The Music of the First Christian Era.
By W. Waugh Lauder.
The Musical Courier,
Vol 13 #20 November 17, 1886, page 308.
The mighty revolution which took place in all fields of intellectual life on the introduction and spreading of the Christian faith necessarily influenced the arts and formed a crisis in the development of music. But as the Grecian music in its infancy leaned on the Egyptian art, so did the Christian art largely depend at first on Greek music for its theories and tone system. That the younger nations of culture were well-nigh wholly dependent upon the older nations in art is further proven to us through the medium of the plastic and decorative arts, for the Roman catacombs in which the early Christians held their secret services show to this day that ancient Greek mythology and legend were the springs of wealth from which they adopted subjects to illustrate even biblical narrative. Orpheus taming wild beasts with a lyre is easily changed into Daniel in the lions' den. A slight metamorphosis and the goat carrying Herms (Kriophoros) will represent the good shepherd bearing the lamb. Jonah and the whale is another pictorial version of Arion and his dolphin. The style of execution of many of these sketches and sculptures, as well as the costumes, indicates unmistakable Greek origin.
We cannot concede to the early Christian music any greater independence, for in the absence of reliable musical information in the form of original compositions, literature proves through Pliny the Younger that they, the early Christians, sang an alternating song of the same description as sung to a Greek or Roman god, and Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish chronicler, says that the Therapeuts and Essaers, two sects converted by the Apostles themselves, accompanied their sacred songs with religious gestures and descriptive movements to and fro, a method evidently adopted from the Greek tragedy. It is, however, acknowledged that the disciples of Christianity, from the very beginning, endeavored to abolish the more luxurious forms of Greek music from their services. Clemens of Alexandria (third century) strictly forbade the use of chromatic intervals in ecclesiastical music, but even if the new system aimed at greater clearness and simplicity it was as yet merely a copy of the Greek art. Even the introduction of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine the Great, 333 A. D., as state religion after the complete change in the political aspect on account of the exodus of the people (375) could not materially affect Greek influence in art, and it still predominated in music. Of all the nations that flooded Italy during the fifth century after Christ, the Goths are the most noteworthy, having had a mighty influence in the development of the arts, and under King Theodorick, 520 A. D., great advancement was made. Boetius and Cassiodor, the famous musical authors and historians, and the last scientific representatives of antique art, lived at his court, and brought it much fame. Boetius's works are still of great importance, and he translated and explained many Oriental and Greek musical works. Cassiodor became, in his old age, a Christian, and here the championship of Greek art ends. Boetius introduced the early art to the King of the Franks, Chlodwig, by sending him either players versed in the classic song and lyre. Boetius was executed in 524, during a Roman insurrection against the power of the Goths, in Pavia, and here we take leave of the Greek system as an independent system. Before passing on to the great ecclesiastical schools of music we will again glance at the Greek musical system.
As I have already mentioned, the foundation of their system was not, as with us, the octave, but a series of four notes (within the compass a perfect fourth), called a tetrachord, which four notes came from the four-stringed lyra (lyre). This tetrachord always contained two progressive or whole notes and one of a half note. The position of this half note indicates the nature of the tetrachord. The Doric tetrachord has one-half at the bottom E, F, G, A, the Phrygian in the middle D, E, F, G, the Lyrian the top C, D, E, F. By joining together two tetrachords of any one kind we have approximately our modern octave, that is, a Lyrian, Phrygian or Doric double tetrachord. Out of the Doric octave E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, a peculiar system was formed by the Greeks by adding a tetrachord in the height E, F, G, A, and one in the depth B, C, D, E, and adding at the bottom the so-called additional tone deep A (Proslambanomenos). By this means was formed a double octave minor scale, which, like the modern major and minor scales, on being transposed into any other key suffers not change of interval. By introducing the tone B-flat we have not whole note between A, B-natural. This system is called the perfect system (systemateleion) and transposition scale or tonos. This is a very important combination and is really the foundation of all ancient and modern scales, and should be understood by all musicians and amateurs, for it is quite simple. The peculiar interloping interval B, A-flat assists throughout moderation.
