Critical and Historical Essays / Lectures delivered at Columbia University

rn music. The novelty in the Gregorian chant consisted in its absolute emancipation from the tyranny of actual words and de

e serving for the display of clever tours de force, the music of the tragedies being merely a kind of melodious declamation.

l sounds. (2) Some definite manner of symbolizing sounds, so that they could be accurately expressed in writing. (3) A cultivation of the sense of he

w of the Greek modes in order to show how they were

d enharmonic styles had been abandoned in theory, the portamento which the singers intro

he Flemish monk, Hucbald (900 A.D.), divided this scale into regular tetrachords, begin

ithout influence on the

ved the idea of using syllables for these notes. The story of how it occurred to him is well known: On one occasion, hearing his brethren in the monastery choir of Arezzo, in Tuscany, sing a hymn to St. John the Baptist, he noticed that the first syllable of each line came on regularly ascending notes of the scale,

was formed of G A B C D E; the second, following the example of the Greeks, he made to overlap the first, namely, C D E F G A; the third, likewise overlapping the second, commenced on F. In order to make this hexachord identical in structure with, the fi

Ga

et our word for the scale, the gamut. The other notes remained the same as before, only that for the lowest octave capital letters were used; in

ent

ame ut re mi fa sol la; the second, which was called natural, C D E F G A, also became ut re mi fa sol la; and the third, which was called soft, F G A B? C D, became l

the keynote, re the second, mi the third, etc., etc. In time ut was found to be a difficult syllable to sing, and do was substituted. This change, however, was made after the scale was divided into a system of octaves instead of hexachords. The improvement in singing soon made the limits of the hexachords too small to be practical; therefore another syllable wa

t of six notes was called ut, the second, re, the third, mi, etc. When the voice had to go beyond la, the sixth note, to B?, that sixth note was always called re, and was considered t

achord was called soft. The B? in it was accordingly called a soft B or B molle, which is still the name in France for a flat, and moll in German still means minor, or "soft" or "lowered." For the fourth hexachord, which was called hard, this B was again raised a semitone. But the flatted B

nglish usage, since our flat is merely a slightly modified form of b. The German B natural is our letter h, which is merely a corruption of the square b, , which by the addition of a line in time became our ?. The Germans have carried the flatting and sharping of tones to a logical conclusion in their present nomenclat

n to the key. In F major, for instance, B? is si bécarré, A? would be la naturel. Our modern sharp is merely another form of the natural or square B (?) which gradually came to be used before any note, signifying that it was raised or sharped a half-tone; the flat lowered it a semitone, and after a while the natural received its present place between t

, we remember the invention of Aristophanes of Alexandria, his accents, high, low, and circumflex. Then we know from Ptolemy, B?thius, and Alypius that lett

idea, clearly expressed, has more chances of living than has a more complicated system, however ingenious the latter may be. Now this sy

later a sign for two steps was invented and when the progression was to be diatonically stepwise the strokes were thicker . So this notation developed, and by combining the many signs together, simple non-rhythmic melodies could be indicated with comparative clearness and simplicity. The flat stroke for a single note , indicating , eventually became smaller and thicker, thus . By combi

ed. This line represented a given pitch, generally E; above and below it were then written the signs for the notes, their pitch being determined by the relative position they h

lance that the music progressed a fifth, from F to C, or vice-versa. And now the copyists, seeing the value of these lines in determining the pitch of the different signs, of their own account added two more in black ink, one of which they drew between the F and the C line, and the other above the C line, thus . By doing this they accurately decided the pitch of every note, for the lowest line, being F, the line between that and the C line must stand for A, and the two spaces for G and B; the top line would stand for E, and the space betw

added on the next to the lowest line. This, in turn, became our present treble clef, . In the course of t

y disconnecting the parts of the sign one from another, the following individual signs were acquired . In order to have two distinct values of length, these signs were called longs and shorts, longa , and brevis , to which was added the brevis in another position , called semibrevis. The longa was twice the v

KING RICHA

moder

s we see, it consisted of a little stroke, which served to show the beginning of a new li

shown in the following chan

ntury used these forms of notes only, and even then restricted themselv

rrespond to the longa, brevis, and semibrevis . Also the number of note symbols was increased by

nvented, and the measure corresponding to our was indicated by placing the sign at the beginning of the line. This was called perfect. Then, for plain triple time the dot was omitted ; for time the sign was adopted, and for ordinary common time was taken. Consequently, when these signs were placed at the beginning of the line

enth century the notes began

xi

ng

ev

ibr

ni

which was

and the half semiminima thus became , and the next smaller values, and . Th

owing values and thei

xi

o

ev

ibr

ni

ima or

or cr

mi

r to avoid the confusion that would ensue if the rest stood for . B

the notes were to be played or sung twice as rapidly as would usually be the case, without, however, affecting the relative value of the notes to one another. Now we remember that the sign stood for our modern t