Music

MUSIC

PART I.—HISTORY.

MUSIC is the art which employs sounds as a medium of artistic expression for what is not in the province of literature, of sculpture, of painting, of acting, or of architecture. Whereas literature, whether in verse or prose, describes or states emotions, .or perceptions, or impressions; whereas sculpture imitates the outward forms of animated beings, and physiognomically, either in the face, or, to speak more broadly, in the moulding and attitude of the entire figure, displays personal character and the effect of passion upon it; whereas painting vitalizes with colour the forms of sculpture, and extends its range of subjects from animate to inanimate nature; and whereas acting adds speech to the written words of the dramatist, and enforces or even qualifies their meaning by vocal inflexion, and illustrates it by changeful gesture, thus giving the mobility of life to the forms of sculpture and painting;—music embodies the inward feelings of which all those other arts can but exhibit the effect. Those other arts are imitative in respect of their reproducing natural objects or circumstances; it is otherwise with architecture, which makes but conventional reference to nature, and wholly arbitrary application of the lines, the lights, and the shadows of the natural world; and in this particular music has an analogy to architecture which it has not to the other fine arts. In the matter of expression also, architecture may be compared with music in the earlier stages of its development, since representing and also prompting a general idea of solemnity, or grandeur, or gaiety; but music left architecture far behind when, in later times, it assumed the power of special, individual, and personal utterance of every variety of passion. The indefiniteness of musical expression furnishes no argument that music is inexpressive, but is one of the qualities that place it on the highest level of art-excellence, enabling it to suggest still more than it displays, and to stimulate the imagination of the witness as much as to exercise that of the artist. The musician is then a poet, whether we regard the term in its primary sense of “maker,” the exact translation of the Greek word by which versifiers were styled in early English, or in its applied sense of one who expresses thought and feeling through the medium of highly-excited imagination. Music, then, is that one of the fine arts which appropriates the phenomena of sound to the purposes of poetry, and has a province of its own in many respects analogous to, but yet wholly distinct from, that of each of the other arts. It is common to style it “the universal language;” but the definition is untrue, for in every age and in every clime there are varieties of musical idiom which are unsympathetic, if not unintelligible, to other generations than those among whom they are first current, and, still more, the very principles that govern it have been and are so variously developed in different times and places that music which is delightful at one period or to one people is repugnant at another epoch or to a different community. An attempt will here be made to sketch the progress of the art through Western civilization, to show how it has been changed from artificial or calculated into natural or spontaneous, and to describe some of the chief forms of its manifestation.

To define the special science, and the art which is its application, that is denoted by our word music, the Greek language has two other words, harmonia or harmonike and melodia,— harmonia implying the idea of “fitting,” and so being a term for propriety or general unity of parts in a whole, not in our limited technical sense of combined sounds, but with reference to the whole principle of orderly and not specially tonal regulation, melodia implying the rising and falling of the voice in speech, and being applied only at a subsequent epoch to a succession of musical notes. 3

We thus owe our three chief musical terms to the Greeks, and in our prevailing system much more besides; they themselves, however, owed all to earlier sources, for the essentials of their knowledge and practice are traced to Egypt.

It has been ingeniously suggested and well sustained by Mr. J. F. Rowbotham that in prehistoric times music passed through three stages of development, each characterized by a separate class of instrument, and the analogy of existing uses in barbarous nations tends to confirm the assumption. Instruments· of percussion are supposed to be the oldest, wind instruments the next in order of time and of civilization, and string instruments the latest invention of every separate race. The clapping of hands and stamping of feet, let us say, in marking rhythm exemplify the first element of music, and the large family of drums and cymbals and bells is a development of the same principle. Untutored ears are quicker to perceive rhythmical accentuation than variations of pitch, so the organ of time makes earlier manifestation than the organ of tune, though, musical sound being a periodic succession of vibrations, the operation of the latter is truly but a refinement on that of the former. The sighing of wind, eminently when passing over a bed of reeds, is Nature’s suggestion of instruments of breath; hence have been reached the four methods of producing sound through pipes: —by blowing at the end, as in the case of the English flute and the flageolet; at the side, as in that of the ordinary concert flute; through a double reed, as in that of the hautboy or oboe and bassoon; and over a single reed, as in that of the clarionet—all of which date from oldest existing records; and also upon the collection of multitudinous pipes in that colossal wind instrument, the organ. An Egyptian fable ascribes the invention of the lyre to the god Thoth; a different Greek fable gives the same credit to the god Hermes; and both refer it, though under different circumstances, to the straining of the sinews of a tortoise across its shell,—whence can only be inferred that the origin of the highest advanced class of musical instruments is unknown. This class includes the lyre and the harp, which give but one note from each stretched string; the lute, which, having a neck or finger-board, admits of the production of several notes from each string by stopping it at different lengths with the fingers; the viol, the addition of the bow to which gives capability of sustaining the tone; and the dulcimer, finally matured into the pianoforte, wherein the extremes of instrumental fabrication meet, since this is at once a string instrument and an instrument of percussion, having the hammer of the drum to strike the string of the lyre.

Musical intervals are named numerically from any given note, say C as the 1st, the note next to which is thus D the 2d, the one beyond is E the 3d, and so on to another C, the 8th. Beyond the 8th, numerical names are only used for the rare combinations of the 9th, the 11 th, and the 13th. This is because the 8th is in some sense a reproduction of the 1st, as all intervals beyond it are reproductions of the 8th below them—reproductions, that is, uniting identity and difference, the relation of tones in the higher octave being just what it is in the lower, while each tone is so or so much more acute than its under 8th, an analogy to which may be sought in the reduction of any visual object to half its size while all its proportions are preserved, the larger and the smaller, as in the interval of the 8th, thus uniting identity with difference. When two voices or instruments produce the same sound they are in unison; the unison or 1st is styled perfect; so too is its reproduction, the 8th; the 8th is unequally divisible into a 5th and a 4th, and these two are classed with the 1st and 8th as perfect. There are many specialities that distinguish the four perfect intervals in music from every other. The two notes of which each is constituted are, save in one instance, of the same quality—as natural, or sharp, or flat; to raise or lower either of the two notes by a chromatic semitone changes a perfect interval into a discord, whereas the other intervals are elastic, that is, they may be major or minor from having a chromatic semitone more or less in their extent, and are not changed from concords to discords, or the reverse, by the modification. To invert a perfect interval by placing the higher note beneath the lower produces another perfect interval, whereas to invert any of the other intervals reverses its character of major or minor. The progression of two parts together from one to another 1st or 8th, from one to another 5th or 4 th, has, save in exceptional instances, the bad effect that all musical grammar forbids, whereas the progression of two parts in 3ds or 6ths with each other has a good effect. In the resolution of fundamental discords the progression of perfect intervals is free, whereas that of the imperfect intervals is restricted; and further, in the relation of subject and answer in a fugue, one perfect interval may be changed for another, but never for an imperfect interval. Many technicalities are anticipated in the foregoing which can only be explained in the sequel, but present mention of them is unavoidable in reference to a position now to be stated. The Egyptians perceived the distinction of the perfect intervals from others, if not all the above specialities, and regarded them as typical of the seasons, spring bearing the proportion of a 4th to autumn, of a 5th to winter, and of an 8th to summer. The distinction, then, has been observed for many centuries, but neither ancients nor moderns have adduced any explanation of the phenomenon, and the wondrous fact that perfect intervals differ in constitution and treatment from other intervals appears to defy reason, and not even to incite speculation.

The anciently supposed affinity of music to astronomy was taught by Pythagoras (585 b.c. ), who derived the notion from the Egyptians, and exemplified it by comparison of the lyre of seven strings with the planetary system. The Sun, then believed to rotate round the earth, was deemed the chief planet, next to which were, on the one side Mercury, Venus, and the Moon, and on the other side Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The strings of the lyre, not the notes they sounded, were thus named :—Mesê (middle), being the principal or keynote, corresponding with our A on the fifth line with the bass clef, and likened to the Sun; Paramesë (next to middle) or B flat, likened to Mercury; Paranêtê (next to lowest, i.e., shortest = highest in pitch) or C, likened to Venus; and Nëtë or Neatë (lowest) or D, likened to the Moon; these constituted the upper tetrachord or scale of four notes, to which the lower tetrachord was conjoined by having Mesë for its acutest note, which was the gravest of the other tetrachord; next to it was Lichanos (forefinger string) or G, likened to Mars; then Parhypatë (next to highest, i.e., longest = lowest in pitch) or F, likened to Jupiter; and lastly Hypatë (highest) or E, likened to Saturn. The Moon being of all the planets the nearest to, and Saturn the farthest from, the earth, they are analogous to the shortest and the longest string.

The Greek lyre (see Lyre, vol. xv. p. 113) had at first four strings, to which subsequently were added the longest three; then an 8th, corresponding with our E, tuned to an 8th above Hypatë; then three below the latter, which took the scale down in pitch to B on the second line with the bass clef; afterwards three above the former, which took the scale up to A in the second space with the treble clef; and finally Proslambanomenos, corresponding with our A in the first space with the bass clef, extended the “greater system” of fifteen notes to an 8th below Mesë and an 8th above it.

Tradition has it that Pythagoras made his discovery of the ratios of the perfect intervals by listening to some smiths who struck the iron on their anvil with hammers of different weights, and thus produced different notes from the metal. But the narrator of the tale has disregarded the obvious fact that, save for slight variation due to the greater or less heat of its different parts, a metallic bar, like a string, always sounds a note of the same pitch whatever be the weight of the instrument with which it is struck. The smithy wherein Pythagoras worked his musical problems was the land of Egypt, where he is said to have acquired and whence he imported his knowledge. His division of the 1st and 2d degrees and the 2d and 3d degrees of the tetrachord, counting downward in pitch into equal intervals of a major tone, left but a leimma (remnant), which was less than a semitone between the 3d and 4th degrees. Aristoxenus (300 b.c. ), who has been called the father of temperament, discovered the difference between the major and minor tones, the first having the ratio ⅜, and the second having that of ⅛ 0 . His followers formed a school opposed to that of Pythagoras, and there was severe contention between the two. Subsequent theorists disputed whether the major or the minor tone should be above the other, and it was Claudius Ptolemy (c. 150 a.d.) who enunciated that the major tone should be below the minor, which is the principle that directs the intonation of our present scale. This intonation may account for the difference between the effect in proceeding from the minor chord of the supertonic to the major chord of the tonic, and the effect in proceeding from the minor chord of the submediant to the major chord of the dominant, of which the latter, at the interval of a minor tone, is acceptable and the former, at the interval of a major tone, is repugnant to cultivated ears.

The Greeks had four modes or Scales included in their “greater system.” The Dorian comprised a series of eight notes from D to D, of which hB was the 6th, and had its semitones between the 2d and 3d and the 5th and 6th degrees counting upward. The others were exact transpositions 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 ⅛F and ⅛B, the Lydian between ⅛F and ⅛F had ⅛G and ⅛C, and the Mixo-Lydian between G and G had hB 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 notai transposition.

The tetrachords above described—having a semitone 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, hB, C, D. To lower by a semitone the 2d note from the highest produced a chromatic tetrachord, as A, hB, βB, 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 enharmonic, 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, hB, D; chromatic, D, E, F, ⅛F, A, hB, 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 11th (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 arrangement 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 enharmonic genus, and so received the appellation of Enhar-monicists, or were as often called Harmonicists, and hence the twofold application of the term “harmonia.”

Anacreon (540 b.c. ) sang to the accompaniment of the magadis (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 (τδ άντίφωνον) 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. Beyond 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 chanting with vocal inflexions the epic poems; they employed 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 performance. 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 afiirm, 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 transplanting of the chorus to the stage and giving to its members participation in the action. Aeschylus 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 numerous, including female as well as male singers; they 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 presents to illustrate figuratively the organization of a state.

How or when the musical system of the Greeks fell into disuse is still untraced; certainly it prevailed and engaged the attention of philosophers for some centuries of the Christian era. The first notices of music in the Western Church refer to the manner but not to the matter of the performance. The name of St Ambrose (384 a.d.) is familiarly associated with the music of his metropolitan church in Milan; but all that is proved of his connexion with the art is that, advised by Flavian of Antioch, he adopted for the first time in the West the practice of dividing the verses of the Psalms between responsive choirs, an usage which has a natural connexion with the so-called “parallelism” of Hebrew poetry, indicated in the English version of the Psalter by the colon that divides each verse. This practice has come to be falsely called antiphonal singing— falsely, because, according to the etymology of the word and to Aristotle’s definition, the Greeks used it for singing together, whereas the church uses it for singing in alternation. St Ambrose regulated the order of the prayers, the ritual, and other matters in the service besides the music; his ordinances prevailed in Milan, and were distinguished by his name; so the term Ambrosian denotes the “use of Milan” in all things in which that differs from the practice of other churches. No proof is given that the melodies so defined belong to the date of St Ambrose.

Boetius (475 a.d.) was the most copious of the Roman writers on music, but his voluminous treatise De Institutione Musica proves that the Greek principles of the art had in his time become matter of antiquarianism; nay, it proves further that he did not understand the technical terms he professed to translate. For instance, he mistook the word for the shortest string of the lyre (Nëtë), which naturally gave the acutest sound, to signify the gravest note; and he mistook the word for the longest string (Hypatë) to signify the acutest note. It is not necessary here to catalogue this author’s many verbal errors; but it is important to mention that he ignored the advance made by Didymus and completed by Ptolemy in the tuning of the scale with the major and minor tones, and the modern semitone of ⅜⅜, counting upward, and returned to the Pythagorean division of two major tones, inducing a discordant 3d, and the leimma ⅜∣f. The very eminence of Boetius makes it matter of regret that he ever wrote upon music. His Latin book being accessible when those of Greek authors were not, it was established as a text-book on the art in the English universities, and musical degrees were granted for knowledge of the principles it set forth; musical progress was thus seriously retarded, and the 18th century was far advanced before search for sound theory dispelled reverence for his scholastic dogma.

As St Ambrose ordained a ritual for Milan which bore his name, so also St Gregory the Great (590 a.d.) ordained one for Rome which was called Gregorian. The terms Ambrosian and Gregorian are now erroneously applied to a system of music that came first into use centuries after the dates of the two bishops, and they are applied even to melodies constructed upon that system. This sentence of St Isidore, the friend and survivor of Gregory, distinctly proves that no music of the time of the Roman pontiff was or could be preserved: “Unless sounds are retained in the memory, they perish, because they cannot be written.” Whatever the age of the oldest church melodies, belief cannot associate them with the days of St Gregory.

The system of notation by letters of the Greek alphabet had fallen into disuse. A system by neumes (grvevμa) or pneumeter, of later date than St Gregory, employed signs over or under the syllables to indicate the rising or falling of the voice but not to define its extent, and, in the manner of modern punctuation, to show where breath should be taken. This was followed by, though for a time practised coincidently with, one in which the Roman letters stood for notes. Afterwards, something like our staff was employed, of which the spaces only and not the lines were used, the syllables being placed in the higher or lower of them to denote to what extent the melody should rise or fall. Of earlier date than anything that has been found of like advance in other countries is a service-book which belonged to Winchester cathedral, and contains music written on the lines as well as in the spaces of a staff of four lines; and this comprises a prayer for Ethelred II., who died in 1016. It has been stated and constantly repeated that staff notation was invented by Guido, a monk of Arezzo, who was alive in 1067, and whose book, Micrologus, refers only to writing in spaces, and who throughout his works professes no more than to describe established principles, and these far less advanced than what then prevailed in England. To him is falsely ascribed the first use of a red line for the note F, and a saffron for the note C, and to him, as unduly, the appropriation of the initial syllables—nonsense without the completion of the words—of six lines of a hymn to St John the Baptist as names of the notes—Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La.

Hucbald (930 a.d.) invented a system, not of notation, but of scales, wherein the semitone was always between the 2d and 3d of a tetrachord, as G, A, bB, C, so the t[B and ⅛F of the second octave were in false relation to the bB and ⅛F of the first two tetrachords. To this scale of four notes, G, A, bB, C, were subsequently added a note below and a note above, which made the hexachord with the semitone between the 3d and 4th both up and down, as F, G, A, bB, C, D. It was at a much later date that the 7 th, our leading note, was admitted into a key, and for this the first two letters of the last line of the above-named hymn, “Sanctus Johannes,” would have been used, save for the notion that as the note Mi was at a semitone below Fa, the same vowel should be heard at a semitone below the upper Ut, and the syllable Si was substituted for Sa. Long afterwards the syllable Ut was replaced by Do in Italy, but it is still retained in France; and in these two countries, with whatever others employ their nomenclature, the original Ut and the substituted Do stand for the sound defined by the letter C in English and German termin-ologv. The literal musical alphabet thus accords with the [table]

Germany, however, a remnant of Greek use prevails in having the note above A at the interval of a semitone, namely bB, as was the classical Paramesë above Mesë, and the Teutons employ the 8th letter H to denote the sound we call ⅛B, and the Italians and French Si. The gamut, which, whenever instituted, did not pass out of use until the present century, regarded the hexachord and not the octachord, employed both letters and syllables, made the former invariable while changing the latter according to key relationship, and acknowledged only the three keys of G, C, and F; it took its name from having the Greek letter gamma with Ut for its lowest keynote, though the Latin letters with the corresponding syllables were applied to all the other notes.

A system of modes had already been established for ecclesiastical music which differed essentially from the Greek modal system in having no notes inflected by sharps 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 ζB 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 relation 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 use 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 intervals. The confusion of F for the church Lydian with ⅛F 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, Aeolian and Hypo-Aeolian, 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 mollis, and those which had £|B were each called dura, and hence the sign “b” to indicate a flat, the word bémol 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 was 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 preserved 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 approximate far nearer to the scale of present use, and are thus susceptible of just harmonic treatment, which is incompatible 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 11th or beginning of the 12th century, a part added to another received the name of descant (dis-cantus, something 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 drone throughout a given melody), and this latter term 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 fauxbourd<m 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 considered there prevailed a church custom of accompanying 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 disproved 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 4 ths 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 i D )

< A > stand as the initials of three melodies, the top or (dJ 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 is the lateness at which notation was devised for defining 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 supplying 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 schoolmen. 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 archbishop of Canterbury in 1228. At this period and afterwards, bar-lines were drawn across the whole or a portion of the staff to show the end of a musical phrase in accordance 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 thisinvention 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 7 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 exceptions, the close or cadence or conclusion of every phrase on this note of strongest accent. To induce such termination of a phrase many a strain must begin with a half bar, or with a shorter or longer fragment, and the exceptions from the rule are so few as to be easily mastered, and so clear as to aid in strengthening the principle.

