Independently of the minstrels of this high class, they had also

wandering minstrels who played the crwth of three strings, and who

made themselves useful in the customary dances and songs of the

peasants and the common people.

There exists an old manuscript, supposed to have been begun in the

third or fourth century, _Y Trioeddy nys Prydain_ ("The Triads of the

Isle of Britain"). It contains the traditions from the ancient times

until the seventh century. Among the famous triads of this book are:

The three bards who bore the cloth of gold, Merlin Ambrosius, Merlin,

son of Morvryn, and Taleisin, chief of the bards. There were three

principles of song: Composition of poetry, execution upon the harp,

and erudition. In the sixth century we see the bards playing the harp

and singing their stirring songs with inspiring effect in animating

the hearts of their compatriots again in their successful combats

against the Saxons. Edward Jones, bard of the Prince of Wales in the

last part of the eighteenth century, preserved the names of

twenty-three bards who lived in the sixth century. The principal were

Taleisin pen Beirrd, Aneurin Gwawrydd, Gildas ab Caw, Gildas Badonius.

Taleisin was bard of Prince Elphin, then of King Maelgwin, and in the

last place of Prince Urien Reged. He lived about 550; a number of his

poems remain, but no fragment of his melody. Aneurin was author of

"Gododn," one of the best Welsh poems that has come down to us.

In the British Museum there is a manuscript supposed to have been

begun in the eleventh century, containing much music for the harp.

Among it are exercises in the curious notation of the Welsh, in which

chords are freely used, and in positions suggesting the immediate

occasion of their introduction--that, namely of supplementing the

small power of the instrument by sounding several tones together,

which, as octaves were impossible outside the middle range or pitch,

were necessarily chords. Among the songs given are several which

betray the transition period of tonality, when chords had come into

legitimate use, but the true feeling for a tonic had not yet been

acquired. The preceding, for instance, proceeds regularly in the key

of G in all respects but the very ending of each strain, which takes

place in the key of C. Or to speak tonically, the melody and

accompaniment after being written nearly all the way in the key of Do,

suddenly diverge to the key of Fa, and there close.

[Music illustration: DADLE DAU--THE TWO LOVERS.

Mae nhw'nd'wedyd na chai fa-wr, gid-a gwawr o gow aeth;

Bod-lon yd-w-i, os-cai'r. Fun, fod heb yr un gein-iog-w rth

Hwi daeew hi! Hwi daeew hi! a hwi daeew hi'rlan E-neth.

Hwi daeew hi! Hwi daeew hi! a hwi daeew hi'rlan brydferth.]

This old song was a great favorite with Henry V, while he

was yet Prince of Wales, and with his jolly companions he

used to shout it vigorously at the Bear's Head tavern, about

1410. (Edward Jones' "Relics of the Welsh Bards," p. 176)

Another (p. 94) is quite modern in spirit and treatment. It is a

vigorous love song, and there is a boisterous chorus of bards which

comes in with the refrain. A curious feature of this melody is the

full-measure rest, immediately following the strong chorus of the

bards. During the rests we seem to hear the chorus repeated.

[Music illustration: OLD WELSH SONG, IN PRAISE OF LOVE.

SOLO.

Car-u'm hell a char-u'n ag-os,

CHORUS of Bards.

Hob y de-ri dan-do:

SOLO.

New-id car-iad pob py-thef-nos

CHORUS of Bards.

Dy-na gan-u et-to

Er hyn i gyd ni all fy nghal-on Sian fw-yn Sian.

Lai na char-u'm hen gar-iad-on, o'r brw-yn,

Der-e, der-e'r Ilwyn; ni sonia i fwy am Sian-tan fwyn.]

In the eleventh century, Gerald Barry, an entertaining writer, made a

tour of Britain, and his account of the people in different parts of

the country is still extant and full of interest. Of the Welsh he

says: "Those who arrive in the morning are entertained until evening

with the conversation of young women, and the music of the harp, for

each house has its young women and harps allotted to this purpose. In

each family the art of playing the harp is held preferable to any

other learning."

He adds (chapter XIII, "Of their Symphonies and Songs"): "In their

musical concerts they do not sing in unison, like the inhabitants of

other countries, but in many different parts, so that in a company of

singers, which one very frequently meets with in Wales, you will hear

as many different parts and voices as there are performers, while all

at length unite with organic melody in one consonance, and in the soft

sweetness of B-flat. In the north district of Britain, beyond the

Humber and on the borders of Yorkshire, the inhabitants make use of

the same kind of symphonious harmony, but with less variety, singing

in only two parts, one murmuring in the bass, the other warbling in

the acute or treble. Neither of the two nations has acquired this

peculiarity by art, but by long habit, which has rendered it natural

and familiar; and the practice is now so firmly rooted in them that it

is unusual to hear a single and simple melody well sung, and what is

still more wonderful, the children, even from their infancy, sing in

the same manner. As the English in general do not adopt this mode of

singing, but only those to the north of the countries, I believe it

was from the Danes and Norwegians, by whom these parts of the island

were more frequently invaded, and held longer under their dominion,

that the natives contracted this method of singing." In further token

of the universality of music among these people, Gerald mentions the

story of Richard de Clare, who a short time after the death of Richard

I, passed from England into Wales, accompanied by certain other lords

and attendants. At the passage of Coed Grono, at the entrance into the

woods, he dismissed his attendants and pursued his journey undefended,

preceded by a minstrel and a singer, the one accompanying the other on

the fiddle. ["_Tibicinem præviens habens et precentorem cantilenæ

notulis alternatim in fidiculare respondentem._"]

Similar devotion to music he found in Ireland. He says: "The only

thing to which I find this people to apply commendable industry is

playing upon musical instruments, in which they are incomparably more

skillful than any other that I have seen. For their modulation on

these instruments, unlike that of the Britons, to which I am

accustomed, is not slow and harsh, but lively and rapid, while the

harmony is both sweet and gay. It is astonishing that in so complex

and rapid a movement of the fingers the musical proportions can be

preserved, and that throughout the difficult modulations on their

various instruments the harmony is completed with so sweet a velocity,

so unequal an equality, so discordant a concord, as if the chords

sounded together fourths and fifths. They enter into a movement and

conclude it in so delicate a manner, and play the little notes so

sportively under the blunter sounds of the bass strings, enlivening

with wanton levity, or communicating a deeper internal sense of

pleasure, so that the perfection of their art appears in the

concealment of it. From this cause those very strains afford an

unspeakable mental delight to those who have skillfully penetrated

into the mysteries of the art; fatigue rather than gratify the ears of

others, who seeing do not perceive, and hearing do not understand, and

by whom the finest music is esteemed no better than a confused and

disorderly noise, to be heard with unwillingness and disgust. Ireland

only uses and delights in two instruments--the harp and tabor.

Scotland has three--the harp, the tabor and the crowth or crowd.

Wales, the harp, the pipes and the crowd. The Irish also used strings

of brass instead of catgut."

The brilliant time of Ireland was the reign of Sir Brian Boirohen, in

the tenth century. After his victory over the Danes, and their

expulsion from the island, he opened schools and colleges for indigent

students, founded libraries, and encouraged learning heartily. He was

one of the best harpers of his kingdom. His harp is preserved in the

library of Trinity College, Dublin, and a well made instrument it is,

albeit now somewhat out of repair. It is about thirty inches high;

the wood is oak and arms of brass. There are twenty-eight strings

fixed in the sounding table by silver buttons in copper-lined holes.

The present appearance of the instrument is this:

[Illustration: Fig. 19.]

The Anglo-Saxons also were great amateurs of music. Up to the sixth

century they remained pagan. Gregory the Great sent missionaries to

them, and more than 10,000 were baptized in a single day. The

Venerable Bede represents St. Benoit as establishing the music of the

new church, substituting the plain song of Rome for the Gallic songs

previously used.

While few remains of the literature of the early English have come

down to us, we have enough from the period of the Venerable Bede and

the generation immediately following to give an idea of the vigor and

depth of the national consciousness here brought to expression. From

the seventh to the tenth centuries there was in England a movement

more vigorous, more productive and consequently more modern, than

anything like it in any other part of Europe for three centuries

later. The Saxon poets Cædmon, the Venerable Bede, Alcuin, the friend,

teacher and adviser of that mighty genius Charlemagne, were minds of

the first order.

King Arthur the Great was an enthusiastic and talented minstrel. It is

told of him that in this disguise he made his way successfully into

the Danish camp, and was able to spy out the plans of his invading

enemies. The incident has also a light upon the other side, since it

shows the estimation in which the wandering minstrel was held by the

Danes themselves. King Alfred also established a professorship of

music at Oxford, where, indeed, the university, properly so-called,

did not yet exist, but a school of considerable vigor had been

founded. All the remains of Anglo-Saxon poetry are full of allusions

to the bards, the gleemen and the minstrels; and the poems themselves,

most likely, were the production of poet-musicians classed under these

different names. Many additional reasons might be given for believing

that the art of music was more carefully cultivated in England at this

time than in any other European country. For instance, at Winchester,

in the year 900, a large organ was built in the cathedral--larger than

had ever been built before. It had 400 pipes, whereas most of the

organs previously in use had no more than forty or fifty pipes. There

is reason to believe that among the other musical devices here

practiced that of "round" singing was brought to a high degree of

popular skill. Apparently also they had something like what was

afterward called a burden, a refrain which, instead of coming in at

the end of the melody, was sung by a part of the singers continually

with it.

Nor was musical cultivation confined to England. In the eighth and

ninth centuries the Scandinavians had a civilization of considerable

vigor. The minstrels were called Scalds, polishers or smoothers of

language. Fétis well says: "As eminently poets and singers as they

were barbarians, they put into their songs a strength of ideas, an

energy of sentiment, a richness of imagination with which we are

struck even in translations, admittedly inferior to the originals. Not

less valiant than inspired, their scalds by turns played the harp,

raising their voices in praise of heroes, and precipitated themselves

into the combat with sword and lance, meeting the enemy in fiercest

conflict. Most that remains from these poet-minstrels is contained in

the great national collections called Eddas, of which the oldest

received their present form early in the eleventh century. The sagas

contained in the Eddas form but a mere fragment of this ancient

literature. More than 200 scalds are known by name as authors of

sagas. These warriors, so pitiless and ferocious in battle, show

themselves full of devotion to their families. They were good sons,

tender husbands and kind fathers. The Eddas contain pieces of singular

delicacy of sentiment." Their songs, when compared with those of other

races, are more musical, the sentiment is richer and more profound,

and the rhythms have more variety. The melodic intervals, also,

indicate a more delicate sense of harmony than we find in other parts

of Europe at so early a date. Their instrument was the harp. Iceland

was the foremost musical center of the civilized world in the ninth

century, and it is said that kings in other parts of Europe sent there

for capable minstrels to lead the music in the courts.

