How the Music Grew.
IN THE DAYS OF A THOUSAND YEARS.
“Most things in Greece are subjects of dispute,” so wrote Pausanias,
and his word for it may be accepted freely. As it was in his day
(writing in 174 A.D.) so it is in ours; learned authorities so differ
on simplest points that the wayfarer asking questions has no little
difficulty in deciding whom he shall heed, whose directions he should
follow.
The evolution of the musical scale should be of interest even to
musicians who would not make the subject a study. How step by step our
diatonic scale developed, how it has become what it is gradually by
slow degrees—does anybody know? Certainly. Wise men in their libraries
find much; the erudition is deep and they can expound it in their
own way, but it is the way for the plodding student, not intended to
attract the general reader. Moreover the wise men do not agree, and
the wayfarer in literature after reading many books fails to obtain
the clear account which he has been seeking. Having had occasion to go
into the matter of the Greek system on the historical side, I saw how
confused it was, and how necessary to examine author against author,
to try to arrive at some orderly assignment of steps and changes made
in those distant times, and to endeavour to bring home to the mind the
conception of a chain of historic facts.
Traditions embody general beliefs in stated facts, or supposed facts,
and history makes record of these, giving to them more or less
credence. The statements concerning the earliest developments of the
Greek scale are based upon traditions, since it was not until after the
lapse of many centuries that anything was written.
The recorded periods of civilization that held good in ancient
chronology have many of them been displaced by the newest explorers,
whose work within the last few years has been prolific in discoveries
affecting calculations of the relations of time in the past. The dates
I adopt will therefore have to be considered authentic only so far as
the learned choose to agree concerning them.
Old historians stated that Athens was founded in 1556 B.C. by Cecrops,
who led a colony from Sais, in Egypt, and established the kingdom
of Athens. Neith, or Nit, was the deity of Sais, her name also was
Minerva, the patron goddess of Athens. In less than fifty years
after, Danaus, who was accounted a brother of Amenhotep III. (by some
Egyptologists called Amunoph) left Egypt 1400 B.C. and founded Argos,
of which he became king, and died 1425 B.C.
These are highly important dates in the perspective of history.
Egypt, through the wars of Thotmes III. and the later expeditions
of the Amenhotep Pharaohs, had been raised to the height of empire;
Mesopotamia and Syria had been brought under her rule and her armies
were constantly traversing and retraversing that extensive region
tributary to her (known now by us as Asia Minor), reaching along that
coast of the Mediterranean and even to Cyprus, Crete and other isles.
By a few touches of history and a chain of dates, it may be possible
to bring before you life as it was, to excite your imagination to
realise in a broad view the state of the then known world, when in all
that vast territory, the high civilization to which Egypt had attained
could not have failed to influence the daily lives of those myriads of
peoples, busy with their tradings, and little ambitions, and religions,
and domestic wants, and pleasures. It was a very composite population,
tribes, clans and races, or by whatever names we class them, full of
jealousies and antagonisms, only held in abeyance from fighting by the
prospect of greater gain by trading with one another.
The musical instincts of the whole of these peoples probably followed
one channel common to all, their music differing but little from what
we call “folk-song”; and even varieties of language need not have
raised barriers in musical feeling, as the instance of the Song of
Linus referred to by Herodotus (see pages 63-4 ante) clearly shews.
The truth is that the founders of Athens, and Argos, and other great
cities, were leaders of bands of military adventurers, and these
when they left Egypt took with them the common popular music such as
themselves and their families had been accustomed to, they had no
need or use for any other; we should not expect of them that they
would represent the musical culture of the motherland, already so
highly developed. Hence the simple tetrachord of ages past, produced
upon their reed pipes, satisfied them for all that they sought, it was
their system of music, and had not been extended. In the early state
of the music of the Greeks there had been a double influence, the
Egyptian influence, and the older Asiatic influence, both as I imagine
proceeding from the same Mesopotamian source in a remote age.
We have to remember that there was a prehistoric Greece and an older
Mycenœan Greece. Of Athens, we should say “the refounding,” for
there had been five “Athens,” each city built upon the ruins of a
former one. “Athens,” says Mr. H. R. Hall in his book, “The oldest
civilization of Greece, has existed as an inhabited place from the
earliest post-neolithic times, perhaps before 2500 B.C. to the present
day,” a fact that may be very usefully recognised, it bears with it
an important value, reminding us that an immigrant people almost
invariably displaces earlier peoples, or absorbs them. Might ruled
then, as now.
