Elisabeth Woodbridge - "More Jonathan Papers"

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Pierre Louys - "Les chansons de Bilitis"

Henrik Ibsen - "La kolonoj de la socio"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

A Popular History of the Art of Music

W >> W. S. B. Mathews >> A Popular History of the Art of Music




[Illustration: Fig. 36.

NOTATION OF THE FRENCH TROUVERES.]

By the time of Franco of Cologne, the four-lined staff with square
notes had come into use, the notes having the value already assigned
them in the chapter upon Franco of Cologne. (See p. 145.) The place of
fa was marked by a clef, and with some few exceptions all the musical
notation from this time forward is susceptible of approximate
translation. The term approximate is used above by reason of the fact
that no sharps or flats were written until long after this period, but
it is thought that they were occasionally interpolated by the singers
quite a long time before it became customary to put them into the
notation. In this way, for example, a piece of music beginning and
ending on the degree appropriate to fa might be brought within the
limits of the key of F by the singer changing B natural to B flat
wherever it occurred. Our information in regard to this practice is
extremely limited, and, in fact, rests upon two or three detached
hints. The signature was not employed until some centuries later.

As already mentioned in chapter XI, there was no measure notation for
a long time after Franco's death. The data are uncertain concerning
the exact time when the bar began to be used to mark the measure. Its
earliest use was that of marking the end of the music belonging to a
line of poetry. This is the same use as now made of the double bar in
vocal music. In fact, everything points to the progressive development
of music in all respects, and the development of what we might call
self-consciousness in musicians, whereby each succeeding generation
sought to place upon record a greater number of particulars concerning
their music, and to leave less and less to accident or tradition. This
progress has gone on until the present time, when two particulars of
our music are exactly recorded--the pitch and the rhythm. The exact
relation of every tone to the key note is ascertainable from our
musical notation, and the precise degree of rhythmic importance
appertaining to each tone according to its place in measure and in the
larger rhythms. We are still lame in the matter of expression, and in
pianoforte music also in regard to the application of the pedals. Here
our notation affords only a few detached suggestions. If the master
works of the modern school could be noted for expression as completely
as for pitch and rhythm, the labor of acquiring musical knowledge
would be very greatly diminished.

The four-line staff has remained in use in the Catholic Church until
the present time, and with it the square notes. It is generally called
Gregorian, and by many is supposed to have been invented by Gregory
the Great; but as a matter of fact, about six centuries elapsed after
his death before this square-note notation came into use. The
five-line staff came into use about 1500. Information is wanting as to
the causes which led to its adoption in preference to the four-line
notation so long in use. The clef for do (C clef) remained in use
until very lately, and is still used by many strict theorists, being
written upon the first line for the soprano, the fourth line for the
tenor, the third line for the alto. The G clef, also, when first
introduced, was often written upon the third or the first line; the F
clef, moreover, was not definitely established on the fourth line
until toward 1700. In the scores of Palestrina's work, now published
in complete form, there are pieces written with the soprano in the G
clef upon the first line, the alto in the C clef upon the second line,
the tenor in the C clef upon the fourth line, and the bass in the F
clef upon the third line. This, while affording the eye two familiar
clefs, the treble and the bass, places them in such a way as to
practically make it necessary for the modern reader to transpose every
note of the composition in all the parts, and, in fact, to effect a
transposition for each part upon principles peculiar to itself.

The progress of classification is distinctly seen in the use of seven
letters instead of fifteen, affording a tacit recognition of the most
essential underlying facts of harmony--_the equivalence of octaves_.
The staff, however, affords the eye no assistance at this point, since
the octaves of notes occupy relatively entirely different positions
upon it, the octave of a space being invariably a line, and the octave
of a line a space. Moreover, the octave of a bass line is always very
differently located when it falls upon the treble staff, and, _vice
versa_, the octave of a treble note falling in the bass is very
differently placed. If a notation had to be made anew it would no
doubt facilitate matters to make use of a staff so planned as to bring
out the equivalence of octaves more perfectly. A recent American
designer, Mrs. Wheeler, has proposed a double staff of six lines,
divided into two groups of three, for the treble and bass, thus
presenting for the piano score four groups of three lines each,
separated by smaller or larger intervals. Upon such a staff every tone
would fall in the same place upon the three lines in every octave, the
octave of the first line of the lower three would be the first line of
the second three, and so on.

