A Popular History of the Art of Music

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30

[Illustration: Fig. 15.

JIWAN CHAH.

(Portrait of Jiwan Chah, one of the latest masters of the vina. He
died about 1790.)]

The Hindoos carried the theory of music to an extremely fine point,
having many curious scales, some of them with twenty-four divisions in
an octave. Twenty-two was the usual number. The pitch of each note in
every mode was accurately calculated mathematically, and the frets of
the vina located thereby, according to very old theoretical works by
one Soma, written in Sanskrit at least as early as 1500 B.C. When this
work first became known to Europeans, its elaboration led it to be
regarded as a purely theoretical fancy piece, and it was thought to be
impossible that practical musicians could have been governed by
theories apparently so fine-drawn. A study of the structure of the
vina, however, perfectly adapted to these theories, set all doubts at
rest. None of the intervals of the Hindoo scale exactly correspond to
our own. Harmony they never conceived. Well sounding chords are
impossible in their scales. All their music was monodic--one-voiced.

[Illustration: Fig. 16.]

There was a curious development of the musical drama in India about
300 B.C., having certain of the traits of modern opera. Several of
these ancient pieces have come down to us, but without the musical
notes. They are long, consisting of as many as eleven acts, part of
them sung, part spoken. Curiously enough, the different acts are not
all in the same dialect. The musical acts are in Sanskrit, which had
then ceased to be a spoken language for at least 500 years; the spoken
acts were in Pakrit, a dialect of Sanskrit, which likewise had ceased
to be spoken for several centuries. A fuller account of the Hindoo
drama is given in Wilson's "Theater of the Hindoos." The curious
circumstance of the drama of the Hindoos of this epoch is that it was
contemporaneous with another very celebrated development of musical
drama in Greece.

Besides the primitive form of the bowed instrument, the ravanastron
(Fig. 16), many forms more advanced are figured among the instruments
from India in European museums, but as they are all of absurd and
impossible acoustical conception, besides being most likely of
comparatively modern origin, we do not present them at this point.
Later, in the history of the violin, one or two of the most curious
will be given.

II.

China has had an art of music from extremely remote periods, and
singularly sagacious ideas concerning the art were advanced there very
long ago, at a time when Europe and most other parts of the world were
still in the darkness of barbarism. For example: There is a saying of
the Emperor Tschun, about 2300 B.C., "Teach the children of the great;
thereby reached through thy care they will become mild and
reasonable, and the unmanageable ones able to receive dignities
without arrogance or assumption. This teaching must thou embody in
poems, and sing them therewith to suitable melodies and with the play
of instrumental accompaniment. The music must follow the sense of the
words; if they are simple and natural then also must the music be
easy, unforced and without pretension. Music is the expression of
soul-feeling. If now the soul of the musician be virtuous, so also
will his music become noble and full of virtuous expression, and will
set the souls of men in union with those of the spirits in heaven."
(Quoted by Ambros.)

[Illustration: Fig. 17.]

The principal instruments of Chinese music are the Kin and the Ke. The
former is a sort of guitar, of which no illustration has come to hand.
The main instrument of their culture-music is the ke, a stringed
instrument entirely unlike any other of which we have accounts, saving
the Japanese ko-ko, which was most likely derived from it. The ke is
strung with fifty strings of silk. Originally it had but twenty-five,
but in the reign of Hoang-Ti, about 2637 B.C., it is said to have been
enlarged to its present dimensions and compass. The appearance of the
ke and the arrangement of its bridges are shown in Fig. 17. The
strings were plucked with the fingers.

In the earlier times the Chinese had the pentatonic scale,
approximately the same as that of the black keys of the piano. Later
it was enlarged to seven notes in the octave, and it is claimed by
some that long before the Christian era they had a complete chromatic
scale of twelve tones in the octave. The evidence upon this point,
however, is insufficient. And even if they had this musical resource
at so early a period the fact counts very little to their credit,
since at best the chromatic scale is only an impure harmonic
compromise, which they have never learned to use understandingly.
Chinese music has always been monodic, and they use a great variety of
melodic shadings composed of intervals of small fractions of a step.
These they call lu. There are movable bridges which can be placed in
such way as to divide the strings of the ke at proper proportions of
its length for producing the lu. The places for the fingers upon the
finger board are marked by small brass points. Besides the intonations
due to stopping the strings, the players upon the ke are in the habit
of adding expression in a manner analogous to that of the _tremolo_ of
the modern violinist. With the left hand he touches the string beyond
the bridge and pulls it slightly, thus imparting to the tone a sliding
intonation upward or downward, familiar to all who have experimented
with strings. This habit the Japanese still have in playing their
ko-ko, and the results are said to be not unpleasing. The volume of
tone in the ke is very light, but the quality is sweet.

