attention and applause. He is said to have kept up an establishment of five thousand singers and players on instruments. When about to put himself to death, he cried, "What a pity it is to kill so good a musician!" Soon after this period music began to decline in the Roman empire. The music of the Greeks, with the use of their instruments, sank into oblivion; and the slight knowledge of it which we now possess is gleaned entirely from the few ancient Greek treatises on the subject which survived the dark ages. 24 CHAPTER II. THE PROGRESS OF MUSIC DURING THE MIDDLE AGES, AND DOWN то THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.MUSIC OF THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES.-GREGORY THE GREAT.-NOTATION. THE ORGAN.-INVENTION OF COUNTERPOINT.-THE TROUBADOURS.-POPULAR MUSIC.PALESTRINA.-SACRED MUSIC IN ENGLAND.-PSALMODY.MADRIGALS.-MUSIC IN GERMANY AND FRANCE. MUSIC was employed from the earliest ages of the Christian church, in its religious service. What the music of the first Christians was, can only be matter of conjecture. But it may be supposed to have been similar to that which had formerly been used in the different countries where they dwelt. In Judea, the religious chants formerly used in the Jewish worship would still be used; and in other parts of the Roman empire, the new Christians would have recourse to the pagan hymns of the Greeks and Romans. That the music of the Christian church came to be generally borrowed from the Greeks, appears from the circumstance, that, when St. Ambrose, about the end of the fourth century, digested this music into a regular system, and established what has been called the Ambrosian chant, the nomenclature he adopted was entirely Greek. The different modes, or scales, on which this chant was constructed, were distinguished by the Greek names of Dorian, Phrygian, &c. About two centuries afterwards, the celebrated pope Gregory the Great improved and extended the limits of the ecclesiastical chant; and threw it into that form which, in the Catholic church, is retained at this day. Parts of the Catholic liturgy are still chanted, or recited, in a kind of melody, composed strictly according to the laws of the Gregorian chant; and with an effect wonderfully grave and noble, arising, partly from the simplicity of the strain, and its total dissimilarity to any of the music that is used on lighter occasions, and partly from the associations connected, as in the case of Gothic architecture, with its venerable antiquity. Of this character of the Gregorian chant our modern composers are so well aware, that they often employ it, on particular occasions, to heighten the effect of their sacred music. The music of these Gregorian chants, in the Catholic missals, is written in those ancient square characters which are usually called Gregorian notes; a term which has led to the supposition that Gregory was the inventor of these notes. This, however, is not the case. Gregory, indeed, made the very important step of applying the first seven Roman letters to the sounds of the octave, as is done to this day; but the Gregorian notes were not invented till many centuries after his death. About the middle of the fourth century, regular choirs were introduced into the churches. These were divided into two parts, and made to sing alternately, or responsively. This was called antiphonal singing, out of which the modern fugue has arisen. In this species of music, a certain phrase of melody, after having been sung by one portion of the choristers, is echoed by the others, at certain distances, and at a higher or lower pitch; and the successive accumulation of these different masses of sound, into one grand and harmonious whole, produces the greatest effects of which music is capable. Of such effects, the most sublime instances are to be found in the chorusses of Handel. The progress of musical notation from the time of Gregory the Great, may be traced in a few words. Gregory's method was the very simple one of writing the words, and then placing above each syllable the letter indicating the note to which it was to be sung. Several clumsy expedients were then adopted, of writing the words on parallel lines, placing each word on a higher or lower line according to the comparative height of the sound. The rudiments of the present system are to be observed in the method adopted about the ninth or tenth century, of drawing seven parallel lines, and expressing the notes by points placed on these lines. At last, the celebrated Guido d' Arezzo reduced the number of lines to four, and placed points not only on the lines, but in the spaces between them. This is the notation of the present day, in so far, at least, as the pitch of the notes is concerned; with this difference, that it has been found convenient to use five lines, in place of four. Down to this period, musical notes being used only to express the simple sounds of the chants of the church, the length of which sounds was regulated by that of the syllables to which they were sung, there was no occasion for any device for expressing the relative duration of musical sounds. But, when harmony came to be discovered, and music was written, consisting of different notes to be sung at the same time, it became necessary to mark the relative length of the notes, in order to keep the singers together. This was necessary even in the simplest kind of harmony, where, as in our psalm-tunes, all the singers had notes of equal length: and it became more and more indispensable when the harmony became more complex, and when a long note, in one part, was accompanied by two or more shorter ones, in another. In the rhythmical music of modern times, it is impossible to write down the simplest tune without determining precisely the relative length of each note. Marks for the length of notes seem to have been invented immediately after the time of Guido; and were first reduced to a regular and systematic form by Franco of Cologne, in a work which is still extant, intituled Franconis Musica et Cantus Mensurabilis. Franco's system, though its details have been extended and improved, remains to the present day, and is simply this; that a note, written in a certain form is to be considered as of twice or thrice the length of a note marked by another form. Guido and Franco of Cologne, therefore, may be held as the authors of musical notation; the subsequent changes being merely modifications of their inventions, rendered necessary by the improvements in music. The ORGAN is an instrument of great antiquity. The period of its invention is not clearly ascertained; but it appears to be established that an organ formed a present to king Pepin of France from the Greek emperor Constantine, in 757. During the tenth century the use of the organ became general in Germany, Italy, and England. The organ, however, of those times, differed very greatly from the instrument of our day. Du Cange has preserved a curious description of it in the following barbarous verses written by Wolstan, a monk, in the tenth century ;— Bisseni supra sociantur ordine folles, Sola quadragentas, quæ sustinet ordine, Musas. We find the following homely translation of these verses in Mason's Essay on Church Music. |