On these points the Greek and Christian systems agree, for the perfect system I have just explained was introduced bodily into the church music and lived for on into the middle ages. The Doric, Lyrian and Phrygian octave methods of double tetrachords exist to-day in the Roman Catholic Church and we have trios and quartets by Beethoven, Schubert and others, composed exclusively either on the Doric or Lydian Model. However little we may be inclined to credit it, it is nevertheless certain that the difference between modern and antique music is the superior melodic variety of the antique. The Greeks, it is true, did not understand harmony as we moderns do, as many voices blending together, but in point of melodic variety of invention they entirely distance us. The Greek melodic system, we can hereby plainly discern, was very variegated and we might almost say kaleidoscope-like. The shading and intonation nuances in Greece were very finely developed, and this luxurious musical worship would scarcely suit the simple and earnest Christians. Shortly after the already mentioned edict of Clemens of Alexandria forbidding chromatic intervals, the Christian Church gives a second sign of energetic life in music. The constantly recurring saint and memorial days necessitated the formation and adaptation of certain norms or formulae for the execution of the music and Pope Sylvester, A. D. 314, and his successor, Hilarius, anxious to preserve these forms to posterity, founded singing-schools. The Church clung, for the study and preservation of the same, to the Latin language, which was rapidly dying out among the people, in consequence of which the laymen could not well take part in church song.
These schools were found to be necessary for the education of singers and the Council of Laodicea, A. d. 367,, decided that no singer but one appointed and educated y the sacred tribune should sing in he churches. We have already briefly treated of Ambrose of Milan, 397, and his illustrious successor of two centuries later, Gregory the Great; but their first great steps in the musical art are of such vital importance that we will touch upon them again. Ambrose simplified the musical system by adopting out of the Greek octave system those four beginning with D, E, F, and G, for the use of his Church, which were called authentic modes. He also added four others, always beginning a fourth below the authentic. These four were called plagial. We now find therefore eight church tones or modes. Authors tell us that the Ambrosian song was perdulcis (wonderfully sweet), but it was soon embodied in the Gregorian chant. The Ambrosian chant was metrical and measured the quantity of the syllables in the Greek manner, but the Gregorian chant took no decided measurement for the length of tones nd was therefore called candus planus, plain chant or plain, even, smooth song. The singers along in the Gregorian chant could alter and adapt the notes and the duration of the same to the expression of the words, and this important innovation of Gregory entirely emancipated the musical art from slavery to the syllabic quantity of words. In this lies the main distinguishing feature between the Ambrosian and the Gregorian chant. Gregory obtained great power and spread the influence of his Church and also of its music. Charlemagne was his great ally. The great and noble ruler founded throughout his whole empire great schools, at Soissons, Fulda, Mayence, Trieste and St. Gallen. Music arithmetic, geometry and astronomy formed the great quadrurum or four-branched divisions of education. in these schools the science and theory of music was cultivated to an equal extend with the practice. The heroic legends and ballads of that day were collected by the scribe Eginhard. Charlemagne himself often sang among the choir-boys and his daughter was instructed in music three hours daily. In Metz he cultivated the vocal service to such an extent that the derivation of mette, messe, mass, is upheld by some to be cantus Metensis (Metz), which obtained great celebrity.