As a natural consequence of the long existence of this nation and
their commercial relations to the other parts of the world, which with
all their care they have never been able wholly to avoid, the Chinese
have many other varieties of instruments, including many trumpets; an
unexampled wealth of instruments of percussion, and a few of the
ruder types of the violin kind, which seem to have come in from India
or Thibet by the way of the Buddhist monks. The ravanastron is a
common instrument with the mendicant friars of this order. The
characteristic instrument of the Chinese, however, the one which
stands as the representative of all their higher musical culture, is
the ke.

In common with all other nations of antiquity, and with some of the
present day, the Chinese have always held strong conservative
opinions. The principle has been held among them from the earliest
times that the pattern of a good thing, whether a religion, an art or
a mechanism, having once been found satisfactory, should be made
official and never afterward changed. This principle, taken in
connection with the limited powers of their chief instrument, accounts
for the small progress they have made in music within the past 2000
years. It must be remembered, however, that our knowledge of the music
of this country is still far from perfect, the travelers and
missionaries from whom it has reached us not having been practical
musicians, nor having had sufficiently long opportunities for
mastering musical systems so different from what they had previously
known, and so contrary to all their inherited percepts of tone.

[Illustration: Fig. 18.]

The Japanese are a very musical people in their way. The chief
instrument of their culture is the ko-ko. (See Fig. 18.)

In structure it much resembles the Chinese ke. They have also many
other instruments, especially various kinds of imperfect guitars, a
few rude violins, and the usual outfit of trumpets, reed pipes and
instruments of percussion. Like all the other barbarous nations, they
have never had harmony until since they began to learn it from the
Europeans.

[Illustration]

Book Second.

THE

Apprentice Period of Modern Music.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF HARMONY, TONALITY, CANONIC IMITATION AND POLYPHONY.
THE GENERAL POPULARIZATION OF THE ART OF MUSIC IN EVERY DIRECTION.

CHAPTER V.

THE NATURE OF THE TRANSFORMATION, AND THE AGENCIES EFFECTING IT.

According to the division of the subject in the beginning of this
work, the period from the Christian era to that of Palestrina, A.D.
1600, is one of apprentice work, in which the details of art were
being mastered, but in which no music, according to our acceptation of
the term, was produced. The history of this period is somewhat
obscure, the writers who throw light on it averaging scarcely more
than one to a century, scattered about in different parts of Europe.
Nevertheless, the most important changes in the history of music took
place during this period. The monody and empyrical tonality of the
ancients gave place to polyphony and harmonized melodies resting upon
the relations of tones in key. New instruments came in, and the entire
practice of the art of music was deepened, ennobled and immeasurably
enlarged in every direction. There were four causes co-operating in
this transformation of the art, and it is not easy to say of any one
of them that this one was the chief. First of these, in the Roman
empire, or in the south of Europe more particularly, for about 800
years the Greek principles remained more or less in force. The Church
is here the foremost influence, and its part in the transformation
already noted will be considered presently. In the north of Europe the
Goths, Celts and Scandinavians built mighty empires and impressed
their enthusiastic and idealistic natures upon the whole form of
modern art. The Saracens conquered a foot-hold in the south of France
about 819, and remained there for twenty years. Their influence was
very important in the development of music, and became still more
active after the crusades, where the armies of the west came again in
contact with this peculiar civilization. Besides these three sources
measurably unprofessional and outside of music, or amateur, as we say
now, there was the work of the professional musicians strictly
so-called, who, from about 1100 in the old French school, commenced
the development of what is now known as polyphony, which culminated in
the hands of the Netherlanders, about 1580, Palestrina himself being
one of the latest products of this school. These influences reacted
upon each other, and all have entered into modern art, and have
imparted to it their most essential elements.

