The art of music. Vol. 01 (of 14) — Reading Notes

and scales; contrast--The aborigines of Carribea, Polynesia, Samoa, Africa--The rhythmic element: music and the dance; instruments of percussion--Harmonic traces--Wind instruments and their scales; the xylophone--Instruments of semi-civilized peoples--The North American Indian--Influence of modern culture on savage music.

Significance of exotic music--Classification; Aztecs and Peruvians--The Orient: China and Hindustan, the Mohammedans--Exotic instruments--Music as religious rite; music and dancing--Music and customs; Orient and Occident.

III. THE MOST ANCIENT CIVILIZED NATIONS 64

Conjecture and authority--The Assyrians and Babylonians; instruments; scales--The Hebrews--The Egyptians; social aspects; Plato’s testimony; instruments--Egyptian influence on Greek culture and its musical significance.

IV. THE MUSIC OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS 88

Significance of Greek music--Greek conception of music; mythical records--Music in social life; folk-song; general characteristics of Greek music--Systems and scales--Pythagoras’ theories; later theorists: Aristoxenus to Ptolemy--Periods of Greek composition; the _nomoi_; lyricism; choral dancing and choral lyricism; the drama--Greek instruments; notation.

V. THE AGE OF PLAIN-SONG 128

Music in the Roman empire--Sources of early Christian music; the hymns of St. Ambrose--Hebrew traditions--Psalmody, responses, antiphons; the liturgy; the Gregorian tradition; the antiphonary and the gradual; sequences and tropes--Ecclesiastical modes; early notation.

VI. THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONY 160

The third dimension in music--'Antiphony’ and Polyphony; magadizing; organum and diaphony, parallel and oblique--Guido d’Arezzo and his reputed inventions; solmisation; progress of notation--Johannes Cotto and the _Ad organum faciendum_; contrary motion and the beginning of true polyphony--Measured music; mensural notation--_Faux-bourdon_, _gymel_; forms of mensural composition.

VII. SECULAR MUSIC IN THE MIDDLE AGES 186

Popular music; fusion of secular and ecclesiastical spirit; Paganism and Christianity; the epic--Folksong; early types in France, _complainte_, narrative song, dance song; Germany and the North; occupational songs--Vagrant musicians; jongleurs, minstrels; the love song--Troubadours and Trouvères; Adam de la Halle--The Minnesinger; the Meistersinger; influence on Reformation and Renaissance.

PART III. THE POLYPHONIC PERIOD

VIII. THE RISE OF THE NETHERLAND SCHOOLS 226

The Netherland style; the _Ars Nova_; Maschault and the Paris school; the papal ban on figured music--The Gallo-Belgian school; early English polyphony; John Dunstable; Dufay and Binchois; other Gallo-Belgians--Okeghem and his school--Josquin des Prés; merits of the Netherland Schools.

IX. THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE 258

Spirit of the Renaissance--_Trovatori_ and _cantori a liuto_; The Florentine _Ars Nova_; Landino; _caccia_, _ballata_, _madrigal_--The fifteenth century; the Medici; Netherland influence; popular song forms--Adrian Willaert and the new madrigal--Orazio Vecchi and the dramatic madrigal.

X. THE GOLDEN AGE OF POLYPHONY 284

Invention of music printing--The Reformation--The immediate successors of Josquin; Adrian Willaert and the Venetian school; Germany and England--Orlando di Lasso--Palestrina; his life--The Palestrina style; the culmination of vocal polyphony--Conclusion.

PART IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF HARMONY

XI. THE BEGINNINGS OF OPERA AND ORATORIO 324

The forerunners of opera--The Florentine reform of 1600; the 'expressive’ style; Peri and Caccini; the first opera; Cavalieri and the origin of the oratorio--Claudio Monteverdi: his life and his works.

XII. NEW FORMS: VOCAL AND INSTRUMENTAL 348

Résumé of the sixteenth century--Rhythm and form; the development of harmony; figured bass--The organ style; _canzona da sonar_; _ricercar_; _toccata_; _sonata da chiesa_; great organists--The genesis of violin music; _canzona_ and _sonata_--The _sonata da camera_; the suite--Music for the harpsichord--The opera in the seventeenth century; Heinrich Schütz.

XIII. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 388

The musicians of the century--Henry Purcell and music in England--Italy: Alessandro Scarlatti; Arcangelo Corelli; Domenico Scarlatti--The beginnings of French opera: the _Ballet-comique de la reine_; Cambert and Perrin--Jean Baptiste de Lully--Couperin and Rameau--Music in Germany: Keiser, Mattheson, and the Hamburg opera; precursors of Bach.

