working instinctively for artistic ends. The instinct for expression in music works so far in all[Pg 55] races alike. But whereas those races whose music we are discussing were content with the harsh or dry sounds of the primitive instruments we have mentioned, the races of Europe have been impelled by the desire for ever richer and more flexible tone to develop and improve these instruments. Of the clumsy, hoarse viol they have made the perfect violin; of the hunting horn the mellow French horn of the orchestra; of the tremulous clavichord and spinet the powerful pianoforte. Music has become an art of sound. Those people whom, for the sake of convenience, we group together in this chapter as exotic never dissociated music from the dance or from elaborate ceremonies of one sort or another. The art of music hardly attained independence. Therefore we are almost at a loss to appreciate it outside the highly ceremonious societies in which it played its part and a discussion of some of the uses to which it was put is necessary in our chapter.

With the exception of the Mohammedans, the first and foremost use of music among the exotic races has been in religious rites of one sort or another. And in this connection it is in most cases an accompaniment to religious dancing and pantomime. Music is rarely looked upon in the Orient as a means of social diversion or artistic enjoyment in itself alone, such as we consider music of the orchestra or the string quartet. Only in the form of poetic song or of orchestral accompaniment to the religious or secular ballet is it highly appreciated.

The hymns chanted in a sing-song manner, the monotonous tunes accompanying the temple services and sacred dances of the ancient Mexicans would, no doubt, prove intolerably wearisome to our ears, but the Aztecs took such pleasure in them that they often[Pg 56] sang during entire days. And, quite in the eighteenth century manner, the wealthy Aztec nobles maintained choirs of singers and bands of professional musicians. At the great Sun-feast of the ancient Peruvians, ‘the long revelry of the day was closed at night by music and dancing.’ Some sort of song flourished among this people. There was a class of minstrels. Aside from the traditional melodies which have already been mentioned, the music of some of the distinctively Inca (not Spanish) dances, the huaino, the cachua, the cachaspare, has come down to our own day.

In China music is for the most part confined to sacred ceremonies and dancing. Père Amiot, a French missionary who spent some time in China in the second half of the eighteenth century, wrote down the following celebrated chorus; a hymn in honor of the ancestors, sung in the emperor’s presence to the accompaniment of sacred dances, and the typical Chinese orchestra:

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At private and ceremonial banquets, also, dancing to orchestral accompaniment is usual. Solo, in the prov[Pg 57]ince of Yunnan, the most southwestern division of China, supplies the musicians and dancers for the private orchestras and entertainments of mandarins throughout the Celestial empire. Then, too, the Chinese orchestra finds a place in theatrical representations. The songs to be heard in every Chinese city at eventide to the crude accompaniment of mandolins and guitars may attest a popular fondness for music, but the gongs continually sounding in the temples and innumerable tinkling bells upon the towers and pagodas can hardly be said to constitute music.

In Siam, Burmah, Cambodia, and Java the arts of music and dancing have always been held in high esteem. In Java the native dances are marked by gravity and harmony of movement. The average ambulant band in that country consists of six players, while the gamelags of native sovereigns like the sultan of Djokka or the emperor of Solo usually comprise a dozen. The Siamese have ballet performances of posturing and slow, deliberate dancing, most of which are pantomime plays with orchestral accompaniment, the story chanted by a kind of Greek chorus behind the scenes. The king of Cambodia maintains a large troupe of dancers, chosen among the most beautiful women in his realm, who preserve the tradition of the ancient dances of the land. The following air is a prelude to one of these Cambodian dances, sung by a female chorus with orchestral accompaniment:

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[Pg 58]

In both these countries, as in Annam and Burmah, it is not the orchestra that leads the dancers, but the dancers who are followed by the orchestra. And in nearly all cases these pantomimes are of an allegorical or mythological character. Similar performances, notably ‘devil dances,’ are given in lamaseries of Tibet, Mongolia, and Siberia in which the Buddhist monks, in costume and mask, represent gods, devils, mythological kings, and other traditional characters.

The airs of the sampan-men of the Hue River in Annam are often beautiful. In alternation with their wives they sing simple ballads full of poetry and grace as they float down stream at night. Peculiar are the orchestras of the blind, made up of poor families, some one member of which is sightless, who sing love-songs before the village tea-houses for a pittance.

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In Japan the ‘geishas’ perform their poetic dances, ‘The Leaf of Gold,’ ‘The Butterfly Dance,’ to the sound of a vague, discreetly agreeable accompaniment. The geishas’ music is that of the plucked string, and is generally vague in form. The koto and the samisen are the representative instruments, though sometimes the musicians sing a few measures. Harmony in our sense of the word is entirely lacking. In the Buddhist temples the entire service is intoned on one note, but the priests sing successively at a different pitch, and the chanting is punctuated by the occasional clang of cymbals and the deep, rich tones of the great gong, a strange and impressive combination. At the time of the various Japanese flower festivals, those of the azaleas, of the flowering plum and cherry, when the country is glad with pink and white blossoms, roving bands of musicians and dancers in grotesque costume add to the gaiety of the occasion.

In Hindustan dance music (vocal and instrumental combined) plays an important part in the religious ceremonies of the temples, both in the voluptuous dances of the devadhazis, or bayadères,[18] and in the chanting of the montranis, scriptural formulas set to a fixed musical rhythm. The size of a Hindoo orchestra varies, and the dance-music it plays is not always of a sensuous, erotic type, but often very animated and vigorous in character, such as accompanies the dancing at the courts of the rajahs. Music frequently accompanies dramatic representations as well, and there is a great deal of popular song. The Hindoos have dhourpad and kourka, warlike hymns, hoti, canticles in honor of Krishna, stouti, official odes, bichnoupoud, evening songs, kheal, love songs, sohla, nuptial songs, thoumries, patriotic songs, palma, cradle songs, and darda, love songs. In many cases Hindoo music shows signs of Mohammedan influence, especially in the variety and liveliness of its rhythm. It is curious to note that the use of certain types accompanying instruments is restricted to certain social classes, priests, mendicant holy men, dancing girls, and so forth.

[Pg 60]

Mohammedan music is associated with a wide variety of voluptuous secular dances, for the Mohammedan Orient possesses an art of dance equal to the most delicate inspirations of our poets. There is the dance of the Ouled Nail, the famous dancing girls of Biskra, the Tunisian ‘Dance of the Hair,’[19] the Algerian ‘Dance of the Pitchers,’ the dances of the Egyptian Ghaouazi or ‘Almees,’ exponents of what is known to us as the danse du ventre, of which one of the dance airs follows:

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There are the dances of Syrian, Soudanese and other dancing-girls. Then there are the special dances, accompanied by choral singing and instrumental music, that celebrate the nuptial ceremony throughout the Orient.

The variety of customs, of traditional observances and usages interwoven with exotic music is endless. Many religious chants, for instance, are fixed by tradition, and are undoubtedly of high antiquity. Such [Pg 61]is the chanting of the sacred books in the Temple of the Sacred Tooth in Ceylon, where on each night of the full moon the whole text of the ‘Tripitakas,’ or ‘Three Baskets’ of wisdom, is recited by relays of yellow-robed priests, succeeding each other every two hours between the dark and the dawn. They are said to chant in deep resonant voices, as steady and continuous as the roar of the surf, without break, quaver, or pause. When we consider that Buddhist priests have repeated these sacred texts in this manner on every night of the full moon for twenty-eight centuries, the traditional cantillation of the Koran appears a thing of recent date. The following interesting ‘call to prayer’ of the muezzin has been traditionally handed down, and its chant is supposed to antedate the era of Mohammed:

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And the Hindoo ragas and mantranis offer further proof of the conserving examples of tradition.

A curious custom among the Chinese of immemorial antiquity is that of attaching whistles weighing only a few grams to the tails of pigeons soon after they emerge from the shell, by means of fine copper wire. The whistles are of two kinds; bamboo, with from two to five tubes, or gourds, with sometimes as many as twenty-five apertures. All the whistles in a flock are tuned to a different pitch. As they fly about Pekin and[Pg 62] other cities they fill the air with a sort of wind-blown music. It is interesting as a commentary on the Chinese national love of sweet sounds.

A custom of the Mohammedan Orient is the use of the flute in services for the dead. Modern Arab mortuary hymns are sung to the accompaniment of the flute, and the employment of the instrument in this connection dates back to ancient times. It is customary in almost every occupation in the Orient to sing traditional songs while work is going on. The Arab camel-drivers have a melody of strange intonations and long-drawn-out sounds which may have come down from the days of Antar; the boatmen on the Nile, the fellahin toiling on its banks, the ambulant peddlers of Oriental cities, all have their traditional airs or cries. Some are very poetic; the water carriers of Mecca sing when they dispense their wares: ‘Paradise and forgiveness be the lot of him who gave you this water!’ When, in June, Arab boys offer bunches of fragrant pink jasmine buds, enclosed in fig-leaves, for sale in the streets of Kairowan, those who buy return to their work chanting in a quaint minor key: ‘We render thanks to Allah for sending rain to make the flowers bloom.’ The Burmese love to thresh rice to the sound of music, and the Buddhist nuns in Japan solicit contributions by striking small metal gongs attached to their belt with little wooden hammers carried in their hands. The Hindoo palanquin-bearers, the Japanese rickshaw-men, the Chinese coolies and sampan-men, all have their characteristic songs, most of them traditional, for the East is slow to change.

The art of music in the Orient and the art of music in Western Europe have little in common. It may be that Christian music in the first few centuries of its[Pg 63] existence was vaguely similar to that music we have been discussing, but after harmony found its place in our music a comparison between the two arts is far to seek. In Oriental music the dominant feature is rhythm, insistent and often unvaried. This may be partly because rhythm is the most exciting element in music and the most immediate in its appeal, partly because in the Orient music was and is almost never dissociated from the dance or from some sort of regular movement such as rowing or reaping. In our music rhythm is constantly varied and subtly disguised. As for melody, the Orientals are bound to short phrases repeated again and again, lacking contrast and only primitively balanced; and most of their melodies are in scales different from ours. Of harmony they have relatively no idea, whereas the music of Western Europe has been subjected to the tremendously powerful influence of harmony in one form or another for nearly a thousand years. Hence, even though the rhythm and melody in both have come from the same instinct in the race of man, the Western and the Eastern arts of music seem almost radically different.

In general the difference between the two is only exaggerated by the few cases in modern music when composers have made use of Oriental themes or rhythms or instruments. Such cases by no means show a working together or an approach of the two systems; for the mere fact that a certain twist of melody, a certain insistence of rhythm, a beat of the tam-tam or the gong can give a strong Oriental color to music proves how foreign Oriental music still sounds to our ears. It may be said that European music has been influenced by Asiatic music hardly at all, unless, possibly, the prominent, almost barbaric rhythms of some Russian music have sprung from a mixture of the Oriental with the Slav.

F. H. M.

The researches and discoveries of the past fifty years in the valley of the Nile and among the deeply buried ruins of Babylon and Nineveh have thrown light on much that was hitherto obscure in the history of the ancient cultured nations of the East. Yet, even to-day, our knowledge of that history is at best fragmentary and largely conjectural. Out of the mass of fragments and conjectures at our command we can pick very little that will fit into the structure of an authoritative musical history.

We know definitely that the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, and Hebrews possessed in their heyday an advanced civilization and a large amount of æsthetic culture. From analogy with other old civilizations of which we have more accurate knowledge, however, we have no reason to suppose that their musical culture kept pace with their advance in other arts. From the plastic to the pictorial and last to the musical seems to have been the historical order of advance in the evolution of artistic expression. Music, to quote John Addington Symonds, ‘is the essentially modern art.’ Nevertheless, even in default of any more specific evidence, we could safely assume that musical culture among the ancient civilized nations had advanced considerably beyond the stage reached by primitive peoples.

[Pg 65]

In support of this assumption we have an amount of definite evidence; which indeed goes very little beyond a corroboration of our beliefs. In the case of the Assyrians and Egyptians this testimony consists of bas-reliefs and mural paintings representing musical instruments, and a few actual instruments which have been discovered in the ruins of Nineveh and in the tombs of Egyptian kings. These sculptures show a wide variety of instruments, the general construction of which would indicate considerable musical knowledge, and they testify clearly that among the Assyrians and Egyptians music was an indispensable adjunct to all affairs of ceremony, and consequently, in all likelihood, a subject for serious cultivation.

The Assyrian bas-reliefs represent chiefly historical events, religious ceremonies, and royal entertainments. We have no means of knowing whether the musical instruments shown thereon were the only ones in use among the Assyrians, or whether there were not other instruments in widely popular use which the priestly conventions excluded from all ceremonial observances. The instruments represented, however, are numerous and interesting. Judged by the frequency of its appearance on the monuments, the favorite instrument of the Assyrians seems to have been the asor, which consisted of a square or triangular frame mounted with six to ten strings of silk or catgut and was played with a plectrum. It was carried in front of the performer by means of a strap slung over his shoulder, and both hands were used in playing it—the right with the plectrum and the left either to twang the strings or to stop any unnecessary vibration. The number of strings on this or on any other Assyrian instrument can only be conjectured. Apparently the artist was never at pains[Pg 66] to secure fidelity of detail, for sometimes there are more strings than tuning-pegs and sometimes the reverse.

After the asor the harp seems to have come next in popular estimation. The Assyrian harp was an imposing instrument, about four feet high, and was carried in ceremonial processions before the breast of the performer, much as a side-drum is carried in a military band. It was furnished with tuning-pegs and with about twenty strings, probably of silk, but possibly of catgut. The most essential point of differentiation between the Assyrian harp and the modern instrument was the lack of a front pillar. This would argue a rather weak and harsh tone; though if the frame were made of metal or ivory—as in the case of the later Egyptian harps—it would allow of sufficient tension to secure a tone not necessarily very inferior to that of our own harp.

Besides the asor and the harp the representations of Assyrian stringed instruments included the lyre, dulcimer, and tamboura or lute. The Assyrian lyre strongly resembled the Nubian kissar of to-day. It carried from four to ten strings tied around the upper bar, which was raised or lowered to change the pitch, and it was probably played with a plectrum. The tamboura was an instrument resembling the banjo or guitar and was the prototype of the instrument which may be found all over the East at the present day. The dulcimer contained about ten strings and was played with a plectrum.

Of wind instruments the Assyrians possessed only pipes and trumpets. Their trumpet was a small instrument, either straight or slightly curved, and was probably made of horn. Presumably it suffered from severe limitations musically. The nature of their pipes, however, indicates that the Assyrians had done some successful experimenting in musical effects and must[Pg 67] have constructed a definite scale system of some sort. In the museum of the Royal Asiatic Society in London there is a small Assyrian pipe of baked clay in a very good state of preservation. It is about three inches long and has two holes equally distant from the end. The fixed notes on this pipe are a tonic, third, and fifth. The closing of the left finger-hole produces a note about a quarter tone lower than the right, and it is possible that this was intended for a minor third. Of a later development than the single pipe was the double pipe, which consisted of two pipes, sometimes of equal, sometimes of unequal length, held one in each hand, with the playing ends of both in the mouth. Probably one of the pipes gave a sort of droning accompaniment to the other and the general effect must have been something like that of the bagpipe. The syrinx, or pipes of Pan, was doubtless known to the Assyrians as well as to the Hebrews, and may be the instrument whose invention is ascribed to Jubal in Genesis.

The Assyrians seem to have been well provided with instruments of percussion, including tambourines and cymbals. Their drums were usually covered only at one end, but they also had barrel-shaped drums covered at both ends and beaten at both ends like a tom-tom. All their drums, apparently, were beaten with the hands. Bells were presumably in high favor among them, as we learn from the Bible, and there have been discovered a number of Assyrian bells of various sizes, all open at the top, like Chinese bells, and indicating that the first use of chimes antedates by a long time their introduction into India and China.

The habit peculiar to ancient artists of depicting the part for the whole, or two to mean many, makes it impossible for us to determine from the reliefs whether the Assyrians used regularly any definite number of musical instruments in their performances. We know, however, that they employed various combinations of[Pg 68] instruments. On the Assyrian bas-reliefs in the British Museum (some of which are fragments) we find such combinations as harp and drum; lyre, harp and double pipe; two asors and drum; three lyres; two trumpets; seven harps, one dulcimer; two double pipes, a drum and chorus. The predominance of strings over instruments of percussion in all representations of Assyrian concerts prompts the supposition that the music was of a soft, suave character. Rhythm seems to have been marked chiefly by the clapping of hands, and musical performances were probably accompanied usually, if not always, by singing and dancing. The evidence of the bas-reliefs on this point is supplemented by the Bible accounts of ceremonial observances among the Hebrews, who must have been profoundly influenced by Babylonian culture. Dancing was undoubtedly an integral part of all ceremonial observances and triumphal processions among the ancient nations of the East, and it would seem that as a rule it was accompanied by vocal as well as instrumental music. The Bible is replete with illuminative references on the subject.

On the Assyrian bas-relief above mentioned, showing the instrumental band and chorus, the women of the chorus are represented with their hands to their throats and are evidently performing that peculiar shrilling which constitutes the Hebrew Allelujah, and which may still be heard in Syria, Arabia, and Persia. This strange style of singing—if it may be so called—was a feature of triumphal processions, and was always performed by women. Various references to this custom may be found in the Bible—for instance, David’s reception by the women after his victory over the Philistines and Jephthah’s reception by his daughter and her companions after the battle against the children of Ammon. We can only guess as to the nature of the choral singing at Assyrian religious festivals. Prob[Pg 69]ably it was in unison or octaves, and it may have been antiphonal, as it was among the Hebrews.[20]

The constant employment of chorus with well-developed musical instruments of different tone quality would seem to have suggested to the Assyrians at least some elementary harmonic effects. But that is entirely a matter of conjecture. As far as we know, they did not possess any system of musical notation, and, lacking that, they could not have developed an harmonic system that was anything but very crude or very haphazard. It is the opinion of Engel[21] that they ‘produced together different notes which appeared to them agreeable in concord,’ but that their instruments were too incomplete for a systematic combination of a fixed number of different parts. A scale system of some sort they must have had, but what it was we are at a loss to determine. Engel, pointing out the analogies between the various old musical systems of Oriental countries, concludes that the Assyrians probably used a pentatonic series consisting of the tonic, second, third, fifth, and sixth. Such a scale is found in China, Japan, India, Burmah, Siam, and Java, and is supposedly of high antiquity in those countries. The deduction that it was also used by the Assyrians is based on the assumption, which Engel supports by much plausible evidence, that there was a common fountain-head of all Asiatic musical art. It is also pointed out as a significant fact that the Nubian kissar, which so closely resembles the Assyrian lyre, is tuned in that scale. On the other hand, from the construction of the Assyrian instruments, and from comparison with the music of other peoples, even those in a more primitive state of musical development, it may be inferred that the Assyrians were acquainted with other effects and may have used other scales.

[Pg 70]

The decree which forbade the Hebrews the making of graven images, salutary as it may have been as a theological safeguard, must always prove a source of regret to the archæologist and historian. Because of it we cannot now visually reconstruct the life of the chosen people in Biblical times with the same satisfactory vividness as we can that of the Assyrians and Egyptians. We are thus deprived of what has been our chief source of information in considering the state of musical culture among the other civilized nations of the ancient East. A few illustrations of what may have been Hebrew musical instruments have, it is true, come down to us; but they are very doubtful and far from enlightening. There is an Egyptian painting of the time of Osirtasen II (about 1800 B. C.), discovered in a tomb at Beni-Hassan, which shows three men—obviously captives—playing on lyres. The hieroglyphics refer to these men as ‘strangers,’ and it is the opinion of Sir Gardner Wilkinson that they were Jews. We also possess some coins of the time of Simon Maccabæus (second century B. C.), on some of which are pictured lyres of different shapes and sizes, while on others are shown a couple of small figures which may represent trumpets or drums. Possibly the musical instruments carved on the Arch of Titus were exact copies of Hebrew originals, but, for all we know to the contrary, the sculptor of the arch may never even have seen a Hebrew instrument. Apart from these scanty and problematical remains, pictorial evidence of the musical culture of the ancient Hebrews is, as far as we know, non-existent.

The documentary evidence in our possession is fuller but not at all definite. It consists chiefly of the Bible and the rabbinical records; and upon the accuracy of[Pg 71] the information obtainable from these sources we cannot implicitly rely. This statement is made in due reverence and without any suggested denial of the spiritual truths embodied in writings which millions of men regard as sacred. The peculiar figurativeness which lends such charm to the language of the Bible makes it impossible for us to be quite sure of its literal meaning, and this obscurity is intensified by the fact that the identification of many names of things in the original text has been the purest guesswork on the part of translators. The identification of the names of musical instruments, especially, has been a stumbling block to scholars. For instance, it has never been determined which of the many names of stringed instruments occurring in the Bible refers to the harp—an instrument which was undoubtedly known to the ancient Hebrews. On the other hand, the ugab, mentioned in Genesis as the invention of Jubal, has invariably been translated organ—an instrument which just as certainly was not known to them. Nor are the rabbinical records any more trustworthy. On many points they contradict the Bible—which raises an indeterminable question of veracity between them—while on other points their statements are irresistibly provocative of doubt in the mind of the judicious reader. It must always be remembered that the Bible and the rabbinical records are, in the main, history written by unscientific historians concerning the past of their own race, and the tendency in such cases to drape an attractive garb of fiction over the bare bones of fact has in all ages been an ineradicable trait of human psychology. The old historians, while in a preferential position compared with us in regard to time, suffered obviously either from lack of knowledge or superfluity of imagination. Josephus, the most authoritative of them, tells us seriously that there were prepared for the dedication of the Temple a band and chorus consisting of[Pg 72] 200,000 trumpets, 40,000 stringed instruments, and 200,000 Levite singers—truly a Brobdignagian ensemble!

In spite of the paucity of our information, however, we are able to form a general idea of the state of musical culture among the ancient Hebrews. Except for inevitable local differences, Hebrew music must have resembled closely that of the Assyrians and Egyptians—probably more the former than the latter, if indeed there was any radical dissimilarity between them. The Hebrew and Assyro-Babylonian people sprang from the same Semitic stock. Abraham, we learn, ‘came out of Ur of the Chaldees,’ and up to the time of the exile to Egypt it is probable that Hebrew and Babylonian culture were almost identical. The long sojourn of the Jews in Egypt, however, must have had a profound influence upon them. It is important to remember that they were not really captives in Egypt; they were not restricted in their activities; they were not socially ostracised. The daughter of a Pharaoh married a Hebrew, and it is reasonable to suppose that such intermarriage was common. At the period of the Exodus, therefore, there must have been little to distinguish the culture of the Hebrews from that of the other people of Egypt. Moses, we know, ‘was learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians,’ and in that respect he probably differed little from his followers. Later we shall advert to the complementary influence of Hebrew culture on the Egyptians as well as to the probability of Babylonian influence on the latter. Consequently the culture which the Jews brought out of Egypt must still have remained Babylonian in essence. Subsequently we see a renascence of Babylonian influence which becomes particularly noticeable after the captivity in Babylon. All the names of musical instruments given in Daniel are Chaldean. Max Müller observes that several of the apocryphal books were written originally[Pg 73] in Chaldee, not in Hebrew, and points out that Ezra contains fragments of Chaldee contemporaneous with the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes.

The rabbinical records mention thirty-six musical instruments in use among the ancient Hebrews, while the Bible contains references to about half that number. As has been said, the names of these instruments have never been exactly identified and it is possible that several different names may refer to the same instrument. The Hebrews almost certainly possessed the harp, though we do not know what they called it. The psanterin, mentioned in Daniel, was perhaps a dulcimer. The Arab dulcimer of the present day is called santir. We may assume from the representation of the lyre on the coins of the high-priest Simon Maccabæus that the Hebrews employed that instrument, and it may have been the kinnor of King David. The minnim, machalath, and nebel were perhaps instruments of the guitar or lute type. The chalil and nekeb were names of pipes or flutes, while the mishrokitha, mentioned in Daniel, is supposed to have been a double pipe. It is likely that the ugab, which is translated as ‘organ’ in the English authorized version of the Bible, was the syrinx or Pandean pipes. Forkel and other historians are of the opinion that the sumphonia, mentioned in Daniel, was a bagpipe, basing their conclusion apparently on the fact that the Italian peasants call the bagpipe zampogna. The magrepha was probably also a sort of bagpipe. Three kinds of trumpets were used by the ancient Hebrews—the keven, shophar, and chatzozerah. The last-named was a straight trumpet, about two feet long, and was sometimes made of silver; the others were curved trumpets probably made of horn. The shophar is still found in Jewish synagogues. Presumably the Hebrews used a number of drums. Of these we know only the toph, which has been translated timbrel or tabret, and was probably a sort of[Pg 74] tambourine. There still exists in the East a small hand-drum, called by the Arabs doff or adufe. According to Saalschütz and other historians, the menaaneim, referred to in Samuel, and translated cymbals, was the sistrum.[22] The tzeltzelim, metzilloth, and metzilthaim may have been cymbals. The phaamon (Exod. xxxviii and xxxix) were little bells on the robe of a priest, and we still find them in Jewish synagogues attached to the ‘rolls of law’ containing the Pentateuch.

There is abundance of evidence that music played a very important part in the lives of the ancient Hebrews and that musical performances were carefully, often elaborately, organized. As with other ancient nations of the East, the most important function of music was to lend solemnity and effect to religious ceremonial. King David, who seems to have filled in the development of Hebrew liturgical music the same rôle traditionally ascribed to St. Gregory in the history of the Christian liturgy, employed in the service of the Temple no fewer than 4,000 musicians, of whom two hundred and eighty-eight were virtuosi, and the remainder assistants and pupils (1 Chron. xxiii and xxv). In the introduction to the Psautier polyglotte of L’Abbé Vigouroux, the following historical sketch is given of the musical organization of the ancient Jewish cult:[23] ‘When David ascended the throne he organized sacred music which comprised instrumentalists and singers; and the institution expressly maintained by Ezekiah and Nehemiah continued until the ruin of the Temple. In a first group there were three choir leaders: Hamon, Asaph, and Ethan; in a second, fourteen Levites distributed in three choirs according to the instruments they played—the first comprising three chiefs who had cymbals to direct the singers and instrumentalists, the [Pg 75]second composed of eight musicians who played the nebel, and the third composed of musicians who played the kinnor. Later Daniel completed this work. Among the descendants of Levi four thousand were chosen “to praise God with instruments of music.” The singers, like the priests, were divided into twenty-four classes, the chiefs of which were the sons of Asaph (four), Jeduthun (six), and Hamon (fourteen). These chiefs have under their orders two hundred and eighty-eight masters charged with instructing the others. This musical organization, established by David and conserved by Solomon, was altered more or less under their idolatrous successors; but the reformer kings, Ezekiah and Josiah, took pains to revive it. In the fifth century, under Nehemiah, they sang and played ‘in the manner of David.’[24]

Apart from its importance in religious service, music had a deep significance in the lives of the ancient Hebrews. They attributed to it peculiar curative and inspirational powers. We know how David used it to relieve the illness of Saul, and even Elias employed it to stimulate the spirit of prophecy. It was the accompaniment of all important occasions, both sad and joyful. There is frequent mention in the Bible of triumphal songs and of the use of trumpets in war. Bridal processions were accompanied by music (Jer. vii), and it also seems to have been commonly employed at funerals (2 Chron. xxxv et al.). Love songs were not unknown to the Hebrews (Isaiah v; Psalm xiv), nor were they lacking in songs of a convivial and lightly popular nature. They welcomed itinerant musicians as warmly as the courts of Europe in the chivalric period welcomed the Troubadours. Indeed, from what we know of them, they seem to have been an intensely music-loving people, and this fact [Pg 76]can but add to our regret that we are unable to determine the exact nature of their music or what the proportions were to which they had developed it as an art.

