Gade--Brahms--Tschaikowsky--Svensden--Grieg--Bruch--Bennett--Macfarren;
Mackenzie--Nicodé--Moszkowsky--Dvorak--Henselt--Litolff--Wilmers--Heller;
Hiller--Rubinstein--Bülow--Reinecke.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE GREATEST COMPOSERS.
(_Copyright._)
EXPLANATION.--The heavy vertical lines are century lines. Light
vertical, twenty-year lines. Horizontal lines, the life of the
composer.
[Illustration]
CHRONOLOGY OF PRINCIPAL ITALIAN COMPOSERS.
(_Copyright._)
From Palestrina to Present Time. (See explanation, page 11.)
[Illustration]
CHRONOLOGICAL CHART OF THE MORE IMPORTANT GERMAN COMPOSERS.
(_Copyright._)
From Orlando Lassus to the Present Time. (See page 11.)
[Illustration]
CHRONOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF PIANISTS AND COMPOSERS FOR THE PIANOFORTE.
(_Copyright._)
From 1660 to the Present Time (1891).
[Illustration]
INTRODUCTION.
I.
The name "music" contains two ideas, both of them important in our
modern use of the term: The general meaning is that of "a pleasing
modulation of sounds." In this sense the term is used constantly by
poets, novelists and even in conversation--as when we speak of the
"music of the forest," the "music of the brook" or the "music of
nature." There is also a reminiscence of the etymological derivation
of the term, as something derived from the "Muses," the fabled retinue
of the Greek god Apollo, who presided over all the higher operations
of the mind and imagination. Thus the name "music," when applied to an
art, contains a suggestion of an inspiration, a something derived from
a special inner light, or from a higher source outside the composer,
as all true imagination seems to be to those who exercise it.
2. Music has to do with tones, sounds selected on account of their
musical quality and relations. These tones, again, before becoming
music in the artistic sense, must be so joined together, set in order,
controlled by the human imagination, that they express sentiment.
Every manifestation of musical art has in it these two elements: _The
fit selection_ of tones; and, second, the _use of them for expressing
sentiment and feeling_. Hence the practical art of music, like every
other fine art, has in it two elements, an _outer_, or technical,
where trained intelligence rules, and teaching and study are the
principal means of progress; and an _inner_, the imagination and
musical feeling, which can indeed be strengthened by judicious
experience in hearing, but which when wanting cannot be supplied by
the teacher, or the laws of their action reduced to satisfactory
statement.
3. There is no fine art which reflects the activity of spirit more
perfectly than that of music. There is something in the nature of this
form of art which renders it particularly acceptable to quick and
sensitive minds. If evidence of this statement were needed beyond the
intuitive assent which every musical reader will immediately give, it
could easily be furnished in the correspondence between the activity
of mind in general and in the art of music in particular, every great
period of mental strength having been accompanied by a corresponding
term of activity in music. Furthermore, the development of the art of
music has kept pace with the deepening of mental activity in general,
so that in these later times when the general movement of mind is so
much greater than in ancient times, and the operations of intellect so
much more diffused throughout all classes, the art of music has come
to a period of unprecedented richness and strength.
II.
4. The earlier forms of music were very simple; the range of tones
employed was narrow, and the habits of mind in the people employing
them apparently calm and almost inactive. As time passed on more and
more tones were added to the musical scales, and more and more
complicated relations recognized between them, and the music thereby
became more diversified in its tonal effects, and therein better
adapted for the expression of a more energetic or more sensitive
action of mind and feeling. This has been the general course of the
progress, from the earliest times in which there was an art of music
until now.
The two-fold progress of an education in tone perception, and an
increasing ability to employ elaborate combinations for the expression
of feelings too high-strung for the older forms of expression, is
observable in almost all stages of musical history, and in our own
days has received a striking illustration in the progress made in
appreciating the works of the latest of the great musical geniuses,
Richard Wagner, whose music twenty-five years ago was regarded by the
public generally as unmusical and atrocious; whereas now it is heard
with pleasure, and takes hold of the more advanced musical minds with
a firmness beyond that of any other musical production. The
explanation is to be found in the development of finer tone
perceptions--the ability to co-ordinate tonal combinations so
distantly related that to the musical ears of a generation ago their
relation was not recognized, therefore to those ears they were not
music. Wagner felt these strange combinations as music. The deeper
relations between tones and chords apparently remote, he felt, and
employed them for the expression of his imagination. Other ears now
feel them as he did. An education has taken place.
5. It is altogether likely that the education will still go on until
many new combinations which to our ears would be meaningless will
become a part of the ordinary vernacular of the art. Indeed, a writer
quite recently (Julius Klauser, in "The Septonnate") points out a
vast amount of musical material already contained within our tonal
systems which as yet is entirely unused. The new chords and relations
thus suggested are quite in line with the additions made by Wagner to
the vocabulary of his day.
III.
6. There are certain conditions which must be met before a fine art
will be developed. These it is worth while to consider briefly:
The state of art, in any community or nation, at any period of its
history, depends upon a fortunate correspondence between two elements
which we might call the internal and the external. By the former is
meant the inner movement of mind or spirit, which must be of such
depth and force as to leave a surplusage after the material needs of
existence have been met. In every community where there is a certain
degree of wealth, leisure and a vigorous movement of mind, this
surplus force, remaining over after the necessary wheels of common
life have been set in motion, will expend itself in some form of art
or literature. The nature of the form selected as the expression of
this surplus force will depend upon the fashion, the prevalent
activity of the life of the day, or, in other words, the environment.
Illustrating this principle, reference might be made to the condition
of Greek art in the flowering time of its history, when the wealth of
Athens was so great as to leave resources unemployed in the material
uses of life, and when the intellectual movement was so splendid as to
leave it until now a brilliant tradition of history. Only one form of
art was pre-eminently successful here; it was sculpture, which at that
time reached its fullest development--to such a degree that modern
sculpture is only a weak repetition of ancient works in this line. So
also the brilliant period of Italian painting, when the mental
movement represented by Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Lorenzo de
Medici, and the pleasure-loving existence, the brilliant fêtes, in
which noble men and beautifully appareled women performed all sorts of
allegorical representations, and the colors, groupings, etc., afforded
the painter an endless variety of material and suggestion. When Rubens
flourished in the Netherlands, a century later, similar conditions
accompanied his appearance and the prolific manifestations of his
genius. In the same way, music depends upon peculiar conditions of its
own. They are three: The vigor of the mental movement in general, its
strength upon the imaginative and sentimental side, and the suggestion
from the environment in the way of musical instruments of adequate
tonal powers. Such instruments never existed in the history of the art
until about the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The organ, the
violin and the predecessor of the pianoforte, the spinet, came to
practical form at nearly the same time. At the same time the
instruments of plucked strings--the guitars, lutes and other
instruments which until then had occupied the exclusive attention of
musicians--began to go out. Moreover, musical science had been worked
out, and the arts of counterpoint, canonic imitation, fugue, harmony,
etc., had all reached a high degree of perfection when Bach and Händel
appeared.
7. The entire history of music is merely an illustration of these
principles. Wherever there has been vigorous movement of mind and
material prosperity (and they have always been associated) there has
been an art of music, the richness of which, however, has always been
limited by the state of the musical ears of the people or generation,
and the perfection of their musical instruments. The instruments are
an indispensable ingredient in musical progress, since it is only by
means of instruments that tonal combinations can be exactly repeated,
the voice mastering the more difficult relations of tones only when
the ear has become quick to perceive tonal relations, and tenacious to
retain them--in other words, educated. Hence in the pages following,
the instruments peculiar to each epoch will receive the attention
their importance deserves, which is considerably more than that
usually allotted them in concise accounts of the history of this art.
8. The conditions of a satisfactory Art Form are three: Unity, the
expression of a single ruling idea; variety, the relief of the
monotony due to the over-ascendency of unity (or contrast, an exact
and definite form of variety); and symmetry, or the due proportion of
the different parts of the work as a whole. These principles,
universally recognized as governing in the other fine arts, are
equally valid in music. As will be seen later, all musical progress
has been toward their more complete attainment and their due
co-ordination into a single satisfactory whole. Every musical form
that has ever been created is an effort to solve this problem; and
analysis shows which one of the leading principles has been most
considered, and the manner in which it has been carried out. Ancient
music was very weak in all respects, and never fully attained the
first of these qualities. Modern music has mastered all three to a
very respectable degree.
9. The art of music appears to have been earliest of all the fine arts
in the order of time; but it has been longer than any of the others in
reaching its maturity, most of the master works now current having
been created within the last two centuries, and the greater proportion
of them within the last century. Sculpture came to its perfection in
Greece about 500 B.C.; architecture about 1200 to 1300 A.D., when the
great European cathedrals were built; painting about 1500 to 1600 A.D.
Poetry, like music, representing the continual life of soul, has never
been completed, new works of highest quality remaining possible as
long as hearts can feel and minds can conceive; but the productions of
Shakespeare, about 1650, are believed to represent a point of
perfection not likely to be surpassed. Music, on the other hand, has
been continually progressive, at least until the appearance of
Beethoven, about the beginning of the present century, and the
romantic composers between 1830 and the present time.
IV.
10. The history of music may be divided into two great
periods--_Ancient_ and _Modern_--the Christian era forming a dividing
line between them. Each of these periods, again, may be subdivided
into two other periods, one long, the other quite short--an Apprentice
Period, when types of instruments were being found out, melodic or
harmonic forms mastered; in other words, the tonal sense undergoing
its primary education. The other, a Master Period, when an art of
music suddenly blossoms out, complete and satisfactory according to
the principles recognized by the musicians of the time. In the natural
course of things such an art, having once found its heart, ought to go
on to perfection; but this has not generally been the case. After a
period of vigorous growth and the production of master works suitable
to the time, a decline has ensued, and at length musical productivity
has entirely ceased. Occasionally a cessation in art progress of this
kind may have been dependent upon the failure of one or other of the
primary conditions of successful art mentioned above, especially the
failure of material prosperity. This had something to do with the
cessation of progress in ancient Egypt, very likely; but more often
the stoppage of progress has been due to the exhaustion of the
suggestive powers of the musical instruments in use. The composers of
the music of ancient Greece had for instruments only lyres of six or
eight strings, with little vibrative power. After ten centuries of use
every suggestion in the compass of these instruments to furnish, had
been carried out. If other and richer instruments could have been
introduced, no doubt Greek music would have taken a new lease of life,
_i.e._, supposing that the material prosperity had remained constant.
