Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/62

 *monic genus. For this purpose they not only used all the twenty-four letters of their alphabet, but supplemented them by the same characters inverted or turned on either side, besides a few other signs. Two different sets of such letter-signs were used for vocal and instrumental music respectively, the latter being the older and simpler. Some use was made of small marks to show the relative length of tones; and there was a sign for a silence or rest.

In teaching singing, syllable-names were sometimes given to the tones of a tetrachord (ta, tē, to, tě).

22. Roman Music.—It is not unlikely that music among the Latins derived something from the earlier Etruscans or from the enterprising Greek colonies in southern Italy and Sicily prior to the founding of Rome, but about this nothing positive is known. Music in Italy seems to have had little importance until after the conquest of Greece in the 2d century, when Greek art-works and artists were scattered far and wide. Then, and still more under the Empire, all Roman education, art and letters came under the direction of Greek teachers and models. As luxury increased, the importation of singers, players and dancers from all parts of the Orient became fashionable, though these performers were nearly all slaves and socially despised.

The Romans, therefore, contributed little to musical progress, except that under their domination immense numbers of musicians were attracted to Rome, and thus the knowledge of Greek styles was spread widely into the West. Some details of theory, of tuning, and of notation were improved, and all kinds of instruments were used and somewhat modified. But the status of musical art was not at all what it had been in Greece.

23. Literature about Music.—The total number of classical works on music that are now known is perhaps seventy, of which, however, about one-third are known only by title, author or topic, while many others exist only in brief citations or other fragmentary shape. But the bulk of writings more or less available for study is far from small.

As the data on this subject are not easily accessible, a brief summary is here appended:—

From the 6th and 5th centuries we have only some bare names, of which the chief is Pythagoras, the founder of a whole school of later writers on acoustics (the Canonici), but who seems himself to have left no writings.