XIV. HANDEL AND THE ORATORIO 418

The consequences of the seventeenth century: Bach and Handel--Handel’s early life; the opera at Hamburg; the German oratorio--The Italian period, _Rodrigo_, _Agrippina_, and _Resurrezione_--Music in England; Handel as opera composer and impresario--Origins of the Handelian oratorio; from 'Esther’ to 'The Messiah’--Handel’s instrumental music; conclusion.

XV. JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH 448

Introduction--The life of Bach--Bach’s polyphonic skill and the qualities of his genius--Bach’s contribution to the art of music and the forms he employed--The revision of keyboard technique and equal temperament--Bach’s relation to the history of music.

INDEX. See Volume III.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. See Volume III.

ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME ONE

King René and his Musical Court (in colors) _Frontispiece_

Orchestra of Pan’s Pipes (Aboriginal) 22

Old Japanese Print: 'Girl of the Old Kingdom playing the Harp’ 58

Ancient Egyptian Fresco showing Instruments in Use 82

Greek Flute and Kithara Players (in colors) 96

The Contest between Apollo and Marysas 122

The Organ in the Middle Ages 156

Mediæval French Sculpture showing Trouvères and Jongleurs with Instruments 202

The Tournament of Song in the Wartburg 218

Josquin des Près (photogravure) 252

Altar of the Virgin by Bellini (photogravure) 268

Orlando di Lasso (photogravure) 308

Perluigi da Palestrina (photogravure) 316

'The Concert’; Painting by Giorgione (in colors) 328

Claudio Monteverdi (photogravure) 338

Henry Purcell (photogravure) 388

Arcangelo Corelli (photogravure) 396

Jean-Baptiste de Lully (photogravure) 408

Jean-Philippe Rameau (photogravure) 414

Georg Friedrich Handel (photogravure) 438

Johann Sebastian Bach (photogravure) 468

CHAPTER I PRIMITIVE MUSIC

Music in nature--Theories of the origin of music-Intervals and scales; Contrast--The aborigines of Carribea, Polynesia, Samoa, Africa--The rhythmic element: music and the dance; instruments of percussion--Harmonic traces--Wind instruments and their scales; the xylophone--Instruments of semi-civilized peoples--The North American Indian--Influence of modern culture on savage music.

Music is coeval with the human race. In all probability it precedes spoken language. For music is primarily the expression of emotion; articulate language is the expression of definite thought. And in the process of evolution emotion precedes thought. The beginnings of music are to be found in Nature herself. The howling of the winds, the humming of insects, the cries of animals, the songs of birds must all be considered as elemental music, inasmuch as they contain the two fundamental elements thereof: 'rhythm’ and 'tone.’

Rhythm is the more or less regular division of time by beats or strokes. The heart beats in a regular rhythm; there is the rhythm of the raindrops; man walks with a rhythmic stride; the waves beat upon the shore in a solemn and impressive rhythm; the drumming of the partridge; the chirping of the crickets; the tapping of the woodpecker; the muttering of distant thunder, etc.--all these are rhythms, more or less regular divisions of time, marked off by beats or accents.

Now 'tone’ is merely a noise which persists at a certain pitch. When we cry out in fear we usually produce a noise, but should we be careful to maintain a steady and equal emission of breath we should produce a tone. In other words, a 'noise’ is produced by a rapid and irregular change in the rate of vibration of the sounding body, whereas a 'tone’ is produced by the steady maintenance of a certain rate of vibration for a long enough time for the ear to appreciate its definiteness. That this time need not be very long is proved by the ease with which we grasp as tones certain very short notes used in music; grace notes, for instance. Many noises, in fact, upon analysis appear to be collections of heterogeneous tonal fragments which succeed each other with such rapidity and eccentricity as to preclude the recognition of their tonal elements, as such.

Such animal cries as the roaring of lions, the baying of wolves, the screeching of parrots, or the barking of dogs must be classed as mere noises. While they are frequently of rhythmic interest, they contain too little of the tonal element to be regarded musically. On the other hand, the humming of certain insects, which produces a definite tone, the whistling and singing of many birds, the musical cries of certain monkeys as related in Darwin, and even on occasion the crying of the wind, must all be regarded as 'natural music.’

The wind with its fitful and irregular howling usually produces mere noise, but there are times when it blows with such a steady intensity through the forest that a definite tone is produced. One reads with interest and sympathy in the memoirs of a certain naturalist how he, while listening to the ethereal singing noises produced by myriads of small insects, imagined that he caught but the lower notes of some elfin symphony, too refined for mortal ears to hear. The songs of the singing birds are very notable examples of 'natural music,’ for here the tones are in many instances quite perfect, while the rhythms of many bird-songs are sharply defined and easily noted.

