'Diminution or division to a ground, is the breaking either of the
bass or of any higher part that is applicable thereto. The manner of
expressing it is thus:--
'A ground, subject, or bass, call it what you please, is prick'd down
in two several papers; one for him who is to play the ground upon an
organ, harpsichord, or what other instrument may be apt for that
purpose; the other for him that plays upon the viol, who having the
said ground before his eyes as his theme or subject, plays such
variety of descant or division in concordance thereto as his skill and
present invention do then suggest unto him.'
[See the Appendix for an example by Sympson.]
Further on, he distinguishes between 'breaking the notes of the
_ground_' and 'descanting upon' the ground.
This phrase, 'breaking' notes, may be taken as a partial explanation
of several passages on Shakespeare, where 'broken music' is referred
to, although it is likely that a better account of this may be found
in the natural imperfection of the Lute, which, being a _pizzicato_
instrument (_i.e._, the strings were plucked, not played with a bow),
could not do more than indicate the harmony in 'broken' pieces, first
a bass note, then perhaps two notes at once, higher up in the scale,
the player relying on the hearer to piece the harmony together.
An entirely different explanation is that of Mr Chappell (in Aldis
Wright's Clarendon Press Edition of Henry V.), viz., that when a
'consort' of viols was imperfect, _i.e._, if one of the players was
absent, and an instrument of another kind, _e.g._, a flute, was
substituted, the music was thus said to be 'broken.' _Cf._ Matt.
Locke's 'Compositions for Broken and Whole Consorts,' 1672.
[Mr Aldis Wright has given me references to Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum,
III., 278, and Essay of Masque and Triumph, which show that 'Broken
Music' was understood to mean _any combination of instruments of
different kinds_. In Sylva Sylvarum Bacon mentions several 'consorts
of Instruments' which agree well together, _e.g._, 'the Irish Harp and
Base-Viol agree well: the Recorder and Stringed Music agree well:
Organs and the Voice agree well, etc. But the Virginals and the Lute
... agree not so well.' All these, and similar combinations, seem to
have been described as 'Broken Music.']
In point, see _Hen. V._ V, ii, 248, where Henry proposes to
Katherine.
_K. Hen._ Come, your answer in _broken music_; for thy
_voice is music_, and thy _English broken_; therefore, queen
of all, Katherine, _break_ thy mind to me in _broken_
English: wilt thou have me?
Also see _Troilus_ III, i, 52 and ff. (quoted further on).
An entirely separate use of 'break' is in the phrase 'broken time,'
which has the simple and obvious meaning that the notes do not receive
their due length and proportion. In this connection we will take the
passage of King Richard's speech in prison at Pontefract--when he
hears music without, performed by some friendly hands.
_Rich. II._ V, v, 41. King R. in prison.
_K. Rich._ _Music_ do I hear?
Ha, ha! _keep time_.--How sour sweet music is,
When _time is broke_, and no _proportion kept_!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
And here have I the _daintiness of ear_,
To check _time broke_ in a _disorder'd string_;
But, for the _concord_ of _my_ state and _time_,
Had not an _ear_ to hear my true _time broke_.
* * * * *
_This music mads me_: let it sound no more:
For though _it hath holp madmen_ to their wits,
In me, it seems, it will make wise men mad.
The simile is perfect, and the play upon 'time broke' admirable. In l.
45 Richard reflects on the sad contrast between his quick 'ear' for
'broken time' in music, and his slowness to hear the 'breaking' of his
_own_ 'state and time.' The 'disorder'd string' is himself, who has
been playing his part 'out of time' ('Disorder'd' simply means 'out of
its place'--_i.e._, as we now say, 'a bar wrong'), and this has
resulted in breaking the 'concord'--_i.e._, the harmony of the various
parts which compose the state.
A few words are necessary about 'Proportion.' This term was used in
Elizabethan times exactly as we now use 'Time.' The 'times' used in
modern music can practically be reduced to two--viz., Duple (two beats
to the bar) and Triple (three beats to the bar). But in Elizabeth's
day the table of various Proportions was a terribly elaborate thing.
Of course many of these 'Proportions' never really came into practical
use--but there was plenty of mystery left even after all deductions.