Descant, which has become a term of general use for disquisition on a stated subject, has been shown to owe its first meaning and 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. 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 produced 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.

When descant ceased to be improvised, and with the 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 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 conditions: (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 counterpoint that the history of the music we know, and the capability 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. 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 form of canon— that is, in which successive parts have the 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 continues 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 ’ catch 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 preserved 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 {fugd). In 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 answer or comes, and they were formerly also distinguished 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 development needed many years for their ripening, but the beginning of this art-form dates from very primitive times, and a speculation has been already offered as to its origin (p. 81).

The earliest piece of music for several voices that has been found in any country is an English “six men’s song,” contained in 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.

Thus far the advance of music was earlier and greater in England than elsewhere. In the 15th century Flanders produced the musicians of most esteem and greatest influence. Early among these was Ockenheim or Ockeghem of Hainault (c. 1420-1513), who was surpassed in fame by his pupil Josse Desprès (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 origination 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 distinguished for the multiplicity of their parts. All are of a character to elicit admiration of their ingenuity rather than induce delight by their beauty.

Tinctor, already mentioned, founded in Naples the first musical conservatory, and coincidently Willaert, another 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.. .

In the 15th century and later, because musical erudition 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 academical 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 and bachelor respectively on Thomas Seynt Just and Henry Habyngton. Probably these degrees were granted on the strength of pedantic lore formally required. In the following 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 rhythmical, 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 minnesänger (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 meistersänger (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, according to tradition, they enacted most rigid and perhaps pedantic laws. None of their work has come down to us, but the name they have left affords an instance of the aspirations of the common people to that intellectual condition which is not the exclusive prerogative of the church nor the privilege of the wealthy. Guilds of meistersänger were also established in other towns of North Germany. The title and its application generally declined until the 17 th century, but lingered feebly in a few places until 1836, when the latest-lived guild was dissolved at Ulm.

The dawn of the 16 th century is marked by the appropriation of musical scholarship to secular writing. It was about that time that the madrigal came into vogue. The etymology of the word is obscure, but the class of music to which it is applied is clearly distinguished. It is stamped with the imitative character of the canon, but is free from the rigid continuance of one melody by the successively entering voices; and it has as much resemblance yet unlikeness to the fugue in having the flight of a musical phrase from one to another of the vocal parts, but not being steadfast to one subject throughout its design,—nay, imitation sometimes ceases in the madrigal when particular words need special emphasis. The villanella, villancico, chanson, or the part-song of the period is distinguished from madrigal by the definite rhythm, a quality excluded from this latter by the response in one part to the uncompleted phrase of another; and the lighter species of composition was so arranged as to suit a single voice with a lute accompaniment when a voice to each part was not available for the performance. Still more marked in rhythm and more slight in structure was the ballet, so named because it was sung as an accompaniment to dancing (ballata, from δα‰re), or the fal-la, so named because often set to these two syllables. All these classes of music were as often played as sung, and in English copies are generally described as “apt for voices or viols.” The Flemish masters have left as many and as admirable specimens of secular work as of church music; Italian musicians, who rose from the teaching of the Flemings, successfully emulated the twofold example; but in England secular composition seems to have been the indigenous development of national intuition, and at its outset at least to have had a style of its own. This is exemplified in the pieces comprised in the Fayrefax MS., which are mostly of a pastoral and always of a tuneful character; of these, Dr. Robert Fayrefax the collector, Sir Thomas Phelyppes (a priest), Newark, Theryngham, Turges, Tudor, Browne, Gilbert Bannister, Richard Davy, Cornyshe, and others were the composers.

The renowned Roman school, to which we must now pass, owed its existence to the precept as much as to the example of foreigners, chiefly from Flanders. Claude Goudimel (c. 1510-1572), known as a Fleming, though his birth be assigned to Avignon, was the first to open a seminary for musical tuition in Rome, and the most famous musicians of the century were its pupils—Palestrina (oδ. 1594), Orlando di Lasso (ob. 1594), the brothers Animuccia, the brothers Nanini, and many more. Lasso, Lassus, or Latres of Mons is signalized among these for the great number and great beauty of his works, and for the wide area over which he spread his labours. In his own land, in Rome, in France, in England, and chiefly in Bavaria, he was active as a choir-master and as a composer, and did as much to advance art by making his music express the words to which it was set as by teaching the executants to realize this expression in performance. He is praised for breaking from the long previous practice of writing prolix florid passages to single syllables, a weakness manifest in the music of his countryman Desprès and of intervening writers.

Several musical treatises by Spanish writers of this period are extant, which are not regarded highly for the novelty of their views, nor for more than usual perspicacity in the statement of them. It might have been supposed that Spain would have been as favourable to the production of musical talent as Italy has always been. That the contrary is the fact is, however, patent; but the explanation lies with the ethnologist rather than with the musician.

Though the church from time to time appropriated the secular art-forms from their rise to their maturity, its chief authorities were always jealous of these advances, and issued edicts against them. So in 1322 Pope John XXII. denounced the encroachments of counterpoint, alleging that the voluptuous harmony of 3ds and 6ths was fit but for profane uses. So too the twelfth or Ionian mode—the modern scale of C major, the only one of the church modes, save under special conditions the fifth or Lydian mode, that accords with the tonality of present use—was stigmatized as “lascivious” and proscribed from the sanctuary. More accordant with present views of propriety was the many-sided objection to the employment of tunes of the people in place of the church’s plain-song as bases on which to erect counterpoint, and the construction of this counterpoint in the most ornate of the several florid species. Enlarging on the primitive practice of adapting Latin words to popular tunes, the best approved masters, in the two centuries preceding the epoch now under notice, took tunes of this class, to which it is stated the original words were commonly sung by congregations at least, and even by some members of the authorized choir, while other of the singers had such extensive passages to execute that to make the sacred syllables distinct was impracticable. The whole custom of composition and performance was rigorously condemned by the council of Trent, in consequence of which Palestrina was commissioned in 1563 to write music for the mass that should be truthful to the spirit of devout declamation and aim ät the utmost approach to musical beauty. To this end he made three experiments; the first two were declared successful, and the third was accepted as the fulfilment of all that could be desired for religion and for art; it was named, after the preceding pope, “Missa Papae Marcelli.” This great work was set forth as the standard to which all ecclesiastical composition was required to conform; and so it did conform until a new musical idiom arose, until the popular ear thirsted for new forms of expression, and until musicians sought and found favour in meeting the general demand. In the three hundred years between that time and this, pontiffs and conclaves have again and again enacted statutes to conserve the purity of ecclesiastical art, but art as often has run out of control and proved that every succeeding era adds to its capabilities.

Despite the unbroken continuance of their use in the Roman service, great ignorance now prevails as to the church modes and their permitted modification. Ears trained by modern experience recoil from the uncouth effect of the melodic progressions incidental to some of these artificial scales, while antiquaries protest the infallibility of extant copies of music constructed in those modes, and insist on the authority of such manuscripts to secure purity of performance. A Treatise on Counterpoint by Stefano Vanneo of Recanati (1531), however, expressly states that the notes in the modes were subject to inflexion, that accomplished singers necessarily knew what notes should be raised or lowered by sharps or flats, and that these signs were never written but for the direction of boys and other executants who had not attained to mastery of their art. The treachery of tradition is exemplified in the loss of the rules for this once generally understood practice of notai inflexion; but the inference is strong that, could these rules be recovered, many of the melodies now called Gregorian might resume a musical character of which they are robbed by strict adherence to their written notes.

In England during the 16th century choral music kept pace with the age. This is evidenced in the works of Tallis and Byrde (Bird, or Byrd), who wrote for the Roman ritual, and continued their labours for the Anglican service as modified by the Reformation, which exercised the genius of many another, of whom Orlando Gibbons was the crowning glory, for the few of his works that are accessible in comparison with what he is believed to have produced are classed among the masterpieces of their style and their period. The same musicians, or most of them, are as notable for their secular as for their sacred writings.

It was in the middle of the 16th century that the class of composition now ranked as the highest was originated. The oratorio dates its existence and its name from the meetings held by San Filippo Neri in the oratory of his church in Rome, at first in 1556, for religious exercise and pious edification. He was the confessor and friend of Giovanni Animuccia, whom he engaged to write music to be interspersed throughout his discourses. Originally this consisted of laudi or short hymns, the extent of which was afterwards enlarged; by and by the spoken matter was replaced by singing, and ultimately the class of work took the form in which it is cast by present composers. Such is the source of the didactic oratorio; the dramatic oratorio is an offshoot of the same, but is distinguished by its representation of personal characters and their involvement in a course of action. The first instance of this kind of writing was the production of Emilio del Cavalieri, La Rappresentazione dell' Anima e del Corpo, which, like its didactic precursor, was given in the oratory of a church in Rome (1600).

To the beginning of the 16th century is due a more significant matter than the secularization of studied music, than the reform of the music of the church, and even than the labours of those musicians of whose great names only the most notable have been cited. The matter in question refers not to art-forms nor to artists, but to the fact that music has its foundation in the natural laws of acoustics, and thus it lays open the principle for which Pagan philosophers and Christians had been vainly groping through centuries, while a veil of mathematical calculation hung between them and the truth. Jean Mouton of Holling in Lorraine (1475- 1522) is the earliest musician in whose works has been found an example of the phenomenal chord of the dominant 7th approached with the full freedom of present-day practice. The discovery is usually ascribed to Claudio Monteverde, of whom and of his great art services much will be said when treating of the ensuing century. Like others of the wonders of nature, the chord and its application seem not to have come suddenly into knowledge, much less into acceptance, but to have been experimented upon with less or more of hardihood by one musician after another, until good effect had silenced dispute and authorized the adoption of this beautiful harmony into the language of music. The discovery of the grounds of its justification is to be traced to a still later time. The speciality of the chord consists in its comprising between its 3d and 7th the interval of the diminished 5th, the two notes of our diatonic scale which are omitted by many primitive nations—the 4th and 7th from the keynote—and which perplexed the considerations of theorists and practitioners, as has in the foregoing been repeatedly shown. Speculation as to the new delight the first hearing of this combination must have occasioned is precarious; the opposition with which it was encountered by the orthodox is certain.

Yet another prominent feature in musical history dates from the beginning of the 16 th century, the practice of hymnody. Luther is said to have been the first to write metrical verses on sacred subjects in the language of the people, and his verses were adapted sometimes to ancient church melodies, sometimes to tunes of secular songs, and sometimes had music composed for them by himself and others. Many rhyming Latin hymns are of earlier date whose tunes are identified with them, some of which tunes, with the subject of their Latin text, are among the Reformer’s appropriations; but it was he who put the words of praise and prayer into the popular mouth, associated with rhythmical music which aided to imprint the words upon the memory and to enforce their enunciation. In conjunction with his friend Walther, Luther issued a collection of poems for choral singing in 1524, which was followed by many others in North Germany. The English versions of the Psalms by Sternhold and Hopkins and their predecessors, and the French version by Marot and Beza were written with the same purpose of fitting sacred minstrelsy to the voice of the multitude. Goudimel in 1566 and Le Jeune in 1607 printed harmonizations of tunes that had then become standard for the Psalms, and in England several such publications appeared, culminating in Ravenscroft’s famous collection (1621); in all of these the arrangements of the tunes were by various masters. The English practice of hymn-singing was much strengthened on the return of the exiled Reformers from Frankfort and Geneva, when it became so general that, according to Bishop Jewell, thousands of the populace who assembled at Paul’s Cross to hear the preaching would join in the singing of psalms before and after the sermon.

The placing of the choral song of the church within the lips of the people had great religious and moral influence; it has had also its great effect upon art, shown in the productions of the North German musicians ever since the first days of the Reformation, which abound in exercises of scholarship and imagination wrought upon the tunes of established acceptance. Some of these are accompaniments to the tunes with interludes between the several strains, and some are compositions for the organ or for orchestral instruments that consist of such elaboration of the themes as is displayed in accompaniments to voices, but of far more complicated and extended character. A special art-form that was developed to a very high degree, but has passed into comparative disuse, was the structure of all varieties of counterpoint extemporaneously upon the known hymn-tunes (chorals), and several masters acquired great fame by success in its practice, of whom Reinken (1623-1722), Pachelbel (1653-1706), Georg Boehm, and the great Bach are specially memorable. The hymnody of North Germany has for artistic treatment a strong advantage which is unpossessed by that of England, in that for the most part the same verses are associated with the same tunes, so that, whenever the text or the music is heard, either prompts recollection of the other, whereas in England tunes were always and are now often composed to metres and not to poems; any tune in a given metre is available for every poem in the same, and hence there are various tunes to one poem, and various poems to one tune. In England a tune is named generally after some place—as “York,” “Windsor,” “Dundee,”—or by some other unsignifying word; in North Germany a tune is mostly named by the initial words of the verses to which it is allied, and consequently, whenever it is heard, whether with words or without, it necessarily suggests to the hearer the whole subject of that hymn of which it is the musical moiety undivorceable from the literary half. Manifold as they are, knowledge of the choral tunes is included in the earliest schooling of every Lutheran and every Calvinist in Germany, which thus enables all to take part in performance of the tunes, and hence expressly the definition of “choral.” Compositions grounded on the standard tune are then not merely school exercises but works of art which link the sympathies of the writer and the listener, and aim at expressing the feeling prompted by the hymn under treatment.

On the verge of the 17 th century a novelty in music was originated that was as pregnant of consequence as anything that has yet been noticed; this was recitative with its special characteristics. Vincenzo Galilei was one of a band of Florentine nobles and gentry who devised the appropriation of music to free declamation, and they engaged authors and productive and executive musicians to put the conception into practice. Galilei had already come prominently into public notice in a controversy with Giuseppe Zarlino, the most esteemed of all the writers on music in his age, who was the author of a treatise that expounded and justified the Ptolemaic division of the scale with the major and minor tones, and the former below the latter; this was answered by Galilei in support of the Pythagorean doctrine of equal tones, which is confuted by the phenomenon of harmonics, and Zarlino in turn replied to him. During two and a half centuries the art of music had been untouched by the New Learning, which had had the effect of regenerating all the other arts, and had wrought the intellectual change now known as the Renaissance. The members of the Florentine association thought it possible to apply ancient principles in modern practice, and so to reproduce the effect to which the newly-revealed writings of Greece testified, but of which these gave no such technical description as could be the groundwork of any reorganization. Obviously, the poetic power of Greek music must have lain in the force it gave to declamation; in exalting speech into song it must have given to words a clearer yet more varied significance than they could else have had, and to the passions words embody it must have given an otherwise impossible medium of expression. There existed two classes of music at the time under notice. The music of the people consisted of concise rhythmical tunes that were either composed to accompany dancing, or so constructed that, though made for singing, they were applicable to that other use; and these tunes, being repeated again and again to the almost countless stanzas of some ballad poems, could have in themselves no quality of expression beyond a vague character of sadness or gaiety; for, what might have been expressive of the prevalent feeling at one stage of a long story would necessarily be fallacious in the subsequent diversities of the tale. The music of the schools consisted of ingenious contrivances of wholly artificial nature, either to assign the same melody to several successive voices in canonic continuance or fugal imitation, or else to multiply more and more the parts for simultaneous execution; in the former case definition of rhythm is annulled, as has been shown by the entry of one part with a phrase while that phrase was uncompleted in another part, and in the latter case the manifold melodies so obscured the sound of one another that none could be distinguished,—a fact that must be self-apparent if we think of the sound of twelve, or twenty-four, or so many as forty simultaneous currents of song. In this music there could neither be expression nor even articulation of the words, and hence, our Florentines assumed, the purpose of music was perverted and its inherent poetical essence was abused. Such combination of diverse melodies is now styled polyphony, a term that might better be applied to simple counterpoint in which the many sounds are onefold in accent than to the florid counterpoint it is employed to define, wherein the many parts have various movement. With the idea before them of the ancient rhapsodists the association proposed the setting of music to verses with the main, nay, only object of expressing the words. This music was not to be rhythmical, but was to consist of longer or shorter phrases in accordance with the literary sense; its intervals were not to be chosen with regard to their melodic interest, but in imitation or idealization rather than exaggeration of the rising and falling of the voice in ordinary speech, the speed being hurried or relaxed by the exigency of the passing sentiment; and the accompaniment of the singer was to be on some unobtrusive instrument or, later, some combination of instruments, that should, as did the lyre of old, verify the intonation and, in the new era (what had not been in the classic), enhance the vocal expression by some pungent harmony. Applied solely to recitation, the new invention was called recitativo (recitative), musica parlante, or stilo rappresentativo. The first instance of its composition is said to have been a cantata— that is, a piece for a single voice with instrumental accompaniment— Il Conte Ugolino, composed by Galilei, but of this no copy is known to exist. Doubt prevails as to whether II Comlattimento d , Apolline col Serpente by Giulio Caccini or II Satiro by Emilio del Cavalieri was the earlier production; they were both given to the world in 1590, were both in dramatic form, and both exemplified the new, if not the revived, classic style of music. Caccini was fitted to make the experiment by practice and excellence as a vocalist more than by contrapuntal erudition, and he was soon associated with Jacopo Peri, a musician of his own class, in the composition of Dafne, a more extensive work than the foregoing, indeed a complete lyrical drama, which was privately performed in the palace of one of the Florentine instigators of the experiment in 1597, or, according to some, in 1594. These two again worked together on the opera of Euridice, which was publicly represented in Florence at the nuptials of Henry IV. of France with Maria dei Medici in 1600, its production having been preceded by that of Cavalieri’s posthumous oratorio in Rome, La Eappresentazione dell , Anima e del Corpo, before noticed. That the first public performance of a dramatic oratorio and of a secular opera, both exemplifying the recently-devised declamatory power of music, should have occurred in the same year is a remarkable coincidence. That the first experiments in the novel art of lyrical declamation were confided to practised executants who brought their experience as vocalists to bear upon composition for a hitherto untried phase of vocal effect was excellent for the purpose of proving the proposition. The success of the experiment was, however, to be established when a composer already renowned as such, one who had drawn exceptional attention by his then new views of harmony, gave the force of his genius and the weight of his name to the novel class of writing. Such was Monteverde (1568-1643), who in 1607 brought out at the court of Mantua his opera of Arianna, followed in 1608 by his Orfeo. In these works, and in those of the same nature that he subsequently produced at Venice, is anticipated the principle (and, so far as the resources of the time allowed, the practice also) which was revived by Gluck some hundred and fifty years later, and of which the votaries of Richard Wagner in the present day assume their hero to have been the originator,—the principle, namely, that the exigencies of the action and the requirements of the text should rule the musical design in a lyrical drama, and that the instrumental portions of the composition should, quite as much as those assigned to voices, illustrate the progress of the scene and the significance of the words. The last speciality is exemplified in the harmonies and figures of accompaniment, and in the appropriation of particular instruments to the music of particular persons, so as to characterize every member of the action with special individuality. Such must be the true faith of the operatic composer; it has again and again been opposed by the superstition that feats of vocal agility and other snares for popular applause were lawful elements of dramatic effect; but it has ever inspired the thoughts of the greatest artists and revealed itself in their work, and no one writer more than another can claim to have devised or to have first acted upon this natural creed.

