Chapter II: Engravings (6)

In one of his dialogues Plato declares that the philosophers are far more fortunate than the orators--“these being the slaves of a miserable water-clock; whereas the others are at liberty to make their discourse as long as they please.” To explain this passage, we must remember that it was the practice in the Athenian courts of justice, as subsequently in those of Rome, to measure the time allowed to the advocates for pleading by means of a water-clock. Three equal portions of water were put into it--one for the prosecutor, one for the defendant, and the third for the judge. A man was charged with the special duty of giving timely notice to each of the three speakers that his portion was nearly run out. If, on some unusual occasion, the time for one or other of the parties was doubled, it was called “adding water-clock to water-clock;” and when witnesses were giving evidence, or the text of some law was being read out, the percolation of the water was stopped: this was called _aquam sustinere_ (to retain the water).

The hour-glass, which is still in use to a considerable extent for measuring short intervals of time, had great analogy with the water-clock, but was never susceptible of such regularity. In fact, at different periods important improvements were applied to the water-clock. Vitruvius tells us that, about one hundred years before our era, Ctesibius, a mechanician of Alexandria, added several cogged-wheels to the water-clock, one of which moved a hand, showing the hour on a dial. This must have been, so far as historical documents admit of proof, the first step towards purely mechanical horology.

In order, then, to find an authentic date in the history of horology, we must go to the eighth century, when water-clocks, still further improved, were either made or imported into France; among others, one which Pope Paul I. sent to Pepin le Bref. We must, however, believe that these instruments can have attracted but little attention, or that they were speedily forgotten; for, one hundred years later, there appeared a water-clock at the court of Charlemagne, a present from the famous caliph Aroun-al-Raschid, regarded, indeed almost celebrated, as a notable event. Of this Eginhard has left us an elaborate description. It was, he says, in brass, damaskeened with gold, and marked the hours on a dial. At the end of each hour an equal number of small iron balls fell on a bell, and made it sound as many times as the hour indicated by the needle. Twelve windows immediately opened, out of which were seen to proceed the same number of horsemen armed _cap-à-pie_, who, after performing divers evolutions, withdrew into the interior of the mechanism, and then the windows closed.

Shortly afterwards Pacificus, Archbishop of Verona, constructed one far superior to all that had preceded it; for, besides giving the hours, it indicated the date of the month, the days of the week, the phases of the moon, &c. But still it was only an improved water-clock. Before horology could really assume an historical date, it was necessary that for motive power weights should be substituted for water, and that the escapement should be invented; yet it was only in the beginning of the tenth century that these important discoveries were made.

“In the reign of Hugh Capet,” says M. Dubois, “there lived in France a man of great talent and reputation named Gerbert. He was born in the mountains of Auvergne, and had passed his childhood in tending flocks near Aurillac. One day some monks of the order of St. Benedict met him in the fields: they conversed with him, and finding him precociously intelligent, took him into their convent of St. Gérauld. There Gerbert soon acquired a taste for monastic life. Eager for knowledge, and devoting all his spare moments to study, he became the most learned of the community. After he had taken vows, a desire to add to his scientific attainments led him to set out for Spain. During several years he assiduously frequented the universities of the Iberian peninsula. He soon found himself too learned for Spain; for, in spite of his truly sincere piety, ignorant fanatics accused him of sorcery. As that accusation might have involved him in deplorable consequences, he preferred not to await the result; and hastily quitting the town of Salamanca, which was his ordinary residence, he came to Paris, where he very soon made himself powerful friends and protectors. At length, after having successively been monk, superior of the convent of Bobbio, in Italy, Archbishop of Rheims, tutor to Robert I., King of France, and to Otho III., Emperor of Germany, who appointed him to the see of Ravenna, Gerbert rose to the pontifical throne under the name of Sylvester II.: he died in 1003. This great man did honour to his country and to his age. He was acquainted with nearly all the dead and living languages; he was a mechanician, astronomer, physician, geometrician, algebraist, &c. He introduced the Arab numerals into France. In the seclusion of his monastic cell, as in his archiepiscopal palace, his favourite relaxation was the study of mechanics. He was skilled in making sun-dials, water-clocks, hour-glasses, and hydraulic organs. It was he who first applied weight as a motive power to horology; and, in all probability, he is the inventor of that admirable mechanism called escapement--the most beautiful, as well as the most essential, of all the inventions which have been made in horology.”

This is not the place to give a description of these two mechanisms, which can hardly be explained except with the assistance of purely technical drawings, but it may be remarked that weights are still the sole motive power of large clocks, and the escapement alluded to has been alone employed throughout the world until the end of the seventeenth century. Notwithstanding the importance of these two inventions, little use was made of them during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. The water-clock and hour-glass (Fig. 144) continued exclusively in use. Some were ornamented and engraved with much taste; and they contributed to the decoration of apartments, as at present do our bronzes and clocks more or less costly.

History does not inform us who was the inventor of the striking machinery; but it is at least averred that it existed at the commencement of the twelfth century. The first mention of it is found in the “Usages de l’Ordre de Cîteaux,” compiled about 1120. It is there prescribed to the sacristan so to regulate the clock, that it “sounds and awakens him before matins;” in another chapter the monk is ordered to prolong the lecture until “the clock strikes.” At first, in the monasteries, the monks took it in turn to watch, and warn the community of the hours for prayer; and, in the towns, there were night watchmen, who, moreover, were maintained in many places to announce in the streets the hour denoted by the clocks, the water-clocks, or the hour-glasses.

