A Popular History of the Art of Music

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[Illustration: Fig. 25.

THE SANTIR.]

Yet while the Arab wrote so abundantly upon the subject of music, and
while it filled so prominent a part in his social and official life,
and in spite of his sagacity in seizing perfectible types of
instruments, there is very little in his treatment of the art which
need delay us in the present work. His music belongs entirely to the
ancient period of monody. He never had a harmony of combined sounds,
nor a scale with intervals permitting combined sounds. He was
sufficiently scientific to carry out the intonations of the
Pythagorean theory, and when he went beyond this and formed a scale
for himself he devised one which did not permit the association of
sounds into chord masses; and, more fatal still, he not only invented
such a scale, but carried it into execution so exactly that the ear of
the race was hopelessly committed to monody, and has remained so until
this very day. The scale of the Arabs in the latter times contained
twenty-two divisions in the octave, of which only the fifth and fourth
exactly correspond with the harmonic ratios. The place of the Arab in
music, therefore, is that of an unintentional minister to a higher
civilization and to the art of music.

CHAPTER VIII.

ORIGIN OF THE GREAT FRENCH EPICS.

One of the earliest developments of popular music on the continent was
that of the _Chansons de Geste_ ("Songs of Action"), which were, in
effect, great national epics. The period of this activity was from
about 800 to 1100 or 1200, and the greatest productions were the
"Songs of Roland," the "Song of Antioch," etc., translations of which
may be found in collections of mediaeval romances. The social
conditions out of which these songs grew have been well summarized by
M. Leon Gautier, in his "_Les Epopees Francaises_": "If we transport
ourselves in imagination into Gaul in the seventh century, and casting
our eyes to the right, the left, and to all parts, we undertake to
render to ourselves an exact account of the state in which we find the
national poetry, the following will be the spectacle which will meet
our gaze: Upon one hand in Amorican Brittany there are a group of
popular poets who speak a Celtic dialect, and sing upon the harp
certain legends, certain fables of Celtic origin. They form a league
apart, and do not mix at all in the poetic movement of the great
Gallo-Roman country. They are the popular singers of an abased race,
of a conquered people. Toward the end of the twelfth century we see
their legends emerge from their previous obscurity and conquer a
sudden and astonishing popularity, which endured throughout all the
remainder of the Middle Ages. But in the seventh century they had no
profound influence in Gaul, and their voice had no echo except beyond
the boundary straits among the harpers and singers of England, Wales
and Ireland.

"Upon another side, that of the Moselle, the Meuse and the Rhine, in
the country vaguely designated under the name of Austrasia, German
invasions have left more indelible traces. The ideas, customs and even
the language have taken on a Tudesque imprint. There they sing in a
form purely Germanic the '_Antiquissima Carmina_' ["Most Ancient
Songs"] which Charlemagne was one day to order his writers to compile
and put in permanent form. Between these two extreme divisions there
was a neutral territory where a new language was in process of
forming--that of the 'Oc' and 'Oil.' Here the songs were neither
German nor Gallo-Roman, but Romance. And here were the germs of the
future epics of France."

Out of this combination of contrasting spirits of race, the movement
of awakened national life, arose, first, what were called
Cantilenas--short songs of a ballad-like character. The language is a
mixture of German, Latin and French, intermingled in a most curious
manner. For example, consider the following verses from the cantilena
of St. Eulalie, as given by M. Gautier, p. 65:

"Buona pulcella fut Eulalia;
Bel avret corps, bellezour anima.
Voldrent la vientre li Deo inimi,
Voldrent la faire diaule servir.
Elle n'out eskoltet les mal conselliers
Qu'elle Deo raniet chi maent sus en ciel."

Which being somewhat freely rendered into English, it says that:

"A good virgin was Eulalia;
She had a beautiful body, more beautiful spirit;
The enemies of God would conquer her,
Would make her serve the devil;
But never would she understand the evil ones who counsel
To deny God, who is above all in heaven."

And so the ballad goes on twenty-three verses more to narrate how she
withstood the exhortations of the king of the pagans, that she would
forsake the name of Christian; and when they threw her into the fire
the fire would not burn her, for the fire was pure; and when the king
drew his sword to cut off her head the _demoiselle_ did not contradict
him, for she wished to leave the world. She prayed to Christ, and
under the form of a dove she flew away toward heaven. These charming
verses of the ninth century were probably sung to music having little
of the movement which we now associate with the term melody, but which
was more of a chant-like character.