But it is savage or primitive man who claims our greatest interest. Untouched by learning, simple of mind and direct and naïve in his conduct, he is at the same time a part of nature and the ancestor of civilized man--a being not only endowed with strong rhythmic sense, but with vocal powers far superior in possible variety of inflection to those of any of the animals. His love cries, war songs, and savage laments are as much natural music as are the songs of birds or the cries of animals, and contain, even though crudely, the elements from which civilized music has subsequently been developed. It is with him that our story really begins.

Thus we see that the fundamental elements of music are to be found in nature herself. Man, in his upward and wonderful course from barbarism to civilization, has but cunningly combined these elements, with ever-increasing intellectuality, until there has come to development the glorious art of music as we know it to-day; an art which 'hath the power of making Heaven descend upon earth,’ as it is written in the Chinese annals.

When we contemplate the life of the savage we are to all intents and purposes observing the lives of our own primitive ancestors. As we see them to-day they without doubt portray for us a phase through which we ourselves passed on our way upward to civilization. No tribe of savages has yet been discovered who have not possessed some elemental fragments of music. No matter how barbaric the people, how rude their manners, or how savage their dispositions, music of some sort plays a vital and significant part in their lives. Most savage tribes have their war cries, songs, and dances; their playful or ceremonious dances; their love or marriage songs, their funeral songs; and lastly, their mysterious and pantheistically religious incantations: prayer songs, appeals to unseen powers, either diabolical or beneficent; to effect the deliverance of some person from a dread disease, or to bring rain, or abundance of game, etc. All these are to be regarded as primitive music--music which has hardly as yet attained the dignity of an Art.

The collection and study of these fragments has been of great interest to ethnologists and philosophers and has given rise to numerous theories regarding the origin of music. Herbert Spencer gives a physiological explanation of its origin, claiming that intense emotion acts in a particular manner on the vocal and respiratory organs, thereby causing the person thus affected to emit sounds; either high or low, loud or soft, according to the kind of emotion with which he is filled. Beginning with the proposition that 'All music is originally vocal,’ he goes on to say: 'All vocal sounds are reproduced by the agency of certain muscles. These muscles, in common with those of the body at large, are excited to contraction by pleasurable and painful feelings.’ And again: 'We have here, then, a principle underlying all vocal phenomena, including those of vocal music, and by consequence those of music in general. The muscles that move the chest, larynx, and vocal cords, contracting like other muscles in proportion to the intensity of the feelings; every different contraction of these muscles involving, as it does, a different adjustment of the vocal organs; every different adjustment of the vocal organs causing a change in the sound emitted; it follows that variations of voice are the physiological results of variations of feeling.’

Charles Darwin attempts to explain the existence of primitive music by considering it as a secondary sexual manifestation. He asserts that primitive song was used as a method of charming the opposite sex; that the first songs were love songs, and that from these all others were developed. In the 'Descent of Man’ he says: 'The male alone of the tortoise utters a noise, and this only during the season of love. Male alligators roar or bellow during the same season. Every one knows how much birds use their vocal organs as a means of courtship; and some species likewise perform what may be called instrumental music.’ And later: 'Women are thought to possess sweeter voices than men, and so far as this serves as any guide, we may infer that they first acquired musical powers in order to attract the other sex.’

Spencer’s explanation is pure theory, based as it is not upon observation of particular facts, but upon a knowledge of certain physiological laws. Darwin’s explanation, on the contrary, is evidently based on very careful observations of particular instances of the manifestation of the primitive musical faculty. Nevertheless, however interestingly Darwin writes concerning the origin of music, Spencer’s explanation must seem to us the broader, more inclusive and satisfying of the two, inasmuch as it bases the origin of music in a variety of emotional experiences rather than in only one (the love emotion). Darwin, however, says that the emotion of love may give rise to many other emotions of a quite different character, such as rage, jealousy, and triumph; and proceeds to indicate the possible development of various kinds of primitive songs from primitive love songs. It is, however, difficult for us to conceive of the development of war songs, incantations, or howls of grief for the dead as having been developed from primitive love songs.

According to Grosse, music arose from the play instinct. It is one of the forms in which superabundant energy is spent. Most animals, including man, are endowed with more than enough energy than is absolutely necessary to supply their physical needs. This superabundant energy is expressed in different kinds of play. The leaping and diving of the porpoise, the gambolling of dogs, the running of races, and the playing of games among primitive men are examples of the working of the play instinct. Our modern sports, tennis, football, etc., are also examples of it. According to this theory, singing and dancing first arose as means of diversion from the monotony of existence, as a means of whiling away the time and making life pleasant. This is a most important theory, and while it probably is not wholly true, it contains a large percentage of truth. It is upheld by a great number of writers besides Grosse, and has great significance concerning the origin of all the Arts, including music.