The machinery for striking once invented, we do not find that horology had attained to any perfection before the end of the thirteenth century; but, in the commencement of the following it received its impulse, and the art from that time continued to progress.

To give an idea of what was effected at that time, we will borrow a passage from the earliest writings in which horology is mentioned; that is, from an unpublished book by Philip de Maizières, entitled “Le Songe du Vieil Pélerin:”--“It is known that in Italy there is at present (about 1350) a man generally celebrated in philosophy, in medicine, and in astronomy; in his station, by common report, singular and grave, excelling in the above three sciences, and of the city of Padua. His surname is lost, and he is called ‘Maistre Jehan des Orloges,’ residing at present with the Comte de Vertus; and, for the treble sciences, he has for yearly wages and perquisites two thousand florins, or thereabouts. This Maistre Jean des Orloges has made an instrument, by some called a _sphere_ or clock, of the movement of the heavens, in which instrument are all the motions of the signs (zodiacal), and of the planets, with their circles and epicycles, and multiplied differences, wheels (_roes_) without number, with all their parts, and each planet in the said sphere, distinctly. On any given night, we see clearly in what sign and degree are the planets and the stars of the heavens; and this sphere is so cunningly made, that notwithstanding the multitude of wheels, which cannot well be numbered without taking the machinery to pieces, their entire mechanism is governed by one single counterpoise, so marvellous that the grave astronomers from distant regions come with great reverence to visit the said Maistre Jean and the work of his hands; and all the great clerks of astronomy, of philosophy, and of medicine, declare that there is no recollection of a man, either in written document or otherwise, who in this world has made so ingenious or so important an instrument of the heavenly movements as the said clock.... Maistre Jean made the said clock with his own hands, all of brass and of copper, without the assistance of any other person, and did nothing else during sixteen entire years, if the writer of the book, who had a great friendship for the said Maistre Jean, has been rightly informed.”

It is known, on the other hand, that the famous clockmaker, whose real name Maizières assumes to be lost, was called Jaques de Dondis; and that, in spite of the assertion of the writer, he had only to arrange the clock, the parts of which had been executed by an excellent workman named Antoine. However this may be, placed at the top of one of the towers of the palace of Padua, the clock of Jaques de Dondis, or of “Maistre Jean des Orloges,” excited general admiration, and several princes of Europe being desirous to have similar clocks, many workmen tried to imitate it. In fact, churches or monasteries were soon able to pride themselves on possessing similar _chefs-d’œuvre_.

Among the most remarkable clocks of that period, we must refer to that of which Froissart speaks, and which was carried away from the town of Courtray by Philip the Bold after the battle of Rosbecque in 1382. “The Duke of Burgundy,” says our author, “caused to be carried away from the market-place a clock that struck the hours, one of the finest which could be found on either side the sea; and he conveyed it piece by piece in carts, and the bell also. Which clock was brought and carted into the town of Dijon, in Burgundy, was there deposited and put up, and there strikes the twenty-four hours between day and night.”

It is the celebrated clock of Dijon which then as now was surmounted by two automata of iron, a man and a woman, striking the hours on the bell. The origin of the name of _Jacquemart_ given to these figures has been much disputed. Ménage believes that the word is derived from the Latin _jaccomarchiardus_ (coat of mail--attire of war); and he reminds us that, in the Middle Ages, it was the custom to station, on the summit of the towers, men (soldiers wearing the _jacque_) to give warning of the approach of the enemy, of fires, &c. Ménage adds that, when more efficient watchers occasioned the discontinuance of these nocturnal sentinels, it was probably considered desirable to preserve the remembrance of them by putting in the place they had occupied iron figures which struck the hours. Other writers trace the name even to the inventor of this description of clocks, who, according to them, lived in the fourteenth century, and was called Jacques Marck. Finally, Gabriel Peignot, who has written a dissertation on the _jacquemart_ of Dijon, asserts that in 1422 a person named Jacquemart, clockmaker and locksmith, residing in the town of Lille, received twenty-two livres from the Duke of Burgundy, for repairing the clock of Dijon; and from that he concludes, seeing how short the distance is from Lille to Courtray, whence the clock of Dijon had been taken, that this Jacquemart might well be the son or the grandson of the clockmaker who had constructed it about 1360; consequently the name of the _jacquemart_ of Dijon is derived from that of its maker, old Jacquemart, the clockmaker of Lille (Fig. 145).

Giving to each of these opinions its due weight, we confine ourselves to stating that, from the end of the fourteenth century to the beginning of the fifteenth, numerous churches in Germany, Italy, and France already had _jacquemarts_.

The first clock possessed by Paris was that in the turret of the Palais de Justice. Charles V. had it constructed in 1370 by a German artisan, Henri de Vic. It contained a weight for moving power, an oscillating piece for regulator, and an escapement. It was adorned with carvings by Germain Pilon, and was destroyed in the eighteenth century.

In 1389, the clockmaker Jean Jouvence made one for the Castle of Montargis. Those of Sens and of Auxerre, as well as that of Lund in Sweden, date from the same period. In the last, every hour two cavaliers met and gave each other as many blows as the hours to be struck: then a door opened, and the Virgin Mary appeared sitting on a throne, with the Infant Jesus in her arms, receiving the visit of the Magi followed by their retinue; the Magi prostrating themselves and tendering their presents. During the ceremony two trumpets sounded: then all vanished, to re-appear the following hour.