Of similar literary texture were a multitude of songs, of which many
different ones related to the same hero. Hence in time there was a
disposition on the part of the cleverer minstrels to combine them into
a single narration, and to impart to the whole so composed something
of an epic character. Thus arose the famous _Chansons de Geste_
already mentioned, the origin and general character of which have been
most happily elucidated in the work of M. Gautier, already referred
to. He says:

"The great epics of the French had their origin in the romantic and
commanding deeds of Charlemagne and the battles against Saracens in
792. The fate of civilization trembled in the balance at Ville Daigne
and at Poitiers. It is the lot of Christianity, it is the lot of the
world, which is at stake. The innumerable murders, the torrents of
blood, these thousands of deaths have had their sure effect upon
history. The world has been Christian in place of being Arab. It
appertains to Jesus instead of Mahomet. This civilization, of which we
are so proud, this beauty of the domestic circle, this independence of
our spirit, this free character of our wives and children it is to
Charles Martelle, and above all to William of Orange, that we owe
them, after God. We possess only a limited number of these primitive
epics, the _Chansons de Geste_, and are not certain that we have them
in the second or even the third versions. At the head of the list we
place the 'Song of Roland,' the Iliad of France. All the other songs
of action, however beautiful and however ancient they may be, are far
inferior. The text of the 'Song of Roland' as it has come down to us
cannot have been written much before 1100. Besides this there is the
'_Chanson de Nimes_,' '_Ogier le Danois_,' '_Jour de Blaibes_,' all of
which were written in the languages of Oc and Oil. All these have
something in common; the verse is ten syllables, the correspondences
are assonances and not rhymes. In style these _Chansons de Geste_ are
rapid, military, but above all dramatic and popular. They are without
shading, spontaneous, no labor, no false art, no study. Above all it
is a style to which one can apply the words of Montaigne, and it is
the same upon paper as in the mouth. Really these verses are made to
be upon the living lip, and not upon the cold and dead parchment of
the manuscript. The oldest manuscripts are small, in order that they
may be carried in the pocket for use of traveling jongleurs and
singers. They have Homeric epithets. The style is singularly grave.
There is nothing to raise a laugh. The first epics were popular about
the end of the eleventh century. The idea of woman is purer in the
early poems. There is no description of the body; there is no
gallantry. The beautiful Aude apprehends the death of Roland; she
falls dead. In the second half of the twelfth century our poets would
have been incapable of so simple and noble a conception. We find, even
in '_Amis et Amelis_,' women who are still very German in physiognomy,
and alluring, but they are Germans, so to say, of the second manner.
They have a habit of throwing themselves into the arms of the first
man who takes their fancy.

"Each one of the races which composed France or Gaul in the sixth or
seventh century, contributed its share toward the future epics. The
Celts furnished their character, the Romans their language, the Church
its faith; but the Germans did more. For long centuries they had the
habit of chanting in popular verse their origin, their victories and
their heroes. Above all they penetrated the new poetry with their new
spirit. All the German ideas upon war, royalty, family and government,
upon woman and right, passed into the epic of the French.

"Our fathers had no epics, it is true, but they had popular chants,
rapid, ardent and short, which are precisely what we have called
cantilenas. A cantilena is at the same time a recitation and an ode.
It is at times a complaint and more often a round. It is a hymn, above
all religious and musical, which runs over the lips and which, thanks
to its brevity, mainly, is easily graven upon the memory. The
cantilenas were a power in society; they caused the most powerful to
tremble. When a captain wished to nerve himself up against a bad
action he said, 'They will make a bad song about me.'

"The heroes and the deeds which gave birth to French epics are those
of the commencement of the eighth century to the end of the tenth.
France is then more than a mere land; it is a country; a single
religious faith fills all hearts and all intelligence. Toward the end
of the tenth century we see the popular singers arresting crowds in
all public places. They sing poems of 3,000 or 4,000 verses. These are
the first of the _Chansons de Geste_. Out of the great number of
cantilenas dedicated to a single hero it happened that some poet had
the happy thought of combining them into a single poem. Thus came a
suite of pieces about Roland or William, and from these, in time, an
epic. The latest of the epic cycles was that concerning the crusades.
The style is popular, rapid, easy to sing. It recalls the Homeric
poetry. The constant epithets, the military enumerations, the
discourses of the heroes before combat, and the idea of God, are
simple, childlike, and superstition has no place. The supernatural
exists in plenty, but no marvels."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IX.