Another theory of the origin of music is that it arose through the imitation by primitive man of bird-songs and other sounds in Nature. It is true that in a collection of the music of many savage tribes there are numerous songs which are certainly imitations of certain bird calls and other animal cries. Particularly are these to be noted in the music of the North American Indians. They have 'Pelican,’ 'Crane,’ 'Elk,’ and 'Buffalo’ songs, and even songs imitating the wind in the pines. Their animal songs are to a large extent but slight developments of the cry of the animal himself. This cry was probably first used by the primitive hunter as a decoy, and eventually through frequent use became a recognized song. Although many primitive songs have undoubtedly arisen in this way, the theory of imitation considered as an explanation of the origin of music is somewhat in discredit with ethnologists and philosophers. It is much too partial and there are too many cases to which it certainly cannot apply.

In his study _Arbeit und Rhythmus_ Karl Bücher advances the idea that through regular 'work’ of any kind 'song’ as an accompaniment is naturally induced. The regularity of the 'work,’ be it walking, driving a stake, or grinding corn in a hollowed-out stone, supplies one element of music; i. e., rhythm. One element of a tune being present, what more natural than an attempt on the part of the worker to supply the other element and thus lighten the labor? Especially is this likely to happen if the task require several workers who are obliged to work together, somewhat in unison. Bücher says 'Song is the offspring of labor. It is a means employed to discipline individual activities to the accomplishment of a common task.’

Leaving out of consideration, however, all external stimuli which may or may not have had a determinative influence in the development of primitive music, we cannot but think of the remark of Karl Böckel, which strikes the note of truth: 'Song has its origin in the cry of joy or sorrow; in the need of expression inborn in all peoples in a state of nature.’

From the foregoing it is easily to be seen that the first music was vocal. Vocal music has its origin and cause in the elemental urge of Nature, whereas musical instruments, even of the most primitive description, are a subsequent development and spring from the inventive faculty of man. The most elemental cries of primitive peoples consist of a succession of sounds beginning on a high tone and descending by means of a gliding or slurring effect, to a low tone. Such are the cries of the Caribs, and of the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia. Sometimes the gliding of the voice takes an upward turn, as it is said to do among the Polynesian cannibals when gloating over a victim about to be sacrificed. Definite musical tones cannot be recognized in these primitive cries, hence they cannot be accurately written down in the musical notation of civilization. In such simple and elemental cries as these, although no definite musical intervals are to be recognized, it is not long before they appear. In fact, it is easily to be seen in the most primitive music that the production of definite tones, and more or less of a definite melodic design, is the object toward which the savage mind unconsciously gropes. It must not be supposed that the intervals in use in civilized music are wholly the invention of man. Many of the intervals, such as thirds, fifths, and octaves, are found to be quite perfect in certain animal cries and particularly in bird-song. Consider the two following bird-songs collected by the writer in Massachusetts:

Civilized man has arranged these tones and intervals in diatonic sequences called scales. The scales are his invention, but the majority of the intervals composing them were undoubtedly in frequent use by primitive man from prehistoric times. As Gilman truly observes, 'Definite successions of tones were in use long before they became regular systematic scales.’[2] The following cry of grief from the southeastern coast of Africa illustrates both the falling inflection of the voice already alluded to as a primitive characteristic and also the use of definite musical intervals. It was noted by Henri A. Junod:

Ô ma mè-re Ô ma mè-re Tu m’as quit-tée, où es-tu al-lóe

Here is another 'lament’; this one being from New Zealand. The tonal range is somewhat more extensive but the falling inflexion of the voice is well illustrated. The usual savage downward howl occurs at the end:

In the 'Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition’ by Captain Wilkes the following song is noted. It comes from the island of Arnheim in Polynesia:

The most primitive musical utterances are usually confined to a narrow range. Seconds and thirds are the intervals most frequently used. The songs of the Terra del Fuegians, for instance, do not usually exceed the limits of a third. The song just quoted from Arnheim is, it will be noted, with the exception of the ornamental quirks, confined to the range of a second. The most limited songs in regard to range of intervals, however, appear to be the songs of the Andamanese Islanders. M. V. Portman in a paper on Andamanese music published in the _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, says: 'The only notes in use in their songs are the following, and in this order: The leading note 1/4 sharp, the tonic, the tonic 1/4 sharp. The whole range of notes is therefore not equal to a superfluous second.’[3]

The savage mind, being incapable, for the most part, of the development of a musical idea, is satisfied by an incessant repetition of the same phrase. Here is a song of the Caribs as noted by Théodore de Bry. While it is comprised within the interval of a small second, it was repeated sometimes for an hour at a time, with what monotonous effect we can well imagine:

Another Carib song, comprised within the interval of a fourth, is here given. A similar song from Polynesia is also given for purposes of comparison. The two songs are remarkably similar; in fact, almost identical.