Two great singes were sent by Gregory from Rome to St. Gallen at Charlemagne's request, and these caused St. Gallen's cloisters to become famous from the eighth to the twelfth centuries. Petrus and Romanus they were named, and bore with then the celebrated "Antiphonarium" or collection of church songs and formulae of Gregory the Great. This antiphonarium is at the present day the most costly treasure of the library of the Convent of St. Gallen, together with the chronicles of the famous monk Ekkehard, fourth of this name, who in the year 1000, wrote most interesting reports of the artistic and scientific life and activity at that time in St. Gallen's cloisters. One of the two monks Notker, the Big Mouth, wrote the oldest existing manuscript on German music, and the other Notker, the Stammerer (Balbulus), was the inventor of that peculiar decoration or appendage, the sequence, our modern cadence, at that time consisting of long coloratura or ornamentations executed to the hallelujah. These sequences also became in time distinct melodies and still exist, even some of them in the Protestant choral form. Instrumental music was also diligently cultivated in St. Gallen, which convent and town fostered the arts and sciences with great love during the dark periods of history. The chroniclers tell us that Tuotilo, one of the brothers, played on many varieties of wind and stringed instruments and many of the nobility of the neighborhood were his pupils. Here, necessarily, instrumental music grew to be of more importance as the climate prohibited the perfect cultivation of the human instrument, the voice. A traveler from Italy writes that the barbarous and harsh singing of the rough monks of St. Gallen resembled the driving of a wagon in winter time over the frosty pavement.
At any rate the Northern countries were destined to enrich music and furnish the art with its greatest ally in the principle of harmony, or the plurality of voices or melodies.
In the next division we will treat of the gradual development of this principle, which in the course of centuries reached the acme of perfection in the sacred church music of Palestrina. Some affirm that there is a lack of reliable material available for the purpose of tracing the history of the musical arts, but a perfect chain of tolerably satisfactory literary proof exists, and on one need lack a knowledge of its origin and development. Beginning with the innumerable pamphlets and brochures on the monumental proofs of Egypt, Syria, ancient Greece and Rome, we have the works of Plato, Aristotle, Athenaus, Ptolemaeus, Aristoreum, Pindar, Plutarch's "De Musica," Euclid's treatise on the "Introductio Harmonica" and the "Division of Strings," the important Eastern chain of Josephus Philo, the Masorite chroniclers, Durred ad Tadtsch of Mahmmud Schirasi on the Persian minor song and instruments (fourteenth century); the works on ancient Messel in the Escurial, Madrid; of Abdolkadir, the Arabian, Saffieddin and others, most of whom are also represented in the vatican and in other libraries. The important link between pagan and Christian music is in general furnished by the writings of Boethius, Hucbald, Guido d'Arezzo, Walter Ovington, Franco of Cologne; Marchettus of Padua, and the other "antiphonarium" of St. Gallen.
The Bible is a most important factor in the chain of musical evidence, showing beyond a doubt of what nature Jewish music was. The Middle Ages of music are preserved to us in the famous Sena Codex of the mastersingers and the Provençal Codex of the troubadours. The Skene manuscript distinctly traces the history of Scotch music, of the bagpipes, and in the numerous histories of music special works on the history of musical notation, e. g. Raimann, of musical instruments; e. g., organ, Richter; piano, Paul Pauer; instrumentation, Berlioz, and innumerable biographies and works on special branches, the history of music, is, perhaps, traced and established at the present day to an extent that is possibly not equaled, and certainly not excelled, in any other branch of science and art.
THE BEGINNING OF MANY-VOICED MUSIC HARMONY - HUCBALD -
GUIDO D'AREZZO - FRANCO, OF COLOGNE - FIRST INVENTION OF
NOTES DISTINGUISHING LENGTH AND DURATION OF SOUND.
Let us devote a little attention to people whose influence over the development of the whole system of culture during mediaeval storms was of the greatest importance, namely, the arabians. Many authors of antiquity bear testimony to the mental powers of this race; but their greatest period of prosperity was reached in 622 A. D., under the treat social and religious reforms of Mohammed, and under favorable circumstances, the Orient attained to an eminence of civilization not to be arrived at by the majority of European nations until centuries later. Not only did the followers of Islam established themselves in Baghdad and Damascus a world-wide fame for culture and Oriental splendor of the arts and science, but they also conquered North Africa to the Pillars of Hercules, and passing the Straits of Gibraltar 711 A. D., put an end to the shattered kingdom of the Goths in Spain. The empire of the Khalifs which arose from this ruin, was soon of such importance, the Cordova, its capital, vied in learning culture with the great centers of the Orient.