Monteverde had been attacked by Giovanni Battista Artusi for his use of what are now known as fundamental harmonies, which the composer might have learned from the music of Mouton (already named), but which he more probably rediscovered for himself; he had defended the practice, and his theoretical assailant had retorted. Polemics ran high as to the relative rights of contrapuntal legislation which had been developed through the course of ages, and the freedom of thought which had as yet neither rule nor tradition; for every separate use of an unprepared discord was tentative as to effect and speculative as to reception by its hearers. It will presently be shown that the discovery (no lighter term will suffice) of Mouton and Monteverde has its base in the laws of nature; here it is enough to say that it was a turning-point in the history of music, the throwing open the resources of the modern as opposed to the limitations of what may justly be called the archaic. The distinction of these two styles was not clearly defined till long afterwards; but a writer may here be named, Angelo Berardi, whose work (1687) more fully than any other sets forth the contrapuntal code and enunciates the requirements in fugal writing, such as the affinity of subject to answer, and whatever else marks the style and the class of composition.

The opera now became a fixed institution in Italy, its performance was no longer restricted to the palaces of princes and nobles, and it became the best-esteemed entertainment in public theatres. The dramatic oratorio was transferred from the church to the secular stage, becoming in every respect a sacred opera, and only specimens of this class were suffered to be represented during the season of Lent.

Conspicuous, as much for the merit as the multitude of his productions, was Alessandro Scarlatti (1659-1725), who gave to the world 115 secular operas, many oratorios, and, besides these, which might well have been a long life’s labour, a far greater quantity of ecclesiastical music, some of which is characterized as most dense and massive. He is accredited with three novelties in his dramatic writing: the repetition, Da Capo, of the entire first part of an aria after the second part, of which, however, some specimens by earlier writers are said to exist; the accompanied recitative, wherein orchestral interludes illustrate the declamation and figurative accompaniment enforces it, as distinguished from speaking recitative, wherein the accompaniment does little more than indicate the harmony whereon the vocal phrases are constructed; and the sinfonia or overture which is often associated with his name, as distinguished in plan from that which was first "written by Lully, his being sometimes styled the French and Scarlatti’s the Italian form of instrumental preface to an extensive work. Alessandro Scarlatti is little less famous as a teacher than as an artist; he was at the head of all the three conservatories then flourishing in Naples, and the long list of his pupils includes his son Domenico and most of the other chief Italian notabilities of the next generation. Conspicuous among his contemporaries were Cavalli and Cesti.

Opera was first introduced in France by Cardinal Mazarin, who imported a company of Italian performers for an occasion. The first French opera, Akebar, Hoi de Mogul (1646), was composed by the abbé Mailly for court performance. So was La Pastorale (1659), by Cambert, who built his work on the Florentine model, and, encouraged by success, wrote several others,* on the strength of which he, "with his librettist Perrin, instituted the Académie Royale de Musique, and obtained a patent for the same in 1669, exclusively permitting the public performance of opera. Jean Battiste Lully (1633-1687) procured the transfer of this patent in 1672, and by it gained opportunity not only for the exercise of his own genius but for the foundation of the French national lyrical drama, which to this day is wrought upon his model.

The ballet had been a favourite subject of court diversion since Beaujoyeaulx produced in 1581 Le Ballet Comique de la Royne, a medley of dancing, choral singing, and musical dialogue. Lully, in his course to the summit of royal esteem, had composed several pieces of this order, which were performed chiefly by the courtiers, and in which the king himself often sustained a part; and, experienced in the taste of the palace, and indeed of the people, our musician incorporated the ballet as an essential in the opera, and so in France it still remains. It was not singly in the structural intermixture of dancing with singing that Lully’s operas were, and those of his French successors are, unlike the works of the same order in other countries, he gave such care to and exerted so much skill in the recitative that he made it as interesting as the rhythmical matter, nay, varied it often with metrical vocal phrases and accompanied it constantly with the full band, whereas, until Rossini’s Otello in 1818, speaking recitative (recitativo parlante, recitativo secco) was always a main element in the operas of Italy.

In Germany the seed of opera fell upon stony ground. Heinrich Schütz wrote music to a translation of Peri’s Dafne, which was performed for a court wedding at Torgau in 1627; but only importations of Italian works with Italian singers came before the public until nearly the end of the century.

In England the lyrical drama found an early home. The masques performed at Whitehall and at the Inns of Court were of the nature of opera, and were largely infused with recitative. Eminent among others in their composition were Nicholas Laniere (c. 1588-1664), born of an Italian father who settled in England in 1571; Giovanni Coperario, who during his sojourn in Rome had thus translated his patronymic of John Cooper; Robert Johnson, who wrote the original music for The Tempest; Dr Campion, Ives, and William and Henry Lawes. The name of Henry Purcell (1658-1695) figures brightly in this class of composition; but, except his Dido and Eneas, written when he was eighteen, his so-called operas are more properly spoken dramas interspersed with music—music of highly dramatic character, but episodical rather than elemental in the design. This is due to an axiom of Dryden, the principal and indeed the model dramatist of the day, that music is not the natural medium of speech, and hence may only be assigned in dramatic representation to preternatural beings, such as spirits, enchanters, and witches,—maniacs also, through the abnormality of their condition, being admitted into the privileged category of those who may sing their conceits, their spells, their charms, and their ravings. The “frost scene” in King Arthur, the “incantation*’ in the Indian Queen, and the cantatas for Altisidora and Cardenio in Don Quixote are masterpieces of lyrical art that give warrant of the success that might have been achieved had Purcell’s librettists given range in the province of humanity for his vivid imagination.

Earlier in the history of English opera was the production of The Siege of Rhodes, an entirely musical composition, the joint work of Dr Charles Colman, Captain Henry Cook, Henry Lawes, and George Hudson, which was performed at Rutland House in Charterhouse Square in 1656, under the express licence of Cromwell to Sir William Davenant, and retained the stage until some years after the Restoration; the existence of its music is unknown, but a copy of its libretto in the British Museum amply details its construction. Separate mention is made of this remarkable historical incident as serving to refute the common supposition that Puritan influence impelled the decadence of music in England. In truth, this influence stirred the spirit of opposition in persons of a different tendency and was virtually the cause of a very powerful counteraction, and through this of many highly-significant things as to the perpetuation of our music of the past, if not of the continuance of our music in the future. It was during the Commonwealth that John Playford printed Ayres and Dialogues, a book that comprises with many pleasant pieces the first three that ever were defined by the word glee,— a term that later times have wontedly acknowledged and boasted as the designation of a class of music specially English. It was during the Commonwealth that the same publisher issued several editions of The Dancing Master, each being a variation of the foregoing; and this is the work to which we owe the preservation of all the beautiful English ballad-tunes of earlier date that are, many of them, not to be found in previous print or manuscript. It was in that very opera, The Siege of Rhodes, that Mrs Colman, daughter-in-law of one of the composers, sustained the character of Ianthe, she being the first female who ever took part in a public musical or dramatic performance in England.

Notice must not be omitted of the application of recitative to other than theatrical purpose. The cantata of Galilei has been cited; it was followed by many a piece under the same designation, dramatic monologues in which the mainly prevailing declamation was relieved by occasional rhythmical strains, and in the composition of these Carissimi, Stradella, Clari, Purcell, and Blow have left admirable specimens. Later, the term acquired a widely-changed meaning, it having been applied in Germany to compositions comprising matter for solo voices and for chorus, expressly for church use, and in England to works equally extensive on sometimes sacred, sometimes secular subjects. Cantatas are sometimes didactic, sometimes narrative, and sometimes dramatic, though never designed for theatrical use.

The music of the English Church might demand a separate history, because of its importance by the side of the art of other lands, because of the longer permanence of its examples than of works in other branches, and because of its unbroken succession of contributors, covering a period of beyond three centuries, whose style has varied with the age in which they wrought, but who in this department have ever aimed to express themselves at their highest. Here, however, only the names of the most noted writers, with an approximation to chronological order, can be given —Tallis, Byrde, Farrant, Orlando Gibbons, Dr Child, Dr Benjamin Rogers, Dean Aldrich (as distinguished in logic and in architecture as in music), Dr Blow, Michael Wise, Pelham Humphrey, Henry Purcell, Dr Croft, Dr Greene, Dr Boyce, Dr Nares, Dr Cooke, Battishill, after whom the art sank in character till it received new life from the infusion of the modem element by Attwood, coeval with whom was Samuel Wesley, and lastly are to be noted Sir John Goss, Dr S. S. Wesley, Dr Dykes (popular for his hymntunes), and Henry Smart, who bring the list down to recent personal remembrance. Well esteemed among living representatives of this department of music are Bamby, J. B. Calkin, Sir G. J. Elvey, Gadsby, Dr Garrett, Dr Gladstone, Dr H. Hiles, Dr Hopkins, Dr E. G. Monk, Dr W. H. Monk, Sir F. A. G. Ouseley, Dr Stainer, Dr Steggall, Sir Arthur Sullivan, and E. H. Turpin, to which names many might be added. It must be owned, however, that the vast increase of facilities for publication within recent years have multiplied church music almost immeasurably, and exercised the pens more than the wits of writers who prove themselves to be amateurs less by love of music than by love of composing, and still more by love of notoriety, which is gratified in the circulation among their own connexions of works that gain no acceptance by the world at large. The style, in strictly technical sense, of music for the church is and always has been, in England and elsewhere, identical with that which characterizes contemporaneous music on lay subjects. Some English musicians have of late aimed at, or perhaps only spoken of, a distinction of styles for the church and for the chamber, and this under a supposition that to be archaic was to be sacred, a supposition seemingly founded on the present use of, and high respect for, more ecclesiastical music of early date than of secular music of like age. The supposition overlooks the facts, however, that the church appropriated the tunes of the people eight hundred years ago, while the people framed some of their tunes on the peculiar church modes, that harmony was practised by the people before it was employed by the church, that the style of madrigals appears coincidently in sacred writing, that recitative was first applied to the opera and to the oratorio in the same year, that Monteverde’s innovations in musical combination were at once adopted by church composers, that Purcell, Handel, and Bach wrote in onefold style for both situations, that the glee-writing of the latter half of the 18th century is undistinguishable from the services and anthems of the period, that Attwood had no different phraseology for the cathedral and the theatre, and that even now, though disguised to the glance by the antiquated notation of minims instead of crotchets, the thoughts expressed and the idiom which is their medium belong not more or less to the one than to the other purpose. Though contention be strong for the contrary, this is true art, presenting the feelings of the time in the time’s own language and not making the sanctuary walls a boundary between art and artifice.

Attention must now be directed to the natural as opposed to the artificial basis of music. Marin Mersenne had great love and much practical knowledge of music; he directed his profound learning and rare mathematical attainments to the investigation of the phenomena of sound; and his treatise Harmonie Universelle (1636) first enunciated the fact that a string yields other notes than that to which its entire length is tuned. The discovery was extended by William Noble and Thomas Pigot, respectively of Merton and Wadham Colleges, Oxford, to the perception of the mode in which a string vibrates in sections, each section sounding a different note. The ancient musicians tested by calculation the few phenomena of sound then discovered rather than by observation of the principles these exemplify. The measurement of major and minor tones was, after the distinction of perfect intervals, the subject dearest to their consideration, and it seems the furthest limit to which their knowledge attained. All the laws for melody, all the rules for counterpoint, were founded on this mathematical method. The step or the leap of stated intervals was prescribed; combinations of sounds were reckoned by intervals from a named note, as 5th, or 6th, or 3d, not as constituting complete chords traceable to a common source, and intervals which are discordant were permissible only if softened in effect by the previous sounding of their discordant note; the canons for the progression of a single part and for the union of several parts were arbitrarily devised, peremptorily fixed, and rigidly enforced. Mouton and Monteverde found the good effect of musical combinations for which there was no account in the theory of their time, and employed them in their works; the innovation was stigmatized by musical grammarians, but it gave delight to the public and was adopted by subsequent composers. No explanation was, however, given of the natural source of fundamental harmonies, as chords of this class are now defined, and their employment was still exceptional, still an act of daring. In 1673 the two Oxonians above named, simultaneously, but independently, noticed the beautiful fact that a stretched string yields a different sound at every one of its nodal divisions, and the same is true of a column of air passing through a tube. The sounds so generated received from Sauveur the name of harmonics, by which they were known for nearly two centuries, but they have of late been renamed partial tones or over-tones. Here is a table of seventeen of the series :—

The figures under the notes show the number of each harmonic, counting from the generator or prime as the 1st. The notes marked * differ in intonation from the corresponding notes in our tempered scale, the 7th and 14th, and also the 13th, and likewise the 17th being slightly flatter, and the 11th being slightly sharper than our conventional notes; but ‘ the matter of temperament must rest for later consideration. The 8th above any note is double the number of that note; thus every higher C is double the number of the C below it, namely, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16; and so with every higher G, namely, 3, 6, 12; again with the higher E, namely, 5, 10; and with the higher hB, namely, 7, 14. The number of each harmonic is the same as that of its relative number of vibrations in any given time as compared with those of the variously-numbered harmonics, namely, the 8th above has two vibrations to each one of the note from which the interval is reckoned, the 5th has three vibrations to two, and so forth throughout the series. From hB to E, the 7th and 10th, is the interval of the augmented 4 th, which was shunned in classic times, ignored by the Chinese, the Mexicans, and the Scots, ruled against by contrapuntists, and avoided in melody and harmony until employed by the Fleming and the Italian with such good effect that the world accepted it under the conditions of accompaniment with which those men employed it, and felt that a new element of beauty had been incorporated in the resources of the artist. The occurrence, in the harmonic series, of the two notes that are separated by this interval accounts for the discord they produce when sounded together, not needing the artifice of preparation which is required to mitigate the harshness of other discords; they are brought into being when the generator is sounded, and their assignment to voices or instruments in performance is but to make more articulate, or, so to speak, to confirm what nature prepares—in fact, what is induced by the generator. As light comprises all the colours and every gradation between each colour and the next, but yet seems spotless, so every musical sound comprises all other sounds, but yet seems to be one single note; the blue, or the red, or the yellow, or any other ray is separated from its prismatic brotherhood and seems then a complete and independent object to the vision, and so any sound is separated from the harmonic column and then seems all in all to the sense of hearing. Let the reader observe in the musical example that the intervals become closer and closer as they rise, and that when the 8th or double of a note occurs, if there be any break in the numerical succession between such 8th and the note that would, by example of the lower octave, stand next below it, then some new harmonic appears whose number adjusts the broken order; between the lowest C and the next is no break; between this C and the one above it, 2 and 4, what would else be a blank is filled by G, the third harmonic; between 4 (C) and 6 (G) what would be a blank is filled by E, the fifth harmonic, and so on throughout the series. No division of an interval is ever equal, the lower portion being always the larger; the interval between 2 and 4 is divided into a 5th and a 4th, that between 4 and 6 is divided into a major 3d and a minor, that between 6 and 8 by an interval less than a minor 3d and a 2d, and that between 8 and 10 by a major tone and a minor tone. It may be well to pause at this point, as it is the natural justification of what Ptolemy calculated, but Pythagoras failed to perceive. Thus much having been noticed, readers may be left to trace the same principle of larger and smaller division throughout the series. Beyond the 17th harmonic (the note known as the minor 9th when forming part of a chord) the series continues on the same principle of ever lessening distance, ever finer gradation, until the intervals become so small as to be almost impossible of articulation and of perception. What has here been adduced of the natural preparation of the discord of the harmonic 7th applies as truly to the discords of the major 9th, the llth, the major 13th, the minor 9th, and the minor 13th, which last is too high in the harmonic series for convenient exemplification by gradual ascent in this place, and these notes are now all used in combination by composers.

Scientific discovery has seldom been made singly. When time has been ripe for the revelation of a phenomenon, several observers have coincidently witnessed its existence, and simultaneously or nearly so displayed if not explained it to the world. In the instance under consideration, art foreran science, and its votaries continued the employment of harmonies which as yet could alone be justified by their beautiful effect, and even musical theorists did not for ages to come perceive the important, the all-powerful bearing of the principle of harmonics upon the subject they treated. What Mouton first ventured to write must be styled the starting-point of the modem in music, and one cannot too much marvel at the strong insight into the beautiful which those after-minds possessed,—that, with no theory to guide, without star or compass, they made wider and wider application of the principle he had exemplified, and displayed in their works its utmost power of expansion. Three of the world’s greatest musicians may be cited to show the force owned by genius of piercing to the utmost depth of a natural law, while having but their own delicate sense of propriety to restrain them within its bounds. Henry Purcell and his two colossal successors, George Frederic Handel (1685-1759) and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), wrote every combination of musical notes that down to our own latest times has ever been employed with good effect; and the more the works of these masters are studied the more are they found to foreshadow the supposed novelties in harmony employed by subsequent artists. This refers but to the technical materials of λvhich their music is wrought; it is impossible in the present article to discuss fully the form and excellence of their works.

Purcell’s voluminous and superb works for the church, his many compositions for the theatre, his countless convivial pieces, and his far less numerous instrumental writings are now but little known, and the ignorance of the age is its loss. They have a wealth of expression that cannot be too highly esteemed, and a fluency of melody that proves the perfect ease of their production. The idiom of the period in which they were written is perhaps a partial barrier to their present acceptance, and the different capabilities of instruments and of executants upon them of those days from the means at a modern musician’s command make the music written in the earlier age difficult sometimes to the verge of possibility, and yet weak in effect upon ears accustomed to later uses.

