Shakespeare and Music Part 4

Our modern Tarantellas derive their name and characteristic speed from the old Tarantula.

_Lear_ I, ii, 137. Edmund pretends not to see Edgar's entrance.

_Edmund (aside)._ Pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy: my cue is villainous melancholy, with a _sigh like Tom o' Bedlam_.--O! these eclipses do portend _these divisions_. _Fa, sol, la, mi._

Songs like 'Tom o' Bedlam,' mad-songs they were called, were very commonly sung in England in the 17th century. The tune and words of the original 'Tom a Bedlam' are to be found in Chappell, Vol. I. p.

175. Its date is some time before 1626,[6] and verse 1 begins, 'From the hagg and hungrie Goblin,' and the whole is as full of e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of 'Poor Tom' as Act III. of _Lear_.

[Footnote 6: Rimbault's preface to the Musical Antiquarian Society's reprint of Purcell's opera, "Bonduca," says that Mad Tom was written by Coperario in 1612, for the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, by Beaumont. This was, 'Forth from my sad and darksome sell.']

The last sentence has yet another play on the double meaning of 'divisions.' A few lines further on Edmund explains what kind of 'divisions' he expects to follow the eclipses--namely, 'between the child and the parent ... dissolutions of ancient amities; divisions in state,' etc. But the very use of the word in the quoted lines brings its musical meaning into his head, for he promptly carries off his a.s.sumed blindness to Edgar's presence by humming over his 'fa, sol, la, mi.' [Burney, Hist., Vol. III. p. 344, has a sensible observation on this pa.s.sage--that Edgar alludes to the unnatural division of parent and child, etc., in this musical phrase, which contains the augmented fourth, or _mi contra fa_, of which the old theorists used to say 'diabolus est.']

Guido d'Arezzo (or Aretinus), in his Micrologus (about 1024), named the six notes of the Hexachord (_e.g._, C, D, E, F, G, A), thus--Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La. These were the first syllables of certain words in the Hymn for the feast of St John Baptist, the words and tune of which are in Hawkins, p. 163.

"UT queant laxis RE-sonare fibris MI-ra gestorum FA-muli tuorum SOL-ve polluti LA-bii reatum, Sancte Joannes."

A rough translation of which is--

'That thy servants may be able with free hearts to sound forth the wonders of thy deeds; release us, O Holy John, from the guilt of a defiled lip.'

In the ancient tune of this verse, the notes a.s.signed to the syllables in capitals were successively those of the scale, C, D, E, F, G, A, and these same syllables were still used in singing in the 16th century. It was noticed, however, that the scale could be easily expressed by fewer names, and accordingly we find Christopher Sympson (1667) saying, in his 'Compendium,' that Ut and Re are 'superfluous, and therefore laid aside by most Modern Teachers.' In his book, the whole scale of _eight_ notes is named thus--Fa, Sol, La, Fa, Sol, La, _mi_, Fa. A modern Tonic Solfaist would understand this arrangement quite differently. C, D, E would be called Do (instead of Ut), Re, Mi; then would follow F, G, A, under the names Fa, Sol, La; and the 'leading note' [top note but one] would be called Ti (instead of Si); the octave C beginning once more with Do.

The reader will remember that the tonal relation of C, D, E is exactly the same as that of the next three notes, F, G, A--viz., C--D, a tone; D--E, a tone; and similarly with F--G, G--A. Therefore the two blocks of three notes (which are separated by a _semi_-tone) might have the same names--viz., Fa, sol, la. Thus we have the first _six_ notes of the scale, Fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la. There only remains one note, the 'leading note,' the B; and this, in Sympson, is named _Mi_. So the princ.i.p.al thing in the sol-fa-ing of a pa.s.sage was to 'place the Mi,'

or, as we should now put it, to find 'what key' it is in. Thus, in the key of C, Mi is in B: in G, Mi is in F sharp: in F, Mi is in E, and so on, the remaining six notes being named Fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la, as explained above.

Edmund's 'Fa, Sol, La, Mi,' therefore, corresponds to F, G, A, B; or C, D, E, F sharp; or B flat, C, D, E, etc.; according to the pitch taken by the singer.

In this connection see the following pa.s.sage:--

_Shrew_ I, ii, 16.

_Petr._ 'Faith, sirrah, an you'll not knock, I'll _wring_ it: I'll try how you can _sol, fa_, and _sing it_.'

[He wrings GRUMIO by the ears.

Here is a pun on 'wring' and 'ring'; and 'sol-fa' is used as an equivalent for 'sing.'

More important still is 'the gamut of Hortensio,' _Shrew_ III, i, 72.

[Gam-ut was the name of the Ut of lowest pitch, corresponding to the low G on the first line of our present ba.s.s staff, and was marked specially with a Greek Gamma, hence Gam-ut. The word became a synonym for 'the Scale.']

In this pa.s.sage the names of the notes are simply those to be found in all instruction books of the 16th and 17th centuries.

'Gam-ut I am, the ground of all accord, A-re, to plead Hortensio's pa.s.sion; B-mi, Bianca, take him for thy lord, C-fa-ut, that loves with all affection: D sol, re, one cliff, two notes have I: E la, mi, show pity or I die.'

Here Hortensio puts in his love-verses under the guise of a musicmaster's Gamut.

