A Popular History of the Art of Music Part 6

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-c.u.m 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 20.

SAXON HARP.

(From ma.n.u.script in the library of Cambridge University.)]

The harp was the princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sed 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 ma.n.u.script in the British Museum. It is presumably of the tenth century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 circ.u.mstances 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 ill.u.s.tration: 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 G.o.d 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. Ginguene, 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 Aba.s.sides, 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 princ.i.p.al 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 ma.n.u.script 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 a.s.sociation of sounds into chord ma.s.ses; 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 mediaeval romances. The social conditions out of which these songs grew have been well summarized by M. Leon Gautier, in his "_Les epopees Francaises_": "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."