A Popular History of the Art of Music

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The following are the ecclesiastical scales and names, as established
by St. Gregory:

[Music illustration:

_Dorian._

_Hypo-Dorian._

_Phrygian._

_Hypo-Phrygian._

_Lydian._

_Hypo-Lydian._

_Mixo-Lydian._

_Hypo-Mixo-Lydian._]

With the labors of St. Gregory the influence of the Church upon the
course of musical development by no means ceased. At various epochs in
its history synods, councils and popes have effected various reforms,
every reform consisting in barring out a certain amount of novelty
which had crept in, and in a supposed "restoration" of the service to
its pristine purity. The restoration, however, has never been
complete. Church music, like every other department of the art, has
gone on in increasing complexity from the beginning until now. The
main difference between the Church and the world in any century
consists in drawing the line of the permissible at a different point.
One of the latest reforms was that begun by Pope Marcellus and the
Council of Trent, which ordered from Palestrina an example of church
music as it should be.

Incidentally, in another direction, the Church has been of very great
influence upon the course of musical development. The great cathedrals
of the commercial centers of the world, in the effort to render their
service worthy of the congregation, have afforded support to talented
composers in all ages, and some of the most important movements in
music have been made by ecclesiastics or officials deriving support
from these sources. More extended particulars of this part of her
influence will be given later. It may suffice to mention the
cathedrals of Westminster and St. Paul in England, of Notre Dame in
Paris, to which we owe the old French school and the beginning of
polyphony; the cathedral at Strassburg, which supported important
musicians; Cologne, where the celebrated Franco lived; St. Mark's, at
Venice, where, from about 1350 to the end of the last century, an
extremely brilliant succession of musical directors found a field for
their activity.

CHAPTER XI.

THE DIDACTIC OF MUSIC FROM THE FIFTH CENTURY TO THE FOURTEENTH.

I.

There is very little in the Roman writers upon music that is of
interest. Macrobus, an expert grammarian and encyclopedist living at
Rome at the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century, wrote
a commentary upon the song of Scipio, in which he quotes from
Pythagoras concerning the music of the spheres: "What hear I? What is
it which fills my ears with sounds so sweet and powerful? It is the
harmony which, formed of unequal intervals, but according to just
proportion, results from the impulse and movements of the spheres
themselves, and of which the sharp sound tempered by the grave sound
produces continually varied concerts." (Cicero, "_De Republica_," VI.)
Commenting upon this passage, Macrobus says that Pythagoras was the
first of the Greeks who divined that the planets and the sidereal
universe must have harmonic properties such as Scipio spoke of, on
account of their regular movements and proportions to each other. We
find in the writings of Macrobus an advance upon the musical theories
of Ptolemy. He shows that contrary to the doctrine of Aristoxenus
there is not a true half tone, and that the relation 8:9 does not
admit of being equally divided. In place of the three symphonies of
the octave, fourth and fifth, mentioned by his predecessors, he makes
five, including the octave and the double octave. "Such," he says, "is
the number of symphonies that we ought to be astonished that the human
ear can comprehend them."

Another of the Roman writers upon music was Martinus Capella. His work
is called the "Nuptials of Philologus and Mercury" ("_De Nuptiis
Philologiae et Mercurii_"). The little upon music which the book
contains was only an abridgment of the Greek treatise of Aristides
Quintilianus.

The most important of the earliest treatises upon music, and by far
the most famous, is that of Boethius, as it is also the most
systematic. The following summary is from Fetis' "History of Music,"
Vol. IV:

"Born at Rome between 470 and 475, Boethius made at home classical
studies, and went, they say, to Athens itself, where he studied
philosophy with Proclus. He was of the age of about thirty-five when,
in 510, he was made president of the senate. Theodoric, king of the
Ostrogoths, called him to himself, on account of his reputation for
wisdom and virtue; he confided to him an important position in the
palace, and intrusted to him many important diplomatic negotiations.
Boethius did nothing which was not to his credit, but this made him
only the more hostile to the interests of the courtiers; he was
therefore overthrown and cast into prison, where he composed his
'Consolations of Philosophy.' He was put to death 524 or 526."