Handel’s music has never, since he wrote, been wholly unknown or unloved, at least in England. He was engaged to come hither as a dramatic composer because of his Continental renown; this was immensely increased by the large number of Italian operas he wrote for the London stage, but, excellent of their kind as are these, the change of structure in the modern lyrical drama unfits the wonted witnesses of the works of the last hundred years to enjoy the complete performance of those of earlier time, and hence we hear but detached excerpts from any of them. It is upon Handel’s oratorios and his secular works cast in the same mould that general knowledge of his mighty power rests, and these are a monument that cannot perish. The Messiah and Israel in Egypt are didactic oratorios, with which may be classed LAllegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato, and Alexanders Feast. The others were defined by himself each as an “oratorio or sacred drama,” and Acts and Galatea, Semele, and Hercules are similarly constructed. Esther (his earliest English oratorio) and Ads and Galatea VfwcQ composed for performance in the mansion of the duke of Chandos in 1720 and 1721, and were publicly produced with the author’s sanction in 1732, but then, as was expressly notified, without dramatic action. Their success established the class of work and form of representation in English use, for, though Handel subsequently wrote Italian operas, he from time to time engaged a theatre for the performance of complete works in concert wise, and yearly composed some new piece for production in this manner. In 1741 he visited Dublin, taking the Messiah, which had been written with a view to the occa sion, and this masterpiece was first heard on the 13th April 1742 in the Irish capital. The reverence with which the work is regarded in England all but equals that for its subject, and the countless repetitions of its performance have made it so familiar to all hearers that the unversed in musical knowledge, little less than the profoundest musicians, feel its sublimity and listen to it with such awe as no other work of art induces. No master has ever excelled Handel in verbal declamation (as at the descent on the last word of “sheds delicious death” in the air of Acis, at that on the last word of “so mean a triumph I disdain ” in the air of Harapha, and the extraordinary use of an almost toneless low note of the tenor voice on the last word of “He turned their waters into blood” in Israel in Egypt), in poetic expression (as in the choruses “He sent a thick darkness” in Israel, and “Wretched lovers” in Acts and Galatea), or in dramatic characterization (as in all the personages in Jeρhtha, who are each distinguished from the others far better in their musical than their verbal phraseology); but the quality in his music which compels the epithet sublime is the broad, simple grandeur of the choral writing, which, rich in the devices of counterpoint, never fails in clearness, never in the melodious flow of each of its parts, and is hence as pleasant to executants as it is perspicuous to auditors. He wrote under the sway of contrapuntal law, from which theorists had not yet defined the exceptions, but the force of his genius broke occasionally through its despotism, and so, in his works as in Purcell’s, the principle of fundamental harmony and the application of the chromatic element are freely demonstrated.

Bach was one of a very large family of musicians, who for two centuries practised the art, in many instances with great success; the family glory culminated in him, and was scattered among his many sons, in whom it became extinct. Bach was a more assiduous student than either his predecessor or his contemporary who are here classed with him. It was later in life than they that he issued his earliest works, for his youthful renown was more as a player than as a producer. Having no theoretical instructor, he made searching study of all the music of earlier times and of his own. Whatever Bach learned of the principles of counterpoint from profounder musicians, he owed his views of plan or design in the structure of a composition to his familiarity with the concertos of Antonio Vivaldi and Tomaso Albinoni, both Venetian violinists who visited Germany, and he gained this familiarity by arranging for the organ many of the concertos for several instruments, as also much that the same authors wrote for a single violin. His arrangement consisted in adding parts to the original, which he kept intact, and so retained the plan while enriching the harmony. To his latest days he was wont to retouch his own music of former years, doubtless with the purpose of improvement, and he thus showed himself to be still a student to the very end of his career. A class of oratorio of which Luther had planted the earliest germ, the recitation of the Divine Passion, had grown into extensive use in North Germany prior to the period of Bach, and to this belongs his largest if not most important work. This is his setting of the portion of St Matthew’s Gospel which narrates the incidents, interspersed with reflective passages, some taken from the chorals of common use in the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches (the tunes proper to which have special harmonic treatment when here appropriated), and some set in the form of airs, duets, and choruses to verses written for the occasion. Bach set also St John’s version of the Passion, and others. He wrote likewise for church use cantatas peculiar to every Sunday’s requirement in the Lutheran service, and left five series of these, each for an entire year. He produced other sacred and many secular cantatas, a mass of such colossal proportions that it is unavailable for the purpose of celebration, other pieces for the Roman Church, very much for the organ alone that has never been equalled in its intrinsic qualities or as a vehicle for executive display, many concertos and suites for the orchestra of the day, and a vast number of pieces for the harpsichord or clavecin. Among these last must be signalized Das wohltemperirte Clavier (1722), and a sequel to the same, XXIV. Pre-ludien und Fugen durch allen Tonarten, sowohl mit der grossen als kleinen Terz (1740). These two distinct works are now commonly classed together as Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues. To describe their purpose reference must be made to the discrepancies between the tuning of intervals by 3ds, or by 8ths, or by 5ths. The B⅛ which is reached by successive 3ds above C, has 250 vibrations in the same period that the C, which is reached by 8ths from the same starting note, has 256, and in the same period that the B⅛ which is reached by 5ths from the original C, has 259 and a fraction. The same is true of every other musical sound as of C, namely, that tuning by 3ds, or 8ths, or 5ths, yields a different note from the other two. Hence it results that notes which are in tune in one key are out of tune in other keys, and consequently musical composition was of old limited to those very few keys that have several notes in common with the key of C. The organ Handel presented to the chapel of the Foundling Hospital, London, had the raised or black keys divided, with each half to act on pipes different from the other half, and thus gave different notes for C⅛ and for Db, and the like; and other organs of the period were similarly constructed. Bach’s notion was so to temper the intonation that, while the tuning of no key should be perfect, the discrepancies should be divided so nicely between all keys that no one would be offensive to the hearer, and to illustrate this he wrote in his 38th year a series of pieces in every one of the keys in its major and minor form, calling it “The clavier with equal temperament.” This bears on a supposition, once diffidently advanced and since confirmed by men who have soundly studied the subject, as much as by constant observation of him who first conceived it, although disputed by others; it is, that the ear receives tempered sounds as they should be, instead of as they are, perceiving a different effect from the note whose tonal surroundings prove it to be Gb from that which is yielded by the same string on a pianoforte when it is required to represent F$. Such is the practical application in modern use of the term enharmonic with reference to keyed instruments when it means the giving different names to one note; on the voice, however, and on bowed instruments the smallest gradations of pitch are producible, and so all notes in all keys can be justly tuned, which, among others, is one reason for the exceptional delight given by music that is represented by either of these means. The enharmonic organ and harmonium of Mr Bosanquet are provided with a keyboard of a general nature in which the restriction to closed circles of 5ths is avoided. Systems reducible to series of 5ths of any character can therefore be placed on this keyboard. As the relative position of the keys determines the arrangement of the notes, the fingering is the same in all keys, and depends only on the intervals employed. The modern use of the word chromatic has already been stated, and it only remains to say of the other of the three Greek genera, diatonic, that the term now defines music consisting of notes according to the signature of the prevailing key. To return to Bach, his orchestration is completer than Handel’s, though yet needing the addition of an organ part that he did not write, but his scores are liable to misrepresentation in modern performance because several of the instruments are obsolete for which they were designed; Bach’s orchestral treatment differs from that of later days in having often a special selection of instruments for a single movement in a work, which are engaged throughout that piece with small variety of interchange, and likewise in having mostly the separate counterpoint for every instrument employed instead of combining instruments of different tone in one melody. But seldom Bach wrote in one or other of the ecclesiastical modes, as did Handel more rarely, and he used more freely than his contemporary the extreme chromatic discords. He may indeed be regarded as a double mirror, reflecting the past in his contrapuntal writing and forecasting the future in his anticipation of modern harmonies.

Notice of these two extraordinary men would be incomplete without an attempt to parallel if not compare them. Born within a month and within walking distance of each other, speaking the same tongue, professing the same religious tenets, devoting themselves to the same art and to the same productive and executive branches of that art with success that cannot be surpassed, they were as different in the character of their works as in their personal traits and their courses of life. The music of Handel for its simple, massive, perspicuous grandeur may be likened to a Grecian temple, and that of Bach to a Gothic edifice for its infinite involution of lines and intricacy of detail. The greater complexity of the one makes it the more difficult of comprehension and more slow in impression, while the sublime majesty of the other displays itself to a single glance and is printed at once on the mental vision. Handel wrote for effect and produces it with certitude upon thousands; Bach wrote as a pleasurable exercise for mastery, and gives kindred pleasure to those who study his work in the spirit that incited him to produce it.

Contemporary with the working of these two glorious Saxons were the labours of Jean Philippe Rameau (1683- 1764), a native of Dijon, who made his mark on history. He wrote many operas and ballets which are held in less esteem than those of Lully, some cantatas and sacred pieces, and a large number of compositions for the organ and clavecin, but, notwithstanding the merit of these and their success, it is more as a theorist than as an artist that he is now regarded. He published several treatises, embracing principles of performance as well as rules of harmony and a system of composition, and the original views these enunciate have obtained high regard. He distinguishes what he styles the “basse continue” from what he names the “basse fondamentale” in tracing inverted chords to their roots, and differs in this from writers on counterpoint who treated only of intervals from each actual bass note. Thus he looked in the direction of later theories of fundamental harmony, but scarcely obtained sight of the object. He speaks of a chord of the 11th apart from the suspension of the 4th; but his examples show this to be the double suspension of the 9th and 4th, to be resolved on the root and minor 3d of a chord of the prepared 7th, which further has to be resolved on a chord whose root stands at a 4th above its own, and so this chord, having nothing exceptional in structure or treatment, needs no distinctive title. Another point is indeed original, and has obtained somewhat wide acceptance; this is his theory of the chord he defines as the “great 6th,” which is named the “added 6th” by his English followers. It consists of a common chord (usually of the subdominant) with a 6th added, and its resolution is on the chord whose root is at a 4th belσw that of the discord, the 5th in the former chord being retained as the root in the latter.

Against this view it may be urged that all harmonic intervals are at uneven numbers from the generator, the even numbers standing for the octaves above any of these, as j 2 5, 0r e ^ se * or t hθ ιr inversions, as g γ, and hence the 6th (D in the above example) is not an original but an inverted interval; further, whatever note may be added in a column of harmony does not affect the concordance or discordance of the notes below it, but is itself the discordant element in the chord, whereas the addition of the 6th to a common chord changes its concordant 5ths into a discord, and therefore the 6th must be otherwise traced. Other theorists have, more in the direction of truth, defined this chord as a first inversion, reckoning the 6th from the bass as the inverted root, but giving no account of its exceptional resolution. It was not till the following century that the theory for this chord was propounded with the seeming of truth, showing that the 7th below its given bass (G under the F in the above) is the real generator, and showing this to be an incomplete inversion of the chord of the 11 th, of which Rameau invented but misapplied the name. The subject will be more fully discussed when the period is treated to which this last theory belongs.

Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739) was a Venetian of wealthy parentage. He was pressed by his father into the pursuit of the law, and held lucrative appointments in his profession, but his love was for music, and in music he has some renown, partly for his compositions, the best known of which are the settings for one or more voices of fifty of the Psalms in an Italian version, and partly for his writings an music, especially a satirical pamphlet, Il Teatro alia moda (1720), as remarkable for the justice with which it censures the corruptions that cankered dramatic art as for its humour. This treatise quotes the principles of the Florentine assumed musical revival in 1600, and is regarded as the precursor of the practical reform effected by Gluck.

The renowned Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) is often accredited as a musical theorist because of his several publications on the subject, especially his Dictionnaire de Musique, which was finished in 1764, licensed in 1765, but not published till 1768. Its repute must have been gained by the grace of his language rather than by the soundness of his views, which are elegantly stated but rarely stable when they look to either side of the beaten track of accepted principles. He wrote violently against French music and the French language as a musical medium, being prominent in the literary disputes known as the “Guerre des Bouffons,” but recanted when Gluck’s genius was exercised on French opera. Rousseau produced some slight musical dramas, but proof has been adduced that they were the works of other hands.

Padre Martini (1706-1784) worked to far higher purpose than the last named, and the deeper impression he made on music is due to the depth of his knowledge. He was a mathematician and a scholar in other branches of learning, all of which he brought to bear upon his musical studies. He composed for the church and for the theatre vocal and instrumental chamber music, and pieces for the organ. He enunciated no new theory, but rendered great service by the collected publication of many art rarities exemplifying the musicianship of earlier times, and proving his ability to estimate their merit by the inclusion of a large number of canons of his own, which latter are presented in the enigmatic form of ancient use wherein the primary part or parts alone are given, and the reader has to discover the canon that fixes the period and the interval at which the response is to enter. He issued at different dates three volumes of a History of Music, and did not live to complete the fourth, which would have brought the subject only down to the Middle Ages. He was revered by the musicians of all lands, and he is honoured by those of our own time for the penetration with which he discovered the excellence of the boy Mozart, and the encouragement that aided largely to confirm the self-reliance of this everlasting prodigy.

German opera owes its birth to Reinhard Keiser of Weissenfels (1673-1739). His first dramatic effort, Is r mene, was produced at the court of Brunswick. Success induced him to further exertion in the same field, and its continuance enabled him to undertake the management of the Hamburg theatre, in which, between 1694 and 1734, he produced 116 operas. Even these were but a portion of his works, for he wrote several dramatic oratorios, and made more than one setting of The Passion, which last preceded the compositions of the class by Handel and Bach. Little of his music survived him, but his influence on the art of his country was enduring. Matthison distinguished himself in Keiser’s theatre, which also was the scene of the young Handel’s first dramatic essays. Karl Heinrich Graun, a singer, and Johann Friedrich Agricola belong to the next generation of writers of German opera, both of whom won large renown.

It is now time to revert to dramatic music in Italy. Giovanni Battista Buononcini (1672-1750) and his brother Marc Antonio were famed in and out of their own country. They both visited London, where the former opposed Handel, and the rivalry between the Italian and the German musician is notable in the history of the time. Nicola Antonio Porpora (1686-1767) owes his fame more to the success of his pupils in singing, of whom Farinelli and Caffarelli were the most distinguished, than to the merit of his numerous compositions. Leonardo Leo (1694-1746) wrote largely for the stage, but is most prized for his church music, which is of a character so different from his other productions that he is entitled to the twofold estimation of being a light and a severe composer. Johann Adolph Hasse (1699-1783), though born in the neighbourhood of Hamburg, wrote all his many operas, except the first, to Italian words for Italian singers, and may therefore be best classed among the composers of that country, where also he received his musical education. His excellence as a tenor singer, his skill as a clavecinist, and his marriage to Faustina Bordogni, the renowned vocalist, all helped to bring him and his music into note. His remark, when at the age of eighty he superintended the production of his last opera at Milan coincidently with Mozart’s bringing out of his Ascanio in Alba when fourteen years old, that “this youngster will surpass us all,” says as much for his penetration as for the diffidence of one who had passed a long life with success. Giovanni Battista Gesi (1710-1736), being born at Pergola, was called by his schoolmates II Pergolese, and is known by all the world under this instead of his family name. Little acknowledged while he lived, he accomplished during his almost momentary career such work as places his name among those of the most famous of his countrymen. His comic opera La Serva Padrona, little noticed when first given in Naples, had such success when reproduced in Paris that it was shortly afterwards played in every country in Europe. If this piece did not initiate it confirmed the application of music as much to subjects of real as of heroic life, and therefore, though slight in structure and brief in extent, it is historically conspicuous. This and his setting of the Stabat Mater for female voices, which occupied him during his last illness, are the compositions by which he is best remembered. Nicolo Jomelli (1714-1774) was born and died in the Neapolitan territory; he produced many operas in Naples, several in Rome, Bologna, and Venice, and he held for fifteen years an engagement in Stuttgart, where his genius was active; he is particularly esteemed for his expression of sentiment, in which quality some of his critics account him the forerunner of Mozart; much as he wrote for the stage, his predilection was for church music, but the amount of his erudition or his power to apply it scarcely justified this preference. This composer may close the present list, as being the first to break through the example of Alessandro Scarlatti, and to write airs without the “Da Capo” which general approval of that example had rendered conventional if not indispensable. The plan claims respect as proving and fulfilling design, but it is inconsistent with truthful treatment of a subject which naturally proceeds in a continuous course and does not admit of the plenary recapitulation of feeling that has already been developed after this has passed into a different direction; as a matter of effect, the “Da Capo” is rarely charming and often tedious, it is less inappropriate in instrumental than vocal music, and even there some modified allusion to previously stated ideas is far more interesting than the unqualified restatement of what has already been set forth. One characteristic must be named that marks the whole period under present survey—the subordination of dramatic propriety to the display of vocal specialities; these were classified in distinct orders, and custom became tyrannic in exacting that every singer in an opera should have an aria of each class, and that the story must be so conducted as to admit of their timely or untimely introduction. The entire action of the Italian opera of the period is conducted in spoken recitative, with few exceptions of accompanied recitative in the most impassioned situations, and the arias or rhythmical portions of the work are episodical, being expatiative or reflective on the circumstances. The volubility that then was esteemed the main, if not the highest, qualification of a vocalist had its imperative exercise in all works for the stage, and the original purpose of dramatic music was thus foiled in making the business of the scene to wait upon the exhibition of the representative.

Instrumental music now began to assume the importance which at present it holds by universal suffrage. Compositions for the organ by Italian and German masters had been numerous, but executancy on bowed instruments was little advanced, and music written for them was accordingly limited in its style and construction. Vivaldi has been named as a pioneer in the art of design, and to the precedent set by him must be attributed the power of unfolding and arranging musical thought which gives to the orchestral and chamber works of after time a supreme position as intellectual and imaginative exercises. The name of Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) figures prominently in the annals of violin playing, but, whatever the merit of his tone and his style, he employed but a limited portion of his instrument’s compass; and this is proved by his writings, wherein the parts for the violin never proceed above D on the first string, the highest note in the third position; it is even said that he refused to play, as impossible, a passage which extended to A in altissimo in the overture to Handel’s Trionfo del Tempo, and took serious offence when the composer played the note in evidence of its practicability. His compositions are still highly esteemed; they consist of concertos— a term which at the time defined concerted pieces for a band, not, as now, pieces for a solo player with orchestral accompaniment—and sonatas, some for one, some for two violins with a bass; they are melodious, but their harmony is not always pure, and, strange to say, though they were written in Italy, where the laws of rhythm and accent were first established, these are slighted in the music; indeed, the longevity of Corelli’s works must be due to some other cause than their merit.

Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770) greatly advanced the art of the violinist, as is testified by his compositions for the instrument and his treatise on its capabilities, and is further proved by the eminence of many of his pupils. Tartini contributed to science as well as to art in his discovery (1714) of “resultant tones,” often called “Tartini’s tones,” and yet some writers ascribe the first perception of the phenomenon to Storge, a German, who described it sixteen years later. The phenomenon is this :— when any two notes are produced steadily and with great intensity, a third note is heard, whose vibration number is the difference of those of the two primary notes. It follows from this that any two consecutive members of a harmonic series have the fundamental of that series for

E their difference tone—thus, q, the fourth and fifth harmonic, produce C, the prime or generator, at the interval of two octaves under the lower of those two notes; q, the third and fifth harmonic, produce C, the second harmonic, at the interval of a 5th under the lower of those two notes. The discoverer was wont to tell his pupils that their doublestopping was not in tune unless they could hear the third note; and our own distinguished player and teacher Henry Blagrove (1811-1872) gave the same admonition. The phenomenon has other than technical significance; an experiment by the Rev. Sir F. A. G. Ouseley showed that two pipes, tuned by measurement to so acute a pitch as to render the notes of both inaudible by human ears, when blown together produce the difference tone of the inaudible primaries, and this verifies the fact of the infinite upward range of sound which transcends the perceptive power of human organs. The obverse of this fact is that of any sound being deepened by an 8th if the length of the string or pipe which produces it be doubled. The law is without exception throughout the compass in which our ears can distinguish pitch, and so, of necessity, a string of twice the length of that whose vibrations induce the deepest perceivable sound must stir the air at such a rate as to cause a tone at an 8th below that lowest audible note. It is hence manifest that, however limited our sense of the range of musical sound, this range extends upward and downward to infinity.

The pianoforte owes its invention to the period now under review. This instrument may be styled the voice of the musician, the only means whereby unaided he can give complete utterance to his thoughts, the only vehicle for the communication of musical ideas in their entirety. This is not said in depreciation of other instruments of various excellence which have qualities impossible to the pianoforte, but has reference to the totality of musical speech that is possible, and to the convenience with which this is produced on the instrument in question. The characteristic difference between this instrument and earlier ones of a similar class is that the strings of the pianoforte are struck by hammers impelled by the keys under the performer’s finger, and yield louder or softer tone according to the force he uses, whereas its predecessors yielded variety of loudness only by mechanical instead of personal means, and hence were not the living exponents as it is of the executant’s impulse. Whether one speak of the happiness kindled in the homestead by this most facile and most self-sufficient instrument, or of the fuel of such happiness, namely, the measureless amount of music of every style and quality that has been written for the pianoforte, its existence is to be accounted as an influence all but infinite upon society as much as upon art. The term “pian e forte” is applied to a musical instrument by Paliarino or Pagliarini, a manufacturer of Modena, in 1598, but no particulars have reached us of its structure or effect. Some instruments which foreshadow the chief essentials of the modern pianoforte, made by Bartolomeo Cristofori, a Paduan then working in Florence, are described in letters of 1709, and must have been made some years earlier, and pianofortes by this ingenious inventor still exist bearing date 1720 and 1726. Marius, a Frenchman, submitted plans for an instrument with hammer action to the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1716, and Schröter, a German, claimed to have devised two models in 1717 and 1721; but the first pianofortes made away from Italy were by Gottfried Silbermanq in 1726, who worked from the designs of Cristofori.

Let us now revert to the opera, in which vast modifications were germinated towards the middle of the 18th century, and ripened before its close into noble maturity. Allusion has been made in the notice of Pergolese to the appropriation of the lyric element to comic subjects. At first wholly unregarded as a sphere for art uses, then admitted for interludial purposes in a fabrication styled intermezzo that was played between the acts of a serious composition, comedy became in course of time the basis of the most highly important, because the most comprehensive and truly the grandest, and further because the most especially musical, application of the art to dramatic ends. The class of writing here to be considered is that structure of concerted vocal music through which a continuous action proceeds, involving the embodiment of the characteristics of the several persons concerned, with their opposition and combination. Handel had been remarkably happy in uniting in one piece the utterances of three, four, and even five distinct persons; he did not, however, make these several individualities interchange speech in dialogue, but caused them to sing, as it were, so many monologues at once, each independent of the others, and Handel was not singular in his occasional practice though he was in his excellence. Nicolo Logroscino (1700-1763), a Neapolitan, who never would write but to the dialect of his own country, was so exclusively comic and so surpassingly successful as to gain the cognomen of “Il Dio dell’ opera buffa.” It was he who first enchained a series of pieces (technically styled movements) in unbroken sequence, during which different persons entered or left the scene, discoursed in amity or disputation, or united either in the outpouring of a common sentiment or in the declaration of their various ^passions. For some time this form of lyrical dramatic art was only applied to comic subjects; Paesiello is said to have been the first musician who introduced its use into serious opera; it reached perfection under the masterly, magical, nay, superhuman touch of Mozart, whose two finales in Figaro and two in Don Giovanni are models which should be the wonder of all time and yet can never be approached. The spoken drama is limited to the onefold utterance of a single person, for, however rapid the colloquy, if any two spoke together, each would eclipse the other’s voice—retort may be instantaneous, but cannot be simultaneous. In a painting the different characters and emotions of the persons presented are shown at once, but, as if under the glance of Medusa, they are fixed for ever in one attitude with one expression. In an opera finale the manifold passions of as many human beings, vivified by the voices of the same number of singers, come at once on our hearing with prolonged manifestation, and this is the wielding of a power that is not in the capability of any other of the fine arts.

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) was a Bohemian by birth, and a wanderer by habit. He was a grand reformer, or rather restorer, of dramatico-musical art, yes, and a prophet, for he not only revived the principles enunciated in Florence on the threshold of the 17th century, which had been superseded by the vocalisms that had usurped the throne of truth, but he fully forestalled by this revival all that is good in what is nowadays denoted by the cant term “music of the future.” As was the wont of his age, Gluck went to extend his art experience, perhaps to complete his education, to Italy, and there produced so many meritorious works in the style of the time as to establish a high reputation. This led to his engagement to write for the Italian Opera in London, whither he came in 1746. The work he composed for this occasion and one he then reproduced met with small favour, and a “pasticcio” from his previous works, Piramo e Tisbe, had no better fortune. The failure brought the conviction that, whatever the abstract merit of music, a piece that was appropriate to one character in one situation could not be fitted to another personage under different circumstances, and that admired pieces culled from different works could not be concocted into a whole with appearance of unity. Gluck therefore resolved to abandon the prevailing customs in writing for the stage, and to devise a system of dramatic composition wherein the musical design should grow out of the action of the scene, being ever dependent upon and illustrative of it, and yet being always a design faithful to the principles of what may be named musical architecture. As did Monteverde and his contemporaries, so did this composer aim to distinguish his dramatic persons by assigning music of different character to each; he required that the overture should announce the cast of feeling and thought that was to pervade the work, and he strove to make the whole of the music appropriate to the individuals, to the situations in which they were concerned, and to the words they uttered. He did not reject the essential of rhythmical melody, which is ever necessary to a musical work, and which stands in relation to passages of pure declamation as metaphor in poetical speech stands in relation to circumstantial statement. An orator will pause in the disclosure of facts to enforce them by the mention of a similitude, or brighten them by reflexions from his own mind, and it is an application of the same art when a character in a drama stays to comment on the scene in which he is involved, and show in words the passion that is seething in his heart. Analogous to this is the occasional arrest of intercourse between the musical persons for the expression of the feeling by which one is swayed, and such is a song in an opera during which, if the action be stagnant, the character more than elsewhere proves its vitality. Plan in a musical work consists (1) in uniform or contrasted rhythm, (2) in the relationship and enchainment of keys, (3) in the development and elaboration of phrases, and (4) in their occasional recurrence. Some plans have by frequent appropriation become to a great extent conventional, and their philosophic basis accounts for and justifies the fact that much music is framed upon them; it is the special province, however, of the writer for voices, and still more so of the writer for the stage, to ignore convention, though never to neglect design, and to construct his plans according to the situations they are to fill and to the materials with which he has to work. For sixteen years Gluck pondered the prevalent improprieties and the possible proprieties of dramatic art, and prepared himself by technical study and polite conversation to strike the blow which was to effect a revolution, the while, strange to say, he wrote several operas in his old style for production in different towns of Italy, Germany, and other countries. At length in 1762 what he meant to be the representative work of his then matured principle, Orfeo ed Euridice, appeared in Vienna and made strong impression. Some lighter pieces filled the interim between this, which without exaggeration may be regarded as an event in musical history, and the production in the same city of Alceste (1767). The opera was published, as also was Paride ed Elena (1769), each with a statement of the artist’s views; and these two essays have since been regarded as constituting a grammar of dramatic music. Gluck was not content with the Viennese reception of the works on his new model, and was less so with the accessories that city afforded for giving theatrical effect to his compositions. He went, therefore, to Paris, wrote music to an adaptation of Racine’s Iphigénie en Aulide, which fulfils his purpose in a higher degree than his previous pieces, and brought it out with extraordinary success. Orphée ( 1774), Alceste (1776) (both rearranged from the Italian versions), Armide (1776), and lastly Iphigénie en Tauride (1779) rose each to a loftier level, and met with just acceptance.

It must be owned that other forces concurred with musical merit in Gluck’s Parisian triumphs. He had taught singing to Marie Antoinette before she became dauphiness, and she now was an ardent partisan of her former instructor. Mme. Du Barry held a rival court to that of the young princess, her jealousy of whom and of her state was evinced by every possible means. Accordingly she invited to Paris Nicola Piccini (1728-1800), and strove to establish him in opposition to the German master. His Poland set to a libretto by Marmontel was brought out in 1777, anticipating the subject of Gluck’s Armide·, it was followed by other French operas, and the contest ended with the production of his Iphigénie en Tauride (1781), subsequently to that with the same title, the masterpiece of his opponent. This musical warfare much resembled that of some forty years earlier between Handel and Buononcini in London, when the king headed the partisans of the German and the Prince of Wales those of the Italian artist; but the Parisian feud was waged with far the greater violence, for, not only were the courts of the two ladies involved in it, but every literatist of note sided with one or the other faction, and hurled poems, or pamphlets, or essays, or critiques at his antagonists, that were crammed with remorseless invective. It pretended to be a dispute as to national style, but was a quarrel between two leaders of fashion. Piccini’s music is marked by the melodious grace for which his country claims pre-eminence, Gluck’s by the graver thought by which the Teutonic muse is more distinguished. Gluck, however, was not profound, he was no contrapuntist, and his often grand and always expressive harmony sprang more from intuition than knowledge; Piccini had dramatic power, and he advanced greatly Logroscino’s invention of continuous concerted music conformable to the business of the scene, but applied this only to comic operas, and so turned it to no account in his compositions for Paris. His most successful production, La buona Figliuola (1760), passed from its birthplace, Rome, to every European capital, and is not even now forgotten.

The origin, development, and supreme importance of the symphony next claim our attention. The term is and always has been used in Italy to define the instrumental preface, which elsewhere is called an overture, to a long vocal work. Handel and others, early in the 18th century, defined by it an instrumental piece incidental to such a work, generally depicting some supposed action, such as a battle, or a multitudinous entry. The term is also applied to the prelude and interludes in a single vocal piece of however small extent. Its significance is far more comprehensive in the application now to be described. Its nearest analogy among earlier compositions is to what of old was called a concerto, and the two names, derived respectively from Greek and Latin, have at root the same meaning. Like the antecedent concerto, the symphony is a composition, consisting of several movements or self-complete divisions, for a full band; unlike its predecessor, the plan of at least its first movement has in the course of years been so distinctly organized that musicians shrink from applying the definition symphony to any work wherein there is not the aim to fulfil this design. At first the term was loosely employed, for even so late as Haydn’s visits to London in 1791 and 1794 the symphonies he wrote for first performance there were sometimes announced as such, sometimes as overtures, and sometimes as “full pieces.” Its structural requirements especially connect it with works for the chamber, which, if for one or two solo instruments, are styled sonatas, if for three or four or more, trios or quartets, or what not, according to the number of parts they comprise. The word “plan,” always used by that distinguished teacher Cipriani Potter (1792- 1871) as meaning musical design, happily, because positively, expresses the arrangement of ideas according to a purpose, to which, being intangible and invisible, the word “form” is but metaphorically applicable. Sebastian Bach, Corelli earlier, and Purcell before them, designated compositions as sonatas which, however, are not modelled on the plan of the modern symphony. Bach in some of his later preludes and in other instances has the incipient germ from which the plan has been evolved, and sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757) comprise movements wherein it is more developed. These musicians were by no means the first, however, to strike the vein of ore for which divination seems to have been carefully in search long prior to their labours. This justifies the belief that its source is in nature, that it was discovered, not created, by man’s genius; and the work of successive generations of artists has been to rear and mature that which, having once been found, is the heirloom of the present and the future. The practice of all ages proves common consent that a musical composition must begin and end in one and the same key, and this statement refers not more to our own time than to that of the ancients, whose modes are comparable though not identical with the keys of modern establishment. Continuance of one key throughout a piece of considerable length would be monotonous; to relieve this, modulation is effected into other keys in the course of a composition. To obtain tonal variety without violence, the choice of alternative keys must be made first and chiefly from those which have the nearest tonal relationship to the primary key. After the harmonic 8th (which is a miniature of the 1st) the harmonic 5th is next in prominence, from this note a chord rises as complete as that of the generator, from this chord a second key proceeds by natural evolution; the note, the chord, the key, are each named the dominant, since dominating, commanding, or defining the tonality of the fundamental note. The key of the dominant is hence the one most often chosen for the principal alternative to the primary key if the latter be major; but the key of the 3d and that of the 6th are occasionally selected instead by a further application of the harmonic system. If the primary key be minor, the choice of the chief alternative key is often made in the contrary direction; the tonic itself is assumed to be a harmonic 3d or else a 6th, and the chief modulation is made to the key at one of these intervals below the original keynote, having reference to the submediant or the mediant as the source whence the minor form of a key is derived. Besides the chief alternative, other keys, more or less frequent, more or less remote, according to the greater or less length of a piece, are also employed in the course of a composition. The distribution of keys constitutes the ground-plan and the elevation of a musical structure; the style of harmony, whether diatonic or chromatic, whether contrapuntal or massive, is its material; the ideas, or subjects, or themes, or phrases, or figures, or—as of late they have been whimsically named— motives, stand for the ornamentation, such as portico, frieze, statuary, and carving, which are sometimes essential in a design. This, then, is a brief summary of the plan of the first movement of a symphony—a first subject in the primary key, which consists of a single idea, or of several connected by tonal identity though melodically distinct; a second subject in the chief alternative key, which also may be onefold or manifold in its matter; and these first and second subjects complete the first part. Thus far has been but a simple statement of ideas, which is here followed by a working of the same matter, drawing from it what varieties of expression it may yield through compression or expansion by means of any or every resource of the musician’s art; the second part is aptly often named the free fantasia, because unrestricted to a fixed course of modulation, the composer’s creative power being at full liberty as to course of keys and manner of development; then for the first time the music reverts to the primary key for a retrospect of the entire matter of the first part, with, however, all that belongs to the second subject transposed from the chief alternative key into that which is the origin and centre whence all the modulations radiate; lastly, there is often, but by no means always, a coda, which is a summing up of the whole argument, or a valediction to the hearer. The first movement, always cast in this mould, is succeeded generally by one in a slow tempo, sometimes planned like a first allegro, sometimes otherwise, according to outlines that cannot here be detailed, and this exhibits the sentiment of the artist, as did the preceding his scholarship and ingenuity. Then follows generally (again one must say, for there is no necessary prescription) a movement of lighter character than either of the foregoing, sometimes having the musical shape of a dance such as the minuet, sometimes having an arbitrary plaη which still is based upon harmonic, and therefore natural, and consequently philosophical, principles. To conclude, there is a movement that is sometimes constructed like the first and is sometimes as complicated, but in other instances has an arbitrary design. Such is the highest class of musical composition: firstly, because it is wholly musical, springing entirely from the artist’s imagination without the prompting of words, needing no words to express its meaning to the auditor, being in itself poetry; secondly, because it may comprise every means within the author’s power to wield melody,—counterpoint, harmony, modulation,—all that but for the symphony would be special to the fugue, orchestration, and, above all, the arrangement of ideas in a consistent logical method with reference to principles that are the very foundation of art. Let it be hoped that this outline of the elements, essence, and plan of the symphony justifies the use of the words supreme importance in reference to the class of composition at the outset of these remarks.