In the realms of myth and legend the chief progenitors of music
appear; Pan and Apollo, Mercury, Athene, and others; then tradition
brings forward many names of poet-musicians who, it cannot be doubted,
veritably existed in the flesh. Certain dates do not seem to be
questioned, although they are prior to the Trojan War, which is
supposed to have taken place between the periods 1500 and 1200 B.C.
Homer himself being given a date about 900 B.C. In musical history as
generally found, little is noted before Terpander 700-650 B.C., and it
is assumed that up to his time only a four-stringed lyre had been in
use by the Greeks; it is as if there had been averred a stagnation in
music for many centuries.
A closer investigation, however, must cause a revision of such a
conclusion, and I repeat, it may well be that we should think of Greek
music as having had two courses of usage, running parallel, even as in
our own history. These are not as opposed but as distinct, the temple
or academic music very strictly conservative, and the popular music
with its mingled Asiatic influences, inherited, and untrammelled by
priests or philosophers. Very naturally it would come to pass that
literature occupied itself with the orthodox and academic views and
systems of music, even as by learned musicians our ecclesiastical music
has been regarded with almost exclusive attention, whilst the old
English songs and ballads have, as it were, existed upon sufferance,
kept in being by popular feeling and tradition.
If this twofold strain in the origin of Greek music is borne in mind
I believe it will solve many difficulties that constantly trouble
enquiry, and will reconcile conflicting accounts given by different
authorities, for there is very much that is vague even in the
originals, and various translators have but added to the confusion,
because they in default of understanding the subject, too often became
dogmatic upon guesswork.
Tradition comes upon fairly solid ground with Hyagnis about 1506 B.C.
and Marsyas his son, and Olympus the elder, his pupils. Musæus the
Athenian, 1426 B.C. was taught by Orpheus and was chief of the Elusian
mysteries instituted in Greece in honour of Ceres; his hymns were used
in the celebrations. Orpheus also taught Thamyris, and Linus, who
taught Hercules, and Amphion, and so on. Then there was Thaletes, the
poet-musician mentioned by Strabo, whose old pæans Pythagoras loved to
sing; he lived about 300 years after the Trojan War. Other names might
be recalled but these suffice to shew that amongst the people of the
various Greek States the art of music never at any time was without
honour and esteem.
The musical system of the Tetrachord having become known to us through
the writings of certain Greek philosophers, fragments of which had been
preserved by authors of later centuries, has therefore been assigned
to the Greeks, and the development of this musical system has been
recorded only in their language, yet the origin of it has undoubtedly
to be placed long before the time of the Greeks. Possibly with good
reason it might be claimed for the primitive Akkadian, as found by him
in the finger holes of the simple reed-pipe.
Although there is clear evidence of the early existence of the
tetrachord in pipes, the attention of philosophers has always been
given to string instruments, pipes having had no share in their regard,
possibly because the playing of pipes was a professional art in which
good training was necessary, whereas any philosopher could twang
strings and discourse upon laws and proportions.
The lyre of Mercury, so tradition asserts, had three strings only,
tuned as
_e_——-_a_——-_e_, or, _e_——-_b_——-_e_,
thus comprising fourth, fifth and octaves according to our terminology,
though doubtless the god was ignorant of such things. Emerging from
the mists of fable we arrive at traces of a period at which it is
said the octave became disused, and nothing remained but the fourth in
its rudimentary condition, divided next into two steps, and after that
separated in three divisions resulting in an interval comprising two
tones and a lesser tone, or two steps and a half, so that the whole is
marked by four sounds; this series was then undesignated, but after
a time a stage was arrived at when it _was_ designated, and known
thereafter by the word “tetra” signifying “four” and the inclusive
system was called a tetrachord, and therefore the commencement of the
evolution of a musical scale.