The Arabians were liberal patrons of the arts and science, and in those days Spain was happy. The religious persecution of later centuries was unknown the Jews were there unhindered in their religious and mental activity, and above all things, Spain became a school in which Europeans became acquainted with the rich treasures of Oriental literature, art and learning of the greater part through the medium of the Latin language. The architectural influence of the Spanish Arabians on neighboring nation cannot have been small, for such building as the Moschee, of Cordova, and the Alhambra, in Granada, are remarkable proofs of their architectural originality and genius. in music the Arabians were behind, as indeed were most nations of the Orient. A vein of mental narrowness, which is shown in their architecture in spite of its delicate beauty, traces its origin to the prohibition of any pictorial or emblematic representation of the laws of the Koran, and imagination finds a vent in mathematical decorations called arabesques. Their music, in spite of its exaggerated richness and ornamentation, lacked earnestness and sound theoretical development, in spite of the fact that the elementary theory may well be said to have had its cradle in Arabia.
The really notable creative power was reserved for the northern nations, and if nature denied them the sweet timbre and mellowness of southern voices, they were richly compensated by higher faculties in combination of instrumental music than the inhabitants of Southern Europe. We must first acknowledge what most great theoreticians acknowledge, viz., that instrumental music on account of its unhindered scope of tonal height and depth offer a much wider sphere for speculation and inventiveness, originality and development of genius, than the limited compass of the human voice, and it is a fact that the more noble, theoretical development of music was practiced instrumentally long before such was attempted vocally.
This supposition (we may say historic certainty) is vouched for by the construction of the early stringed instruments, mostly constructed with three strings, which lie flat without the curved body of more modern instruments. The bow would touch all strings at once, and in this way one string would play a melody or theme, and the other two strings improves, so to say, a kind of organ point, or running accompaniment, such as heard in the bagpipes of to-day, the ground tone of octave and fifth forming a solid, harmonic basis. It is certain that the first efforts in the direction of many-voiced singing was the improvisation of a second voice to a melody o the Gregorian church song, the incentive being the hearing of such instruments, proof of which is found in the theory of "ars organandi" or "organum," - art of organizing sound; organum not only meaning organ in those days, but the system of treating any instrument theoretically or practically. And "organum," or the theory of many-voiced treatment of music, found its origin in the Convent of St. Amand, in Flanders, where Ubaldus and Hucbald (present French Department du Nord) in the year 30 A. D., wrote the first great theoretical work, "Organum Diaphonem," that is, not the mere occasional simultaneous sound of two or more sounds, but the independent melodic treatment of two or more melodies. This is the first appearance of harmony, as we understand it at the present day.
It has been proven hat the ancients considered any ordered series of sounds harmony, and did not distinguish between harmony and melody, and at the commencement of the middle ages Johannes Tinctores, a theoretician of the Netherlands, explains that harmony and melody are synonymous terms. Strange to say, the first beginning in the many-voiced music consisted in leading different voices or instruments and parallel octaves and fifths, a method exceedingly disagreeable to out sense of hearing and now positively forbidden.
Of course tastes change in the course of a thousand years, and what was then allowable is not execrable. In a short time they improved, and the interval of the second and third was freely used. The mere letters a, b, c, d, e, f, g, (F), used by Gregory to denote musical sounds, did not long suffice for the advancing art, and so-called neumes or signs or fomulae were invented, the idea being taken from the accents of the Greek language. Numbers of signs, points, tails and pot-hooks had the advantage, in that they could also denote the height and depth of the notes. Hucbald called certain notes tonus, whole notes indicated by the letter T, and semi tonium, half note, indicated by letter S, and most important innovation and the first indication of a mathematical division of music into measures by means of varying the length of notes. Guido d'Arezzo was the great inventor who first thought of using four lines for the score, using not only the lines, but the spaces between the lines, for the purpose of indicating the position of a sound. he carried on his experiments patiently and preserving to considerable perfection, and is the acknowledged father of our musical notation, and in addition to T and S, introduced the virgula, figure of a comma, out of which arose our crotchet. Guido also obtained great fame by introducing a method of singing by means of which pupils could learn, says that confident man, more in three days than they could in three weeks through the instrumentality of the old system.