The apprentice periods of ancient history extend back to the earliest
traces of music which we have, beginning perhaps with the early Aryans
in central Asia, whom Max Müller represents as circling around the
family altar at sunrise and sunset, and with clasped hands repeating
in musical tones a hymn, perhaps one of the earliest of those in the
Vedas, or a still older one. From this early association of music with
religious worship we derive something of our heredity of reverence for
the art, a sentiment which in all ages has associated music with
religious ritual and worship, and out of which has come much of the
tender regard we have for it as the expression of home and love in the
higher aspects.
All the leading types of instruments were discovered in the early
periods of human history, but the full powers of the best have been
reached only in recent times.
11. The art of music was highly esteemed in antiquity, and every great
nation had a form of its own. But it was only in three or four
countries that an art was developed of such beauty and depth of
principle as to have interest for us. The countries where this was
done were Egypt, Greece and India.
12. Modern music differs from ancient in two radical points: Tonality,
or the dependence of all tones in the series upon a single leading
tone called the Key; and Harmony, or the satisfactory use of combined
sounds. This part of music was not possible to the ancients, for want
of correctly tuned scales, and the selection of the proper tone as
key. The only form of combined sounds which they used was the octave,
and rarely the fifth or fourth. The idea of using other combined
sounds than the octave seems to have been suggested by Aristotle,
about 300 B.C. The period from the Christian era until about 1400 A.D.
was devoted to apprentice work in this department of art, the central
concept wanted being a _principle of unity_. After the beginning of
the schools of the Netherlands, about 1400, progress was very rapid.
The blossoming time of the modern art of music, however, cannot be
considered to have begun before about 1600, when opera was commenced;
or 1700, when instrumental music began to receive its full
development. Upon the whole, the former of these dates is regarded as
the more just, and it will be so used in the present work.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: KING DAVID, PLAYING ON THE THREE-STRINGED CRWTH.
(From a manuscript of the eleventh century now in the National
Library, Paris.)]
Book First.
THE
Music of the Ancient World.
PRIMITIVE TYPES OF INSTRUMENTS, AND AN ARTISTIC MONODY, WITHOUT REAL
TONALITY.
CHAPTER I.
MUSIC AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.
By a curious fortune we are able to form an approximately accurate
idea of the musical instruments in use in Egypt as long ago as about
4000 B.C. The earliest advanced civilization of which any coherent
traces have come down to us was developed along the Nile, where the
equable climate and the periodic inundations of the river raised the
pursuit of the husbandman above the uncertainties incident to less
favorable climates, while at the same time the mild climate reduced to
a minimum the demands upon his productive powers for the supply of the
necessaries of life. This interesting people had the curious custom of
depositing the mummies of their dead in tombs elaborately hewn out of
the rock, or excavated in more yielding ground, in the hills which
border the narrow valley of the Nile. Many of these excavations are of
very considerable extent, reaching sometimes to the number of twenty
rooms, and a linear distance of 600 feet from the entrance. The walls
of these underground apartments are generally decorated in outline
intaglio if the rock be hard; or in color if the walls be plaster, as
is often the case. The subjects of the decorations embrace the entire
range of the domestic and public life of the people, among them
being many of a musical character. One of the first discoveries of
this kind was made toward the close of the preceding century, when
Bruce, an English traveler, found in a tomb at Biban-El-Moulouk
representations of two magnificently decorated harps played by
priests. These have since generally been called "Bruce's Harpers." The
instruments have been represented in many ways by different writers,
the most curious perversion of the facts being found in Burney's
"History of Music," where they have the form of the modern harp.
[Illustration: Harps, pipe, and flute, from an ancient tomb near the
Pyramids.
Fig. 1.
EXPLANATION OF FIG. 1.--(1) Harper, with harp, bent, of seven cords;
over him is inscribed in hieroglyphs sqa em bents (_a_), "player
[literally "scraper"] on the harp." (2) Singer, seated; above him, hes
t (_b_) "singer." (3, 4) Similar harper and singer, and same
inscriptions (_c_, _d_). (5, 6) Singer and player on the direct flute
or pipe; before the former, hes (_h_) "singer"; before the latter, mem
t (_g_) "pipe." (7, 8) Singer and player on the oblique flute, seba
(_e_); before the former, hes (_f_) "singer."]
Several large works have been devoted to plates of the pictorial
discoveries in these ancient tombs, but not until the colossal work of
Lepsius, issued under the auspices of the German government, were we
in possession of data for the study of this civilization from the
standpoint of a progressive development.
The oldest of the musical representations are found in tombs near
Thebes, and already we find the art in an advanced state. The
preceding cut shows one of these pictures. A musical group is
represented, consisting of eight figures. Their occupations are
designated by the hieroglyphics above them. The harper is designated
as "harp scraper."
It is not possible to make out in the present state of these drawings
the exact number of strings upon the harps, but explorers agree that
it must have been either five or seven. From the length of the strings
and the structure of the instrument without a "pillar" in front for
resisting the pull of the strings, the tones must have been within the
register of the male voice. The long flute played by the figure
bearing the number 8 must also have produced low tones. It is not
plain whether these players are supposed to be all playing at the
same time, or whether their ministrations may have taken place
separately. Most likely, however, they all played and sang together.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.
BRUCE'S HARPERS.]
The most advanced harps found in Egypt were the elegantly colored and
ornamented priestly instruments which Bruce found in what was
afterward discovered to be the tomb of Rameses III, at Biban-El-Moulouk.
The black and white cuts give but a poor idea of the elaborate
structure and rich ornamentation of these fine instruments (Fig. 2).
The instruments are not playing together; each harper plays before his
own particular divinity. They occupy opposite sides in the same hall.
The players, by their white robes and positions, evidently belonged to
the highest order of the priesthood. The harp upon the right is
represented by some writers as having had twenty-one strings; whereas
the one upon the left has only eleven. This would be an interesting
fact if it were well founded. But, unfortunately, the truth is that
the painting was somewhat defaced after Bruce saw it, and it was only
within later years that a clever explorer discovered that by passing a
wet sponge over it the original lines could be made out. According to
Lepsius it has thirteen strings.
In the XXth dynasty, about 1300 B.C., there were harps having
twenty-one strings, of which a good example is shown in Fig. 3. This
instrument, also, is elaborately colored and ornamented in gold and
carving. The strings are shorter than those of Bruce's harpers, and
the pitch was most likely within the treble register. The second
figure clapping hands is marking time. The one upon the right is
playing upon a sort of banjo, of which mention will be made presently.
[Illustration: Fig. 3.]
Some time before the period of the Hyksos, the "Shepherd Kings" of
the Exodus, there is a scene of a procession of foreigners presenting
tribute to one of the sovereigns of Egypt. Among the figures is one
playing upon a sort of lyre. Later this instrument became the
established instrument of the higher classes, as it was afterward in
Greece and Rome. Several complete instruments have been found, which,
although dating most likely from a period near the Christian era, are
nevertheless sufficiently like the representations of ten centuries
earlier to make them instructive as well as interesting. Figs. 4 and 5
are from Fétis. One of these lyres had originally six strings, as is
shown by the notches in the cross-piece at the top. They were tuned
approximately by making the cord tense and then sliding the loop over
its notch. From the clever construction of the resonance cases these
instruments should have had a very good quality of tone. In some of
the later representations there are lyres of twenty strings.
[Illustration: Fig. 4.
LYRE AT BERLIN.]
[Illustration: Fig. 5.
FROM THE LEYDEN MUSEUM.]
[Illustration: Fig. 6.
A GROUP OF STREET MUSICIANS.
(1) Woman with tall light harp, of fourteen strings. (2) Cithara. (3)
Te-bouni, or banjo. (4) Double flute. (5) Shoulder harp. (6) Singer,
clapping hands.]
It will be observed that up to this point all the musicians
represented are men. In later representations women are more common.
Fig. 6 represents the entire musical culture of the later empire, this
particular representation belonging apparently to an epoch not more
than a few centuries before the Christian era. The harp in this case
is of a different construction, and lighter than those in the former
examples. It would seem to have been played while the player walked,
for we find it in what seems to be moving processions. The lyre
occupies here the post of honor next the harp. The banjo and double
flute come next, and then a curious instrument of three or four
strings, played while carried upon the shoulder. Several of these
instruments have been found in a very respectable state of
preservation. Their construction is better shown in the illustrations
following:
[Illustration: Fig. 7.]
The tonal relation of these instruments to the larger harps is
difficult to conceive. Wilkinson gives the dimensions of the most
perfect one in the British Museum as forty-one inches long, the neck
occupying twenty-two inches, and the body being four inches wide.
The instrument with the long neck and the short body, seen in Figs. 3
and 6, belongs to the banjo family. Its resonance body consisted of a
sort of hoop, or a hollowed out piece of sycamore, the sounding board
being a piece of parchment or rawhide. Some of these have two strings,
others one; three are occasionally met with. The name of this
instrument was te-bouni, and it was of Assyrian origin. It was
afterward known as the "monochord," and by its means all the ancients
demonstrated the ratios of the octave, fourth and fifth, as we will
later see.
We have no knowledge whatever of the tonal sound of the music which so
interested these ancient players and singers. There is, however, an
ancient poem, called "The Song of the Harper" found in a papyrus
dating from about 1500 B.C., which gives an idea of the sentiments the
music was intended to convey. Here it is, from Rawlinson's "History of
Ancient Egypt," p. 48:
"THE SONG OF THE HARPER."
(From a papyrus of the XVIIIth Dynasty.)
The great one has gone to his rest
Ended his task and his race;
Thus men are aye passing away,
And youths are aye taking their place.
As Ra rises up every morn,
And Tum every evening doth set.
So women conceive and bring forth,
And men without ceasing beget.
Each soul in its turn draweth breath,
Each man born of woman sees death.