This, however, is to anticipate. The smaller rhythmic divisions of the
measure were very little used in the old music which, if not sung in
slow time, was at least written in long notes, and the smaller
varieties of notes are the invention of a period perhaps rather later
than that at which we have now arrived. They belong to the elaborate
rhythmic construction of the music of Haendel, Bach, Scarlatti and
Haydn.




CHAPTER XVI.

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. THE VIOLIN, ORGAN, ETC.


I.

During the entire period covered by the division of the story with
which we have been now for some time dealing, the influences operating
upon the tonal sense in the direction of harmonic perception had also
been highly stimulative to the sense of melody. All the devices of
counterpoint, with their two, three and four tones of the moving voice
against one of the _cantus fermus_, were so many incitations in the
direction of melodic cleverness. This influence was still further
strengthened by the constant effort of the composer to impart to each
voice as characteristic an individuality of movement as possible.
Hence there is a distinct gain in smoothness of melody, and there are
occasional appearances of truly expressive quality in this part of the
music, even in the most elaborate of the contrapuntal compositions.
Meanwhile the various forms of popular minstrelsy, whose general
course we have already traced, were powerfully appealing to this part
of the musical endowment of the hearers. But the great means of
cultivating an ear for melody, both in players and hearers, was the
violin, which, contemporaneously with the present point of our story,
had reached its mature form and nearly all of its tonal powers. In
fact, the tonal education of the mediaeval musicians had been carried
forward in several directions by the instruments in use. The harp and
its influence upon the development of chord perceptions have already
received attention, but there was another instrument which, during the
period subsequent to about 1400, exerted even a more powerful
influence--I mean the lute. The lute and the violin appear in crude
forms at nearly the same time in Europe. The violin was the instrument
of the north, the lute of the south. Later they move together
geographically, sharing the popular suffrages. By the time of
Palestrina the lute had come to its full powers and most complete
form. Within twenty years after the death of Palestrina orchestral
music started upon the career which has never since stopped, the
violin at the head of the forces, thanks to the insight of the great
musical genius, Monteverde.

The lute belongs to the same class of instruments as the guitar,
differing from that, however, in important details of construction. It
has a pear-shaped body, composed of narrow pieces of bent wood glued
together; the sounding board is flat, and of fir. The neck is longer
or shorter, according to the variety of lute. It was strung with from
eight to eleven strings, which in the east were of silk, but in Europe
were catgut down to the end of the seventeenth century, when spun
strings were substituted for the bass. The finger board was marked by
frets, indicating the places at which the strings should be stopped.
There were four or more of the longest strings which were not upon the
finger board, and were never stopped. They were used for basses.
Melodically the instrument had little power, although its tone was
gentle and sweet. Its influence, like that of the guitar of the
present time, was in the direction of simple harmony, mainly
restricted to the nearest chords of the key. The essential point in
which the construction of the lute differed from that of the guitar,
was in the back, which in the latter is flat, so that ribs are
indispensable for preserving the rigidity of the body against the pull
of the strings. The lute body is very solid, from the mode of its
construction involving an application of the principle of the arch.
The standard appearance of the lute was the following:

[Illustration: Fig. 37.

THE LUTE IN ITS STANDARD FORM.

(From Grove's Dictionary.)]

The stringing and tuning varied much in different periods. According
to Praetorius, the lute had four open strings tuned according to the
scale in _a_ below. Later, a G was added above and below, and the
tuning was that at _b_.

[Music illustration]

Another authority--Baron--gives a tuning for an "eleven-course" lute,
as follows:

[Music illustration]

The F below the bass staff had ten frets, G eleven, and each of the
highest six strings twelve frets. The instrument thus had a compass of
three octaves and a half from the C below the bass. All the strings
were in pairs, two to each unison, excepting the upper two, which were
single. The instrument was a very troublesome one to keep in order.
Mattheson, who wrote in the latter part of the eighteenth century,
when the lute was still cultivated, said that a lutist of eighty years
must have spent nearly sixty in tuning his instrument. The pull of the
strings broke down the sounding board or belly, which had therefore to
be taken off and righted once in every two or three years. The lute
was derived from an Arabian or Persian instrument, of which the Arab
eoud, Fig. 24 (p. 113), was the latest representative.