Boethius' treatise on music is divided into five books. It is a vast
repertory of the knowledge of the ancients relative to this art. Its
doctrine is Pythagorean. The first book is divided into thirty-four
chapters. In the first he develops the thought of Aristotle, that
music is inherent in human nature. He there renders the text of a
decree which the Ephori of Sparta rendered against Timotheus of
Miletus, but which better critics have regarded as fictitious. The
second chapter establishes that there are three sorts of music: the
worldly, which is universal harmony; the human, which has its source
in the intelligence, which reunites and co-ordinates the elements;
finally, the third kind is artificial, made by instruments of
different sorts. The chapters following treat of the voice as the
source of music; of consonances and their proportions; of the division
of the voice and its compass; of the perception of sounds by the ear;
of the correspondence of the semitones; of the division of the octave;
of tetrachords; of the three genera--enharmonic, chromatic and
diatonic; of intervals of sounds compared to those of the stars; of
the musical and different faculties.

All the second book, divided into thirty chapters, is speculative, and
devotes itself to the different kinds and relations of intervals,
according to the different systems of theoreticians. The third book,
in seven chapters, is a continuation of the subject of the second. It
is particularly employed in refuting the errors of Aristoxenus. The
fourth book, in eighteen chapters, is entirely relative to the
practice of the art, particularly to the notation. It is in this book
that Boethius makes known the Latin notation of the first fifteen
letters of the alphabet without preparation, without the slightest
explanation, and as if he had done something which any one concerned
with music at Rome would readily understand, as a matter of course.
There is not one word to show that it was new, or that he claimed the
invention. It was undoubtedly the usual notation.

The fifth book of this treatise has for its object the determination
of intervals by the divisions of a monochord, and a refutation of the
systems of Ptolemy and Archytas. We here find this proposition,
remarkable if we recall the time when the author lived, that: "If the
ear did not count the vibrations, and did not seize the inequalities
of movement of two sounds resonating by percussion, the intelligence
would not be able to render account of them by the science of
numbers." After Boethius there is nothing in Roman literature
concerning music. Notwithstanding that Italy fell under the dominion
of the Goths and Lombards after 476, it preserved Greek traditions in
music to the end of the sixth century.

Cassiodorus, who lived still in 562, aged almost 100 years, left a
souvenir for music in the fifth chapter of his treatise on the
"Discipline of Letters and Liberal Arts" (_De Artibus ac Disciplinis
Litterarum_). He enumerates the fifteen modes of Alypius as not having
been abandoned, and establishes them in their natural order, calling
them tones. Here also we find the classification of six kinds of
symphonies, about 300 years after this enumeration, first realized in
notes by Hucbald. He gives a series of fourths and of fifths,
occasionally for two voices, occasionally with the octave added. These
are the most important of all the things concerning music to be found
in that part of Cassiodorus' book dedicated to music.

In the seventh century the first, or perhaps the only author who wrote
upon music was Bishop Isidore, of Seville. In his celebrated treatise
on the etymologies or origins ("_Isidori Hispaniensis Episcopi
Etymologiarum, Libri XX_") divided into twenty books, chapters XIV to
XXII of the third book relate to music. These are the chapters
published by the Abbe Gerbert, under the name of "_Sentences de
Musique_," in the collection of ecclesiastical writers upon this art,
after a manuscript in the imperial library at Vienna. While many of
these chapters contain nothing more than generalities and pseudo
historical anecdotes concerning the inventors of this art, this is not
the case with the nineteenth chapter, the sixth in Gerbert's edition,
for here he speaks "Of the First Division of Music, called Harmony."
The definitions given by St. Isidore have a precision, a clearness not
found in other writers of the Middle Ages. "Harmonic music," says he,
"is at the same time modulation of the voice, and concordance of many
simultaneous sounds. Symphony is the order established between
concordant sounds, low and high, produced by the voice, the breath or
by percussion. Concordant sounds, the highest and the lowest, agree in
such way that if one of them happens to dissonate it offends the ear.
The contrary is the case in diaphony, which is the union of dissonant
sounds." Here we find St. Isidore employing the term diaphony in its
original sense, as a Greek word, meaning dissonance--a sense exactly
opposite to that of Jean de Muris.