A very highly finished English composition, a round with strict canon

for four voices, with a burden of the kind already mentioned, repeated

over and over by two other voices has been discovered. It is the

famous "Summer is Coming In," composed, apparently, some time before

the year 1240.

On page 101 is given a reduced _fac simile_. It is written on a staff

of six lines, in the square notes of the Franconian period. The clef

is that of C. The asterisk at the end of the first phrase marks the

proper place of entrance for the successive voices, each in turn

commencing at the beginning when the previous one has arrived, at this

point. Below is the _pes_, or burden, which is to be repeated over and

over until the piece is finished. The complete solution is reproduced

in miniature from Grove's Dictionary, on pages 102 and 103. The

elaborateness of this piece of music led the original discoverers to

place it much later than the date above given, but more careful

examination of the manuscript justifies the conclusion that it was

written some time before 1240. It is by far the most elaborate piece

of ancient part music which has come down to us from times so remote.

It indicates conclusively that early in the thirteenth century, when

the composers of the old French school were struggling with the

beginnings of canonic imitation, confining their work to

ecclesiastical tonality, English musicians had arrived at a better art

and a true feeling for the major scale and key. Following is the

manuscript, the original size of the page being seven and

seven-twelfths inches by five and five-twelfths inches. The reduced

page before the reader represents the original upon a scale of about

two-thirds. The Latin directions below the fourth staff indicate the

manner of singing it.

[Illustration: FAC SIMILE OF MSS. OF "SUMER IS ICUMEN IN."]

[Music illustration: "SUMER IS ICUMEN IN."

Sum-er is i-cu-men in, Lhud-e sing cuc-cu.

Grow-eth sed and blow-eth med and springth the wod-e nu.

Sing cuc-cu.

Awe blet-eth af-ter lomb, lhouth af-ter calv-e cu.

Bul-luc stert-eth, buck-e vert-eth, mu-rie sing cuc-cu.

Cuc-cu, cuc-cu.[3]

Wel sing-es thu cuc-cu, ne swik thu nau-er nu.

Sum-er is i-cum-en in, Lhud-e sing cuc-cu.

Grow-eth sed and blow-eth med, and springth the wod-e nu.

Sing cuc-cu.[4]

Per-spi-ce X[=p]-i-co-la[5] que dig-na-ci-o.

Ce-li-cus a-gri-co-la Pro vi-tis vi-ci-o.

Fi-li-o,

Non par-cens ex-pos-u-it, Mor-tis ex-i-ci-o,

Qui cap-ti-vos se-mi-vi-vos A sup-pli-ci-o.

Vi-ta do-nat, et se-cum co-ro-nat in ce-li so-li-o.

Per-spi-ce X[=p]-i-co-la que dig-na-ci-o.

Ce-li-cus a-gri-co-la Pro vi-tis vi-ci-o.

Fi-li-o.]

[Footnote 3: Burner and Hawkins have both mistaken this note

(Transcriber's Note: referring to an A) for G. It is quite certainly A

in the original MS. In the four bars which follow, the words and music

are incorrectly fitted together in all previous editions.]

[Footnote 4: Antiently, each voice ceased at the end of the _Guida_,

which is here denoted by the sign *. The present custom is for all the

voices to continue until they reach a point at which they may all

conveniently close together, as indicated by the pause.]

[Footnote 5: Abbreviated form of _Christicola_. (Transcriber's Note:

The original lyrics use a Greek chi and a rho with a line over it,

represented above as X[=p].)]

[cross symbol] This sign indicates the bar at which each

successive Part is to make its entrance.

[Illustration: Fig. 20.

SAXON HARP.

(From manuscript in the library of Cambridge University.)]

The harp was the principal instrument of these people, and their songs

and poems contain innumerable references to it. Sir Francis Palgrave

says in his "History of the Anglo-Saxons": "They were great amateurs

of rhythm and harmony. In their festivals the harp passed from hand to

hand, and whoever could not show himself possessed of talent for

music, was counted unworthy of being received in good society. Adhelm,

bishop of Sherbourne, was not able to gain the attention of the

citizens otherwise than by habilitating himself as a minstrel and

taking his stand upon the bridge in the central part of the town and

there singing the ballads he had composed." One of the earliest

representations of the English harp that has come down to us is found

in the Harleian manuscript in the British Museum. It is presumably of

the tenth century.

[Illustration: Fig. 21.

KING DAVID.

(From Saxon Psalter of the tenth century.)]

The harp was three or four feet in height. It had eleven strings. It

was held between the knees, and was played with the right hand. In the

thirteenth century it appears to have been played with both hands.

Two circumstances in this account may well surprise us; nor are there

data available for resolving the questions to which they give rise.

The presence of two such instruments as the harp and the crwth in this

part of Europe is not to be explained by historical facts within our

knowledge. The harp does not appear in musical history after its

career in ancient Egypt until we find it in the hands of these bards,

scalds and minstrels of northern Europe. The Aryans who crossed into

India do not seem to have had it. Nor did the Greeks, nor the Romans.

We find it for a while in Asia, but only in civilizations derived from

that of Egypt, already in their decadence when they come under our

observation. Inasmuch as there are no data existing whereby we can

determine whether these people discovered the harp anew for themselves

or derived it from some other nation, and greatly improved it, either

supposition is allowable. Upon the whole, the probabilities appear to

be that this instrument was among the primitive acquisitions of the

Aryans. All of them were hunters, to whom the clang of the bow string

must have been a familiar sound. As already suggested, it seems that

the harp must have been the oldest type of stringed instrument of all.

The Aryans who crossed the Himalayas into India may have lost it, in

pursuit of some other type of instrument of plucked strings.

The crwth presents still more troublesome questions, which we must

admit are still less hopeful of solution. (See Fig. 22.)

In this case we find an instrument played with a bow in northern

Europe, far one side the course of Asiatic commerce, at a time when

there was no such instrument elsewhere in the world but in India.

Whence came the crwth? The rebec was not known in Arabia until nearly

two centuries after we find the crwth mentioned by Venance Fortunatus.

We have seen that the Sanskrit had four words meaning bow, a fact

affording presumptive evidence of the knowledge of this mode of

exciting vibrations, while the Sanskrit was still a spoken language.

It is possible that the bow was a discovery of the Aryans in their

early days, ere yet the family had begun to separate. The crwth may

have been a survival of this primitive discovery, still cherished

among a people not able to employ it intelligently, and not able to

develop its powers. For while the crwth was in Europe two centuries

before the violin, the improvement of this instrument was due to

stimulation from quite another quarter. It was the Arab rebec that

afforded the starting point for the modern violin, and this instrument

was not known in Europe until it came in by way of the crusaders or

the Spanish Arabs.

[Illustration: Fig. 22.]

Another popular instrument of music in all parts of Britain from the

earliest of modern times, was the bagpipe, a reed instrument generally

of imperfect intonation, the melody pipe being accompanied by a

faithful drone, consisting of the tonic and its octave, and

occasionally the fifth. It was the witty Sidney Smith who described

the effect as that of a "tune tied to a post." This instrument was

common in all parts of Britain until driven out by better ones. It

still survives in Scotland. Its influence is distinctly to be traced

in the Scotch melodies founded upon the pentatonic scale, of which the

following is a specimen:

[Music illustration: SCOTCH MELODY (IN THE PENTATONIC SCALE).

The law-land lads think they are fine:

But O they're vain and wondrou' gawdy!

How much unlike that grace-fu' mien,

And man-ly looks of no High-land Lad-die!

O my bon-ny, ben-ny High-land Lad-die,

O my hand-some High-land lad-die!

when I was sick, and like to die,

he row'd me in his high-land plai-die.]

CHAPTER VII.

THE ARABS OR SARACENS.

Upon many accounts the influence of the Arab civilization was

important in this quarter of the musical world, and it may here well

enough engage our attention, since its most important aspects are

those in which it operates upon the European mind, awakening there

ideas which but for this stimulus might have remained dormant

centuries longer.

From the standpoint of the western world and the limited information

concerning the followers of Mahomet which enters into our educational

curricula, the Arab appears to us an inert figure, picturesque and

imposing, upon the sandy carpet of northern Africa, but a force of

little influence in the world of modern nineteenth-century thought.

Nevertheless, there was a time when this picturesque figure became

seized with an activity which shook Europe and Christendom to its very

center. The voice of the prophet Mahomet awakened the Arab from his

slumber. He aroused himself to the duty of proselyting the world to

the doctrine of the One God and the Great Prophet. With sword in hand

and the rallying cry of his faith he went forth, with such result that

a vast proportion of the inhabitants of the globe at this very hour

profess the tenets of his religion. Once awakened into life, he

penetrated the distant east, and brought back thence the foundation of

our arithmetic, the predecessor of our greatest of musical

instruments, the violin, and discovered for himself the productions of

the greatest of the Greek minds, the works of the philosopher

Aristotle. He established a new state in Spain, and for several

centuries confronted Christendom with the alternative of the sword or

his faith. One of the best characterizations of this people upon the

musical-literary side is that of the eminent M. Ginguène, who in his

"History of Italian Literature," remarks as follows, concerning the

points under immediate consideration:

"In the most ancient times the Arabs had a particular taste for

poetry, which among almost all people had opened a way to the most

elevated and abstract studies. Their language, rich, flexible and

abundant, favored their fertile imagination; their spirit lively and

sententious; their eloquence natural and artless, they declaimed with

energy the pieces they had composed, or they sang, accompanied with

instruments, in a very expressive chorus. These poems make upon the

simple and sensitive auditors a prodigious effect. The young poets

receive the praises of the tribe, and all celebrate their genius and

merit. They prepare a solemn festival. The women, dressed in their

most beautiful habits, sing a chorus before their sons and husbands

upon the happiness of their tribe. During the annual fair, where

tribes from a distance are gathered for thirty days, a large part of

the time is spent in a contest of poetry and eloquence. The works

which gain praise are deposited in the archives of the princess or

emirs. The best ones are painted or embroidered with letters of gold

upon silk cloth, and suspended in the temple at Mecca. Seven of these

poems had obtained this honor in the time of Mahomet, and they say

that Mahomet himself was flattered to see one of the chapters of the

Koran compared with these seven poems and judged worthy to be hung up

with them. Almansor, the second of the Abassides, loved poetry and

letters, and was very well learned in laws, philosophy and astronomy.

They say that in building the famous town of Bagdad he took the

suggestions from the astronomers for placing the principal building.