Until the end of the thirteenth century, clocks were destined exclusively

to public buildings; or they at least affected, if we may say so, a monumental character which precluded their admission into private houses. The first clocks with weights and the flywheel made for private use appeared in France, in Italy, and in Germany, about the commencement of the fourteenth century; but naturally they were at first so costly that only nobles and wealthy persons could obtain them. But an impulse was given which led to the manufacture of these objects more economically. In fact, it was not long before portable clocks were seen in the most unpretentious abodes. This of course did not prevent the production of expensive examples, either as regards ornamentation or carving, or in placing the clock on costly pedestals or cases, within which were suspended the weights (Fig. 146).

The fifteenth century has distinctly left its mark on the progress of horology. In 1401 the Cathedral of Seville was enriched with a magnificent clock which struck the hours. In 1404, Lazare, a Servian by birth, constructed a similar one for Moscow. That of Lubeck, which was embellished with the figures of the twelve Apostles, dates from 1405. It is proper to notice also the famous clock which Jean-Galeas Visconti had made for Pavia; and more especially that of St. Marc of Venice, which was not executed until 1495.

The spiral spring was invented in the time of Charles VII.: a band of very fine steel, rolled up into a small drum or barrel, produced, in unrolling, the effect of the weights on the primitive movements. To the possibility of enclosing that moving power in a confined space is due the facility of manufacturing very small clocks. In fact, one finds in certain collections, clocks of the time of Louis XI., remarkable not only for the artistic richness of their decoration, but still more so for the small space they occupy, although they are generally of very complicated mechanism; some marking the date of the month, striking the hour, and serving also as alarm-clocks.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine the exact date of the invention of watches. But, in truth, we ought perhaps to regard the watch, especially after the invention of the spiral spring, as only the last step taken towards a portable form of clock. It is however true, according to the statements found in Pancirole and Du Verdier by the authors of the “Encyclopædia of Sciences,” that at the end of the fifteenth century watches were made no larger than an almond. Even the names Myrmécides and Carovagius are cited as those of two celebrated artisans in such work. It was said that the latter made an alarm-watch which not only sounded the hour required, but even struck a light to ignite a candle. Besides, we know for certain that, in the time of Louis XI., there were watches very small yet perfectly manufactured; and it is proved that, in 1500, at Nuremberg, Peter Hele made them of the form of an egg, and consequently the watches of that country were long known as _Nuremberg eggs_.

We learn, moreover, from history that in 1542, a watch which struck the hours, set in a ring, was offered to Guidobaldo of Rovere; and that in 1575, Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, bequeathed to his brother Richard a cane of Indian wood having a watch placed in its head; and, finally, that Henry VIII. of England wore a very small watch requiring to be wound up only every eighth day.

It is not inappropriate here to remark that the time kept by these little machines was not regular until an ingenious workman, whose name has not come down to us, invented the fusee, a kind of truncated cone; to the base of this was attached a small piece of catgut which, spirally rolling itself up to the top, became fastened to the barrel that enclosed the spring. The advantage of this arrangement is, that owing to the conical form of the fusee, the traction of the spring acting as it relaxes on a greater radius of the cone, it results in establishing equilibrium of power between the first and the last movements of the spring. Subsequently a clockmaker named Gruet substituted jointed (_articulées_) chains for catgut; the latter having the great disadvantage of being hygrometric and varying in tension with the state of the atmosphere.

The use of watches spread rapidly in France. In the reigns of the Valois, a large number were made of very diminutive size, to which the clockmakers gave all sorts of forms, especially those of an acorn, an almond, a Latin cross, a shell (Figs. 148 to 150). They were engraved, chased, enamelled; the hand which marked the hour was very frequently of delicate workmanship, and sometimes ornamented with precious stones. Some of these watches set in motion symbolic figures, as well as Time, Apollo, Diana, the Virgin, the Apostles, and the saints.

It may be conceived that all these complicated works required numerous craftsmen. It was therefore considered proper to unite these artisans in a community. The statutes which they had received from Louis XI. in 1483 were confirmed by Francis I. They contained a succession of laws, intended to protect at the same time the interests of members of the corporation and the dignity of their profession.

No one was admitted as master but on proof of having served eight years of apprenticeship, and after having produced a _chef-d’œuvre_ in the

house, or under the supervision, of one of the inspectors of the corporation. The visiting inspectors, elected by all the members, as well as by the trustees and the syndics, were authorised when introducing themselves into the workshops, to look after the proper construction of watches and clocks; and if it happened that they found such as did not appear to be made according to the rules of art, they could not only seize and destroy them, but also impose a fine on the maker for the benefit of the corporation. The statutes also gave exclusive right to the accredited masters to trade, directly or otherwise, with all the stock, new or second-hand, finished or unfinished.

“Under the influence of these wise institutions,” M. Dubois remarks, “the master-clockmakers had no fear of the competition of persons not belonging to the corporation. If they were affected by the artistic superiority of some of their colleagues, it was with the laudable desire to contend with them for the first places. The work of one day, superior to that of the preceding, was surpassed by that of the day following. It was by this incessant competition of intelligence and knowledge, by this legitimate and invigorating rivalry of all the members of the same industrious community, that science itself attained by degrees the zenith of the excellent and the sublime of the beautiful. The ambition of workmen was to rise to the mastership, and they attained that only by force of labour and assiduous efforts. The ambition of the masters was to acquire the honours of the syndicate--that consular magistracy the most honourable of all, for it was the result of election, and the recompense of services rendered to art and to the community.”