All modern music differs from the ancient in two important
particulars--_Harmony and Tonality_. Harmony is the use of combined
sounds. These may be either dissonant, inharmonious in relation to
each other, or harmonious, agreeable. All points of repose in a
harmonized piece of music must be consonant; or, to say it
differently, the combined sound (chord) standing at the beginning or
end of a musical phrase must be harmonious. All the elements in it
must bear consonant relations to all the others. Between the points of
repose the combined sounds may or may not be consonant. Under certain
conditions dissonances make an effect even better than consonance--better
because more appealing. The law of the introduction of dissonances is
that every dissonance must arise out of a consonance, and subside into
a consonance. When this law is observed there is hardly any
combination possible in the range of music which may not be employed
with good effect. Here already we have a progress in perception of
tones, in the ability to discriminate between those which harmonize
and those which dissonate. All consonance and dissonance are purely
relative. There is no such thing as a dissonant tone in music, by
itself considered; a tone becomes dissonant by being brought into
juxtaposition with some other tone with which it does not agree. This
part of the development of a tonal sense had its beginnings in Greece,
but only reached the point where the most elementary relations were
regarded as agreeable. The octave, the fourth and the fifth, were the
only consonances which they knew, and of these they used in the
combined sounds of their music only the octave. The third, which with
us is the most agreeable part of a pure harmony, because it adds so
many elements of agreement to the combined sound into which it enters,
was not only regarded as a dissonance by them, but actually _was_ a
dissonance as they tuned their scale.

The entire course of harmonic perception in modern music may be
roughly divided into three steps: First, the recognition of
consonance, especially of the most fruitful consonance of all--that of
the thirds, and the differentiation between consonance and dissonance.
A second step involved the recognition of dissonance as an element in
musical expression, on account of the motion it imparts to a harmonic
movement. Third, the establishment of these materials of music in the
mind in such depth and fullness that their aesthetic implications
became realized as elements of expression, so that when a composer had
a certain feeling to express, the proper combination of consonance and
dissonance immediately presented itself to his mind. The first of
these steps was taken by the minstrels of the north, somewhere between
the Christian era and the tenth century. The second was the particular
work of the old French school, the Netherlanders, and of all who
composed music between about 1100 A.D. and the epoch of Palestrina,
about 1600. The third, the spontaneous application of musical material
to the expression of feeling, had in it another element, that of
tonality, concerning which it is proper to say something at this
point.

By "tonality" is meant the dependence or interdependence of all the
tones in a key upon some one principal tone called the Key-tone. The
tonality of the music of the ancients was wholly artificial and
unreal. A mode and a point of repose for the melody were chosen
arbitrarily; the beginning was here made, and still more the ending
was conducted to this point of repose. Between the beginning and the
ending the same tones were employed, whether the melody proposed to
repose upon re, upon fa or do. The usual points of repose in Greek
music were mi, fa and re; never upon do, the real key tone, and rarely
upon la, the natural tonic of the minor mode.

One of the chief elements of modern musical expression, particularly
in the expression of melody, is the unconscious perception of the
"relation of tones in key." With every tone sung the singer conceives
not only that tone, its predecessor and its follower, but all other
tones in the entire course of the melody; and the expression of every
tone in the series rests upon its place in rhythm, and still more upon
its "place in key." Change a single tone in a melody, as, for
instance, to make fa a half step sharp, and the expression of the
entire melody is thereby changed, until such time as the hearer has
forgotten the change of key effected by the introduction of the
foreign tone. It is not at all unlikely that what little of melodic
expression the music of the Greeks had, may have rested to some extent
upon an unconscious perception of these relations, which, although
foreign to their musical theory, may nevertheless have made their way
into the ears of these acute minstrels. The discovery of simple
tonality seems to have been due to the northern minstrels, for it is
here that we find the earliest melodies purely tonalized. But the
natural bounds of a melodic tonality as established by these northern
harpers have been very much exceeded in modern times, so that now
there is hardly a chord possible which might not be introduced in the
course of a composition in any key whatever, without effecting a
digression into the new key suggested by the strange chord. Not only
all the natural or diatonic notes are regarded as belonging to a key,
but also all the chromatics, the sharps and flats, and the double
sharps and double flats.

All this implies a growth of tonal perception on the part of the
hearers, and especially of the ability to co-ordinate tonal
impressions over a wide and constantly increasing range. For the
hearer has in mind not only the particular tone which at the moment
occupies his ear, and the others which preceded it, and a sort of
inner feeling of the tone which will follow the present one, but also
all the other tones over which the singer would pass in going from one
tone to another. And unless he has this he cannot realize the true
place of the melody tone in key, and therefore rests unconscious of
its real expression. It is, indeed, possible for him to make a mistake
in regard to the tones which he unconsciously associates with the
tones actually heard--as, for example, when one hears an E followed by
a C higher, and one thinks of the four white keys of the piano between
them, while the melody may be thinking of the black keys between them.
In the one case the melody would be in the key of C, in the other of C
sharp minor. And the expression of the melodic skip would be
enormously changed thereby. This larger education of the faculties of
tonal perception and tonal co-ordination has been the work mainly of
the last century and a half, and more particularly of the present
century itself. During this period the progress has been more rapid
than within any other in the entire course of the history of our art,
and it is to the successive steps preparing for this that we now
address ourselves.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI.

