A Popular History of the Art of Music Part 1

A Popular History of the Art of Music.

by W. S. B. Mathews.

PREFACE.

I have here endeavored to provide a readable account of the entire history of the art of music, within the compa.s.s of a single small volume, and to treat the luxuriant and many-sided later development with the particularity proportionate to its importance, and the greater interest appertaining to it from its proximity to the times of the reader.

The range of the work can be most easily estimated from the Table of Contents (pages 5-10). It will be seen that I have attempted to cover the same extent of history, in treating of which the standard musical histories of Naumann, Ambros, Fetis and others have employed from three times to ten times as much s.p.a.ce. In the nature of the case there will be differences of opinion among competent judges concerning my success in this difficult undertaking. Upon this point I can only plead absolute sincerity of purpose, and a certain familiarity with the ground to be covered, due to having treated it in my lectures in the Chicago Musical College for five years, to the extent of about thirty-five lectures yearly. I have made free use of all the standard histories--those of Fetis, Ambros, Naumann, Brendel, Gevaert, Hawkins, Burney, the writings of Dr. Hugo Riemann, Dr. Ritter, Prof. Fillmore, and the dictionaries of Grove and Mendel, as well as many monographs in all the leading modern languages.

I have divided the entire history into books, placing at the beginning of each book a general chapter defining the central idea and salient features of the step in development therein recounted. The student who will attentively peruse these chapters in succession will have in them a fairly complete account of the entire progress.

W. S. B. MATHEWS.

_Chicago, May 5, 1891._

INTRODUCTION.

I.

The name "music" contains two ideas, both of them important in our modern use of the term: The general meaning is that of "a pleasing modulation of sounds." In this sense the term is used constantly by poets, novelists and even in conversation--as when we speak of the "music of the forest," the "music of the brook" or the "music of nature." There is also a reminiscence of the etymological derivation of the term, as something derived from the "Muses," the fabled retinue of the Greek G.o.d Apollo, who presided over all the higher operations of the mind and imagination. Thus the name "music," when applied to an art, contains a suggestion of an inspiration, a something derived from a special inner light, or from a higher source outside the composer, as all true imagination seems to be to those who exercise it.

2. Music has to do with tones, sounds selected on account of their musical quality and relations. These tones, again, before becoming music in the artistic sense, must be so joined together, set in order, controlled by the human imagination, that they express sentiment.

Every manifestation of musical art has in it these two elements: _The fit selection_ of tones; and, second, the _use of them for expressing sentiment and feeling_. Hence the practical art of music, like every other fine art, has in it two elements, an _outer_, or technical, where trained intelligence rules, and teaching and study are the princ.i.p.al means of progress; and an _inner_, the imagination and musical feeling, which can indeed be strengthened by judicious experience in hearing, but which when wanting cannot be supplied by the teacher, or the laws of their action reduced to satisfactory statement.

3. There is no fine art which reflects the activity of spirit more perfectly than that of music. There is something in the nature of this form of art which renders it particularly acceptable to quick and sensitive minds. If evidence of this statement were needed beyond the intuitive a.s.sent which every musical reader will immediately give, it could easily be furnished in the correspondence between the activity of mind in general and in the art of music in particular, every great period of mental strength having been accompanied by a corresponding term of activity in music. Furthermore, the development of the art of music has kept pace with the deepening of mental activity in general, so that in these later times when the general movement of mind is so much greater than in ancient times, and the operations of intellect so much more diffused throughout all cla.s.ses, the art of music has come to a period of unprecedented richness and strength.

II.

4. The earlier forms of music were very simple; the range of tones employed was narrow, and the habits of mind in the people employing them apparently calm and almost inactive. As time pa.s.sed on more and more tones were added to the musical scales, and more and more complicated relations recognized between them, and the music thereby became more diversified in its tonal effects, and therein better adapted for the expression of a more energetic or more sensitive action of mind and feeling. This has been the general course of the progress, from the earliest times in which there was an art of music until now.