Regarding Egyptian music, the evidence at our disposal is fuller and more suggestive, though the deductions to be drawn from it are hardly less conjectural. It consists mainly of monumental sculptures, mural paintings, and fragments and nearly preserved specimens of actual instruments. There are also many fugitive references to Egyptian music in the works of Herodotus, Plato, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and other Greek writers. Between the earliest representations of Egyptian musical instruments and the visits to Egypt of Herodotus and Plato stretches a period of nearly two thousand years—time enough for such a complete revolution to have taken place as to render valueless the references of the Greek writers as throwing light on Egyptian musical culture at the noontide of Egypt’s greatness. Yet such a revolution almost certainly did not take place. During two thousand years, as we may see from the monuments, Egyptian art stood practically still.

The system of hereditary castes was an impermeable barrier to the advance of culture. Caste conventions were elevated to the dignity of sacred laws and innovations were regarded almost as sacrilege. Herodotus, who lived in Egypt, tells us that the musical profession was strictly hereditary and had been so for uncounted centuries. No one, for instance, who was not of a family of professional singers, he asserts, could adopt the profession of a singer. Considering the rarity of good voices, even where such restrictions do not exist, one can easily imagine that vocal performances in Egypt were not stimulating. Nor could Egyptian music be[Pg 77] very rich in inspiration, if we are to accept the following admiring tribute of Plato, who had lived thirteen years in Egypt, and who, like other Greek philosophers, was himself a musical scholar.

‘The plan which we have been laying down for the education of youth,’ he says in one of his dialogues,[25] ‘was known long ago to the Egyptians, that nothing but beautiful forms and fine music should be permitted to enter into the assemblies of young people. Having settled what those forms and what that music should be, they exhibited them in their temples; nor was it allowable for painters and other imitative artists to innovate or invent any forms different from what were established. Nor is it now lawful, either in painting, statuary, or any of the branches of music, to make any alteration. Upon examining, therefore, you will find that the pictures and statues made two thousand years ago are in no one particular better than what they make at the present day.’

As further evidence of the unchanging antiquity of Egyptian music Plato quotes the tradition that ‘the music which has been so long preserved was composed by Isis.’ The fact that, as Strabo says, music, both vocal and instrumental, was an integral part of the ritual in the worship of all the gods, except Osiris, tended to conserve still more strictly that rigidity of system to which Plato so admiringly refers. The priestly caste in Egypt was the perfect embodiment of petrified conservatism and its influence was all-pervading and absolute. Egyptian music must eventually have come to be a lifeless, colorless, meaningless thing—the dry and chalky skeleton of an art—and we are not surprised to learn from Diodorus (60 B. C.) that the Egyptians of his time despised it and looked upon its cultivation as an effeminate and undesirable occupation.

Comparative studies of Egyptian and Assyrian cul[Pg 78]ture lead George Rawlinson[26] to the conclusion that the former has been vastly overrated. While Assyrian art flourished apace, he asserts, art in Egypt remained a stunted growth. The inference that musical art among the Egyptians lagged behind that of the Assyrians is not borne out by the evidence of the monuments and mural paintings. From these we may see that Egyptian musical instruments were much superior in design and construction to those pictured on the Assyrian bas-reliefs. This, of course, may be explained by the superior mechanical talent of the Egyptians, which is apparent in their architecture, and cannot be taken as conclusive evidence of a higher æsthetic development. The whole question of the comparative culture of Egypt and Assyria is a very doubtful one. Whether Egypt was influenced by Assyrian culture or the reverse, and to what extent, is a moot point. There are evidences of similar influences in the art of both countries. The fact seems to be that Egypt and Assyria interacted on each other closely and borrowed from each other or from a common source. Their musical instruments show striking resemblances and seem to have been used in much the same way and in connection with similar ceremonies.

There are, however, important points of divergence. The asor, which was apparently the favorite instrument of the Assyrians, is not found represented on any Egyptian monuments that have come down to us. In its stead the harp obviously held the place of honor. The Egyptian harp was much superior to the Assyrian instrument, both in design and construction; indeed, except for the lack of a front pillar, pedals, and double strings, it must have been little inferior to our own harp, even in musical quality, while in beauty of design it could hold its own with the best we are able to show. This is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that it was brought to perfection at least three thousand [Pg 79]years ago. The two ornate and beautifully modelled harps found by the English traveller Bruce, painted in fresco on the walls of the Tomb of the Kings at Thebes, are attributed to the period of Rameses II (about 1250 B. C.) and, whatever they may have been musically, they are perfect models of grace and finished workmanship. Most of the harps on the Egyptian monuments are highly ornamented and were obviously constructed with an eye to decorative effect. The harp seems to have been the instrument de luxe in Egypt—the necessary finishing touch to the furniture of every well-appointed home—the Egyptian counterpart of our piano. It varied in size to suit the taste, or perhaps the pocket-book, of its owner. The largest harps were almost as tall as a man and were equipped with twenty or more strings, the smallest ones had four strings and were easily carried about. In regard to the number of strings, however, the fidelity to numerical truth of the ancient artists cannot unquestionably be assumed. It is the opinion of Carl Engel that the Egyptian harp was tuned in the same diatonic series of intervals as the Greeks obtained by two conjunct tetrachords. He bases his opinion on the apparent number of strings. Probably it was tuned in a diatonic series of some sort; but opinions on the subject are the purest guesswork.

A favorite instrument among the Egyptians was the trigonon or triangular harp—referred to as a Phrygian instrument by Sophocles. It was small and easily carried, and its tone must have approximated somewhat that of the lyre. The latter instrument is represented frequently on Egyptian monuments and apparently varied very much in size and shape. It seems to have been much more powerful than the Greek lyre, but was not so symmetrical in design. Several well-preserved specimens of Egyptian lyres may be seen in the museums of Berlin and Leyden. One end of the top bar is higher than the other, and the instrument obviously[Pg 80] was tuned by sliding the strings up and down the bar. On the whole, the Egyptian lyre must have been a somewhat crude and ungainly instrument. It does not seem to have been nearly so esteemed as the harp, nor did it apparently hold the same place in popular regard as the tamboura or nofre. The latter is found represented in various shapes, and it seems likely that it was, above all others, the instrument of the people. Instruments closely resembling it are popular in many Oriental countries to the present day. These usually contain three strings, which are tuned in the tonic, fifth, and octave. It would be assuming too much to declare that the Egyptian nofre was similarly tuned. There is in the British Museum a small Egyptian terra-cotta vase upon which is depicted a tamboura with frets distinctly marked over the whole neck, and we may reasonably argue from this that the nofre players used habitually a number of strictly defined intervals. Besides the long-necked nofre the Egyptians possessed a short-necked tamboura strongly resembling the Arabian oud. They had also a peculiar instrument with four or five strings, which was carried on the shoulder; a kind of lyre which was placed on a stand and played by both hands, and a primitive variety of harmonicon.

By far the most interesting and instructive relics of Egyptian musical instruments that have come down to us are a number of pipes and flutes, many well-preserved specimens of which may be seen in the British and Leyden museums. They contain from three to five—usually four—holes, and in many of them pieces of thick straw or other similar material are found inserted in the playing ends. There does not appear to have been any restriction as to the number of holes. In the British Museum there is an Egyptian pipe about twelve inches long, with seven holes burned in the sides. Two straws of about the same length as the pipe were found with it. Straw reeds have also been[Pg 81] found with Egyptian flutes. The latter were very long instruments, reaching from the player’s mouth to beyond the length of his arm. The most interesting and perfectly preserved specimens of those that have yet come to light are a pair of reed flutes, eighteen inches long and three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, which were discovered by the distinguished Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in a rock-hewn sepulchre at Kahan—the town inhabited by workers employed in building the pyramid of Userteen II. On these flutes were elicited the following notes:

[PNG] [

[PNG] [

The testing of facsimiles produced between the flutes the following scale:

[PNG] [

By varying the pressure, a fifth and an octave higher were obtained, and by the same means was elicited from the three-holed flute the complete diatonic scale of C. Allowance must, of course, be made for the possible differences between the facsimiles of these old flutes and the original instruments, as they were in the time of Userteen II. There is also to be considered a probably wide divergence in method between modern European and ancient Egyptian flute players. The experiments, however, suggest interesting speculations.

The double-pipes are represented frequently on Egyptian monuments; the trumpet less frequently. Trumpets apparently were not very popular in Egypt. They seem to have been made of wood—though brass may have been used. The scarcity of trumpets is peculiar, because the Egyptians obviously did not affect a soft, suave style of music, as the Assyrians did. Some of[Pg 82] their dances look almost riotous, and they must have had a strong sense of rhythm. They had a partiality for drums, of which they possessed a variety. Besides drums, their instruments of percussion included sistra, crotola, bells, cymbals, and tambourines. The sistrum or seshesh was a peculiar instrument, almost identical with the sarasel used to-day by the priests of a Christian sect in Abyssinia, and seems to have been employed exclusively in religious ceremonies. The crotola were two balls or knobs of wood or metal, with handles, and were used apparently in the same way and with the same effect as castanets.

The representations of Egyptian musical performances furnish a wide and fascinating field for speculation; but beyond the testimony that music played a very important part in the lives of the Egyptians they supply us with little definite information. The contention of Rawlinson that the Assyrians were more advanced æsthetically is supported to some extent by the apparent fondness of the Egyptians for barbaric rhythmical effects. The same line of reasoning, however, would place the music of Wagner and Strauss lower in the scale of evolution than that of Mendelssohn and John Field. Between the Assyrians and the Egyptians a difference in musical taste is obvious; a difference in musical development is decidedly questionable. There are always to be taken into consideration dissimilarities in national character. It is the opinion of some ethnologists that, about 5000 B. C., there came into the valley of the Nile a Semitic people from East Africa or South Arabia who mingled with the aboriginal Hamites and produced the historic Egyptians. These immigrants, it is contended, had been under the influence of the culture which had already grown up on the plains of Babylonia, and introduced into Egypt elements of art which were unknown to the ruder Hamitic stock. These elements the [Pg 83]Egyptians may have developed to greater perfection in certain technical aspects than the Babylonians, owing partly to their superior industry and partly to the fact that, in comparison with the Assyrio-Babylonian people, their history was peaceful, and favorable to the development of the arts and crafts.

This theory would explain the appearance of a common source of the art of both nations. It is probable, too, that Babylonian culture exercised a continuous, though perhaps slight, influence throughout the whole course of Egyptian history. That there was close intercourse between the two nations at various times is evident from many known facts in the history of both. Syria, which was saturated with Babylonian culture, was an Egyptian province; nor can the possibility be overlooked that the Hebrews, during their long sojourn in Egypt, brought to Egyptian art some of the influence of a culture that had its genesis in Babylonia. These speculations are given here because there is a general tendency to assume readily that Egypt was predominantly the influential factor in the growth of ancient culture, and because the representations of Egyptian and Assyrian musical performances show similarities which indicate that either may have strongly influenced the other.

Herodotus tells us of an Egyptian musical performance at which women beat on drums and men played on flutes, while a chorus sang and clapped their hands at the same time. This performance, it seems, was typical. The suggested effect is barbaric; but the monuments bear evidence that the Egyptians enjoyed musical performances of a much more refined character. We find represented, for example, such combinations as harp, two tambouras and double-pipe, and lyre, harp, double-pipe and chorus. In an interesting work on Egyptian antiquities edited by Lepsius[27] there is an illustration of an extraordinary concert of eight flutes. The players are divided into two sets. One man, differently dressed from the others, stands facing the group, and holds his flute as if he had either just finished playing or was just about to begin. Presumably he was either the conductor or a solo player. The illustration is taken from a tomb in the Pyramid of Gizeh and dates from the Fifth Dynasty, or before 2000 B. C. The Egyptians, obviously, adapted their music to the occasion, using different combinations of instruments for religious ceremonies, public celebrations, private entertainments, and military parades. There has been preserved on an imperfect fragment a representation of a military band consisting of a trumpet, a drum, some large instrument which is too much obliterated to be distinguished, and two crotola.

Dancing, an important feature of Egyptian life, formed a part both of ceremonial observances and private entertainments. The Egyptians seem to have developed dancing into a much more sophisticated art than the Assyrians, and, unlike the latter, they showed a partiality for dances of a lively, spirited nature. These were usually performed by men, who, to judge from the monuments, were equipped with all the semi-acrobatic technique of the modern ballet-dancer—even to the pirouette. The slower dances were rendered by women and were, as a rule, languorous and erotic in character.

Much has been said of the influence of Egyptian music on the Greeks, and more than due importance, perhaps, has been attached to the supposition that Pythagoras (571-497 B. C.) learned music in Egypt. A posteriori inferences have been drawn as to the nature of Egyptian music which are hardly warranted by the evidence. Greek literature is not lacking in references to Egyptian influence. ‘The Greeks,’ says Burney,[28] ‘who lost no merit by neglecting to claim it, confess [Pg 85]that most of their ancient musical instruments were of Egyptian invention.’ Greek notions of the origin of their ancient musical instruments, however, cannot be taken very seriously. The evidence inherent in the instruments themselves is more valuable and tends rather to contradict the supposition that they were of Egyptian origin. The beautifully proportioned and graceful Greek lyre is so markedly different from the clumsy and crude Egyptian instrument as to suggest an absolutely independent development. Significant, too, is the absence of the harp from all except one of the specimens of Greek art that have come down to us; though the beauty and grace of the Egyptian harp must have appealed strongly to Greek artists had they been at all familiar with it. The one exception is the representation of Polyhymnia with a harp, on a Greek vase in the Berlin Museum, and the harp in this case resembles more the Assyrian than the Egyptian instrument. It may be pointed out, however, that this vase belongs to the later period of Greek art, after the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander had exposed the classical civilization of Greece to the full force of Oriental influence. But the case for Asiatic influence does not depend upon this vase. There is significance in the fact that most of the famous Greek musicians were from Asia Minor or adjacent islands. Marsyas was a Phrygian; Terpander, Arion, and Sappho hailed from Lesbos; Olympus, the supposed inventor of the old enharmonic scale, was a native of Mysias. Strabo,[29] too, speaks of the derivation of Greek stringed instruments from Asia. On the other hand, we are informed by the ubiquitous and omniscient Herodotus that the Dorians came originally from Egypt. The statements of Herodotus, however, must be taken with a large amount of reservation. ‘The net result of Oriental research,’ Prof. Sayce warns us, ‘in its bearing on Her[Pg 86]odotus is to show that the greater part of what he professes to tell us of the history of Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia is really a collection of Märchen, or popular stories, current among the Greek loungers and half-caste dragomen on the skirts of the Persian empire.’[30] As a matter of fact, the statements of all Greek historians, except as to contemporary events, are totally untrustworthy. Excellent reporters they undoubtedly were; but they lacked the historical sense and were but scantily informed. There seems to have been in Greece a peculiar admiration for things Egyptian and a corresponding contempt for things Asiatic—the latter bred probably of the constant wars between Hellas and Persia that began with the conquest of the Lydian kingdom by Cyrus the Great. In default, therefore, of any more specific evidence the statements of Greek writers on the origins of Greek music are of little value; nor does the intrinsic evidence lead us to any more definite conclusion than the conjecture that Greek music was influenced somewhat by both Egyptian and Assyrian music, though to what extent and in what proportions it is impossible to determine.

We are equally ignorant of the nature of the Egyptian musical system. A well-defined system they had, without doubt—they systematized everything. The evidence seems to point to the fact that they used a diatonic scale, and the representations of their musical performances would indicate that they were acquainted with harmonic effects. A concert of eight flutes, for instance, in unison, or even in octaves, without other instruments of any sort to vary the monotony, would hardly have appealed to a taste as cultivated as theirs must have been. Fétis is of the opinion that the Egyptians possessed a system of musical notation, and sees in the resemblance to demotic characters of the musical notation used by the modern Greek Church evidence of [Pg 87]the fact that it belonged to ancient Egypt.[31] The presence of a system of musical notation is no proof of the coincidence of an harmonic system, but it is prima facie evidence of a stage of artistic development which included a sense of something more than primitive and haphazard concords. Such a stage of development we may probably credit with safety to the ancient Egyptians, and, whatever their music may have been, we can surely conclude that it had acquired at least the elementary proportions of an art.

W. D. D.

The importance of the music of the most ancient civilizations and its relevance to the history of music as an art may be questioned with some justification. Indeed, some historians, notably Riemann, in his scholarly Handbuch der Musikgeschichte, have practically foregone all reference to it. But an account of Greek music has unanimously been held an essential part of the scheme, for it has had an unquestioned influence upon the beginnings of our own art, and though misunderstood for centuries its theoretic system has served as the foundation of mediæval musical science.

Moreover, the Greeks, in whose civilization antiquity reached its pinnacle, manifested an attitude toward the art distinctly different from that of the older nations, an æsthetic and humanistic attitude more akin to our own, which enabled them to realize something like the degree of beauty and perfection which they are conceded to have attained in the other arts. Therefore, though music is destitute of parallels to our glorious examples of the plastic arts of antiquity, a presentation of the few facts hinting at the true merits of this lost art is distinctly pertinent.

It is lamentable, indeed, that next to nothing has been preserved to us of Greek music. The few frag[Pg 89]ments which assiduous antiquarians have restored and deciphered are hardly sufficient to suggest its true quality, and even further restorations could do no more than confirm the present evidence, for manuscripts are but the skeleton records—the essence has been lost with the lyres and flutes, it has died with the voices of Anacreon and Sappho.

While we moderns generally deny to music any direct correspondence with the realities of life, the Greeks held it to be the most ‘imitative’ or representative of arts.[32] Not only states of feeling, but also ethical qualities and dispositions of mind were reproduced by musical ‘imitation,’ and on the close correspondence between the copy and the original depended the importance of music in the formation of character. Aristotle in his ‘Politics’ says: ‘In rhythm and melodies we have the most realistic imitation of anger and mildness, as well as of courage, temperance, and all their opposites.’ Here is an important element in the Greek conception of music, radically different from our own. Its imputed educational value, its influence upon the character of the youth, and even its therapeutic powers are no less foreign to our modern ideas.

Plato in his ‘Republic’ sets down the study of music and its regulation as an essential part of the ideal commonwealth. ‘Beginning from early childhood,’ he says, ‘they teach and admonish their sons as long as they live....’ ‘Again the music masters in the same way pay attention to sobriety of behavior and take care that the boys commit no evil, and when they have learned to play upon the lyre they teach them all the compositions of other good poets, lyric poets, setting them to music, and they compel Modes and Harmony to become familiar to the boys’ souls in order that they may become more gentle, and, being themselves more rhythmical and harmonious, they may be serviceable in word and [Pg 90]deed; for the whole life of man requires rhythm and harmony.’ And elsewhere in the same work: ‘But when handsome amusements are appointed them in their infancy, and when by means of music they embrace that amusement which is according to law (contrariwise to the others), this music attends them in everything else and grows with them, and raiseth up in the city whatever formerly was fallen down.’

As illustrative of the moral import of music Plato says: ‘Is it indeed then according as I say, that we shall never become musicians, neither we ourselves, nor the guardians we say we are to educate, before we understand the images of temperance, fortitude, liberality and magnificence, and the other sister virtues?...’ Hierocles attests Pythagoras’ belief in the therapeutic powers of music in the following quotation: ‘He look’d on Musick as a great advantage to Health and made use of it in the diseases of the body as well as of the Soul; for, as Plato said after him, Perfect Musick is a Compound of Voices and of Instrumental Harmony. The Voice alone is more perfect than instruments alone; but it wants one thing to complete its Perfection; and that one thing is Harmony: and Instruments alone, without a voice, yield only rambling and extravagant Sounds, which may indeed affect and move the Soul, but cannot instruct nor form the Manners which ought to be the chief end of Musick.’[33]

Before considering the probable character and form of ancient Hellenic compositions we must record that music hardly existed among the Greeks as an independent art. The word [Greek: mousikê] held a much broader meaning than our own word music; it included poetry, at least in its narrower sense, and in a measure dancing and mimetics. Likewise it was closely allied, through their philosophy, to mathematics and astronomy. But [Pg 91] to say that music was subordinate to poetry is inaccurate, for, while vocal compositions, both solo and choral, made up the bulk of Greek music, instrumental music was practised not only in accompaniment, but independently also, and virtuosity on the kithara and aulos was developed to a considerable degree. The great musicians of Greece, however, were at the same time its great poets. Homer and Hesiod may be thought of as musicians, no less than Pindar, the adored creator of the first dithyramb, and Æschylus, the greatest of dramatists. It may be interesting at this point to reproduce the table compiled by Aristides Quintilianus (second century A. D.), one of the most eminent Greek theoreticians of the Roman era, to show the various branches of musical science as then understood. This illustrates clearly the union of poetry and music, the perfect fusion of two arts in which neither predominated, but was only an inherent part of the other.

[Pg 92]

The earliest references to the art, in the works of Homer and Hesiod,[34] who themselves may be deemed the first poetic singers of record, are clothed in mythical terms, and a brief review of these references may be of interest as reflecting the racial attitude toward music. In Hesiod we read much about the immortal muses, the nine daughters of Zeus (all-father) and Mnemosyne (memory), and of these especially three are of interest to us: Calliope, the muse of epic song; Euterpe, the muse of melody and lyric poetry, and Terpsichore, the muse of choral dance. According to Homer these entertained the gods by singing (Iliad, i, 604), while song itself the poet considered a direct gift of the gods.

The greatest mythical figure of Greek music is Orpheus, who, like all the early civilizers of Hellas, was a Thracian, a people afterward considered barbarous by the Athenians. Orpheus was said to be the son of the king of Thrace, by the muse Calliope, but another account makes Apollo his father. He was one of the Argonauts, and indeed it was the stirring tones of his lyre as he chanted of adventure on the sea that stirred the good ship Argo to her launching when all the strength of the heroes had failed in the task. On passing the Island of the Sirens the Argonauts owed their safety to Orpheus, for, taking his lyre, he sang so loudly and so sweetly as to overpower the Sirens’ melodies, whereby all escaped unscathed save Butes, who plunged overboard only to be snatched up by Aphrodite. Again it was the urging of Orpheus’ lyre that gave the strength to the Argonautic rowers to speed between the clashing rocks, the Sympleglades, after the dove had passed through and the rocks had recoiled. The skill with which he plucked the strings moved even the trees and [Pg 93]rocks, and the wild beasts of the forest surrounded him in delighted transports as he sang.

The story of Orpheus and his wife, the nymph Eurydice, is perhaps the best known of all myths connected with music. Eurydice, it is said, was slain by the bite of a serpent as she was fleeing from the unwelcome love of Aristæus, son of Apollo. Orpheus determined to descend to the Underworld, and, using the power of melody to soften the hearts of the rulers of that abode of Darkness and of Death, to regain possession of his beloved. Armed with his lyre, he easily obtained admittance to the realm of Hades, and in course of time made good his entrance to the palace of Pluto. At the music of his lyre the wheel of Ixion stopped, Tantalus forgot the thirst which was his eternal torture, for a moment the vulture ceased his perpetual gnawing at the vitals of Tityus and Pluto, and Proserpina granted the prayer of the impassioned melodist, with one condition only: that he should not look back upon his almost-rescued wife before he had reached with her the confines of the land of darkness. Impelled by love and eagerness, Orpheus violated this condition and Eurydice vanished evermore from his sight.

Of the poetical works ascribed to Orpheus, those which remain appear to have been written chiefly by Onamacritus and Cercops, and they illustrate some of the earliest forms of hymns with a musical accompaniment. Orpheus is also credited with the formulation of an augmentation of the scale, having added two strings to the seven-stringed lyre which Apollo had given him.

The legend of Amphion also signifies the peculiar veneration in which music was held by the Greeks. The son of Zeus (or Jupiter) and Antiope, he became king of the Thebans, and Hermes gave him a lyre of gold. By its power alone, the story runs, he built the walls of Thebes, the stones taking their places in obedience to the strains of his instrument. All of which[Pg 94] serves to illustrate the high conception which the Greeks had of the art, how constantly it occupied their thoughts, and what extraordinary powers they ascribed to it. This is further attested by historical evidence showing the place which music occupied in their social system.

There is little doubt that in the classic period at least music was an essential part of the intellectual equipment of every citizen. It assumed a public importance and received an official recognition from the state which no other people has ever accorded to it. Not only did it form an integral part of religious worship, but it occupied an important position in the great national festivals at which the intellectual accomplishments no less than the physical prowess of all Greece were matched.

The Olympic games, beginning with the year 776 B. C., and taking place regularly every four years in the plain of Alpheious in Elis (Olympia), are the oldest as well as the most famous of these festivals, and as the most comprehensive national celebrations they assumed the greatest importance. All Hellas and the colonies sent spectators and participants in the contests. While music no doubt played a great part in the celebration of the victors, in the sacred sacrifice to Zeus, and in the pageants and dances, an actual contest in music or poetry was never incorporated into the Olympic games. But the Pythic games, which took place at Delphi every nine years, and after 586 B. C. in the third year of every Olympiad, were primarily poetico-musical contests in honor of Apollo. The first day was permanently dedicated to the performance of the famous Nomos Pythicos (of which later). Both the Isthmian games and the Nemeic games, which took[Pg 95] place every two years, were likewise closely identified with music.

But besides these great national festivals, which in all amounted to two or three annually, there were a great number of local celebrations, some of which partook of an almost national character by virtue of the great influx of foreign visitors. The Eleusinian mysteries, primarily confined to the initiates, also took on the character of a popular festival by the institution of public contests and pageants, in which, of course, music played a great part. The Athenians’ annual Panatheneas in honor of their patron goddess, their harvest festivals, and their Dionysos festivals; the Spartans’ numerous celebrations and a host of others, all of which were dedicated to some phase of culture, will indicate in some measure the tremendous amount of time and attention which the Greeks gave to the cultivation of the representative arts.