The lines may be taken separately as fantastic commentaries on the syllables themselves, as well as having their ulterior meaning for Bianca.

For instance, Gam-ut the _lowest_ note then recognised in the scale, is called 'the _ground_ of all _accord_.' A-re, I suppose, represents the lover's sigh 'to plead his pa.s.sion.' B-mi, may be twisted into 'Be mine,' by the light of the remaining words in the line; while 'D sol re, one cliff, two notes have I' obviously refers to Hortensio's disguise. The 'cliff' is what is now called a 'clef,' or 'key,'

because its position on the staff gave the 'key' to the position of the semitones and tones on the various lines and s.p.a.ces. The six notes here mentioned are the G, A, B, C, D, E, in the ba.s.s staff. They could only be written (as they are yet) in _one_ clef--namely, the F clef.

The expression 'two notes have I,' as applied to the D, means that, in the key of G, D is called Sol; while in the key of C it would have the name Re; just as Hortensio is Hortensio, and at the same time masquerades as a singing-master.

It has been mentioned that the art of adding an extempore counterpoint to a written melody was called 'descant.' The written melody itself was called the 'Plain-song,' and hence the whole performance, plainsong and descant together, came to be known by the term 'Plain-song,' as opposed to the performance of plainsong with a _written_ descant; which was known as 'p.r.i.c.k-song.'

Morley gives us a clear idea that the extempore descant was often a very unsatisfactory performance, at any rate when it was attempted to add more than one extempore part at a time to the plainsong. As he says--'For though they should all be moste excellent men ... it is unpossible for them to be true one to another.' The following pa.s.sage will be more clear on this light.

_H. 5._ III, ii, 3. Fight at Harfleur.

_Nym._ Pray thee, corporal, stay: ... the humour of it is too hot, that is the very _plain-song_ of it.

_Pistol._ _The plain-song is most just_, for humours do abound.

L. 41.

_Boy_ (speaks of the 3 rogues).... They will steal anything, and call it purchase. Bardolph _stole a lute-case_, bore it twelve leagues, and _sold it for three half-pence_.

Falstaff's worthy body-guard are getting tired of hard knocks in fight; Nym compares their late activity to a somewhat florid 'plain-song' [meaning an extempore descant, as explained above]; Pistol says it is a 'just' plainsong. A 'just' plainsong would mean that the singer had managed his extempore descant 'without singing eyther false chords or forbidden descant one to another.' Similarly, there is little doubt that both Ancient and Corporal managed to take a part in the skirmishings with as little damage as possible to their sconces.

The speech of the boy at l. 41 hardly enrols Bardolph amongst music lovers. At all events he stole a lute-case, and seems to have liked it so much that he carried it 36 miles before his worser nature prevailed on him to sell it for 1-1/2d.

The next quotation still concerns Jack Falstaff and his crew, all of whom (and strictly in accordance with history) seem to have been sound practical musicians. This time they are speaking, not of descant, but of p.r.i.c.k-song. The chiefest virtue in the performance of p.r.i.c.k-song, by which Falstaff and Nym probably understood both sacred and secular part-music, is that a man should 'keep time,' religiously counting his rests, 'one, two, three, and the third in your bosom,' and when he begins to sing, that he should 'keep time, distance, and proportion,'

as Mercutio says Tybalt did in his fencing, see _Romeo_ II, iv, 20.

All this is thoroughly appreciated by Falstaff and his corporal in the following lines:--

_Merry Wiv._ I, iii, 25.

_Falstaff_ (of Bardolph) ... his thefts were too open; his filching was _like an unskilful singer_, he _kept not time_.

_Nym._ The good humour is to _steal at a minim's rest_.

['Minims' is a modern conjecture.]

The metaphor is of an anthem or madrigal, say in four parts. We will suppose the Hostess of the 'Garter' is taking the _Cantus_, a tapster the _Altus_, mine Host the _Tenor_, and Nym the _Ba.s.sus_. The three former are all hard at work on their respective 'parts,' one in the kitchen, another in the taproom, the third in familiar converse outside the front door. But Nym has 'a minim rest,' and during that short respite takes advantage of the absorbing occupations of the other three 'singers' to lay hands on whatever portable property is within his reach. 'A minim rest' is not much--but the point remains.

Any musician has had experience of what can be done during a short 'rest'--_e.g._, to resin his bow, or turn up the corners of the next few pages of his music, light the gas, or find his place in another book.

By an easy transition we pa.s.s to the following:--

_Pericles_ I, i, 81. Pericles addresses the daughter of King Antiochus.

_Per._ You're a _fair viol_, and _your sense the strings_, Who, _finger'd_ to make man his _lawful music_, Would draw heaven down and all the G.o.ds to hearken; But being _play'd upon before your time_, h.e.l.l only danceth at so harsh a chime.

Pericles compares the lawful love of a wife with the performance of a good viol player, the proper characteristics of which would be, 'in tune,' and 'in time.' The comparison in l. 84 is of this girl's lawless pa.s.sion with the 'disorder'd' playing of a bad violist, who has got 'out,' as we say; who is playing 'before his time,' thus entirely spoiling the music, which becomes a dance for devils rather than angels.

The viol was decidedly the most important stringed instrument played with a bow that was in use in Elizabethan times. There were three different sizes.