Take thy pleasure to-day,
Father! Holy one! See,
Spices and fragrant oils,
Father, we bring to thee.
On thy sister's bosom and arms
Wreaths of lotus we place;
On thy sister, dear to thy heart,
Aye sitting before thy face.
Sing the song, let music be played,
And let cares behind thee be laid.
Take thy pleasure to-day;
Mind thee of joy and delight!
Soon life's pilgrimage ends,
And we pass to silence and night.
Patriarch, perfect and pure,
Neferhotep, blessed one! Thou
Didst finish thy course upon earth,
And art with the blessed ones now.
Men pass to the silent shore,
And their place shall know them no more.
They are as they never had been
Since the sun went forth upon high;
They sit on the banks of the stream
That floweth in stillness by.
Thy soul is among them; thou
Dost drink of the sacred tide,
Having the wish of thy heart,
At peace ever since thou hast died.
Give bread to the man who is poor,
And thy name shall be blest evermore.
All princely households appear to have had their regular staff of
musicians, at the head being the "Overest of Musicians," whose tombs
still furnish some of the most instructive information upon this part
of the ancient life. People of lower social grade had to be content
with the temporary services of the street musicians, such as those
represented in Fig. 6. They played and sang and danced for weddings
and festivities, and undertook the entire contract of mourning for the
dead, the measure being the production of a small vial full of tears,
under the immediate inspection of the relative of the deceased whose
grief might happen to need this official assistance.
For warlike purposes the Egyptians had a short trumpet of bronze, and
a long trumpet, not unlike a straight trombone. They had drums of many
kinds, but as none of these instruments have reference to the
development of the higher art of music, we do not delay to describe
them.
One thing which might surprise us in casting an eye over the foregoing
representations as a whole is the small progress made considering the
immensely long period covered by the glimpses we have of the music of
this far-away race. From the days of the harpers in our earliest
illustrations to those of the last is more than 2,000 years, in fact
considerably longer than from the beginning of the Christian era until
now. The explanation is easy to find. In the first place, the
incitations upon the side of sense perception were comparatively
meager. Neither in sonority nor in delicacy of tonal resource were the
Egyptian instruments a tenth part as stimulating as those of to-day.
Moreover, we have here to deal with childlike intelligences, slow
perceptions, and limited opportunities of comparison. Hence if these
were all the discouraging elements there would be but little cause for
wonder at the slow progress. But there was another element deeper and
more powerful. The Egyptian mind was conservative to reaction. Plato
in his "Laws," says: "Long ago the Egyptians appear to have recognized
the very principle of which we are now speaking--that their young
citizens must be habituated to the forms and strains of virtue. These
they fixed, and exhibited the patterns of them in their temples, and
no painter or artist is allowed to innovate upon them, or to leave the
traditional forms or invent new ones. To this day no alteration is
allowed in these arts nor in music at all. And you will find that
their works of art are painted or modeled in the same forms that they
were 10,000 years ago. This is literally true, and no exaggeration--their
ancient paintings and sculptures are not a whit better or worse than
those of to-day, but are with just the same skill." This, which Dr.
Draper calls the "protective idea," was undoubtedly the cause of their
little progress.
In another place Plato gives a very interesting glimpse of the
Egyptian method of education, and describes something having in it
much the spirit of the modern kindergarten. He says ("Laws," Jowett's
translation, p. 815): "In that country systems of calculation have
been actually invented for the use of children, which they learn as a
pleasure and amusement. They have to distribute apples and garlands,
adapting the same number to either a larger or less number of persons;
and they distribute to pugilists and wrestlers, or they follow one
another, or pair together by lot. Another mode of amusing them is by
taking vessels of gold, and brass, and silver, and the like, and
mingling them, or distributing them without mingling. As I was saying,
they adapt to their amusement the numbers in common use, and in this
way make more intelligible to their pupils the arrangements and
movements of armies and expeditions, and in the management of a
household they make people more useful to themselves, and wide-awake."
This, together with the well known expectation of the Egyptians to be
judged after death according to the "deeds done in the body," as our
sacred writings have it, affords a high idea of their serious and
lofty turn of mind, as well as of the great advance they had made
toward a true notion of the means of education.
CHAPTER II.
MUSIC AMONG THE HEBREWS AND ASSYRIANS.
Second in point of antiquity, but first in modern association, comes
the music of the Hebrews, and of the other allied nations of Assyria
and Babylon, from whom they learned a part of their art of music. The
place of music in the cult of the Hebrews was very large and
important, yet in spite of this fact they never elevated their music
into an art, strictly so called. There are no evidences of a
progressive development of instruments and a tonal sense among this
people. As they were when first we meet them, so they continued until
they pass out of the view of history as a nation, when the sacrificial
fires went out in the great temple at Jerusalem on the 11th of July,
A.D. 70, and the heathen Roman defiled the altars of God. In the
beginning Genesis tells us of one Jubal, who was the father of such as
handle the harp and the organ (kinnor and ugabh--the little triangular
harp of Assyria, and the shepherd's pipe, which here stands for all
sorts of wind instruments). In the course of the centuries the harp
changed its form somewhat, and perhaps had an increased number of
strings; the flute was multiplied into several sub-varieties, and the
horn was added. From Egypt they had the timbrel, a tambourine, to
which Miriam, the sister of Moses, intoned the sublime canticle, "The
horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." There were also the
sistra, those metallic instruments serving in the temple service the
same purpose that the bells serve in the mass at the present
day--that, namely, of letting the distant worshipers know when the
solemn moment has arrived.
Vast numbers of musicians were employed in the greater temple service,
4,000 being mentioned in I Chronicles xxiii, 5, as praising God with
the kinds of instruments appointed by David. According to Josephus,
this great number was vastly increased in still later times, the
numbers given being 200,000 trumpeters and 40,000 harpers and players
upon stringed instruments. Even if we take the figures as greatly
exaggerated, they show nevertheless that the art of music had a great
place among this people.
The instruments known were few in number, and their type underwent
little change from the earliest days. The principal instrument of the
older time was the _Kinnor_, or little triangular harp, which we find
in the record of the primeval Jubal, and which more than 1,000 years
later was played before Saul to defend him from the evil spirit. This
also was the instrument most prominent in the temple service, and this
again was hung upon the willows of Babylon. The name kinnor is said to
have been Phoenician, a fact which points to this as the source of
its derivation. It is not easy to see how this could well be, unless
we regard the name as having been applied to the invention of Jubal at
a later time, for Jubal lived many years anterior to the founding of
the great metropolis of the Mediterranean. The kinnor was a small harp
having from ten to twenty strings. The usual forms are shown in the
accompanying illustration. The strings were fastened upon a metal rod
lying along the face of the sounding board. The type of construction
is totally unlike that of the Egyptian harps, and its musical powers
were apparently considerably inferior. Its form was the following:
[Illustration: Fig. 8.]
Another instrument often mentioned in the English version of the Bible
is the psaltery, of which the form is somewhat uncertain, but is
thought to have been four-sided. Various ancient representations have
been supposed to be this instrument, but none of them satisfactorily,
at least not authoritatively. It was probably a variety of harp. The
nebel is also said to have been a psaltery, but its etymology points
to the Phoenician nabel, a triangular harp like a Greek delta. The
forms of the psaltery were four-sided or triangular. It was probably
the predecessor of the Arab canon, which again is much the same as the
santir. (See Fig. 25.)
There were two kinds of flute, both of them reed pipes, the smaller
being merely a shepherd's pipe. They were used for lamentations and
for certain festivals, as in Isaiah xxx, 29: "Ye shall have a song as
in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart as
when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, the
Holy One of Israel."
Many of the different names of musical instruments in the common
version of the Scriptures are merely blunders of the Septuagint
translators, who rendered the word kinnor by about six different
terms, where no distinction had been originally intended by the sacred
writers.
[Illustration: Fig. 9.]
Among the Hebrews we find the same progression from men alone as
musicians to women almost exclusively, and it is likely that the
Hebrews gained the idea from Egypt. Jubal was the discoverer of the
harp, according to the tradition in Genesis, and David manifested no
loss of manliness while playing before the Lord. Nevertheless when he
sang and danced before the ark his wife despised him in her heart.
Miriam, the sister of Moses, may well have been a professional
musician, one of the singing and dancing women, such as are
represented over and over again in the monuments. In the time of
Moses, and for some time later, women had no status in the public
service; but in the later days of the second temple the women singers
are an important element of the display. Ezra and Nehemiah speak of
them, and the son of Sirach, in the Apocrypha, recommends the reader
to "beware of female singers, that they entice thee not with their
charms."
According to the views of many writers, the Hebrews had a larger harp
than the small one represented in Fig. 8. It may have been something
like one which was found in Egypt, but the form is clearly Assyrian,
belonging to the same type as the small harps already given. It
certainly is not Egyptian. (See Fig. 9.)
The liturgy of the temple must have been singularly noble and
imposing. Never had a church so grand a body of poetry as this of the
Hebrews, which they heard in the very sonorous words of David, Moses,
Isaiah and Ezekiel, with all the subtle suggestion of a vernacular as
employed by minds of the first poetic order. The Hebrew parallelism
afforded exactly the kind of formula in which one congregation could
most effectively respond to another.
"The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof;
The world and they that dwell therein;
For He hath founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the floods.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in His holy place?"
When the priests had intoned one line, we may suppose that the whole
choir of Levites made answer in the second line, completing the
parallelism.
There are other psalms in which the people have a refrain which comes
in periodically, as, for instance, in the one: "O give thanks unto
the Lord; [refrain] for His mercy endureth forever." (Ps. cxxxvi.)
[Illustration: Fig. 10.]
The voice of these masses stood to the Hebrews' mind as the feeble
type of the great song which should go up from the entire Israel of
God when the scattered members of the cult were gathered in their time
of fullness and glory. For us also the same image stands. And while
the art of this venerable and singularly gifted people did not attain
a place of commanding influence upon the tonal side of music, it
nevertheless has borne no small part in affording a vantage ground for
later art in the line of noble conceptions, inspiring motives and
brilliant suggestions. It has been, and still is, one of the most
potent influences in the art-music of the world. Nor is it without
interest that the scattered representatives of this race have been
and continue to be ministers of art in all the lands into which they
have come. The race of Israel has made a proud record in modern music,
no less than that of the ancient temple.