From Polybius, writing in the second century A. D., and taking as his authority Ephorus, writing two hundred years earlier, we learn that the Arcadians ordered their State affairs entirely according to music, in such manner that not only boys, but young men up to the age of thirty were obliged to cultivate musical study continually. ‘From infancy on their children are accustomed to sing according to rule the hymns and pæans with which every country district praises its gods and heroes. Later they learn the melodies of Timotheus and Philoxenos, and annually perform their choral dances in the theatre to the accompaniment of Dionysian flutes—the children their children’s dances, and youths the dances of men. Throughout their whole life they institute performances in this way, not engaging foreign musicians, but relying upon their own talents, and relieving each other in turn in the execution of songs. And while it is not considered a disgrace to plead ignorance in other fields of knowl[Pg 96]edge, they consider it reprehensible to decline to sing. They also practise processions to the accompaniment of flutes, and annually perform dances which they study together and produce in the theatres at the common expense.’

Not only in the public functions, but in their domestic life as well, did music assume great importance. From earliest times we have records of folk songs associated with the various occupations of ordinary life. Of these the songs which have reference to the seasons of the year and their phenomena, and which express the emotions called forth by them, are of the greatest antiquity. They were sung by country folk, by the reapers and vintners. There were two distinct classes of folk songs, the songs of sorrow and the songs of joy, both of which existed according to Homer before his time. Karl Bücher in his Arbeit und Rhythmus shows that in the occupational songs, where the dance did not form a part of the music, the rhythm of the occupations themselves—the handling of tools—determined the rhythm of the songs. Among such are the song of the miller while grinding, the song of the spinners, the binders of sheaves, and many others. There is no doubt that these songs, expressing in simple terms the sorrows and joys of the ordinary man, had a refreshing influence upon the more sophisticated artistic creations of Greek musicians, just as our folk songs have had upon the works of our greatest composers. The private practice of the more artistic forms was also common among the Greeks. We read in their literature how the lyre was passed round at the banquet, and each guest was expected to add to the merriment of the occasion; of the bridal songs, and many other forms of choral music executed upon special occasions.

The actual character of this music we must gather from the writings about it, rather than the few fragments at hand for analysis. Just as music, because of its moral significance, became the subject of philosophic speculation, so did its scientific side appeal to the analytic mind of the Greeks, and their mathematicians and scientists in general expatiated at length upon its theory. From their writings we adduce first of all the fact that Greek music lacked at least one of the important elements of modern music, namely, polyphony—or harmony—the quality which of all, from a modern point of view, appeals most directly to our emotions, to our susceptibility, which is most closely associated with color and ‘mood.’ Investigators, such as Westphal, Gevaert, etc., have untiringly striven to establish evidence of something more than simple homophony in the music of antiquity, but beyond a slight deviation in the instrumental accompaniments, partaking of the nature of grace notes, they have discovered traces of nothing but melody at the unison—or at the distance of an octave, when men and boys (or women) sang together, or when the voice was accompanied by an instrument of higher or lower pitch. Such and nothing more is the import of the testimony of Aristotle, when he says: ‘Why is symphonous or antiphonal singing more pleasing than harmony? Is it not because it is the consonance of the octave? For antiphony is born of the voices of young boys and men, whose tones are equal in distance from each other as is the highest note of an octave from the lowest’ (Problems xix, 29). Curious as it may seem that it should never have occurred to a people intellectually so advanced to venture experiments in the field of polyphony; that it should never have entered their minds to strike two strings of the lyre or kithara simultaneously, or that an occasional false note struck along with the right one should not have suggested the possibilities of the ‘third dimension’ in music, it remains a fact that in all the mass of theoretical and technical writings upon the art sufficient to reconstruct the entire ‘system’ of Greek music,[Pg 98] no mention is made of harmony or polyphony.[35] We can only conclude then that combinations other than the perfect consonance of the octave, all mixtures of sounds or a confusion of lines, were hostile to the Greek ideal of purity, to the underlying principle of classic simplicity.

Thus the Greeks, reduced to the resources of rhythm and melody as means of musical expression, developed these to a very high degree, in the fineness of its distinctions advanced even beyond the point which we have as yet found it necessary to reach in modern music. Their rhythm, while no doubt it had a distinct and independent existence, was primarily determined by the accent of the spoken word, the metres of poetry. Even if conceived as a musical entity, it must at all times be thought of as pertaining to the text rather than the melody. The earliest rhythm of which we have knowledge is the hexameter of the Homeric epics, and it is doubtful whether any variety in rhythmic structure was introduced until the introduction of the short iambic measures at a later period. Melody, on the other hand, while subjected to certain laws, and at first perhaps nothing more than a monotonous chant or declamation at slightly varying pitch, finally attained a variety of line and freedom of movement which rendered it capable of the most subtle shades of expression. This, we are informed, was due to a complex system of modes or scales, of genera and chroai, which, if we understand them correctly, would credit the Greek ear with much finer distinctions of pitch than we are capable of to-day.

A full discussion of this system is beyond our present purpose, and the numerous controversies concerning it, which in many respects are still unsettled, place the [Pg 99]matter outside the pale of true history; but a brief statement of its development (in historical sequence) is necessary for the comprehension of the terms which must recur in the course of our sketch.

We have seen that the Greeks recognized the consonance of the octave. Similarly they recognized at an early period the close relationship of the interval of the perfect fifth, and its inversion, the perfect fourth. The latter became the basis of the Greek system of scales. They divided the interval into unequal smaller intervals according to three methods, or genera, in each case placing the larger steps at the top and the smaller at the bottom. (An equal division of the interval has, as far as we know, never been attempted and is entirely foreign to natural impulses.) The results obtained were as follows:

[PNG] [

Of these three tetrachords (from [Greek: tetra] = four and [Greek: chordon] = string) only the first was generally accepted, the chromatic was rarely used and the enharmonic probably only by virtuosi, for we have the testimony of Aristoxenus that the ear accustomed itself only with difficulty to the distinction of quarter tones.

By joining two diatonic tetrachords together we obtain a series of notes corresponding to the Dorian scale or mode ([Greek: harmonia])—more properly ‘octave species’—which was accounted the oldest of all the modes:

[PNG] [

[Pg 100]

Associated with this we soon find the Phrygian mode, supposed to be of Asiatic origin and introduced into Greece by Terpander of Lesbos, one of the earliest known composers of antiquity:

[PNG] [

and also the Lydian, the name of which indicates its origin:

[PNG] [

Around these three may be grouped all the modes in use in classic times. These scales or octave species may be compared rather to our present major and minor modes than to our modern transposition scales, in that their identity is determined not by their absolute pitch, but by the intrinsic character of each mode, based upon the distribution of the large and small steps or intervals within the octave. But here the analogy ends, for the Greek modes cannot really be thought of in the same way as either modern scales or modes, which by long association with our harmonic system have become inseparably identified with it, so that every step of the scale has a harmonic significance as well as a melodic. Hence, there is associated with our scales the idea of tonality, which in its modern sense is entirely foreign to Greek music. Nevertheless a distinct character or ethos was ascribed to their scales by the Greeks (just as our major and minor have their individual character). The Lydian, for instance, was thought of as plaintive and adaptable to songs of sorrow; the Dorian as manly and strong, hence to be employed in warlike strains; and so on.[36]

[Pg 101]

It will be seen that the above three scales correspond to the three series of notes comprised within the octaves from e to e´, d to d´, and c to c´, produced by the white keys of the piano. (While this does not indicate their absolute pitch, it represents the relative pitch at which they appear as part of the entire system, or ‘foundation scale,’ of the Greeks, illustrated on page 103.) By a transposition of the tetrachord divisions of each of these scales, the Greeks obtained two additional scales out of each of the above three. These derived scales were denoted by the prefixes hypo and hyper (low and high), respectively:

(It is evident from this table that the Hypodorian corresponds to the Hyperphrygian, and the Hypophrygian to the Hyperlydian; hence there are only seven different modes.)

[Pg 102]

A common relationship was thus clearly recognized between the three scales of each group, which may be thought of as having one common tonic. It may be noted, however, that the Hypodorian probably had an independent existence before being associated with the Dorian, as is indicated by its own ethnological name of ‘Æolian,’ and as such was supposed to be of great antiquity. The Hyperdorian enjoyed an independent existence as ‘Mixolydian.’ Its invention has been variously ascribed to Sappho, Damon and Pythocleides.

We have seen how, by joining two tetrachords, the Greeks constructed their Dorian scale (octachord). By joining additional tetrachords to this scale at either end they obtained their double octave scale or ‘Perfect Immutable System’:

[PNG] [

It should be noted, however, that the new tetrachords are added conjunctively, i. e., so that one of their notes (e) coincides with the terminal notes of the original octave, while the two tetrachords making up that octave were placed in juxtaposition with a whole tone step between them. This was called the tone of disjunction (diezeuxis). For purposes of modulation (metabole) they now laid across the middle of this system an additional diatonic tetrachord (from d to a) in such a way that one of its tones (b♭) came half way between the two notes of the diezeuxis.[37] The low A was added to round out the octave. (It is a curious fact that what we call low the Greeks called high and vice versa.) The two tetrachords Meson and [Pg 103]Hypaton, together with the conjunctive (Synemmenon), were also considered as an independent system called the Lesser Perfect System. The relation of these systems as well as the names of the individual notes are set forth on the accompanying table.

By carving out of the Greater Perfect System (which we may call simply the Complete System) overlapping octave sections, each beginning on a different note, the[Pg 104] Greek theorists found these to correspond in their intervals to each of the seven different modes, as follows: Thus all scales came to be thought of theoretically as transpositions of the corresponding octave sections in the Complete System (Foundation Scale). Indeed, the entire system was considered as transposed and the individual tones retained their names regardless of pitch, i. e., in the Dorian mode the mese would always be the fourth note from the bottom, in the Phrygian the fifth, etc.

[PNG] [

As an example, let us transpose the Foundation Scale one tone above its natural pitch:

The middle octave will now be seen to be Phrygian (corresponding to No. 3 above) instead of Dorian as before. Now in their system of transposition scales (in reality transposed Complete Systems) the Greeks gave to every scale the name corresponding to the mode of its middle octave. Before the time of Aris[Pg 105]toxenus only seven of these transposition scales, or keys ([Greek: tonoi]) were in use. That theoretician eventually rounded out the scheme to eighteen (of which six appear in modern notation as duplicates or octave transpositions). He did this systematically by taking the interval of the perfect fifth as a basis and building on each semi-tone degree a group of three scales (natural, hypo, and hyper). As there were not enough of the original modes to supply names for all of the new scales, it was, of course, necessary to invent arbitrary names for the superfluous ones. By this achievement it was possible to transpose a melody into any one of the eighteen (or really twelve) keys without changing its modal character. We may therefore assume with some justification that Aristoxenus’ system in a way did for the Greeks what our own equal temperament has done for modern music.

We end our brief sketch of Greek theory at this point, which may be assumed as the highest development of the system. Later systems were either based on Aristoxenus or were of reactionary nature. We must, however, for a moment retrace our steps to explain briefly the achievements of an earlier theoretician, the great philosopher Pythagoras, in the field of musical acoustics.

Like many of the ancient philosophers, Pythagoras (ca. 600 B. C.) is known only by his disciples and by their quotations from or commentaries on his teaching. Of these the most important are Archytas (400-365 B. C.) and the great mathematician Euclid (ca. 300 B. C), though there is some reason to suppose the part of Euclid’s work dealing with music to have been written by Cleonides (ca. 200 B. C.) and by the later Pythagorean Nichomachus (ca. 150 A. D.).

In Hierocles’ Commentaries on the ‘Symbols’ and[Pg 106] ‘Golden Verses’ of Pythagoras, M. Dacier, the translator, amplifies the prefatory Life of Pythagoras found in Hierocles, and he recounts, as Gaudentius, Nichomachus, Macrobius, Boëtius, and others have recounted, the incident which drew the attention of the ancient founder of the great system of secret numbers to the numerical relations of Sound in Music. The quaint old story is as follows: ‘Pythagoras is honored with the Invention of Harmonical Measures; and ’tis related how it happened. They write, that one Day, after he had been meditating a long while on the Means of assisting the Hearing, as he had already found means of assisting the Sight, by the Rule, Compass, Astrolabe and other Instruments, and the Feeling, by the Balance and the Measures, he chanced to go by a Smith’s Shop, and heard several Hammers of different Sizes, beating Iron upon the Anvil. He was moved with the Justness of the Harmony, and going into the Shop, he examined the Hammers and their sound in regard to their Sizes; and, being returned home, he made an Instrument on the Wall of his Chamber, with Stakes that served for pegs and with strings of equal length, at the end of which he tied the different Weights, and by striking several of these strings at once he produced different Tones, and thereby learnt the Reasons of this different Harmony, and of the intervals that caused it.’

In general it may be pointed out that the Pythagorean system of harmonics was only incidental to philosophy. Thus Laloy, speaking of the musical system of Pythagoras, says: ‘One finds, amid their confused accounts and contradictory assertions, a body of rules and precepts which present a “Pythagoric life,” as there was an “Orphic life,” in which justice, order, friendship, abstinence, geometry, and music are an integral part ... even metempsychosis itself being merely the truth inherent in a number.’

[Pg 107]

The monochord, a single string stretched over a sliding bridge, was the basis of the acoustical experiments of Pythagoras. By shifting the position of the bridge he varied the pitch of this string. His great discovery, that which has rightly caused him to be regarded as the founder of a branch of acoustics, was that between the respective lengths of stretched strings which gave the three consonances of octave, fifth and fourth, there existed certain essentially simple relations, as follows: the octave was in the relation of a string of one half the length or double the length; in other words, the relation of 2/1; the fifth was in the relation of 3/2; and the fourth in the relation of 4/3. These intervals, apparently on account of the simplicity of their mathematical relationship, were henceforth regarded as consonant. All other intervals were dissonant, at any rate in theory. The essential difference between the mathematical theory of sound ratios as held by the Pythagoreans and that held in modern times lies in the conception of the Third. To the Greeks such an interval was entirely dissonant, not necessarily because it was displeasing to the ear, but because they either did not recognize its ratio as 4/5 or did not deem this ratio to fit in with the highly abstruse theology they had built up on other numerical ratios. The step of the Fifth was to the Pythagoreans not merely the fundamental, but also the only, basis for the determination of tone ratios, whereas to-day the Third and sometimes even the Seventh are taken into account.

As to the value that Pythagoras attached to these fundamentals, we may quote Hierocles: ‘Pythagoras,’ he says, ‘has a very particular Opinion concerning Musick, which nevertheless the Masters of that Science, after they have duly weigh’d it, will find Just and Reasonable. He condemned and rejected all judgment that was made of Musick by the ear: because he found the Sense of Hearing to be already so weaken’d and[Pg 108] decay’d, that it was no longer able to judge aright. He would have Men therefore judge of it by the Understanding, and by the analogical and proportionable Harmony. This in my opinion was to show that the Beauty of Musick is independent of the Tune that strikes the Ear, and consists only in the Reason, in the confirmity and in the Proportion, of which the Understanding is the only Judge.’ And he adds this remark: ‘As to what he said, that the Sense of Hearing was become weak and impotent, it agrees with this other Assertion of his, that the reason why Men did not hear the Musick of the Universe was the weakness and imbecility of their Nature, which they had corrupted and suffered to degenerate.’

The error of the Pythagoreans, it may be pointed out, did not lie in the misuse of experimental data, but in the philosophical deductions therefrom. To the followers of Pythagoras a harmonic consonance was not a perception, it was a thing the existence of which could be conceived independently, a thing as real as the string which had given it birth. Sound was to them, therefore, a distinct identity, possessing attributes pertaining only to itself, yet susceptible of impression from without; it was a number realized and concrete, a number simple and all-inclusive, but, above all, a series of numbers possessing a personality, the veiling power of which both illumined and obscured a myriad symbolisms. Strict Harmonic Consonance was the utmost of numerical potency, it was a divine thought, not embodied Being. How deeply this was felt to be a truth by the Pythagoreans is evidenced by the story told of the death of Pythagoras, when the great philosopher, turning to his disciples, gave as his last instruction “Always the monochord!”

As for the value of the Pythagorean school as a whole, it is manifest that it must be considered as a group of mystical speculators, professing to be students[Pg 109] of music and claiming Pythagoras as their master, but, in actual verity, doing little more than reducing sounds to air vibrations and ascertaining the numerical relations of pitch. Lovers of music they were not, they were mathematical precisians, perceiving no beauty and hearing no inspiration in melodic sounds except in such wise as these fitted into an ordered sequence of arithmetical form.

The development of the Pythagorean school was rendered all the more self-centred by the vitality and strength of the Empiricists. This flourishing school of musical art was concerned with arbitrary regulations as to the most acceptable forms of composition. The Empiricists determined what melodies were suitable to certain instruments. They debarred the flute from certain festivals and admitted it to others, they decided upon the forms of construction of musical instruments, and, above all, they insisted upon the performance of certain compositions in the traditional style. While not avowedly hostile to the Pythagoreans, the Empirical school paid little heed to the mathematical speculations of the learned, and song and dance continued because music was an art. Great as was the symbolic majesty of the Monochord, the surging strain of the lyre meant infinitely more to the life of Ancient Greece.

The second great development of Greek musical philosophy is that of Aristoxenus (b. 354 B. C.), whose systemization of the transposition scales has already been mentioned. If Pythagoras established some of the fundamental rules of acoustics, Aristoxenus may be given the credit of establishing Musical Science; the former was a branch of a science, the second was the science of an art.

To put the essential principles of Aristoxenus in the simplest possible form it may be said that he established two principal rules: (1) that music accepts[Pg 110] Sound as sounds heard by the ear, and that the science of music must be built upon the foundation of sounds that are heard; (2) that sound-functions exist, possessing properties of sonance not directly reducible to any simple or elemental numerical ratio. The work of Aristoxenus was a revolution in musical philosophy based upon the principle of music as an organic whole of sounds bearing a dynamic relation each to the other. Aristotle had not been able to break away from the old Pythagorean conception, but Aristoxenus brushed away the misty speculations of morality, the mathematical entanglements and the musty formalism that surround the music of his time and set himself to answer the one vital question: Why does Music employ certain sounds and reject certain others?

The third stage of development of Greek music may be represented by Claudius Ptolemy, who lived in the second century of the Christian era. He may, with considerable authority, be deemed the inventor of the first interpreter of the equal tempered scale. R. C. Phillips has thrown considerable light upon the disputed questions involved in this matter, and to his monograph on the ‘Harmonic Tetrachords of Claudius Ptolemy’ (1904) we may refer the reader desirous of detailed information. Leaving the question of theory, we now proceed to pick up the thread of mythical story and trace what we can of the history of Greek composition.

All legendary references to the prehistoric era of Greek music point to its importation into Hellas by various artists, partly from the North (Thessaly and Thrace) and partly from the East (Asia Minor). In this we see probably nothing more than a racial recollection of the Dorian migration, which, as we know, took place about the year 1104 B. C. Orpheus, of[Pg 111] whom we have already spoken, must be counted among the Northerners, the Thracians, for his native place was Pieria at the foot of Mt. Olympus. His pupil, Musaios, was supposed to have lived in Athens, and his son Eumolpos was the progenitor of the famous family of priests and singers which were entrusted perpetually with the rites of the Eleusinian mysteries, sacred to Demeter. Amphion, another of the Northern artists (the miraculous builder of the walls of Thebes), is described by Pausanias (Græco-Roman historian, 2d Cent., A. D.) as a relative of Tantalos of Lydia, and to have brought from there the Lydian mode. He is also credited with having increased the lyre from four to seven strings. Heraclides Ponticus calls him the founder of the kitharœdic school of poetry, which was governed by a method and laws distinct from the auletic school, associated with the aulos, the Grecian flute, from which it took its name. The regulation of the cult of Apollo at Delphi is ascribed to Philammon, whose son Thamyris, a native of the more uncultured regions of Thrace, was said to have challenged the muses to contest, and to have been punished for this offense with blindness.

Thus the North was, as we have seen, the home of the kitharœdic muse; Phrygia, on the other hand, must be considered as the cradle of the auletic school, of which the most prominent early names are Hyagnis, Marsyas, and Olympus, the three oldest players upon the flute. The first of these was said to be the inventor of that art. Marsyas was his son and first disciple, while Olympus introduced the art into Greece and became the first Hellenic master of artistic instrumental music.[38]

[Pg 112]

The first distinct period of musical composition is that of the nomoi (sing. nomos; Gr. [Greek: nomos] = law), a certain type of melodies constructed according to fixed rules, which were sung as solos to verses whose subject was usually the praise of some god. (The singers performing them were known as aœds and later as rhapsodists.) The earliest nomoi were melodies of very simple structure, but from the first there is a distinction between the kitharœdic and auletic types, the first of which is supposed to have followed the Homeric hexameter (iambic metre), and the latter to have been based on the elegiac measures, offering, however, a considerable variety of rhythm.

The pioneer representatives of these two opposing schools were, respectively, Olympus, already familiar to us, and Terpander, both of whom belong to the seventh century B. C. Concerning Olympus’ art a startling assertion is found in Plutarch. He was regarded by Greek musicians as the originator of the enharmonic genus. Upon clearer examination, it has been found that this use of the word ‘enharmonic’ does not coincide with the sense in which it is used above, where we explained the three genera of tetrachords. The quarter-tone division is, indeed, a much later product and does not seem ever to have attained to great popularity. The enharmonic scale of Olympus simply consisted of the diatonic with a step omitted, so as to avoid all semi-tone intervals in the melodies. This elided tone was probably the Lichanos of the Phrygian scale ([Greek: harmonia]), or f, if we take the octave from d to d´ on the white keys of the piano. The Phrygian was naturally the scale used by Olympus, whose home was Phrygia, but he is also said to have introduced this ‘enharmonic’ type of melody into the Dorian mode. When the full octachord came into consideration (originally the scale was limited to seven[Pg 113] notes) the omission of the upper tone of the higher semi-tone interval (from b to c) followed as a matter of course. Thus Terpander’s ‘enharmonic’ scale is seen to be simply a sort of pentatonic system, the antiquity of which is already evident from our examination of primitive music.

Little is known of Olympus’ life. What part of Greece he inhabited we are not told. It seems certain that he practised his art in the service of Apollo. About one hundred years before the beginning of the Pythic games at Delphi he composed a song describing the fight of Apollo with the dragon, which afterward became known as the Nomos Pythicos, and which, as we have seen, was regularly performed upon the first day of the Pythic festivals.[39]

Of Terpander, however, the first of the kitharœdic nome writers, we have many isolated details, both of legend and fact. There is a story that the lyre of Orpheus was carried on the waves of the sea from the Thracian coast to Antissa on Lesbos, where Terpander was born. Orpheus is, indeed, the singer whom Terpander was said to emulate, while Olympus was supposed to follow the models of Homer. Terpander was the first victor in the Spartan Carneata (festival in honor of Apollo), which began during the twenty-sixth Olympiad. This indicates his settling in Sparta, which is further confirmed by Plutarch, who in his De musica calls him the chief representative of the first period in which Sparta flourished musically. Plutarch also records the legend that he successfully subdued a revolt of the Lacedemonians by the power of his music. To us the most important item of Terpander’s achieve[Pg 114]ments is the addition of the eighth string to the lyre (kithara), thus completing the octave.

The next musician of extraordinary importance was Archilochos of Paraos, whose period has been fixed as 675-630. His popularity seems to have surpassed that of any other except Homer, with whom he was equal in the estimation of the ancients. His literary merit consists of the introduction into artistic poetry of the iambic and trochaic trimeter and tetrameter and the origination of the strophic form, by the alternation of shorter verses of different rhythm with longer ones. Similarly, his great musical achievement is the introduction of rhythmical change and the use of faster time. In using shorter measures he endowed his compositions with a certain folk-quality which, combined with the element of satire and fable, quickly brought them into popular favor. Archilochos was a pugnacious, combative character; he had taken part in the wars on Eubœa and found his death in a warlike exploit on Nasos. His invective and satirical poems were a totally new departure in Greek poetry. A peculiar practice, which in a sense survives in the method of our musical comedians, was introduced by Archilochos for humoristic effect, i. e., the interrupting of the song proper by the spoken word, followed by a return to the melody after a brief instrumental interlude. This was known as paracataloge. Its use was later transferred to the serious ode and even the tragedy. A reference in Plutarch to Archilochos’ accompaniments ‘under the vocal part, whereas the old ones sang everything in unison’ has aroused considerable controversy. We shall dismiss it with the well-supported conclusion of Riemann, that it does not point to any form of heterophony, but to certain methods of interluding, rhythmical ornamentation and playing in the upper octave (flageolet).

The strophic forms of Archilochos constituted the[Pg 115] preliminary steps toward the development of lyric poetry, which, founded in the seventh century, ‘raised its graceful structure in the sixth.’ Alkman and Stesichoros furnish the transition to this subjective school, whose disciples are essentially the celebrants of love and wine. According to dialects it falls into three divisions—the Ionian, Dorian, and Æolian. The last, rooted in the kitharœdic school of Terpander, finds in its Lesbian home its first exponents—Alkaios and Sappho.

Alkaios (625-575 B. C.), son of a noble family of Mitylene, composed no less than ten books of sacred hymns and drinking, love, and war songs, in which the predominating note is the hate of tyranny and the joys of the banquet. His contemporary, Sappho, whose verses are likewise full of passion and pathos, takes flaming love as her theme, and a number of other Greek women poets of the sixth century follow her example. ‘The poems of Alkaios and Sappho are the most melodious of Greek creations.... Their fluent strophes, so easily subjected to musical treatment, have not only in antiquity but throughout a series of centuries been regarded as a fixed form’ (cf. the Odes of Horace). Ibykos and Anakreon, both living in the second half of the sixth century, belong to the same category. Both were wandering singers. The former is known to us through Schiller’s poem perpetuating the legend of the cranes; the latter is still a byword for the joy of life and the praise of love, wine, and song.

A group of auletic musicians living in the seventh century, to which belonged Xenokritos, Polymnestos, and Thaletas, is credited with new developments in the musical practice of Sparta, which were soon transferred to the other Hellenic states as well. This great and far-reaching innovation was the introduction of the choral dances.

[Pg 116]

The cradle of the dance was said to be the island of Crete. Thence came Thaletas, the most important of the group of composers just mentioned. His fame reached the Spartans, who summoned him to organize a Pæan in honor of Apollo, in order to allay the pest,[40] and this inaugurated his extended activity in Sparta, where he introduced also the pyrrhic ([Greek: pyrrhíchê]), a rapidly moving dance, and the gymnopædia ([Greek: gymnopaidia]) festival dances performed annually in honor of those who fell at Thyrea. In the regular order of gymnastic dance education the last named were first, then came the pyrrhics, and finally the ‘stage dances,’ including the famous hyporchemas—pantomimic dances—which doubtless were a development in the direction of the drama.