The university at Bagdad was honored and very celebrated. Copious

translations from the Greek were made, and many original treatises

produced in other parts of Arabia, but the most brilliant development

of Arabic letters was in Spain. Cordova, Grenada, Valencia were

distinguished for their schools, colleges and academies. Spain

possessed seventy libraries, open to the public in different towns,

when the rest of Europe, without books, without letters, without

culture, was sunk in the most shameful ignorance. A crowd of

celebrated writers enriched the Spanish-Arabic literature in all its

parts. The influence of the Arab upon science and literature extended

into all Europe; to him are owed many useful inventions. The famous

tower at Seville was built for the observatory. It is to be noticed,

however, that the Arabs, while taking much from the Greeks, did not

take any of their literature, properly so-called--neither Sophocles,

Euripides, Sappho, Anacreon, nor Demosthenes. The result is that their

own literature preserved its original character; they preserved also

in all purity the peculiarity of their music--an art in which they

excelled and in which the theory was very complicated. Their works are

full of the praises of music and its marvelous effect. They

attributed very powerful effects not alone to music sung, but to the

sound of certain instruments and to certain instrumental strings and

to certain inflections of the voice."

[Illustration: Fig. 23.

THE ARAB REBEC.]

The modern world is indebted to the Arab for at least three of its

most important instruments of music. The ravanastron he brought home

with him from India, and under the name Rebec it found its way into

Europe, where in an appreciative soil it grew and expanded into that

miracle of sonority and expression, the modern violin. The instrument

of the south of Europe during the latter part of the Middle Ages was

the lute, which had its origin in the Arab Eoud. (See Fig. 24.)

[Illustration: Fig. 24.

THE EOUD.]

Still more familiar to domestic eyes is that descendant of the Arab

santir, the modern pianoforte. This, under the name of psaltery,

begins to figure in manuscript as early as the ninth century. The Arab

canon, which is commonly taken as the immediate predecessor of the

pianoforte, had the important difference of being strung with catgut

strings. The essential foundation of the pianoforte was the metal

strings, necessitating hammers for inciting the vibrations, and

affording in the superior solidity incident to metal support a

firmness and susceptibility to development. This is the santir. It has

survived in Europe as the dulcimer, or the German hackbrett.

[Illustration: Fig. 25.

THE SANTIR.]

Yet while the Arab wrote so abundantly upon the subject of music, and

while it filled so prominent a part in his social and official life,

and in spite of his sagacity in seizing perfectible types of

instruments, there is very little in his treatment of the art which

need delay us in the present work. His music belongs entirely to the

ancient period of monody. He never had a harmony of combined sounds,

nor a scale with intervals permitting combined sounds. He was

sufficiently scientific to carry out the intonations of the

Pythagorean theory, and when he went beyond this and formed a scale

for himself he devised one which did not permit the association of

sounds into chord masses; and, more fatal still, he not only invented

such a scale, but carried it into execution so exactly that the ear of

the race was hopelessly committed to monody, and has remained so until

this very day. The scale of the Arabs in the latter times contained

twenty-two divisions in the octave, of which only the fifth and fourth

exactly correspond with the harmonic ratios. The place of the Arab in

music, therefore, is that of an unintentional minister to a higher

civilization and to the art of music.

CHAPTER VIII.

ORIGIN OF THE GREAT FRENCH EPICS.

One of the earliest developments of popular music on the continent was

that of the _Chansons de Geste_ ("Songs of Action"), which were, in

effect, great national epics. The period of this activity was from

about 800 to 1100 or 1200, and the greatest productions were the

"Songs of Roland," the "Song of Antioch," etc., translations of which

may be found in collections of mediæval romances. The social

conditions out of which these songs grew have been well summarized by

M. Léon Gautier, in his "_Les Épopées Françaises_": "If we transport

ourselves in imagination into Gaul in the seventh century, and casting

our eyes to the right, the left, and to all parts, we undertake to

render to ourselves an exact account of the state in which we find the

national poetry, the following will be the spectacle which will meet

our gaze: Upon one hand in Amorican Brittany there are a group of

popular poets who speak a Celtic dialect, and sing upon the harp

certain legends, certain fables of Celtic origin. They form a league

apart, and do not mix at all in the poetic movement of the great

Gallo-Roman country. They are the popular singers of an abased race,

of a conquered people. Toward the end of the twelfth century we see

their legends emerge from their previous obscurity and conquer a

sudden and astonishing popularity, which endured throughout all the

remainder of the Middle Ages. But in the seventh century they had no

profound influence in Gaul, and their voice had no echo except beyond

the boundary straits among the harpers and singers of England, Wales

and Ireland.

"Upon another side, that of the Moselle, the Meuse and the Rhine, in

the country vaguely designated under the name of Austrasia, German

invasions have left more indelible traces. The ideas, customs and even

the language have taken on a Tudesque imprint. There they sing in a

form purely Germanic the '_Antiquissima Carmina_' ["Most Ancient

Songs"] which Charlemagne was one day to order his writers to compile

and put in permanent form. Between these two extreme divisions there

was a neutral territory where a new language was in process of

forming--that of the 'Oc' and 'Oil.' Here the songs were neither

German nor Gallo-Roman, but Romance. And here were the germs of the

future epics of France."

Out of this combination of contrasting spirits of race, the movement

of awakened national life, arose, first, what were called

Cantilenas--short songs of a ballad-like character. The language is a

mixture of German, Latin and French, intermingled in a most curious

manner. For example, consider the following verses from the cantilena

of St. Eulalie, as given by M. Gautier, p. 65:

"Buona pulcella fût Eulalia;

Bel avret corps, bellezour anima.

Voldrent la vientre li Deo inimi,

Voldrent la faire diaule servir.

Elle n'out eskoltet les mal conselliers

Qu'elle Deo raniet chi maent sus en ciel."

Which being somewhat freely rendered into English, it says that:

"A good virgin was Eulalia;

She had a beautiful body, more beautiful spirit;

The enemies of God would conquer her,

Would make her serve the devil;

But never would she understand the evil ones who counsel

To deny God, who is above all in heaven."

And so the ballad goes on twenty-three verses more to narrate how she

withstood the exhortations of the king of the pagans, that she would

forsake the name of Christian; and when they threw her into the fire

the fire would not burn her, for the fire was pure; and when the king

drew his sword to cut off her head the _demoiselle_ did not contradict

him, for she wished to leave the world. She prayed to Christ, and

under the form of a dove she flew away toward heaven. These charming

verses of the ninth century were probably sung to music having little

of the movement which we now associate with the term melody, but which

was more of a chant-like character.

Of similar literary texture were a multitude of songs, of which many

different ones related to the same hero. Hence in time there was a

disposition on the part of the cleverer minstrels to combine them into

a single narration, and to impart to the whole so composed something

of an epic character. Thus arose the famous _Chansons de Geste_

already mentioned, the origin and general character of which have been

most happily elucidated in the work of M. Gautier, already referred

to. He says:

"The great epics of the French had their origin in the romantic and

commanding deeds of Charlemagne and the battles against Saracens in

792. The fate of civilization trembled in the balance at Ville Daigne

and at Poitiers. It is the lot of Christianity, it is the lot of the

world, which is at stake. The innumerable murders, the torrents of

blood, these thousands of deaths have had their sure effect upon

history. The world has been Christian in place of being Arab. It

appertains to Jesus instead of Mahomet. This civilization, of which we

are so proud, this beauty of the domestic circle, this independence of

our spirit, this free character of our wives and children it is to

Charles Martelle, and above all to William of Orange, that we owe

them, after God. We possess only a limited number of these primitive

epics, the _Chansons de Geste_, and are not certain that we have them

in the second or even the third versions. At the head of the list we

place the 'Song of Roland,' the Iliad of France. All the other songs

of action, however beautiful and however ancient they may be, are far

inferior. The text of the 'Song of Roland' as it has come down to us

cannot have been written much before 1100. Besides this there is the

'_Chanson de Nimes_,' '_Ogier le Danois_,' '_Jour de Blaibes_,' all of

which were written in the languages of Oc and Oil. All these have

something in common; the verse is ten syllables, the correspondences

are assonances and not rhymes. In style these _Chansons de Geste_ are

rapid, military, but above all dramatic and popular. They are without

shading, spontaneous, no labor, no false art, no study. Above all it

is a style to which one can apply the words of Montaigne, and it is

the same upon paper as in the mouth. Really these verses are made to

be upon the living lip, and not upon the cold and dead parchment of

the manuscript. The oldest manuscripts are small, in order that they

may be carried in the pocket for use of traveling jongleurs and

singers. They have Homeric epithets. The style is singularly grave.

There is nothing to raise a laugh. The first epics were popular about

the end of the eleventh century. The idea of woman is purer in the

early poems. There is no description of the body; there is no

gallantry. The beautiful Aude apprehends the death of Roland; she

falls dead. In the second half of the twelfth century our poets would

have been incapable of so simple and noble a conception. We find, even

in '_Amis et Amelis_,' women who are still very German in physiognomy,

and alluring, but they are Germans, so to say, of the second manner.

They have a habit of throwing themselves into the arms of the first

man who takes their fancy.

"Each one of the races which composed France or Gaul in the sixth or

seventh century, contributed its share toward the future epics. The

Celts furnished their character, the Romans their language, the Church

its faith; but the Germans did more. For long centuries they had the

habit of chanting in popular verse their origin, their victories and

their heroes. Above all they penetrated the new poetry with their new

spirit. All the German ideas upon war, royalty, family and government,

upon woman and right, passed into the epic of the French.

"Our fathers had no epics, it is true, but they had popular chants,

rapid, ardent and short, which are precisely what we have called

cantilenas. A cantilena is at the same time a recitation and an ode.

It is at times a complaint and more often a round. It is a hymn, above

all religious and musical, which runs over the lips and which, thanks

to its brevity, mainly, is easily graven upon the memory. The

cantilenas were a power in society; they caused the most powerful to

tremble. When a captain wished to nerve himself up against a bad

action he said, 'They will make a bad song about me.'

"The heroes and the deeds which gave birth to French epics are those

of the commencement of the eighth century to the end of the tenth.

France is then more than a mere land; it is a country; a single

religious faith fills all hearts and all intelligence. Toward the end

of the tenth century we see the popular singers arresting crowds in

all public places. They sing poems of 3,000 or 4,000 verses. These are

the first of the _Chansons de Geste_. Out of the great number of

cantilenas dedicated to a single hero it happened that some poet had

the happy thought of combining them into a single poem. Thus came a

suite of pieces about Roland or William, and from these, in time, an

epic. The latest of the epic cycles was that concerning the crusades.

The style is popular, rapid, easy to sing. It recalls the Homeric

poetry. The constant epithets, the military enumerations, the

discourses of the heroes before combat, and the idea of God, are

simple, childlike, and superstition has no place. The supernatural

exists in plenty, but no marvels."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IX.

THE TROUBADOURS, TROUVÈRES AND MINNESINGERS.

To the full account of the origin of the _Chansons de Geste_ in the

foregoing chapter, it remains now to add a few notes concerning the

_personnel_ of the different classes of minstrels through whose

efforts these great songs were created.