The notes of the scale were named do (ut), re, me, fa, sol, la, and these formed the first syllables of the lines of a Latin hymn to St. John entreating him to relive singers from hoarseness, which runs thus: Ut quecent laxis - ressnare filris mira gestorum. Famuli tuorum solve polluti labii reatum sancte Johannes. The seventh syllable si was shortly added to complete the system of the octave, universally acknowledged to be the true basis of music.
Here I should like to make a short excursion and treat in a brief manner of the most interesting Armenian church music. When in Venice I visited the interesting and superb church and convent of Meklintharist Fathers, of the island of St. Lazare, and not only heard that wonderful Oriental Church service (but lately published), but I also gleaned much information regarding their body. It is well known that Armenia is one of the most wonderful of the ancient nations and is regarded as the cradle of the human race, and it is also there that the ark, the hope of mankind, rested. Two thousand years before Christ they were a powerful kingdom, but were in turn vanquished by Semiramis, of Assyria, then by Persia, then by the Macedonians and Sélencides, but again recovered their liberty, and under the dynasty of the Arsacides became again powerful. They, however, soon had to acknowledge the sovereignty of almighty Rome, and after the fall of that colossus, poor Armenia passes successively through the greedy hands of the Persians, Turks and Russians. One of Armenia's kings was one of the first crowned heads to adopt Christianity, the King Agar himself wrote on a papyrus manuscript to Christ while on earth, praying him to permit him the glory of welcoming him into his Armenian kingdom. After the resurrection of our Savior St. Thaddeus carried the gospel to Armenia, and, although many sovereigns persecuted the Christians, one of them, Tiridates, in the fourth century, embraced the faith under Gregory, who became the first patriarch under the title of "The Illuminator of Armenia." In the fifth century came the golden age of this wonderful nation, and from this period date those wonderfully original Oriental church songs. In Liszt's rhapsodies and in Hungarian, Bohemian and Slav music we will perceive many echoes of this music. This music was never published until 1877, having been, like the music of the glorious Palestrina at the Vatican, preserved as their most precious jewel, in a jealous monopoly. In accordance with innumerable requests from professors and amateurs they at last consented to give this glorious historic heirloom to the world, and while there I had the honor of receiving a copy of this musical service and of hearing the exquisite music sung to perfection. It would be a lengthy task to described to any extent this wonderful service and its music, but suffice it to say that the Armenian musical system consisted of a kind of musical shorthand, composed of waving lines, dots, strokes, and it was complete and exhaustive long before our European system had even an approach to a system. And as they print all their works on their own convent presses, compose their own music and form a little world for themselves, we can easily understand how independent was their music.
Guido's principle of teaching appears strange to our modern ideas of music in that he adopted one melody as a model with certain well-defined melodic phrases, or measures, as we call them, the first notes of which phrases, or measures, as we call them, the first notes of which phrases or measures formed a simple diatonic scale. By comparing this melody with others as regards the movement up or down of the melody (as a waving line) he soon taught his pupils to catch quite complicated phrases in a very facile manner. We see how primitive the first singing lessons were. the harp, lyre, zither, a kind of violin, the trumpet, the water or wind organ, were, however, already played with considerable perfection of technique and system, and we see that, although the voice was undoubtedly the first medium for expressing musical sound, the laying of instruments, nevertheless, soon distanced the vocal department of the art.