The Venerable Bede was the light of the eighth century, and the glory
of the Anglo-Saxons. His treatise upon music, however, deals in
theories and generalities, throwing no light upon the music of his
day. The elevation of his ideas may be seen in the following sentence,
with which he introduces his subject: "It is to be remarked that all
art is contained in reason; and so it is that music consists and
develops itself in relations of numbers." ("_Notandum est, quod omnis
ars in ratione continetur. Musica quoque in ratione numerorum
consistit atque versatur._")

Only two treatises upon music have come down to us from the ninth
century. The first is by a monk, named Aurelian, in the abbey of Reome
or Montier-Saint-Jean, in the diocese of Langes, who appears to have
lived about the year 850. His book, called "_Musicae Disciplina_," in
twenty chapters, is a compilation of older anecdotes and theories,
throwing no light upon the actual condition of the art in his day. The
sole remaining work of this period was by Remi, of Auxerre, who had
opened the course of theology and music at Rheims in 893, and
afterward at Paris in the earlier years of the tenth century. His
book, like the preceding, is wholly devoted to the ideas of the
ancients.

II.

This brings us to the first writer on music, during the Middle Ages,
whose work throws any important light upon the actual practice of the
art in the period when it was written, namely, Hucbald, a monk of the
convent of St. Armand, in the diocese of Tournay, in French Flanders.
Gerbert gives two treatises upon music, as having come down to us from
this author. Nevertheless there is reason to doubt the genuineness of
one of them--whereof presently. The first of these, the so-called
"Treatise," from a manuscript in the library of the Franciscan convent
at Strassburg, collated with another from Cesene, bears this title:
"_Incipit Liber Ubaldi Peritissimi Musici de Harmonica Institutione_."
The other is called "_Hucbaldi Monachi Elonensis Musica
Enchiriadis_," or "Manual of Music, by the Monk Hucbald." The former
work is of little interest, and if a genuine production of Hucbald's,
probably belongs, as M. Fetis suggests, to his earlier period, when he
was still teaching at Rheims, along with his former classmate, Remi,
of Auxerre.

The manual of Hucbald is not to be regarded as a complete treatise
upon music. It has three principal subjects, namely: The formation of
a new system of notation, the tonality of plain song, and symphony, or
the singing of many voices at different intervals--in other words,
harmony.

In treating the scale he divides it into tetrachords, precisely
according to the Greek method, as far as known to him, and he nowhere
appears to perceive the inapplicability of this division to the
ecclesiastical modes. For representing the sounds of the scale,
divided into four tetrachords, Hucbald proposed the Greek letters,
which in effect, would have been a notation of absolute pitch, with
the farther disadvantage of ignoring the harmonic principles of unity
already discovered, and in fact involved in his own method of
enlarging a two-voice passage by adding a third at the interval of an
octave with the lowest.

He recognizes six kinds of symphony; in reality he employs only three,
the others being reduplications. His symphonies are those of fourths,
fifths and octaves. In all parts of his work but one he uses the term
diaphony as synonymous with symphony; _there_ he gives its ancient
meaning of dissonance.

He proposed a sort of staff notation, upon which all the voices could
be represented at once. The following illustration represents his
staff and his diaphony, or harmony:

[Illustration: POLYPHONIC NOTATION OF HUCBALD.]

The initial letters, T and S, at the beginning of the lines in the
preceding staff indicate the place of the steps (tones) and half steps
(semitones).

[Music illustration: DECIPHERING OF ABOVE.

Sit glo-ri-a Do-mi-ni in sae-cu-la lae-ta-bi-tur
Do-mi-nus in o-pe-ri-bus su-is.]

M. Fetis gives a two-voice parallelism in fifths, which is
progressively enlarged to three voices by adding an octave to the
lower voice; and then to four by doubling the original upper voice in
the octave above. Thus:

[Music illustration: Tu pa-tris sem-pi-ter-nus es fi-li-us.]

In addition to mechanical progressions of parallel motion in this way,
Hucbald in another place gives an account of a so-called "roving"
organum, in which, while parallel progressions of fourths and fifths
still are found, there are also other intervals, while the beginning
and the end must be in unison. This form of the harmony of
simultaneous sounds has in it much of the character of counterpoint,
especially in the restriction that the voices must begin and end in
unison. This roving organum, or free organum, was also known as
"profane" or "secular" organum, in contradistinction to the "sacred
organum" already given, upon the sweetness of which Hucbald greatly
prided himself.

Fetis has well said that Hucbald must be considered as one of those
superior spirits who impress upon their epoch a movement in an art or
science. Besides this, he merits particular mention in the history of
music because his works are the first since those of Boethius--a
period of four centuries--in which the art of music is treated
systematically and without obscurity.