The two-fold progress of an education in tone perception, and an increasing ability to employ elaborate combinations for the expression of feelings too high-strung for the older forms of expression, is observable in almost all stages of musical history, and in our own days has received a striking ill.u.s.tration in the progress made in appreciating the works of the latest of the great musical geniuses, Richard Wagner, whose music twenty-five years ago was regarded by the public generally as unmusical and atrocious; whereas now it is heard with pleasure, and takes hold of the more advanced musical minds with a firmness beyond that of any other musical production. The explanation is to be found in the development of finer tone perceptions--the ability to co-ordinate tonal combinations so distantly related that to the musical ears of a generation ago their relation was not recognized, therefore to those ears they were not music. Wagner felt these strange combinations as music. The deeper relations between tones and chords apparently remote, he felt, and employed them for the expression of his imagination. Other ears now feel them as he did. An education has taken place.

5. It is altogether likely that the education will still go on until many new combinations which to our ears would be meaningless will become a part of the ordinary vernacular of the art. Indeed, a writer quite recently (Julius Klauser, in "The Septonnate") points out a vast amount of musical material already contained within our tonal systems which as yet is entirely unused. The new chords and relations thus suggested are quite in line with the additions made by Wagner to the vocabulary of his day.

III.

6. There are certain conditions which must be met before a fine art will be developed. These it is worth while to consider briefly:

The state of art, in any community or nation, at any period of its history, depends upon a fortunate correspondence between two elements which we might call the internal and the external. By the former is meant the inner movement of mind or spirit, which must be of such depth and force as to leave a surplusage after the material needs of existence have been met. In every community where there is a certain degree of wealth, leisure and a vigorous movement of mind, this surplus force, remaining over after the necessary wheels of common life have been set in motion, will expend itself in some form of art or literature. The nature of the form selected as the expression of this surplus force will depend upon the fas.h.i.+on, the prevalent activity of the life of the day, or, in other words, the environment.

Ill.u.s.trating this principle, reference might be made to the condition of Greek art in the flowering time of its history, when the wealth of Athens was so great as to leave resources unemployed in the material uses of life, and when the intellectual movement was so splendid as to leave it until now a brilliant tradition of history. Only one form of art was pre-eminently successful here; it was sculpture, which at that time reached its fullest development--to such a degree that modern sculpture is only a weak repet.i.tion of ancient works in this line. So also the brilliant period of Italian painting, when the mental movement represented by Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Lorenzo de Medici, and the pleasure-loving existence, the brilliant fetes, in which n.o.ble men and beautifully appareled women performed all sorts of allegorical representations, and the colors, groupings, etc., afforded the painter an endless variety of material and suggestion. When Rubens flourished in the Netherlands, a century later, similar conditions accompanied his appearance and the prolific manifestations of his genius. In the same way, music depends upon peculiar conditions of its own. They are three: The vigor of the mental movement in general, its strength upon the imaginative and sentimental side, and the suggestion from the environment in the way of musical instruments of adequate tonal powers. Such instruments never existed in the history of the art until about the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The organ, the violin and the predecessor of the pianoforte, the spinet, came to practical form at nearly the same time. At the same time the instruments of plucked strings--the guitars, lutes and other instruments which until then had occupied the exclusive attention of musicians--began to go out. Moreover, musical science had been worked out, and the arts of counterpoint, canonic imitation, fugue, harmony, etc., had all reached a high degree of perfection when Bach and Handel appeared.

7. The entire history of music is merely an ill.u.s.tration of these principles. Wherever there has been vigorous movement of mind and material prosperity (and they have always been a.s.sociated) there has been an art of music, the richness of which, however, has always been limited by the state of the musical ears of the people or generation, and the perfection of their musical instruments. The instruments are an indispensable ingredient in musical progress, since it is only by means of instruments that tonal combinations can be exactly repeated, the voice mastering the more difficult relations of tones only when the ear has become quick to perceive tonal relations, and tenacious to retain them--in other words, educated. Hence in the pages following, the instruments peculiar to each epoch will receive the attention their importance deserves, which is considerably more than that usually allotted them in concise accounts of the history of this art.

8. The conditions of a satisfactory Art Form are three: Unity, the expression of a single ruling idea; variety, the relief of the monotony due to the over-ascendency of unity (or contrast, an exact and definite form of variety); and symmetry, or the due proportion of the different parts of the work as a whole. These principles, universally recognized as governing in the other fine arts, are equally valid in music. As will be seen later, all musical progress has been toward their more complete attainment and their due co-ordination into a single satisfactory whole. Every musical form that has ever been created is an effort to solve this problem; and a.n.a.lysis shows which one of the leading principles has been most considered, and the manner in which it has been carried out. Ancient music was very weak in all respects, and never fully attained the first of these qualities. Modern music has mastered all three to a very respectable degree.