Having thus reached the middle of the sixteenth century, and not wishing to exceed the compass assigned to this sketch, we may limit ourselves to the mention of some of the remarkable works produced during a century by an art that had already manifested itself with a power never to be diminished.

The clock which Henry II. had constructed for the château of Anet has long been regarded as very curious. Every time the hand denotes the hour, a stag appears from the inside of the clock, and darts away followed by a pack of hounds; but soon the pack and the stag stop, and the latter, by means of very ingenious mechanism, strikes the hours with one of his feet.

The clock of Jena (Fig. 151), which is still in existence, is not less famous. Above the dial is a bronze head presumed to represent a buffoon of Ernest, Elector of Saxony, who died in 1486. When the hour is about to strike, the head--so remarkably ugly as to have given the clock the name of the _monstrous head_--opens its very large mouth. A figure representing an old pilgrim offers it a golden apple on the end of a stick; but just when poor Hans (so was the fool called) is about to close his mouth to masticate and swallow the apple, the pilgrim suddenly withdraws it. On the left of the head is an angel singing (the arms of the city of Jena), holding in one hand a book, which he raises towards his eyes whenever the hours strike, and with the other he rings a hand-bell.

The town of Niort, in Poitou, possessed also an extraordinary clock, ornamented with a great number of allegorical figures--the work of Bouhain,

in 1570. A much more famous clock was that of Strasburg (Fig. 152), constructed in 1573, and which was long considered to be the greatest of all wonders. It was entirely restored in 1842 by M. Schwilgué. Angelo Rocca, in his “Commentarium de Campanis,” gives a description of it. Its most important feature was a moving sphere, whereon were represented the planets and the constellations, and which completed its rotation in three hundred and sixty-five days. On two sides of the dial and below it the principal festivals of the year and the solemnities of the Church were represented by allegorical figures. Other dials, distributed symmetrically on the façade of the tower in which the clock is situated, marked the days of the week, the date of the month, the signs of the zodiac, the phases of the moon, the rising and setting of the sun, &c. Every hour two angels

sounded the trumpet. When the concert was finished, the bell tolled; then immediately a cock, perched on the summit, spread his wings noisily, and made his crowing to be heard. The striking machinery, by means of movable trap-doors, cylinders, and springs concealed in the interior of the clock, set in motion a considerable number of automata, executed with much skill. Angelo Rocca adds that the completion of this _chef-d’œuvre_ was attributed to Nicolas Copernicus; and that when this able mechanician had finished his work, the sheriffs and consuls of the city had his eyes put out in order to render it impossible for him to execute a similar clock for any other city. This last statement is the more deserving to rank among mere legends from the fact that, independent of existing proof of the clock being made by Conrad Dasypodius, it would be very difficult to prove that Copernicus ever visited Alsace, or had his eyes put out.

A similar tradition is attached to the history of another clock still in existence, and which was not less celebrated than that of Strasburg. We refer to that of the Church of St. John at Lyons, made in 1598 by Nicholas Lippius, a clockmaker of Basle; repaired and enlarged subsequently by Nourisson, an artisan of Lyons. Only the horary mechanism now acts; but the clock is not on that account neglected by visitors, to whom the worthy attendants still repeat, in perfect faith, that Lippius was put to death as soon as he had finished his _chef-d’œuvre_. To show the improbability of this pretended penalty it is sufficient to remark, with M. Dubois, that even in the sixteenth century persons were not killed for the crime of making _chefs-d’œuvre_; and there is, besides, proof that Lippius died in peace, and honoured, in his native country.

To these famous clocks must be added those of St. Lambert at Liège, of Nuremberg, of Augsburg, and of Basle; that of Medina del Campo, in Spain, and those which, in the reign of Charles I., or during the Protectorship of Cromwell, were manufactured and placed in England, at St. Dunstan’s in London,[21] and in the Cathedral of Canterbury, in Edinburgh, and in Glasgow, &c.

Before concluding, and to do justice to a century to which we have assigned a period of decline, we are bound to acknowledge that some years before the death of Cardinal Richelieu--that is to say, from 1630 to 1640--artists of ability made praiseworthy efforts to create a new era in horology. But the improvements they had in view were directed much more to the processes of the construction of the several parts composing the clockwork of watches and clocks than to the beauty and ingenuity of the workmanship. This was progress of a purely professional character, in order to create a more ready and inexpensive supply; a progress which we may regard as services rendered by art to trade. The period of great constructions and delicate marvels was past. Ornamental _Jacquemarts_ were no longer placed in belfries. Mechanical _chefs-d’œuvre_ were no longer set in frail gems. The time was still far off when, laying down the sceptre of that empire on which “the sun never sets,” the conqueror of Francis I., retiring to a cloister, employed himself in the construction of the most complicated clockwork. Charles V. had as assistant, if not as teacher, in his work the learned mathematician, Jannellus Turianus, whom he had induced to join him in his retreat. It is said that he enjoyed nothing so much as seeing the monks of Saint-Just standing amazed before his alarum watches and automaton clocks; but it is also stated that he manifested the greatest despair when obliged to admit it was as impossible to establish perfect concord among clocks as among men.

In truth, Galileo had not yet arrived to observe and formulate the laws of the pendulum, which Huygens was happily to apply to the movements of horology.

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.