THE TROUBADOURS, TROUVERES AND MINNESINGERS.

To the full account of the origin of the _Chansons de Geste_ in the
foregoing chapter, it remains now to add a few notes concerning the
_personnel_ of the different classes of minstrels through whose
efforts these great songs were created.

The first of these singers were the troubadours, who were traveling
minstrels especially gifted in versification and in music. Their
compositions appear to have been short, on the whole, and of various
kinds, as will presently be seen. The earliest of the troubadours of
whom we have definite account was Count Wilhelm of Poitiers,
1087-1127. Among the kind of songs cultivated by these singers were
love songs, canzonets, chansons; serenade--that is, an evening song;
auberde, or day song; servantes, written to extol the goodness of
princes; tenzone, quarrelsome or contemptuous songs; and roundelays,
terminated forever with the same refrain. There was also what was
called the pastourelle, a make-believe shepherd's song.

The so-called chansonniers of the north, who flourished toward the end
of the twelfth century, were also troubadours. Among them the name of
Count Thibaut of Champagne, king of Navarre, stands celebrated--1201-1253.
He composed both religious and secular songs. The following is one of
his melodies unharmonized. Its date is about the same as that of
"Summer is Coming In." Another celebrated name of these minstrels was
Adam de la Halle, of Arras in Picardy--1240-1286. Upon many accounts
the music of this author is of considerable interest to us. He was a
good natural melodist, as the examples in Coussemaker's "Adam de la
Halle" show. He is also the author of the earliest comic opera of
which we have any account, the play of "Robin and Marion." We shall
speak of this later, in connection with the development of opera in
general.

[Music illustration:

L'autrier par la ma-ti-ne-e,
En-tre un bois et un ver-gier
U-ne pastoure ai trou-ve-e
Chantant pour soi en-voi-sier,
Et di-soit un son pre-mier
'Chi me tient li maus d'amor.'
Tan-tost ce-le part m'entor,
Ka je l'oi des rais-ner;
Si li dis sans de-la-ier.
Bel-le Diex vous doint bon-jor.]

Immediately following the troubadours came the trouveres, who were
simply troubadours of nobler birth, and perhaps of finer imagination.
There were so many of these singers that it is quite impossible here
to give a list of their names. Among the more celebrated, forty-two
names are given by Fetis, the most familiar among them being those of
Blondel, the minstrel of Richard Coeur de Lion, and the Chatelaine
de Coucy (died about 1192), from whom we have twenty-three chansons.

It was the trouveres who invented the _Chansons de Geste_ already
mentioned--songs of action; in other words, ballads. One of the most
celebrated of these was the "Story of Antioch," a romance of the
crusades, extending to more than 15,000 lines. This poem was not
intended to be read, but was chanted by the minstrels during the
crusades themselves. One Richard the Pilgrim was the author. The song
is, in fact, a history of the crusade in which he took part, up to a
short time before the battle in which he was killed. Another very
celebrated piece of the same kind, the "Song of Roland," the history
of a warrior in the suite of Charlemagne, is said to have been chanted
before the battle of Hastings by the Jongleur Taillefer. Other pieces
of the same kind were the "Legend of the Chevalier Cygne"
("Lohengrin") "Parsifal" and the "Holy Grail." Each one of these was
sung to a short formula of melody, which was performed over and over
incessantly, excepting variations of endings employed in the episodes.
A very eminent author of pieces of this kind was the Chevalier de
Coucy, who died 1192, in the crusade. There are twenty-four songs of
his still in the Paris Library.

[Illustration: Fig. 26.

REINMAR, THE MINNESINGER.

(From a manuscript of the thirteenth century, in the National Library
at Paris.)]

