Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 14.djvu/203

* MUSIC. 167 MUSIC. tain that speech is but degenerated singing and tluit music with words is the archetype of the art. Mu»ic and articulate speech are far from resting on a common basis, though both begin at the liuman tiiroat. Half the heresies of music orig- inate in tliis confounding of widely disparate tilings. It was a stumbling block for Iteethoven, Richard Wagner, and for Schumann and Richard btrauss. Even among the savages the break is clear between impassioned speech and song. Rowbothani ingeniously groups prehistoric music under the drum, pipe, and Ij-re types; in- struments of percussion, wind, and string. Man drunnned and thrummed before he piped, and he piped before he plucked, and he probably jowled to the moon before the rhythmic noises of nature, drijipiiig of waters, sounds of wood and wind, stimulated his phono-motor centres to imitation. (See JIisiCAL Instruments). The rhythmic chantings were part of a ritual, the soul of the savage worshiped its fetish ; the begin- nings of religion and art are identical. These manifestations belong properly to culture study. (See FoLK-ilusiC; see also "the ilusic of Ara- bia, China, Egypt, India. .lapan, Turkey, Russia, Scandinavia, of the Magyars, Celts, Negroes, Xt)rth American Indians, and Hebrews, under Abahian Music; Chinese ilusic, etc.) The earliest musical system of which we possess any authentic record was invented by the Greeks or rather absorbed from Phienician and Egj'ptian systems. The Hebrews also borrowed their forms from other nations. The invention of the lyre is attributed to the Egj'ptian god Thoth in the pretty fables. The Greek play is the protot^'pe of modern opera. (See Opera.) It was sung, though the music has not been vouchsafed us. Two thousand years ago Athens thrilled at the Anti- gone of Sophocles, yet not a note of it has been preserved. The C4reeks. sensitive to all the arts, made music part of their daily lives. Its influ- ence upon them, as described by poets, must have been extraordinary. Yet in the three hyi)othetical Hymns of Apollo. Nemesis, and Calliope, and the first Pythian Ode to Pindar, we find little that would touch modern nerves. Theoretical writ- ings of Pythagoras. Aristoxenus, Euclid, and others have come down to us and show that the Greek knew the perfect intervals of the natural scale — the octave, fourth, fifth, and greater tone. But their system is a highly artificial, needlessly complicated one, and finally blossomed into the modes: Dorian, Ionian, Phi-ygian, ^^olian, Lydian, Mixolydian, etc. (See Greek Music; MonES.) The Romans derived their musical knowledge from the Greeks, but diil not pursue its study seriously. The early Christians who foim<l in the Imperial city a harbor of refuge brought with them new forms, echoes of the liturgy heard in the Temple of Jerusalem. Saint Ambrose, Bishop of !Milan, made about the year A.i). 384 a general collection of these melodies and at the same time laid down a code of tech- nical laws. Two centuries later Saint Gregory the Great is said to have nuide a second col- lection (ciflO A.D.) and based it on a more comprehensive system. The four modes or scales bequenthed l)y Ambrose were increased to nine. The combined melodies received in early times the names of canfiifi jilniiiis, plain chant; the older being known as the Ambrosian Chant (q.v.) — still sung in Milan — the later one as the Gre- gorian Chant (q. v.) . (See Plain Chant.) From these liturgical chants has sprung the noble music of the Ronum Catholic Church. Gevaert doubts with historic accuracy the historic basis of the Gregorian chants; believing that the Christian Church derived its modal scales and its melodies, not from the olil liel>raic psalmody, but from the secular Kilhura song of the Roman Empire, which comes from tlu> tireek. These psalm tunes, whatever their origin, are the oldest ecclesiastical music we possess. Later music was treated as arithmetic by Boetius and the art became a mere mathematical exercise. In the latter half of the ninth century Hucbald, a monk of Saint Amand in Flanders, proposed a new division of tetra- eliords, and attempted the arrangement of vocal music in parts, and invented a new system of notation. Semiography or sign writing was the method of notation that superseded the nota- tion of Gregory. Figures called Ncumte (see Neumes) were placed over the words to which the tunes were sung. Though the ascent and descent of the melody were not at first shown, Hucbald remedied that by a series of horizontal lines arranged like the modern stave. The Musicn ICnchiriadis. which was until latelv ascribed to him, contains information al)Out notation and the Organum or Diaphony. which was the first form of harmony, consisting chielly of consecu- tive octaves, fifths, or fourths added to Uie plain song of the church. (See Harmony.) Guido of Arezzo (c.lOOO-c.1050), another monk, distrib- uted the twenty notes then used into groups of six, called hexachords. He invented solmi- zation (q.v.), which is the naming of the notes of each hexaehord by the syllables Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol. La; the origin of these syllables being a verse of a hynm to Saint .John, each hemistich of which began with one of them, and was sung to phrases a note higher each time. Ut was supplanted by Do, and Si was added to com- plete the necessary seven notes of the octave. ( See Scale. ) Franco of Cologne made the first recorded attempt to measure the relative length of notes in his 'cantus mensurabilis' or 'measured song.' Four standards of length were adopted: (1) maxima, or duplex lonf/u ; (2) longa ; (3) brevis; (4) semihrevis. A time signature was put at the beginning of the nnisic. which showed whether each long note was to be equal to two or three shorter ones. (See Mensurable Music.) Diaphony merged into discant : the former doub- ling the melody at the fifth or fourth, the latter varying the monotony of the organum by the addition of ornamental notes, passing notes. This discant was usually extemporaneous, though com- posers soon employed it, when it was called 'con- trapunctus a penna,' in contradistinction to 'con- trapunctus a mente.' Counterpoint, or note against note, was born; motets were sung, rough attempts at part-singing lent it at least a begin- ning. See Counterpoint. IMuch of the musical development of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was centred in Paris. The troubadours, trouv^res, jongleurs, and minne- singers, who cultivated poetry and music, play no small part in the advancement of the art. They developed epic, lyric, and dramatic art. and spread over France, Germany, even the sovith of England. Some of the better-known were Thi- baut. icing of Navarre, Count of Champagne, Adam de la Hale, who wrote Kohin and Marion — a play with music and dialogue interspersed — and later Walther von der Vogelweide, Wolfram von