The problem of locating the frets accurately upon the finger board was
one of the causes which led to close investigation into the
mathematical relation of the tones in the scale; and the directions
given for placing them by various Arab and other writers afford
precise and valuable information concerning their views of
intonation. The lute was made in a great variety of sizes, the largest
being what was called the arch lute, which was more than four feet
long from bottom to the end of the neck. This was employed by Corelli
for the basses of his violin sonatas, and Haendel made similar use of
it. A diminutive lute has come down to our own days under the name of
Mandolin. It is strung with metal strings, however, and played with a
plectrum, whereas the mediaeval lute was played with the fingers.
Monteverde employed still another variety of the lute in his
orchestra, called the Chitarrone, whence our word guitar. This was a
very large lute, with many strings, which were wire, and played,
therefore, with a plectrum. The chitarrone in the collection at South
Kensington has twelve strings upon the finger board, and eight bass
strings tuned by the pegs at the top of the long neck. It was used
mainly for basses. The guitar, of which a figure is omitted on account
of the familiarity of the instrument, was the Spanish form of the
lute, or the Spanish form which the Moorish lute took in that country.

The essential feature of the violin is the incitation of the vibration
by means of the bow. We do not know when or where this art was
discovered, but it is supposed to have been in the remote east, at a
very early period. The argument of Fetis, that since the Sanskrit has
four terms for bow, according to the material of which it was made,
therefore the art of the bow must have been known before the Sanskrit
ceased to be a spoken language, has little weight. For while it is
true that Sanskrit was not a spoken, or, more properly, a living,
language in ordinary life after about 1500 B.C., it is true, on the
other hand, that it remained in use as a language of religion and of
the learned down to times very recent. In that case there would
necessarily be additions made to it from time to time, as new concepts
came up for expression, in the same manner as additions were made to
Latin during the Middle Ages, and even in modern times. Still, all the
nations around Hindostan have the tradition that the art of playing
music by means of a bow is very old, the Ceylonese attributing the
invention to one of their kings who reigned about 5000 B.C. Their
ravanastron is very crude. (See page 72.) A similarly simple
instrument is in use to the present day in many parts of the east. The
Arab form of it, known as the rebec, is represented on p. 113, Fig.
23. It has two strings of silk, and is played with the point downward,
like a 'cello. It is not possible after this lapse of time to
determine which was the original form of the violin in Europe. Very
early we find the crwth in the hands of the Celtic players, as noticed
in chapter VI. The form given in Fig. 22 (p. 107) is rather late, most
likely, and somewhat of a degradation, since many of the elements of
the violin are wanting in it. The clumsy resonance body is of the same
width all the way, preventing the depression of one end of the bow in
order to avoid sounding adjacent strings. As the bridge of the crwth
was nearly flat, the adjacent strings were octaves, or related in such
a way that when sounding together chords were produced. Many have
supposed that all the strings were sounded together at each drawing of
the bow. This is not impossible, for in one of the sculptures on a
capital in the old church at Boscherville in Normandy a stringed
instrument is represented in which the tone is produced by a revolving
bow, on the principle of the hurdy-gurdy, whereby chords must have
been produced continually. (See p. 208.) The same carving has two
stringed instruments of the violin family, one held like a violin (No.
6), the other bass downward, like a 'cello (No. 1). These two figures
are fragments of the same carving. They are supposed to date from
about the eleventh century. Many similar representations occur, such
as the following from old manuscripts.

[Illustration: Fig. 38.]

These oval instruments had the same deficiency as the crwth, in
respect to indentations at the side of the instrument, for permitting
the depression of the bow. The oldest type of this instrument in use
appears to have been the form known as the rebec, the Arab form, which
came into Europe in the time of the crusades. According to certain
authorities this was the primitive type from which our violin was
derived. The form is better shown in the cut on page 196, which is
from an Italian painting of the thirteenth century.

The body of the rebec was pear-shaped. It was contemporaneous with
many other forms partaking of the shape of the guitar. From this came
the family of viols, which were very popular in England during the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The viol differed from the violin family proper in having a flat back
like a guitar, and rounded corners. The only individual of the viol
family which attained to artistic development was the viol da Gamba,
or bass viol, which was tuned like a lute, having six strings. This
instrument was a favorite with many amateurs until late in the
eighteenth century. (See p. 197.)

[Illustration: Fig. 39.

ANGEL PLAYING A REBEC.

(From an Italian painting of the thirteenth century.)]

Still more curious was the form of viol known as the barytone, which,
in addition to an outfit of six catgut strings upon the finger board,
was furnished with twenty-four wire strings, stretched close under the
sounding board, where they sounded by sympathetic vibration. This was
the instrument which Prince Esterhazy, Haydn's patron, so much
admired, and for which Haydn wrote more than 150 compositions. Its
form is shown in Fig. 41.

[Illustration: Fig. 40.

VIOL DA GAMBA.

(From Reissman's "History of German Music.")]

[Illustration: Fig. 41.

THE BARYTONE.]