A similar development of knightly music was had in Germany from the
time of Frederick the Red--1152-1190. These were known as
minnesingers. Among the most prominent were Heinrich of Beldeke,
1184-1228, an epic writer; Spervogel, 1150-1175; and Frauenlobe,
middle of the twelfth century. The forms of the minne songs were the
song (_lede_), lay (_lerch_), proverb (_spruch_). The song rarely
exceeded one strophe; the lay frequently did. A little later we
encounter certain names which have been recently celebrated in the
poems of Wagner, such as Heinrich von Morungen, Reinmar von Hagenau,
Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strassburg, Walther von der
Vogelweide, Klingsor, Tannhaeuser, etc. All of these were from the
middle of the thirteenth century. A portrait of Reinmar, the
minnesinger, has come down to us with a manuscript now contained in
the National Library at Paris. The last of the minnesingers was
Heinrich von Meissen, 1260-1318. His poems were always in the praise
of woman, for which reason he was called Frauenlob ("Woman's Praise").
An old chronicle tells us that when he died the women of Mayence bore
him to the tomb, moistened his grave with their tears, and poured out
libations of the costliest wines of the Rhineland. The following
illustration is supposed to be a representation of this minstrel,
although the drawing is hardly up to the standard of the modern
Academy.

[Illustration: Fig. 27.

MASTER HEINRICH FRAUENLOB.

(From a manuscript in the Manesse collection at Paris.)]

The work of the minnesingers was succeeded in Germany by a class of
humbler minstrels of the common people, known as the Mastersingers,
the city of Nuremberg being their principal center. A few of these men
were real geniuses--poets of the people. One of the most celebrated
was Hans Sachs, since represented in Wagner's "Meistersingers." Sachs
was a very prolific poet and composer, his pieces being of every kind,
from the simpler songs of sentiment and home to quite elaborate plays.
About nine volumes of his poems have been reprinted by the Stuttgart
Literary Union.

[Illustration: Fig. 28.

MINSTREL HARPS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.]

The principal influence of these different classes of popular minstrel
was temporary, in keeping alive a love for music and a certain
appreciation of it. The most of their music was rather slow and
labored, and it is impossible to discover in the later development of
the art material traces of their influence upon it. In this respect
they differ materially from the Celtic and English bards mentioned in
the previous chapter. Although the productions of those minstrels have
all passed away, they have left a distinct impress upon musical
composition, even to our own day, in certain simple forms of diatonic
melody of highly expressive character. The troubadours, trouveres and
minnesingers, on the other hand, never acquired the art of spontaneous
melody, and as for harmony, there is no evidence that they made any
use of it. Their instrument of music was a small harp of ten or twelve
strings, but no more--a much smaller and less effective instrument
than the Irish harp of the eleventh century, or the Saxon of the
tenth. (See Fig. 28.)

[Illustration]