Music in the Middle Ages.--Musical Instruments from the Fourth to
the Thirteenth Century.--Wind Instruments: the Single and Double
Flute, the Pandean Pipes, the Reed-pipe, the Hautboy, the
Flageolet, Trumpets, Horns, _Olifants_, the Hydraulic Organ, the
Bellows-Organ.--Instruments of Percussion: the Bell, the Hand-bell,
Cymbals, the Timbrel, the Triangle, the _Bombulum_,
Drums.--Stringed Instruments: the Lyre, the Cithern, the Harp, the
Psaltery, the _Nable_, the _Chorus_, the _Organistrum_, the Lute
and the Guitar, the _Crout_, the _Rote_, the Viola, the _Gigue_,
the Monochord.

The history of Music in the Middle Ages would commence about the fourth century of our era. In the sixth century, Isidore of Seville, in his “Sentiments sur la Musique,” writes as follows:--“Music is a modulation of the voice, and also an accordance of several sounds and their simultaneous union.”

About 384, St. Ambrose, who built the Cathedral of Milan, regulated the mode in which psalms, hymns, and anthems should be performed, by selecting from Greek chants those melodies he considered best adapted to the Latin Church.

In 590, Gregory the Great, in order to remedy the disorder which had crept into ecclesiastical singing, collected all that remained of the ancient Greek melodies, with those of St. Ambrose and others, and formed the antiphonary which is called the _Centonien_, because it is composed of chants of his selection. Henceforward, ecclesiastical chanting obtained the name of _Gregorian_; it was adopted into the whole of the Western Church, and maintained its position almost unaltered down to the middle of the eleventh century.

It is thought that originally the music of the antiphonary was noted in accordance with Greek and Roman usage--a notation known as the _Boethian_, from the name of Boethius the philosopher, by whom we are informed that in his time (that is, about the end of the fifth century) the notation was composed of the first fifteen letters of the alphabet.

The sounds of the octave were represented--the major by _capital_ letters, the minor by _small_ letters, as follows:--

Major mode A B C D E F G Minor mode a b c d e f g

Some fragments of music of the eleventh century are still preserved, in which the notation is represented by letters having above them the signs of another kind of notation called _neumes_ (Fig. 154).

_Musical Notation expressed in Modern Signs, the Text and Translation of the Lament on Charlemagne._

Fran ci Ro ma ni at que cun cti cre du li, Luc tu pun gun tur et mag na mo les ti a in fan tes, se nes glo ri o si prin ci pes Nam clan git or bis de trimentum Ka ro li Heu mi hi mi se ro!]

A solis ortu usque ad occidua
Littora maris, planctus pulsat pectora;
Ultra marina agmina tristitia
Tetigit ingens cum errore nimio.
Heu! me dolens, plango.

Franci, Romani, atque cuncti creduli,
Luctu punguntor et magna molestia,
Infantes, senes, gloriosi principes;
Nam clangit orbis detrimentum Karoli.
Heu! mihi misero!

From the East to the Western shores,
sorrow agitates every heart; and inland,
this vast grief saddens armies.
Alas! in my grief, I, too, weep.

French, Romans, and all believers are
plunged into mourning and profound
grief: children, old men, and illustrious
princes; for the whole world deplores the
loss of Charlemagne.
Alas! miserable me!

About the fourth century the _neumes_ were in use in the Greek Church; they are spoken of by St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Certain modifications in them were introduced by the Lombards and Saxons.

“They were specially in use from the eighth to the twelfth century,” says M. Coussemaker, in his learned work, “Histoire de l’Harmonie au Moyen Age,” “and consisted of two sorts of signs: some formed like commas, dots, or small inclined or horizontal strokes, which represented isolated sounds; others in the shape of hooks, and strokes variously twisted and joined, expressing groups of sound composed of various intervals.

“These commas, dots, and inclined or horizontal strokes were the origin of the long notes, the breve and the semibreve, and afterwards of the square notation still in use in the _plain-chant_ of the Church. The hook-shaped signs and the variously twisted and joined strokes gave rise to the ligatures and connections of notes.

“From the eighth to the end of the twelfth century--that is, during one of the brightest periods of musical liturgy--the _neumes_ were the notation exclusively adopted over the whole of Europe, both in ecclesiastical singing and also in secular music. From the end of the eleventh century, this system of notation was established in France, Italy, Germany, England, and Spain.”

The chief modification to which the notation of music was subject at the end of the eleventh century is due to the monk Guido, of Arezzo. In order to facilitate the reading of the _neumes_, he invented placing them on lines, and these lines he distinguished by colours. The second, that of the _fa_, was red; the fourth, that of the _ut_, was green; the first and the third are only traced on the vellum with a pen. In order that the seven notes should be better impressed upon the memory, he gave as an example the three first lines of the Hymn of St. John the Baptist, in which the syllables _ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la_, corresponded to the signs of the gamut:--

“_Ut_ queant laxis _Re_sonare fibris
_Mi_ra gestorum _Fa_muli tuorum,
_Sol_ve polluti _La_bii reatum,
Sancte Joannes.”

The choristers, in singing this hymn, slightly raised the intonation of each of the italicised syllables, which were soon adopted for indicating six of the notes of the gamut. To supply the seventh, which was not named in this system, the barbarous theory of _muances_ (divisions) was introduced, and it was not until the seventeenth century the term _si_ was applied in France.