II.
The Assyrians held music in honor, and employed it for liturgical
purposes, as well as those of social and private life. Among the
discoveries at Nineveh and Babylon are many of a musical character.
Strong bearded men are playing upon harps which are of a triangular
form, but of a different structure to any which we have thus far
given. (See Fig. 10.)
The one upon the left is a eunuch. In the following figure we have the
banjo-like instrument so constantly seen in the Egyptian
representations.
[Illustration: Fig. 11.]
There are several instances of some sort of an instrument, apparently
consisting of metallic plates or rods, played by means of a hammer.
Many have considered these to have been the original type of the
modern instruments of percussion, where metal plates are vibrated by
means of hammers or mallets. The following is one of this kind.
[Illustration: Fig. 12.]
The general appearance of these processions indicates that the
Assyrians were in the habit of massing a large number of players upon
important occasions. We have no idea what the effect of this music can
have been, but upon the tonal side it cannot have had any great
resonance or power. Enough if it satisfied the ears of the dignified
players and those who employed their services as a part of the pageant
of their great festivals.
CHAPTER III.
MUSIC AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS.
Upon several accounts the development of the art of music among the
ancient Greeks is both important and interesting. Our word "music" is
theirs; it carries within its etymology the derivation from the Muses,
the nine agreeable divinities who presided over the more becoming and
nobler activities of the Greek mind. By music the Greeks meant much
more than merely the tonal art itself. Under this term they included
pretty much all that they had of a liberal education; grammar,
history, rhetoric, mathematics, poetry and song--all were included in
this one elastic and comprehensive term. Music itself, the art of
tone-sequence, they called harmony.
Our information concerning the general course of the development of
music among this people is pretty accurate through a period of about
1300 years. The entire course of the Greek history of music may be
divided into four great divisions, each of which was principally
devoted to a certain part of the art. These divisions begin at a date
which we might take approximately at about 1000 B.C., when the Homeric
poems began to be chanted or sung by traveling minstrels called
Rhapsodists. The schools of rhapsodies lasted for about 250 years,
when choral and patriotic song began to be developed. In connection
with this part of the history, there was in the later portion of it a
more ornamental and fanciful development of the smaller and social
uses of song, represented by Sappho, Anacreon and others. This period
endured for about two centuries and a half, and by insensible degrees
passed into the Attic drama, which came to its maturity at the hands
of Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides about 450 B.C.
Here was the culmination of Greek musical art upon the purely artistic
and æsthetic side. Then followed a period of philosophizing, theory
and mathematical deduction, which extended to the end of the
Alexandrian schools, about 300 A.D. The limits of the present work do
not permit tracing this course of progress with the amplitude which
its relation to liberal education would otherwise warrant, or even to
the extent which its bearing upon the present ideals of the tonal art
would justify, were not the range of subjects indispensable to even a
summarized treatment of musical history so wide as it has now become.
But the general features of the different steps in the Greek music are
the following:
As already noticed, the earliest traces of music are those in the
Homeric poems, which are thought to have been composed about 1000 B.C.
In these we find the minstrel everywhere a central figure, an honored
guest, ready at call to entertain the company with some ballad of the
ancient times, or to improvise a new one appropriate to the case in
hand. The heroes themselves were not loth to take part in these
exercises. Ulysses, the Odyssey tells us, occasionally took the lyre
in his own hand and sang a rhapsody of his own adventures. Several
centuries later, Solon, one of the famed seven wise men of Greece,
composed the rhapsody of "Salamis, or the Lost Island," and sang it in
a public assembly of the Athenians with so much effect that an
expedition was organized, with Solon at its head, for its recovery,
which presently followed triumphantly.
Many passages in the Odyssey will occur to the classical reader in
illustration of the position of the minstrel in Argos in the earlier
times. For example (Odyssey I, 400, Bryant's translation):
"Silent all
They sat and listened to the illustrious bard
Who sang of the calamitous return
Of the Greek host from Troy, at the command
Of Pallas. From her chamber o'er the hall
The daughter of Icarius, the sage queen
Penelope, had heard the heavenly strain,
And knew its theme. Down by the lofty stairs
She came, but not alone; there followed her
Two maidens. When the glorious lady reached
The threshold of the strong-built hall, where sat
The suitors, holding up a delicate veil
Before her face, and with a gush of tears,
The queen bespake the sacred minstrel thus:
'Phemius, thou knowest many a pleasing theme--
The deeds of gods and heroes, such as bards
Are wont to celebrate. Take, then, thy place,
And sing of one of these, and let the guests
In silence drink the wine; but cease this strain;
It is too sad. It cuts me to the heart,
And wakes a sorrow without bounds--such grief
I bear for him, my lord, of whom I think
Continually; whose glory is abroad
Through Hellas and through Argos, everywhere.'
"And then Telemachus, the prudent, spake--
Why, O my mother! canst thou not endure
That thus the well graced poet should delight
His hearers with a theme to which his mind
Is inly moved? The bards deserve no blame;
Jove is the cause, for he at will inspires
The lay that each must sing.'"
Later than the Homeric rhapsodists, the Hesiodic poems were composed
and sung similarly by wandering minstrels, who, although wandering,
were not on that account lowly esteemed. There were regular schools,
or more properly guilds, of rhapsodists, into which only those were
admitted as masters who were able to treat the current topics with the
light and inspiring touch of real poetry, and only those taken as
apprentices who evinced proper talent and promise. The training of
these schools was long, partly spent in acquiring technique of
treating subjects and the mastery of the lyre, and partly in
memorizing the Homeric and Hesiodic hymns. It is supposed that these
poems were transmitted for more than three centuries orally in this
way, before having been reduced to writing.
In Hesiod's poem of "The Shield of Hercules" (Bank's translation,
365), the general idea of the Greek festive processions is
illustrated:
"There men in dances and in festive joys
Held revelry. Some on the smooth-wheeled car
A virgin bride conducted; then burst forth
Aloud the marriage song; and far and wide
Long splendors flash'd from many a quivering torch
Borne in the hands of slaves. Gay blooming girls
Preceded, and the dancers followed blithe:
These, with shrill pipe indenting the soft lip,
Breath'd melody, while broken echoes thrill'd
Around them; to the lyre with flying touch
Those led the love-enkindled dance. A group
Of youths was elsewhere imaged, to the flute
Disporting; some in dances, and in song;
In laughter others. To the minstrel's flute
So pass'd they on; and the whole city seem'd
As fill'd with pomps, with dances, and with feasts."
So again in the same poem (274) there is a scene of a minstrel contest
among the immortal gods themselves, described by the poet from one of
the scenes upon the shield of Hercules.
"And the tuneful choir appear'd
Of heaven's immortals; in the midst, the son
Of Jove and of Latona sweetly rang
Upon his golden harp; th' Olympian mount,
Dwelling of gods, thrill'd back the broken sound.
And there were seen th' assembly of the gods
Listening; encircled with beatitude;
And in sweet contest with Apollo there
The virgins of Pieria raised the strain
Preluding; and they seemed as though they sang
With clear, sonorous voices."
As early as 750 B.C. we find the famous rhapsodist, Terpander,
summoned to Sparta to sing patriotic songs, in the hope of preventing
a secession of this rather unruly state. He accomplished his mission,
a circumstance creditable alike to the talent of the poet-minstrel and
the high estimation in which the class was held.
The application of music to patriotic purposes was no novelty.
Plutarch, in his "Life of Lycurgus," says that "Thales was famed for
his wisdom and his political abilities; he was withal a lyric poet
who, under cover of exercising his art, performed as great things as
the most excellent lawgivers. For his odes were so many persuasions to
obedience and unanimity, and as by means of numbers they had great
grace and power, they softened insensibly the manners of the audience,
drew them off from the animosities which then prevailed, and united
them in zeal for excellence and virtue." Again, of the subject matter
of the Spartan songs, he says: "Their songs had a spirit which could
arouse the soul and impel to an enthusiastic action. The language was
plain and manly; the subject serious and moral. For they consisted
chiefly of praises of heroes who had died for Sparta, or else of
expressions of detestation for such wretches as had declined the
glorious privilege."
About this time the art of choral song began to be much cultivated in
Greece, particularly in connection with the cult of certain
divinities, especially Dionysos and Apollo. By the term choral song we
are not to understand anything resembling our singing of a chorus in
parts. There was no part-singing in Greece, but merely a singing, or
rather chanting, of national and patriotic songs in unison,
accompanied by the cithara, the national instrument.
Plato speaks of the imitative and semi-dramatic character of the
choral dance ("Laws," II, 655): "Choric movements are imitations of
manners occurring in various actions, chances, characters--each
particular is imitated, and those to whom the words, the song or the
dances are suited, either by nature or habit, or both, cannot help
feeling pleasure in them and calling them beautiful."
About 500 B.C. a room was rented upon the market place for the
practice of the chorus. Every town had its body of singers, who sang
and performed the evolutions of the representative dance appropriate
to the service of the particular divinity to whom they were devoted.
Presently competitive singing came into vogue, in connection with the
famous games, and the art of the poet was taxed, as well as the
musical and more purely vocal arts of the singers themselves, striving
in honorable competition for the glory of their native towns.
In some of the festival occasions the proceedings of the choral songs
were varied by the leader, who improvised rhapsodies upon topics
connected with the life of the divinity or upon national stories. At
proper points the chorus came in with the refrain, which remained a
fixed quantity, being put in, apparently, at whatever points the
inspiration or breath of the leader needed a point of repose. None of
these compositions have come down to us, but the allusions to them in
ancient writings give, perhaps, a sufficiently accurate idea of their
nature.
The added interest incident to the fresh improvisations of the leader
in this form of choral song presently opened toward a lyric drama.
Thespis is credited with having been the first to place the leader
upon a centrally located stage where he could be plainly seen and
heard by all concerned. Now the recitations became more dramatic, the
choruses more varied. The speaker illustrated by gestures the acts
which he described; he varied his style of delivery according to the
feeling appropriate to the incidents represented. The chorus meanwhile
was not upon the stage, but in a central location below, and during
their strophes they circled around the platform of the leader in a
sort of mystic dance, each man accompanying himself upon his cithara.