According to a description of Athenæus the gymnopædias resembled the regular wrestling of the palæstra, for all the young boys danced naked and executed rhythmic body motions and responsive movements of the hands. The pyrrhic, which, according to Aristoxenus, was not an importation but of native Spartan origin, was a sort of war dance, which later, however, took on a bacchic character, rods and torches displacing the spears. It is recorded that marching songs, accompanied by rhythmic motions, were popular in Sparta from early times, and in the second Messenian war (685 B. C.) inspired the warriors to victory. The word hyporchema, defined as a pantomimic dance, ‘in its narrowest sense signifies the pantomimic representation of the action described by the words’ (Athenæus, i. 15). The same authority says that ‘while the chorus danced, it sang’ and that ‘some of the hymns were danced and some were not, just as the Pæans were sung either with or without dancing.’ Among [Pg 117]the hyporchemas are also included a great number of individual actions which made up the ceremonial of the great religious festivals and games, such as the gathering of the laurels for the victor, the garnering of the grapes, the bringing in of the tripod. To them belong also the so-called ‘Prosodies,’ sung to the accompaniment of the aulos during the processional into the temple or the approach to and withdrawal from the altar. All choral dancing was of course closely associated with music. And, while the monodic forms of composition continued to flourish, choral music came to stand highest in the public favor. The charm of variety afforded by a combination of the two was, moreover, quickly recognized.

The development of this choral music was the particular mission of a school of lyricists no less celebrated than the Æolian—namely, the Dorian. It was considered the highest form of lyricism. Larger periods and great variety, instead of short and regular strophes, distinguish its form, while its spiritual import is correspondingly broader. The hymnæ (bridal choruses); the scolia (praising a celebrated personality), out of which grew the encomium (song of praise), and the epinikion, sung in praise of the victors at the great festival games, are said to have introduced the softer, subjective, essentially lyrical element into the chorus. The dithyramb, originally a Bacchic festival song in honor of the god of wine (Dionysos), represents the highest of lyric choral forms. It originated in Phrygia, was developed artistically by Arion, living at the court of Periander in Corinth (628-585 B. C.), but was cultivated principally at Athens, first through Lasos of Hermione. Arion was the first to assemble a large chorus—50 men and boys—forming a circle around the altar of Dionysos, with a flute player in the centre. Before him Tyrtæus (685 B. C.) was said to have originated the division of the[Pg 118] chorus into three parts—‘children, men, and old men’—but earlier than that we learn from Pollux of the partition of the chorus into two semi-choirs, which sang in responsive or antiphonary manner.

Simonides of Keos and Pindar are the chief figures of choral lyricism. The former, born on the isle of Keos (Ionia), lived first at the court of Hipparch in Athens, after whose assassination he went to Thessaly. After the battle of Marathon (490) he reappeared at Athens with an elegy upon the fallen warriors, which left him victor over Æschylus, the founder of the drama. He also won the dithyrambic contest in 471, and he died at the court of Hierons of Syracuse. The reproach of commercialism, made against Simonides because of his acceptance of favors and pay at the hand of rulers, reminds one of present-day criticism. In contrast to him, Pindar (522-448), the illustrious master, revered not less than Homer himself, was a retiring personality, ‘living for himself rather than others.’ He was born at Thebes. His life story has been embellished with legend and fiction, indicating the nation’s affection for him. He participated frequently in the national festivals and, it is related, found his death on the stage of the theatre at Argos. His works combine no less than seventeen books containing hymns, pæans, dithyrambs, parthenias, hyporchemas, encomiums, thernoi epinikia, and other forms, all intended for choral performance. His first Pythic ode is among the six fragments of Greek music preserved to us.

We must now consider what is perhaps the greatest and the most original creation of the Greek mind—the drama. Its forms we have seen in lyric poetry and in pantomimic dances of the chorus, furnishing the elements of dialogue and representative action. These forms are to be found independently among other nations of antiquity, but their combination is peculiar[Pg 119] to the Greeks, to whom the entire world is indebted for the art of the theatre. Like the dithyrambic chorus, whose close connection with the worship of Dionysos we have observed, the drama was perpetually associated with these Bacchic festivals. The very name tragedy (from [Greek: tragos] = goat) indicates its root form—the satyr play, executed by men disguised with fur skin and the cloven hoof to represent the votaries of the God. Here is added another element of the drama—impersonation—though earlier cases of it are seen, for instance, in the disguise of the poet Chrysothemis as the god Apollo, when performing his compositions. Allegory and symbolism were things to which the Greek mind naturally inclined. Mythological conceptions were often visualized, such as the favorite fight of Apollo and the dragon, the myth of Demeter and Persephone represented in the Eleusinian mysteries, etc. The word [Greek: dran] is the general expression for secret action in the Pagan cult, hence in the antique drama, no less than our own opera, we may recognize a sacred origin (cf. Chap. XI, p. 325). The dithyrambic chorus, whose members themselves are thought to have been disguised as satyrs, furnished the last preparatory step leading to the tragedy, which, it should be noted, gradually developed out of the non-choral sections, the solo speeches of the leaders.[41] Similarly, the Comedy had its beginning in the rather coarse witticisms of the choral leaders in the Bacchic processions of the Dionysos festival (cf. Aristotle, ‘Poetics,’ 4).

The first real dramatist was Thespis, who, in 536 B. C., was summoned to Athens by the Pisistratides to produce a tragedy in which for the first time there appeared an actor outside of the chorus. It developed [Pg 120]rapidly from then on—we need only mention the introduction of the comedy by Epicharmos (540-450) and its official sanctioning in Athens in 487. Phrynichos, the greatest dramatist before Æschylus, is remembered by the performance of the ‘Fall of Milet’ for which, because it reminded the Athenians of their defeat, he was punished, and the political tragedy henceforth forbidden. The names of the three greatest tragic poets, Æschylus (525-456), Sophocles (496-406), and Euripides (450-395), are too well known to require comment. Our present task is simply to point out the important part which music played in their works. The parallel frequently drawn between the modern opera or music drama on the one hand, and the classic tragedy on the other, we may dismiss with the statement of Riemann, that ‘the classic tragedy was a drama in which music as such coöperated, while in the modern (music drama) music occupies an eminently dominating place.’ We might add that, whereas we speak, for instance, of Wagner as being his own librettist, we might say of Euripides that he supplied his own music for his drama.

The three elements of modern opera—soloists, chorus, and orchestra—were, indeed, represented in the classic drama. The soloists were the actors (who sang most of their speeches) and the chorus leader with his assistants, who were sometimes drafted to the stage proper, to take part in the action. The chorus consisted of fifteen members in the tragedy, twenty-four in the comedy. It was placed on a lower eminence than the principals (on the ‘orchestra’) and represented at first (with Æschylus and Sophocles) the ‘moral consciousness of the people.’ Later, with Euripides, its contemplative function was superseded by its actual participation in the action as a mob. It sang together—or tutti, as we would say—the parados and aphodos, the processional and recessional choruses—for which[Pg 121] the chorus was sometimes divided into sections, appearing one after the other, as, for instance, in the ‘Seven against Thebes,’ and the stasima, interspersed through the action. The choral dance of the tragedy, festive and stately, was called emmeleia; that of the satyr play, grotesque and rapid, the sikinnis, and the lampooning, lascivious dance of the comedy, cordax. The ‘orchestra’ consisted of one simple flute player, who used the double aulos. This was traditionally the characteristic ‘orgiastic’ instrument. The kithara, despite its popularity in other uses, was never admitted to the tragedy. The chief function of the flute may have been to keep the chorus ‘in tune,’ but it is certain that it played interludes, etc., and at times solo numbers, for we know that aulos playing had become a highly developed technical practice, and that aulos virtuosi achieved great reputations and were highly esteemed.

This leads us to the question of instrumental practice in general, the brief consideration of which is our next task.

One of the most ancient musical controversies was that regarding the respective merits of wind and string instruments. How it resulted in a most important victory for the latter is revealed in the partly mythical story of Marsyas, a Phrygian satyr. According to this legend Marsyas found upon the banks of a stream a flute, probably the double flute, which Athena had thrown away because she feared that blowing upon it would injure her beauty. Being a satyr, and therefore not so sensitive upon the point of personal attractions as the goddess, Marsyas set himself to learn the use of the instrument, and, in course of time, grew[Pg 122] so proficient that he challenged Apollo to a contest, the god to use the lyre, the satyr the pipe. Apollo played a simple melody, but Marsyas, following, executed a number of variations upon this tune which compelled the judge to admit that in the first test victory belonged to the satyr. Apollo then played again, accompanying himself with the voice, and this Marsyas could not surpass; he objected, however, on the ground that the voice and the lyre were two instruments, while he was using only one. Apollo retorted that Marsyas used both mouth and fingers for his pipe, hence he had the right to use his mouth as well. The judges agreed with Apollo and the second test was awarded to the god. But when the third test came Apollo scorned to use the voice, and burst out in such a strain of melody as even Mount Olympus had never heard before, the music of the immortals which no satyr could hope to compass. Marsyas was flayed alive by Apollo as a sufficient declaration of his defeat.

Thus the myth. It has its reflection in fact. For the ancient national music of the lyre prevailed in Greece over the foreign Phrygian double flute and the latter was regarded as a barbarian instrument, finding its place only in vintage festivals, bacchanalian orgies, and, finally, into the chorus of the tragic drama.

The lyre and the aulos, then, are the arch-types of the two great classes of instruments—string and wind—which the Greeks used. That there were a great number of varieties we gather from their representation on monuments, vases, etc., and from the writings of classic authors. Taking the string instruments as the oldest—for mythical references to these go farthest back into antiquity—we find first the lyre, and then its more graceful sister, the kithara (or phorminx), which were in common use in the north, on the islands and the coast of Asia Minor. The lyre, originally made of the shell of a tortoise, had an arched soundbox, while the kithara’s was flat; the latter’s body was larger and more angular in shape. Both had originally four, subsequently seven, strings, which were added to in later periods till eleven was reached. These were fastened in a base at the lower end of the instrument and ran across a ‘bridge’ to the cross-piece connecting the two arms, which acted also as tuning peg. The sounding board had in the centre a resonance opening.

The Asiatic form of kithara became popular throughout Greece as a consequence of the work of Terpander’s school and attained the leading rank as the Greek concert instrument, employed by professional players exclusively, while the primitive lyre was relegated to the use of amateurs and domestic purposes. With its full complement of strings music in all the modes could be played upon it without especially tuning the individual strings. The relative pitch of the string was based on the Dorian mode in the middle octave (e to e´), but for greater brilliancy of effect virtuosi preferred the higher transpositions, so that finally the instrument was accordingly tuned as follows:

[PNG] [

By special technical practice the higher octave (flageolet) could also be produced. The manner of playing was probably as follows: The left arm held the instrument close to the body by means of a sling, while the right, by means of a plectrum with arrow-shaped ends, plucked the strings from the outside. This left the fingers of the left hand free to touch the strings from the body side. It is thought that this was done as accompaniment (in unison) to the voice, while the right played the solo selections, interludes, etc.

Most prominent among other forms of string instru[Pg 124]ments was the magadis, a larger harp-like instrument with twenty strings, which was played without plectrum, and, if we read ancient writers correctly, in octaves.[42] Likewise the barbiton (similar to the kithara), the harp-like pectis, simikion, and epigoneion, and the lute-like pandura and nabla (of archaic origin), were played without plectrum, as indeed the lyre and kithara were also played in earliest times. The harp, though known to the Greeks, was not used by them. There only remains to mention the monochord, an instrument of one string stretched over a soundbox, which could be arbitrarily divided by a movable ‘bridge.’ It was used purely for experimental purposes, as we have already seen. Later it was constructed with several strings in order to demonstrate the consonance of intervals; in modern times it became the basis from which the clavichord, and finally the piano, was evolved.

The chief Greek wind instrument, as already indicated, was the aulos, or flute—not, however, a flute in the modern sense, but a reed instrument resembling an oboe, and having a double reed. It was often used in pairs, of equal intonation, but of different size, the larger instrument playing the soli, the smaller the accompaniment. The aulos had as many as fifteen or sixteen holes, but not sufficient to produce all the chromatic degrees of the scale, which, as well as the different genera, were produced by half stops and similar technical manipulations. There were also rings attached near the holes, by the turning of which the pitch could be altered. Overblowing was also practised, by means of a small hole (syrinx) near the mouthpiece. There was a whole family of auloi corresponding to the varying ranges of the human voice. The entire compass from the lowest note of the bass aulos to the highest of the soprano was three octaves. It is recorded [Pg 125]that auloi were tuned differently according to the various modes, and that players were usually equipped with an entire set of seven.

Other wind instruments used by the Greeks were the Libyan flute (played sideways), the elymos, and the syrinx—the familiar ‘pipes of Pan’—consisting of a number of rush reeds of different lengths fastened together with wax. Trumpets, straight (sapinx) and crooked horn-like (keras), were also common as instruments of war and priestly ceremony. The former variety even attained the rank of a contest (agonistic) instrument. A female exponent of Sapinx playing is recorded in the person of Aglais, the daughter of Megalocles.

A few words will suffice to indicate the nature of Greek musical notation. Instrumental notation differed from vocal and was of earlier origin. Characters of archaic form (Phœnician) were used to indicate the notes, though not in a definite alphabetic order. They are also used in inverted or distorted forms to indicate minute variations, i. e., the three notes of a Pyknon (the short step of the tetrachord) were indicated by a certain sign in different positions, thus: , , and . In vocal notation the regular Greek alphabet was employed from Α to Ω to represent the notes of the middle octave (including every step necessary to the production of the various modes and genera.) The higher octave was indicated by an ‘octava sign.’

Rhythm was usually not noted, being determined by the metre of the verse, but a code which determined the proportion of sound duration was sometimes used. The norm or unit in that system was denoted by the absence of any sign, its double by , its triple by , quadruple by , and quintuple by . Rests were indicated thus: . All of these signs were, like our [Pg 126] modern notes, set over the text. While the system was thoroughly worked out in its technical details, its cumbersomeness would suggest that in practice it was of less use than in theoretical exposition. No wonder, then, that few compositions were, as far as we know, actually written down, and of those only six are preserved to us. These are as follows:

This necessarily brief sketch will have acquainted the reader with the most salient facts concerning Greek music—lost as an art, but perpetuated as a science. Many volumes have been written upon the subject, but much more than these facts cannot possibly be adduced except by long and arduous study. For our present purpose may it suffice to convey to the reader that here for the first time music has attained the dignity of an art, with all its æsthetic, emotional and moral significance, with its complicated theory, its sophisticated technique, consciously employed to give pleasure and to uplift the mind of man. Mechanical limitations and peculiar conditions prevented the development of this art in the modern sense, but its theory has without doubt given a definite direction to modern music. Not only the musical teaching of the early church fathers, but the speculations of theorists down to comparatively[Pg 127] modern times, and the principles of the Renaissance masters were based on those of the Greeks, however much misunderstood. Perhaps it is not out of place to recall, in conclusion, how modern composers have been inspired by the stories of classic antiquity and beguiled by the music of Greek poetry. Modern music, disconnected from all that may have been the music of the older nations of antiquity, is a lineal descendant of the music of the Greeks.

[PNG] [

C. S.

From the point of view of the musical historian the dominant note of civilization at the opening of the Christian era was the all-pervading influence of Hellenistic culture. It is well to remember, however, that this influence was more in form than in content. Greek art was no longer the pure, bright flame that lighted the world so gloriously in the age of Pericles. Its blaze had become dull and lifeless; elements foreign to the fuel that had fed it in the classic age had been brought to it by the softly sensuous fingers of the Orient and the rough, unsympathetic hands of Rome. Hellenic art at the opening of the Christian era resembled that of Periclean Athens as little as the pseudo-classic architecture of the Italian Renaissance resembled the crowning glories of the Acropolis. The serene, clear, intellectual æstheticism of Greece had degenerated into the coarse sensuality of the pagan Latins and the sterile dilettantism of the theistic peoples of the Orient. Neither Latins nor Orientals were at all capable of understanding or assimilating it. Its joyous, essentially Aryan paganism was as foreign to the Semitic temperament as its lucid intellectuality was impossible to the turgid Roman mind.

[Pg 129]

We have then at the beginning of the Christian era a veneer of Greek culture covering a gross materialism in the West and a decadent, mystic symbolism in the East. Into this situation was born the new cult with its utter negation of everything the ancient world, pagan or theistic, held precious. Christianity from the beginning was at war with its environment—Greek, Roman, and Hebraic. Though its roots lay in Jewish philosophy, its pessimistic attitude toward the world, its view of life as an evil, poisoned condition, was directly opposed to the spirit of a people with whom, as Renan says, ‘the evils of life were never chronic complaints’ (‘pour qui les maux de la vie ne deviennent pas des maladies chroniques’). Its opposition to all the teachings and practices of paganism was, of course, absolute and uncompromising.

Nevertheless, Christianity absorbed from its environment the material of its ritual as inevitably as the tree draws nurture from the soil and atmosphere that underlies and surrounds it. That it absorbed those elements unconsciously, even unwillingly, goes a long way to explain our ignorance of the manner in which the liturgical music of the Church developed. It seems practically certain that among the most devout early Christians music was looked upon with suspicion, and its use, especially in connection with the worship of God, was probably discouraged as far as possible. Even as late as the fourth century we find a Syrian monk warning one of his brethren that we should approach God with sighs and tears, with reverence and humility, and not with song. When, through the inevitable pressure of environment, music had become an integral part of the Christian ritual, the Church fathers, with characteristic naïveté, completely ignored the source from which it was drawn, and, in what is obviously simple faith, attributed to it a divine origin. ‘Our singing,’ says St. John Chrysostom, ‘is only an echo, an[Pg 130] imitation of that of the angels. Music was invented in heaven. Around and above us sing the angels. If man is musical it is by a revelation of the Holy Ghost; the singer is inspired from on high.’ St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, Justin Martyr, St. Basil, St. Benedict, and other early fathers talk in the same strain. John de Muris, more historical and less mystical, can find no more definite origin for liturgical music than a vague tradition.[43]

With those who were practically eye-witnesses to the growth of early Church music so serenely blind to the influences that determined its course, the task of the modern historian in reconstructing those influences becomes practically impossible. If, however, we understand clearly the conditions under which liturgical music took shape we can formulate a theoretical sketch of its history, which is probably not far from the truth. In this connection it will help us considerably if we remember that during the early centuries of the Christian era the Roman church was far from being the dominant and unifying factor which it later became, and that the great institution to which we are wont to refer simply as ‘the church’ resulted from the confluence of many independent streams, and not from the expansion of any single one. These streams were divided, so to speak, between two main watersheds, one of which was Asia Minor and the other Italy. In Asia Minor the church was surrounded by a Semitic civilization shot through with Hellenic elements; in Italy it grew up in an environment of Græco-Roman culture.

It might be well to take a glance here at the state of music in Rome at the beginning of the Christian era. Roman music previous to the conquest of Greece [Pg 131](146 B. C.) had borrowed its forms from the Etruscans and the Greeks. Etruscan influences were probably predominant in the early centuries of the Republic.[44] The nature of these influences is not known to us. It would seem that the Etruscans were originally a Greek race, and the fountain-head of their musical art was consequently Hellenic. But they were, as their vases show, a race dowered with artistic ideals and genuine creative impulses, and they must have modelled their musical inheritance into something new, characteristic, and beautiful. But, if we are to believe Dionysius, Strabo, and other Roman writers who have touched on the subject, we must conclude that the Romans merely imitated such music of the Etruscans as was useful for religious and military purposes, choosing, presumably, the cruder forms of the art. We may accept this conclusion all the more readily since we know that the Romans, even down to Imperial times, remained obtuse and obtrusive Philistines.

It does not seem that the Romans borrowed much directly from Greece until after Greece became a Roman province. They were not, in fact, interested at all in art. But, after repeated conquests had made them rich and luxurious, they began to cultivate—or rather patronize—art as a sort of fashionable and expensive luxury. The result was a gradual growth, among the leisure classes in Rome, of a very real literary and æsthetic taste. By the time of Augustus Rome was able to produce such excellent imitators of Greek models as Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Catullus. In music, however, the imperial people never rose so high. Hellenic music had already degenerated when Rome fell under its influence. ‘Besides pantomime with chorus,’ says Gevaert, ‘Greek musicians brought to Rome only the instrumental solo and the song with kithara or lyre ac[Pg 132]companiment.’[45] This branch of the art flourished apace in Rome, where, however, like Italian opera in later centuries, it became distorted into a craze for meaningless virtuosity. We know less about the music itself than we know about the famous kithara players who were the favorites of emperors and were accorded the honors and dignity of princes. History speaks to us about Tigellius, the friend of Augustus, and Mesomedes, of Crete, the intimate of Hadrian. Nero gained a humorous immortality by his pretensions as a singer and kithara player. The story of his journey through Greece, where he won the kithara prize at the Olympic games and defeated in public competition the most famous performers in every city he visited, is surely one of the most ludicrous narratives in all history.

Until the third century A. D. the kitharœdic chant was purely Hellenic, as we might surmise from the names of its most famous exponents, such as Terpnos, Menecrates, Diodorus, Chrysogones, Pollion, Echion, and Glaphyros. In the second century Ptolemy, writing his ‘Harmonics,’ founded his system of tones and modes on the practice of the kithara and lyre players.[46] Practically all of the pieces which have come down to us from the Græco-Roman period, and which we have noted in the last chapter, belong to the literature of the kithara. The kitharœdic chants were narratives in the style of Timotheus, or lyrics, chiefly hymns to some divinity. These compositions were not in strophic form. The melody was divided into sections of unequal length (commata) and varied more or less from one end of the poem to the other. Until the beginning of the fourth century the texts were usually in Greek. The Latin kitharœdic songs, such as those of Horace and Catullus, were scarcely heard except at banquets and private reunions. Greek was, indeed, the prevail[Pg 133]ing musical language, as we may learn from Vitruvius, who prefaces to the chapter on music in his work on Architecture a warning that musical theory is practically a sealed book to those who do not know Greek.[47] After the removal of the seat of empire to Byzantium in 330 A. D., the use of Greek disappeared, and with it the use of musical notation by means of Greek letters. The transmission of music then became oral and the art of the kithara song and its accompaniments gradually vanished.[48]

Now the founders of Christianity were Jews, and Oriental influences were never absent from the church, even in Rome. Furthermore the apostles of Christianity in Rome were humble, untutored men, and the majority of their converts were drawn from the same class—the class which in all ages has naturally taken refuge in any creed which contradicts the views and practices of its masters and oppressors. Christ’s message of hope to the humble in spirit came home first to the humble in material possessions. ‘Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles.’ For three centuries the Christians in Italy were subjected to constant oppression and often to fiercely violent persecution. Their rites were performed in dark and secret places and, presumably, without any noise that could be avoided. Under the circumstances one is tempted to conclude that music was severely ignored by the first Christians in Rome. They had every reason to avoid it. It was likely to attract undesirable attention; it was associated primarily in their minds with the sensual orgies of their [Pg 134]pagan oppressors, and, finally, the first Christians themselves were not of the class likely to possess much musical culture. Nevertheless, it is practically certain that they intoned some of their services in a simple, discreet way. They must have chanted their psalms, at least, probably as the Hebrews did. This chant, it would perhaps be safe to assume, was responsorial and consisted of a low, more or less monotonous, recitative.

By the time the Edict of Milan (313 A. D.) struck off the fetters that bound Christianity the Church had already gathered to her bosom many of the most influential and cultured Roman citizens. Their advent must have changed gradually the whole complexion of the Roman church. With their cultivated taste for art they probably furnished the prime impulse toward the æstheticism which gradually came to be a distinguishing feature of the church ritual. After the Edict of Milan the church jumped almost at a bound to a position of social and political influence which soon became one of social and political predominance. The most influential of its members no longer came from the lowly and oppressed, but from the rich and powerful. Every reason that had operated against the use of music in the primitive church had disappeared, and with it had disappeared for a time the Oriental tendencies which the founders of the church had consciously or unconsciously incorporated with it. There is little doubt that during the third and fourth centuries Græco-Roman culture penetrated to the innermost shrine of Western Christianity and remained an active agent in the formulation of liturgical music long after the Orient had again become a predominant influence through the removal of the seat of empire to Byzantium.

It is unfortunately not within our power to indicate the point at which the Græco-Roman kitharœdic chant began to influence Christian religious music, nor do the relative proportions of a general history permit us[Pg 135] to study the question here. However, it is sufficient for us to know that the kitharœdic chant was the direct ancestor of the Christian hymnody in the West. ‘Among various kinds of pieces of which the Roman antiphonary is composed,’ says Gevaert, ‘none is known by literary documents to be so old as the strophic hymnody; from the musical point of view it marks the transition from the vocal melopæia of antiquity to the liturgical chant properly so called.’ We find this transition fully accomplished in the hymns of St. Ambrose (d. 397), who is unquestionably the most striking and influential figure in early liturgical music. Gevaert aptly calls him the ‘Terpander of Western Christianity.’ His works are full of reference to music, many of which are naïvely charming. For example, he writes: ‘The angels praise the Lord, the powers of heaven sing psalms unto him, and even before the very beginning of the world the cherubim and seraphim sang with sweet voice Holy, Holy, Holy!’ He mentions the music of the spheres and recalls that it has been said the axle of heaven itself turned with a perpetual sweet sound that might be heard in the uttermost parts of the earth where there are certain secrets of Nature; that the wild beasts and birds might be soothed with the delight of voices blending. Even more practical, he points out that those things we wish well to remember we are accustomed to sing, for that which is sung stays the better in our memories. His hymns produced a great effect upon St. Augustine, who wrote of them in his ‘Confessions’ in terms almost extravagant; and a whole century later Cassiodorus constantly cites St. Ambrose and bears witness to the wide and everlasting nature of his influence on Christian hymnody.