It is not easy within present limits to apportion the various steps by
which the violin reached its present form. The first eminent master
of violins, as distinguished from small viols, was the celebrated
Gaspar da Salo, who lived and worked at Brescia during the latter part
of the sixteenth century. The model varies, and the sound holes are
straight and flat. His violins are small and weak of tone, but his
tenors and basses are much sought for. His model was followed some
time later by Guarnerius. The real mastership in violin making was
attained at Cremona, in Lombardy, where were many religious houses
with elaborate services, and a surrounding population of wealth and
artistic instinct afforded the mechanic an appreciative public. It
was here early in the sixteenth century that we first find the Amati
family in the person of the oldest known violin maker, Andrea, from
whom Fetis quotes two instruments dated 1546 and 1551. One of them is
a rebec with three strings; the other is a small violin. They are a
distinct advance over the violins of the western school, but they stop
very far short of the modern instrument. The tone of his instruments
is clear and silvery, but not very powerful. The most eminent of the
Amatis was Nicolo, 1596-1684, a son of Geronimo and grandson of
Andrea. The outline is more graceful, the varnish deeper and richer,
and the proportions of his instruments better calculated. His
instruments have greater power and intensity of tone, and his tenors
and 'cellos are very famous. But the Cremona school came to a
culmination in the works of the pupil of Nicolo Amati--Antonio
Stradivari, 1649-1737. This great master of the violin pursued the
principles of the Amati construction down to about 1700, having then
been making violins for upwards of thirty-three years. After 1700 he
changed his principles of construction somewhat, and developed the
grand style distinguishing his later works. He marks the culminating
point of the art of violin making. It was he who perfected the model
of the violin and its fittings. The bridge in its present form, and
the sound holes, are cut exactly as he planned them, and no artist has
discovered a possibility of improving them. His main improvements
consisted (1) in lowering the height of the model--that is, the arch
of the belly; (2) in making the four corner blocks more massive, and
in giving greater curvature to the middle ribs; (3) in altering the
setting of the sound holes, giving them a decided inclination to each
other at the top; (4) in making the scroll more massive and permanent.
Every violin of Stradivari was a special study, modified in various
details according to the nature of the wood which he happened to have,
sometimes a trifle smaller, a trifle thicker in this place or the
other, or some other slight change accounted for not by
pre-established theory, but by adaptation to the peculiarities of the
wood in hand. According to Fetis, his wood was always selected with
reference to its tone-producing qualities--the fir of the belly always
giving a certain note, and the maple of the back a certain other note.
These peculiarities are not regarded as fully established. The tone of
the Stradivarius violin is full, musical and high-spirited. The small
number now in existence are held at extremely high prices. The usual
pattern is that represented in the following figure.

[Illustration: Fig. 42.

THE STRADIVARIUS VIOLIN.

(From Grove.)]

Stradivari established his own factory about 1680, and continued to
make instruments up to 1730. The violin of 1708 weighs three-quarters
of a pound. Besides making violins, this eminent artist also made
guitars, lutes, 'cellos and tenors. It is wholly uncertain to what
extent the peculiarities of the Stradivari instruments were matters of
deduction and how far accidental. But there can be no question that
the average excellence of his instruments, judging from the specimens
still in existence, was much greater than that of any other violin
maker.

Many other eminent artists made good violins in the century and a half
from the time of Andrea Amati and Gaspar da Salo to Stradivari, among
the most eminent being Maggini, of Brescia, whose violins are very
highly esteemed. Still, inasmuch as the finishing touches were put to
the instrument by Stradivarius, we need not linger to discuss the
minor makers.


II.

Before 1600 the organ had attained its maturity, and had become
furnished with its distinctive characteristics as we have it at the
present time. As this instrument, from the nature of its tone
qualities and its peculiar limitation to serious music of grave
rhythm, is naturally suited to the service of the Church, it has
remained till the present day in the province where it had already
firmly established itself at the time now under consideration. The
origin of the organ is very difficult to ascertain. There are traces
of some sort of wind instrument before the Christian era. The
so-called hydraulic organ was probably one in which water was used to
perfect the air-holding qualities of the wind chest, in the same
manner as now in gas holders. One of the earliest mediaeval references
to organs is to that sent King Pepin, of France, father of
Charlemagne, in 742 by Constantine, emperor of Byzantium at that time.
This instrument, says the old chronicler, had brass pipes, blown with
bellows bags; it was struck with the hands and feet. It was the first
of this kind seen in France.