The first of these singers were the troubadours, who were traveling

minstrels especially gifted in versification and in music. Their

compositions appear to have been short, on the whole, and of various

kinds, as will presently be seen. The earliest of the troubadours of

whom we have definite account was Count Wilhelm of Poitiers,

1087-1127. Among the kind of songs cultivated by these singers were

love songs, canzonets, chansons; serenade--that is, an evening song;

auberde, or day song; servantes, written to extol the goodness of

princes; tenzone, quarrelsome or contemptuous songs; and roundelays,

terminated forever with the same refrain. There was also what was

called the pastourelle, a make-believe shepherd's song.

The so-called chansonniers of the north, who flourished toward the end

of the twelfth century, were also troubadours. Among them the name of

Count Thibaut of Champagne, king of Navarre, stands celebrated--1201-1253.

He composed both religious and secular songs. The following is one of

his melodies unharmonized. Its date is about the same as that of

"Summer is Coming In." Another celebrated name of these minstrels was

Adam de la Halle, of Arras in Picardy--1240-1286. Upon many accounts

the music of this author is of considerable interest to us. He was a

good natural melodist, as the examples in Coussemaker's "Adam de la

Halle" show. He is also the author of the earliest comic opera of

which we have any account, the play of "Robin and Marion." We shall

speak of this later, in connection with the development of opera in

general.

[Music illustration:

L'autrier par la ma-ti-né-e,

En-tre un bois et un ver-gier

U-ne pastoure ai trou-vé-e

Chantant pour soi en-voi-sier,

Et di-soit un son pre-mier

'Chi me tient li maus d'amor.'

Tan-tost ce-le part m'entor,

Ka je l'oi des rais-ner;

Si li dis sans de-la-ier.

Bel-le Diex vous doint bon-jor.]

Immediately following the troubadours came the trouvères, who were

simply troubadours of nobler birth, and perhaps of finer imagination.

There were so many of these singers that it is quite impossible here

to give a list of their names. Among the more celebrated, forty-two

names are given by Fétis, the most familiar among them being those of

Blondel, the minstrel of Richard Coeur de Lion, and the Châtelaine

de Coucy (died about 1192), from whom we have twenty-three chansons.

It was the trouvères who invented the _Chansons de Geste_ already

mentioned--songs of action; in other words, ballads. One of the most

celebrated of these was the "Story of Antioch," a romance of the

crusades, extending to more than 15,000 lines. This poem was not

intended to be read, but was chanted by the minstrels during the

crusades themselves. One Richard the Pilgrim was the author. The song

is, in fact, a history of the crusade in which he took part, up to a

short time before the battle in which he was killed. Another very

celebrated piece of the same kind, the "Song of Roland," the history

of a warrior in the suite of Charlemagne, is said to have been chanted

before the battle of Hastings by the Jongleur Taillefer. Other pieces

of the same kind were the "Legend of the Chevalier Cygne"

("Lohengrin") "Parsifal" and the "Holy Grail." Each one of these was

sung to a short formula of melody, which was performed over and over

incessantly, excepting variations of endings employed in the episodes.

A very eminent author of pieces of this kind was the Chevalier de

Coucy, who died 1192, in the crusade. There are twenty-four songs of

his still in the Paris Library.

[Illustration: Fig. 26.

REINMAR, THE MINNESINGER.

(From a manuscript of the thirteenth century, in the National Library

at Paris.)]

A similar development of knightly music was had in Germany from the

time of Frederick the Red--1152-1190. These were known as

minnesingers. Among the most prominent were Heinrich of Beldeke,

1184-1228, an epic writer; Spervogel, 1150-1175; and Frauenlobe,

middle of the twelfth century. The forms of the minne songs were the

song (_lede_), lay (_lerch_), proverb (_spruch_). The song rarely

exceeded one strophe; the lay frequently did. A little later we

encounter certain names which have been recently celebrated in the

poems of Wagner, such as Heinrich von Morungen, Reinmar von Hagenau,

Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strassburg, Walther von der

Vogelweide, Klingsor, Tannhäuser, etc. All of these were from the

middle of the thirteenth century. A portrait of Reinmar, the

minnesinger, has come down to us with a manuscript now contained in

the National Library at Paris. The last of the minnesingers was

Heinrich von Meissen, 1260-1318. His poems were always in the praise

of woman, for which reason he was called Frauenlob ("Woman's Praise").

An old chronicle tells us that when he died the women of Mayence bore

him to the tomb, moistened his grave with their tears, and poured out

libations of the costliest wines of the Rhineland. The following

illustration is supposed to be a representation of this minstrel,

although the drawing is hardly up to the standard of the modern

Academy.

[Illustration: Fig. 27.

MASTER HEINRICH FRAUENLOB.

(From a manuscript in the Manesse collection at Paris.)]

The work of the minnesingers was succeeded in Germany by a class of

humbler minstrels of the common people, known as the Mastersingers,

the city of Nuremberg being their principal center. A few of these men

were real geniuses--poets of the people. One of the most celebrated

was Hans Sachs, since represented in Wagner's "Meistersingers." Sachs

was a very prolific poet and composer, his pieces being of every kind,

from the simpler songs of sentiment and home to quite elaborate plays.

About nine volumes of his poems have been reprinted by the Stuttgart

Literary Union.

[Illustration: Fig. 28.

MINSTREL HARPS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.]

The principal influence of these different classes of popular minstrel

was temporary, in keeping alive a love for music and a certain

appreciation of it. The most of their music was rather slow and

labored, and it is impossible to discover in the later development of

the art material traces of their influence upon it. In this respect

they differ materially from the Celtic and English bards mentioned in

the previous chapter. Although the productions of those minstrels have

all passed away, they have left a distinct impress upon musical

composition, even to our own day, in certain simple forms of diatonic

melody of highly expressive character. The troubadours, trouvères and

minnesingers, on the other hand, never acquired the art of spontaneous

melody, and as for harmony, there is no evidence that they made any

use of it. Their instrument of music was a small harp of ten or twelve

strings, but no more--a much smaller and less effective instrument

than the Irish harp of the eleventh century, or the Saxon of the

tenth. (See Fig. 28.)

[Illustration]

CHAPTER X.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

It is not easy to define the influence of the Christian Church in this

transformation, for the reason that upon the technical side it was

slight, although upon the æsthetic side it was of very great

importance. From the circumstance that all the early theoretical

writers from the sixth century to the thirteenth were monks or

ecclesiastics of some degree, and from the very important part played

by the large cathedrals in the development of polyphonic music, many

historians have concluded that to the Church almost this entire

transformation of the art of music is due. This, however, is wide of

the truth. The Church as such had very little to do with developing an

art of music through all the early centuries. The early Christians

were humble people, for the most part, who had embraced a religion

proscribed and at times persecuted. Their meetings were private, and

attended by small numbers, as, for instance, in the Catacombs at Rome,

where the little chapels in the dark passage ways under ground were

incapable of holding more than twenty or thirty people at a time.

Under these circumstances the singing cannot have been essentially of

more musical importance than that of cottage prayer meetings of the

present day. In another way the Church, indeed, exercised a certain

amount of influence in this department as in all others, an influence

which might be described as cosmopolitan. The early apostles and

bishops traveled from one province to another, and it is likely that

the congregation in each province made use of the melodies already in

existence. The first Christian hymns and psalms were probably sung to

temple melodies brought from Jerusalem by the apostles. As new hymns

were written (something which happened very soon, under the

inspiration of the new faith and hope), they were adapted to the best

of these old melodies, just as has been done continually down to

nearly our own time. Our knowledge of the early Church, in this side

of its activity, is very limited. It is not until the time of St.

Ambrose, who was bishop of Milan in the last part of the fourth

century, that the Church began to have an official music. By this time

the process of secularization had been carried so far that there was a

great want of seriousness and nobility in the worship. St. Ambrose,

accordingly, selected certain melodies as being suitable for the

solemn hymns of the Church and the offices of the mass. He himself was

a poet of some originality. He composed quite a number of hymns, of

which the most famous is that noble piece of praise, _Te Deum

Laudamus_, a poem which has inspired a greater number of musical

settings than any other outside the canon of the Scriptures. The

melodies which St. Ambrose collected were probably from Palestine, and

he selected four scales from the Greek system, within which, as he

supposed, all future melodies should be composed. This was done, most

likely, under the impression that each one of the Greek scales had a

characteristic expression, and that the four which he chose would

suffice for the varying needs of the hymns of the Church. In naming

these scales a mistake was made, that upon re being called the Dorian,

and all the other names being applied improperly. The series upon mi

was called Phrygian, upon fa Lydian; upon sol Mixo-Lydian. The

melodies of St. Ambrose were somewhat charged with ornament, a fact

which indicates their Asiatic origin. It is probable that a part of

the melodies of the Plain Song still in use are remains of the

liturgies of St. Ambrose. The Church at Milan maintains the Ambrosian

liturgy to the present date. In this action of St. Ambrose we have a

characteristic representation of the influence which the Church has

exerted upon music in all periods of its career. Upon the æsthetic and

ethical sides the Church has awakened aspirations, hopes and faith, of

essentially musical character, and in this respect it has been one of

the most powerful sources of inspiration that musical art has

experienced. But upon the technical side the action of the Church has

been purely conservative and, not to say it disrespectfully, politic.

The end sought in every modification of the existing music has been

that of affording the congregation a musical setting for certain

hymns--a setting not inconsistent with the spirit of the hymns

themselves, but in melody agreeable to the congregation. The question

which John Wesley is reported to have asked, "Why the devil should

have all the good tunes," has been a favorite conundrum with the

fathers of the Church.

Notwithstanding the firmness with which the Church at Milan maintained

the Ambrosian liturgy, in other provinces this conservatism failed;

and within the next two centuries very great abuses crept in through

the adoption of local secular melodies not yet divested of their

profane associations. St. Gregory the Great (540-595), who was elected

pope about 590, set himself to restore church music to its purity, or

rather to restrict the introduction of profane melodies, and to

establish certain limits beyond which the music should not be allowed

to pass. St. Gregory himself was not a musician. He therefore

contented himself with restoring the Ambrosian chants as far as

possible; but the musical scales established by Ambrose he somewhat

enlarged, adding to them four other scales called plagal. These were

the Hypo-Dorian, la to la; Hypo-Phrygian, si to si; Hypo-Lydian, do to

do; Hypo-Æolian, mi to mi. I do not understand that the terminal notes

of these plagal scales of St. Gregory were used as key notes, but only

that melodies instead of being restricted between the tonic and its

octave, were permitted to pass below and above the tonic, coming back

to that as a center; for we must remember that in the ancient music

the tonality was purely arbitrary, and, so to say, accidental. While

all kinds of keys used the series of tones known by the names do, re,

mi, fa, so, la, si, do, it was within the choice of the composer to

bring his melodies to a close upon any one of these tones, which,

being thus emphasized, was regarded as the tonic of the melody.

