A Popular History of the Art of Music

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[Music illustration: DADLE DAU--THE TWO LOVERS.

Mae nhw'nd'wedyd na chai fa-wr, gid-a gwawr o gow aeth;
Bod-lon yd-w-i, os-cai'r. Fun, fod heb yr un gein-iog-w rth
Hwi daeew hi! Hwi daeew hi! a hwi daeew hi'rlan E-neth.
Hwi daeew hi! Hwi daeew hi! a hwi daeew hi'rlan brydferth.]

This old song was a great favorite with Henry V, while he
was yet Prince of Wales, and with his jolly companions he
used to shout it vigorously at the Bear's Head tavern, about
1410. (Edward Jones' "Relics of the Welsh Bards," p. 176)

Another (p. 94) is quite modern in spirit and treatment. It is a
vigorous love song, and there is a boisterous chorus of bards which
comes in with the refrain. A curious feature of this melody is the
full-measure rest, immediately following the strong chorus of the
bards. During the rests we seem to hear the chorus repeated.

[Music illustration: OLD WELSH SONG, IN PRAISE OF LOVE.

SOLO.

Car-u'm hell a char-u'n ag-os,

CHORUS of Bards.

Hob y de-ri dan-do:

SOLO.

New-id car-iad pob py-thef-nos

CHORUS of Bards.

Dy-na gan-u et-to
Er hyn i gyd ni all fy nghal-on Sian fw-yn Sian.
Lai na char-u'm hen gar-iad-on, o'r brw-yn,
Der-e, der-e'r Ilwyn; ni sonia i fwy am Sian-tan fwyn.]

In the eleventh century, Gerald Barry, an entertaining writer, made a
tour of Britain, and his account of the people in different parts of
the country is still extant and full of interest. Of the Welsh he
says: "Those who arrive in the morning are entertained until evening
with the conversation of young women, and the music of the harp, for
each house has its young women and harps allotted to this purpose. In
each family the art of playing the harp is held preferable to any
other learning."

He adds (chapter XIII, "Of their Symphonies and Songs"): "In their
musical concerts they do not sing in unison, like the inhabitants of
other countries, but in many different parts, so that in a company of
singers, which one very frequently meets with in Wales, you will hear
as many different parts and voices as there are performers, while all
at length unite with organic melody in one consonance, and in the soft
sweetness of B-flat. In the north district of Britain, beyond the
Humber and on the borders of Yorkshire, the inhabitants make use of
the same kind of symphonious harmony, but with less variety, singing
in only two parts, one murmuring in the bass, the other warbling in
the acute or treble. Neither of the two nations has acquired this
peculiarity by art, but by long habit, which has rendered it natural
and familiar; and the practice is now so firmly rooted in them that it
is unusual to hear a single and simple melody well sung, and what is
still more wonderful, the children, even from their infancy, sing in
the same manner. As the English in general do not adopt this mode of
singing, but only those to the north of the countries, I believe it
was from the Danes and Norwegians, by whom these parts of the island
were more frequently invaded, and held longer under their dominion,
that the natives contracted this method of singing." In further token
of the universality of music among these people, Gerald mentions the
story of Richard de Clare, who a short time after the death of Richard
I, passed from England into Wales, accompanied by certain other lords
and attendants. At the passage of Coed Grono, at the entrance into the
woods, he dismissed his attendants and pursued his journey undefended,
preceded by a minstrel and a singer, the one accompanying the other on
the fiddle. ["_Tibicinem praeviens habens et precentorem cantilenae
notulis alternatim in fidiculare respondentem._"]