But after the commencement of the tenth century many individuals, and especially poets, had invented rhythmical songs, which were entirely different from those of the Church. “Harmony formed by successions of various intervals,” as we are told by the author whom we have before quoted, “obtained in the eleventh century the name of _discantus_, in old French _déchant_. Francon de Cologne is the most ancient author who makes use of this word. During the whole course of the eleventh century the composition of melody was independent of harmony, and henceforth the composition of music was divided into two very distinct parts. The people, and poets and persons in high life, constructed the melody and the words; but being ignorant of the science of music, they resorted to a professional musician to have their inspirations written down. The first were very justly called _trouvères_ (_trobadori_), the others the _déchanteurs_, or harmonisers. Harmony was then only adapted for two voices--a combination of fifths, and of movements in unison.

“In the twelfth century, the construction of melody continued to be in the hands of poets. The _déchanteurs_ or harmonisers were the professional musicians. Popular songs became very numerous. Troubadours multiplied all over Europe, and the greatest lords deemed it an honour to cultivate both poetry and music. Germany had her ‘master-singers,’ who were in request at every court. In France, the Châtelain de Coucy, the King of Navarre, the Comte de Béthune, the Comte d’Anjou, and a hundred others acquired a brilliant reputation by songs, of which they composed both the words and the melody. The most celebrated of these _trouvères_ was Adam de la Halle, who flourished in 1260.”

In the fourteenth century, the name of _counterpoint_ was substituted for that of _déchant_; and in 1364, at the coronation of Charles V. at Rheims, a mass was sung which was written in four parts, composed by Guillaume de Machault, poet and musician.

Among the ancients the number of musical instruments was considerable, but their names were even still more numerous, because derived from the shape, the material, the nature and character of the instruments, all of which varied infinitely, according to the whim of the maker or the musician. Added to this, every country had its national instruments; and as each in its own language designated them by descriptive names, the same instrument appeared under ten different denominations, and a similar name was applied to ten instruments. However, having nothing but monumental representation to guide us, and in the absence of the instruments themselves, an almost inextricable confusion arises.

The Romans carried back to their own country, as the results of conquest, specimens of most of the musical instruments they found in use in the countries subdued by them. Thus Greece supplied Rome with nearly all the soft instruments of the class of lyres and flutes. Germany and the northern provinces, being inhabited by warlike races, gave to their conquerors the taste for loud-sounding instruments, such as trumpets and drums. Asia, and Judæa especially, which had multiplied various kinds of metal-instruments for use in their religious ceremonies, were the means of naturalising in Roman music deep-toned instruments of the class of bells and tom-toms (a kind of drum). Egypt introduced into Italy the timbrel along with the worship of Isis. Byzantium had no sooner invented the first pneumatic organs than the new religion of Christ took possession of them for exclusive consecration to its service, both in the East and in the West.

All the musical instruments of the known world had therefore taken refuge, as it were, in the capital of the Roman empire; but their fate was only to disappear and sink into oblivion after they had played their part in the last pomps of that falling empire, and in the final festivals of the ancient mythology. In a letter in which he specially treats of “various kinds of musical instruments,” St. Jerome, who lived from 331 to 420, speaks of those which were in use in his time for the requirements of religion, war, ceremonial, and art. He mentions, in the first place, the organ, and describes it as composed of fifteen brazen pipes, two air-reservoirs of elephant’s skin, and twelve large sets of bellows, “to imitate the voice of thunder.” He next specifies, under the generic name of _tuba_, several kinds of trumpets: that which called the people together, that which directed the march of troops, that which proclaimed the victory, that which sounded the charge against the enemy, that which announced the closing of the gates, &c. One of these trumpets, the shape of which is rather difficult to gather from his description, had three brazen bells, and _roared through four air-conduits_. Another instrument, the _bombulum_, which must have made a frightful uproar, was, as far as we can conjecture from the text of the pious writer, a kind of peal of bells attached to a hollow metallic column which, by the assistance of twelve pipes, reverberated the sounds of twenty-four bells that were set in motion by one another. Next come the _cithara_ of the Hebrews, in the shape of a triangle, furnished with twenty-four strings; the sackbut, of Chaldæan origin, a trumpet formed of several movable tubes of wood, fitting one into the other; the psaltery, a small harp provided with ten strings; and lastly, the _tympanum_, also called the _chorus_, a hand-drum to which were fixed two metal flute-tubes.

A nomenclature of a similar kind, applying to the ninth century, exists in a history of Charlemagne, in Latin verse, by Aymeric de Peyrac. This shows as that, during the lapse of four centuries, the number of instruments had been nearly doubled, and that the musical influence of Charlemagne’s reign had made itself felt in the revival and improvement of several instruments which had been formerly abandoned. This curious metrical composition enumerates all the stringed, wind, and pulsatile instruments which celebrated the praise of the great emperor, the protector and restorer of music. The number of instruments specified are twenty-four in number, among which we find nearly all those mentioned by St. Jerome.