The ending of the word in “chord,” has given rise to the notion of
a chord as of harmony, and again of cords as another name for the
strings. But these are misconceptions, the meaning of “tetrachord” is,
a series of four sounds, in an order of succession so that the extreme
sounds comprise a fourth. The terms fourth, and fifth, and octave,
are quite artificial, are signs founded on _vision_ or the counting
of the strings of the lyre; the fourth in music is not a fourth part
of anything, is not a fourth part or proportion of the octave, it was
called by the Greeks “diatessaron,”—_right through_ or _over, four_.
One most ancient form may be represented thus, considering the extreme
sounds to embrace the interval,—
_e_ ‿ _f_———_a_
it was the initiatory stage afterwards completed as,—
_e_ ‿ _f_———_g_———_a_
only that it should be read from right to left, because with the
Greeks the reading was from the high note downwards thus—
_a_———_g_———_f_ ‿ _e_
to us occularly confusing, yet it was the way of Greek thought.
(The sign —— indicates whole tone, and ‿ semitone).
The man’s voice was the guide, and from time immemorial the _a_ has
been the standard of pitch, by ruling of the ear.
(The _A_ below middle C, top line, bass clef).
From father to son, from teacher to scholar the tradition of pitch
was carried on. The string affected by heat and moisture and by the
strain when twanged, never remains accurately to pitch. Although pipes
and strings have run a parallel course, we do not find that the lyre
players actually cared to refer to pipes as guiding them in setting
the pitch. Yet it was the custom, so Plutarch tells us, for _reciters_
and orators to have a pitch pipe sounded by an attendant to keep their
voices to a prescribed pitch, and he mentions an ivory pipe being used
for the practice. On the contrary it would seem that from the earliest
times lyrists of all sorts, and players on stringed instruments of
every nation, even up to the present day have found the habit of the
ear sufficient for the purposes of their art, that indeed to the
soloist, the musical ear relies upon itself for tuning.
By the Greeks music as an art was regarded as an aid to regulate by
rule the inflections of the voice, to mark the places of emphasis and
to define the pauses in the recitation of their epic poetry; and the
rhythm of their songs followed strictly laws that had been laid down,
innovation was reprehended, and even prohibited. The lyre itself was
held subordinate to the voice, accompanying it and filling in the
pauses according to a conventional fashion, which the hearers judged,
critically and keenly.
We import our modern ways of speech upon musical subjects into the
considerations of these matters, and necessarily so, but it is
essential to a right apprehension to remember that the Greeks had no
way of naming the sounds except by certain names given by them to the
strings of the lyre, thus the forefinger string was called “lichanos”
and the others had their distinctive appellations. They had no sense of
a _tonic_ as we have, no system of harmony, no musical stave, no use
of letters, a, b, c, etc., to denote their music. In late times they
devised a kind of letter-note method, curiously crude yet elaborate,
of letters standing upside down, letters lying on the side, letters
mutilated and signs for instrumental sounds different from those for
the sounds of the voice, altogether 1,062 varied characters are stated
as used, and this knowledge of their written music was by the merest
accident preserved to us in a solitary manuscript, by Alypius, 115 A.D.
The only date known in the life of Terpander was the year when
he gained the prize in the competition for singing, B.C. 676, at
the Pythian games; some say that he also won at four festivals in
succession. He may have been known to that Demaratus, mentioned _page_
68 ante, as the date connects them as contemporary. Some time later
than this victory he is credited with having increased the number of
strings from four to seven, but statements upon this question are very
conflicting. Helmholtz says that he added but one string to the Cithara
of six strings.
According to some ancient writers Chorebus, son of Altis, King of
Lydia, he it was who commenced innovation by adding a fifth string.
Hyagnis, who in the sixteenth century B.C. invented the Phrygian mode,
added a sixth string; Terpander a seventh, and Lychasos an eighth; but
Pliny says, Terpander added three strings to the orthodox four, that
Simonides added an eighth and Timotheus a ninth. Anacreon as before
stated had ten strings, and Timotheus increased the seven strings of
the Spartan lyre to eleven. Pythagoras, by equal authority, was the
reputed father of the eight-stringed lyre.
Through the maze of such traditions (and other statements I could
quote, increasing the intricacy for the benefit of research) I have had
to make my way, and decide as best I could, upon a line of connected
record.
So, pending an alternative view to be offered presently, I elect to
follow Pliny and allow to Terpander the claim to the increase of the
scale of the tetrachord by a trichord above _a_, the highest sound of
the four-stringed lyre.