9. The art of music appears to have been earliest of all the fine arts in the order of time; but it has been longer than any of the others in reaching its maturity, most of the master works now current having been created within the last two centuries, and the greater proportion of them within the last century. Sculpture came to its perfection in Greece about 500 B.C.; architecture about 1200 to 1300 A.D., when the great European cathedrals were built; painting about 1500 to 1600 A.D.

Poetry, like music, representing the continual life of soul, has never been completed, new works of highest quality remaining possible as long as hearts can feel and minds can conceive; but the productions of Shakespeare, about 1650, are believed to represent a point of perfection not likely to be surpa.s.sed. Music, on the other hand, has been continually progressive, at least until the appearance of Beethoven, about the beginning of the present century, and the romantic composers between 1830 and the present time.

IV.

10. The history of music may be divided into two great periods--_Ancient_ and _Modern_--the Christian era forming a dividing line between them. Each of these periods, again, may be subdivided into two other periods, one long, the other quite short--an Apprentice Period, when types of instruments were being found out, melodic or harmonic forms mastered; in other words, the tonal sense undergoing its primary education. The other, a Master Period, when an art of music suddenly blossoms out, complete and satisfactory according to the principles recognized by the musicians of the time. In the natural course of things such an art, having once found its heart, ought to go on to perfection; but this has not generally been the case. After a period of vigorous growth and the production of master works suitable to the time, a decline has ensued, and at length musical productivity has entirely ceased. Occasionally a cessation in art progress of this kind may have been dependent upon the failure of one or other of the primary conditions of successful art mentioned above, especially the failure of material prosperity. This had something to do with the cessation of progress in ancient Egypt, very likely; but more often the stoppage of progress has been due to the exhaustion of the suggestive powers of the musical instruments in use. The composers of the music of ancient Greece had for instruments only lyres of six or eight strings, with little vibrative power. After ten centuries of use every suggestion in the compa.s.s of these instruments to furnish, had been carried out. If other and richer instruments could have been introduced, no doubt Greek music would have taken a new lease of life, _i.e._, supposing that the material prosperity had remained constant.

The apprentice periods of ancient history extend back to the earliest traces of music which we have, beginning perhaps with the early Aryans in central Asia, whom Max Muller represents as circling around the family altar at sunrise and sunset, and with clasped hands repeating in musical tones a hymn, perhaps one of the earliest of those in the Vedas, or a still older one. From this early a.s.sociation of music with religious wors.h.i.+p we derive something of our heredity of reverence for the art, a sentiment which in all ages has a.s.sociated music with religious ritual and wors.h.i.+p, and out of which has come much of the tender regard we have for it as the expression of home and love in the higher aspects.

All the leading types of instruments were discovered in the early periods of human history, but the full powers of the best have been reached only in recent times.

11. The art of music was highly esteemed in antiquity, and every great nation had a form of its own. But it was only in three or four countries that an art was developed of such beauty and depth of principle as to have interest for us. The countries where this was done were Egypt, Greece and India.

12. Modern music differs from ancient in two radical points: Tonality, or the dependence of all tones in the series upon a single leading tone called the Key; and Harmony, or the satisfactory use of combined sounds. This part of music was not possible to the ancients, for want of correctly tuned scales, and the selection of the proper tone as key. The only form of combined sounds which they used was the octave, and rarely the fifth or fourth. The idea of using other combined sounds than the octave seems to have been suggested by Aristotle, about 300 B.C. The period from the Christian era until about 1400 A.D.

was devoted to apprentice work in this department of art, the central concept wanted being a _principle of unity_. After the beginning of the schools of the Netherlands, about 1400, progress was very rapid.

The blossoming time of the modern art of music, however, cannot be considered to have begun before about 1600, when opera was commenced; or 1700, when instrumental music began to receive its full development. Upon the whole, the former of these dates is regarded as the more just, and it will be so used in the present work.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: KING DAVID, PLAYING ON THE THREE-STRINGED CRWTH.

(From a ma.n.u.script of the eleventh century now in the National Library, Paris.)]

Book First.

THE

Music of the Ancient World.

PRIMITIVE TYPES OF INSTRUMENTS, AND AN ARTISTIC MONODY, WITHOUT REAL TONALITY.

CHAPTER I.

MUSIC AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.