Whatever of color one key had differing from another was due therefore

to the preponderance of some one tone of the scale in the course of

the melody. The Plain Song of the Roman Church, and of the English

Church as well, has been called Gregorian, from St. Gregory, and the

majority of ecclesiastical amateurs suppose that the square note

notation upon four lines was invented by St. Gregory. This, however,

is not the case. The melody, very likely, may have come down to us

with few alterations. The notation, however, has undergone several

very important changes, of which there will be more particular mention

in chapter XV. The Gregorian notation of the sixth century was

probably the Roman letters which we find in Hucbald, as will be seen

farther on. Several of the tunes well known to Protestants have been

arranged from the so-called Gregorian chants. They are "Boylston,"

"Olmutz" and "Hamburg." The eighth tone, from which "Olmutz" was

arranged, has always been appropriated to the _Magnificat_ ("My Soul

doth Magnify the Lord").

The following are the ecclesiastical scales and names, as established

by St. Gregory:

[Music illustration:

_Dorian._

_Hypo-Dorian._

_Phrygian._

_Hypo-Phrygian._

_Lydian._

_Hypo-Lydian._

_Mixo-Lydian._

_Hypo-Mixo-Lydian._]

With the labors of St. Gregory the influence of the Church upon the

course of musical development by no means ceased. At various epochs in

its history synods, councils and popes have effected various reforms,

every reform consisting in barring out a certain amount of novelty

which had crept in, and in a supposed "restoration" of the service to

its pristine purity. The restoration, however, has never been

complete. Church music, like every other department of the art, has

gone on in increasing complexity from the beginning until now. The

main difference between the Church and the world in any century

consists in drawing the line of the permissible at a different point.

One of the latest reforms was that begun by Pope Marcellus and the

Council of Trent, which ordered from Palestrina an example of church

music as it should be.

Incidentally, in another direction, the Church has been of very great

influence upon the course of musical development. The great cathedrals

of the commercial centers of the world, in the effort to render their

service worthy of the congregation, have afforded support to talented

composers in all ages, and some of the most important movements in

music have been made by ecclesiastics or officials deriving support

from these sources. More extended particulars of this part of her

influence will be given later. It may suffice to mention the

cathedrals of Westminster and St. Paul in England, of Notre Dame in

Paris, to which we owe the old French school and the beginning of

polyphony; the cathedral at Strassburg, which supported important

musicians; Cologne, where the celebrated Franco lived; St. Mark's, at

Venice, where, from about 1350 to the end of the last century, an

extremely brilliant succession of musical directors found a field for

their activity.

CHAPTER XI.

THE DIDACTIC OF MUSIC FROM THE FIFTH CENTURY TO THE FOURTEENTH.

I.

There is very little in the Roman writers upon music that is of

interest. Macrobus, an expert grammarian and encyclopedist living at

Rome at the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century, wrote

a commentary upon the song of Scipio, in which he quotes from

Pythagoras concerning the music of the spheres: "What hear I? What is

it which fills my ears with sounds so sweet and powerful? It is the

harmony which, formed of unequal intervals, but according to just

proportion, results from the impulse and movements of the spheres

themselves, and of which the sharp sound tempered by the grave sound

produces continually varied concerts." (Cicero, "_De Republica_," VI.)

Commenting upon this passage, Macrobus says that Pythagoras was the

first of the Greeks who divined that the planets and the sidereal

universe must have harmonic properties such as Scipio spoke of, on

account of their regular movements and proportions to each other. We

find in the writings of Macrobus an advance upon the musical theories

of Ptolemy. He shows that contrary to the doctrine of Aristoxenus

there is not a true half tone, and that the relation 8:9 does not

admit of being equally divided. In place of the three symphonies of

the octave, fourth and fifth, mentioned by his predecessors, he makes

five, including the octave and the double octave. "Such," he says, "is

the number of symphonies that we ought to be astonished that the human

ear can comprehend them."

Another of the Roman writers upon music was Martinus Capella. His work

is called the "Nuptials of Philologus and Mercury" ("_De Nuptiis

Philologiæ et Mercurii_"). The little upon music which the book

contains was only an abridgment of the Greek treatise of Aristides

Quintilianus.

The most important of the earliest treatises upon music, and by far

the most famous, is that of Boethius, as it is also the most

systematic. The following summary is from Fétis' "History of Music,"

Vol. IV:

"Born at Rome between 470 and 475, Boethius made at home classical

studies, and went, they say, to Athens itself, where he studied

philosophy with Proclus. He was of the age of about thirty-five when,

in 510, he was made president of the senate. Theodoric, king of the

Ostrogoths, called him to himself, on account of his reputation for

wisdom and virtue; he confided to him an important position in the

palace, and intrusted to him many important diplomatic negotiations.

Boethius did nothing which was not to his credit, but this made him

only the more hostile to the interests of the courtiers; he was

therefore overthrown and cast into prison, where he composed his

'Consolations of Philosophy.' He was put to death 524 or 526."

Boethius' treatise on music is divided into five books. It is a vast

repertory of the knowledge of the ancients relative to this art. Its

doctrine is Pythagorean. The first book is divided into thirty-four

chapters. In the first he develops the thought of Aristotle, that

music is inherent in human nature. He there renders the text of a

decree which the Ephori of Sparta rendered against Timotheus of

Miletus, but which better critics have regarded as fictitious. The

second chapter establishes that there are three sorts of music: the

worldly, which is universal harmony; the human, which has its source

in the intelligence, which reunites and co-ordinates the elements;

finally, the third kind is artificial, made by instruments of

different sorts. The chapters following treat of the voice as the

source of music; of consonances and their proportions; of the division

of the voice and its compass; of the perception of sounds by the ear;

of the correspondence of the semitones; of the division of the octave;

of tetrachords; of the three genera--enharmonic, chromatic and

diatonic; of intervals of sounds compared to those of the stars; of

the musical and different faculties.

All the second book, divided into thirty chapters, is speculative, and

devotes itself to the different kinds and relations of intervals,

according to the different systems of theoreticians. The third book,

in seven chapters, is a continuation of the subject of the second. It

is particularly employed in refuting the errors of Aristoxenus. The

fourth book, in eighteen chapters, is entirely relative to the

practice of the art, particularly to the notation. It is in this book

that Boethius makes known the Latin notation of the first fifteen

letters of the alphabet without preparation, without the slightest

explanation, and as if he had done something which any one concerned

with music at Rome would readily understand, as a matter of course.

There is not one word to show that it was new, or that he claimed the

invention. It was undoubtedly the usual notation.

The fifth book of this treatise has for its object the determination

of intervals by the divisions of a monochord, and a refutation of the

systems of Ptolemy and Archytas. We here find this proposition,

remarkable if we recall the time when the author lived, that: "If the

ear did not count the vibrations, and did not seize the inequalities

of movement of two sounds resonating by percussion, the intelligence

would not be able to render account of them by the science of

numbers." After Boethius there is nothing in Roman literature

concerning music. Notwithstanding that Italy fell under the dominion

of the Goths and Lombards after 476, it preserved Greek traditions in

music to the end of the sixth century.

Cassiodorus, who lived still in 562, aged almost 100 years, left a

souvenir for music in the fifth chapter of his treatise on the

"Discipline of Letters and Liberal Arts" (_De Artibus ac Disciplinis

Litterarum_). He enumerates the fifteen modes of Alypius as not having

been abandoned, and establishes them in their natural order, calling

them tones. Here also we find the classification of six kinds of

symphonies, about 300 years after this enumeration, first realized in

notes by Hucbald. He gives a series of fourths and of fifths,

occasionally for two voices, occasionally with the octave added. These

are the most important of all the things concerning music to be found

in that part of Cassiodorus' book dedicated to music.

In the seventh century the first, or perhaps the only author who wrote

upon music was Bishop Isidore, of Seville. In his celebrated treatise

on the etymologies or origins ("_Isidori Hispaniensis Episcopi

Etymologiarum, Libri XX_") divided into twenty books, chapters XIV to

XXII of the third book relate to music. These are the chapters

published by the Abbé Gerbert, under the name of "_Sentences de

Musique_," in the collection of ecclesiastical writers upon this art,

after a manuscript in the imperial library at Vienna. While many of

these chapters contain nothing more than generalities and pseudo

historical anecdotes concerning the inventors of this art, this is not

the case with the nineteenth chapter, the sixth in Gerbert's edition,

for here he speaks "Of the First Division of Music, called Harmony."

The definitions given by St. Isidore have a precision, a clearness not

found in other writers of the Middle Ages. "Harmonic music," says he,

"is at the same time modulation of the voice, and concordance of many

simultaneous sounds. Symphony is the order established between

concordant sounds, low and high, produced by the voice, the breath or

by percussion. Concordant sounds, the highest and the lowest, agree in

such way that if one of them happens to dissonate it offends the ear.

The contrary is the case in diaphony, which is the union of dissonant

sounds." Here we find St. Isidore employing the term diaphony in its

original sense, as a Greek word, meaning dissonance--a sense exactly

opposite to that of Jean de Muris.

The Venerable Bede was the light of the eighth century, and the glory

of the Anglo-Saxons. His treatise upon music, however, deals in

theories and generalities, throwing no light upon the music of his

day. The elevation of his ideas may be seen in the following sentence,

with which he introduces his subject: "It is to be remarked that all

art is contained in reason; and so it is that music consists and

develops itself in relations of numbers." ("_Notandum est, quod omnis

ars in ratione continetur. Musica quoque in ratione numerorum

consistit atque versatur._")

Only two treatises upon music have come down to us from the ninth

century. The first is by a monk, named Aurelian, in the abbey of Réomé

or Montier-Saint-Jean, in the diocese of Langes, who appears to have

lived about the year 850. His book, called "_Musicæ Disciplina_," in

twenty chapters, is a compilation of older anecdotes and theories,

throwing no light upon the actual condition of the art in his day. The

sole remaining work of this period was by Rémi, of Auxerre, who had

opened the course of theology and music at Rheims in 893, and

afterward at Paris in the earlier years of the tenth century. His

book, like the preceding, is wholly devoted to the ideas of the

ancients.

II.

This brings us to the first writer on music, during the Middle Ages,

whose work throws any important light upon the actual practice of the

art in the period when it was written, namely, Hucbald, a monk of the

convent of St. Armand, in the diocese of Tournay, in French Flanders.

Gerbert gives two treatises upon music, as having come down to us from

this author. Nevertheless there is reason to doubt the genuineness of

one of them--whereof presently. The first of these, the so-called

"Treatise," from a manuscript in the library of the Franciscan convent

at Strassburg, collated with another from Cesene, bears this title:

"_Incipit Liber Ubaldi Peritissimi Musici de Harmonica Institutione_."