The names, therefore, of musical instruments had passed through seven or eight centuries without undergoing any kind of change than that naturally resulting from variations in the language. But the instruments themselves, during this long interval of time, had been often modified to such extent that the primitive denomination not unfrequently appeared to contradict the musical characteristics of the instrument to which it still continued to be attached. Thus, the _chorus_, which had been a four-stringed harp, and from its name seems to indicate a collection of instruments, had become a wind-instrument.[22] So also the psaltery, which was originally touched by a _plectrum_ (stick) or with the fingers, now only gave forth its notes under the influence of a bow; an instrument that had had twenty strings now only retained eight; another, the name of which seemed to refer to a square shape, was rounded; those primitively made of wood were now constructed of metal. There is reason to believe that, generally speaking, these changes were made not so much with the view of any musical improvement, properly so called, as with an idea of gratifying the

fancy of the eye (Figs. 155 to 157). Scarcely any fixed rules for the construction of musical instruments existed before the sixteenth century, when learned musicians applied mathematical principles to the theory of manufacture. Down to 1589 musical instruments were made in Paris by workmen who were organ-makers, lute-makers, or even coppersmiths, under the inspection and guarantee of the community of musicians; but at this epoch the makers of musical instruments were united in a trade corporation, and obtained, through the goodwill of Henry III., certain privileges and special statutes.

As musical instruments have always been divided into three particular classes,--stringed, pulsatile, and wind instruments,--we shall adopt this natural division in passing under review the various kinds in use during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. We shall not, however, pretend to be always able to point out the precise musical value of these instruments, for in several instances we have no knowledge of them, except from representations more or less truthful.

The class of wind instruments comprised flutes, trumpets, and organs; each of these was, however, subdivided into several very distinct kinds. In the division of flutes alone, for instance, we find the straight flute, the double flute, the side-mouthed or German flute, the Pandean pipes, the _chorus_, the _calamus_, the bagpipes (_muse_ or _mousette_), the _doucine_ or hautboy, the _flaïos_ or flageolet, &c.

The flute is the most ancient of musical instruments; even in the Middle Ages no orchestra was considered complete which did not contain an entire order of flutes, differing both in shape and tone. In principle, the simple flute, or _flûte à bec_, consisted of a straight pipe of hard and sounding wood, made in one piece, and pierced with four or six holes. But the number of holes being successively increased to eleven, and the pipe being enlarged to a length of seven or eight feet, the result was that the fingers were unable to act simultaneously upon all the openings; thus, in order to close the two holes farthest from the mouthpiece, keys were attached to the body of the flute which the instrumentalist acted on with his foot.

The simple flute, of greater or less length, is seen on the figured monuments of every epoch. The double flute, which was equally in use, had, as its name indicates, two pipes, generally of unequal lengths; the _left-hand_ tube, which was the shortest and therefore called the _feminine_, produced shrill sounds, while the _right-hand_, or _masculine_, gave the low notes. Whether these two tubes were united or were separate, this flute had always two distinct mouths,--although they were often very close together--on which the musician played alternately. The double flute (Fig. 158) was the instrument employed in the eleventh century by the _jongleurs_ or jugglers as an accompaniment.

The side-mouthed flute, which was at first very little used, owed its celebrity in the sixteenth century to the improvements it received from the Germans, hence it acquired the name of the _German flute_ (Fig. 160).

The _syrinx_ was nothing but the ancient Pandean pipes, composed generally of seven tubes of wood or metal, gradually decreasing in length; they were closed at the bottom, and at the top took the form of a horizontal plane, which was touched by the lip of the musician as it passed along (Fig. 159). In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the syrinx, which must have produced very shrill and discordant music, was generally made in the shape of a semicircle, and contained nine tubes in a metallic case pierced with the same number of holes.

The _chorus_, which in the time of St. Jerome was composed of a skin and two tubes, one forming the mouth, the other the bell-end (Fig. 161), must have presented a very great similarity to the modern bagpipes. In the ninth century its shape had changed but little, except that we sometimes find two bell-ends, and the membranous air-reservoir is in some examples replaced by a kind of case made of metal or resonant wood (_bois sonore_). Subsequently this instrument was transformed into a simple dulcimer.

The _calamus_, called the _chalemelle_ or _chalemie_, which derived its origin from the _calamus_ or reed-pipe of the ancients, became in the sixteenth century a treble to the hautboy, the _bombarde_ being its counter-bass and tenor, and the bass being executed on the _cromorne_. There was, however, quite a group of hautboys. The _douçaine_ or _doucine_, a soft flute, the great hautboy of Poitou played the parts of tenor or of fifth. The length of the hautboy having been found inconvenient, it was divided into pieces united in a movable cluster (_faisceau_) known by the name of _fagot_. This instrument was afterwards called _courtaut_ in France, and _sourdeline_ or _sampogne_ in Italy, where it had become a kind of bagpipe, like the _muse_ or _estive_. The _muse de blé_ was a simple reed-pipe, but the _muse d’Aussay_ (or _d’Ausçois_, district of Auch) was certainty a hautboy. With regard to the bagpipes, properly so called, they generally bore the name of _chevrette_, _chevrie_, or _chièvre_, on account of the skin of which the bag was made. They were also designated by the names of _pythaule_ and _cornemuse_, drone-pipe (Fig. 162).

The _flaïos de saus_, or reed-flutes, were nothing but mere whistles, such as village children are still in the habit of making in the spring; but there were, says an ancient author, more than twenty kinds, “as many loud as soft,” which were coupled by pairs in an orchestra. The _fistule_, the _souffle_, the _pipe_, and the _fretiau_ or _galoubet_, were all small flageolets played on by the left hand while the right marked the time on a tambourine or with the cymbals. The _pandorium_, which has been classed among the flutes without its shape and character of tone being rightly determined, must have presented, at least at its origin, some similarity of sound to the stringed instrument called _pandore_ (_pandora_).