Six hymns which have come down to us are attributed with certainty to this gifted saint. They are the Deus creator omnium, Jam surgit hora tertia, Æterne rerum conditor, Veni redemptor gentium, Illuxit orbi[Pg 136] jam dies, and Bis ternas horas explicans. Probably also he was the author of O lux beata Trinitas, Hic est dies verus Dei, Splendor paternæ gloriæ, and Æterna Christi munera. The melodic forms of these hymns are borrowed directly from the Greeks and Romans. Stripped of their melismas their primitive contours are easily recognizable, and their structure is thoroughly in accord with the modal theory of the classic Greeks. All of these hymns which seem to be the most ancient belong to one of the principal kitharœdic modes—the Dorian, Iastian, or Æolian. The Ambrosian hymns in the Dorian mode have the same melodic texture as the hymn to Helios and the main part of the song to the Muse (see pp. 126-127 above). Hymns after the manner of Ambrose in the Iastian and Æolian modes are frequent in the Catholic hymnody.[49]

The Græco-Roman complexion of the Ambrosian hymns is still further evident in their metrical form. ‘The old ecclesiastical hymns composed in iambic dimeters and ascribed to Bishop Ambrose,’ says Riemann, ‘are still firmly founded upon the antique art, as they respect absolutely the quantity of the syllables and introduce long syllables and short ones only where it is in accordance with the laws of classic poetry.’[50] The eight syllable iambi of the Ambrosian verse became extremely popular in ecclesiastical hymnody, and the Breviary, as it is to-day, contains many hymns in that measure. But this was not the only metrical form of classic Rome that became incorporated in the liturgy of the Church. Vanantius Fortunatus in the sixth century introduced the trochaic tetrameter, which was a favorite popular verse among the ancient Romans, and still survives in the rhythm of the Roman saltarello and the Neapolitan tarantella. The elegant Sapphic strophe, so dear to Latin lyricists, made its appearance subse[Pg 137]quent to the Carlovingian epoch. As long as Latin prosody remained dominant the ecclesiastical hymns were more or less metrical, but as literary Latin passed into desuetude these chants lost their isochronous rhythm. At the beginning of the eighth century the vogue of metrical verse had already passed. With it passed, too, the classic melopæia which had gradually become enriched by accessory inflexions.[51]

There was quite a large school of hymn writers in the Ambrosian style, among whom may be mentioned especially St. Augustine (350-430), St. Paulinus of Nola (ca. 431), the Spanish poet Prudentius (fourth century),[52] Sedulius (fifth century), Ennodius and Venantius Fortunatus (sixth century). The style spread rapidly from Milan into the different western provinces of the Roman empire. A text of the time of Sidonius Apollinaris (second half of the fifth century) tells us that at the feast of Christmas all the churches of Gaul and Italy resounded to the hymn Veni creator gentium, and Rhabanus Maurus, bishop of Mayence in the middle of the ninth century, tells us that the Ambrosian hymns were then in use in all the churches of the West.[53] Further proof of their wide prevalence is furnished by the rules of St. Benedict and Aurelian of Arles (first half of sixth century). For many centuries, however, they were frowned upon by Rome. The Council of Braga (563) expressly excluded from the divine office all chants in verse and all texts not taken from the sacred scriptures. Three centuries later the deacon Amalarius, charged by Louis the Pious with regulating the chants of the office for all the churches of the Frankish empire, leaves hymns completely aside [Pg 138]in conformity with the usage of Rome at that time. In fact, the local rite of Rome had not yet welcomed hymns as late as the beginning of the twelfth century.

Priority is given to the Ambrosian hymns in this discussion, not because they are the most ancient forms of liturgical chant, but because they form the most easily demarcable point of transition from Græco-Roman music to Christian ecclesiastical music. The most ancient forms of the liturgy undoubtedly had their genesis in the Orient. There, of course, the influence of Greek music was also active, though to what extent it affected the Hebrew traditions we cannot even surmise. We find, too, the vogue of the kitharœdic chant even greater among the Roman citizens of the Orient than among the inhabitants of Italy. The former carried their passion for this form of expression to the extent of engraving the songs with their melodies on funeral monuments. It may again be remarked, however, that the first Christians were not of the class likely to be influenced easily by extraneous culture. Acquainted with foreign music they undoubtedly were. The apostles, for instance, speak of the Greek ‘zither’ as a familiar instrument.[54] But this acquaintance was in all probability superficial. Humble and uneducated for the most part, those pioneers of a new cult were of the sort with whom custom and tradition die hard. They were reared in the atmosphere of the synagogue; and it must be remembered that they were not iconoclasts of the Hebrew faith, but rather professed reformers and purifiers of it. The Temple of Solomon, the Ark of the Covenant, the patriarchs and prophets were subjects as sacred to them as they were to older generations of the children of Israel. Their quarrel was not with the [Pg 139]Jews, but with such Jews as refused to recognize their new king. While, therefore, they had every reason for avoiding the music of the Pagan Greeks and Romans, they had no reason whatever for abandoning that which had been handed down to them from David. They certainly took over the texts of the Old Testament psalmody, and it is a natural assumption that with them they adopted the music to which these texts were sung. We may conjecture with some plausibility that the psalmodic solo, responsorial chant, and antiphonal chant—all ancient Hebrew liturgical forms—passed directly from the Temple and Synagogue into the first Christian communities, with such minor changes as may have been necessitated by the new ritual and attendant upon the transference of its conduct from trained cantors to untrained laymen.

The psalmodic solo has no special significance in the development of the Christian liturgy. Of more importance is the responsorial chant, which consists of a solo interrupted periodically by the voice of the people.[55] It is very probable that this form of psalmody was in use among the first Christians, though we have no direct evidence on the point. We learn, however, from church historians that psalms were sung in this fashion at Alexandria in the time of Bishop Athanasius in the early part of the fourth century. The antiphonal chant, which is the most interesting and important of liturgical forms, is of extreme antiquity. David, we know, divided the singers of the Temple into two choirs. Whether this form passed directly and without interruption from the Temple and Synagogue into the religious services of the first Christians we have no means of knowing. It was, however, adopted at a very early date by Christian communities in the Orient. Eusebius, bishop of Cesarea (third century) repro[Pg 140]duces a text of Philo in which occurs the following description: ‘Suddenly all rose on both sides ... and formed two choirs, men and women. Each choir chose its coryphee and soloist ... then they sang to God hymns of different melodies and metres, sometimes together and sometimes answering each other in suitable manner.’ As showing the early expansion of this style of singing throughout the Christian world we may quote from a letter of St. Basil (fourth century) to the inhabitants of Nova Cesarea. ‘The people rise in the night,’ he writes, ‘and go to the house of prayer; when they have prayed they pass to the psalms. Sometimes they divide into two alternate parts, sometimes a soloist sings and all answer; and having thus passed the night in divers psalms they intone all together, as one voice and one heart, the penitential psalm.... If it is for this reason [the organization of the psalmody] you wish to separate from me you must also separate from the Egyptians and Lybians, from the inhabitants of Thebes, Palestine, Arabia, Phœnicia, Syria, and the banks of the Euphrates—in a word, from all those who hold in honor vigils and psalms performed in common.’ It may be remarked that the antiphon originally was merely the alternate singing of two choirs. Later it came to mean the solo refrain intoned by the high priest before the biblical psalm or canticle and repeated by the choir when the psalm or canticle is finished. According to the rules of St. Benedict this solo refrain was intended to give (imponere) the melody to the singers. Musically, says Gevaert, it forms the introduction and finale of the psalmodic chant to which it is bound by a community of mode. It probably took the place of an earlier instrumental introduction and finale, as, for some reason or reasons upon which it is idle to speculate, instruments were excluded from the services of the primitive church.

It was in the monasteries of the East, of Syria and[Pg 141] Egypt, that the forms of the liturgy first began to take shape, and in Antioch and Alexandria there developed schools of singing which were to the Greek churches of the East what the schola cantorum was to the Latin churches of the seventh and eighth centuries. In the fourth century, as we may gather from the canons of the council of Laodicea, they had already trained singers in the churches of Syria, and St. Augustine speaks of the singing of St. Athanasius as if the latter must have had a careful schooling in the art. Silvia, the Gallic pilgrim, mentions the singing of antiphons and psalms in the church at Alexandria (385-88). In the fifth century, as we learn from a letter of Sidonius Apollinaris, Syrian cantors were used in Italian churches.

The prejudice against Pagan music, which must have excluded all Greek or Græco-Roman influences from the Christian services of apostolic times, proved hard to kill. We find it cropping out even in Clement of Alexandria, who admits only ‘modest and decent harmonies’ and excludes harmonies that are ‘chromatic and light, such as are used in the lascivious orgies of courtesans.’ By that time, however, the prejudice apparently had become discriminating. The extraordinary popularity of the kitharœdic songs was bound to have its influence. The heresiarchs were not slow to recognize the hold of profane melodies on the people, and composed dogmatic chants to the melodies of popular songs, much in the manner of the Salvation Army of our day. Arius, for instance, the great heresiarch who was condemned by the council of Nicea (325), reproduced in his Thalia the lascivious musical forms of the Ionian Sotades—to the great scandal of Athanasius. St. Ephraem (320-79), adopting the same idea, turned the Syrians from the songs of Harmonius by writing hymns in the Syrian language on the same melodies, and Gregory of Nazianza (328-89) composed canticles[Pg 142] to take the place of the heterodox psalms of the Apollinarists.

While probably there was never any break in the communication between the churches of the East and those of the West, it is likely that they developed their liturgical forms more or less independently until about the middle of the fourth century. Then the floodgates of Oriental influence seem to have been opened by St. Hilarius and St. Ambrose. The former, who was bishop of Poitiers, is said to have introduced into his church the antiphonal and other forms of psalmody then practised in the churches of Asia, where he had lived in exile for four years (356-60). He is supposed to have introduced the Syrian hymnody into the Western Church. ‘Hymnorum carmine floruit primus,’ Isidor of Seville said of him. He is credited with having been the pioneer of the metrical style of hymn known as Ambrosian, though the three hymns from his pen which have been preserved hardly bear out this contention. They are crude in rhythm and not likely to have served as models for the cultured Ambrose. From all available evidence one is impelled to award to St. Ambrose the honor of having first introduced antiphonal psalmody to the West.[56] Indeed there is little doubt that he was the real founder of the Latin chant in general. Ecclesiastical songs, as we have already seen, had already developed, both in the East and in the West, to [Pg 143]something like a formal art; but Ambrose seems to have been the first to gather together the various elements composing it and lay the foundations of a strictly ordered liturgy. From Milan the antiphonal psalmody spread through all the churches of the West. Even Rome, which until the twelfth century excluded the Ambrosian hymns, adopted antiphonal psalmody in the time of Pope Celestine I (422-32).[57] It is to Rome that one must look for the subsequent development of liturgical song; though until the time of the great schism the formative influences were more Byzantine than Latin. St. Leo the Great (440-61) established in the immediate vicinity of the Basilica of St. Peter a monastic community especially entrusted with the service of the canonical hours, under the patronage of Saints John and Paul, and this was followed in the second half of the seventh century by the community of St. Martin and, under Gregory III (731-41), by that of St. Stephen.

The complete collection of liturgical chants upon which Rome finally set her approval has been called for ages the Antiphonarium Romanum; and this, as Rome became the head of the organization of the church, was adopted by all other branches in Western Europe as the Bible, so to speak, of ecclesiastical song. It was compiled from four collections of which the Ambrosian was one, the others being the Gregorian, the Gallican, and the Mozarabian or Spanish. The principal manuscripts in these collections have been reproduced in facsimile by the Benedictine monks of Solesmes in their invaluable Paléographie musicale (1889 et seq.). To quote from the introduction to this magnificent series: ‘The Gregorian, Ambrosian, Moz[Pg 144]arabian, and the little which remains to us of the Gallican dialects, seem in fact to have one common source, to have been derived from the same musical language: the chant of the Latin church in its cradle. That is at least the opinion to which we have been brought by the examination of the manuscripts in the libraries of our own monasteries and of those which we have been able to consult elsewhere. Concerning the similarities we can say modes and rhythms are the same in the four varieties of chant. The melodic forms present the same general character.... Moreover, in these diverse musical dialects certain melodic types or airs constantly recur which are always perfectly recognizable, in spite of the differences resulting from the peculiarities of style or character proper to each of them. Among the Ambrosian and Gregorian these mutual borrowings, these common heritages are especially frequent.’

The history of these collections is extremely obscure. No manuscripts are extant of earlier date than the twelfth century. As to who actually compiled the Antiphonarium Romanum, a long-standing and generally accepted tradition ascribed it to St. Gregory the Great (d. 604), but the validity of the tradition has been attacked by a number of reputable and authoritative modern historians, conspicuous among whom is Gevaert. Without entering into the merits of the controversy we shall briefly indicate the earliest sources of information on liturgical collections, following Gevaert on the Gregorian tradition, not in parti pris, but because the tradition has been so long and so strongly intrenched that it is more in need of examination than of support.

The first mention of a collection of chants occurs about the year 760 when Pope Paul I sent to King Pepin an Antiphonal and a Responsal.[58] In the time of [Pg 145]Charlemagne there existed a missal and breviary called Gregorian, as we gather from a letter addressed to the emperor by Pope Hadrian. This is the earliest mention we find of the Gregorian tradition, and it is not very enlightening. The first writer to give us much information about the liturgy is Amalarius, who was deacon of Metz under Louis the Pious. Aurelian of Réomé (ca. 859) classes the melodies according to the order of the eight ecclesiastical modes, and Regino, Abbé of Prum, toward the end of the same century gives us in his Tonarius an extended catalogue of anthems and responses, accompanied by a neumatic notation. We find again a hazy reference to Gregory by Walafrid Strabo under Louis the Debonair, and it is only when we come to the life of St. Gregory, written by John the Deacon about 882, that we find an explicit and unequivocal ascription of the existing collection of liturgical chants to that pope.[59]

The scarcity of references to the Gregorian tradition among writers prior to John the Deacon is curious. Isidor of Seville and the Venerable Bede, both of whom occupied themselves much with the liturgy, are silent on the point; so is the Liber Pontificalis. Gregory’s own writings are singularly lacking in references to music. His only utterance on the subject that has been preserved to us is the decree of the Synod of 595 in which he condemns the tendency of the priests to be more preoccupied with the effect of their voices than with the import of what they sing, and orders that they confine themselves thenceforth by reciting the Gospel in the celebration of the mass and leave the singing to sub-deacons and clerics of inferior grade. This would not of itself imply any great devotion on Gregory’s part to liturgical music, though the necessity of training clerics of inferior grade to sing the services might [Pg 146]have suggested the founding of the Schola Cantorum which is traditionally ascribed to him. It is pointed out by Gevaert that the Antiphonarius Gregorianus does not fit the ecclesiastical calendar of the time of St. Gregory, but belongs to the liturgical usage of Rome about the year 750.[60] Duchesne credits the editing of the Gregorian missal to Pope Hadrian during the first years of Charlemagne’s reign. The name Gregorian may have reference to Gregory II (715-31) or, more probably, to Gregory III. It is a fact that until the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century the churches did not open on Friday, and it was not allowed to celebrate mass on that day, because it coincided with the Pagan feast of Jupiter (Jovis Dies). Even as late as the end of the sixth century the celebration of this festival was so common that it was solemnly condemned by the Council of Narbonne (589). By the eighth century, however, the last remains of Paganism had so completely disappeared that the prohibition of Friday services was removed by Pope Gregory II, who ordained the celebration of the sacred rites on the Fridays of Lent. Now the Gregorian Antiphonary contains a mass for each Friday in Lent, while there is none in the Gelasian Missal of the seventh century. If the mass is not a later interpolation, then the Gregorian Antiphonary certainly could not have been compiled before the time of Gregory II.

Many historical considerations lead Gevaert to credit the completion and final formulation of liturgical chant to the Hellenic popes of the seventh and eighth centuries. Following the end of the Gothic kingdom and with the dominance of the Byzantine emperors begins the second period of church music in the West, a period which shows every sign of the Oriental influence so powerful at Rome under the rule of the exarchs of Ravenna. This influence is apparent not [Pg 147]only in the more ornate form of the music, but in the frequent use of the Greek language and in the importation of feasts foreign to the Roman rite. In the seventh century four of the most ancient feasts of the Virgin—the Purification, Annunciation, Assumption, and Nativity—were brought from the Orient, and from the same epoch dates the adoption at Rome of the feast called the Exaltation of the Cross, which originated in the Oriental church. ‘By the seventh century,’ says Gevaert, ‘we are in the presence of an advanced art, conscious of its principles, with rules and formulas for each class of composition.’ Skilled interpreters had been developed by the Schola Cantorum, and these, together with the Syrian monks who fled to Italy after the Mussulman conquest, were the real authors of the responses of the nocturnal office and the true chants of the mass. The popes of the seventh century, most of whom were themselves versed in the cantilena romana, were particularly solicitous about the beauty and order of the liturgy. To the eleven popes of Hellenic origin who held the chair of St. Peter between 678 and 752 is probably due the final development and perfection of liturgical forms. Chief among them was Agathon (678-681), who seems to have regulated or fixed definitely the texts of what in the eighth century was called the Responsal, or actual Antiphonary, containing the complete repertory of the office of the hours for the entire year. The Venerable Bede says that Agathon sent the leader of the Basilica singers to England to organize that part of the ecclesiastical service according to the usage of Rome. Leo II, we learn from the papal chronicles, was very learned in the sacred chant, as was also Sergius II. The latter, our authority thinks, inspired the last work on the Roman Gradual, and was the first to initiate the Roman singers in the doctrine of the four double ecclesiastical modes, which later writers, following the lead of Boethius, identified with[Pg 148] the eight tonal steps of Aristoxenus, falsely attributed to Ptolemy. The editing of that part of the Liber Antiphonarius which has become our Gradual was probably due to the Syrian pope, Gregory III, who was very active in the promotion of liturgical music.

The Antiphonarium Romanum, or complete collection of liturgical chants of the church—consisting of several hundred pieces—is divided into two distinct parts—the Antiphonarium proper and the Gradual. The former contains the offices of the canonical hours (cursus ecclesiasticus), consisting of the responses, anthems, and hymns reiterated day and night by religious communities. The custom of reciting the office began among the monastic orders of the Orient about the fourth century. Apparently it had its genesis in Antioch, about 350, and soon spread to the other Greek churches. The pilgrim in Silvia speaks of hearing the Vigils and other hours in the church of Jerusalem (386), and Bishop Cassian of Autun found the hour of Prime introduced at Bethlehem in 390. From Alexandria and Constantinople the office passed to Milan and Rome. In the sixth century it was organized somewhat as it is to-day. Cassiodorus (ca. 540) names seven synaxes, or daily reunions, and a similar number is mentioned in the rules of St. Benedict about the same time.

The Gradual consists of the services of the mass, and contains the anthems, responses, and hymns proper to these services. There are a few fixed pieces, such as the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, and Credo, constituting what is known as the Ordinary of the mass, and besides these there are a large number which vary according to the day and the name of the saint whose feast is celebrated. The chants belonging to the Introit and Communion are antiphonal, while those of the Gradual, Alleluja, Tractus, and Offertory are responsorial. The Gloria in excelsis is a sort of hymn. Be[Pg 149]sides the hymns of the Ambrosian cycle, already spoken of, the Latin church adopted many Oriental hymns of the seventh and eighth centuries. Fourteen hymns of great age are still included in the Gradual, among them the Pange lingua, attributed to Fortunatus, the Vexilla regis, and the Veni creator spiritus, attributed to Charlemagne.

The hymns, anthems, and responses in the general repertory of church songs appear under two distinct forms—simple melodies and ornate melodies. The former, which are more or less syllabic, are used for all the anthems in the cursus ecclesiasticus and the responses belonging to that part of it which forms the office of the day. The ornate style is used for the anthems and responses of the mass and for the office of the night. The responses of the Gradual, Tractus, and Alleluja are musically the most interesting of the liturgical chants. They are not so much an integral part of the sacrifice of the mass as they are a sort of vocal intermezzo for solo and chorus, allowing the display of considerable art, both in technique and expression.

A peculiar form of composition which first appears in the liturgy after the ninth century is the sequence or prosa. Apparently this originated in the East and grew out of the custom of writing words as mnemonics under the syllables of the word Alleluja.[61] Gradually it became of such importance that it was detached from the Alleluja and made an independent form. The first examples of the sequence which appear in the Latin church are furnished by Notker Balbulus (830-912), [Pg 150]who was responsible for developing it to the proportions of an independent form. Indeed he has been called its inventor. An ancient Irish authority, quoted in the Book of Lismore, says, ‘Notker, Abbot of St. Gall’s, invented sequences, and Alleluja after them in the form in which they are.’[62] Among the most famous followers of Notker in the composition of sequences may be mentioned Tutilo or Tuathal (d. 915), an Irish monk of St. Gall’s, Wipo, and Adam de Saint-Victor. The council of Trent suppressed all sequences except five, which are still used by the church. These are the Victimæ pascali laudes of Wipo; the Lauda Sion Salvatorem of St. Thomas Aquinas; the Dies Iræ of Thomas de Celano; the Stabat Mater of Jacques de Benedictis, and the Veni Sancte Spiritus.

Another peculiar form, practically the antithesis of the sequence in its origin, is the trope, which consists of the dilation of the musical or the literary text by the interjection of complementary phrases. This—at least at first—was probably done to avoid monotony. For instance, instead of singing Kyrie eleison nine times in succession, it was sung as follows:

All parts of the mass, from the Introit to the Communion, have been decorated with tropes. There has been compiled a list of seventy-eight tropes for the Kyrie alone. Like the sequence the trope developed from an accessory function to an independent form which at one time was practised with much assiduity.

[Pg 151]

Whether the musical theory of the ecclesiastical chants prior to the fifth century—apart from the Ambrosian hymns—was influenced more by Roman or Oriental traditions is a moot point. The question, however, is not vital, as the real founder of the church system of modes, the Pythagorean philosopher Boethius (fifth century), was professedly an imitator of the Greek theorists. Boethius speaks of the ancients with something like veneration, and takes pride in writing like a Greek, after the fashion of Plato, Aristotle, Aristoxenus, Nichomachus, Philolaus, and Ptolemy. He is a mathematician rather than a musician. He congratulates Ptolemy on having ignored the testimony of the ear and condemns the practice of music as interfering with the just and logical consideration of theory. Cassiodorus and Isidore of Seville speak in somewhat the same fashion. Boethius is the authority for a long line of church musicians, including Hucbald, Guido, Englebert, Jean de Muris, Adam de Fulda, and Alcuin. The mathematical view of music fathered by him gained such prevalence that in the curriculum of mediæval universities music was placed among the mathematical sciences.

We cannot do more here than briefly indicate the tone system used in the church after the liturgy had been definitely formulated, without going into the question of its earlier evolution. The system of modes was professedly founded on the tetrachordal species of the Greeks (see Chap. IV, p. 112), but with an obvious misunderstanding of the Greek system. At first only four forms were recognized, namely, the so-called authentic (from [Greek: ], to govern) modes of St. Ambrose. According to tradition St. Gregory added to these four ‘plagal’ (from [Greek: plagios], oblique). At any rate[Pg 152] before the eleventh century there were eight accepted church modes, four ‘authentic’ modes, and four ‘plagal’ or derived modes. Later theorists taught the existence of fourteen different scales. Two of these were rejected as ‘impure’; the other twelve remained in use for centuries, and were known by the names of their Greek prototypes, but these names, too, were misapplied, as will be seen from the following table, where the octave D-d corresponding to the Phrygian species of the Greeks is named Dorian, and vice versa the octave F-f (Greek mixolydian) has become the Lydian, and so forth. The difference between authentic and plagal modes was chiefly one of range and emphasis. For example, in every mode two tones were considered, and were, as a matter of fact, of predominant importance; the final or note on which the piece ended, somewhat analogous to our tonic or key-note, and the dominant, the note most frequently touched in the course of the melody, the centre of gravity, so to speak, about which the melody moved. In the authentic modes the melody never sank below the final except in cadence, where it might take the note immediately below the final and rise by one step to the close; and the dominant was, like our dominant, in the middle of the scale. In the plagal modes, on the other hand, the melody wandered freely as low as a fourth below the final, which thus was near the middle of the melodic range; and the dominant was a third below the dominant of the corresponding authentic mode. Whenever the dominant fell on B, C was substituted (indicated by N.B. in the table) and in the rejected Locrian G was substituted for F.

Each authentic mode had its related plagal. The final of the ecclesiastical Dorian mode was D.[63] The [Pg 153]range of a melody written in this mode was limited to notes which may be represented on the pianoforte by the white keys between D and d, including the two D’s and, for the cadence, the C below the lower. The melody would centre about A and come to end on D. The related plagal mode, called the Hypodorian, had the same final, D, but the range of a melody in this mode was from the A below to the A above the final, centering about the dominant, F. The so-called relaxed modes which are frequently met with varied likewise from the authentic modes in range which in such modes might be extended to a third below the final. The dom[Pg 154]inant remained the same and the slight extension of range hardly altered the ethos or character of the authentic mode from which it thus technically varied.

The modes were in as far as possible strictly adhered to, but the occurrence of certain intervals difficult to sing and not wholly pleasant to the ear (notably the augmented fourth, or tritone,[64] from F to B), led to modifications or, as we should say, chromatic alterations. B-flat, for instance, was substituted for B whenever the interval from F to B occurred; and later, in the development of part singing, many other alterations were found necessary. Marks indicating such alterations were seldom written in the score, and singers were specially trained to alter intervals at sight, according to the elaborate rules of the practice called musica ficta, or ‘false music.’

We have already adverted to the gradual decline in the use of the Greek language at Rome and the incidental passing from the minds and the memories of men of the alphabetical system of notation which had been inherited from the Greeks. It is not quite clear, however, how the Oriental church, which used Greek until a comparatively late period and even introduced that language into the liturgy of the Latin church, could have absolutely ignored the Greek system of notation. Yet such appears to be the case. As far as we can discover, the early chants of the church, both in the East and in the West, were handed down viva voce, and not until about the eighth century do we find traces of any attempt to devise a system of graphic aids to musical memory. This system, as we first find it, was of a most elementary sort and consisted merely of a few strokes and dashes placed above the text of the song and serving apparently no other purpose than to indicate in a general way the rising and falling inflections of the [Pg 155]melody. These signs are known as neumes, and from them gradually developed our modern system of notation. The origin of the neumes is quite obscure. It would appear that at first they consisted merely of the acute and grave accents borrowed from the Byzantine grammarians and designed to indicate the occurrence of a rising and falling inflection respectively. To them were gradually added dashes, strokes, curves, and hooks in various combinations which in time became a fairly complete and precise system of musical writing. Their evolution into the square and diamond-shaped Gothic notation of the middle ages can be followed with sufficient clearness.

These signs, though representing definite turns and embellishments in the melody, gave no exact indication of pitch. The first sign of anything approaching a staff occurs in the tenth century, when one or two lines were drawn across the page to mark the place of certain tones or pitches. The first line was used for the tone F and the second for the tone C. Other lines were later added for the other tones, and each line was marked with the letter of the tone to which it was assigned. Though all the letters of the scale were used in this fashion, F, C, and G were the ones most commonly employed and from the Gothic characters for these were developed our modern clef signs, as may be seen from the following illustration:

[Pg 156]

A system of letter notation seems to have grown up contemporaneously with the neumatic system. Its invention has been ascribed to Gregory the Great and to Boethius, without much authority in either case. The first instances of its practical use are found in the writings of Notker Balbulus and Hucbald. Originally fifteen letters were used to designate the tones of two octaves; this number was afterward reduced to seven, repeated in successive octaves. The letters ran from A to G, but none of them had a definite tone meaning, as they have with us. A was merely the tone taken as a starting point and the series was always counted upward from it. In the system as it was finally completed the lowest G was added and called gamma to distinguish it from the G in the regular series. It is of interest to note here that the introduction of B flat necessitated the use of two differently shaped B’s. The B durum was angular and the B molle was rounded . From the former was derived our natural sign (♮) and from the latter our flat sign (♭). Our sharp is merely a variation of the natural. The system of letter notation was originally devised chiefly for instruments, particularly the organ, though its use gradually became universal. It belongs, however, more properly to a period later than the one we have been discussing.