The other is called "_Hucbaldi Monachi Elonensis Musica

Enchiriadis_," or "Manual of Music, by the Monk Hucbald." The former

work is of little interest, and if a genuine production of Hucbald's,

probably belongs, as M. Fétis suggests, to his earlier period, when he

was still teaching at Rheims, along with his former classmate, Rémi,

of Auxerre.

The manual of Hucbald is not to be regarded as a complete treatise

upon music. It has three principal subjects, namely: The formation of

a new system of notation, the tonality of plain song, and symphony, or

the singing of many voices at different intervals--in other words,

harmony.

In treating the scale he divides it into tetrachords, precisely

according to the Greek method, as far as known to him, and he nowhere

appears to perceive the inapplicability of this division to the

ecclesiastical modes. For representing the sounds of the scale,

divided into four tetrachords, Hucbald proposed the Greek letters,

which in effect, would have been a notation of absolute pitch, with

the farther disadvantage of ignoring the harmonic principles of unity

already discovered, and in fact involved in his own method of

enlarging a two-voice passage by adding a third at the interval of an

octave with the lowest.

He recognizes six kinds of symphony; in reality he employs only three,

the others being reduplications. His symphonies are those of fourths,

fifths and octaves. In all parts of his work but one he uses the term

diaphony as synonymous with symphony; _there_ he gives its ancient

meaning of dissonance.

He proposed a sort of staff notation, upon which all the voices could

be represented at once. The following illustration represents his

staff and his diaphony, or harmony:

[Illustration: POLYPHONIC NOTATION OF HUCBALD.]

The initial letters, T and S, at the beginning of the lines in the

preceding staff indicate the place of the steps (tones) and half steps

(semitones).

[Music illustration: DECIPHERING OF ABOVE.

Sit glo-ri-a Do-mi-ni in sae-cu-la lae-ta-bi-tur

Do-mi-nus in o-pe-ri-bus su-is.]

M. Fétis gives a two-voice parallelism in fifths, which is

progressively enlarged to three voices by adding an octave to the

lower voice; and then to four by doubling the original upper voice in

the octave above. Thus:

[Music illustration: Tu pa-tris sem-pi-ter-nus es fi-li-us.]

In addition to mechanical progressions of parallel motion in this way,

Hucbald in another place gives an account of a so-called "roving"

organum, in which, while parallel progressions of fourths and fifths

still are found, there are also other intervals, while the beginning

and the end must be in unison. This form of the harmony of

simultaneous sounds has in it much of the character of counterpoint,

especially in the restriction that the voices must begin and end in

unison. This roving organum, or free organum, was also known as

"profane" or "secular" organum, in contradistinction to the "sacred

organum" already given, upon the sweetness of which Hucbald greatly

prided himself.

Fétis has well said that Hucbald must be considered as one of those

superior spirits who impress upon their epoch a movement in an art or

science. Besides this, he merits particular mention in the history of

music because his works are the first since those of Boethius--a

period of four centuries--in which the art of music is treated

systematically and without obscurity.

In the "_Epistola de Harmonica Institutione ad Rathbodum Episcopum

Trevinesem_" ("Letter to Rathbodum, Bishop of Treves"), there is

mention of the instruments of music during the seventh and eighth

centuries. They are the cithara and harp as the stringed instruments;

musetts, syrinx and organ among the wind instruments; cymbals and

drums, instruments of percussion. In the tenth century there was a

methodical treatise upon music in dialogue form, published by Odon,

abbot of Cluny, who died in this monastery November 18, 942. This

work, which was wrongfully attributed to Guido of Arezzo, contains a

number of analyses of intervals showing an understanding of the exact

dimensions of the various kinds of fourths, fifths, thirds and sixths.

According to his doctrine, the intervals of the fourths, fifths and

octaves are more natural for the voice than the others called thirds

and sixths, because the former are invariable, while the latter may be

larger or smaller by a half step. He makes a summary of ecclesiastical

chant, mentioning the modes as established by St. Gregory,

illustrating each of them by a selection from the "Plain Song." It is

a fact significant of the unsettled condition of musical theory and

the complete unconsciousness of musical amateurs that any essential

change in the art was being undergone, that as late as 1000 or 1020

Adelbold, Bishop of Utrecht, published a treatise upon music in which

the proportions of the tetrachords are calculated carefully according

to the Greek theories, and demonstrated upon the monochord.

III.

The most important writer upon music in the eleventh century, and one

of the most famous in the history of the art, was a monk named Guido,

living at Arezzo, in Tuscany, a Benedictine in the abbey of Pontose.

He was a remarkably skillful teacher of ecclesiastical singing, both

in his own monastery and at Rome, and in the effort to systematize the

elements of music he introduced a number of important reforms, and is

credited by later writers with many others which he did not himself

originate, but which grew out of some of his suggestions. He is

generally credited with having invented the art of solmization, the

introduction of the staff, the use of the hand for teaching intervals,

and the introduction of notes. He was not the first who introduced the

staff. Hucbald, as we have already seen, employed the spaces between

the lines for designating pitch. Between his time and that of Guido,

one or more lines were introduced in connection with the neumæ, as

will be more particularly illustrated in chapter XV. Guido, however,

employed both the lines and the spaces, but instead of notes he wrote

the Roman letters upon the lines and spaces according to their pitch.

The notes were invented shortly after his time. For determining the

correct pitch of the notes of the scale he explains the manner of

demonstrating them upon the monochord. He mentions organum and

diaphony, and remarks that he finds the succession of fifths and

fourths very tiresome. The last treatise of the thirteenth century was

written by John Cotton, an English monk, whose entire theory of music

is made up from the Greek works.

[Illustration: Fig. 29.

GUIDO OF AREZZO.]

This summary of the didactic writers between Boethius and Franco at

Cologne fully confirms the justice of the remark, in the chapter

previous, concerning the influence of the Church upon music. At the

very time when a well marked beginning was being made in counterpoint

by the old French school at Paris, and when the English, Welsh and

Scandinavian musicians were in possession of an art of expressive

melody resting upon a simple harmonic foundation, these writers can

find nothing to say but to repeat over and over again their tedious

calculations concerning the intonations of _nete hypate_ and the other

Aristoxinean notes in the enharmonic and chromatic genera, which had

been dead names in the art of music for more than ten centuries.

With the appearance of Franco at Cologne, there is something new in

music. Late in the twelfth century he wrote a treatise upon measured

music, the first one in all the history of the art, so far as we know,

in which musical measure is treated independently of verse, and a

notation given for representing it. He recognizes two kinds of

measure--triple or perfect, and duple or imperfect. He gives four

kinds of notes--the shortest being the _brevis_, an oblong note having

twice the value of a whole note; a short stem affixed to this note

doubled its value. It was then called the _longa_. A note head twice

as long represented a still longer duration, called the _maxima_ or

longest. There was also a _semibreve_, a diamond-shaped note which was

used when two or more tones were sung to one syllable. There were no

bars for indicating the place of the strong pulse in the measure, but

a bar was used to show the end of the musical phrase belonging to a

line of verse. The notation was made still more uncertain by the

license of the breve in triple time being equal to three semibreves,

and so in general each long note in triple measure being equal to

three of the next class shorter. In short, the time notation was of

the most crude and imperfect description, but it was at least a

beginning, and all the theoretical writers upon music for the next two

centuries rest in the precepts of Franco of Cologne, as a sure

stronghold, where no false doctrine can find admission. Franco

remarks, concerning the dissonances, that the imperfect dissonances,

the thirds and sixths, go very well between two consonances, showing

that in his time the third and sixth were still regarded as licenses

in harmony to be explained or excused. The general principle that any

dissonance is admissible when smoothly placed between two consonances

is a fundamental law of modern counterpoint.

There was another Franco whose work has often been confounded with

that of the celebrated master at Cologne. Franco of Paris was

connected with the Sorbonne or with Notre Dame, and his writing had

mostly to do with harmonic music. He classifies the consonances

as--complete, the unison and octave; the incomplete, the major and

minor thirds; the middle, the fourth and fifth. This is the first

instance in musical theory where the third has been recognized as a

consonance. Among the dissonances he classes the major and minor

sixth as incomplete, and says concerning these two only that

immediately before a consonance any incomplete dissonance goes very

well. From the superior celebrity of the Cologne Franco the work of

the Parisian master was overlooked for many years, and it is only

through the investigation of Coussemaker that his real standing and

importance have been ascertained.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XII.

THE RISE OF POLYPHONY. OLD FRENCH AND GALLO-BELGIC SCHOOLS.

I.

We here enter upon one of the most interesting and important chapters

in the history of music. The art of polyphony had its origin at the

same period as the pointed arch and the great cathedrals of Europe,

which our architects strive in vain to surpass. In the province of

music it represents the same bounding movement of mind, filled with

high ideality, which gave rise to the crusades, and poured out in

their support such endless treasures of life and love. And in the same

country, too, arose the Gothic arch, the beauties of the shrine of

Notre Dame in Paris, and the involved and massive polyphony of music.

_Polyphonic_ is a term which relates itself to two others, as the

leading types of all effort toward the expression of spirit through

organized tones. They are _Monodic_ and _Homophonic_. The musical art

of the ancients was an art in which a single melodic formula was

doubled in a lower or higher octave, but where no support of harmony

was added, and where the only realization of variety could come

through the province of rhythm alone; or, perhaps, to a very limited

extent through changes in the mode or color of the scale from which

the melody had been derived. Monodic art was an art of melody only,

rhythm finding its explanation and source in the words, and so far as

we understand the case, scarcely at all in the music. Our modern art

of homophony is like that in having but a single melody at each moment

of the piece; but it differs from the ancient in the important

particular of a harmonic support for the melody tones composed of

"chords in key." This harmonic accompaniment rules everything in

modern music. It is within the power of the composer to confirm the

obvious meaning of the melody tone by supporting it with the chord

which would most readily suggest itself, within the narrowest

limitations in the concept of key; or, second, it is within his reach

to impart to any tone, apparently most commonplace, a deeper and a

subtler meaning, by making it a peculiarly expressive tone of some

related key. Instances of this use of harmonic accompaniment are

numerous in Wagner's works, and form the most obvious peculiarity of

his style, and the chief reason why the hearers to whom his works were

first presented did not recognize the beauties and the novelties of

poetic expression in them. Half way between these two types of musical

art stands polyphony, which means etymologically "many sounds," but

which in musical technique means "multiplicity of melodies." In a true

polyphony not only has every tone of the leading voice a melodic

character, but all the tones which sound together with it are

themselves elements of other and independently moving melodies.

Polyphony comprehends the most recondite elements of musical theory,

but its essence consists of one leading concept--that of canonic

imitation. The simplest form of this is furnished by that musical

construction known as "round," in which one voice leads off with a

phrase, and immediately a second voice begins with the same melodic

idea at the same pitch, and follows after. At the proper interval a

third voice enters and follows the procession at a corresponding

distance behind. Thus, when there is only one voice singing we have

monody; when the second voice enters we have combined sounds

consisting of two elements; and when the third enters we have at each

successive step chords of three tones. If there are four voices, as

soon as the fourth enters, we have combined sounds of four elements.