Similar devotion to music he found in Ireland. He says: "The only
thing to which I find this people to apply commendable industry is
playing upon musical instruments, in which they are incomparably more
skillful than any other that I have seen. For their modulation on
these instruments, unlike that of the Britons, to which I am
accustomed, is not slow and harsh, but lively and rapid, while the
harmony is both sweet and gay. It is astonishing that in so complex
and rapid a movement of the fingers the musical proportions can be
preserved, and that throughout the difficult modulations on their
various instruments the harmony is completed with so sweet a velocity,
so unequal an equality, so discordant a concord, as if the chords
sounded together fourths and fifths. They enter into a movement and
conclude it in so delicate a manner, and play the little notes so
sportively under the blunter sounds of the bass strings, enlivening
with wanton levity, or communicating a deeper internal sense of
pleasure, so that the perfection of their art appears in the
concealment of it. From this cause those very strains afford an
unspeakable mental delight to those who have skillfully penetrated
into the mysteries of the art; fatigue rather than gratify the ears of
others, who seeing do not perceive, and hearing do not understand, and
by whom the finest music is esteemed no better than a confused and
disorderly noise, to be heard with unwillingness and disgust. Ireland
only uses and delights in two instruments--the harp and tabor.
Scotland has three--the harp, the tabor and the crowth or crowd.
Wales, the harp, the pipes and the crowd. The Irish also used strings
of brass instead of catgut."

The brilliant time of Ireland was the reign of Sir Brian Boirohen, in
the tenth century. After his victory over the Danes, and their
expulsion from the island, he opened schools and colleges for indigent
students, founded libraries, and encouraged learning heartily. He was
one of the best harpers of his kingdom. His harp is preserved in the
library of Trinity College, Dublin, and a well made instrument it is,
albeit now somewhat out of repair. It is about thirty inches high;
the wood is oak and arms of brass. There are twenty-eight strings
fixed in the sounding table by silver buttons in copper-lined holes.
The present appearance of the instrument is this:

[Illustration: Fig. 19.]

The Anglo-Saxons also were great amateurs of music. Up to the sixth
century they remained pagan. Gregory the Great sent missionaries to
them, and more than 10,000 were baptized in a single day. The
Venerable Bede represents St. Benoit as establishing the music of the
new church, substituting the plain song of Rome for the Gallic songs
previously used.

While few remains of the literature of the early English have come
down to us, we have enough from the period of the Venerable Bede and
the generation immediately following to give an idea of the vigor and
depth of the national consciousness here brought to expression. From
the seventh to the tenth centuries there was in England a movement
more vigorous, more productive and consequently more modern, than
anything like it in any other part of Europe for three centuries
later. The Saxon poets Caedmon, the Venerable Bede, Alcuin, the friend,
teacher and adviser of that mighty genius Charlemagne, were minds of
the first order.

King Arthur the Great was an enthusiastic and talented minstrel. It is
told of him that in this disguise he made his way successfully into
the Danish camp, and was able to spy out the plans of his invading
enemies. The incident has also a light upon the other side, since it
shows the estimation in which the wandering minstrel was held by the
Danes themselves. King Alfred also established a professorship of
music at Oxford, where, indeed, the university, properly so-called,
did not yet exist, but a school of considerable vigor had been
founded. All the remains of Anglo-Saxon poetry are full of allusions
to the bards, the gleemen and the minstrels; and the poems themselves,
most likely, were the production of poet-musicians classed under these
different names. Many additional reasons might be given for believing
that the art of music was more carefully cultivated in England at this
time than in any other European country. For instance, at Winchester,
in the year 900, a large organ was built in the cathedral--larger than
had ever been built before. It had 400 pipes, whereas most of the
organs previously in use had no more than forty or fifty pipes. There
is reason to believe that among the other musical devices here
practiced that of "round" singing was brought to a high degree of
popular skill. Apparently also they had something like what was
afterward called a burden, a refrain which, instead of coming in at
the end of the melody, was sung by a part of the singers continually
with it.