One other item may justly find a place in this chapter, namely, the early history of the organ. The instrument has virtually since the beginning of our era been associated with the church, and was already a factor in the service during the plain-song period. We shall presently see how one of the earliest forms of polyphony—of music that was not merely plain chant—received its name from the instrument. The organ is of ancient origin; according to Riemann, its ancestors are the bagpipe and the Pan’s pipe. Already in the second century B. C. there existed a true organ, in which air pressure was generated by pumps (bellows) and compressed by means of water pressure and the manipulation of a keyboard. The invention of this so-called water-organ (organum hydraulicum, hydraulic organ) was ascribed to Ktesibios (170 B. C.) by his pupil Heron of Alexandria, whose writings have come down to us. Water was, it seems, not a necessary accessory to this instrument and organs were soon after constructed without the hydraulic principle, in Greece and Italy.

The instrument was known in the occident long before King Pepin received one as a present from Emperor Constantine Copronymos in 757 A. D. A Greek description of an organ belonging to Julian the Apostate (fourth century) and others mentioned by Cassiodorus and St. Augustine furnish valuable details. These instruments usually consisted of from eight to fifteen pipes (one to two octaves of the diatonic scale) which were constructed in the same manner as the flue pipes of modern organs. Throughout the ninth century organs were assiduously manufactured by monks, especially in France and Germany, and their compass was made to coincide with the middle range of the human voice (c to c´) so as to be used in connection with vocal instruction. The names of the tones were inscribed on the ‘keys,’ which were small wooden plates in vertical position. The player was obliged to pull this shutter away to allow the wind to enter the pipes, which would sound continuously till shut. By 980 there existed organs of considerable size, such as the famous one at Winchester, consisting of 400 pipes and two keyboards, requiring two players. A special form of notation, known as tablature, grew up for organ playing which coincides in general with our modern staff notation.

The above will, we believe, suffice to give a clear account of the musical activities of the period which we have called the Age of Plain-song. Among music[Pg 158]-loving people in general there is a lack of interest in plain-song, due partly to religious reasons, but chiefly born of a tendency to regard it as a dry and spiritless formula, an insipid sort of recitative designed to lend solemnity to devotional exercises. Complete lack of sympathy and imagination could alone excuse such an impression in the minds of those who have ever had the opportunity of hearing it sung in a sincere and reverent spirit. Unlike the pedantic, mathematical art that music came to be in the middle ages, plain-song was preëminently a form of emotional expression. Further, it was the expression of emotions most poignant and profound. It came from the hearts of men who were conscious actors in a gigantic drama. The inexpressible tortures of eternal fire, the ecstatic wonders of a golden heaven, the ineffable mystery of the Godhead, the awful panoply of the Judgment, the wrath and agony of a wronged and insulted Deity who yet offered Himself as a bloody holocaust for the sins of men—all the esoteric spiritual symbols of Christianity had for these early believers a real and literal significance. To them was vouchsafed the simple faith, the naïve wonder of childhood. Their souls were possessed with a great awe, with an intense longing, with profound humility and passionate remorse, with fiery zeal and ardent love, with the joyous ecstasy of anticipated salvation and the nameless horror of ever-threatening damnation. All this wealth of deep and keen emotion is conveyed to us in the songs of the early church with the direct simplicity of Greek drama. No one, listening to the mournful strains of the Dies Iræ, could escape the vague awe, the blood-congealing sense of that tremendous drama set for ‘the day of wrath, that awful day when heaven and earth shall pass away’; nor could any one hear the serene melody of the Veni sancte spiritus without feeling some suggestion of the ineffable peace that follows the descent of the[Pg 159] Spirit Paraclete. Understanding and sympathy—difficult perhaps for a scientific and rationalistic age—are essential to the appreciation of these poets of the ecstatic vision; but for any one who can bring imagination and sensibility to the study of plain-song the results of the task will prove well worth the labor.

W. D. D.

In the preceding chapter we have tried to trace the perfecting of a form of melody called plain-song. We have seen how the mass of the Catholic Church was set to solo music. Apart from the highly expressive quality which the music inevitably acquired because of the reality and life of the new emotional religion, the plain-song of the mass did not differ from the artistic music of the Greeks and the Romans, that is to say, it brought forward no new means of effect or of expression. We may say it was the adaptation of old and tried methods to new ends. We can hardly suppose that the technique of composition had been advanced by the early Christian composers beyond the point to which the Greeks had brought it, nor that the art of music had been expanded during the first centuries of the Christian era to greater proportions than the Greeks had developed it. The theorists of the first nine centuries made blunders in trying to systematize Christian song according to the remnants of Greek theory which had been preserved; yet the Greek scales were still in use, though misnamed by the theorists, and composers for the church still conformed to them. But about the beginning of the ninth century a new element appeared in music for the church which the Greeks had[Pg 161] left practically untouched and which was probably the contribution of the barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe, either the Germans or the Celts, namely, part-singing. To the single plain-song melodies of the ritual composers added another accompanying melody or part. The resultant progression of concords and discords was incipient harmony, the practice of so weaving two and later three and four melodies together was the beginning of the science or art of polyphony.

Polyphony was practically foreign to the music of the Greeks. They had observed, it is true, that a chorus of men and boys produced a different quality of sound from that of a chorus made up of all men or all boys, and they had analyzed the difference and found the cause of it to be that boys’ voices were an octave higher than men’s; and that boys and men singing together did not sing the same notes. This effect, which they also imitated with voices and certain instruments they called Antiphony, and they considered it more pleasing than the effect of voices or instruments in the same pitch which they called Homophony. The practice of making music in octaves was called magadizing, from the name of a large harp-like instrument, the magadis, upon which it was possible. But magadizing cannot be considered the forerunner of polyphony, for, though melodies an octave apart may be considered not strictly the same, still they pursue the same course and are in no way independent of each other; and the effect of a melody sung in octaves differs from the effect of one sung in unison only in quality, not at all in kind.

The allegiance of theorists to Greek culture all through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance has tended to conceal the actual origin of polyphony, but[Pg 162] as early as 1767 J. J. Rousseau wrote in his Dictionnaire de musique, ‘It is hard not to suspect that all our harmony is an invention of the Goths or the Barbarians.’ And later: ‘It was reserved to the people of the North to make this great discovery and to bequeath it as the foundation of all the rules of the art of music.’

The kernel from which the complicated science of polyphony sprang is simple to understand. One voice sang a melody, another voice or an instrument, starting with it, wove a counter-melody about it, elaborated by the flourishes and melismas which are still dear to the people of the Orient. Some such sort of primitive improvisation seems to have been practised by the people of northern Europe, and to have been taken over by the church singers. The later art of déchant sur le livre or improvised descant was essentially no different and seems to have been of very ancient origin. The early theorists naturally took it upon themselves to regulate and systematize the popular practice, and thereupon polyphony first comes to our notice through their works in a very stiff and ugly form of music called organum, which in its strictest form is hardly more to be considered polyphony than the magadizing of the Greeks.

The works of many of the ninth century theorists such as Aurelian of Réomé, and Remy of Auxerre, suggest that some form of part-singing was practised in their day, though they leave us in confusion owing to the ambiguity of their language. The famous scholar Scotus Erigena (880) mentions organum, but in a passage that is difficult and obscure. Regino, abbot of Prum in 892, is the first to define consonance and dissonance in such a way as to leave no doubt that he considers them from the point of view of polyphony, that is to say, as sounds that are the result of two different notes sung simultaneously. In the works of Hucbald of St. Amand in Flanders, quite at the end of[Pg 163] the century, if not well into the tenth (Hucbald died in 930 or 932, over ninety years of age), there is at last a definite and clear description of organum. The word organum is an adaptation of the name of the instrument on which the art could be imitated, or, perhaps, from which it partly originated, the organ; just as the Greeks coined a word from magadis.

Of Hucbald’s life little is known save that he was born about 840, that he was a monk, a poet, and a musician, a disciple of St. Remy of Auxerre and a friend of St. Odo of Cluny. Up to within recent years several important works on music were attributed to him, of which only one seems now to be actually his—the tract, De Harmonica Institutione, of which several copies are in existence. This and the Musica Enchiriadis of his friend St. Odo are responsible for the widespread belief that polyphony actually sprang from a hideous progression of empty fourths and fifths. Both theorists, in their efforts to confine the current form of extemporized descant in the strict bounds of theory, reduced it thus: to a given melody taken from the plain-song of the church the descanter or organizer added another at the interval of a fifth or fourth below, which followed the first melody or cantus firmus note by note in strictly parallel movement. The fourth seems to have been regarded as the pleasanter of the intervals, though, as we shall see, it led composers into difficulties, to overcome which Hucbald himself proposed a relaxation of the stiff parallel movement between the parts. In the strict organum or diaphony the movement was thus:

Either or both of the parts might be doubled at the octave, in which case the diaphony was called composite.

[Pg 164]

Just why the intervals of the fifth and fourth should have been chosen for this parallel music, which is excruciating to our modern ears, is not positively known. The simple obvious answer to the riddle is that Hucbald and his contemporaries based their theories on the theories of the Greeks, who regarded the fifth and fourth as consonances nearest the perfect consonance of the octave and unison. But in that case we have to ask ourselves why Hucbald and his followers regarded the diaphony of the fourth as pleasanter than that of the fifth which they none the less acknowledged was more nearly perfect. Dr. Hugo Riemann has suggested a solution to this difficulty which is in substance that organum was an attempt to assimilate elements of an ancient art of singing practised by the Welsh and other Celtic singers. The Welsh scale is a pentatonic scale, that is, a scale of five steps in which half steps are skipped. In terms of the keyboard, it can be represented by a scale starting upon E-flat and proceeding to the E-flat above or below only by way of the black keys between or by a similar progression between any other two black keys an octave apart. In such a scale parallel fourths are impossible, as indeed they are in the Greek scales of eight notes upon which the church music was based; but whereas the progression of the fourths in the Greek scales is broken by the imperfect and very unpleasant interval of the tritone, in the pentatonic scale it is interrupted by the pleasing major third. Such a progression of fourths and thirds seems to spring almost naturally from the pentatonic scales and was very likely much practised by the ancient Welsh singers.[65] A comparison of two examples will make the difference obvious.

[Pg 165]

The presence in the octatonic scale of the disagreeable tritone, marked with a star in the example, forced even Hucbald and Odo to make some provision for avoiding it. This consisted in limiting the movement of the ‘organizing’ voice. It was not allowed to descend below a certain point in the scale. In those cases, therefore, in which the cantus firmus began in such a way that the organizing voice could not accompany it at the start without sinking below its prescribed limit the organizing voice must start with the same note as the cantus firmus and hold that note until the cantus firmus had risen so that it was possible for the organizing voice to follow it at the interval of the fourth. In the same way the parts were forced to close at the unison if the movement of the cantus firmus did not permit the organizing voice to follow it at the interval of a fourth without going below its limit. The following example will make this clear:

In this case it will be noted that the movement of the parts is no longer continuously parallel, but that there are passages in which it is oblique. Indeed it is hardly conceivable that strict parallel movement was ever adhered to in anything but theory. It is interesting to observe how even in theory it had to give way, and how by the presence of the tritone in the scale the theorists were practically forced into a genuine polyphonic style. The strict style, as we have already remarked, was hardly more polyphonic than the magadizing of the Greeks; for, though the voice parts are actually different, still each is closely bound to the other and has no independent movement of its own; but in the freer[Pg 166] style there is a difference if not an independence of movement.

In connection with this example it is also well to note that through the oblique movement the parts are made to sound other intervals than the fourth or fifth or unison, which with the octave were regarded for centuries as the only consonances. At the first star they are singing the harsh interval of a second; immediately after they sing a major third. By the earliest theorists these dissonances were disregarded or accepted as necessary evils, the unavoidable results of the restrictions under which the organizing voice was laid. But if the free diaphony was practised at all it was to lead musicians inevitably to a recognition of these intervals, and of the effect of contrasting one kind with another. In the works of Hucbald and Odo and their contemporaries, however, the ideal is theoretically the parallel progression of the only consonances they would admit, the fourth, fifth, and octave. Oblique movement was first of all a way to escape the tritone, and the unnamed dissonances were haphazard. Thus we find only the mere germ of the science of polyphony. The dry stiffness of the music and the inadequacy of the cumbersome rules must lead one to believe that learned men, true to their time, were doing what they could to define a popular free practice within the limits of theory. The sudden untraceable advent of a new free style some hundred years or more later goes to prove that the free descant of a genuinely musical people was never actually suppressed or discontinued by the influence of the theorists.

However, before considering the new diaphony, we have still to trace the further progress of the organum of Hucbald and Odo. The next theorist of importance[Pg 167] was Guido of Arezzo. To Guido have been attributed at various times most of the important inventions and reforms of early polyphonic music, among them descant, organum and diaphony, the hexachordal system, the staff for notation, and even the spinet; but the wealth of tradition which clothed him so gloriously has, as in the case of many others, been gradually stripped from him, till we find him disclosed as a brilliantly learned monk and a famous teacher, author of but few of the works which possibly his teaching inspired. He has recently been identified with a French monk of the Benedictine monastery of St. Maur des Fosses.[66] He was born at or near Arezzo about 990, and in due time became a Benedictine monk. He must have had remarkable talent for music, for about 1022 Pope Benedict VIII, hearing that he had invented a new method for teaching singing, invited him to Rome to question him about it. He visited Rome again a few years later on the express invitation of Pope John XIX, and this time brought with him a copy of the Antiphonarium, written according to his own method of notation. The story goes that the pope was so impressed by the new method that he refused to allow Guido to leave the audience chamber until he had himself learned to sing from it. After this he tried to persuade Guido to remain in Rome, but Guido, on the plea of ill-health, left Rome, promising to return the following year. However, he accepted an invitation from the abbot of a monastery near Ferrara to go there and teach singing to the monks and choir-boys; and he stayed there several years, during which he wrote one of the most important of his works, the Micrologus, dedicated to the bishop of Arezzo. Later he became abbot of the Monastery of Santa Croce near Arezzo, and he died there about the year 1050. During the time of his second visit to Rome he wrote the famous letter [Pg 168]to Michael, a monk at Pomposa, which has led historians to believe that he was actually the inventor of a new division of the scales into groups of six notes, called hexachorda, and a new system of teaching based on this division.

The case of Guido is typical of the period in which he lived. Very evidently an unusually gifted teacher, as Hucbald was a hundred years before him, his influence was strong over the communities with which he came into contact, and spread abroad after his death, so that many innovations which were probably the results of slow growth were attributed to his inventiveness. The Micrologus contains many rules for the construction of organum below a cantus firmus, which are not very much advanced beyond those of Hucbald and Odo. The old strict diaphony is still held by him in respect, though the free is much preferred. To those intervals which result from the ‘free’ treatment of the organizing voice, however, he gives names, and he is conscious of their effect; so that, where Hucbald and Odo confined themselves to giving rules for the movement of the organizing voice in such a way as to avoid the harsh tritone even at the cost of other dissonances, Guido gives rules to direct singers in the use of these dissonances for themselves, which, as we have seen, in the earlier treatises were considered accidental. This marks a real advance. But there is in Guido’s works the same attempt merely to make rules, to harness music to logical theory, that we found in Hucbald’s and Odo’s; and it is again hard to believe that his method of organizing was in common practice, or that it represents the style of church singing of his day. From the accounts of the early Christians, from the elaborate ornamentation of the plain-song in mediæval manuscripts in which it is first found written down, and from later accounts of the ‘descanters’ we are influenced to believe that music was sung in the church[Pg 169] with a warmth of feeling, sometimes exalted, sometimes hysterical even to the point of stamping with the feet and gesticulating, from which the standardized bald ornamentation of Guido is far removed. Furthermore, the next important treatises after Guido’s, one by Johannes Cotto, and an anonymous one called Ad Organum Faciendum, deal with the subject of organum in a wholly new way and show an advance which can hardly be explained unless we admit that a freer kind of organum was much in use in Guido’s day than that which he describes and for which he makes his rules.

But before proceeding with the development of the early polyphony after the time of Guido, we have to consider two inventions in music which have been for centuries placed to his credit. In the first place he is supposed to have divided the scale, which, it will be remembered, had always been considered as consisting of groups of four notes called tetrachords placed one above the other, into overlapping groups of six notes called hexachords. The first began on G, the second on C, the third on F, and the others were reduplications of these at the octave. The superiority of this system over the system of tetrachords, inherited from the Greeks, was that in each hexachord the halftone occupies the same position, that is, between the third and fourth steps.[67] It is not certain whether Guido was the first so to divide the scale, but he evidently did much to perfect the new system.

There has long been a tradition that he was the first to give those names to the notes of the hexachord which [Pg 170]are in use even at the present day. Having noticed that the successive lines of a hymn to St. John the Baptist began on successive notes of the scale, the first on G, the second on A, the third on B, etc., up to the sixth note, namely, E, he is supposed to have associated the first syllable of each line with the note to which it was sung. The hymn reads as follows:

Hence G was called ut; A, re; B, mi; C, fa; D, sol; and E, la. These are the notes of the first hexachord, and these names are given to the notes of every hexachord. The half-step therefore was always mi-fa. Since the hexachords overlapped, several tones acquired two or even three names. For instance, the second hexachord began on C, which was also the fourth note of the first hexachord, and in the complete system this C was C-fa-ut. The fourth hexachord began on G an octave above the first. This G was not only the lowest note of the fourth hexachord but the second of the third and the fourth of the second. Therefore, its complete name was G-sol-re-ut. The lowest G, which Guido is said to have added to perfect the system, was called gamma. It was always gamma-ut, from which our word gamut. The process of giving each note its proper series of names was called solmisation.

The system seems to us clumsy and inadequate. We cannot but ask ourselves why Guido did not choose the natural limit of the octave for his groups instead of the sixth. However, it was a great improvement over the yet clumsier system of the tetrachords, and[Pg 171] was of great service to musicians down to comparatively recent times. One may find no end of examples of its use in the works of the great polyphonic writers. As a help to students in learning it, the system of the Guidonian Hand was invented, whereby the various tones and syllables of the hexachords were assigned to the joints of the hand and could be counted off on the hand much as children are taught in kindergarten to count on their fingers. That Guido himself invented this elementary system is doubtful, though his name has become associated with it.

Guido must also be credited with valuable improvements in the art of notation. In his day two systems were in use. One employed the letters of the alphabet, capitals for the lowest octave, small letters for the next and double letters for the highest. This was exact, though difficult and clumsy. The other employed neumes (see Chap. V) superimposed over the words (of the text to be sung) at distances varying according to the pitch of the sound. This, though essentially[Pg 172] graphic, was inaccurate. Composers were already accustomed to draw two lines over the text, each of which stood for a definite pitch, one for F, colored red, and one for C, a fifth above, colored yellow, but the pitch of notes between or below or above these lines was, of course, still only indefinitely indicated by the distance of the neumes from them. Guido therefore added another line between these two, representing A, and one above representing E, both colored black. Thus the four-line staff was perfected. It has remained the orthodox staff for plain-song down to the present day. This improvement of notation, in addition to the hexachordal system and the invention of solmisation, have all had a lasting influence upon music, and through his close connection with them Guido of Arezzo stands out as one of the most brilliant figures in the early history of music.

Hardly a trace has survived of the development of music during the fifty years after the death of Guido, about 1050. The next works which cast light upon music were written about 1100. One is the Musica of Johannes Cotto, the other the anonymous Ad organum faciendum mentioned above. In both works a wholly new style of organum makes its appearance. In the first place, the organizing voice now sings normally above the cantus firmus, though the whole style is so relatively free that the parts frequently cross each other, sometimes coming to end with the organizing voice below. In the second place, contrary movement in the voice parts is preferred to parallel or oblique movement; that is, if the melody ascends, the accompanying voice, if possible, descends, and vice versa. Thus the two melodies have each an individual free movement and the science of polyphony is really under[Pg 173] way. Moreover, they proceed now through a series of consonances. There are no haphazard dissonances as in the earlier free organum of both Hucbald and Guido. The organizing voice is no longer directed only in such a way as is easiest to avoid the hated tritone, but is planned to sing always in consonance with the cantus firmus. The following example illustrates the movement of the parts in this new system:

Cotto is rather indifferent and, of course, dry about the whole subject of organum. It occupied but a chapter in his rather long treatise. But the ‘Anonymus’ is full of enthusiasm and loud in his praises of this method of part-singing and bold in his declaration of its superiority over the unaccompanied plain-song. Such enthusiasm smacks a little of the layman, and is but another indication of the real origin of organum in the improvised descant of the people, quite out of the despotism of theory. The Anonymus gives a great many rules for the conduct of the organizing or improvising voice. He has divided the system into two modes, determined by the interval at which the voices start out. For instance, rules of the first mode state how the organizing voice must proceed when it starts in unison with the cantus firmus, or at the octave. If it starts at the fourth or fifth it is controlled by the rules of the second mode. There are three other modes which are determined by the various progressions of the parts in the middle of the piece. The division into modes and the rules are of little importance, for it is obvious that only the first few notes of a piece are definitely influenced by the position at which the parts start and that after this influence ceases to make itself felt the modes dissolve into each[Pg 174] other. Thus, though the enthusiasm of the Anonymus points to the popularity of the current practice of organizing, whatever it may have been, his rules are but another example of the inability of theory to cope with it. Still this theoretical composition continued to claim the respect of teachers and composers late into the second half of the twelfth century.

A treatise by Guy, Abbot of Chalis, about this time, is concerned with essentially the same problems and presents no really new point of view. He is practically the last of the theorizing organizers. Organum gave way to a new kind of music. In the course of over two hundred years it had run perfectly within the narrow limits to which it had been inevitably confined, and the science of it was briefly this: to devise over any given melody a counter-melody which accompanied it note by note, moving, as far as possible, in contrary motion, sinking to meet the melody when it rose, rising away from it when it fell, and, with few exceptions, in strictest concord of octaves, fifth, fourths, and unison. Rules had been formulated to cover practically all combinations which could occur in the narrow scheme. The restricted, cramped art then crumbled into dust and disappeared. Again and again this process is repeated in the history of music. The essence of music, and, indeed, of any art, cannot be caught by rules and theories. The stricter the rules the more surely will music rebel and seek expression in new and natural forms. We cannot believe that music in the Middle Ages was not a means of expression, that it was not warm with life; and therefore we cannot believe that this dry organum of Hucbald and Odo, of Guido of Arezzo, of Guy of Chalis, which was still-born of scholastic theory, is representative of the actual practice of music, either in the church or among the people. On the other hand, these excellent old monks were pioneers in the science of polyphonic writing. Inadequate[Pg 175] and confusing as their rules and theories may be, they are none the less the first rules and theories in the field, the first attempts to give to polyphony the dignity and regularity of Art.

Meanwhile, long before Guy of Chalis had written what may be taken as the final word on organum, the new art which was destined to supplant it was developing both in England and in France. Two little pieces, one Ut tuo propitiatus, the other Mira lege, miro modo, have survived from the first part of the twelfth century. Both are written in a freely moving style in which the use of concords and discords appears quite unrestricted. Moreover, the second of them is distinctly metrical, and in lively rhythm. It is noted with neumes on a staff and the rhythm is evident only through the words, for the neumes gave no indication of the length or shortness of the notes which they represented, but only their pitch. Now in both these little pieces there are places where the organizing voice sings more than one note to a note of the cantus firmus or vice versa. So long as composers set only metrical texts to music the rhythm of the verse easily determined the rhythm in which the shorter notes were to be sung over the longer; but the text of the mass was in unmetrical prose, and if composers, in setting this to music in more than one part, wished one part to sing several notes to the other’s one, they had no means of indicating the rhythm or measure in which these notes were to be sung. Hence it became necessary for them to invent a standard metrical measure and a system of notation whereby it could be indicated. Their efforts in this direction inaugurated the second period in the history of polyphonic music, which is known as the period of measured music, and which extends roughly from the first half of the twelfth century to the first quarter of the fourteenth, approximately from 1150 to 1325.

[Pg 176]

Our information regarding the development of the new art of measured music comes mainly from treatises which appeared in the course of these two centuries. Among them the most important are the two earliest, Discantus positio vulgaris and De musica libellus, both anonymous and both belonging to the second half of the twelfth century; the De musica mensurabili positio of Jean de Garlandia, written about 1245; and at last the great Ars cantus mensurabilis, commonly attributed to Franco of Cologne, about whose identity there is little certainty, and the work of Walter Odington, the English mathematician, written about 1280, De speculatione musices. As the earlier theorists succeeded in compressing a certain kind of music within the strict limits of mathematical theory, so the mensuralists finally bound up music in an exact arbitrary system from which it was again to break free in the so-called Ars nova. But the field of their efforts was much larger than that of the organum and the results of their work consequently of more lasting importance.

The first attempts were toward the perfecting of a system of measuring music in time, and the outcome was the Perfect System, a thoroughly arbitrary and unnatural scheme of triple values. That the natural division of a musical note is into two halves scarcely needs an explanation. We therefore divide our whole notes into half notes, the halves into quarters, the quarters into eighths, and so forth. But the mensuralists divided the whole note into three parts or two unequal parts, and each of these into three more. The standard note was the longa. It was theoretically held to contain in itself the triple value of the perfect measure. Hence it was called the longa perfecta. The first sub[Pg 177]division of the longa in the perfect system was into three breves and of the breve into three semi-breves. But in those cases in which the longa was divided into two unequal parts one of these parts was still called a longa. This longa, however, was considered imperfect, and its imperfection was made up by a breve. So, too, the perfect breve could be divided into an imperfect and a semi-breve.

Let us now consider the signs by which these values were expressed. The sign for the longa, or long, as we shall henceforth call it, was a modification of one of the old neumes called a virga, written thus ; that for the brevis or breve came from the punctum, written thus . The new signs were long and breve . The semi-breve was a lozenge-shaped alteration of the breve, . This seems simple enough until we come across the distressful circumstances that the same sign represented both the perfect and imperfect long, and that the perfect and imperfect breve, too, shared the same figure. The following table illustrates the early mensural notes and their equivalents in modern notation.

In our age of utilitarian inspiration the imperfections of such a system of notation in which the two most frequent signs had a twofold significance would be remedied by the invention of other signs; but the theorists of that day found it easier and more natural to supplement the system with numbers of rules whereby the exact values of the notes could be determined. For example, a long followed by another long was perfect; a long followed by a breve was imperfect and to[Pg 178] be valued as two beats. But a long followed by two breves was perfect, for the two breves in themselves made up a second perfect three, since one was considered as recta and the other as altera. A long followed by three breves was obviously perfect, since the three breves could not but make up a perfect measure. Similar rules governed the valuation of the breve. Three breves between two longs were not to be altered, four breves between two longs also remained unaltered, since one of them counted to make up the imperfection of the preceding long. But five breves required alteration, the first three counting as one perfect measure, the last two attaining perfection by the alteration of the second of them. Semi-breves were also subject to the laws of perfection and alteration and were governed by much the same laws as governed the breves. One who had mastered all these laws was able to read music with more or less certainty, though it must have been necessary for him to look ahead constantly, in order to estimate the value of the note actually before him.