This form of musical construction was much practiced in England, as

already noticed. A round, however, does not come to a close, but goes

on in an endless sequence until arrested arbitrarily by the

performers. Such a form is not proper to art, since it lacks the

necessary element of completeness, for at whatever point it may have

been arrested there was no innate reason why it might not have gone on

indefinitely.

The polyphonic compositions of the schools in consideration in the

present chapter go farther than this. While they consist of imitative

treatment of a single subject carried through all the voices, or of

several subjects which come together in such a way that the ear is not

able to follow them as individuals, there is a conclusion, and the

canonic imitation has a legitimate ending. Besides those compositions

consisting of repetitions of the same subjects, these schools gave

rise to other works in which several subjects are treated more or less

in the same manner as a single subject would have been in a simpler

composition. Nevertheless, in the earlier stages of the development,

all the chords arose as incidents, and not as ends. The composer

brought in his leading melodic idea at the interval prescribed or

chosen. If crudities arose when all the voices were employed, he took

no notice of them; the hearers, apparently, being too intent upon

following the individual voices to notice the forbidden parallels of

fifths or octaves, which inevitably arose until the composer had

learned which intervals might be used without harmonic offense, and

which not.

Before proceeding to the story of this chapter, the definition of a

few terms may be advisable, in the interests of clearness. By

"imitation," then, we mean the exact repetition of the melody of one

part by another part, at the same or a different pitch. Such an

imitation may be "strict," as when the intervals and progressions are

exactly repeated; or "free," as when certain changes are made here and

there in order to lead the imitation around better to the principal

key. Canonic imitation is one in which the imitation is strict, the

repeating voice exactly repeating the melody of the principal. By

"counterpoint" we mean a second voice added to a melody already

existing, the counterpoint having a strict relation to the leading

melody, but a wholly independent movement. This conception had its

origin in the art of extemporaneous descant, in which, while the choir

and congregation repeated the melody of the plain song, a few talented

singers performed variations to it, guided solely by ear and

tradition, returning to the tone of the plain song at all the points

of repose. We do not know when extemporaneous descant gave place to

written composition, but it was probably early in the twelfth century.

By "double counterpoint" is meant a counterpoint which, although

written to be sung an octave lower than the principal song, can be

transposed an octave and sung higher than the principal song without

giving rise to forbidden progressions. This will be the case only when

the original relations of the two voices have been restricted to

certain prescribed intervals. By "fugue" is meant a form of

composition in which every voice in turn enters with the leading

melody of the piece, the same given out by the leading voice at first,

called the "subject," responding alternately in tonic and dominant.

This form comes later than the period we are now about to consider,

but it grew out of the devices of polyphony, and accordingly is always

to be kept in mind as the goal toward which all this progress was

tending.

The art of polyphony is to be understood as an effort toward variety

and unity combined. The unity consisted in all the voices following

with the same melodic idea; variety, in the different combinations

resulting in the course of the progress. The limitations of polyphony

were reached when the true expression of melodic intervals was lost

through their intermingling with so many incongruous elements.

II.

The beginnings of contrapuntal and polyphonic music have been traced

to what is now known as the old French school, having its active

period between about 1100 and 1370, or thereabouts. The principal

masters known to us now by name, were all, or nearly all, connected

with the cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, and several of them with the

university of the Sorbonne. Paris, during the earlier part of this

period, in fact during the greater part of it, was the most advanced

and active intellectual center of the entire civilized world. When the

French school had ceased to advance, as happened some time before the

close of the history in 1370, as above assigned, it found a successor

in what is known as the Gallo-Belgic school, which was active between

1350 and 1432. This, in turn, was succeeded by the Netherland school,

extending from about 1425 to 1625. The removal of the star of progress

from one location to another, as here indicated in the succession of

these great national schools, was probably influenced by corresponding

or slightly antecedent changes in the commercial or political

relations of the countries, rendering the old locality less favorable

to art than the new one. For questions of this sort, however, there is

not now time or space. To return to the old French school--the

recognition of the importance of this school is due to a learned

Belgian savant, M. Coussemaker, who happening to discover in the

medical library at Montpelier, France, an old manuscript of music,

analyzed it, and found that it represented masters previously unknown,

and, for the most part, belonging to the period under present

consideration. In several monographs upon the history of "Harmony in

the Middle Ages," he traced the steps through which polyphony had

arisen, and was able to show that, instead of dating from the

fourteenth or fifteenth century, as previously supposed, it had its

beginnings more than three centuries earlier, and that Paris was the

first center of this form of musical effort.

For convenience of classification the entire duration of the old

French school may be divided into four periods, of which the first may

be taken to extend from 1100 to 1140, the great names being those of

Léonin and Pérotin, both organists and deschanteurs at Notre Dame. The

Montpelier manuscript contains several compositions by both these

masters, and in them we find the germs of the most important devices

of counterpoint.

Léonin was known to his contemporaries as "Optimus Organista," on

account of his superior organ playing. He wrote a treatise upon the

art, a manuscript copy of which appears to be in the British Museum,

and its contents have been summarized by an anonymous observer, but

never published in full. He is said to dwell mainly upon the proper

manner of performing the antiphonary and the graduale. It is also

stated that he noted his compositions according to a method invented

by himself. If this work could be fully examined it might throw

important light upon the point reached in the practice of church music

in his day; his notation, also, would be a matter of interest and

possibly of importance. Quite a number of compositions by Léonin have

been discovered. The successor of Master Léonin, as director of the

music at Notre Dame, was one Pérotin, who, besides being a capable

deschanteur, was an even greater organist than his teacher, Léonin. He

was also a very prolific composer, many of his compositions being

still extant. He made additions to his predecessor's manual of the

organ.

By descant in the foregoing account, reference is made to the practice

of extemporaneous singing of an ornamental part to the plain song or a

secular _cantus fermus_. This art had its origin one or two centuries

earlier than the period now under consideration, in the secular

organum of Hucbald (see p. 142), and all the more talented singers,

who were also composers as well, were expert masters of it. Descant

was the predecessor of counterpoint.

The chief forms of composition in vogue during this period were

motette, rondo and conduit. The terms were rather inexactly applied,

but in general the motette appears to have been a church composition,

in which often the different voices had different texts, so that the

words were wholly lost in performance. The rondo seems to have been a

secular composition, and was sometimes written without words. The

conduit was an organ piece, occasionally, if not generally, of a

secular character. All of these forms were also distinguished as

duplum, triplum and quadruplum, according to the number of voices. The

harmonic treatment in them is still crude, occasional passages of

parallel fifths occurring, after the manner of Hucbald, but in the

works of Pérotin passages of this kind are softened somewhat by the

device of contrary motion in the other parts. He made a beginning in

canonic imitation, Coussemaker and Naumann, after him, giving examples

from a composition of his called "_Posuit Adjutorium_." In these works

of Pérotin, and in many others of that day, traces are to be seen of

an amelioration of the musical ear, and a preference for thirds and

sixths, such as but a short time previously had been unknown to

musical theory. This influence was probably due to what was called

"_Faux Bourdon_," a system of accompanying a melody by an

extemporaneous second and third part in thirds or sixths.

This art, again, is clearly due to the influence of the round singing

of the British isles. Thus we have already a beginning of at least

three important elements of good music: The recognition of the triad,

or, more properly, of the third and sixth, a beginning in imitation,

and the contrapuntal concept of an independently moving melodic

accompaniment to a second voice, which in turn had been the outcome of

extemporaneous descant. The works of Pérotin were undoubtedly in

advance of his time, having in them no small vitality, as is shown in

their having formed a part of the repertory of Notre Dame for more

than two centuries.

The second period of the old French school extended from about 1140 to

1170, and great improvements were made in the art of harmony

meanwhile. The three great masters of this period were Robert of

Sabillon, his successor in Notre Dame, Pierre de la Croix, and a

theoretical writer named Jean de Garland. The first of these men was

distinguished as a great deschanteur, in other words, a ready hand at

extemporaneous counterpoint. Pierre de la Croix made certain

improvements in notation, the nature of which, however, the musical

historians fail to give us. Garland divided the consonances into

perfect, imperfect and middle--a system which has remained in use,

with slight alteration, to the present day. The thirds and sixths,

however, still rank as dissonances. He also defines double

counterpoint, and gives examples. The illustrations are crude, but the

idea is correct.

The third period of the old French school is sometimes known as the

Franconian period, from the two great names in it of Franco of Paris

and Franco of Cologne, whose theories have already been noticed. (See

page 146.)

Another celebrated name of this period was that of Jerome of Moravia,

also a theoretical writer, whose treatise has been published along

with the others in Coussemaker's "Mediæval Writers upon Music." He was

a teacher and a Dominican monk at Paris. He was contemporaneous with

Franco of Cologne.

The fourth period of the old French school extended from 1230 to 1370.

The three great names were Phillippe de Vitry, Jean de Muris and

Guillaume de Machaut. They were regarded by their contemporaries as

exponents of the _ars nova_, in contradistinction to the Franconian

teaching, which was called _ars antiqua_. One of these differences was

the use of a number of signs permitting singers to introduce

chromatics in order to carry out the imitations without destroying the

tonality. Jean de Muris was born in Normandy. He was a doctor in the

Sorbonne, and from 1330 a deacon and a canon. He died in 1370. He was

a learned man of an active mind. He speaks of three kinds of

tempo--lively, moderate and slow. He says that Pierre sometimes set

against a breve four, six, seven and even nine semibreves--a license

followed to this day in the small notes of the _fioratura_. This kind

of license on the part of the deschanteurs had been carried to a great

length, the melodic figures resulting being called "_fleurettes_"

("little flowers"). John Cotton compared the singers improvising the

_fleurettes_ of this kind to revelers, who, having at length reached

home, cannot tell by what route they got there. Jean de Muris reproved

them in turn, saying: "You throw tones by chance, like boys throwing

stones, scarcely one in a hundred hitting the mark, and instead of

giving pleasure you cause anger and ill-humor." Machaut was born in

Rethel, a province in Champagne, in 1284. He was still living in 1369.

He was a poet and musician who occupied important positions in the

service of several princes, and wrote a mass for the coronation of

Charles V. Naumann thinks that Machaut was the natural predecessor of

the style of Lassus and Palestrina. He says that the use of double

counterpoint slackened from this time, whereby the music of the

Netherland composers--Dufay, Willaert and Palestrina--is simpler and

less artificial than that of Odington and Jean de Garland. Chords

were more regarded. This also had its source in the north.

III.