Haydn (1732-1809) is commonly styled the father of the symphony. If truly, then Carl Philip Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), the second of the many sons of the great Sebastian, stands as grandfather in the genealogy of that species of music; and its remoter ancestry may be traced to all but forgotten men in whose works is certainly a forecast of the plan above described. C. P. E. Bach wrote 18 symphonies, and upon these and upon the instrumental chamber music of the same author, Haydn avowedly modelled the plan of his compositions. The earlier writer had not the profundity of his father, nor the grace of Haydn, but his music represents the transition from one to another use in instrumental writing, and it fixed the plan which, however it may be expanded, can never be disestablished from the canons of art. Haydn produced the marvellous number of 125 symphonies (some of them, indeed, were overtures for theatrical use), besides 77 quartets for bowed instruments (the last one unfinished), 52 pianoforte sonatas, and pieces that are almost countless for various combinations of instruments; and in these one knows not whether to wonder more at the infinite fluency of melody or at the artistic mastery. In summing up the enormous amount of his works regard must also be given to his 3 oratorios, his 14 masses, his operas, and his many detached pieces for one and several voices, and then it is hard to believe that all this can have been accomplished in a single life.

f Next in chronology as a symphonist stands Mozart (1756-1791). Particular comparison must be made of these dates with those of Haydn, as illustrating the relation of the mighty musicians to each other, and the influence each may be supposed to have exercised on his friend—for warmest friends they were and truest estimators of each other’s powers. If the young Mozart profited by Haydn’s example, as doubtless he did, the old Haydn learned greatly from Mozart’s, for there is so obvious a rise in the character of his music from the beginning to the end of his long career as shows that he was under a continuous course of self-schooling. It is because his was self-schooling, and because he seems to have had no distinct principle of harmony, but to have experimented without infallible success on every unusual combination he wrote, and because likewise in orchestration his writing often appears to have been tentative rather than proving intuition of an effect and a means for its production—it is for these reasons, in spite of his prodigious command of counterpoint, that he may without disrespect be classed after the man whom circumstances compel us to regard as his rival. Mozart wrote 48 sym-^∙ phonies, some of them in the tenderest ’ years of childhood, and repeated the design in many chamber works for several or for a single instrument. These differ in merit, mainly, it may be assumed, because some were written to meet the exigencies and the limitations of particular occasions; but, every one compelling admiration, the last three are conspicuous among the music of all time for the excellence of each and for their difference in character from one another, and these were composed in less than seven weeks, between 26th June and 10th August 1788, during which interval several other lesser and larger pieces also were produced, some for voices and some for instruments. The symphony in E flat, No. 46, is notable for sweetness and playful grace; that in G minor, No. 47, is a torrent of passionate fervour; and that in C, No. 48 (in England named Jupiter), is a combination that has never been surpassed of all the means possible to a musician. In the final movement of this last, a fugue is wrought on the symphonic plan, which is also the case in the overture to the author’s latest opera, Die Zauberflöte, a completer fusion than has elsewhere been made of the two most distinguishable art-forms, and the formalism is hidden under the beauty of the ideas.

History now steps on to the great name of Beethoven (1770-1827), who in his 9 symphonies, his 6 concertos (which are pieces on the same plan with the addition of a part for a solo instrument), and his priceless bequest of chamber music commands the world’s adoration. It is the shallow practice of the present day to depreciate his two great predecessors, especially Mozart, in his favour; but comparative criticism is to ill purpose if it can only exalt one master by the dethronement of another. Beethoven enlarged the symphony, in some respects changed its character, and perhaps advanced its consideration; above' all, after writing for a while in the idiom of those two masters, he stamped his own individuality upon music. One finds, however, a prototype for each thing critics describe as particularly Beethovenish in the writings of Mozart, so that the manifest originality of the later musician lies in the new aspect given by happy expansion to prior existences more than in the creation of new forms of thought. Though he often strove at fugal excellence, he was a child at counterpoint as compared with the two adults who preceded him, and he lost rather than gained fluency in this branch of art as his life proceeded. The ideas of a great artist bear the impress of his age, which is remarkably the case with the musical thoughts of Beethoven, and as his age was nearer to our own, so is his frame of mind more congenial with that of present hearers than are those of Haydn and Mozart. The figure may be reversed; the individuality of an artist is the matrix in which the feelings and thoughts of his age, and still more of the age that next follows him, are moulded, but there must be affinity of temperament between the one and the many for this interchange of impressions to be possible. We of to-day have Beethoven and the consequences of Beethoven, and the influences of these have been active in the interval between our time and the period previous to the French Revolution; and the political, moral, and artistic changes that have been wrought by the ones upon the many as much as by the many on the ones indispose us to the recognition of the beautiful under its earlier aspect. Let us delight in Beethoven— who can fail ?—but let us also love Mozart and revere Haydn. Two points are notable in Beethoven’s instrumental music—(1) the linking together of the several movements of a work which usually are separated by an interval of silence; but such union is in some of Mozart’s early symphonies and some also of Emanuel Bach’s; (2) the expression of feelings excited by subjects external to the music and entitling works accordingly, as Sinfonia Pastorale, and sonata, Les Adieux, Γ Absence, et le Retour·, but Dietrich Buxtehude of Lübeck had a century earlier produced seven pieces characteristic of the seven planets, and Vivaldi had represented the four seasons in as many concertos, to say nothing of the chaos which opens Haydn’s Creation. Beethoven’s professed purpose in this last particular was to give utterance to impressions rather than to present pictures, and such is the legitimate scope of music, which is not an imitative but an expressive art.

Next in time came Spohr (1784-1859), whose deliciously-phrased rich-toned symphonies have lost regard in late years, but not beauty. Of his seven symphonies, four bear titles which refer them to an objective purpose; but r they are still subjective, for the personality of the writer is expressed in every bar. Mendelssohn (1809-1847) did less but achieved more than Spohr; far less numerous, his instrumental writings for the concert-room and for the chamber have vitality and permanence which are not in those of the other master; they belong as much to hereafter as to now, while those of Spohr are already of the past. Mendelssohn too made musical pictures, owning that “as Beethoven had opened the road it was impossible not to follow;” his two finest symphonies, those in A and in A minor, represent, though not so entitled by him, his impressions of Italy and. Scotland, and his characteristic overtures are translations into sound of the poems after which they are named. He also, in more than one instance, joined the several movements of a work, and he employed other devices—his own by felicity of appropriation more than by first use—for enforcing the relationship of the several portions of a musical structure. Schumann (1810-1856) has suffered through the persistence of his partisans in comparing him with another instead of displaying and extolling his own merit. Party spirit and the opposition it kindles has passed, and the delicacy, often subtle in its refinement, the grace, the deep feeling, the ingenuity, but rarely grandeur, that mark his symphonic and chamber music, are now fully perceived. Johannes Brahms is a ⅛iny worker in this class of art who has already planted his foot in the future and given warrant for transmitting to the coming generation the great model he received from the past, which, because of the masterpieces that have been cast in it, justly bears the name of classical. Cherubini (1760-1842) is the one Italian known to have written a symphony, and this work gives small reason for regret that it stands thus alone; he arranged the same as a violin quartet and wrote two original pieces of this class. Méhul (1763-1817) is the French representative of the symphonic art best known and best esteemed.

The Englishmen who have best succeeded in this highest form of music are Dr Crotch (1775-1847), Cipriani Potter, J. Henry Griesbach (1798-1875), Henry Westrop (1812-1879), and Sterndale Bennett (1816- 1875). The last-named cannot be passed with a mere mention. The wide recognition of Bennett’s genius at home and in Germany distinguishes him; far more so does the quite individual charm of his music, and most of all does the tender age at which he wrote his best works and the facility with which he produced them. Three of his pianoforte concertos, one of his symphonies, and four of his concert overtures may be cited as representative pieces, wherein sometimes the plan, always the phraseology, and, in those for the pianoforte, the treatment of the instrument are peculiar to the author in sweetness and elegance; the eternal riddle of the beautiful is propounded in every cadence, and still defies analysis, still remains unsolved. As living writers in this department, Aguilar, Banister, J. F. Barnett, Cowen, Davenport, Walter Macfarren, Hubert Parry, Prout, Stanford, Stephens, and Sullivan must be named.

To have spoken of orchestral music compels notice of instrumentation as an element of the art that has high significance. It is analogous to colouring with the painter, being extra to the composition or plan of his work, but essential in vivifying and varying its effect. Its root is the appropriation of passages to the capabilities of instruments for which they are designed, and this is planted in the earliest as much as the latest essays in composition. Its trunk and branches are the combinations of voices and instruments of the same or different qualities of tone, so as to give greatest prominence to the chiefest parts in a musical texture, so as to produce effects of sound which cannot be yielded by the means separately used, but are liable to infinite diversity from the manifold compounds in which they are clustered, and, most of all, so as to secure distinctness of every part in the complex woof which strikes the ear as onefold. Instrumentation may be styled the chemistry of sound, which by the synthesis of distinct tones produces new organisms; it is the blending of any of the rays of the musical prism which produces previously unheard colours. Mozart was the first to evince the very fine sense which perceives the parity and disparity of qualities, how some sounds will mix with and some will penetrate through others, how some instruments by pouring forth a stream of harmony may enrich or nourish a melody that floats on its surface in another quality of tone. Prior musicians had used instruments in alternation for variety of effect, or in combination for the sake of loudness; but it was Mozart that both originated and perfected instrumentation as above described, and it has been practised with more or less success in so far as his principles have been fulfilled, with more or less failure in so far as his principles have been abandoned. In two centuries instruments have undergone large modification, and their treatment has been modified accordingly. Writing for the harpsichord is widely different from that for the pianoforte, which also has been changed in character from generation to generation of composers, not only because of improvements in the manufacture of the instrument, but because of enlarged insight into its capabilities; hence the music of Emanuel Bach, Mozart, Dussek, Beethoven, Clementi, Cramer, Hummel, Moscheles, John Field, C. Μ. von Weber, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Thalberg, Sterndale Bennett, and Anton Rubinstein forms a continuous scale of development in aptitude and diversity. The transformation of the viol of various sizes into the violin, violoncello, and double bass of present use is a subject for special history, but its course is inseparably associated with the names of the great Cremonese manufacturers, Andrea Amati (1540), his two sons and his grandson, the family Guanarius, and Straduarius, who all practised their craft as an art more than as a trade, setting each the stamp of his own genius on the instruments he produced and leaving models that have never yet been equalled. The extended resources of bowed instruments have come wholly through extended skill of executants, especially of Viotti 1 Rudolphe Kreutzer, Rode, Baillot, Paganini, Spohr, De Beriot, Molique, Ernst, Blagrove, Sivori, Sainton, Vieuxtemps, Joachim, and Carrodus on the violin; of Crosdill, Cervetto, Lindley, and Piatti on the violoncello; and of Dragonetti and Bot-tesini on the double bass. The entire construction of flutes and reed instruments was changed by Theobald Boehm (1794-1881), and all makers now work upon his principle. Facilities have been increased on each of these classes of instruments, but on horns and trumpets modern use has in some respects diminished them; that is, employing only notes of the harmonic scale, players of the time of Purcell, Handel, and Bach practised so constantly in the upper register that they easily produced the 12 th harmonic and above this sometimes notes up to the 18th, and these they executed with volubility akin to that displayed on fingered instruments; it is now the custom to exercise the lips on the lower notes and on longer continued sounds, and hence the passages written by the elder masters are difficult to the verge of the impossible to present practitioners, and a totally different character distinguishes modern from earlier music for brass instruments. On the other hand, Charles Joseph Sax (1791-1865), and far more his still living son Adolphe, have devised such systematic changes in the fabrication of all brass instruments as to give them an entirely new place in the orchestral category; by means of the pistons of their sax-horns, cornets, and saxophones, these instruments yield the complete chromatic scale, which, superficially, appears to be an advantage; but, save for military bands, the alteration is a serious evil and has an incalculably pernicious effect upon the orchestration of the day. This strong but careful statement is justified by the beautiful effects in music written earlier than the use of valves, from the characterization, firstly, of particular keys in a musical composition; secondly, of certain chords in the keys; and, thirdly, of special notes in each of these chords through appropriation to them of selected sounds from the limited harmonic series, whereas composers who apply Sax’s invention to orchestral use reduce the band to a one-toned machine that has the same quality throughout its range. Let proof be drawn from example; in the andante in A flat in Beethoven’s symphony in C minor, the horns and trumpets are crooked in C, they can therefore be used but for peculiar notes in the primary key of the piece, but they give especial tone to the key of C, into which the music thrice modulates, that distinguishes it from the entire context; in the finale of the same master’s symphony in F the return to the primary key from the remote tonality of F sharp minor is marked by the tone of the F trumpet, whose keynote is the enharmonic of the E sharp of the foregoing harmony; and yet again, in the “dona nobis” of the same master’s mass in D, the phrases for the trumpets in B flat are distinguished from what surrounds by the tone and the key, and thus give technical significance to the author’s purpose, “a prayer for peace in the midst of war.” Inability to resist the temptation of the semitonic scale, and so to use “sounding brass” as freely as instruments of more delicate tone and greater natural volubility, is exemplified in the writings of many a living musician, and regretted by many of his admirers.

A class of opera, defined in French as opéra comique, dates ostensibly from 1715. The definition is unsound, because, whatever the subjects of the first pieces so styled, it is often applied to works of a romantic, serious, or even tragic nature. The separation of this from the grand opéra lies in the latter having music throughout, its rhythmical pieces being divided by accompanied recitative, while the opéra comique consists of music interspersed with spoken dialogue. The distinction arose from what was considered an infringement of the patent of the Parisian Opera House by a company who performed musical pieces at the Théâtre de la Foire, and an agreement between the two establishments was authorized at the date above cited to the effect that the assumed intruder must have speaking in every piece it presented. The name of Rameau is the earliest of note among composers of this class of work, and his success in I.’Endriaque (1721) and I.'Enrôlement d ’ Arlequin (1726), which were comical enough in plot to sanction the definition, procured hearing for his larger and graver dramatic efforts. Most conspicuous of those who later have gained fame as composers of opéras comiques are Monsigny, Dalayrac, Grétry, Méhul, Boieldieu, the profound Cherubini, Halévy, Auber, Ambroise Thomas, and Gounod, many of whom also produced masterly pieces in the other class of opera. The singspiel is the German parallel to the opéra comique, and its examples comprise some of the greatest works that adorn the lyric stage. Among these are the Entführung aus dem Serail and the Zauberflöte of Mozart, the Fidelio of Beethoven, which stands above comparison with all dramatic music save only the Figaro and the Don Giovanni of Mozart, and suffers not in being placed side by side with these prodigies of genius and mastery, the Faust and the Zemira und Azor of Spohr, the Freischütz of C. Μ. von Weber, and Heimkehr aus der Fremde of Mendelssohn. It was a novelty of Weber to break from set forms in his dramatic monologues and frame from the promptings of the situation a special plan for each, which has frequent variations of tempo but always coherence of key, and which never fails to manifest a conceived and fulfilled design; and this successful innovation, as much as their musical merit, gives historical importance to his works for the stage. Spohr, with Jessonda (1823), was the first to appropriate continuous music with full orchestra to the German stage, and he wrote in the journals to defend his innovation, which had been preceded in Italy by Rossini with Otello, wherein the “recitativo parlante” was for the first time in that country discarded. Spoken dramas profusely interspersed with music and called operas have had vogue in England since the time of Purcell, whose genius was cramped by the literary conceit that music was unfit for expression of human feelings on the stage. The principle was superseded, but the form resulting from it was preserved in the ballad operas, which from 1727 for more than a century were the sole vehicles for music in our theatres; but these had the speciality that for the most part their music consists of the popularities of the day and rarely includes original composition. Dr Arne, Stephen Storace, Shield, Dibdin, and Sir H. R. Bishop wrote all the music for pieces of this class, and the last appropriated, or modified, or restored to its pristine form the glee in his dramatic works, and by specimens of this he is and will be chiefly remembered. In 1834 a new impulse was given to English opera by the warm welcome of John Barnett’s Mountain Sylph, which, though it has speaking, is far more essentially musical in structure than its predecessors, and it has been followed by many a work of merit by the same hand, by Balfe, E. J. Loder, Wallace, and others, several of these being wholly lyrical, according to the requirements of French grand opéra.

Side by side with the activity in other countries just reviewed was the progress of opera in Italy. Important contributors to this were Giovanni Paesiello (1741-1815) and Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801), who both wrote extensively, succeeded greatly, and impressed the art with their specialities. Of vastly greater consequence in the future was Mozart, who produced many Italian operas, and, of all musicians that have ever composed for the theatre, brought dramatic music the most nearly to perfection in fitness to the scene, delineation of character, and technical design. The name of Rossini (1792-1868) is conspicuous in the history of opera from the once universal fashion to admire his writings, from the new manner of vocal flourishes he introduced, which strongly tended to revive the inconsistencies against which Gluck had striven, from the ardent imitators who at the time of his triumphs emulated his peculiarities, from his entire change of style in his later productions, and from his all but ceasing to produce during nearly forty years. The languishing Bellini (1802-1835) and the spirited and far more prolific Donizetti (1796-1848) proved their artistic strength by avoiding the Rossini idiom, but neither can be accredited with asserting a style. Giuseppe Verdi has proved melodic creativeness equal to either of theirs, with a stronger power of characterization and a better regard for the exigencies of the scene.

A new species of composition has sprung into being within these thirty years, which in France is defined as opéra bouffe, and in England as comic opera, but is totally distinct from the opera buffa of Italy or the opéra comique of France, while less unlike the intermezzo of Italian use in the 18th century. It may be described as burlesque, sometimes of stories that have held mankind’s respect for ages, sometimes of modern social absurdities, but having the ridiculous for its main quality, and extravagant in every essential. It consists of an intermixture of lightest and most frivolous music with spoken dialogue, and depends as much on its literary sprightliness as on its musical tunefulness, for success. It may be said to have been originated by Offenbach (1819-1882) of Cologne, who settled in Paris when young, where in 1855 he engaged a theatre for the production of his lyrical caricatures, initiated them with Les Deux Aveugles, and wrote in all sixty-nine pieces. He has several imitators in the country of his adoption, and is represented in England by Sir Arthur Sullivan.

Operatic history may be epitomized in a few sentences. The Greek tragedy was essentially lyrical, and it portrayed the characters and the incidents with which all who witnessed were intimate. It fell asleep with the other forms of classic art, to be awakened at the end of the 16th century · but those who aimed at restoring it to the active world chose subjects from the antique which stirred the wonder more than the sympathy of their audiences. Regard for the gods and heroes of ancient myths, or for the figures of mediaeval chivalry, who were little less outside general familiarity, long gave an artificial air to theatrical writing. It was the comic branch of opera that first broke from the trammels of the pedagogue, and in representing people of its own time applied the grandest attribute of music—the expression of passions common to us all under circumstances experienced by us all in phraseology familiar to us all. In the pieces for the Countess and the Count in Figaro Mozart rose to earnestness, and in those for Donna Anna, Ottavio, and the Commandant in Don Giovanni still higher to the grandest tragedy, and always on the lips of persons in a period so near to our own that we recognize our own feelings in their utterances. The preternatural is also shown to be within the range of this art in the music of the Statue in Don Giovanni, which may confidently be compared for effect with the ghost scenes in Hamlet, in answer to those who raise quarrelsome questions as to the relative power of music and speech to embody analogous situations. All musicians since Mozart have chosen subjects, however serious, from modern history or from still later modern life, and the preternatural has exercised the imagination of Spohr, Weber, Marschner, and Barnett, to whom Mendelssohn must be added on account of the fragments of Loreley.