Later theorists did not fail to associate the mysteries of the perfect system of triple values with the Trinity, and thus sprang up the belief that the earlier mensuralists had had the perfection of the Trinity in mind when they allotted to the perfect longa its measure of three values. Yet, clumsy as the system of triple values was, it was founded upon perfectly rational principles. It was the best compromise in music between several poetic metres, some of which, like the Iambic and Trochaic, are essentially triple; others, like the Dactylic and Anapæstic, essentially double. Music, during all the years while the mensuralists were supreme, was profoundly influenced by poetic metres. All these had been reduced by means of the triple proportion to six formulas or modes, and every piece of music was theoretically in one or another of these[Pg 179] modes. Such a definite classification of various rhythms, besides being eminently gratifying to the learned theorists, was of considerable assistance to the singer in his way through the maze of mensural notation, who, knowing the mode in which he was to sing, had but to fit the notes before him into the persistent, generally unvarying, rhythm proper to that mode. Composers were well aware of the monotony of one rhythm long continued. They therefore interrupted the beats by pauses, and occasionally shifted in the midst of a piece from one mode to another. The pauses were represented by vertical lines across the staff, and the length of the pause was determined by the length of the line—the perfect pause of three beats being represented by a line drawn up through three spaces, the imperfect pause of two beats by one crossing two spaces and the others in proportion. The end was marked by a line drawn across the entire staff.

So far the complexities of the mensural system of notation are not too difficult to follow with comparative ease. But the longs, the breves and the semi-breves were employed only in the notation of syllabic music; that is, of music in which each note corresponds to a syllable of the text. In those cases where one syllable was extended through several notes, another form of notation was employed. The several notes so sung were bound together in one complex sign called a ligature. The ligatures, like the longs and the breves, were adaptations of old neumatic signs. In the old plain-song the flourishes or melismas on single syllables were sung in a free rhythm; but the mensuralists were determined to reduce every phrase of music to exact rhythmical proportions, and these easy, graceful, soaring ornaments were crushed with the rest in the iron grip of their system. Hence the ligatures were interpreted according to the strictest rules. A few examples will serve to show the extraordinary complexity of the[Pg 180] system. Among the old neumatic signs which stood for a series of notes two were of especially frequent occurrence. These were the podatus, , and the clivis, . Of these the first represented an ascending series, the second—which seems to have developed from the circumflex accent—a descending series. It will be noticed that the clivis begins with an upward stroke to the first note, which is represented by the heavy part of the line at the top of the curve. The podatus has no such stroke. Several other signs were derived from these two, and those derived from the clivis began always with this upward stroke, and those from the podatus were without it. Thus all ascending ornaments were represented by a neume which had no preliminary stroke, all descending ornaments by one with the preliminary stroke. This characteristic peculiarity was maintained by the mensuralists in their ligatures. The podatus became , the clivis . In so far as the mensural system of notation was graphic, in that the position of the notes in the scale presented accurately the direction of the changing pitch of the sounds they stood for, there was no need of preserving in the ligatures such peculiarities of the neumatic signs. But, on the other hand, these peculiarities were needed to represent the mensural value of the notes in the ligatures, the more so because the mensuralists were determined to allow no freedom in the rendering of those ornaments in ligature, but rather to reduce each one to an exact numerical value. Hence we find two kinds of ligatures: those which preserved the traits inherited from their neumatic ancestors, and those in which such marks were lacking. The first were very properly called cum proprietate, the others sine proprietate; and the rule was that in every ligature cum proprietate the first note was a breve, while in every ligature sine proprietate it was[Pg 181] a long. If the ligature represented a series of breves and semi-breves, the preliminary stroke was upward from the note, not to it, thus: .

Further than this we need not go in our explanation of notation according to the mensural system. The mensuralists had their way and reduced all music to a purely arbitrary system of triple proportion, and their notation, though bewildering and complex, was practically without flaw. The reaction from it will be treated in the next chapter. Meanwhile we have to consider what forms of music developed under this new method.

Regarding the relations of the voice parts, one is struck by the new attitude toward consonance and dissonance of which they give proof. In the old and in the free organum only four intervals were admitted as consonant—the unison, the fourth, the fifth, and the octave. The third and the sixth, which add so much color to our harmony, were appreciated and considered pleasant only just before the final unison or octave. The mensuralists admitted them as consonant, though they qualified them as imperfect. For, true to the time in which they lived, they divided the consonants theoretically into classes—the octave and unison being defined as perfect, the fourth and the fifth as intermediate, the third and later the sixth as imperfect. So far did the love of system carry them that, feeling the need of a balancing theory of dissonances, these were divided into three classes similarly defined as perfect, intermediate, and imperfect. We should, indeed, be hard put to-day to discriminate between a perfect and an imperfect discord. Of the imperfect consonances the thirds were first to be recognized, the minor third being preferred, as less imperfect, to the[Pg 182] major. The major sixth came next and the last to be consecrated was the minor sixth, which, for some years after the major had been admitted among the tolerably pleasant concords, was held to be intolerably dissonant. The fact that these concords, now held to be the richest and most satisfying in music, were then called imperfect is striking proof of the perseverance of the old classical ideas of concord and discord inherited from the Greeks. Again, one must suspect that theory and practice do not walk hand in hand through the history of music in the Middle Ages.

The admission of thirds and sixths even grudgingly among the consonant intervals is proof that through some common or popular practice of singing they had become familiar and pleasant to the ears of men. We have already mentioned the possible origin of organum in the practice of improvising counter-melodies which seems to have existed among the Celts and Germans of Europe at a very early age. There is some reason to believe that in this practice thirds and sixths played an important rôle; in fact, that there were two kinds of organizing or descant, one of which, called gymel, consisted wholly of thirds, the other, called faux-bourdon, of thirds and sixths. These kinds of organizing, it is true, are not mentioned by name until nearly the close of the fourteenth century, but there is evidence that they were of ancient origin. Whether or not these were the popular practices which brought the agreeable nature of thirds and sixths to the attention of the mensuralists has not yet been definitely determined. The reader is referred to Dr. Riemann’s Geschichte der Musiktheorie im IX-XIV Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1898), and the ‘Oxford History of Music,’ Vol. I, by H. E. Wooldridge (Part I, p. 160), for discussions on both sides of the question. The word gymel was derived from the Latin gemellus, meaning twin, and the cantus gemellus, or organizing in thirds,[Pg 183] in fact, consists of twin melodies. Faux-bourdon means false burden, or bass. The term was applied to the practice of singers who sang the lowest part of a piece of music an octave higher than it was actually written. If the chord C-E-G is so sung then it becomes E-G-C, and whereas in the original chord as written the intervals are the third, from C to E, and the fifth, from C to G, in the transposed form the intervals are the third, from E to G, and the sixth, from E to C, of which intervals faux-bourdon consisted. The origin of this ‘false singing’ offered by Mr. Wooldridge,[68] though properly belonging in a later period, may be summarized here.

By the first quarter of the fourteenth century the methods of descant had become thoroughly obnoxious to the ecclesiastical authorities and the Pope, John XXII, issued a decree in 1322 for the restriction of descant and for the reëstablishing of plain-song. The old parallel organum of the fifth and fourth was still allowed. Singers, chafing under the severe restraint, added a third part between the cantus firmus and the fifth which on the written page looked innocent enough to escape detection, and further enriched the effect of their singing by transposing their plain-song to the octave above, which, as we have seen, then moved in the pleasant relation of the sixth to the written middle part. Thus, though the written parts looked in the book sufficiently like the old parallel organum, the effect of the singing was totally different. However, this explanation of the origin of the term faux-bourdon leaves us still unenlightened as to how the sixth had come to sound so agreeably to the ears of these rebellious singers.

Having perfected a system of notation, and having admitted the intervals pleasantest to our ears among [Pg 184]the consonances to be allowed, having thus broadly widened their technique and the possibilities of music, we might well expect pleasing results from the mensuralists. But their music is, as a matter of fact, for the most part rigid and harsh. Several new forms of composition had been invented and had been perfected, notably by the two great organists of Notre Dame in Paris, Leo or Leonin, and his successor, Perotin. It is customary to group these compositions under three headings, namely, compositions in which all parts have the same words, compositions in which not all parts have words, and compositions in which the parts have different words. Among the first the cantilena (chanson), the rondel and rota are best understood, though the distinction between the cantilena and the rondel is not evident. The rondel was a piece in which each voice sang a part of the same melody in turn, all singing together; but, whereas in the rota one voice began alone and the others entered each after the other with the same melody at stated intervals, until all were singing together, in the rondel all voices began together, each singing its own melody, which was, in turn, exchanged for that of the others. Among the compositions of the second class (in which not all parts have words), the conductus and the organum purum were most in favor. Both are but vaguely understood. The organum purum, evidently the survival of the old free descant, was written for two, three, or even four voices. The tenor sang the tones of a plain-song melody in very long notes, while the other voices sang florid melodies above it, merely to vocalizing syllables. The conductus differed from this mainly in that such passages of florid descant over extended syllables of the plain-song were interspersed with passages in which the plain-song moved naturally in metrical rhythm, and in which the descant accompanied it note for note. In the conductus composers made use of all the devices[Pg 185] of imitation and sequence which were at their command. Finally, the third class of compositions named above is represented by the Motet.

The Motet is by far the most remarkable of all forms invented by the mensuralists. In the first place, a melody, usually some bit of plain-song, was written down in a definite rhythmical formula. There were several of these formulæ, called ordines, at the service of the composers. The tenor part was made up of the repetition of this short formal phrase. Over this two descanting parts were set, which might be original with the composer, but which later were almost invariably two songs, preferably secular songs. These two songs were simply forced into rhythmical conformity to the tenor. They were slightly modified so as to come into consonance with each other and with the tenor at the beginning and end of the lines. Apart from this they were in no way related, either to each other or to the tenor. So came about the remarkable series of compositions in which three distinct songs, never intended to go together, are bound fast to each other by the rules of measured music, in which the tenor drones a nonsense syllable, while the descant and the treble may be singing, the one the praises of the Virgin, the other the praises of good wine in Paris. This is surely the triumphant non plus ultra of the mensuralists. Here, indeed, the rules of measured music preside in iron sway. Not only have the old free ornaments of the early church music been rigorously cramped to a formula and all the kinds of metre reduced to a stiff rule of triple perfection, but the quaint old hymns of the church have been crushed with the gay, mad songs of Paris down hard upon a droning, inexorable tenor which, like a fettered convict, works its slow way along. A reaction was inevitable and it was swift to follow.

L. H.

However slim the records of early church music they still suffice to give some clews to the origin and nature of the first religious songs. But, when we turn to the question of secular song at the beginning of our era, we are baffled by an utter lack of tangible material. For the same monks to whom we are indebted for the early examples of sacred music were religious fanatics who looked with hostile eyes upon the profane creations of their lay contemporaries. Yet we may be confident of the continued and uninterrupted existence not only of some sort of folk music, but also of the germs at least of an art music, however crude, throughout that period of confusion incident to, and following, the crumbling of the Roman empire.

We need but point to our discourse upon the music of primitive peoples (Chap. I), the traces of musical culture left by the ancients (Chap. II), and especially the high achievements of the Greeks (Chap. IV), as evidence that, whatever the stage of a people’s intellectual development, music is a prime factor of individual and racial expression. Furthermore, at almost every period there is recognizable the distinction between folk music proper—the spontaneous collective[Pg 187] expression of racial sentiment—and the more sophisticated creations which we may designate as art. Thus the music transmitted by the Greeks to the Romans, if added to ever so slightly, no doubt was continued with the other forms of Greek culture. The symposias, scolia, and lyrics of Hellas had their progeny in the odes of Horace and Catullus; the bards, the aœds, and rhapsodists had their counterpart—degenerate, if you will—in the histriones, the gladiators, and performers in the arena of declining Rome. Turning to the ‘Barbarians’ who caused the empire’s fall, we learn that already Tacitus recorded the activities of the German bardit who intoned war songs before their chiefs and inspired them to new victories; while Athenæus and Diodorus Siculus both tell of the Celtic bards who had an organization in the earliest Middle Ages and were regularly educated for their profession.

Because of the fact that our earliest musical records are ecclesiastical, the impression might prevail that modern music had its origin in the Christian church. But, although almost completely subjected to it as its guardian mother, and almost wholly occupied in its service, the beginnings of Christian music antedate the church itself. Pagan rites had their music no less than Christian. Just as we find elements of Greek philosophy in the teaching of Christianity, so the church reconciled Pagan festivals with its own holidays, and with them adapted elements of Pagan music. Thus our Easter was a continuation of the Pagan May-day festivals, and in the old Easter hymn O filii et filiæ we find again the old Celtic may day songs, the chansons de quête which still survive in France. We here reproduce one above the other:

[Pg 188]

[PNG] [

[PNG] [

The midwinter festival, merged into our Christmas, and the midsummer festival, corresponding to the feast of St. John the Baptist, both became connected with masses and songs common to both beliefs; the Tonus Peregrinus, sung to the psalm ‘When Israel came out of Egypt,’ already an old melody in the ninth century, is almost identical with old French secular songs, and we have already observed the adoption of vulgar melodies into ‘sequences’ and motets.

It must be remembered that for a considerable period Christianity and Paganism coexisted as tolerant companions. The former could not totally blot out the traditions, customs, conventions, ideas, and myths of classic Paganism which were rooted in the popular consciousness. ‘All through the Middle Ages,’ says Symonds, ‘uneasy and imperfect memories of Greece and Rome had haunted Europe. Alexander, the great conqueror; Hector, the noble knight and lover; Helen, who set Troy town on fire; Virgil, the magician; Dame Venus, lingering about the hill of Hörsel—these phantoms, whereof the positive historic truth was lost, remained to sway the soul and stimulate desire in myth and saga.’[69]

Associated with these myths were the traditions native to the Celtic and Germanic peoples. The very bards of whom we spoke are known to have entered the service of the church in great number, though this did not prevent their travelling from castle to castle to sing before the princes ballads in praise of their heroic ancestors. Of these epics, hero tales, strange [Pg 189]stories of conquest and adventure the nations of central Europe possessed a rich treasure, and we hear that about A. D. 800 Charlemagne, the sovereign patron of liberal arts, ordered a collection of them to be made.

Tolerant though he was of the traditions of his people, the profane songs of love and satire, sometimes indecent, which were sung about the churches, became subjects of his censure; and no doubt the trouble they caused was but one indication of the growing antagonism between Christian and non-Christian, the intolerance of the later Middle Ages. Already Charles’ son, Ludwig the Pious, looked with disfavor upon the heathen epics. As time went on and clerical influence broadened, the personalities of Pagan tradition became associated with the spirit of evil; Dame Venus had now become the she-devil, the seductress of pious knights.[70] This again gave rise to new ideas, traditions, and superstitions; the mystic and the supernatural caught hold of the people’s fancy and were reflected in their poetry and song.

Among the earliest epics, of which the verses are extant, are fragments such as the song on the victory of Clothar II over the Saxons in 622 A. D. Helgaire, a historian of the ninth century, tells us that, ‘thanks to its rustic character, it ran from lip to lip; when it was sung the women provided the chorus by clapping their hands.’ Its Latin text is said to be merely a translation of a popular version, which would antedate the earliest known vernacular song by over two centuries. Of a more advanced type is the Song of Roland, that famous chronicle of the death of the Count of Brittany in the Pass of Roncesvalles, during Charlemagne’s return from the conquest of the Spanish march. Its musical notation was lost, but it was sung as late as 1356 at the battle of Poitiers. Though this great epic consists [Pg 190]of no less than four thousand verses, Tiersot points out that its hero had long been celebrated in innumerable short lyrics, easy to remember, which all the people sang. Many were the epics describing the valiant deeds of Charlemagne himself, and posterity deified him as the hero of heroes in numerous strains that are lost to us. But one of which the music has been deciphered, though with varying results, is the Planctus Karoli, a complainte on the death of the great emperor (813 A. D.).[71] Then there is the quaint vernacular song in praise of King Ludwig III, celebrating his victory over the Normans (832 A. D.):

But with isolated exceptions like this one all the early epics were written in Latin; even the early songs of the first crusaders (eleventh century) are still in that language. Their origin may in many instances have been ecclesiastical; written by some monk secluded within his monastery walls, they may never have been sung by the people; their melodies, akin to the plain chant of the church, may never have entered into the popular consciousness. Yet it is in the popular consciousness that we must look for the true origin of mediæval secular music. In folk song itself we must seek the germs of the art which bore such rich blossoms as the Troubadour and Minnesinger lyrics and which in turn refreshed by its influence the music of the church itself.

[Pg 191]

As folk songs we are wont to designate those lyrics of simple character which, handed down from generation to generation, are the common property of all the people. Every nation, regardless of the degree of its musical intelligence, possesses a stock of such songs, so natural in their simple ingenuity as to disarm the criticism of art, whose rules they follow unconsciously and with perfect concealment of means. Their origin is often lost in the obscurity of tradition and we accept them generally and without question as part and parcel of our racial inheritance. Yet, while in a sense spontaneous, every folk song did originate in the consciousness of some one person. The fact that we do not know its author’s name argues simply that the song has outlived the memory of him who created it. He was a man of the people, more gifted than his fellows, who saw the world through a poet’s eye, but who spoke the same language, was reared in the same traditions, and swayed by the same passions and sentiments as they who were unable to express such things in memorable form. This fellow, whose natural language is music, becomes their spokesman; their heartbeats are the accents of his song. His talent is independent of culture. A natural facility, an introspective faculty and a certain routine suffice to give his song the coherence and definiteness of pattern which fasten it upon the memory. Language is the only requisite for the transmission of his art. Once language is fixed and has become the common property of the people, this song, vibrating the heart-strings of its makers’ countrymen, will be repeated by another who perchance will fashion others like it; his son, if he be gifted like himself, will do likewise and so the inexhaustible well of popular genius will flow unceasingly from age to age.

[Pg 192]

In the sentiments and thoughts common to all, then, we will find the impulses of the songs which we shall now discuss. Considering the different shades of our temperament, sadness, contentment, gladness, and exuberance, we find that each gives rise to a species of song, of which the second is naturally the least distinctive, the two extremes calling for the most decisive expression. Now sadness and melancholy have their concrete causes, and it is in the narration of these causes that the heart vents its sorrow. Hence the narrative form, the complainte, whose very name would confirm our reasoning, is the earliest form of folk song in the vulgar tongue. In a warlike people this would naturally dwell upon warlike heroic themes, and we have already pointed out the early origin of the epic. The musical form of epic was perhaps the simplest of all, taking for its sole rhythm the accent of the words, one or two short phrases, chanted much in the manner of the plain-song, sufficing for innumerable verses. It is notable, too, that the church, adroitly seizing upon popular music as a power of influence, adopted this form to another genus, the légende, which, though developed by clericals, struck as deep a root in the people’s imagination. Thus we see in the ninth century the ‘Chant of St. Eulalia,’ and in the tenth the ‘Life of St. Leger,’ which already shows great advance in form, being composed in couplets of two, four, and six verses, alternating. Possessed of better means of perpetuation this religious epic flourished better and survived longer than the heroic complainte.

Still another genus was what we might call the popular complaintes, the chansons narratives, which dealt with the people’s own characters, with the common causes of woe; the common soldier and the peasant; the death of a husband or a son. Such a one is the Chanson de Renaud, which is considered the classic type of popular song. It is sung in every part of[Pg 193] France, and its traces are found in Spain, Italy, Sweden, and Norway. It is unquestionably of great age, though its date cannot be fixed.

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This strain is sung through thirteen stanzas, recounting Renaud’s return from the wars to his home, where mother and wife await him, only to die upon the stroke of midnight. The mother artfully conceals the fact from his young spouse till finally she hears the news from the boys in the street and sees the catafalque in the church. Her grief is expressed in two final stanzas upon this melody:

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the last stanza very naïvely telling of her own death:

‘She had said for him three verses; at the first she confessed,
At the second she took sacrament; at the third she expired.’

The music is notable not only for its perfect symmetry and the fidelity with which it expresses the sentiment, but also its discriminating use of the natural and flatted B to produce a plaintive effect. (To both the employment of ‘modern’ tonality and the chromatic element in popular song we shall have occasion to return.) The 6/8 rhythm is no less remarkable, giving the piece a crispness and definiteness never attained by mediæval church music.

[Pg 194]

Parallel to the narrative song there developed a lighter genre, as old as the complainte itself, which corresponds to comedy as the latter does to tragedy. Its personages are the same, but stripped of all their sombre aspect; its story has a happy conclusion; its subject is not infrequently comic and satirical. Tiersot quotes, in contrast to the Chanson de Renaud, an example which is still heard in the provinces of France.[72] Like the song already quoted, it narrates the return of soldiers from the war, but, where the first has the mark of death upon him, the other returns with a ‘rose between his lips.’ It is perhaps not so old as the Chanson de Renaud, but equally characteristic and particularly ‘Gallic’ in flavor:

[PNG] [

Note the crisp rhythm, the decided major tonality, and the exuberant spirit of the song. Many early melodies show these same characteristics, which at once remind us of that other elemental form of folk music—the dance song, in which rhythm is the essential element.

Rhythm is the feature which most of all distinguishes popular song, and secular music in general, from church music. It is the essentially emotional quality of music which the Christian church carefully excluded from its chant. We have seen, however, how people’s primitive instinct causes them to mark the rhythm of a melody (Chap. I) and beheld the women clapping their hands to the tune of the complainte of Clothar II. Dependent upon simple formulas which [Pg 195]could be easily grasped and remembered, folk song naturally chose the simplest rhythmic and melodic types. Hence the dance became one of the principal root-stocks of secular music. An element which was never admitted into the narrative form, the refrain, is a distinguishing characteristic of the dance song, and in it we see the germ of the earliest of our modern instrumental forms, the rondeau, originally the name of a dance. The dance song was perhaps the most varied in melodies, for the wayfaring musicians of the Middle Ages carried them from village to village and from country to country, so that there was a continuous international exchange.

The rhythmic nature of folk song carries us into another field of speculation, namely, the influence of the people’s daily occupations, the close relation between daily life and song in ages when life in its individual and social manifestations could be reduced to simple formulæ. Occupational songs have from earliest times (cf. Chap. IV) been an important factor in folk music, and it is obvious that early in the Middle Ages such songs were closely associated with the movements of the human body in various occupations. Dr. Bücher[73] calls attention to the fact that the blacksmith at his anvil, the navvy in the street, are striking iambi, trochees, spondees, dactyls, and anapests. He has collected an enormous amount of folk songs that were sung by the woodman as he wielded his axe, by the boatman plying his oars, by the peasant as he plowed his acre, scattered the seed, mowed the field, and reaped the harvest. This, however, pertains particularly to Germany, where Bücher’s investigations were chiefly carried on, and whither we must now direct the reader’s attention.

To trace and formulate distinctions between the folk songs of the northern and southern nations is a haz[Pg 196]ardous undertaking, since the Celtic element which so largely determines the music of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales is also present in France and Spain, and since the wars between the various races, as well as the great international movements of the Crusades, tended to modify national distinctions. All these meetings and collisions between the different nations have left traces in the songs of the individual peoples. However, northern folk song may in general be said to be simpler and more regular in outline and striving for greater continuity of design or pattern than southern. Rhythm is simpler, firmer, and less given to eccentricities. The tonality is usually clearer and minor scales seem to predominate. In the dance songs the passionate and boisterous element, characteristic of the dances of the Slavic and Latin races, is lacking.

The folk song of Northern Europe draws largely upon the stock of topics held in common. Ever since Johann Gottfried Herder, in his Stimmen der Völker in Liedern (‘The Voices of the Peoples in Song’), called attention to the treasures of folk song, the patient research of painstaking scholars has brought forth proof upon proof to show how closely the nations of the North are related, in spite of political boundary lines and other barriers. The recurrence of the same saga or story of ancient myth or hero-lore in Scandinavian song and in German, the resemblance between the German Tannhäuser, the Swedish knight Olaf, the Scottish Thomas the Rhymer, and the Flemish Heer Daniel or Heer Halewyn, make the question of priority seem irrelevant. North and south of the Channel, and even east and west of the Rhine, the contents of legendary song are curiously alike.

In manner, too, northern folk songs have many features in common; an instinctive simplicity of language, a freedom from obscurities and far-fetched allusions, the prevalence of a four-line strophe and alliteration[Pg 197] and assonance which only in time yield to rhyme. The singing of the same tune to an indefinite number of lines or stanzas is common to Celtic bards, Norse skalds, and German singers, and links them to their forerunners in classical antiquity, the Greek rhapsodists. In following the outline of the poem, the melody is usually cast in lines, each closing with a cadence or ‘fall’; the lines form groups or couplets, either similar or dissimilar, in the manner of rhyming verse-lines. The first couple of phrases is repeated to give the structure stability; the middle portion forms the contrast, either by being broken up into shorter lengths or founded upon different notes of the scale. The dominant in the middle cadence is of frequent occurrence. The rhythm is simple.

Impressionable and receptive by nature, the German people have always been given to imitation of foreign models and there is no doubt that the international movements during the Crusades and the visits of wandering minstrels of foreign birth introduced alien elements and obliterated some of the original features of German folk song. The pathetic rise of a tune through the fifth to the minor seventh suggests Scandinavian influence; the alternation of major and relative minor may be traced to the same source. Still the German Volkslied has some traits that distinguish it from the folk song of other northern nations. It is more firmly knit, more formal, and less emotional. Unlike English song, which favors a repetition of short phrases, a single figure which, repeated on different degrees of the scale, sometimes makes up the whole tune, German folk song repeats short phrases only to establish balance after contrast or to make the essential parts of the structure correspond. There is a marked tendency to make the formal climax coincide with the emotional, but in this respect the Volkslied does not reach the admirable symmetry of the Irish[Pg 198] folk song. A distinctive form is the ‘Jodel’ or ‘Jodler’ of the mountaineers of Germany, the Tyrol, and Switzerland. Based upon broken chords or arpeggios, it suggests, as do some other folk songs built upon a harmonic foundation, that the German people had an innate sense for diatonic harmony long before harmony as such became an element of musical composition.[74] With the exception of the Jodler, which is unique for its exuberance of spirit, the Volkslied is rather reserved and contained in manner. It reflects the serious, contemplative character and the healthy, well-poised temperament of a physically and spiritually strong race.