The Gallo-Belgic school occupies an intermediate place between the old

French and Netherlandish. Its time was from 1360 to 1460, and Tournay

the central point for most of the time. The first great name in this

school was Dufay, 1350-1432. The compositions remained the same as

formerly, triplum, quadruplum, etc. One of the masters of this school,

Hans Zeelandia, who died about 1370, is to be noticed on account of

his part writing being more euphonious than that of his predecessors.

He uses the third more freely, and he gives the principal melody in

his chansons to the treble, and not to the tenor, as do the others.

This also is in line with the British influence. Dufay was regarded by

his contemporaries as the greatest composer of his time. The open note

notation succeeded the black notes about 1400, or, according to

Ambros, as early as 1370. Coussemaker dates Dufay 1355 to 1435. The

introduction of popular tunes as a _cantus fermus_ in masses and other

such compositions is due to him; there are a large number of such

works still in the library of the Vatican. He was the first, so far as

we know, who introduced "_L'Omme Armé_," and the same subject was

treated by several other composers after him. Naumann thinks that the

most noticeable peculiarity of the work of Dufay is the interrupted

part writing, the imitation not running through the whole composition,

but appearing here and there, according to the fancy of the composer.

Dufay is also credited with having written pure canonic imitations

without descending to the level of the rota, with its endless phrases.

Quite a number of his compositions are preserved at the Vatican and

the Royal Library at Brussels. The other great name of the first

period of this school was that of Binchois, born in Hennegau, died

about 1465. A few of his compositions are preserved, but they hardly

present important differences from those of Dufay. There were several

masters intervening between those just mentioned and Busnois, who

closed the school, but at this lapse of time their work hardly retains

sufficient individuality to warrant burdening the memory with them.

Antoine de Busnois was born in Flanders in 1440, and died in 1482.

During a great part of his active life he was _chapelain-chanteur_ in

the household of Charles the Bold, and that of his successor, Maria of

Burgundy. His salary in this position was extremely meager, ranging

between twelve and eighteen sous a day, or, in our currency, between

about twenty-five cents and forty-eight cents a day, but as the

position carried provision for all the real needs of a man in the

matter of food and clothing, perhaps the salary was not so

insufficient, considering the greater purchasing power of money, which

must have been at least three or four times as great as at the

present. Busnois appears to have been on cordial terms with the duke,

accompanying him in his travels.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SCHOOLS OF THE NETHERLANDS.

The wealth and commercial activity of the Low Countries, known as

Flanders, Brabant and Hainault, had now become greater than that of

any other part of Europe, Italy perhaps excepted. The organization of

the Communes, which began, indeed, in France as early as the tenth

century, naturally reached a greater extent during the crusades, when

so many of the higher and more energetic nobility were absent in the

Holy Land, since the defense and order of the people at home had to be

maintained by those who were left behind. Under these circumstances,

the power naturally drifted into the strongest hands available, which

quite as naturally were those of the capable merchants and

manufacturers of the burgher class. Hence the condition of society,

while much hampered by the restrictions of the guilds requiring

children to be brought up to the occupation of the parents, was

nevertheless more favorable to the freedom of the individual than at

any previous period. These social elements combining with the wealth

aforesaid, and the public spirit which has always distinguished the

mercantile classes engaged in foreign commerce upon a large scale,

united to form an environment favorable to the development of art;

and, as music was the form of art which happened to be most in demand

at the time, the effects of the stimulating environment were

immediately seen. It was perhaps partly in consequence of the burgher

character of the classes most engaged in music in Flanders that the

form music there developed should have been so exclusively vocal. All

the work of this school, extending over two centuries, was either

exclusively vocal, or written with main consideration for the voice,

the instrumental additions, if any, having never taken on a

descriptive or colorative character.

The schools of the Netherlands came into prominence about 1425, and

endured, with little loss of prestige, for two centuries, or until

1625. During this period there was a succession of eminent names in

music in these countries, and a great progress was made in polyphony,

and a transition begun out of that into harmony (which was in part

accidental, owing to their outdoing themselves, as we shall see).

Moreover, in the later times, quite a number of eminent men emigrated

to foreign countries, and there kindled the sacred fires of the art,

and set new causes in operation, leading to the development of

national schools of great vigor. The three most eminent names in the

category last referred to were those of Tinctor, who founded the

school of Naples shortly before 1500; Willaert, who founded that of

Venice soon after 1500, and Orlando Lassus, who founded that of Munich

a trifle later. The great Palestrina himself was an outcome of these

schools of the Netherlands, and, aside from the independent musical

life in Spain, there was no strong cultivation of music anywhere in

Europe during this period, which did not have its source in these

schools of the Netherlands. The entire relation of these schools is

perhaps better shown in the following table taken from Naumann, than

is possible in any other manner:

THE NETHERLAND SCHOOL. (1425-1625 A.D.)

BELGIAN SCHOOL. DUTCH SCHOOL.

_First Period--1425-1512._ _First Period--1430-1506._

OKEGHEM, Compère, Petrus, Hobrecht.

Platenis, Tinctor.

_Second Period--1455-1526._ _Second Period--1495-1570._

JOSQUIN DES PRÈS, Agricola, ARKADELT, Holländer.

Mouton.

_Third Period--1495-1572._ _Third Period--1440-1622._

GOMBERT, WILLAERT, SCHWELINCK.

Goudimel,

Clemens (_non papa_),

Cyprian de Rore.

_Fourth Period--1520-1625._

ORLANDO LASSUS, Andreas Pavernage,

Phillippus de Monte, Verdonck.

The first composer of the Belgian branch of the Netherlandish school

was Joannes Okeghem, who was a singer boy in the choir of the Antwerp

cathedral in 1443, and is supposed to have been a pupil of Binchois.

Directly after the date just mentioned he gave up his place at

Antwerp, and entered the service of the king of France. For forty

years he served three successive kings, having been in especial favor

with Louis XI. He resigned his position at Tours soon after 1490, and

lived in retirement until his death in 1513, at the age of nearly 100

years. Okeghem was a very ingenious and laborious composer, who

carried the art of canonic imitation to a much finer point than had

been reached before his time. He is generally credited with having

composed a motette in thirty-six parts having almost all the devices

later known as augmentation, diminution, inversion, retrograde, crab,

etc. The thirty-six parts here mentioned, however, were not fully

written out. Only six parts were written, the remainder being

developed from these on the principle of a round, the successive

choruses following each other at certain intervals, according to Latin

directions printed with the music. The other composers belonging to

this period were comparatively unimportant, with the exception of

Johannes Tinctor, who was born about 1446 and died in 1511. Tinctor,

after being educated to music in Belgium, emigrated to Naples. In

early youth he studied law, and took the degree of doctor of

jurisprudence, and afterward of theology; was admitted to the

priesthood, and became a canon. He then entered the service of

Ferdinand of Aragon, king of Naples, who appointed him chaplain and

cantor. He founded a music school in Naples, and published a multitude

of theoretical works of the nature of text books. He is entitled to

the honorable distinction of having published the first musical

dictionary of which we have any record. This book is without date, but

is supposed to have been printed about 1475. None of the compositions

of Tinctor have been printed, and his importance in music history

ranks mainly upon the theoretical works which he composed, and his

relation as founder of the Naples school.

The second period of the Belgian school has the great name of Josquin

des Près, who was born about the middle of the fifteenth century,

probably at St. Quentin, in Hainault. He was a pupil of Okeghem; was

chapel master in his native town, and in 1471 was a musician at the

papal court of Sixtus IV. This great master is to be remembered as the

first of the Netherlandish school whose works still have vitality. He

was a man of genius and of musical feeling. Martin Luther said of him

that "Other composers make their music where their notes take them

[referring to their canonic devices]; but Josquin takes his music

where he wills." Baini, the biographer of Palestrina, speaks of him as

having been the idol of Europe. He says: "They sing only Josquin in

Italy; Josquin alone in France; only Josquin in Germany; in Flanders,

in Hungary, in Bohemia, in Spain--only Josquin." ("_Si canta il solo

Jusquino in Italia; il solo Jusquino in Francia; il solo Jusquino in

Germania_," etc.) Josquin was a musician of ready wit, and many

amusing stories are told of the skill with which he overcame

obstacles. Among others it is told that while he was at the French

court the courtier to whom he applied for promotion always put him off

with the answer, "_Lascia fare mi_." Weary of waiting, Josquin

composed a mass upon the subject la, sol, fa, re, mi, repeated over

and over in mimicry of the oft repeated answer. The king was so much

amused that he at once promised Josquin a position, but his memory not

having proved faithful, Josquin appealed to him with a motette:

"_Portio mea non est in terra viventium_" ("My portion is not in the

land of the living"); and "_Memor esto verbi tui_" ("Remember thy

words"). Another anecdote of similar readiness is that of the motette

which the king, who was a very bad singer, asked Josquin to write,

with a part in it for the royal voice. Josquin composed a very

elaborate motette, full of all sorts of canonic devices, and in the

center of the score one part with the same note repeated over and

over, the one good note of the king's voice--the inscription being

"_Vox regis_" ("voice of the king"). It will be too much to claim

Josquin as a composer of expressive music. The mere fact of his having

written motettes upon the genealogies in the first chapters of St.

Matthew and St. Luke sufficiently defines the importance he attached

to the words. Speaking of Josquin's treatment of effects, it is

recorded of him that a single word is sometimes scattered through a

whole page of notes, showing that he attached no importance to the

words whatever. One of the most beautiful of his pieces was a dirge

written upon the death of Okeghem. Owing to the good fortune of the

invention of music printing from movable types, in 1498, when Josquin

was at the height of his powers, a large number of his works have come

down to modern times.

In the corresponding period of the Dutch school the name of Jacob

Arkadelt is to be remembered, who, although not a composer of the

first order, was nevertheless a man of decided power, and is known to

us through a number of his works still existing in considerable

freshness. Arkadelt was a singing master to the boys in St. Peter's in

Rome in 1539, and was admitted to the college of papal singers in

1540. About 1555 he entered the service of Cardinal Charles of

Lorraine, duke of Guise, and went to Paris, where probably he died.

Besides a large number of motettes and masses, he was one of the most

famous of the Venetian school of madrigal writers, a form of

composition of which it will be in order to speak later. One of the

most pleasing of Arkadelt's compositions is an _Ave Maria_ which is

often played and sung at the present day.

The third period of the Netherlandish school embraced four very

eminent names--Gombert, Willaert, Goudimel and Cyprian de Rore. The

three latter were successively chapel masters at the cathedral of St.

Mark's in Venice, and were eminent lights of the Venetian school. It

is a significant indication of the commercial decadence of the

Netherlands, which had now set in, that all the composers of this

period distinguished themselves in foreign countries. Nicholas

Gombert, a pupil of Josquin, became master of singers, and afterward

directed the music at the royal chapel in Madrid from 1530. He was a

prolific composer of masses, motettes, chansons and other works. Of

the remaining members of this period mention will be made in

connection with the account of the music in St. Mark's, where they all

distinguished themselves.