Nor was musical cultivation confined to England. In the eighth and
ninth centuries the Scandinavians had a civilization of considerable
vigor. The minstrels were called Scalds, polishers or smoothers of
language. Fetis well says: "As eminently poets and singers as they
were barbarians, they put into their songs a strength of ideas, an
energy of sentiment, a richness of imagination with which we are
struck even in translations, admittedly inferior to the originals. Not
less valiant than inspired, their scalds by turns played the harp,
raising their voices in praise of heroes, and precipitated themselves
into the combat with sword and lance, meeting the enemy in fiercest
conflict. Most that remains from these poet-minstrels is contained in
the great national collections called Eddas, of which the oldest
received their present form early in the eleventh century. The sagas
contained in the Eddas form but a mere fragment of this ancient
literature. More than 200 scalds are known by name as authors of
sagas. These warriors, so pitiless and ferocious in battle, show
themselves full of devotion to their families. They were good sons,
tender husbands and kind fathers. The Eddas contain pieces of singular
delicacy of sentiment." Their songs, when compared with those of other
races, are more musical, the sentiment is richer and more profound,
and the rhythms have more variety. The melodic intervals, also,
indicate a more delicate sense of harmony than we find in other parts
of Europe at so early a date. Their instrument was the harp. Iceland
was the foremost musical center of the civilized world in the ninth
century, and it is said that kings in other parts of Europe sent there
for capable minstrels to lead the music in the courts.

A very highly finished English composition, a round with strict canon
for four voices, with a burden of the kind already mentioned, repeated
over and over by two other voices has been discovered. It is the
famous "Summer is Coming In," composed, apparently, some time before
the year 1240.

On page 101 is given a reduced _fac simile_. It is written on a staff
of six lines, in the square notes of the Franconian period. The clef
is that of C. The asterisk at the end of the first phrase marks the
proper place of entrance for the successive voices, each in turn
commencing at the beginning when the previous one has arrived, at this
point. Below is the _pes_, or burden, which is to be repeated over and
over until the piece is finished. The complete solution is reproduced
in miniature from Grove's Dictionary, on pages 102 and 103. The
elaborateness of this piece of music led the original discoverers to
place it much later than the date above given, but more careful
examination of the manuscript justifies the conclusion that it was
written some time before 1240. It is by far the most elaborate piece
of ancient part music which has come down to us from times so remote.
It indicates conclusively that early in the thirteenth century, when
the composers of the old French school were struggling with the
beginnings of canonic imitation, confining their work to
ecclesiastical tonality, English musicians had arrived at a better art
and a true feeling for the major scale and key. Following is the
manuscript, the original size of the page being seven and
seven-twelfths inches by five and five-twelfths inches. The reduced
page before the reader represents the original upon a scale of about
two-thirds. The Latin directions below the fourth staff indicate the
manner of singing it.

[Illustration: FAC SIMILE OF MSS. OF "SUMER IS ICUMEN IN."]

[Music illustration: "SUMER IS ICUMEN IN."

Sum-er is i-cu-men in, Lhud-e sing cuc-cu.
Grow-eth sed and blow-eth med and springth the wod-e nu.
Sing cuc-cu.
Awe blet-eth af-ter lomb, lhouth af-ter calv-e cu.
Bul-luc stert-eth, buck-e vert-eth, mu-rie sing cuc-cu.
Cuc-cu, cuc-cu.[3]
Wel sing-es thu cuc-cu, ne swik thu nau-er nu.
Sum-er is i-cum-en in, Lhud-e sing cuc-cu.
Grow-eth sed and blow-eth med, and springth the wod-e nu.
Sing cuc-cu.[4]

Per-spi-ce X[=p]-i-co-la[5] que dig-na-ci-o.
Ce-li-cus a-gri-co-la Pro vi-tis vi-ci-o.
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-cum 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.

[Illustration: Fig. 20.

SAXON HARP.

(From manuscript in the library of Cambridge University.)]

The harp was the principal 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 passed 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 manuscript in the British Museum. It is presumably of
the tenth century.

[Illustration: 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 circumstances 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.

[Illustration: 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 illustration: 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 God 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 Abassides, 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 principal 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."

[Illustration: 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.)

[Illustration: 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 manuscript 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.

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