Trumpets formed a much more numerous class than the flutes. In Latin they were called _tuba_, _lituus_, _buccina_, _taurea_, _cornu_, _claro_, _salpinx_, &c.; in French, _trompe_, _corne_, _olifant_, _cornet_, _buisine_, _sambute_, &c. In most cases, however, they derived their name either from their shape, the sound which they produced, the material whereof they were made, or the use for which they were specially intended. Thus, among military trumpets of copper or brass, the names of some (_claro_, _clarasius_) indicating the piercing sound which they produced; the names of others seem rather to refer to the appearance of their bell-ends (Fig. 164), which imitated the head of a bird, a horn, a serpent, &c. Some of these trumpets were so long and heavy that a foot or stand was required to support them, while the performer took the end in his mouth and blew through it with full power of breath (Fig. 163.)

The shepherds’ horns, made of wood rimmed with brass, were a heavy and powerful kind of speaking-trumpet, which in the eighth century the Welsh herdsmen and those of the _landes_ of Cornouaille always carried with them (Fig. 165.) When the barons or knights desired to convey any signals rendered necessary either in war or hunting, they were in the habit of using horns of a much more portable character, which were suspended at their girdles; they used them, also, as drinking vessels when occasion required. At first these instruments were generally made of nothing but buffalo’s or goat’s horns; but when the fashion arose of working delicately in ivory, they took the name of _olifant_, an appellation destined to become famous in the old romances of chivalry, in which the _olifant_ played a very important part (Fig. 166). To cite only one example among a thousand, Roland, when overwhelmed by numbers in the valley of Ronceveaux, sounded the _olifant_ in order to call Charlemagne’s army to his aid.

In the fourteenth century, according to a passage in a manuscript in the Library of Berne, quoted by M. Jubinal, there were in bodies of troops _corneurs_, _trompeurs_, and _buisineurs_, who played under certain special circumstances. The _trompes_ sounded for the movements of the knights, or men-at-arms; the _cornes_ for the movements of the banners or the foot-soldiers, and the _buisines_, or clarions, when the entire camp (_ost_) was to march. The heralds-at-arms, whose duty it was to make the announcements or proclamations in the public ways, were in the habit of using either long trumpets, called _à potence_, on account of the forked stick whereon they were supported, or trumpets _à tortilles_ (serpentine), the name of which sufficiently indicates their shape. Added to this, the sound of the trumpet or horn accompanied or signalised the principal acts of the citizens both in public and private life. During the meals of great men, the water, the wine, and the bread, were heralded by sound of trumpet. In towns this instrument announced the opening and closing of the gates, the opening and closing of the markets, and the time of curfew, till the time when the horn and the copper trumpet were superseded in this function by the bells in church-towers.

Polybius and Ammianus Marcellinus tell us that the ancient Gauls and Germans had a great passion for large, hoarse-sounding trumpets. At the time of Charlemagne, and still more in the days of the Crusades, the intercourse that took place between the men of the West and the African and Asiatic races introduced among the former the use of musical instruments of a harsh and piercing tone. Then it was that the Saracen-horns, made of copper, replaced the wooden or horn trumpets. At the same period sackbuts, or _sambutes_ (Fig. 167), made their appearance in Italy: in those of the ninth century, we find the principle of the modern trombone. About the same epoch the Germans introduced great improvements into the trumpet by adapting to it the system of holes, which up to that time had been the characteristic of flutes (Fig. 168).

But among all the wind instruments of the Middle Ages, the organ was the one most imposing in its nature, and destined to the most glorious career. The only instrument of this kind known by the ancients was the water-organ, in which a key-board of twenty-six keys corresponded to the same number of pipes; and the air, acted upon by the pressure of water, produced most varied sounds. Nero, it is said, spent a whole day examining and admiring the mechanism of an instrument of this kind.

The water-organ, although described and commended by Vitruvius, was not much in use in the Middle Ages. Eginhard speaks of one constructed, in 826, by a Venetian priest; and the last of which mention is made existed at Malmesbury in the twelfth century. But this latter might be regarded more in the light of a steam-organ; for, like the warning whistles of our locomotives, it was worked by the effects of the steam of boiling water rushing into brass pipes.

The water-organ was, in very early times, superseded by the pneumatic or wind-organ (Fig. 169), the description of which given by St. Jerome agrees with the representations on the obelisk erected at Constantinople in the time of Theodosius the Great. We must, however, fix a date as late as the eighth century for the introduction of this instrument into the West, or at least into France. In 757, Constantine Copronymus, Emperor of the East, sent to King Pépin a number of presents, among which was an organ that excited the admiration of the court. Charlemagne, who received a similar present from the same monarch, had several organs made from this model. These were provided, according to the statement of the monk of Saint-Gall, with “brazen pipes which were acted on by bellows made of bull’s hide, and imitated the roaring of thunder, the accents of the lyre, and the clang of cymbals.” These primitive organs, notwithstanding the power and richness of their musical resources, were of dimensions which rendered them quite portable. It was, in fact, only in consequence of its almost exclusive application to the solemnities of Catholic worship that the organ became developed on an almost gigantic scale. In 951, there existed in Winchester Cathedral an organ which was divided into two parts, each provided with its apparatus of bellows, its key-board, and its organist. Twelve bellows above, and fourteen below, were worked by seventy strong men, and the air was distributed by means of forty valves into four hundred pipes, arranged in groups or choirs of ten, each group corresponding with one of the twenty-four keys of each key-board (Fig. 170).