In the "_Epistola de Harmonica Institutione ad Rathbodum Episcopum
Trevinesem_" ("Letter to Rathbodum, Bishop of Treves"), there is
mention of the instruments of music during the seventh and eighth
centuries. They are the cithara and harp as the stringed instruments;
musetts, syrinx and organ among the wind instruments; cymbals and
drums, instruments of percussion. In the tenth century there was a
methodical treatise upon music in dialogue form, published by Odon,
abbot of Cluny, who died in this monastery November 18, 942. This
work, which was wrongfully attributed to Guido of Arezzo, contains a
number of analyses of intervals showing an understanding of the exact
dimensions of the various kinds of fourths, fifths, thirds and sixths.
According to his doctrine, the intervals of the fourths, fifths and
octaves are more natural for the voice than the others called thirds
and sixths, because the former are invariable, while the latter may be
larger or smaller by a half step. He makes a summary of ecclesiastical
chant, mentioning the modes as established by St. Gregory,
illustrating each of them by a selection from the "Plain Song." It is
a fact significant of the unsettled condition of musical theory and
the complete unconsciousness of musical amateurs that any essential
change in the art was being undergone, that as late as 1000 or 1020
Adelbold, Bishop of Utrecht, published a treatise upon music in which
the proportions of the tetrachords are calculated carefully according
to the Greek theories, and demonstrated upon the monochord.

III.

The most important writer upon music in the eleventh century, and one
of the most famous in the history of the art, was a monk named Guido,
living at Arezzo, in Tuscany, a Benedictine in the abbey of Pontose.
He was a remarkably skillful teacher of ecclesiastical singing, both
in his own monastery and at Rome, and in the effort to systematize the
elements of music he introduced a number of important reforms, and is
credited by later writers with many others which he did not himself
originate, but which grew out of some of his suggestions. He is
generally credited with having invented the art of solmization, the
introduction of the staff, the use of the hand for teaching intervals,
and the introduction of notes. He was not the first who introduced the
staff. Hucbald, as we have already seen, employed the spaces between
the lines for designating pitch. Between his time and that of Guido,
one or more lines were introduced in connection with the neumae, as
will be more particularly illustrated in chapter XV. Guido, however,
employed both the lines and the spaces, but instead of notes he wrote
the Roman letters upon the lines and spaces according to their pitch.
The notes were invented shortly after his time. For determining the
correct pitch of the notes of the scale he explains the manner of
demonstrating them upon the monochord. He mentions organum and
diaphony, and remarks that he finds the succession of fifths and
fourths very tiresome. The last treatise of the thirteenth century was
written by John Cotton, an English monk, whose entire theory of music
is made up from the Greek works.

[Illustration: Fig. 29.

GUIDO OF AREZZO.]

This summary of the didactic writers between Boethius and Franco at
Cologne fully confirms the justice of the remark, in the chapter
previous, concerning the influence of the Church upon music. At the
very time when a well marked beginning was being made in counterpoint
by the old French school at Paris, and when the English, Welsh and
Scandinavian musicians were in possession of an art of expressive
melody resting upon a simple harmonic foundation, these writers can
find nothing to say but to repeat over and over again their tedious
calculations concerning the intonations of _nete hypate_ and the other
Aristoxinean notes in the enharmonic and chromatic genera, which had
been dead names in the art of music for more than ten centuries.

With the appearance of Franco at Cologne, there is something new in
music. Late in the twelfth century he wrote a treatise upon measured
music, the first one in all the history of the art, so far as we know,
in which musical measure is treated independently of verse, and a
notation given for representing it. He recognizes two kinds of
measure--triple or perfect, and duple or imperfect. He gives four
kinds of notes--the shortest being the _brevis_, an oblong note having
twice the value of a whole note; a short stem affixed to this note
doubled its value. It was then called the _longa_. A note head twice
as long represented a still longer duration, called the _maxima_ or
longest. There was also a _semibreve_, a diamond-shaped note which was
used when two or more tones were sung to one syllable. There were no
bars for indicating the place of the strong pulse in the measure, but
a bar was used to show the end of the musical phrase belonging to a
line of verse. The notation was made still more uncertain by the
license of the breve in triple time being equal to three semibreves,
and so in general each long note in triple measure being equal to
three of the next class shorter. In short, the time notation was of
the most crude and imperfect description, but it was at least a
beginning, and all the theoretical writers upon music for the next two
centuries rest in the precepts of Franco of Cologne, as a sure
stronghold, where no false doctrine can find admission. Franco
remarks, concerning the dissonances, that the imperfect dissonances,
the thirds and sixths, go very well between two consonances, showing
that in his time the third and sixth were still regarded as licenses
in harmony to be explained or excused. The general principle that any
dissonance is admissible when smoothly placed between two consonances
is a fundamental law of modern counterpoint.

