Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/94

82 MUSIC [HISTORY. wards, bar-lines were drawn across the whole or a portion of the staff to show the end of a musical phrase in accord ance with that of the line or verse which was to be sung to it, and the number of notes between these bar-lines was more or less, according to the number of syllables in the verse. It was not, however, till more than three hundred years later that music was first divided into bars of equal length, and not until a still later date that these were applied to their most valuable purpose of showing the points of strongest emphasis. Prior to this invention the distribution of accent was styled perfect or imperfect time, according to whether the strongest note was to be the first of three or the first of two, or according to whether three or two should follow during the continuance of one, corresponding with present division into triple or duple time. Our compound times were denoted by such directions as " imperfect of the first and perfect of the second," which may be translated by 6 6 our sign or -, meaning that a bar is divisible into 4 8 two equal notes (dotted minims or dotted crotchets), and each of these into three equal notes (crotchets or quavers). It is not only that early music is, on account of this vague notation, difficult to interpret, but writers seem to have had undefined notions of where their accent should lie ; and hence we have varying versions of melodies, partly because the transcribers may have doubted how to express them, and partly because composers, when choosing them as themes against which to construct other parts, lengthened or shortened any of the notes at the prompting of their own fancy. It was not until the 18th century that the plan was fully accepted of having the strongest note on the first of every bar, and of having, with rarest excep tions, the close or cadence or conclusion of every phrase on this note of strongest accent. To induce such termina tion of a phrase many a strain must begin with a half bar, or with a shorter or longer fragment, and the excep tions from the rule are so few as to be easily mastered, and so clear as to aid in strengthening the principle. Motet Descant, which has become a term of general use for and an- disquisition on a stated subject, has been shown to owe them. -f. g rg mean j n g an( j musical application to the words dis- cantus. A like meaning belongs to the word motet, which seems to have come from motetus, to denote a florid or moving part against a fixed theme in longer notes. 1 It may be supposed that the term anthem had reference originally, similarly to the word motet, to a free part constructed against or upon the plain-song. The word descant has passed out of use as a musical definition ; motet now generally signifies a composition to Latin text for the Roman Church, and it is also applied to the works pro duced in North Germany in the centuries next following the Reformation which were elaborations of the choral melodies ; and anthem is applied to pieces designed for use in the Church of England. Counter- When descant ceased to be improvised, and with the point. advance of notation the writing of a carefully -planned accompanying part became more and more practicable, such a part was defined as counterpoint point or note against note. Counterpoint is simple when each melody is in notes of the same length as those of an accompanying melody ; it is florid when one melody proceeds in longer or shorter notes than another melody. At first the use of perfect concords only was allowed in counterpoint, but of these 1 Among other grounds for this derivation a strong one is that in the 13th and 14th centuries the word motetus often denned a florid part next above that which was styled tenor, because it held the chief melody, the word motetus being subsequently changed for medius or mean when that part stood midway between the tenor and the third part above it or treble. Bass, or base of the harmonic column, was then designated the burden. never two at the same interval, as two 5ths or two 8ths, in succession. 3ds and 6ths were afterwards introduced. Then discords were admitted under either of two condi tions : (1) that they were approached and quitted by step and not by leap, and were always unaccented ; (2) that they were suspended from a note of a previously-sounded chord, or from a note without harmony, and that they were resolved by passing to a concord while the harmony lasted against which they were discordant. Subsequently one more class of discords was employed ; these were elements of the harmony, being added to, not substituted for, the notes of a chord, and they were resolved, with the change of the entire chord, upon notes of that chord whose root was at the interval of a 4th above the root of the discord. It is from the institution of the art of constructing counter point that the history of the music we know, and the capa bility to produce it, are truly to be dated. Throughout the period of transition from what must be regarded as an instinct of the people to what was truly a scholastic problem, there were English writers on music in such numbers as to prove the high consideration in which it was held in Britain, and the great pains spent there to evolve principles for its regulation. 2 John of Dunstable is especially to be noted, of whom Tinctor the Netherlander (c. 1460 A.D.) wrote, in discussing the art of counterpoint : "Of this new art, as I may call it, the fountain and source is said to have been among the English, of whom Dunstable was the chief." Contemporaneous with Dunstable, but far behind him in esteem, was Egide Binchois, a musician of Picardy. The first essays at composition in harmony were in the Canon form of canon that is, in which successive parts have the and same melody, but begin each at a stated period after its precursor. When the first part completes a rhythmical sentence prior to the entry of the second part and con tinues the melody as accompaniment to the second, and so on with regard to the third or fourth parts if there be so many, the composition has in England always been styled a round or catch, as distinguished from the closer canon, in which the successive parts enter without regard to the close of a phrase ; but elsewhere than in England no distinction is made between the catch and the canon. The term round refers to the return to the beginning by the first part, while the other parts respectively continue the melody. The term atch springs from each later part catching up the tune during its continuance by the others. The term canon relates to the problem of finding the one or more points in a melody whereat one or more successive parts should begin the same tune. Very early allusion is made to the singing of catches by the English people, which continued in practice until after the Restoration ; every trade had its characteristic catch ; there were many on pastoral subjects ; those which engaged composers in the time of Charles II. are mostly of a bacchanalian cast ; and the form was appropriated in the later Georgian era to sentimental subjects, when the practice of singing catches had passed from the people at large, but was pre served in some convivial clubs that consisted of men of fortune, who paid and listened to, but took no part with, professional singers. Quite distinct from the canon is the fugue (fuga In Fugue, it a short complete melody flies (hence the name) from one part to another, while the original part is continued in counterpoint against it. To suit the different compass of high and low voices, this melody is transposed into the key of the dominant (the 5th above or 4th below) when assigned to the second entering voice ; in the first instance it is called the subject or dux, in the second it is called the 2 John Cotton (referred to as Johannes Anglicanus by the almost fabulous Guido) was the earliest to indicate the good effect of contrary motion between two simultaneous melodies.