THE MINSTRELS OF THE NORTH.

Upon many accounts the development of minstrelsy by the Celtic singers
and harpers was one of the most important of all the forces operative
in the transformation of the art from the monody of the ancients to
the expressive melody and rich harmony of modern music. As it is to a
considerable extent one side of the direct course of this history,
which hitherto has dealt largely with the south of Europe, the present
is the most convenient time for giving it the consideration its
importance deserves. I do this more readily because English influence
upon the development of music has generally been underrated by
continental writers, the erudite Fetis alone excepted; while their own
national writers, even, have not shown themselves generally conscious
of the splendid record which was made by their fathers.

The Celts appear upon the field of history several centuries before
the Christian era. Caesar's account of them leaves no doubt of the
place which music held in their religion, education and national life.
The minstrel was a prominent figure, ready at a moment's notice to
perform the service of religion, patriotism or entertainment. There is
a tradition of one King Blegywied ap Scifyllt, who reigned in
Brittany about 160 B.C., who was a good musician and a player upon the
harp. While we have no precise knowledge of the music they sang in the
oldest times, it was very likely something like the following old
Breton air, which is supposed to have come down from the Druids. It is
full of a rude energy, making it impressive even to modern ears. By
successive migrations of Angles, Danes and Northmen, the Celts were
crowded into Wales, where they still remain. The harp has always been
their principal instrument, and for many centuries a rude kind of
violin called the crwth, of which there will be occasion to speak in
connection with the violin, at a later period in this work.

[Music illustration: OLD BRETON SONG.

Da-ik mab gwenn Drouiz, o-re;
Da-ik pe-tra fell d'id-de? pe-tra gan-inn-me d'id-de?--
Kan d'in euz aeur rann,
Ken a ouf-enn bre-man;--
Heb rann ar Red heb-ken:
An-Kou, tad ann an-ken;
Ne-tra kent ne tra ken.--
Da-ik mab gwenn Drouiz, o-re;
Da-ik pe-tra fell d'id-de? pe-tra gan-inn-me d'id-de?--
Kan d'in euz a zaou rann,
Ken a ouf-enn bre-man.]

According to the best authorities the bards were divided into three
great classes. The first class was composed of the historians and
antiquaries, who piqued themselves a little upon their sorcery, and
who, upon occasion, took up the roles of diviners and prophets. The
second class was composed of domestic bards, living in private houses,
quite after the custom of ancient Greece. These we may suppose were
chiefly devoted to the annals and glories of their wealthy patrons.
The third class, the heraldic bards, was the most influential of all.
They wrote the national annals. All these classes were poet-bards as
well as musicians.

The musical bards were divided into three classes. In the first were
the players upon the harp; they were called doctors of music. To be
admitted into this class it was necessary that they should perform
successfully the three Mwchwl--that is, the three most difficult
pieces in the bardic repertory. The second class of musical bards was
composed of the players upon the crwth, of six strings. The third
class were the singers. From the wording of the requirement it would
seem that these must have had the same qualification as the first
class, and therefore have been true doctors of music. For, in addition
to being able to accord the harp or the crwth, and play different
themes with their variations, two preludes and other pieces "with
their sharps and their flats," they had to know the "three styles of
expression," and accent them with the voice in different styles of
song. They had also to know the twenty-four meters of poetry as well
as the "twenty-four measures of music." Finally, they must be able to
compose songs in many of these meters, to read Welsh correctly, to
write exactly, and to correct an ancient poem corrupted by the
copyists.

The classification of new bards was made at an Eisteddfod once in
three years. It was a public contest, after the custom of the Greeks.
The degrees were three, conferred at intervals of three years
respectively. The organization of the bards existed until the
sixteenth century; it was suppressed under Queen Elizabeth. The
Eisteddfod has been maintained until the present time. The learned
musical historian, J.J. Fetis, attended one in 1829, of which he has
left an interesting account. The performances of the blind minstrel of
Caernarvon, Richard Robinson, excited his admiration beyond anything
else that he mentions. He says: "His skill was something
extraordinary. The modern harp of Wales has no pedals for the
semitones in modulations. It is supplied with three ranks of strings,
of which the left and right give diatonic notes, those in the middle
the half-tones. Nothing more inconvenient could be imagined; in spite
of his blindness, this minstrel, in the most difficult passages,
seized the strings of the middle ranks with most marvelous address.
The innate skill of this musician of nature, the calm and goodness
painted upon his visage, rendered him an object of general interest."

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.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30