Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/91

HISTORY.] MUSIC 79 Greek The Greeks had four modes or Scales included in their modes. " greater system." The Dorian comprised a series of eight notes from D to D, of which bB Avas the 6th, and had its semitones between the 2d and 3d and the 5th and 6th degrees counting upward. The others were exact trans positions of this, as all our modern scales are transpositions of the scale of C, the identity of intervals being induced by the various tuning of the lyre strings. The Phrygian mode lay between E and E, and had $F and flB, the Lydian between $F and JfF had $G and jfC, and the Mixo-Lydian between G and G had bB and bE. These four were styled authentic, and were distinguished by having the dominant (or predominant note) at the interval of a 5th above the tonic. Each had a plagal or relative mode at the interval of a 4th below the authentic, distinguished by having the dominant a 4th below the tonic, and defined by the prefix " hypo " to the name of the authentic mode, as Hypo-Dorian beginning on A, Hypo -Phrygian on B, &c. To each mode was assigned its special character of subject, which may be accounted for by the different qualities of voices that could sing in lower or higher keys, the majestic being fitted to a bass, who would sing in the Dorian, the tender to a tenor, who would sing in the Lydian, and so forth. In later but still classic times other modes were added to these, but on the same principle of precise notal trans position. Greek The tetrachords above described having a semitone genera, between the lowest note and that next above it, a tone between the 2d and 3d, and a tone between the 3d and 4th, the latter of which Ptolemy made smaller than the other, and so left a semitone between the 2d and 1st degrees were called diatonic, as A, bB, C, D. To lower by a semitone the 2d note from the highest produced a chromatic tetrachord, as A, bB, $B, D. To tune the 2d string from the top yet a semitone lower reduced it to the same pitch as the 3d string, which was equivalent to its total rejection, and this form of tetrachord was the enhar monic, the invention of which was ascribed to Olympus (640 B.C.). If we observe the two tetrachords that occur, for instance, in the Dorian mode that from D down to A, and that from A down to E with the addition of the tonic D below, it will be seen that our modern scale of D minor with the omission of the 4th and 7th degrees was in the enharmonic genus, and that the chromatic genus gave the minor and major 3d and the minor and major 6th with still the omission of the 4th and 7th : enharmonic, D, E, F, A, bB, D ; chromatic, D, E, F, #F, A, bB, t|B, D ; and the other authentic modes were transpositions of this. In the harmonic scale of nature the 7th from the generator is too flat, and the llth (octave above the 4th) is too sharp, for accepted use ; the rejection of these two notes indicates a refinement of ear that shrank from the natural and equally refused the artificial intonation of these degrees of the scale. Mr. Carl Engel proves the rejection of the said 4th and 7th from the keynote by nations of high civilization in remote parts of the world ; we call a scale that is so formed Scottish, but in China, Mexico, and other places than Great Britain the same ar rangement is found to have prevailed in the remotest periods of which we have knowledge. An important principle is here involved which has affected all musical theory directly or indirectly, and is now seen to lie at the foundation of modern rules of harmony or the combining of musical sounds. The Pythagoreans advocated the use of the en harmonic genus, and so received the appellation of Enhar- monicists, or were as often called Harmonicists, and hence the twofold application of the term " harmonia." Anti- Anacreon (540 B.C.) sang to the accompaniment of the phony. ma gadis (doubling bridge), an instrument imported from Egypt to Greece ; it had a bridge, across which the strings were drawn at one-third of their entire length, when of course the shorter division sounded the note an 8th higher than the longer. Aristotle (384 B.C.) describes antiphon (TO avTi<ti>vov) as the singing of a melody by men an 8th lower than it is sung at the same time by boys in other words, what is miscalled in modern church congregations " singing in unison." The same writer enunciates that the antiphon may not be at either of the other perfect intervals, the 5th or the 4th below a melody, and in this he anticipates a rule till lately deemed inflexible in modern music. Be yond these two instances of the combination of the 8th, no allusion has been found in ancient writings to the use of harmony in the modern sense of the word, and the only three examples of ancient Greek music that are known to exist are melodies (notes in succession), and supposition assigns them to the 3d or 4th century A.D. They are hymns to Apollo, Nemesis, and Calliope, with the respective verses, and their translation into modern notation has only been possible through reference to the verbal accent, because there are no extant rules of that era for purely musical measure. Nevertheless we have Egyptian paintings of the period of Dynasty IV., and Greek sculptures of players on pipes of different lengths which must have produced notes of different pitches, and sometimes in the same party players on string instruments with necks whereon two strings, differently stopped and yet sounded together, would have yielded a combination of different notes ; and this, though a speechless, is a strong evidence that the musicians so represented made at least a forecast of modern harmony. One cannot but marvel that, while copious treatises have come down to us upon niceties that have here been adduced, nothing has been brought to light but pictorial testimony as to ancient knowledge of chords ; and the three specimens just mentioned are all that have been found of musical composition in any form. The classic Greeks used music in rhapsodizing or chant- Greek ing with vocal inflexions the epic poems ; they employed applica- it in religious rites and to accompany military evolutions ; and prizes were awarded for its performance by voices and on instruments (including, during the last two centuries B.C., the organ) at their Olympic and other games. It belonged essentially to the drama, which had its origin in the dithyrambic hymns ; these were gradually developed into the tragedy, which took its name from the tragos (goat) that was sacrificed to Dionysus during the perform ance. Possibly Thespis (536 B.C.) may have spoken the recitations with which he was the first to intersperse the hymns ; but some interpreters of Greek writings affirm, and others while doubting do not disprove, that in the mature drama all the characters sang or chanted, seemingly after the manner of the rhapsodists, and the impersonal chorus sang to instrumental accompaniment during their orchestric evolutions, from which motions or marchings the part of the theatre wherein the chorus were stationed between the audience and the proscenium was called the orchestra. Here, then, was the prototype of the modern opera, the main departure from which is the trans planting of the chorus to the stage and giving to its members participation in the action. ^Eschylus wrote the music to his own tragedies ; Sophocles accompanied on the cithara the performance of his Thamyris, if not of other of his plays ; Euripides left the composition of the music for his works to another genius than his own, and such was the case with after dramatists. In ancient Rome the choristers in tragedies were very Roman numerous, including female as well as male singers ; they j- hea - were accompanied by a large number of instruments, among which trumpets were conspicuous. This we learn from Seneca, who employs the idea of multitudinous unity it pre sents to illustrate figuratively the organization of a state.