From this to adding a second speaker to the one already upon the stage
was but a short step. It was taken, and the result was a drama with a
chorus in connection. In the earlier plays the speakers represented as
many characters as necessary for carrying out the action. Later they
changed costume to some extent, the chorus meanwhile occupying the
time with their own songs, which generally had the character of a
comment upon the action as developed at the moment. The changes of
costume were extremely slight, merely a different head dress, a mantle
or some slight modification of appearance more or less symbolical in
character. All the dialogue was delivered in a musical voice, and, it
is thought, all accompanied by the cithara, which every player carried
in his hand. The instrument was sometimes played all the time, in the
same notes as those of the song or chant; at other, times the speaker
employed it for ritournelles, for affording breathing time or points
of emphasis. Once in a great while, it is thought, the instrument had
a note different from that of the song in connection with it. Upon
this point great uncertainty prevails.
At length, about 470 B.C., Æschylus, the great tragedian, made his
début as actor and author, and placed three speakers upon the stage.
Besides the three principals, each man had a suite, if his station
demanded such an appendage according to the ideas or customs of the
times. These, however, had the rank of supernumeraries, merely
following the speaker around, but never taking part in the dialogue.
The principals each represented more than one character, effecting
some slight change of costume for indicating the transformation. The
stage was simply an open platform, with three doors in the rear. The
actor entering by one door represented a prince at home; from another
a prince abroad; by another door he represented a common person. The
chorus occupied the central place in front of the stage, much in the
same location as the parquet is now. In the center of this space was
an altar, originally dedicated to Dionysos, and an offering was
probably placed upon it. Later the Choreagos, or leader of the chorus,
sat upon it and directed the movements of the singers, much as the
operatic director does now. The theaters were very large, being vast
amphitheaters, open to the sky, but with an awning available over the
more expensive seats. The seats were of stone, arranged exactly like
those in a modern circus. The theater in Athens is said to have held
25,000 persons. At first admission was free, the theater being
conducted by the state. The plays were mounted very expensively at
times, although with the absence of scenery or properties of an
elaborate character it is not easy to imagine what was the use made of
the vast sums reported to have been expended in different productions.
There was a rivalry of leading citizens, each taking upon himself the
expense of mounting a new play, and striving to outdo the last before
him upon the list.
There were three great dramatic authors whose names have come down to
us as the Shakespeares of the Athenian drama. They were Æschylus,
Sophocles and Euripides. All were great poets, the first perhaps the
greatest. Sophocles was a fine musician and an elegant poet, and for
many years he remained the popular idol. All these men wrote not only
the words of the plays, but the music as well, every phrase of every
character having been noted for musical utterance, and all the choral
effects carefully planned. Besides this he composed what was then
called the "Orchestic," whence we have our word orchestra. By
orchestic they meant an apparatus of mystical dancing or posturing and
marching and certain gestures. We do not know precisely what this
famous orchestic was, for no example of it has come down to us in
intelligible form. But from the descriptions of it by contemporary
writers, it seems to have formed the pantomimic complement of the
acting, with a certain added grace of art in grouping and posturing,
suited to attract and satisfy the eye of a public accustomed to
national games, and the beautiful conceptions of Phidias upon the
Parthenon frieze. Thus, as will be readily seen, this drama was
essentially opera. For reasons to be hereafter detailed, the music is
thought to have been of slight tonal value. This is inferred from the
compass of the instruments and the general deficiency of the Greeks
upon this side, although popular report assigns them a place entirely
different. This mystical drama, leaving so much to the imagination,
and supplementing its actual representation by the help of chorus and
a sort of sanctity derived from music, lasted but a few years. Other
causes were at work destined to bring it to a close.
Almost immediately after Euripides, appeared the great comedy writer,
Aristophanes, about 420 B.C. This great artist was not simply a
dramatist, but also a patriot and a philosopher. In several of his
plays he satirizes the classical dramas effectively, parodies their
effects, and in general pokes fun at them. He was, however, a well
accomplished musician, who might, if he had chosen, have gone on in
the steps of his predecessors. But the times were not favorable to
this. Previous to the time of Socrates, orators in addressing popular
assemblies, lawyers in pleading cases, and all public speakers, appear
to have made use of the cithara as a sort of accompaniment, if for no
other purpose than to assure themselves of securing a proper pitch of
the voice. But Socrates drew attention to verbal distinctions, made
words the image of exact concepts, and in general set in operation an
era of scientific classification and purely intellectual development,
into which music could not enter, especially in a form so poor upon
the tonal side as Greek art then was, and always remained. Then came
the great orators, of whom Demosthenes was the greatest, who seems to
have been the first to speak without musical aids; and Plato, with his
philosophy; and after him the great Aristotle, the father of
scientific classification and orderly knowledge.
To a disciple of Aristotle, Aristoxenus, we are indebted for the first
really musical work which has come down to us. It is true that the
so-called Problems of Aristotle contain many of a musical character,
showing that this great master observed tonal effects in a purely
musical spirit, but he did not make a scientific treatise upon the
art. In his Politics he has much admirable matter relating to music,
and its influence upon the feelings and its office in life has hardly
been better explained than by him. But music upon the practical side
remained a sealed book.
Among the lucid musical questions of Aristotle's Problems (which, if
not by Aristotle himself, are at least the product of his time or the
succeeding century) he refers to the phenomena of sympathetic
resonance; he asks further, why it is that when _mese_ (the keynote of
the lyre) is out of tune everything is out of tune; yet when any other
string is out of tune it affects only the particular string which is
not correctly adjusted. One of his most instructive, but also, as it
turned out, most misleading questions was why they did not magadize
(sing in) fourths and fifths as well as in octaves, since the
consonances of the fourth and the fifth are almost as well sounding as
those of the octave. This question appears to have led to the practice
of what Hucbald called "diaphony." This question, it may be remarked
incidentally, is conclusive that they did _not_ use the third as a
consonance in Aristotle's time, nor sing together in fourths, fifths,
or any other intervals than the octave.
In spite of the talk about music by the Greek writers, musical theory,
in an exact form, occupies but a small place in the volume of their
works. The earliest theorist of whom we have any account was
Pythagoras, who lived about 580 B.C. He was one of the first of the
Greek wise men to avail himself of the opening of Egypt to foreigners,
which took place by Psammeticus I in the year 600 B.C. Pythagoras
lived there twenty years in connection with one of the temples, where
he seems to have gained the confidence of the priesthood and learned
much of his philosophy and so-called musical science. He defined the
mathematical relation of the octave as produced by half of a given
string, the fifth produced by two-thirds and the fourth by
three-fourths. He also found the ratio of the major step by
subtracting the fourth from the fifth. This was the ratio 9:8. With
this as a measure he attempted to place the tones of the tetrachord,
or Greek scale of four tones, which was the unit of their tonal
system. This gave him two major steps, and a half step somewhat too
small, being equal to the ratio of 256:243.
The most important part of Pythagoras' influence upon the art of music
was of a sentimental character. From Egypt he acquired many ideas of a
musical nature, such as that certain tones represented the planets,
and that time was the essence of all things. It was one of the laws of
his religion that before retiring at night his disciples should sing a
hymn in order to compose their spirits and prepare them for rest. The
verses selected for this use were probably of a devotional character,
like what are now known as the Orphic hymns, of which the lines upon
the next page may be taken as a specimen. Ambros well remarks that
such hymns could only have been sung appropriately to melodies of a
choral-like character.
"Thou ruler of the sea, the sky, and vast abyss,
Thou who shatterest the heavens with Thy thunder peals;
Thou before whom spirits fall in awe, and gods do tremble;
Thou to whom fates belong, so wise, so unrelenting Thou;
Draw near and shine in us."
Various musicians and theorists later are credited with having made
additions to the musical resources of the Greeks, and it was a
proverb, said of any smart man, that he "added a new string to the
lyre." This was said of Terpander especially; but it is pretty certain
that the lyre had six or seven strings some time before Terpander, and
that the form of expression was purely symbolical, as if they had said
of him "he set the river on fire." The first real contributions to
musical science after the Problems of Aristotle, already cited, are
the two works of his pupil Aristoxenus--one on harmony, the other on
rhythm. These give a full account of the Greek musical systems, and
are the source of the greater part of our information upon the
subject. From them it appears that the basis of their scale was the
tetrachord of four tones, placed at an interval of two steps and a
half step. The outside tones of the tetrachord remained fixed upon the
lyre, but the two middle ones were varied for the purpose of
modulation. The Dorian tetrachord corresponded to our succession mi,
fa, sol, la; the Phrygian re, mi, fa, sol; the Lydian from do. Besides
these modes, the Greeks had what they called genera, of which there
were three--the diatonic, to which the examples already given belong;
the chromatic, in which the tetrachord had the form of mi, fa, fi, la,
the interval between the two upper tones being equal to a step and a
half; and the enharmonic, in which the first two intervals were
one-quarter of a step and the upper one a major third. We are
entirely ignorant of the practical use made of these different forms
of scale. Whether the quarter tones were used habitually, or were
glided like appoggiaturas, or passing tones, has been vigorously
maintained on both sides by different writers. The evidence seems to
point to the enharmonic as having been the most ancient, and the
chromatic and diatonic gradually superseding it. In Plato, Aristotle
and many of the Greek writers, especially in Athenæus, much is said
about the characteristic expression of the different modes, but as
they are mutually contradictory, one saying of a given mode that it is
bold and manly, while another calls it feeble and enervating, we may
leave this for the antiquarians to settle for themselves.
