Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/95

HISTORY.] MUSIC 83 answer or comes, and they were formerly also distin guished as masculine and feminine. A subject is real when it admits of exact transposition into the key of the dominant ; it is tonal when it needs modification to be fitted for this change, and then, if authentic, its answer must be plagal, and, if the subject be plagal, the answer must be authentic. The copious rules of fugal develop ment needed many years for their ripening, but the begin ning of this art-form dates from very primitive times, and a speculation has been already offered as to its origin (p. 81). Priority The earliest piece of music for several voices that has of Eng- been found in any country is an English " six men s song," lish mu- con t a i ne( j j n a manuscript which best judges assign to the period prior to 1240. It is a canon for four voices, with independent parts for two more, which stand as a foot, or burden, or ground bass to support all the others. The original words are a description of summer ; these are proof of the secular origin of the music, but there are also written to the notes the words of a Latin hymn, which prove the practice above noticed of utilizing the people s songs for church purposes. The Arundel MS., which had lain unnoticed in the library of the Royal Society and has lately been transferred to that of the British Museum, comprises several compositions in two-part and three-part counterpoint, and it belongs to the year 1260 a new addition to the many proofs of the earlier and greater advance of music in England than in other countries. In the Parisian library are some pieces by Adam de la Hale, the Hunchback of Arras, which consist of a secular tune as bass with its original words, and two florid parts above it with sacred Latin words. The reputed author lived in the later half of the 13th century, but it is surmised that the contrapuntal parts may have been added to his tune at a subsequent period by another hand ; if this be so, the English pieces are the first, and seem to be the only extant specimens of counterpoint of the period. Flemish Thus far the advance of music was earlier and greater school. i n England than elsewhere. In the 15th century Flanders produced the musicians of most esteem and greatest influ ence. Early among these was Ockenheim or Ockeghem of Hainault (c. 1420-1513), who was surpassed in fame by his pupil Josse Despres (more commonly known by what must have been his pet name of Josquin) of Hainault. He practised the art in his own country, in Italy, in France, and in Austria, and was everywhere regarded as its highest ornament. Though not credited with the origin ation of principles, he is highly extolled for his practical application of those already acknowledged, and the renown of many of his scholars shows him to have been as good a teacher as he was a voluminous composer. In his works, however, the artificiality of the prevailing style is obvious ; many of them have some secular song for " cantus fermus " which supports the florid melodies set to sacred texts that it was the musician s highest aim to engraft upon them. Some of them are notable for a pleasantry or even a jest framed on a punning application of the names of the notes, or on the choice of a text that was pertinent to the occasion for which they were written. Others are distin guished for the multiplicity of their parts. All are of a character to elicit admiration of their ingenuity rather than induce delight by their beauty. Conser- Tinctor, already mentioned, founded in Naples the first vatones mus jcal conservatory, and coincidently Willaert, another demies Fleming, founded one in Venice, their object being, as implied in the definition, to conserve the art of music from corruption. Not only in these exclusively musical schools and in similar institutions which sprang up in the same and other cities was the art cultivated, but in the academies of general learning that were established in all the Italian cities when study of the classics became the passion of the age there was generally provision for the teaching of music. 1 In the 15th century and later, because musical erudi tion was still applied entirely to the service of the church, and because Italy was the ecclesiastical centre, musicians of all lands went to Italy, and especially to Rome. It was, however, in England first, and it has been only in England until America adopted the practice, that academi cal honours have been given to musicians. John Hamboys (c. 1470), author of some treatises on the art, is the reputed first doctor of music. The record exists that in 1463 the university of Cambridge conferred the degrees of doctor Academi- and bachelor respectively on Thomas Seynt Just and Henry cal de- Habyngton. Probably these degrees were granted on the^ 1668 strength of pedantic lore formally required. In the follow ing century a musical composition also was exacted from candidates for graduation. It may seem an anomaly that art-excellence should be tested by academical regulation, since by some supposed to soar above rule ; but, rise as it may, to be art it must be founded on principle, and, if in its working of to-day it overstep its limits of yesterday, it is for ever unfolding new exemplifications of those natural laws whereon it is based, and the greatest artist of any time is he who can most deeply probe, and is thus best able to apply, the phenomena ; upon these grounds, then, it is not beyond the province of the schoolman to test and to declare the qualifications of an artist. The knightly calling, in the age of chivalry, not only referred to heroic acts and deeds of arms, but regarded skill in verse and melody, in singing and accompaniment. Princes and nobles of highest rank practised these arts, and were then styled troubadours, who were sometimes attended and assisted by jongleurs to play to their singing. See TROUBADOURS. Their music seems to have been rhythmi cal, as was necessary to fit the verses, and the perfect, or ternary, or triple time is said to have prevailed in it more commonly than that which we should now write as two or four in a bar. A similar race of knightly songsters in Germany were the minnesanger (see vol. x. p. 525). They set great value on the invention of new metres, and he who produced one with a melody to suit it was called a meister (master), while he who cast his verses in a previously accepted metre or adapted them to a known melody was styled tondieb (tone thief). For the most part, their pieces comprised a fore -song, a far longer section in several stanzas, to each of which the same melody was repeated, and an after-song, all three divisions having their own separate melody. Their music is said to have been in the church style of the period, but was distinctly their own composition. The exercise of the gentle arts by the nobility declined with the decline of chivalry, and as it fell into disuse among them it was adopted by the burgher class in the guilds of meistersanger (see vol. x. p. 526). One of the most meritorious and by far the most prolific of the whole craft his compositions being numbered by thousands was Hans Sachs of Nuremberg (1494-1576). He was by trade a shoemaker, and all the members of the guild followed some such calling, and devoted themselves to the study and practice of song as recreation from their daily labour. They cultivated the arts of both composition and performance of song in its twofold aspect of verse and tune, for which, 1 As belonging to this branch of the subject, the principal schools for musical education that have been instituted of late, and are now in existence, may here be named: the Paris Conservatoire, 1795, and its five provincial branch schools ; the Conservatoire of Brussels ; the Conservatorio of Naples, an offspring of earlier institutions ; the Royal Academy of Music, London, 1822 ; the Conservatorium of Leipsic, instituted in 1843, mainly through the instrumentality of Mendelssohn ; the Conservatorium of Vienna, and like institutions in Dresden, Cologne, Stuttgart, Munich, and Frankfort, and also in Milan and Bologna ; and the Hochschule fur Musik, a branch of the Academy of Arts, Berlin.