Morley (Introduction, 1597) gives Five kinds of proportions 'in most
common use'--viz., Dupla, Tripla, Quadrupla, Sesquialtera, and
Sesquitertia. The first three correspond to what we still call Duple,
Triple, and Quadruple Time--_i.e._, 2 in the bar, 3 in the bar, and 4
in the bar. ['Bars' were not in general use till the end of the 16th
century, but the principle was the same. The bars themselves are
merely a convenience.]
Sesquialtera is more complicated, and means 'three notes are sung to
two of the same kinde'; and 'Sesquitertia is when four notes are sung
to three of the same kinde.' 'But' (Morley adds), 'if a man would
ingulphe himselfe to learn to sing, and set down all them which
Franchinus Gaufurius [1496] hath set down in his booke De
Proportionibus Musicis, he should find it a matter not only hard but
almost impossible.'
Ornithoparcus, in his Micrologus (1535), gives us an idea of the way
this subject of proportion was treated by more 'learned' writers. He
says (1) that music considers only the proportion of inequality, (2)
that this is two-fold--viz., the greater and the lesser inequality.
(3) The greater inequality contains five proportions, namely,
multiplex, superparticular, superpartiens, multiplex superparticular,
and multiplex superpartiens.
This is more amusing than instructive, perhaps. The three last lines
of this passage refer to the various stories of real or pretended
cure of disease by the use of particular pieces of music. One of the
best known of these diseases is 'Tarantism,' or the frenzy produced by
the bite of the Tarantula, in Italy.
Kircher, a learned Jesuit (1601-1680), gives an account, in his
"Musurgia," of the cure of this madness by certain airs, by which the
patient is stimulated to dance violently. The perspiration thus
produced was said to effect a cure. In his "Phonurgia nova" (1673)
Kircher actually gives the notes of the tune by which one case was
cured.
In this connection, Kircher mentions King Saul's madness, which was
relieved by David's harp playing. This is certainly to the point, and
may well have been in Shakespeare's mind. [See George Herbert's poem,
'Doomsday,' verse 2.]
Our modern Tarantellas derive their name and characteristic speed from
the old Tarantula.
_Lear_ I, ii, 137. Edmund pretends not to see Edgar's entrance.
_Edmund (aside)._ Pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the
old comedy: my cue is villainous melancholy, with a _sigh
like Tom o' Bedlam_.--O! these eclipses do portend _these
divisions_. _Fa, sol, la, mi._
Songs like 'Tom o' Bedlam,' mad-songs they were called, were very
commonly sung in England in the 17th century. The tune and words of
the original 'Tom a Bedlam' are to be found in Chappell, Vol. I. p.
175. Its date is some time before 1626,[6] and verse 1 begins, 'From
the hagg and hungrie Goblin,' and the whole is as full of ejaculations
of 'Poor Tom' as Act III. of _Lear_.
[Footnote 6: Rimbault's preface to the Musical Antiquarian Society's
reprint of Purcell's opera, "Bonduca," says that Mad Tom was written
by Coperario in 1612, for the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's
Inn, by Beaumont. This was, 'Forth from my sad and darksome sell.']
The last sentence has yet another play on the double meaning of
'divisions.' A few lines further on Edmund explains what kind of
'divisions' he expects to follow the eclipses--namely, 'between the
child and the parent ... dissolutions of ancient amities; divisions in
state,' etc. But the very use of the word in the quoted lines brings
its musical meaning into his head, for he promptly carries off his
assumed blindness to Edgar's presence by humming over his 'fa, sol,
la, mi.' [Burney, Hist., Vol. III. p. 344, has a sensible observation
on this passage--that Edgar alludes to the unnatural division of
parent and child, etc., in this musical phrase, which contains the
augmented fourth, or _mi contra fa_, of which the old theorists used
to say 'diabolus est.']
Guido d'Arezzo (or Aretinus), in his Micrologus (about 1024), named
the six notes of the Hexachord (_e.g._, C, D, E, F, G, A), thus--Ut,
Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La. These were the first syllables of certain words
in the Hymn for the feast of St John Baptist, the words and tune of
which are in Hawkins, p. 163.
"UT queant laxis
RE-sonare fibris
MI-ra gestorum
FA-muli tuorum
SOL-ve polluti
LA-bii reatum, Sancte Joannes."