After Aristotle, there were several Greek theorists who devoted
themselves to mathematical computations, the favorite problem seeming
to be to find as many ways as possible of dividing the major fourth,
or the ratio 4:3, into what they called super-particular ratios--that
is to say, a series of fractions in which each numerator differed from
the denominator by unity. They had observed that all the ratios
discovered by Pythagoras had this character, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 8/9, and
they attributed magical properties to the fact, and sought to
demonstrate the entire theory of music by the production of similar
combinations. The latest writer of the Greek school was Claudius
Ptolemy, who lived at Alexandria about 150 A.D. In his work upon
harmony he gives a very large number of tables of fractions of this
kind--his own and those of all previous Greek theorists, and it is to
his book that we principally owe all the exact knowledge of Greek
musical theory which we possess. Among other computations, Ptolemy
gives the precise formula of the first four notes of the scale as we
now have it, but as this occurred only as one among many of a similar
character, and is in no way distinguished from any of the others by
any adjective implying greater confidence in it, we can only count it
as a lucky accident. The eminence that has been awarded to Ptolemy as
the original discoverer of the correct ratio of the major scale,
therefore, does not properly belong to him.
This will more clearly appear from the entire table of the various
determinations of the diatonic mode made by Ptolemy, taken from his
work. (Edition by John Wallis, Oxford, 1682, pp. 88 and 172.) He gives
no less than five of his own forms of diatonic genus, as follows: (The
fractions give vibration ratios.)
Soft diatonic, 8/7 × 10/9 × 21/20 = 4/3.
Medium diatonic, 9/8 × 8/7 × 28/27 = 4/3.
Intense diatonic, 10/9 × 9/8 × 16/15 = 4/3.
Equable diatonic, 10/9 × 11/10 × 12/11 = 4/3.
Diatonic diatonic, 9/8 × 9/8 × 256/243 = 4/3.
Among these there is no one that is correct or rational. The proper
ratios are given in the diatonic intense, but the large and small
steps stand in the wrong order. It is in Ptolemy's record of the
determinations of Didymus (born at Alexandria, 63 B.C.) that the true
tuning of the first four tones of the scale occurs. This is it:
Diatonic (Didymus), 9/8 × 10/9 × 16/15 = 4/3.
Thus it appears that it was Didymus, and not Ptolemy, who proposed the
tuning of the tetrachord which is now accepted as correct. It is very
evident from the entire course of the discussion as conducted by
Ptolemy that his calculations were purely abstract. He is to be
reckoned among the Pythagoreans, who held that in time and number all
things consist. It was not until some centuries later that the happy
thought of Didymus came to recognition as the true statement of the
mathematical relation of the first four tones of the scale, and then
only through the ears of a race of musicians following the great
thesis of Aristoxenos, that in music it is always the ear which must
be the arbiter, and not abstract reasoning or calculation. The ratios
of the major and minor third also occur among the calculations of
Didymus; but here, again, they count for nothing in the history of
art, because these intervals derive their value and expressive quality
from their harmonic relation, while Didymus and all the Greeks
employed them as melodic skips only, and reckoned them in with a
multitude of other skips and progressions, without distinguishing them
in any way.
The one characteristic instrument of Greek music from the earliest to
the latest days was the lyre. In the oldest times, those of Homer and
Hesiod, it was called phorminx, which is believed to have been the
form so often represented on Greek vases of a turtle shell with side
pieces like horns, an instrument having but little effective
resonance. The later form was the so-called cithara, the most common
shape of which is that made familiar to all by the pedal piece of the
square pianoforte. This instrument rarely had more than six strings,
and as it had no finger board it could have had no more notes than
strings. Chappell, the English historian, attempts to demonstrate that
certain ones of these instruments had a bridge dividing the string
into two parts, thus largely increasing the compass, but the evidence
supporting this hypothesis is not satisfactory. Plato speaks of
instruments of many strings imported from Asia, which seem to have
been the fashion or fad in his day. He disapproved of them very
heartily, but the terms in which he speaks of them show that he cannot
have been very familiar with their appearance, for it is impossible to
make out what he is driving at.
[Illustration: Fig. 13.
LYRE.]
[Illustration: Fig. 14.
CITHARA.]
There is considerable doubt as to the extent to which the larger
instruments of Asiatic origin penetrated the general musical practice
of Greece. Athenæus, in his "Banquets of the Learned" (B. xvi, C),
quotes Anakreon as saying:
"I hold my magadis, and sing,
Striking loud the twentieth string,
Leucaspis at the rapid hour
Leads you to youth and beauty's bower."
Most certainly the lyre of Terpander had no twenty strings.
The so-called Greek flute was a very reedy oboe or clarinet, a pipe
played with a reed, the pitch determined by holes stopped by the
fingers. These instruments were so hard to blow that the players wore
bands over their cheeks because there were cases on record where, in
the contests, they broke their cheeks by the wind pressure. The flute
or aulos does not seem to have been used in connection with the
cithara at all, and the Greeks had nothing corresponding to what we
call an orchestra. The aulos was appropriate to certain religious
services and to certain festivals, and it had a moderate status in the
various contests of the national games, but the great instrument of
Greek music, the universal dependence for all occasions, public and
private, was the lyre.
In spite of the meager resources of Greek music upon its tonal side,
this development of art has had a very important bearing upon the
progress of music, even down to our own times. Opera was re-discovered
about 1600 in the effort to re-create the Greek musical drama, and the
ideal proposed to himself by Richard Wagner was nothing else than that
of a new music drama in which the severe and lofty conceptions of the
old Greek poets should be embodied in musical forms the most advanced
that the modern mind has been able to conceive. Upon the æsthetic side
musical theory is entirely indebted to the Greek. Nothing more
suitable or appropriate can be said concerning musical taste and
cultivation than what was said by Aristotle 300 years before Christ.
For example, he has the following (Politics, viii, C. Jowett's
translation, p. 245): "The customary branches of education are in
number four. They are: (1) reading and writing, (2) gymnastic
exercises, (3) music, to which is somewhat added (4) drawing. Of
these, reading, writing and drawing are regarded as useful to the
purposes of life in a variety of ways." He recommends the study of
music as part of the preparation of the fit occupation of leisure.
"There remains, then, the use of music for the intellectual enjoyment
of leisure; which appears to have been the reason of its introduction,
this being one of the ways in which it is thought that a freeman
should pass his leisure; as Homer says:
'How good it is to invite men to the pleasant feast,'
and afterward he speaks of others whom he describes as inviting
'The bard who would delight them all' (Od. xvii, 385);
and in another place he says that there is no better way of passing
life than when
'Men's hearts are merry, and the banqueters in the hall
Sitting in order hear the voice of the minstrel.'"
Plato is particular that only the noble harmonies shall be permitted
in his state. He says, "Of the harmonies I want to have one warlike,
which will sound the word or note which a brave man utters in the hour
of danger or stern resolve, or when his cause is failing and he is
going to wounds or death, or is overtaken by some other evil, and in
every such crisis meets fortune with calmness and endurance; and
another which may be used by him in times of peace and freedom of
action, when there is no pressure of necessity--expressive of entreaty
or persuasion or prayer to God, or of instruction to man, or again
willingness to listen to persuasion or entreaty or advice. These two
harmonies I ask you to leave; the strain of necessity and the strain
of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the
fortunate, the strain of courage and the strain of temperance; these,
I say, leave." These he explains will be only the Dorian and the
Phrygian harmonies. In another place Plato shows himself a disciple of
the Egyptian ideas of conservatism, already mentioned. "And therefore
when one of these clever and multiform gentlemen who can imitate
anything comes to our state, and proposes to exhibit himself and his
poetry, we will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and
wonderful being; but we must also inform him that there is no place
for such as he is in our state--the law will not allow him. And so
when we have anointed him with myrrh and set a garland of wool upon
his head, we shall send him away to another city." (Republic, Jowett,
iii, 398.)
In fact, upon the subject of music, Plato is one of the least
satisfactory of writers. He has many noble sentiments which might well
be printed in letters of gold and hung upon the walls of educational
institutions to-day, as ("Laws," Jowett's translation, 668): "Those
who seek for the best kind of song and music, ought not to seek for
that which is pleasant, but for that which is true." In another place,
however, he speaks of music as a kind of imitation. He says that music
without words is very difficult to understand. ("Laws," _ibid._, 668.)
All these inconsistencies disappear, however, as soon as we recognize
the limitations of the music which Plato knew, upon its tonal side.
All the richness of sense incitation, and all the definiteness of
expression which come into our modern music through the magic of
"tones in key," were wholly outside the range of Plato's knowledge.
The musical notation of the Greeks consisted of letters of the
alphabet placed over the syllables to which the tones indicated were
to be sung. The letters represented absolute pitch, and as, owing to
the variety of genera, modes and chroa, the total number of tones was
very large, parts of older forms of the alphabet were also employed,
the whole number of characters thus demanded being upwards of seventy.
There was little or no classification of tones, and the entire
twenty-four letters were applied in regular order to the diatonic
series of the Dorian mode. Tones in the chromatic or enharmonic modes
were named by other letters, and the system was extremely complicated.
The notes of the instrumental accompaniment were still different from
those of the vocal part. No genuine example of this music has come
down to us in reliable form, and curiously enough, no classical writer
gives any idea of the notation of music. All that we know of this
notation we derive from Alypius, who lived about 150 A.D. Athanasius
Kircher, a Jesuit of a monastery in Sicily, published in the last
century the text of what purported to be a fragment of the first
Pythic Ode of Pindar. (See page 69.) In the original the musical
characters stood in immediate proximity to the words of the text. At
the middle of the third line begins the chorus of Citharodists. As all
the musical characters of the Greeks indicated absolute pitch, the
student will discover the difference between the vocal and
instrumental notation by comparing the notes in the early part of the
ode with those of the same pitches noted for instruments later.
Three other pieces of similar apocryphal character have come down to
us. It is likely that these melodies, if not really genuine, as
related to the composition of Pindar, nevertheless belong to a period
a little anterior to the Christian era.
FRAGMENT OF THE FIRST PYTHIC ODE OF PINDAR,
According to the musical notation given by Athanasius Kircher, (F.A.
Gevaert's "_La Musique dans l'Antiquité_.")
[Greek: PINDAROU PYTHIONIKAI A'] (I're PYTHIQUE DE PINDARE)[1].
[Music illustration:
(Greek: Chry-se-a phor-minx, A-pol-lô-nos kai i-o-plo-ka-môn
syn-di-kon Moi-san kte-a-non, tas a-kou-ei men ba-sis
ag-la-ï-as ar-cha, pei-thon-tai d' a-oi-doi sa-ma-sin,
ha-gê-si-cho-rôn ho-po-tan pro-oi-mi-ôn
am-bo-las teu-chêis e-le-li-zo-me-na. Kai[2] ton
ai-chma-tan ke-rau-non sben-nu-eis.)]