Praetorius says that the organ which Vitellianus set in church 300
years before Pepin, must have been the small instrument of fifteen
pipes, for which the wind was collected in twelve bellows bags.

According to Julianus, a Spanish bishop who flourished in 450, the
organ was in common use in churches at that time. In 822 an organ was
sent to Charlemagne by the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, made by an Arabian
maker. This instrument was placed in a church at Aix-la-Chapelle.
There were good organ builders in Venice as early as 822, and before
900 there was an organ in the cathedral at Munich. In the ninth
century organs had become common in England, and in the tenth the
English prelate, St. Dunstan, erected one in Malmesbury Abbey, of
which the pipes were of brass. The instruments of that time were
extremely crude.

[Illustration: Fig. 43.

(From Franchinus Gaffurius, "_Theorica Musica_," Milan, 1492.)]

From this time on there are many authentic remains in the way of
treatises on organ building and description of organs. The essential
elements of this instrument consist of pipes for producing sound, of
which a complete set, one pipe for each key of the keyboard, is called
a stop; bellows and wind chest for holding the wind, sliders or valves
for admitting it to the pipes, and keys for controlling the valves.

In his studies for a history of musical notation, Dr. Hugo Riemann
quotes an extract from an anonymous manuscript of the tenth century,
in which the author gives directions for a set of organ pipes. "Take
first," he says, "ten pipes of a proper dimension and of equal length
and size. Divide the first pipe into nine parts; eight of these will
be the length of the second. Dividing the length of this again into
nine parts, eight of these will be the proper length of the third;
dividing the first pipe into four parts, three of them will be the
length of the fourth; taking the first pipe as three parts, two of
them will be the length of the fifth; eight-ninths of this again will
give the proper length of the sixth; eight-ninths of this, the length
of the seventh; one-half the first, the length of the eighth, or
octave." This gives a major scale, with the Pythagorean third,
consisting of two great steps, which was too sharp to be consonant.
The semitone between the third and the fourth is too small, as is also
that between the seventh and eighth. The modern way of making the
pipes of smaller diameter as they become shorter, had evidently not
been thought of. Nevertheless, these directions are very important,
since they throw positive light upon the tuning of the various
intervals, the pipe lengths and proportions affording accurate
determinations of the musical relations intended.

[Illustration: Fig. 44.

PORTABLE ORGAN FROM THE PROCESSION IN HONOR OF MAXIMILIAN I.

(From Praetorius' "_Syntagma Musica_," about 1500 A.D.)]

The early organs were furnished with slides which the organist pulled
out when he wished to make a pipe speak, and pushed back to check its
utterance. The date of the invention of the valve is uncertain, but it
must have been about as soon as the power of the instrument was
increased by the addition of the second or third stop. Before this,
however, and perhaps for some little time after, there were many
organs in use, which were committed to the diaphony of Hucbald, having
in place of the diapason three ranks of pipes, speaking an octave and
the fifth between. Each of these combined sounds was treated in the
same way as simple ones are on other instruments, and if chords were
attempted upon them the effect must have been hideous indeed; but it
is probable that at this time the notes were played singly, and not in
chords, or at most in octaves. We do not know the date at which this
style of organ building ceased, but it is probably before the
thirteenth century. There is a manuscript of the fourteenth century in
the Royal Library at Madrid, stating that the clavier at that epoch
comprised as many as thirty-one keys, and that the larger pipes were
placed on one side, and small pipes in the center, the same as now.
The earliest chromatic keyboards known are those in the organ erected
at Halberstadt cathedral in 1361. This instrument had twenty-two keys,
fourteen diatonics and eight chromatics, extending from B natural up
to A; and twenty bellows blown by ten men. Its larger pipe B stood in
front, and was thirty-one Brunswick feet in length and three and a
half feet in circumference. This note would now be marked as a
semitone below the C of thirty-two feet. In this organ for the first
time a provision was made for using the soft stop independently of the
loud one. This result was obtained by means of three keyboards. The
keys were very wide, those of the upper and middle keyboards measuring
four inches from center to center. The sharps and flats were about two
and a half inches above the diatonic keys, and had a fall of about one
and a quarter inches. The mechanical features of the organ were very
greatly improved during the next century, but it was not until the old
organ in the Church of St. AEgidien in Brunswick that the sharps and
naturals were combined in one keyboard in the same manner as at
present. The keys were still very large, the naturals of the great
manual being about one and three-quarters inches in width. It was to
the organ at Halberstadt that pedals were added in 1495, but no pipes
were assigned to them. They merely pulled down the lower keys of the
manual.

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