During the last thirty years Richard Wagner (1813-1883) has striven to revolutionize the lyrical drama by his polemical writing, by his compositions for the theatre, of which he is the twofold author of words and notes, and by his extraordinary means of bringing these conspicuously before the public. His principles were all gathered from antecedent reformers; their application was his own. His works of art are, by himself and his supporters, professed to be neither dramas nor music, but this cannot exempt them from dramatic and musical censure. The very remarkable commotion he has made in the world of art might be compared with that excited by the rivalry between Buononcini and Handel in London and that between Piccini and Gluck in Paris, but that these were in each instance the contention between one musician and another, whereas in the present case it is the opposition of one writer to all the musicians in the world, save the few members of the profession who, believing in the man, his doctrine, and his power to apply it, undertake propagandism as a duty, and endeavour to make proselytes to their faith. Wagner’s recent death has left judgment free as to his theoretical and practical merit ; a few years will determine the permanence or evanescence of his productions, and an article on his name in the present work may be written far enough from now to chronicle the result.

Within the present century the oratorio has undergone large modification, somewhat in structure and more in style. Haydn’s Creation is planned on the model of the several settings of music to the recitation of the Divine Passion which were frequent from the date of the Reformation till the 18th century was one-third advanced. Its text consists of a Bible narrative interspersed with reflective verses which have no pretension to be defined as poetry. The work was said to have been suggested to the composer by his hearing some of Handel’s oratorios during his two visits to England, but it differs in character as widely from these as was natural in coming from a musician whose genius, however great, was wholly unlike that of his predecessor. The Seasons, by the same master, has a secular subject which is secularly treated, and in this, equally with the other, the manner of the author, as evinced in his instrumental music, is ever apparent. Beethoven’s Mount of Olives is in dramatic form, though changed into narrative in several English versions. The portions of this that have most interest are those which are the least sacred— for instance, the chorus of the soldiers who come to seek and then to arrest the Accused of Iscariot. The Deluge, by Schneider, is also a drama by a modern hand. It and the Moses of Marx have sent only the reputation of their esteem into England. Spohr’s three oratorios—especially Die letzten Dinge, known here as the Last Judgment —bear so strongly the impress of his speciality in the constant prevalence of the chromatic element throughout them, and in the rich but always transparent orchestration, and they were so largely imitated by contemporaries, that they may be said to have opened an epoch which, however, was early closed. Far more important in themselves and in their influence are the two works of the class by Mendelssohn, with which may be associated the Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise), written to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the invention of printing. In these the dramatic, the narrative, and the didactic elements all appear, the first so conspicuously and so grandly in consonance with the spirit of the time that it specially distinguishes the works as they do the master who, through them, holds a rank in England as a sacred writer all but parallel to that of Handel. The influence of Mendelssohn’s oratorios is obvious in the works of other musicians, and public approval attests it to be an influence for good. Compositions styled oratorios have been produced by Liszt and Gounod which seem to aim largely at novelty, but a future generation must judge whether they have struck the mark. In England, Crotch’s Palestine emulated Handelian precedent, and stood for long alone as a native production. Many years later Sir Sterndale Bennett’s Woman of Samaria won wider sympathy. The living writers who have courted and gained fame in England by longer or shorter oratorios are J. F. Barnett, Sir J. Benedict, Sir Μ. Costa, and Sir A. Sullivan.

With some pleasure and some regret must be mentioned the active exertions of John Curwen (1816-1880), a Nonconformist minister, with a large staff of adherents, in the promulgation of a professedly new musical system under the title of “Tonic Sol-fa”: pleasure, because of the wide extension of musical study resulting from his indefatigable zeal; regret, because perhaps a larger and certainly a better result would have rewarded like energy in the propagation of musical knowledge in the shape that has grown into maturity through eight centuries, and possesses the whole world’s acceptance. He who is honoured as the founder of the system professed to have derived it from Miss Glover of Norwich, whose method he but modified and expanded; but hers was based upon the ancient gamut already described, omitting the constant recital of the alphabetical name of each note, together with the arbitrary syllable that indicates its key relationship, and omitting too the recital of two or more of these syllables when the same note is common to as many keys, as “C, Fa, Ut,” meaning that the note C is the subdominant of G and the tonic of C. The notes are represented by the initials of the seven syllables still used in Italy and France as the fixed names of the seven notes; but in “Tonic Sol-fa” the seven letters refer to key relationship and not to pitch. Further, the system has a wholly different terminology from that in universal use. It would be uncandid not to state that many men of greatest eminence outside the musical profession and many musicians support the system; here may only its bare principles be stated and not its merits discussed. A somewhat analogous action has, at the same time, been busy with regard to musical notation in France. Émile Chevé (1804), a surgeon in the French marine service, having married Nanine, the sister of Aimé Paris, learned from her the views of her brother (who had adopted them from Galin) as to another new system of musical notation, and he, Chevé, in 1844 applied himself to its dissemination. The system bears the name of “Galin-Paris-Chevé,” and, like the other, refers the notes to key relationship and not to pitch, but employs the first seven numerals as their symbols. This invention, if so it may be called, was strongly discouraged by the most esteemed musicians of Paris, but its advocates persevere in its propagation.

As a summary of all the precept and example that has been cited in this survey of the centuries let the writer state his convictions on musical theory, which are, that the Treatise on Harmony (1845) by Alfred Day (1810-1849) comprehends whatever is practically available, and reconciles the previously apparent discrepancies between principle and use. The laws of the primitive diatonic style had never been repealed; the discovery by Noble and Pigot of generated harmonics had been held as belonging to science and not pertaining to art; composers had employed what may be classed as natural in distinction from arbitrary combinations, but each only on the prompting of his own genius and only with the justification of their effect. The author now cited was the first to classify the ancient, strict, uniform, diatonic, contrapuntal style, apart from the modern, free, exceptive, chromatic, massive style, to separate the principles that guide the one from the laws that control the other, and to place a subject that is at once sublime and beautiful in a light of unfailing clearness. He showed that one or another beautiful chord and the progressions thence were not capricious violations of rule, permissible to genius though unallowable to ordinary writers; he showed that such things were acceptable not only because great masters had written them, and so small musicians might repeat the trespass; he proved this by demonstrating the self-perfection of the ancient canon and the also perfect modern system that rests on a basis totally distinct from that of the other. He classed diatonic harmony, with its uniform treatment of all the notes in a key, into concords which include not the 4th from the bass, and three species of discords, namely, passing notes of several varieties, suspensions resolved on a note of the harmony in which they are discordant, and essential or elemental discords resolved with the progression of the whole chord to a chord whose root is at a 4th above the root of the discord. In this style discordant notes have identical treatment according to the number of their interval (as 7th or 9th), unaffected by its quality (as major or minor). He traced all the notes of the scale available in the diatonic style to the tonic, the 5th below it, and the 5th above it, as their roots, having thus a minor tone between the dominant and submediant in the major form of a key. Present composers with ability for its production may, by observance of this ancient canon, make music in the style of the 16 th century with as good likelihood of beauty as had the great masters of that period, but without imitating them, since working by their method and not necessarily by their example. Day showed that peculiar treatment of certain notes of the diatonic scale, together with the inclusion of the chromatic element which has crept into use during the later centuries, constitutes a style totally distinct from the other, and justly to be called exceptional. The basis of this system is the derivation of harmonics from specified fundamental nβtes or generators in every key. Thus exceptionally the 4th above the bass is a concord, when it is the root inverted above the 5th in the triads of the tonic, the subdominant, and the dominant. Thus exceptionally the 3d in the dominant triad has peculiar poignancy to which modern ears are sensitive, and the dominant triad is imitable on the supertonic by employment of its chromatic major 3d that has the same special character as the 3d of the dominant. Thus exceptionally the 7th may be added to the dominant triad. This combination may also be imitated on the supertonic, and the addition likewise of a chromatic minor 7th to the tonic triad makes another chord consisting of the same intervals as the dominant 7th, namely, perfect 5th, major 3d, and minor 7th, the last two being at a diminished 5th asunder. Again exceptionally the minor or the major 9th may be added to each of these chords of the 7th, the 11th to the chords of the 9th, and the minor or major 13th to the chords of the 11 th, beyond which the ascent by 3ds proceeds no more, as the 15th is the double octave of the root. The 9th, 11 th, and 13th are susceptible of resolution each on a note of its own chord, which is not so with the 3d and 7 th; or they may, like the 3d and 7 th, be resolved on some note of another chord when the entire harmony changes. The chords of the 9th, still less of the 11 th, and of the 13th least, rarely appear complete, the root being frequently, and other notes occasionally, omitted. In this style the discordant notes (3d, 7th, minor or major 9th, 11 th, and minor or major 13th) are identical in quality to whichever of the three roots they belong; but they vary in treatment according to their source; and in these two specialities they are distinguished from diatonic discords. Broadly it may be stated, but subject to amplification, that the natural resolution of dominant discords is upon the tonic concord, that the natural resolution of supertonic discords is either upon a tonic concord or upon a dominant discord, and that the natural resolution of tonic discords is either upon a dominant discord or upon a supertonic discord, the several elements of each harmony proceeding variously according to what note must follow it in the ensuing chord. The term fundamental discords is aptly applied to these which are traced to their harmonic generator, and their pertinence to one key is established by their all being resolvable on chords peculiar to the same tonality. The theory steps a degree further in proving ⅛F

that the harmony of the augmented 6th with its several varieties of accompaniment consists of the primary and secondary harmonics of a common generator, and that the dominant and tonic are the notes in any key whence this harmony is derived, yielding respectively the augmented 6th on the minor 6th of the chromatic scale, and the augmented 6th on the minor 2d. The bold venture of Mouton, repeated by Monteverde and defended by the latter against the fierce disputation of the orthodox, is theoretically justified in this system on the principle of natural harmonics first enunciated in Oxford, and the ingenious searchings after truth by Rameau are shown in this system to have been on a false track and so to have passed round instead of to their mark. Day’s Treatise, on its appearance, was denounced by the chief musicians in London, and a single believer for some time alone maintained and taught its enlightened views. These have now the acquiescence of many more musicians than originally opposed them, they are upheld by several eloquent supporters, and they are widely disseminated throughout England. They have not yet been promulgated beyond that country; but the advance they have made there in thirty-eight years may be taken as augury of their admission elsewhere when time and circumstance may be opportune for their presentation.

Music, in the modern special sense of the word, was with the early Greeks regulated declamation to the accompaniment of instruments with stretched strings that were plucked or struck. With the Greeks it was also produced from pipes of metal or wood or horn, with reeds or without, as signals or incentives in war and for domestic amusement. Far later, and in imperial Rome, it acquired a more definite form of what is now called melody. The transition of its principles from those which ruled in the classic ages to those which had been slowly developed in the course of after centuries is veiled with a mist like that which obscures the setting of paganism and the dawning of Christianity. Many fallacies are still entertained as to the dated organization of music in the church, and none greater than its ascription to St Ambrose and St Gregory, and the credit given to Guido for the enunciation of its rules. From the end of the 10th century music was in England in advance of other nations until its rise in Flanders in the 15th, when still our forefathers kept abreast of their contemporaries. Throughout the ecclesiastical reign of scholarship, the untutored people had a music of their own, which in its tonal and rhythmical affinity to that of later date commands present sympathy, and which, throughout the North, having the element of harmony or the combination of sounds, was the foundation of all to which science and art have together attained. The Flemings planted schools in Rome, Naples, and Venice, and the rise of the art in Germany was due to their influence. Adopted from the people by the church, the art of harmony was reduced to a system under the name of counterpoint. Its artificial ordinances were broken through at the end of the 16th century, against violent opposition but with permanent success. Coincident with this innovation of principles was another innovation in the form of applying them, which was intended as a revival of antique use, but which issued, working together with the first-named change, in the establishment of the modern in music; these two were the discovery of fundamental discords and the originating of free musical recitation. The acoustical phenomenon whereon fundamental discords are grounded was first perceived in England, and this in the last quarter of the 17th century. Empirical rules drawn from the tentative practices of great musicians were from time to time enunciated; but no theory till that described in the last foregoing paragraph probed the natural principles upon which, unknowingly, masters have wrought, nor distinguished between these and the ingenious artifices whereby in former times musical etymology and syntax were regulated. The development of plan or design in musical composition has been the fruition of the last two centuries, and, in spite of all dispute as to its paramount necessity, hope points to it as the everlasting standard of genuineness in art.

To distinguish allusions to the present time in comparison with former dates throughout this article, and to mark the period to which its narration reaches, statement must be made that it is completed in 1883. (g. a. μ.)

PART II.—SCIENTIFIC BASIS.

Musical sounds reach our ears through the air. This is proved by showing that a sounding body placed in a space void of air, as under the receiver of an air-pump, is unable to emit sound. It will be sufficient for our present purpose to admit that musical sounds are transmitted through the air with substantially unchanged quality, even to great distances. The law according to which the apparent intensity of a musical sound diminishes as it spreads itself over an increasing surface of air is as yet uncertain; we can only say with certainty that it does diminish.

The origin of musical sound consists in the regular periodic vibration of some surface in contact with air, whereby motion is imparted to the air, and thus transmitted to the ear. Experience tells us as follows :—

1. Regular repetition is characteristic of those motions which give rise to musical sounds.

2. The pitch of the note produced depends on the time in which the motion takes place.

3. The loudness or intensity of the note depends on the magnitude of the motion and on the pitch.

4. The quality of the note depends on the form or shape of the motion, that is to say, on the manner in which it is executed within the time in which it takes place.

1. Regular repetition characterizes musical notes; irregularity in the movements in successive periods characterizes unmusical noises. This is most usefully illustrated by cases in which false notes are obtained. Strings, for instance, sometimes cannot be tuned. In these cases the motion can frequently be seen to be irregular.

2. The time in which the motion takes place is defined conveniently by the number of times the whole motion is repeated in a second. The number which expresses this may be called the vibration number, or the frequency of the note. Pitch, then, is defined by frequency. Notes of different frequencies present sounds to the ear which are essentially different from one another. The physical analogy based on frequency would compare notes of different pitch to light of different colours; this analogy does not, however, extend to the nature of the perceptions. The notes of a uniform instrument present a closer analogy with a definite colour in virtue of their uniform quality, so far as perception goes. And from this point of view there is nothing in the perception of colour analogous to the perception of difference of pitch in music. In speaking of the perception of combinations of notes we shall see that the ear possesses, in a more or less perfect form, the power of analysing combinations and hearing the notes separately. If we admitted the physical analogy between pitch and colour this would correspond to a power of seeing compound colours analysed into their constituents. This of course does not exist. Though we may know by experience what a compound colour consists of, no amount of experience will enable us to see the components separately in the same way in which we hear the notes of a combination separately. The modes of perception are therefore wholly different in the two cases.

When one note is produced by a motion whose frequency is twice that of another, a relation subsists between the sounds of the two notes which appears not to be capable of further explanation. They are said to form octaves with one another. It is easy to give some account of the formation of the octave regarded as a concord, but the inexplicable peculiarity of the relation consists in a sort of quasi-identity between the sounds of the two notes. Many persons cannot distinguish with certainty two notes an octave apart, particularly if the quality of tone employed be one in the use of which the observer is not practised, and this is the case even with ears of considerable acuteness and cultivation; but it does not apply to those ears of the highest class which possess the power of the recollection of absolute pitch. Such ears can usually distinguish octaves with certainty. But in all cases the similarity of effect between notes differing in pitch by one or more octaves will be admitted. It is a purely mental phenomenon, and no explanation can be given of it. If for a moment we recur to the physical analogy of colour simply for the purpose of illustration, the whole range of visible colour corresponds to less than an octave. The musical phenomenon of the similarity of octaves is as if part of the invisible spectrum, say in the ultra-red, excited a sensation having some similarity to the sensation of its octave in the visible spectrum, the two sensations being such that there is a continuous change from the one to the other. Nothing of the kind actually exists in the case of light. The actual impression on the nervous system of the ear which is concerned with the perception of pitch is believed to be substantially the same in different individuals. But the mental processes attached to this perception differ so widely that for all practical purposes the results are different in different individuals. The chief difference appears to consist in the different development of the memory of the actual sound of definite notes, which we may speak of as the perception of absolute pitch. This is developed in all degrees: from almost complete absence, in which case we have a want of musical ear arising from the failure to retain the pitch of a note heard even for the shortest time, to that highest degree of perfection in. which the memory retains permanently the sound of every note that is once heard. It is not believed that the possession of this memory is capable of cultivation to any considerable extent. It appears rather to be a natural gift, as it usually appears at once in childhood where it is possessed at all. Roughly speaking, and in the absence of reliable statistics, we may say that the possession of the perception of absolute pitch is distributed as follows :—say 1 per cent, possess it, 1 per cent, are entirely destitute of it, so as to be said to have no ear, and the remaining 98 per cent, or so possess it in a more or less modified form. Of this usual condition we may take as a type cases in which the mental effect of a musical note can be retained in the memory for some minutes.

We have to consider the musical perception of the class possessing the power, and of the numerically much larger class who only possess it in a modified form. A simple tune or melody produces the same effect in all cases as far as we know, except that those who have the perception of absolute pitch know what notes are employed, while others are only conscious of the intervals, i.e., of the relative pitch. All the analytical perceptions are as a rule much better developed in the case of those who possess the perception of absolute pitch than in other cases. In those whose perceptions fall below a certain mark the analysis of combinations of notes by the ear fails more or less entirely. In this particular, however, cultivation is generally possible. And this agrees with the assumption that the mechanism of the ear is generally the same. For the perception of differences of pitch is conceived to be due to a mechanism universally present, which effects the analysis of combinations by the same means by which the pitch is distinguished. The phenomena which give rise to this belief may be stated as follows. If we sound two notes together and cause one of them to change its pitch, we can examine the sensations produced by all sorts of binary combinations. If the two notes have the same pitch at starting, then when they separate beats are heard. Up to a certain point, which is not very far from the point where the two notes are half a semitone apart, the effect in the ear is as if one note was heard, having the alternations of intensity which constitute beats and a pitch generally intermediate between the constituent notes. At this distance of about half a semitone the ear begins to perceive the two separate notes beside the beats. As the distance between the constituent notes increases the two notes become more prominent, the beats grow fainter, and ultimately, when the constituent notes are a little more than a whole tone apart, the beats disappear and the two notes are recognized as separate and distinct sensations.