[Footnote 1: KIRCHER, _Musurgia universalis_, I, p. 541.]
[Footnote 2: Le savant jésuite, ne connaissant que les notes du ton
lydien, aura probablement changé [Greek music symbol] (si [flat]_2) en
[Greek music symbol] (_si_ [flat]_2), signe inusité dans le trope
phrygien.]
NOTE.--The amateur unfamiliar with the C clef, will obtain
the true tonal effect of the above fragment from Pindar, by
considering the clef to be G, and the signature five flats.
This will transpose the piece one degree lower than above
written, but the melody will be preserved. In other words,
read it exactly like the treble part of any piano piece,
only considering the signature to be five flats.
CHAPTER IV.
MUSIC IN INDIA, CHINA AND JAPAN.
I.
Very important developments of the art of music took place in India
from a remote period, but dates are entirely uncertain. When the hymns
of the Rig-Veda were collected into their present form, which appears
to have been about 1500 B.C., music was highly esteemed. It was in
India that the art of inciting vibrations of a string by means of a
bow was discovered; and our violin had its origin there, but the date
is entirely unknown. The primitive violin was the ravanastron, which
the Ceylonese claim to have been invented by one of their kings, who
reigned about 5000 B.C. The form of this instrument is given in Fig.
16. It must have been some time before the Mohammedan invasion, for
they brought a rude violin back to Arabia, from whence it came into
Europe after the crusades. They had many forms of guitar, instruments
of percussion, and the varieties of viol, as well as trumpets and the
like. The national instrument was the vina. This was a sort of guitar,
its body made of a strip of bamboo about eight inches wide and four
feet long. Near each end a large gourd was fixed, for reinforcing the
resonance. In playing, it was held obliquely in front of the player,
like a guitar, one gourd resting upon the left shoulder, the other
under the right arm. It was strung with six strings of silk and wire,
and had a very elaborate apparatus of frets, much higher than those of
a guitar, many of them movable, in order to permit modulation into any
of the twenty-four Hindoo "modes." The instrument had a light, thin
tone, not unpleasing. A fine specimen is figured in "Hipkins' Plates
of Rare Instruments" in the South Kensington Museum, a copy of which
may be seen in the Newberry Library.
[Illustration: Fig. 15.
JIWAN CHAH.
(Portrait of Jiwan Chah, one of the latest masters of the vina. He
died about 1790.)]
The Hindoos carried the theory of music to an extremely fine point,
having many curious scales, some of them with twenty-four divisions in
an octave. Twenty-two was the usual number. The pitch of each note in
every mode was accurately calculated mathematically, and the frets of
the vina located thereby, according to very old theoretical works by
one Soma, written in Sanskrit at least as early as 1500 B.C. When this
work first became known to Europeans, its elaboration led it to be
regarded as a purely theoretical fancy piece, and it was thought to be
impossible that practical musicians could have been governed by
theories apparently so fine-drawn. A study of the structure of the
vina, however, perfectly adapted to these theories, set all doubts at
rest. None of the intervals of the Hindoo scale exactly correspond to
our own. Harmony they never conceived. Well sounding chords are
impossible in their scales. All their music was monodic--one-voiced.
[Illustration: Fig. 16.]
There was a curious development of the musical drama in India about
300 B.C., having certain of the traits of modern opera. Several of
these ancient pieces have come down to us, but without the musical
notes. They are long, consisting of as many as eleven acts, part of
them sung, part spoken. Curiously enough, the different acts are not
all in the same dialect. The musical acts are in Sanskrit, which had
then ceased to be a spoken language for at least 500 years; the spoken
acts were in Pakrit, a dialect of Sanskrit, which likewise had ceased
to be spoken for several centuries. A fuller account of the Hindoo
drama is given in Wilson's "Theater of the Hindoos." The curious
circumstance of the drama of the Hindoos of this epoch is that it was
contemporaneous with another very celebrated development of musical
drama in Greece.
Besides the primitive form of the bowed instrument, the ravanastron
(Fig. 16), many forms more advanced are figured among the instruments
from India in European museums, but as they are all of absurd and
impossible acoustical conception, besides being most likely of
comparatively modern origin, we do not present them at this point.
Later, in the history of the violin, one or two of the most curious
will be given.
II.
China has had an art of music from extremely remote periods, and
singularly sagacious ideas concerning the art were advanced there very
long ago, at a time when Europe and most other parts of the world were
still in the darkness of barbarism. For example: There is a saying of
the Emperor Tschun, about 2300 B.C., "Teach the children of the great;
thereby reached through thy care they will become mild and
reasonable, and the unmanageable ones able to receive dignities
without arrogance or assumption. This teaching must thou embody in
poems, and sing them therewith to suitable melodies and with the play
of instrumental accompaniment. The music must follow the sense of the
words; if they are simple and natural then also must the music be
easy, unforced and without pretension. Music is the expression of
soul-feeling. If now the soul of the musician be virtuous, so also
will his music become noble and full of virtuous expression, and will
set the souls of men in union with those of the spirits in heaven."
(Quoted by Ambros.)
[Illustration: Fig. 17.]
The principal instruments of Chinese music are the Kin and the Ke. The
former is a sort of guitar, of which no illustration has come to hand.
The main instrument of their culture-music is the ke, a stringed
instrument entirely unlike any other of which we have accounts, saving
the Japanese ko-ko, which was most likely derived from it. The ke is
strung with fifty strings of silk. Originally it had but twenty-five,
but in the reign of Hoang-Ti, about 2637 B.C., it is said to have been
enlarged to its present dimensions and compass. The appearance of the
ke and the arrangement of its bridges are shown in Fig. 17. The
strings were plucked with the fingers.
In the earlier times the Chinese had the pentatonic scale,
approximately the same as that of the black keys of the piano. Later
it was enlarged to seven notes in the octave, and it is claimed by
some that long before the Christian era they had a complete chromatic
scale of twelve tones in the octave. The evidence upon this point,
however, is insufficient. And even if they had this musical resource
at so early a period the fact counts very little to their credit,
since at best the chromatic scale is only an impure harmonic
compromise, which they have never learned to use understandingly.
Chinese music has always been monodic, and they use a great variety of
melodic shadings composed of intervals of small fractions of a step.
These they call lu. There are movable bridges which can be placed in
such way as to divide the strings of the ke at proper proportions of
its length for producing the lu. The places for the fingers upon the
finger board are marked by small brass points. Besides the intonations
due to stopping the strings, the players upon the ke are in the habit
of adding expression in a manner analogous to that of the _tremolo_ of
the modern violinist. With the left hand he touches the string beyond
the bridge and pulls it slightly, thus imparting to the tone a sliding
intonation upward or downward, familiar to all who have experimented
with strings. This habit the Japanese still have in playing their
ko-ko, and the results are said to be not unpleasing. The volume of
tone in the ke is very light, but the quality is sweet.
As a natural consequence of the long existence of this nation and
their commercial relations to the other parts of the world, which with
all their care they have never been able wholly to avoid, the Chinese
have many other varieties of instruments, including many trumpets; an
unexampled wealth of instruments of percussion, and a few of the
ruder types of the violin kind, which seem to have come in from India
or Thibet by the way of the Buddhist monks. The ravanastron is a
common instrument with the mendicant friars of this order. The
characteristic instrument of the Chinese, however, the one which
stands as the representative of all their higher musical culture, is
the ke.
In common with all other nations of antiquity, and with some of the
present day, the Chinese have always held strong conservative
opinions. The principle has been held among them from the earliest
times that the pattern of a good thing, whether a religion, an art or
a mechanism, having once been found satisfactory, should be made
official and never afterward changed. This principle, taken in
connection with the limited powers of their chief instrument, accounts
for the small progress they have made in music within the past 2000
years. It must be remembered, however, that our knowledge of the music
of this country is still far from perfect, the travelers and
missionaries from whom it has reached us not having been practical
musicians, nor having had sufficiently long opportunities for
mastering musical systems so different from what they had previously
known, and so contrary to all their inherited percepts of tone.
[Illustration: Fig. 18.]
The Japanese are a very musical people in their way. The chief
instrument of their culture is the ko-ko. (See Fig. 18.)
In structure it much resembles the Chinese ke. They have also many
other instruments, especially various kinds of imperfect guitars, a
few rude violins, and the usual outfit of trumpets, reed pipes and
instruments of percussion. Like all the other barbarous nations, they
have never had harmony until since they began to learn it from the
Europeans.
[Illustration]
Book Second.
THE
Apprentice Period of Modern Music.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF HARMONY, TONALITY, CANONIC IMITATION AND POLYPHONY.
THE GENERAL POPULARIZATION OF THE ART OF MUSIC IN EVERY DIRECTION.
CHAPTER V.
THE NATURE OF THE TRANSFORMATION, AND THE AGENCIES EFFECTING IT.
According to the division of the subject in the beginning of this
work, the period from the Christian era to that of Palestrina, A.D.
1600, is one of apprentice work, in which the details of art were
being mastered, but in which no music, according to our acceptation of
the term, was produced. The history of this period is somewhat
obscure, the writers who throw light on it averaging scarcely more
than one to a century, scattered about in different parts of Europe.
Nevertheless, the most important changes in the history of music took
place during this period. The monody and empyrical tonality of the
ancients gave place to polyphony and harmonized melodies resting upon
the relations of tones in key. New instruments came in, and the entire
practice of the art of music was deepened, ennobled and immeasurably
enlarged in every direction. There were four causes co-operating in
this transformation of the art, and it is not easy to say of any one
of them that this one was the chief. First of these, in the Roman
empire, or in the south of Europe more particularly, for about 800
years the Greek principles remained more or less in force. The Church
is here the foremost influence, and its part in the transformation
already noted will be considered presently. In the north of Europe the
Goths, Celts and Scandinavians built mighty empires and impressed
their enthusiastic and idealistic natures upon the whole form of
modern art. The Saracens conquered a foot-hold in the south of France
about 819, and remained there for twenty years. Their influence was
very important in the development of music, and became still more
active after the crusades, where the armies of the west came again in
contact with this peculiar civilization. Besides these three sources
measurably unprofessional and outside of music, or amateur, as we say
now, there was the work of the professional musicians strictly
so-called, who, from about 1100 in the old French school, commenced
the development of what is now known as polyphony, which culminated in
the hands of the Netherlanders, about 1580, Palestrina himself being
one of the latest products of this school. These influences reacted
upon each other, and all have entered into modern art, and have
imparted to it their most essential elements.