Our scale system is based on a _tonic_ sound, and we read upward, but
the Greeks in their music thought downwards, and by the laws, the tonic
was, in the structure of tetrachords, barred out, for the _a_ was the
master tone, and between it and _g_ no semitone was allowed, though
what necessity existed for this essential feature of the formation, no
explanation is apparent.
The three sounds above this formed with the _a_ another tetrachord,
_conjunct_, as it was termed.
[Illustration: _The Added Trichord_
_d_
| tone
|
_c_ tone
|
_b_♭
) hemitone
*_a_
| tone
|
_g_
| tone
|
_f_
) hemitone
_e_
_The Original Tetrachord_]
Continuing to plot out the scale on a vertical plan would not be of any
advantage. The habit of the eye would perhaps require a diagonal line
of ascent; I think, however, that showing the growth of the scale on a
level line will best suit our general convenience.
This then let us call the Terpander scheme for the scale to which the
_seven-stringed lyre_ or Cithara was tuned. As we shall see, this
became the classical lyre of Apollo, throughout the glorious period of
Greek Art.
╭————————^———————╮╭————————^————————╮
_e_ ‿ _f_———_g_———_a_ ‿ _b_♭———_c_———_d_
*
The _a_ I have marked with a star. It was called the _mese_ or
_middle-note_, was considered the master-note of the lyre, and was
compared to the sun as being the centre of the musical system. The
original names of the strings of the four string lyre are lost, but it
is quite obvious that until the extra three strings were introduced
there could have been no _mese_ or middle string, so that the name
originated with this condition, with this perfecting of the system.
Before systems exists methods and rules have sway; and out of these
methods and rules systems are constituted. The great poet-musicians
renowned in the land, in teaching their successors in art according to
their own practical experiences, and teaching _viva voce_, no doubt
insisted upon the observance of certain methods, and laid down rules
which on their authority as chief masters, became the traditions of the
profession.
The great repute of Terpander would have caused him to be regarded
as one who spoke with authority, and I have sometimes thought that
discrepancies in the accounts given by different authors, who wrote
many centuries after the time of this musician, and from whom alone
we have any knowledge of the doings in such early period, might be
reconciled by the surmise that perhaps it was Terpander who first
showed how the two tetrachords should be disposed and the tuning of the
enlarged series of strings be regulated in the best way for the art
of music, so that instead of being left to the caprice of different
teachings, an uniform method should prevail. Some one in authority by
his recognised supreme skill, would have been necessary to reduce to
order the practices of the day as taught by the wandering minstrels in
the land of Greece, and in the numerous settlements in Asia Minor, and
it seems reasonable to suppose that Terpander may have been the first
to formulate definite laws for the structure of the tetrachord in Greek
music.
Very binding indeed were these laws, and they have exercised an
important, indeed, an imperishable influence upon the musical art in
all the centuries that have followed.
The methods of the great master-players of the cithara were in course
of time resolved into forms, very simple they were and very definite.
These are the laws of the tetrachord:—
1—between the two extremes of the strings of the
four-stringed lyre there shall be a consonance in sound
called a diatessaron.
2—between the string the highest in pitch and the string
next to it lower in pitch there shall be a separation in
the sounds equal to not less than one full tone.
3—between the third string (reckoning from the highest)
and the fourth string there shall always be a separation
in pitch equal to one hemitone.
There remained therefore the neutral ground between the second and the
third string—equal to a tone—but variable, according to the selection
of a maximum beyond the “_not less_ than a full tone” affirmed by law
2; there might be two full tones in succession, or the upper might be
increased at the expense of the lower, or on the contrary the lower
might part with some of its own fulness to increase the hemitone.
We should not imagine a written law at that early time ruling the
craft, the oral tradition would be sufficient.
Giving an account of the growth of the scale, I have put the matter in
my own way, in words, that as I think, will best fix the attention of
the general reader. Evidently for many centuries the orthodox Greek
lyre was restricted to four strings, notwithstanding the popular
adoption from time to time of an increased number of strings according
to the prevalence of Asiatic influences.
A time however came when authority accepted an increase to seven
strings. Whether Terpander, or Archilocus, or Tyrtæus, or other
poet-musicians got the innovation accepted is a question that will
remain unsolved; hearsay or history favours Terpander. Terpander let it
be.