Now this observation is explained by Helmholtz’s hypothesis of the existence of a resonant mechanism in the ear. Just as a harp, or a piano with the dampers raised, will have the strings corresponding to any sound that reaches it set in vibration, so we suppose that there exists a collection of resonant bodies in the ear which respond to vibrations of pitch nearly coincident with their own. The question then arises, Is the range of sympathy, the distance at which a certain response is excited in the vibrating mechanism of the ear, the same in all cases?

It is easily seen that, if the above phenomena are substantially the same in all cases, the character of the mechanism must also be the same. The interval at which the two notes of a binary combination begin to be separately distinguished can be observed with considerable accuracy, and is critical in the matter. So far as such observations have been hitherto attempted, this interval is very nearly the same in persons of the highest type of ear, who have the perception of absolute pitch in an advanced degree, and in persons occupying a position not high among those who only possess the power of relative perception. In all cases, moreover, where beats are observed, the beats are the same to all persons, so far as our present knowledge goes. And as some of these beats arise within the ear itself, they depend upon the properties of its mechanism. The result is that, so far as ordinary observation goes, the main features of the mechanism of the ear may be safely pronounced to be the same,—in the great majority of cases, at all events. Some slight differences in this respect have been observed; but there can be little doubt that the great differences which exist in the endowment of the ears of different persons do not arise from differences in the receptive mechanism, but have their source in the nervous or mental actions which lie behind the mechanism. In this we are not referring to the differences which exist between the range of hearing in different individuals. These undoubtedly arise from what may be spoken of as differences in the compass of the receptive instrument in different individuals. These differences exist both at the upper and lower extremities of the scale. Those in whom the upward range is defective fail to hear the noises of certain insects, and are also unable to hear organ-pipes of very high pitch. The absence of the lower range of hearing is less well established.

The complete range of audible musical sounds comprises about nine octaves. It extends from the 32-foot C, two octaves below the lowest note of a bass voice, to somewhere about three octaves above C in alt. The upper notes of this range are not audible to some persons. Organ-pipes are made having notes covering this whole range, except about the top half-octave. The position of notes is so frequently referred to the length of the corresponding organpipe that it is convenient here to give these lengths, with the usual notation for the notes to which they correspond. 2 octaves above.

- c τι ∣ inch.

8va. ⅛

— ~ C v 1J inches.

8va. ~^*~ — f? or j ·: · ,— C ιv c in altissimo. 3 inches,

* y c√

— C ιπ c in alt. 6 inches.

— _=: C π C treble. 1 foot.

∣^==== C 1 c middle. 2 feet.

* -= C o c tenor. 4 feet.

- ≡ C Great c. 8 feet.

⅜Ξ ~Γ~≡ ,C or C 16 feet.

—≡-

⅛≡Ξ≡ „C or C 32 feet.

2 octaves below. N.B.— The letter notation is continued from each C upwards through the octave, and changes at the next C above.

The normal perception of pitch does not, however, cover all this range. Its extent varies much in different individuals. We cannot assume that pitch can be completely perceived in the normal manner in either the uppermost octave or the lowest octave of the foregoing range. The lower half of the uppermost octave is easily examined, wherever an organ is available, by drawing the fifteenth alone and sounding the notes of the upper half octave of the keyboard. These notes will generally be heard as sounds, but if a bit of a melody be sounded on them, for instance a simple scale passage, it will generally be found unrecognizable. The same is the case with the lowest octave lying between the 16-foot and 32-foot notes. There has been considerable doubt as to the reality of the notes which profess to occupy this position. All instruments sound notes of a complex character, which include sounds of a higher pitch than the nominal note, in fact the harmonics, of which the nominal note is the fundamental. And doubts have been raised, which have in some cases proved to be well founded, whether the deep notes in question really contain any of the nominal note or fundamental at all, and do not rather consist entirely of harmonics, or of sounds whose real pitch is much higher than the nominal one.

These doubts have been settled in the case of the low notes of the organ by the process of analysis by beats. Where two notes differing slightly in pitch form beats, the number of beats in a second is equal to the difference of the frequencies. If, then, the frequencies of the notes sounded differ by one vibration per second nearly, there will be one beat per second; if they differ by two or three per second there will be two or three beats. The frequencies of the two lowest notes of the 32-foot range are sufficiently nearly— C =17

C#=18.

If, therefore, C and C⅛ are true notes they should give about one beat per second. The octaves of these notes give about two beats per second, and the twelfths give about three beats per second. The notes of large-scale open 32-foot pipes when thus tested give one beat per second. The notes of stopped pipes vary very much according to the scale and voicing, but in these low notes no fundamental has as yet been detected. They always present the three beats characteristic of the twelfth.

This is contrary to the statement, long accepted on the authority of Helmholtz, that large-scale stopped pipes give nearly pure tones. It does not appear that that statement was ever verified, and it appears not to be correct. 32-foot stops are not very common, but these principles can be illustrated with 16-foot stops. Here the fundamental beat is about two per second, the octave four, and the twelfth six for adjoining semitones at the bottom of the range. The same results are easily found. As a rule the large open 16-foot stops of the pedal give their fundamentals quite pure, while stopped pipes professing to speak the same notes almost invariably present the six beats of the twelfth, sometimes with and sometimes without fundamental. The conclusion we may draw is that the enormous power laid on to the lower notes of the organ enables the test of audibility to be made under most favourable circumstances, and that under these circumstances the limit of audible sounds can be carried down to a point close to the 32-foot C, or to a frequency of about 17.

The determination of the frequency or vibration number of particular notes was first effected by calculations depending on the mechanical theory of strings. Subsequently the method of beats was employed, and the first reliable determinations appear to have been made by this method, which was developed by Scheibler. The usual process consists of providing a series of notes each of which makes four beats with its next neighbour, whence every such pair has vibration numbers differing by four. The series extends over an octave, whence the total difference of frequency between the extreme notes which form the octave is known. And this number is equal to the frequency of the lower note of the octave. This method, however, is difficult of execution, and depends on a number of observations, each of which is liable to error.

The method described in most of the books depends on the employment of the “siren.” This consists essentially of a circular plate, revolving on an axis through its centre at right angles to its plane. Series of holes are aιτanged in circles, and puffs of air are sent through the holes as they move over fixed holes. In this way a known number of impulses is produced at each revolution. The revolutions are counted by a wheel work. With the more perfect forms of this instrument fair determinations of frequency could be effected by bringing the note of the instnιment into coincidence with that to be determined, and counting the impulses delivered during a certain time. But until quite recently there was great uncertainty as to the actual frequency of the notes in use. In particular, the forks sold some time ago as 512 for treble C were for the most part several vibrations higher. And the various forks sold as philharmonic have at different times represented a great variety of pitches. The pitch of treble C has in recent times varied between the limits 512 and 540, being almost exactly a semitone. A few of the principal pitches may be summarized as follows :— ⅞ — =512—old theoretical pitch.

518—equal temperament equivalent of French diapason normale. A = 435.

528—Society of Arts. Helmholtz’s theoretical pitch.

540—Modern concert pitch.

There is a tendency in practice to keep the pitch rising. This appears to arise from the habit among musicians of considering flatness in the orchestra or in singing a more heinous offence than sharpness. Everybody tries, at all events, not to be flat. Wind instruments made to concert pitch force the pitch up at all public performances. A rise is easily made, but a fall only with great difficulty. It will be seen that the pitch of the French diapason normale is the best part of a semitone below modern concert pitch, and the difficulty of getting it adopted is well known.

Forks stamped -with the numbers of vibrations are now issued privately by some of the principal musical firms, and they appear to be fairly accurate. Probably they are copied from certain series of forks beating four per second which have been constructed according to Scheiblers process, so as to furnish the vibration numbers.

The most easy and convenient way of settling the frequency of tuning-forks, or rather of adjusting any vibrating body to a standard note, appears to be by means of a uniform rotation machine controlled by a clock so as to revolve exactly once per second. A disk is mounted on the machine, having say 135 radial slits spokewise. A light behind the disk then throws 135 flashes per second. If a tuning-fork or other vibrating body be placed in front of the disk and looked at against the illuminated background, it presents a pattern which will be stationary if the fork be 135 or 270 or 405 or 540, or any other multiple of 135. If the fork is sharp the pattern moves one way, if flat the other. In this way the vibration number of a vibrating body is refeιτed directly to the clock, and the adjustment to the standard note is one easily made, and not requiring great delicacy of observation.

3. The loudness or intensity of notes undoubtedly increases with the magnitude of the displacements of which the vibrations consist, or rather perhaps with the magnitude of the changes of pressure which occur in the neighbourhood of the ear. It has been customary to speak of the energy of the vibration as affording a measure of intensity, and this is true from a mechanical point of view. But the subjective intensity or loudness is certainly not correctly measured by any of these quantities. Further, the same changes of pressure or the same mechanical intensity cause sounds which vary in loudness according to the pitch. Taking this last point first, it is easy to show that a given mechanical intensity produces a very much louder sound in the higher parts of the scale than in the lower. The simplest way of looking at this is to consider the work employed in exciting the pipes of an organ-stop. The upper pipes take only a small fraction of the wind, and consequently of the power, used by the lower ones, and yet the upper pipes appear quite as loud. It has been shown that with a particular stop the work consumed was proportional to the length of the pipe, and so inversely as the vibration number.

It has been maintained lately that the loudness of sound is measured by the amplitude of the motion, or by the changes of pressure, rather than by the mechanical intensity. The experiments on which this view is based consist of dropping weights from different heights. A weight m from a height h gives a certain loudness. Now let the weight be doubled, the question is whether the loudness remains the same when the height is halved, or when it is divided by √2. The experiments appear to prove that the latter is the case. The estimation of the loudness is difficult on account of the apparent change of timbre, but the experiments are carefully arranged and discussed, and appear to establish a prima fade case. The experiments are based upon Fechner’s law, and appear to afford proof of its applicability. Fechher’s law may be stated thus :— equal differences of sensation are produced by changes which are equal fractions of the whole excitation. Thus we may take the change in the mechanical excitation to consist in doubling it; then every time that it is doubled a change will be made in the sensation which is in all cases equally recognizable. The general probability of the truth of this will be seen by enumerating ten different magnitudes under which sounds may be classified; these represent fairly equal differences of sensation :—

Loud. Not loud.

1.2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10 fff ff f m f m P P PP PPP

Magnitude 1 serves for sounds louder than those used in music, 10 for sounds softer than those used in music,— microscopic sounds, so to speak. It seems reasonable, without going into detail, to assume that the mechanical ratio of any two consecutive magnitudes is the same. The general expression of this law is, The measure of sensation is the logarithm of the mechanical excitation. It appears probable that the ratio of energy corresponding to one of the above differences of magnitude is somewhere about 2 or 3. The corresponding ratio depending on amplitude or compression would be from 1 ’ 4 to 1*7, but these quantities are not known with any accuracy.

4. The pitch depending on the period or frequency and the loudness on the amplitude or magnitude of the changes, there remains on the one hand the quality of tone, and on the other the form of the vibration or the manner in which the motion takes place between the prescribed limits. These may be expected to correspond with each other, and in fact they do so. The peculiarities of form of vibration are most easily discussed in the case of a musical string whose vibrations are started or maintained in a given manner. The smoothest and purest quality of tone that can be produced is known as a simple tone. When a string produces a simple tone its motion is such that its shape at any moment is that of a curve of sines, and that every point of the string executes oscillations according to the pendulum law.

Simple tones are also produced by any vibrating surface which moves according to the pendulum law. The method for producing simple tones given by Helmholtz, and commonly employed, is to use tuning-forks as the sources of sound, and present their extreme faces to the opening of a resonator or air-chamber arranged so as to vibrate to the same note as the fork. Resonators may be conveniently made from wide-mouthed bottles with flat corks having holes bored in them. The dimensions are usually found by trial, though data exist for their calculation. Simple tones have also been produced by fitting a sort of organpipe mouthpiece into the corks of such bottles. The mouths require to be cut up much higher than usual; the notes produced are of an exceedingly full and pure character. Such bottle-notes can be blown from an organbellows, and being easily manipulated are very suitable for experiments on the properties of simple tones.

The law of Ohm states that the simple tone or pendulum vibration is that to which the sensation of pitch is attached in its simplest form. If the motion which constitutes the vibration of a note be of any other type, it is capable of being analysed by the ear into a series of simple tones according to what is called Fourier’s Theorem. This is most simply described in connexion with stretched strings, assuming that the notes which are exhibited in the form of the string pass over into the air through the sound-board without essential alteration of quality, which appears to be true in a general way. Fourier’s Theorem, as applied to a string, states that the motion of the string is equivalent to the sum of the motions which would result if there were a curve of sines of the whole length, two curves of sines each of half the length, three each of one-third the length, and so on,—the amplitudes being determined when the total motion to be represented is given. This equivalence is true mechanically; the law of Ohm says that it is also true for the ear. Hence a great presumption that the ear acts by a receptive mechanism obeying the laws of mechanics.

The notes formed by the division of a string into two, three, or more parts are commonly called harmonics. They are also called overtones; but this word includes such cases as those of bars, <fcc., where the notes produced by these divisions are not harmonious with the fundamental. Harmonics play an important part in the theory of consonant combinations, but the theory of consonance cannot be rested entirely upon the properties of harmonics.

Consonance and Dissonance.

It was already known in ancient times that lengths of the same stretched string having the ratio of any two small whole numbers form consonant intervals, or perhaps we may more correctly say smooth combinations, since the interval of a fourth (3: 4) is regarded as a dissonance in technical music, though it is a smooth combination. The question why smooth combinations are associated with small whole numbers is known as the Pythagorean question. The modern knowledge that the length of a given string is inversely as the vibration number refers the question more generally to vibration numbers rather than to lengths of string. This question has been answered by Helmholtz; we proceed to give a short account of his answer, with some slight modifications.

It has been long known that when two notes form an imperfect unison, or nearly form almost any smooth combination, flutterings or beats are heard. These have been already described in the case of imperfect unisons where two notes differ but little from each other in pitch. They exist also, in most cases, where two notes nearly, but not quite, form a smooth combination. According to Helmholtz, beats are the cause of the sensation of dissonance, and to seek further for this cause we must seek the cause of beats. We may note that this must be taken with some limitation, since the fourth is regarded as a dissonance, though it presents no beats. In the case of imperfect unisons there is no difficulty. Such beats have been long explained as arising out of the alternate coincidences and oppositions of the motions or pressures arising from the two sets of vibrations.

In other cases, however, this explanation is not applicable. Explanations similar in principle have been given by Smith, an English writer of the last century; but these only amount to reckoning the recurrence of certain configurations arising from the superposition of the two sets of motions. No hypothesis is made as to the actual nature of the receptive mechanism of the ear, and no attempt is made to determine of what sounds the beats consist, nor how such sounds arise. We have already seen that the ear receives separately notes which are more than one or two semitones apart. They appear to be received on different parts of the aural mechanism. The production of the beats in the case of imperfect fifths, octaves, &c., where the impulses fall on different parts of the receptive mechanism, appears therefore to be due to secondary causes rather than to the direct superposition of the impulses.

Beats of Harmonics.— This class of beats arises from the fact that in compound notes containing harmonics a pair of notes representing two small whole numbers gives rise to the coincidence of a pair of harmonics forming a unison, and, if the interval be mistuned, the harmonics form an imperfect unison. Beats of this description are easily identified by the pitch of the harmonics. The imperfect unison gives rise to alternations of sound and silence, or to variations of intensity, of a note having the pitch in question. With practice these variations can be heard with the unaided ear. But the employment of resonators, tuned to the pitch in question and connected with the ear, causes the beat to be heard with great intensity.

Beats of Combination Tones. —When two notes are sounded loudly at the same time they give rise to the appearance of certain other notes within the ear, which are called combination tones. Call the vibration numbers of the two notes p and q. Then the first combination tone (Tartini tone, difference tone) has the frequency p-q. Other combination tones are also formed, whose frequencies are of the forms p - 2q, p - 3<∕, and so on. Each of these has its region of greatest intensity when its frequency is smallest consistently with its forming an audible sound. Thus the first difference tone (p-q) is most powerful when p and q differ only by one or more semitones, though the note is still recognizable by the beats it produces when p and q are a fifth or an octave apart. The beats of mistuned consonant intervals other than the beats of harmonics are produced by the formation of imperfect unisons between combination tones and primaries, or among the combination tones themselves.

Intervals of the form, h : 1.—These comprise the intervals formed between fundamental and harmonics. The beats of mistuned consonances of the form h : 1, other than the beats of harmonics, consist of variations of intensity of the lower note of the pair. This rule has been established experimentally by the employment of the pure notes furnished by bottles blown from an organ-bellows.

Octave. Let the notes be 100: 201. p - q = 101, which with 100 gives one beat per second.

Twelfth. Let the notes be 100: 301. p- 2q= 101, which with 100 gives one beat per second.

Double octave. Let the notes be 100: 401. p - 3q = 101. One beat per second as before, and so on.

These explanations satisfy the observation that the beats are on the lower notes of the combinations.

Other Consonant Intervals.— The chief remaining consonance which furnishes beats is the fifth. There is no doubt that the beats of the fifth, other than the beats of harmonics, are chiefly on the octave below the lower note. Hence the following explanation :—·

Fifth. Let the notes be 200: 301,

∕>-g ’ = 101

2q-p = 99

2 beats per second, an octave below the lower note of the pair.

Triad with Mistuned Third.— If a fifth be tuned perfect and a third inserted, the note two octaves below the lowest note of the triad can generally be heard distinctly. If the third be mistuned, beats are heard on that note.

Let the notes be 400, 501, 600,

501-400 = 101 600-501= 99

2 beats per second, two octaves below the lowest note of the triad.

There can be little doubt that the definition of consonances as intervals which can be tuned free from beats lies at the basis of almost all music. There can also be little doubt that the power of the perception or memory of absolute pitch, though sparely distributed, must ensure to those musicians who have it influence on the progress of the art. With these persons the influence of consonance or smoothness is generally subordinate to the recognition of the pitch of the notes used. Between these two elements scales of different kinds have been evolved in different parts of the world. These scales have almost invariably a basis of consonances, generally fifths. But when once developed the melodic effects almost invariably supersede the reference to the consonances in the ears of expert persons. The scales of different countries and systems, embodied in melodies, sound atrocious to those accustomed to other scales, quite independently of the consonant relations on which they are all founded in common.

The subject of Temperament deals with the general theory of the construction of scales from slightly mistuned consonances. (r. h. μ. b.)