All modern music differs from the ancient in two important
particulars--_Harmony and Tonality_. Harmony is the use of combined
sounds. These may be either dissonant, inharmonious in relation to
each other, or harmonious, agreeable. All points of repose in a
harmonized piece of music must be consonant; or, to say it
differently, the combined sound (chord) standing at the beginning or
end of a musical phrase must be harmonious. All the elements in it
must bear consonant relations to all the others. Between the points of
repose the combined sounds may or may not be consonant. Under certain
conditions dissonances make an effect even better than consonance--better
because more appealing. The law of the introduction of dissonances is
that every dissonance must arise out of a consonance, and subside into
a consonance. When this law is observed there is hardly any
combination possible in the range of music which may not be employed
with good effect. Here already we have a progress in perception of
tones, in the ability to discriminate between those which harmonize
and those which dissonate. All consonance and dissonance are purely
relative. There is no such thing as a dissonant tone in music, by
itself considered; a tone becomes dissonant by being brought into
juxtaposition with some other tone with which it does not agree. This
part of the development of a tonal sense had its beginnings in Greece,
but only reached the point where the most elementary relations were
regarded as agreeable. The octave, the fourth and the fifth, were the
only consonances which they knew, and of these they used in the
combined sounds of their music only the octave. The third, which with
us is the most agreeable part of a pure harmony, because it adds so
many elements of agreement to the combined sound into which it enters,
was not only regarded as a dissonance by them, but actually _was_ a
dissonance as they tuned their scale.
The entire course of harmonic perception in modern music may be
roughly divided into three steps: First, the recognition of
consonance, especially of the most fruitful consonance of all--that of
the thirds, and the differentiation between consonance and dissonance.
A second step involved the recognition of dissonance as an element in
musical expression, on account of the motion it imparts to a harmonic
movement. Third, the establishment of these materials of music in the
mind in such depth and fullness that their æsthetic implications
became realized as elements of expression, so that when a composer had
a certain feeling to express, the proper combination of consonance and
dissonance immediately presented itself to his mind. The first of
these steps was taken by the minstrels of the north, somewhere between
the Christian era and the tenth century. The second was the particular
work of the old French school, the Netherlanders, and of all who
composed music between about 1100 A.D. and the epoch of Palestrina,
about 1600. The third, the spontaneous application of musical material
to the expression of feeling, had in it another element, that of
tonality, concerning which it is proper to say something at this
point.
By "tonality" is meant the dependence or interdependence of all the
tones in a key upon some one principal tone called the Key-tone. The
tonality of the music of the ancients was wholly artificial and
unreal. A mode and a point of repose for the melody were chosen
arbitrarily; the beginning was here made, and still more the ending
was conducted to this point of repose. Between the beginning and the
ending the same tones were employed, whether the melody proposed to
repose upon re, upon fa or do. The usual points of repose in Greek
music were mi, fa and re; never upon do, the real key tone, and rarely
upon la, the natural tonic of the minor mode.
One of the chief elements of modern musical expression, particularly
in the expression of melody, is the unconscious perception of the
"relation of tones in key." With every tone sung the singer conceives
not only that tone, its predecessor and its follower, but all other
tones in the entire course of the melody; and the expression of every
tone in the series rests upon its place in rhythm, and still more upon
its "place in key." Change a single tone in a melody, as, for
instance, to make fa a half step sharp, and the expression of the
entire melody is thereby changed, until such time as the hearer has
forgotten the change of key effected by the introduction of the
foreign tone. It is not at all unlikely that what little of melodic
expression the music of the Greeks had, may have rested to some extent
upon an unconscious perception of these relations, which, although
foreign to their musical theory, may nevertheless have made their way
into the ears of these acute minstrels. The discovery of simple
tonality seems to have been due to the northern minstrels, for it is
here that we find the earliest melodies purely tonalized. But the
natural bounds of a melodic tonality as established by these northern
harpers have been very much exceeded in modern times, so that now
there is hardly a chord possible which might not be introduced in the
course of a composition in any key whatever, without effecting a
digression into the new key suggested by the strange chord. Not only
all the natural or diatonic notes are regarded as belonging to a key,
but also all the chromatics, the sharps and flats, and the double
sharps and double flats.
All this implies a growth of tonal perception on the part of the
hearers, and especially of the ability to co-ordinate tonal
impressions over a wide and constantly increasing range. For the
hearer has in mind not only the particular tone which at the moment
occupies his ear, and the others which preceded it, and a sort of
inner feeling of the tone which will follow the present one, but also
all the other tones over which the singer would pass in going from one
tone to another. And unless he has this he cannot realize the true
place of the melody tone in key, and therefore rests unconscious of
its real expression. It is, indeed, possible for him to make a mistake
in regard to the tones which he unconsciously associates with the
tones actually heard--as, for example, when one hears an E followed by
a C higher, and one thinks of the four white keys of the piano between
them, while the melody may be thinking of the black keys between them.
In the one case the melody would be in the key of C, in the other of C
sharp minor. And the expression of the melodic skip would be
enormously changed thereby. This larger education of the faculties of
tonal perception and tonal co-ordination has been the work mainly of
the last century and a half, and more particularly of the present
century itself. During this period the progress has been more rapid
than within any other in the entire course of the history of our art,
and it is to the successive steps preparing for this that we now
address ourselves.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI.
THE MINSTRELS OF THE NORTH.
Upon many accounts the development of minstrelsy by the Celtic singers
and harpers was one of the most important of all the forces operative
in the transformation of the art from the monody of the ancients to
the expressive melody and rich harmony of modern music. As it is to a
considerable extent one side of the direct course of this history,
which hitherto has dealt largely with the south of Europe, the present
is the most convenient time for giving it the consideration its
importance deserves. I do this more readily because English influence
upon the development of music has generally been underrated by
continental writers, the erudite Fétis alone excepted; while their own
national writers, even, have not shown themselves generally conscious
of the splendid record which was made by their fathers.
The Celts appear upon the field of history several centuries before
the Christian era. Cæsar's account of them leaves no doubt of the
place which music held in their religion, education and national life.
The minstrel was a prominent figure, ready at a moment's notice to
perform the service of religion, patriotism or entertainment. There is
a tradition of one King Blegywied ap Scifyllt, who reigned in
Brittany about 160 B.C., who was a good musician and a player upon the
harp. While we have no precise knowledge of the music they sang in the
oldest times, it was very likely something like the following old
Breton air, which is supposed to have come down from the Druids. It is
full of a rude energy, making it impressive even to modern ears. By
successive migrations of Angles, Danes and Northmen, the Celts were
crowded into Wales, where they still remain. The harp has always been
their principal instrument, and for many centuries a rude kind of
violin called the crwth, of which there will be occasion to speak in
connection with the violin, at a later period in this work.
[Music illustration: OLD BRETON SONG.
Da-ik mab gwenn Drouiz, o-re;
Da-ik pe-tra fell d'id-de? pe-tra gan-inn-me d'id-de?--
Kan d'in euz aeur rann,
Ken a ouf-enn bre-man;--
Heb rann ar Red heb-ken:
An-Kou, tad ann an-ken;
Ne-tra kent ne tra ken.--
Da-ik mab gwenn Drouiz, o-re;
Da-ik pe-tra fell d'id-de? pe-tra gan-inn-me d'id-de?--
Kan d'in euz a zaou rann,
Ken a ouf-enn bre-man.]
According to the best authorities the bards were divided into three
great classes. The first class was composed of the historians and
antiquaries, who piqued themselves a little upon their sorcery, and
who, upon occasion, took up the rôles of diviners and prophets. The
second class was composed of domestic bards, living in private houses,
quite after the custom of ancient Greece. These we may suppose were
chiefly devoted to the annals and glories of their wealthy patrons.
The third class, the heraldic bards, was the most influential of all.
They wrote the national annals. All these classes were poet-bards as
well as musicians.
The musical bards were divided into three classes. In the first were
the players upon the harp; they were called doctors of music. To be
admitted into this class it was necessary that they should perform
successfully the three Mwchwl--that is, the three most difficult
pieces in the bardic repertory. The second class of musical bards was
composed of the players upon the crwth, of six strings. The third
class were the singers. From the wording of the requirement it would
seem that these must have had the same qualification as the first
class, and therefore have been true doctors of music. For, in addition
to being able to accord the harp or the crwth, and play different
themes with their variations, two preludes and other pieces "with
their sharps and their flats," they had to know the "three styles of
expression," and accent them with the voice in different styles of
song. They had also to know the twenty-four meters of poetry as well
as the "twenty-four measures of music." Finally, they must be able to
compose songs in many of these meters, to read Welsh correctly, to
write exactly, and to correct an ancient poem corrupted by the
copyists.
The classification of new bards was made at an Eisteddfod once in
three years. It was a public contest, after the custom of the Greeks.
The degrees were three, conferred at intervals of three years
respectively. The organization of the bards existed until the
sixteenth century; it was suppressed under Queen Elizabeth. The
Eisteddfod has been maintained until the present time. The learned
musical historian, J.J. Fétis, attended one in 1829, of which he has
left an interesting account. The performances of the blind minstrel of
Caernarvon, Richard Robinson, excited his admiration beyond anything
else that he mentions. He says: "His skill was something
extraordinary. The modern harp of Wales has no pedals for the
semitones in modulations. It is supplied with three ranks of strings,
of which the left and right give diatonic notes, those in the middle
the half-tones. Nothing more inconvenient could be imagined; in spite
of his blindness, this minstrel, in the most difficult passages,
seized the strings of the middle ranks with most marvelous address.
The innate skill of this musician of nature, the calm and goodness
painted upon his visage, rendered him an object of general interest."