Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/93

HISTORY. MUSIC 81 or flats, and consequently a different distribution of tones and semitones in each mode from that in all the others. The sole exception from this was the permissible bB in the second octave, the toleration of which was for the sake of avoiding the interval of the augmented 4th between JJB and F below it, but the inflected note was admitted in the fifth mode only. Here the numbers of the modes must be explained and the later misapplication to them of the Greek names. The two classic forms of authentic and plagal were employed in the structure of melody, that having its dominant above the tonic or final, this having its dominant below it. The four authentic modes bore the uneven numbers first beginning its scale from D, third from E, fifth from F, wherein the bB might be used, and seventh from G. The four plagal modes bore the even numbers, which showed their parallelism or rela tion to their respective authentic modes second beginning from A, fourth from B, sixth from C, and eighth from D. In the latter half of the 9th century, Notker, abbot of St Gall, applied the Greek names to these, regardless of the distinction that by u^e of inflected notes the classic modes had all the same disposition of tones and semitones, whereas by the omission of sharps and of flats the church modes varied from each other in the arrangement of inter vals. The confusion of F for the church Lydian with $F for the Greek Lydian is obvious, and the reader may easily trace the discrepancies between the systems if he consider the diverse principles on which the two are based. Some centuries later, the ninth and tenth modes, .^Eolian and Hypo-^Eolian, beginning respectively on A and E, were added, and later still, the eleventh and twelfth, Ionian and Hypo -Ionian, beginning respectively on C and G. The mode or scale that comprised bB was called tnollis, and those which had |B were each called dura, and hence the sign " b " to indicate a flat, the word hemol to define the same in French, the word be or its first letter to name a flat, and the terms moll and dur to express minor and major in German. Lastly, as bearing on the aversion from the augmented 4th between F and B, and on the omission of the 4th and 7th in several characteristic national scales, it must be added that, whenever the 5th above or 4th below a tonic or final Avas B, C instead of this note was dominant of the mode. Coincidently with the church practice of constructing unrhythmical melody in one or other of these unnatural and arbitrarily devised modes, and of singing the same without accompanying harmony, the people of Northern nations had the habit, as has been proved in many districts, of singing tunes with the accompaniment of different parts performed by other voices. Among what tradition has pre served of these tunes, some indeed are in one or other of the church modes, as was inevitable in the productions of people who had experience of this artificial system in the music of the daily service ; but many approxi mate far nearer to the scale of present use, and are thus susceptible of just harmonic treatment, which is in compatible with the modal system. So devoted to their song-tunes were the English people in the later Saxon times that churchmen, as is well attested, would often sing these to attract the public to divine worship, and after the Norman settlement it was a frequent custom to write words of hymns to fit secular tunes, which tunes and their titles are preserved through this appropriation only, with the Latin words written under the notes. The appropriation of popular tunes to church use was followed by the adoption of the harmonic practice or part-singing of the people in many English districts, and probably in other Northern lands. At the end of the llth or beginning of the 12th century, a part added to another received the name of descant (dis-cantus, some thing apart from or extra to the song), and rules were gradually framed for its extemporaneous invention. It was preceded by faburden (the singing of a single note or Fabur- drone throughout a given melody), and this latter term den. was retained with a wider contrapuntal signification, whence difficulty has arisen as to its primary meaning. To " bear the burden " was to sing the bass below either a single part or fuller harmony ; when the bass was a single note, which was of course the tonic, this being generally F or Fa, it constituted the faburden or drone ; that the term is translated fauxbourdon and falsobordone in French and Italian may have referred at first to its being a single note or drone, and not a part changing with the changeful harmony. The assertion that previously to the period now being D; a . considered there prevailed a church custom of accompany- phony. ing melodies with a transposition of the same at the interval of the 5th or 8th above or below is disproved by Aristotle s injunction that the antiphon might be at the 8th below, but not at any other of the perfect intervals ; and the blundering of Boetius could not eradicate the fact, though it might obscure the rule. It is also dis proved by the habit of the peoples of the North to sing in harmony, showing unschooled perception of the principles of combining sounds, and making it impossible that either they or their priests (who must casually have heard their natural performances) could have tolerated the cacophonous progression of parts at perfect intervals from each other. It is disproved by the identity of human perceptions to-day with those of a thousand years ago, and by the certainty that men of old positively could not have sung with satisfaction, or heard with respect, things that are in the highest degree offensive to us all. An explanation may be speculatively ventured, that the manuscripts wherein two parts appear to be written in 5ths or 4ths with each other are not scores showing what was to be sung in combination, but the parts for separate choirs, showing what was to be sung in response ; thus, when A V stand as the initials of three melodies, the top or the bottom may have been intended to be sung alone, the middle to follow, and the other to succeed. In this is to be seen the germ of the fugue, if we may suppose that the part which first held the cantus was continued in descant, when the cantus was sung a 5th higher by another part. Music written as here described is defined as diaphony, a term at least as appropriate to the successive as to the simultaneous singing of a melody at the interval of a 5th above or below. One of the most inscrutable things to the modern student Musical is the lateness at which notation was devised for defining measure. the relative length of musical sounds. The rhythmical sense is the earliest of the musical faculties to be developed, and is often the strongest in its development among individuals and nations. Still, the ancients have left no record that they had signs of indication for the length of notes, and centuries rolled over Christendom before there was any chronicled attempt to find a principle for supply ing this musical necessity. Here again conjecture will insist that the practice of singing longer and shorter notes with stronger and weaker accent must have prevailed before a system was framed for its regulation; and in this supposition offers that the instincts of the people must have given example for the canons of the school men. Franco of Cologne, in the 12th century, is the first writer who codified the uses of " measured music," and all he enunciates is expanded in the treatises of Walter Odington, a monk of Evesham who was appointed arch bishop of Canterbury in 1228. At this period and after- XVII. ii