Olympus, who was a Phrygian, and—about 630 B.C., brought asiatic flute
music into Greece,—changed this as follows, and obtained the octave on
the seven strings.
╭————————^————————╮ ╭———————^—————-╮
_e_ ‿ _f_———_g_———_a_———_b_ ‿ ———_d_———_e_
*
Notice particularly the interval _b_ ‿ ———_d_ as it plays an important
part in the history of music. It was a flute-pipe interval, older than
Terpander. Olympus was the first to introduce the disjunct form, and
from _b_ to _e_ he compasses a tetrachord.
Olympus was a contemporary of Terpander, and we may consider that the
two scales were in favour at the same time, one as the orthodox and the
other as the secular system.
Pythagoras about 530 B.C., added an eighth string, and it is evident
that the string he introduced was that of the missing _c_, since, as to
extent, the octave already existed on the lyre.
╭————————^————————╮ ╭————————^————————╮
_e_ ‿ _f_———_g_———_a_———_b_ ‿ _c_———_d_———_e_
* x
Therefore two complete tetrachords, but _disjunct_. It is plainly to be
seen that he wanted a fifth to the _f_, to make his scheme of fifths
perfect. It was a marked advance. The doings of Pythagoras with the
monochord though of great interest, need not be told here, as they
belong to another branch of investigation, to be treated subsequently.
Ion of Chios, about 430 B.C., enlarged the scale of the lyre to ten
sounds, and was the author of the Conjunct or Lesser System complete.
It consisted of three tetrachords conjoined and one note added, to
complete the octave below, from _mese_ the middle note _a_. Greek names
would bewilder, and it will be the best plan to keep to the method of
distinguishing the notes by letters.
3 1 2
╭———————^————————╮╭————————^——————-╮╭—————————^————————-╮
_a_———_b_ ‿ _c_———_d_———_e_ ‿ _f_———_g_———_a_ ‿ _b_♭———_c_———_d_
*
Notice the return to the Terpander scale with the _b_ flat. I have seen
the addition of the three notes below _e_ attributed to Terpander, but
considering the period the statement is not convincing. The eleven
notes here given may possibly be those of the Lesbian lyre of Timotheus
the celebrated poet-musician who according to Pausanias excited the
Spartan censure (mentioned page 312 ante), by his eleven strings. The
low _a_ first seen in the system was called the _proslambanomenos_,
meaning a note taken into the scale to complete the octave.
This was the state at which after two hundred years the Greek scale had
arrived. After Ion there came a period of controversy.
Archytas, 400 B.C., challenged the Pythagorean third, which was
extremely sharp, and he was the first to shew that _c_——_e_ should bear
the ratio 5/4.
Aristoxenus 350-320 B.C., a pupil of Aristotle, disavowed the whole
Pythagorean scheme, and the philosophers ranged themselves in two
opposing schools, the Pythagoreans who determined intervals by
proportional numbers, and the Aristoxenians who relied upon the
judgment of the ear.
Somewhere in the period embraced by the lives of Ion and Aristoxenus,
for it was a period of high intellectual activity with the Greeks
(Sophocles, Pericles, Plato, Aristotle and other famous men were
living), somewhere we have to place the Disjunct, or Greater System
Complete. It consists of fifteen notes,—
3 1
╭———————-^——————-╮╭————————^————————╮
_a_———_b_ ‿ _c_———_d_———_e_ ‿ _f_———_g_———_a_
*
2 4
╭————————^———————╮╭————————^———————-╮
———_b_ ‿ _c_———_d_———_e_ ‿ _f_———_g_———_a_
then there was an alternative arrangement ultimately admitted, making
conjunction at _a__{*}, allowing _b_ flat instead of _b_, causing that
tetrachord to end on _d_, and placing the tone of disjunction between
the _d_ and _e_. Very noticeable this as shewing how popular feeling
hankered after the old way of Terpander. This later arrangement of the
Greek scale, comprising the two octaves, comes to us from Euclid’s
reputed treatise on Music, now attributed to Cleonidas, writing about
120 A.D.
Thus was the scale completed. The order of the growth of the scale is
shewn by the figures, 1, 2, 3, 4 over the several tetrachords.