There was another Franco whose work has often been confounded with
that of the celebrated master at Cologne. Franco of Paris was
connected with the Sorbonne or with Notre Dame, and his writing had
mostly to do with harmonic music. He classifies the consonances
as--complete, the unison and octave; the incomplete, the major and
minor thirds; the middle, the fourth and fifth. This is the first
instance in musical theory where the third has been recognized as a
consonance. Among the dissonances he classes the major and minor
sixth as incomplete, and says concerning these two only that
immediately before a consonance any incomplete dissonance goes very
well. From the superior celebrity of the Cologne Franco the work of
the Parisian master was overlooked for many years, and it is only
through the investigation of Coussemaker that his real standing and
importance have been ascertained.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XII.

THE RISE OF POLYPHONY. OLD FRENCH AND GALLO-BELGIC SCHOOLS.

I.

We here enter upon one of the most interesting and important chapters
in the history of music. The art of polyphony had its origin at the
same period as the pointed arch and the great cathedrals of Europe,
which our architects strive in vain to surpass. In the province of
music it represents the same bounding movement of mind, filled with
high ideality, which gave rise to the crusades, and poured out in
their support such endless treasures of life and love. And in the same
country, too, arose the Gothic arch, the beauties of the shrine of
Notre Dame in Paris, and the involved and massive polyphony of music.
_Polyphonic_ is a term which relates itself to two others, as the
leading types of all effort toward the expression of spirit through
organized tones. They are _Monodic_ and _Homophonic_. The musical art
of the ancients was an art in which a single melodic formula was
doubled in a lower or higher octave, but where no support of harmony
was added, and where the only realization of variety could come
through the province of rhythm alone; or, perhaps, to a very limited
extent through changes in the mode or color of the scale from which
the melody had been derived. Monodic art was an art of melody only,
rhythm finding its explanation and source in the words, and so far as
we understand the case, scarcely at all in the music. Our modern art
of homophony is like that in having but a single melody at each moment
of the piece; but it differs from the ancient in the important
particular of a harmonic support for the melody tones composed of
"chords in key." This harmonic accompaniment rules everything in
modern music. It is within the power of the composer to confirm the
obvious meaning of the melody tone by supporting it with the chord
which would most readily suggest itself, within the narrowest
limitations in the concept of key; or, second, it is within his reach
to impart to any tone, apparently most commonplace, a deeper and a
subtler meaning, by making it a peculiarly expressive tone of some
related key. Instances of this use of harmonic accompaniment are
numerous in Wagner's works, and form the most obvious peculiarity of
his style, and the chief reason why the hearers to whom his works were
first presented did not recognize the beauties and the novelties of
poetic expression in them. Half way between these two types of musical
art stands polyphony, which means etymologically "many sounds," but
which in musical technique means "multiplicity of melodies." In a true
polyphony not only has every tone of the leading voice a melodic
character, but all the tones which sound together with it are
themselves elements of other and independently moving melodies.
Polyphony comprehends the most recondite elements of musical theory,
but its essence consists of one leading concept--that of canonic
imitation. The simplest form of this is furnished by that musical
construction known as "round," in which one voice leads off with a
phrase, and immediately a second voice begins with the same melodic
idea at the same pitch, and follows after. At the proper interval a
third voice enters and follows the procession at a corresponding
distance behind. Thus, when there is only one voice singing we have
monody; when the second voice enters we have combined sounds
consisting of two elements; and when the third enters we have at each
successive step chords of three tones. If there are four voices, as
soon as the fourth enters, we have combined sounds of four elements.
This form of musical construction was much practiced in England, as
already noticed. A round, however, does not come to a close, but goes
on in an endless sequence until arrested arbitrarily by the
performers. Such a form is not proper to art, since it lacks the
necessary element of completeness, for at whatever point it may have
been arrested there was no innate reason why it might not have gone on
indefinitely.

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