Song and dance entered largely into the life of mediæval German villages and towns. When village communities depended upon their own resources for work and play, every village had its own musicians. The peasant boys usually played the fiddle, the shepherds the Schalmey, while the flute was hardly less popular. In the towns there were several functionaries identified with certain forms of song. The watchman on the town wall (Türmer) was blowing a tune on his horn; the ‘wait’ or Nachtwächter admonished the people to observe the curfew hour and repair for the night; and, when the Postillon or courier came through the gates with clatter of hoofs and cracking of whips, the rousing notes of his horn brought young and old into the street to greet the bringer of news. The smallest community had its ‘town piper.’ There was no festivity without song or dance, and the instrumentalist playing for the dance was accompanied by a precentor for the singing and a leader for the steps. The great variety of occupations and pastimes accompanied by song and dance made for a great variety of folk [Pg 199]tunes. From this folk song of mediæval Germany, dealing with the realities of life in their manifold manifestations, one could almost reconstruct the whole life of the race, its history, beliefs, superstitions, activities, social and domestic customs, its intimate domestic relations and its important public functions. The Tage, Leichen, Tanz, Spruch, Zauber, and Wünschelieder, the harvest, spinning, soldiers’, and other trade and labor songs are a musical commentary as illuminating to the historian as any other relics of the past.

Many beautiful melodies still heard by the traveller in Brittany, Normandy, Provence, or the rural sections of Germany, date from the Middle Ages. Their charm and their vitality are such that they have survived the onslaught of advancing civilization for eight centuries or more. They take us back to the time when agriculture was the one great pursuit of man, when in solitude song lightened his labor and in company song cheered his rest; when every custom, ceremonial, occupation, had its songs; when music was a solace to all alike; when that terrible distinction between the lettered and unlettered did not exist. ‘For neither in Greece nor in the Middle Ages did it exist; the same poetry pleased all, the prince and the burgher, the knight and peasant.’ ‘In certain Breton provinces,’ says Tiersot, ‘following an old feudal law, established in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, certain revenues were paid in song. In one place the prior exacted the tax of “nuptial song” from the newly married on the Sunday after the wedding; in another, every new bride was obliged to perform a song and dance, whereupon the lord would decorate the bride with a flower bonnet, while all the women married during the year danced and sang a song—eloquent testimony indeed of the love of music among our early forefathers.

C. S.

[Pg 200]

We have had occasion to mention the vagrant musicians, that singular adjunct to Middle-Age society, which appeared in every country of Central Europe, in Germany as Fahrender, in France as fableor or contraire and later as jongleur or ménétrier, in England as minstrel. Gustav Freytag has speculatively traced their origin back to the Roman gladiators, actors, and performers mentioned above, a despised race, who were, like their supposed posterity, beyond the pale of the law. When the Germanic hordes swept away the degenerate opulence of Rome, this class may well be supposed to have scattered among the barbarian conquerors. As once in the arena, they now stood before the huts of Frankish chieftains, performing their tricks and piping strange tunes. To the populace of the Middle Ages they were welcome guests, for they provided the one means of artistic entertainment outside the church.

In Germany the fahrende Sänger or Spielmann, whether a native who had travelled in many lands or a singer of foreign birth, was sure to find his way into the remotest huts of the countryside. He brought with him new tunes and took with him those that he heard at the fireside that had given him hospitality. In this way the stock of tunes handed down from father to son and from mother to daughter was in every generation enlarged by acquisitions from without. The minstrel was the medium of musical exchange between the town and the country, between the several provinces and between different nations. He was the middleman and the teacher, through whom echoes of the songs of Norse skalds, Welsh and Irish bards, and French and Provençal singers reached the German people and vice versa. He was especially popular in[Pg 201] England, where numerous instances are quoted of minstrels appearing at royal weddings and other great functions, not only individually but in large numbers, and being so richly rewarded for their services that the church complained because they were better paid than priests. Individual German sovereigns also seem to have appreciated their skill and distinguished them by marks of favor. In 1355 Emperor Charles IV appointed one Johann der Fiedler ‘rex omnium histriorum’ for the archbishopric of Mayence, and thirty years later another minstrel, the piper Brachte, bore the official title Künig der farenden Lüte (King of the wayfarers).

In France, too, the vagrant appears as the original type of popular singer. He ran from one end of the land to the other. Received and even invited by the great lords he went from castle to castle, his head filled with songs, or his pockets with parchments—if, indeed, he could read. Perchance he would stop in the common of some village, play a few stray arpeggios on his viol, and, having collected an enthusiastic audience, sing a complainte, the adventures of a favorite hero, or perhaps recount the story of a celebrated crime, embellished with horrifying details. Again he might sing a love romance, or even a scriptural légende—the ‘Prodigal Son’ or some other parable, the life of a saint, or the Passion of our Lord.

With the growth of the cities and the development of the middle class the wandering minstrel lost popularity in Germany, even among the people. His itinerant life bred a disregard of social customs and conventions which caused no little concern among the respectable burghers of larger communities, and both the Sachsenspiegel and the Schwabenspiegel, chronicles of the thirteenth century, record the fact that minstrels were outside the social pale and even excluded from membership in the church. Yet these same outcasts[Pg 202] of the church, excluded from its sacraments, would gather the faithful in the cathedral square and, exciting the people’s fancy with sacred legends and miracles, would, as it were, become the self-appointed allies of the clergy. But at last, in uncompromising opposition to them, the resident musicians of the towns associated themselves in the manner of guilds and monopolized the privilege of furnishing music for public functions, being employed and paid by the city councils. The earliest musicians’ guild of this kind was the Nikolaibrüderschaft (Brotherhood of St. Nicholas), organized in Vienna in 1288. Its management was entrusted to a high official, the Musikantenvogt, later Oberspielgraf, who represented the highest tribunal in matters of music. The policy of these musicians’ guilds was similar to that of musicians’ unions of the present day. In a district covered by the guilds only persons enrolled as paying members were allowed to play or sing for money.

It was different in France. Here the jongleur, by virtue of special circumstances, became a privileged character and enjoyed the continued patronage of the aristocracy, for he was an all-important factor in the musicianship of chivalry, which we shall presently discuss.

We have left out of our consideration of folk music so far that all-important element of modern song, the mainspring of lyricism—romantic love. In an age when man’s entire spiritual life was dictated by religious dogma, his natural instincts, branded as profane and unworthy, were naturally excluded from the objects of his poetic expression. ‘But the church could not completely triumph over Nature. The fundamental human sentiments—above all, profane love—after having for more than ten centuries been excluded from the expression which musical science might have vouchsafed to them, now seemed to take their revenge, [Pg 203]to free themselves from long subjection, to let voices hitherto condemned to silence be heard at last. By the side of the altars where psalms were sung, where the things of the world were condemned, the free and subtle stories of exalted love arose, like irresistible protests of the human heart. The cult of the ideal woman, the mother of the Saviour, the Virgin immaculate, continued; but beside it was heard the praise of the woman of France [of Germany, of Italy]; the subject of another sort of devotion, as exalted and often as pure. The chivalrous qualities of the race, disciplined and refined by Christian dogma, but rebelling against asceticism, reappeared and reclaimed their rights with a new vivacity.’[75] This new spirit pervaded all classes of society. The nobility, especially, now affected a finer, more spiritual manner of life. Christian metaphysics, superior education, and the advanced social position of women were the things which prepared the way for chivalry, that new moral code propagated by formal orders of knighthood. The Crusades and contact with Eastern culture confirmed its establishment.

With this first renaissance of the modern spirit came also the awakening of a new appreciation of the beauties of Nature. Man began to notice the first flowers, the song of birds, the signs of spring’s awakening. This gave rise to a species of popular song known as the pastoral—pastourelle—which was afterward adopted and cultivated by the Troubadours, who subjected it to certain rules, respecting the sequence of different lengths of verses, etc. Besides the pastourelle, numerous other forms of love songs (we need only mention the serenades peculiar to the south—the Basque country and Corsica especially) are of truly popular origin.

It may not be out of place here to quote the charming love romance in narrative form entitled Aucassin et Nicolette, dating from the beginning of the thirteenth century, which had an undoubted influence upon the music of chivalry both in France and in Germany. It comprises twenty-one vocal pieces interspersed with twenty prose sections, which are to be read, not sung, as the superscription Or se dient et content et flabloient indicates, in distinction from the Or se cante of the verse sections. The verse also forms part of the narrative, with the exception of Aucassin’s song to the evening star, which is purely lyric but of the same musical treatment as the epic songs of the piece:

[PNG] [

1. E-stoi-le-te je te voi

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2. Que la lu-ne trait a soi
(and twelve more verses)

[PNG] [

15. Suer douce a-mi-e.

The second musical line here serves for thirteen successive text lines with continuous rhyme—another example of this most ancient method of cantilation.

We must now pass on to the development of the love song, which seems to have been the special task of a gifted and celebrated race of knighthood, the glorious post-musicians called Troubadours and Trouvères in France, and Minnesinger in Germany.

The Troubadours and Trouvères (so called from trobar or trouver—to find) were, in sharp contrast to the vagrant professional musicians, noble knights, who practised the graceful arts as gifted amateurs, primarily in the impassioned praise of woman and for the sole prize of her favor, with such zeal and superior in[Pg 205]telligence that they soon outstripped in skill their meaner colleagues, who now became their servants. France was, it will be recalled, at this time, linguistically divided into two sections. The langue d’Oc was spoken in the south and the langue d’Oïl in the north. In the south, in Provence and Languedoc, the so-called Troubadour movement had its inception. ‘That glorious land, endowed with all the charms of sunny skies, which surpassed all other European provinces in culture, prosperity, and spiritual contentment, was the cradle of this chivalry, with which are associated supreme sensual enjoyment, a passion for splendor, and the worship of women, thus uniting all the conditions of poetic art.’[76] Chivalry spread rapidly beyond the limits of these provinces, however, and across the Pyrenees, where lay the three Christian kingdoms of Castille-León, Navarre, and Aragón. Counts, dukes, and kings extended their patronage to this knightly poet-band and vied with each in attaching to their courts a brilliant assemblage of singers. The counts of Provence especially, Raimon Berengar III and his successors, the counts of Toulouse, Anjou, and Poitou, the kings of Aragón, Castille, and León, the margraves of Montferrat and Este, the French royal court where Eleonore of Poitou was queen, and the court of England under Henry II, the second husband of Queen Eleonore, provided rallying centres. Even the sovereigns themselves were ambitious for the favor of the Muses. The earliest Troubadour of prominence was Guillaume, count of Poitiers (1087-1127). Contemporary with him was Robert, duke of Normandy, the son of William the Conqueror, who, after returning from the Crusade (1106), was till his death a prisoner of his brother Henry I of England in the Castle of Cardiff, where he is said to have attained the rank of a Welsh bard.

[Pg 206]

This remarkable and sudden flowering of lyric poetry among the knighthood of the eleventh century, continuing for two centuries and more the record of which stands brightly emblazoned upon the shield of musical history, has never been satisfactorily explained. Riemann thinks that the education of the young nobility in the monasteries certainly had a refining influence. The familiarity with old Breton and British literature, the legend of King Arthur’s Round Table, the old Celtic narrative poems and romances, especially the legend of Tristan and Yseult, which were known through old French adaptations, likewise had an influence.

By their own testimony, however, the Provençal poets found their immediate suggestions in folk song itself, as interpreted by the jongleurs. The latter’s entire repertoire of classic and mediæval chronicles was adopted by the Troubadours, whose own experiences in the Crusades later caused them to substitute recent chivalric deeds for antique subjects. The forms of the jongleurs’ art we find again in the Troubadour creations, but refined in style, governed by definite laws of poetry, more exalted in sentiment, so that, without sacrifice of spontaneity, they have gained distinction and variety and have become conscious works of art. As we are concerned here only with their musical significance, which, indeed, has been generally ignored by literary historians and underestimated by musicians, we shall have little to say about these forms; for, great as is the variety of their content, we fail to find parallel distinctions in their musical settings. It should not be overlooked, however, that certain poetic devices and ingenuities gave rise to more advanced musical forms, i. e., the repetition of a phrase on two rhyming verses at the beginning of a song, followed by a variant, which is the elementary form of the Lied.

The so-called vers gives a starting point for Trouba[Pg 207]dour lyrics. This was the name given to a strictly normal composition in a measure of eight syllables, with probably an amplification of the more sporadic, uneven verse forms of the jongleurs. The chanson is a more sophisticated form, consisting of alternating verses of different lengths. Girant de Borneil (1175-1220) is known as its first exponent. Then we find again the familiar narrative form in the guise of chansons de geste—epics recounting deeds of valor—the sirventes, employed in a lover’s address to his mistress as well as in satire (which is an early prototype of the famous terza rima later adopted by Dante and Petrarch), and the tenson, a controversial song in which the same subject is treated by rival poets, real and fictitious, in alternating verses. The Breton narrative or lai, of melancholy character, as represented in the ‘Tristan’ legend, was also adopted by the Troubadours; other lyrics are variously designated as canson, canzona, soula (a merry song), romance (more characteristic of the Trouvères), alba (aubade), a morning song, serena (serenade), an evening song, and pastourelle, the favorite form already mentioned, which is the richest in popular elements—dance rhythms, refrains, etc.

The pastourelle is characterized by extreme simplicity of theme. Its characters are shepherds and shepherdesses, and it usually begins in the narrative form, the narrator fixing the time of his adventure—the early morn—and the scene, invariably a field, where he meets a shepherdess ‘in the shade of a bush,’ or ‘at the edge of a spring.’ The amorous dialogue which follows has a happy conclusion if the lover be a shepherd, an unhappy one if he be a knight. The sentiments expressed in the Troubadour pastoral are, of course, rather those of knight and lady in the disguise of shepherds than those of real shepherds. Robin and Marion, the usual hero and heroine of pastoral songs, are the central personalities of a whole cycle, the origin[Pg 208] of which is exceedingly ancient, far behind the day of Adam de la Halle, who is perhaps the most famous composer of pastorals. Most of the mediæval pastorals preserved to us belong to this cycle. The famous Robin m’aime is still sung, we are told, by the peasants of northern France. It runs as follows:

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The pastoral song survived the Middle Ages and was a favorite down to the Revolution, long before which it had, however, found its way into the aristocracy and polite society of cities and so lost the little natural flavor which still clung to it in the days of the Troubadours. Robin and Marion made way for Tircis and Aminta, Phyllis and Lycidas, beribboned and bespangled counterfeits of the original article. To illustrate how hackneyed this type of song and the plays later made out of them had become in the time of Molière, we may quote Monsieur Jourdain: ‘Why all these shepherds? I see nothing else.’ To which the dancing-master replies peremptorily: ‘When characters speak in music it is necessary, for the sake of realism, to make them shepherds. Song was ever affected by shepherds; it is hardly natural that princes and princesses should vent their passions in musical dialogue!’

Among Troubadour dance forms there should also be mentioned the carol or rondet de carol, retroensa, estampida, and the espringerie (jumping dance). Particularly notable is the Estampida of Rambaut de Vacqueiras (1180-1270), a Troubadour at the court of Montferrat, the lover of the beautiful princess Beatrice. The story connected with it aptly illustrates the influence of the jongleurs. When one day a band of these, native of France, came to the court, they awakened[Pg 209] general merriment with a new Estampida played on their viols. Only Rambaut could not be roused from his melancholy, and Beatrice asked him therefore to sing a song himself, and so regain a happier mood. Whereupon he composed the charming dance song Kalenda maya in the manner of the jongleurs’ estampida:

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It should be noted here that in the transcriptions of Troubadour songs—and most of the small manuscript treasure preserved to us still wants unfolding—there has until recently prevailed the error to interpret them as measured music. Measured music came into use, we have seen, with Franco of Cologne, about A. D. 1200, but, nevertheless, many writers did not adopt it for centuries thereafter. The Troubadours persistently followed the metre of the verse instead of fitting their melodies into a set rhythmic scheme (and most naturally so, when we consider that they were primarily poets); hence the square notes in which they note their melodies are really nothing but neumes on a staff. This use has given rise to the error common to most historians, who, in forcing the beautiful, spontaneous tunes into a straitjacket of modern measurement, deprived them of their rhythmic and melodic[Pg 210] grace in a manner which did violence to the verses as well. In considering their musical quality we must call attention to the fact that, while devoid of the rich beauties of modern harmony, these songs, availing themselves both of the antique modes and modern tonalities, are able to convey nobility of sentiment, passion, and varied shades of emotion. Breathing the ‘tender grace of a day that is dead,’ they are, in some instances, still able to charm in our noisy age, and the influence which they have had upon the course of the art can hardly be over-appreciated.

It has been mentioned that the Jongleurs came largely into the service of the Troubadours. It is they who accompanied the knights in their travels from castle to castle, providing the lighter kinds of amusement, and the instrumental accompaniment, such as it was, on their viols or rottas—sometimes, indeed, singing their master’s songs, with the dissemination of which they were frequently entrusted. That they often undertook to ‘improve’ these compositions on their own account we gather from the words of Peire d’Auvergne and others, entreating jongleurs not to meddle with their verses and melodies. Sometimes, no doubt, they were more gifted than the Troubadour and provided the melody for his verses as well. In some instances, indeed, a Jongleur became a Troubadour or Trouvère, and sometimes a Troubadour became a Jongleur, as in the case of Gaucelm Faidit, who lost money at dice and was forced to earn a livelihood by his art. For that was the real distinction between the two; one sang for glory, the other for gain. As long as they did not make a trade of their art, lowly-born and bastards took equal rank with princes and nobles, in the earlier periods at least.

While at first the Troubadour disdained to accompany his own singing, he soon learned the art from the Jongleur and in many cases became his own ac[Pg 211]companist. His favorite instruments were the viol, the rotta (a form of fiddle), and the organistrum.[77] The quality of the melodies or chords he wrested from them can hardly be conjectured, for we must not forget that of polyphony, still in its incipient stages among the learned musicians of the church, he had no knowledge—not, at least, until about the time of Adam de la Halle (1240-1287), who forms the bridge, as it were, from the Trouvères to the scientific musicians of the Netherland school.

We must now briefly enumerate a few of the illustrious Provençal Troubadours. There were about four hundred poets of fame. The list is headed by Guillaume, count of Poitiers. Soon after him comes the fiery and poetic Bernard de Ventadour (1140-1195), patronized by Queen Eleanor; and Macabrun, the foundling, who wrote—between 1150 and 1195—in a most involved style and generally a satirical vein. Then comes Jaufre Rudel, prince of Blaya (1140-1170), famous for his languishing love-songs; Peire d’Auvergne (1152-1215) the ‘master of the Troubadours,’ renowned for artistic finish; Guillem de Cabestanh (1181-1196), whose poetic adulation of his lady cost him his life at the hand of her jealous husband, while the object of his affection was forced to eat his heart; Peire Vidal (1175-1215), perhaps the most celebrated of all the Troubadours; Bertrand de Born (1180-1195), famous for his war songs; Folquet de Marseilles (1180-1231), Bishop of Toulouse; Rambaut de Vaqueiras (1180-1207), the cynical and caustic ‘Monk of Montaudon’ (1180-1200); Arnault Daniel (1180-1200), a nobleman of Perigord, celebrated by Petrarch and Dante; Gaucelm Faidit (1190-1240); Savarie de Mauleon (1200-1230), who fought with Raymond of Toulouse against Simon de Montfort; Peire Cardinal (1210-1230); and Guirant Riquier (1250-1294), the last true Troubadour.

[Pg 212]

Among the women-of whom seventeen achieved great reputation—the foremost was Beatrice, countess of Die and wife of Guillaume de Poitiers.

The crushing out of the Troubadours is ascribed to the Albigensian crusade, which lasted from 1207 to 1244. The Albigenses’ home was in the very heart of the Troubadour country and the legate of Pope Innocent III, sent as inquisitor, was murdered there during his attempt to extirpate the heresy. The crusade of revenge which followed was particularly directed against Count Raymond of Toulouse, staunch patron of the Troubadours, who flocked to his standard and raised their voices in songs of war and religious controversy. Their odes, pasquinades, and sirventes were sung by their Jongleurs in market places and at fairs, while they themselves girt on their swords and fought. During a fierce war of twenty years waves of soldiers and clergy swept through the lonely vineyards and gardens, leaving only blackened ruin in their wake. The bright days of the Troubadour were ended; the society that supported him was crushed, and the blow that fell in Provence reverberated through all the land. The race was not extinct, however; its representatives found a welcome at the courts of Castille, of Aragón, and of Sicily, where Frederick II was king. From this last centre they unquestionably exerted an important influence upon the Italian Renaissance, to which we shall recur in a later chapter. In this connection we may mention the interesting fact that the poet Dante early in the fourteenth century visited the Troubadours in their home and drew inspiration from their art.

The Trouvères’ ascendancy dates from about 1137, when Eleonore of Aquitaine became queen of France. At her court the knights who spoke the langue d’Oïl came in contact with those of the south, and from them received their poetic impulse. Besides this linguistic difference, the only other distinction is the somewhat[Pg 213] more earnest character of Trouvère songs. Among their illustrious representatives we must name, first, King Richard I (1169-1199) of England (Cœur-de-Lion) and his ménéstrel Blondel de Nesle. Then there are Marie de France, at the court of Henry II of England; Thibaut IV, count of Champagne, afterward king of Navarre (1208-1253); Raoul de Coucy (end of the twelfth century); Perrin d’Angecourt; Audefroi le Bastard; Guyot de Dijon; Jehan de Bretal; and Adam de la Halle (or de la Hâle)[78] surnamed le bossu d’Arras (the hunchback of Arras), whose works are preserved to us and are published by Coussemaker in modern notation.[79] That he was a genuinely inspired poet and composer is eloquently attested by his chansons, rondeaux, and motets, in which he also displays a complete mastery of the musical science of his day. The most important of his works is the pastoral comedy, Le geu de Robin et de Marion, which he arranged at the command of the king of Naples, about the year 1285. Very little of the music was his own, most of it was taken from the stock of popular song. As a wanderer over Europe, a man of free, wild life who yet had undergone strict musical training in the monasteries of northern France, he is interesting as showing the contrast of theoretical and of actual music and the first efforts to combine the one with the other.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to say just how much the Troubadours and the Trouvères influenced the de[Pg 214]velopment of music. The Troubadours found a footing in Sicily and southern Italy and influenced the growth of the so-called Ars Nova, which will be treated in the next chapter. Melodies of the Trouvères were adopted by the Netherland composers as the foundations of their masses. These are definite points at which secular and religious music certainly touched. If, beyond this, the relations between them are vague and hard to trace, the movements of which the Troubadours and the Trouvères are manifestations are none the less of vital significance in the history of music. Through them the undercurrent of real free music, which we may be sure never ceased to flow even when the crushing weight of scholasticism was heaviest, welled to the surface. They represent spontaneous joy and human delight in ages fettered with theology and logic. They represent the real source of music. Those who would believe that the great Italian Renaissance was not primarily a return to classicism but an all-powerful and general awakening of man to the beauty and delight of earth will find in the music of the Troubadours and Trouvères this natural delight expressed. If, as it happened, music was the last to rise up in the freedom of the Renaissance, it was because music got no help in her need of expression from a study of the music of the ancients; music had to build slowly her own means, unaided by precedent and past accomplishment, fed and encouraged only by the natural love of man’s heart to sing, a love which is here attested in the dark ages and to which she finally turned.

We must again give our attention to Germany, where a musical development parallel to that of the Provençal and French chivalry had been going forward[Pg 215] since the twelfth century. Art music as such had so far been confined in Germany to the church; the composers and scholars devoted to its practice were to be found largely in the monasteries. But about the beginning of the twelfth century an attempt was made by poet-singers of noble birth to found a school of secular song expressing their ideals of life and appealing to people of their rank. This conscious effort of aristocratic singers shared with the unconscious achievement of folk song a certain range of topics, notably historical and sacred, and a certain naïveté of attitude. In other respects it differed from it radically, both in content and in manner, for it was founded upon the ideal of chivalry and was full of the spirit of gallantry. But, while the southern poet-singers made profane love their one great theme, German chivalric poetry in a curious way blended the mediæval adoration of the Virgin Mary with the worship of women in general. From this devotion to Fru Minne (Dame Love) it was called Minnegesang and its singers Minnesinger. The beauties of Nature, ever present in German poetry, also formed an important subject in Minnegesang.

Though simple enough in itself, this first art song of the Germans never equalled the ingenuousness of the Volkslied, for a burden of knowledge hampered the flight of the poets’ imaginations and chilled the ardor of their sentiments, and, in the attempt to escape from base realities, they frequently lost themselves in elusive abstractions. The allegorical element, almost absent in the Volkslied, was largely represented in Minnegesang, which is full of poetic allusions to the heavenly virtues that lead to salvation, and to the deadly sins that pave the road to perdition. Minnegesang was more personal and direct than the Volkslied, which tends to socialize or generalize an individual experience until it applies and appeals to all. A product of[Pg 216] the castles, Minnegesang was frequently a matter of ambition, encouraged by the hope of finding favor with a princely patron or winning the love of a high-born lady. The Volkslied, a product of the people, made no such appeal and was its own reward. The tournaments of song were therefore limited to the Minnesinger and represented a counterpart of those other contests which in the period of chivalry brought out physical prowess and skill.

There is an element of partisan controversy in the writings of even recent historians concerning the respective merits of the Troubadours and Minnesinger, some maintaining the superiority and originality of the latter, while others, like Combarieu, call them simply ‘imitators’ of the Troubadours. The fact that they appeared somewhat later is not sufficient evidence for such a statement, however, and may be explained by the fact that in Germany chivalry flourished later. The German knights, it will be remembered, did not participate in the first Crusade. Doubtless the same influences making for exalted expression were at work in both countries and the early epics of which we have spoken were in a sense the common property of both. Moreover, the epic poems of the Celtic people (the Breton lais, etc.) preceded the Provençal lyrics and probably reached Germany by direct road.

A fundamental difference between the two schools, which strongly argues a separate origin, is the fact that in form Minnegesang approached the heavier epic style of the Northern bards, rather than the lighter lyric vein of the Southern singers. Inasmuch as German poetry contained a great variety of verse-forms with a varying number of syllables, Minnegesang developed a great variety of rhythms. Unlike Romance lyricism, German composition never forsook the principle of accentuation for the sake of mere syllabic proportion (enumeration). In other words, the Germans considered only[Pg 217] the accented syllables, subordinating the unaccented so that they might be either eliminated or increased in number without disturbing the rhythmic contour; which means a very different relation between text and melody. Melody corresponding with verbal accent makes for correct emphasis and a natural and logical declamation.

The stereotyped contour of the Troubadour songs which their composers sought to overcome by excessive melodic ornament is not found to the same extent in Minnegesang, where the change of hypermetres and catalectics provides in itself a considerable variety of rhythm even where the same melody is retained for a succession of stanzas. This sort of adaptation must have required considerable skill in execution; it has, moreover, given no end of trouble to modern transcribers in the determination of phrase limits. In the example here given we follow the interpretation of Riemann. It is an excerpt from the Jena manuscript, being the only example dating from the twelfth century. Its author is ‘old Spervogel,’ and its serious contemplative character will illustrate the difference between the works of Troubadours and Minnesinger. We give only the first line of the melody in four of the thirteen forms which it assumes over the various texts of succeeding verses.

[PNG] [

1. Swa ein vriund dem an-dern vriun de bi-ge-stat—

[PNG] [

2. Swer si-nen gůt-en vriund be-hal-ten—wil—

[PNG] [