CHAPTER X.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

It is not easy to define the influence of the Christian Church in this
transformation, for the reason that upon the technical side it was
slight, although upon the aesthetic side it was of very great
importance. From the circumstance that all the early theoretical
writers from the sixth century to the thirteenth were monks or
ecclesiastics of some degree, and from the very important part played
by the large cathedrals in the development of polyphonic music, many
historians have concluded that to the Church almost this entire
transformation of the art of music is due. This, however, is wide of
the truth. The Church as such had very little to do with developing an
art of music through all the early centuries. The early Christians
were humble people, for the most part, who had embraced a religion
proscribed and at times persecuted. Their meetings were private, and
attended by small numbers, as, for instance, in the Catacombs at Rome,
where the little chapels in the dark passage ways under ground were
incapable of holding more than twenty or thirty people at a time.
Under these circumstances the singing cannot have been essentially of
more musical importance than that of cottage prayer meetings of the
present day. In another way the Church, indeed, exercised a certain
amount of influence in this department as in all others, an influence
which might be described as cosmopolitan. The early apostles and
bishops traveled from one province to another, and it is likely that
the congregation in each province made use of the melodies already in
existence. The first Christian hymns and psalms were probably sung to
temple melodies brought from Jerusalem by the apostles. As new hymns
were written (something which happened very soon, under the
inspiration of the new faith and hope), they were adapted to the best
of these old melodies, just as has been done continually down to
nearly our own time. Our knowledge of the early Church, in this side
of its activity, is very limited. It is not until the time of St.
Ambrose, who was bishop of Milan in the last part of the fourth
century, that the Church began to have an official music. By this time
the process of secularization had been carried so far that there was a
great want of seriousness and nobility in the worship. St. Ambrose,
accordingly, selected certain melodies as being suitable for the
solemn hymns of the Church and the offices of the mass. He himself was
a poet of some originality. He composed quite a number of hymns, of
which the most famous is that noble piece of praise, _Te Deum
Laudamus_, a poem which has inspired a greater number of musical
settings than any other outside the canon of the Scriptures. The
melodies which St. Ambrose collected were probably from Palestine, and
he selected four scales from the Greek system, within which, as he
supposed, all future melodies should be composed. This was done, most
likely, under the impression that each one of the Greek scales had a
characteristic expression, and that the four which he chose would
suffice for the varying needs of the hymns of the Church. In naming
these scales a mistake was made, that upon re being called the Dorian,
and all the other names being applied improperly. The series upon mi
was called Phrygian, upon fa Lydian; upon sol Mixo-Lydian. The
melodies of St. Ambrose were somewhat charged with ornament, a fact
which indicates their Asiatic origin. It is probable that a part of
the melodies of the Plain Song still in use are remains of the
liturgies of St. Ambrose. The Church at Milan maintains the Ambrosian
liturgy to the present date. In this action of St. Ambrose we have a
characteristic representation of the influence which the Church has
exerted upon music in all periods of its career. Upon the aesthetic and
ethical sides the Church has awakened aspirations, hopes and faith, of
essentially musical character, and in this respect it has been one of
the most powerful sources of inspiration that musical art has
experienced. But upon the technical side the action of the Church has
been purely conservative and, not to say it disrespectfully, politic.
The end sought in every modification of the existing music has been
that of affording the congregation a musical setting for certain
hymns--a setting not inconsistent with the spirit of the hymns
themselves, but in melody agreeable to the congregation. The question
which John Wesley is reported to have asked, "Why the devil should
have all the good tunes," has been a favorite conundrum with the
fathers of the Church.

Notwithstanding the firmness with which the Church at Milan maintained
the Ambrosian liturgy, in other provinces this conservatism failed;
and within the next two centuries very great abuses crept in through
the adoption of local secular melodies not yet divested of their
profane associations. St. Gregory the Great (540-595), who was elected
pope about 590, set himself to restore church music to its purity, or
rather to restrict the introduction of profane melodies, and to
establish certain limits beyond which the music should not be allowed
to pass. St. Gregory himself was not a musician. He therefore
contented himself with restoring the Ambrosian chants as far as
possible; but the musical scales established by Ambrose he somewhat
enlarged, adding to them four other scales called plagal. These were
the Hypo-Dorian, la to la; Hypo-Phrygian, si to si; Hypo-Lydian, do to
do; Hypo-AEolian, mi to mi. I do not understand that the terminal notes
of these plagal scales of St. Gregory were used as key notes, but only
that melodies instead of being restricted between the tonic and its
octave, were permitted to pass below and above the tonic, coming back
to that as a center; for we must remember that in the ancient music
the tonality was purely arbitrary, and, so to say, accidental. While
all kinds of keys used the series of tones known by the names do, re,
mi, fa, so, la, si, do, it was within the choice of the composer to
bring his melodies to a close upon any one of these tones, which,
being thus emphasized, was regarded as the tonic of the melody.
Whatever of color one key had differing from another was due therefore
to the preponderance of some one tone of the scale in the course of
the melody. The Plain Song of the Roman Church, and of the English
Church as well, has been called Gregorian, from St. Gregory, and the
majority of ecclesiastical amateurs suppose that the square note
notation upon four lines was invented by St. Gregory. This, however,
is not the case. The melody, very likely, may have come down to us
with few alterations. The notation, however, has undergone several
very important changes, of which there will be more particular mention
in chapter XV. The Gregorian notation of the sixth century was
probably the Roman letters which we find in Hucbald, as will be seen
farther on. Several of the tunes well known to Protestants have been
arranged from the so-called Gregorian chants. They are "Boylston,"
"Olmutz" and "Hamburg." The eighth tone, from which "Olmutz" was
arranged, has always been appropriated to the _Magnificat_ ("My Soul
doth Magnify the Lord").

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