A Popular History of the Art of Music Part 8

The following are the ecclesiastical scales and names, as established by St. Gregory:

[Music ill.u.s.tration:

_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 Stra.s.sburg, 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 pa.s.sage, 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 Philologiae et Mercurii_"). The little upon music which the book contains was only an abridgment of the Greek treatise of Aristides Quintilia.n.u.s.

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 Fetis' "History of Music,"

Vol. IV:

"Born at Rome between 470 and 475, Boethius made at home cla.s.sical 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 fict.i.tious. 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 compa.s.s; 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.

Ca.s.siodorus, 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 cla.s.sification 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 Ca.s.siodorus' 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 Abbe Gerbert, under the name of "_Sentences de Musique_," in the collection of ecclesiastical writers upon this art, after a ma.n.u.script 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 consist.i.t 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 Reome or Montier-Saint-Jean, in the diocese of Langes, who appears to have lived about the year 850. His book, called "_Musicae 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 Remi, 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 ma.n.u.script in the library of the Franciscan convent at Stra.s.sburg, collated with another from Cesene, bears this t.i.tle: "_Incipit Liber Ubaldi Peritissimi Musici de Harmonica Inst.i.tutione_."

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. Fetis suggests, to his earlier period, when he was still teaching at Rheims, along with his former cla.s.smate, Remi, of Auxerre.

The manual of Hucbald is not to be regarded as a complete treatise upon music. It has three princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sage 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 ill.u.s.tration represents his staff and his diaphony, or harmony:

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 ill.u.s.tration: 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. Fetis 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 ill.u.s.tration: 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.

Fetis 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 Inst.i.tutione 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 a.n.a.lyses 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, ill.u.s.trating 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.