Chapter I: The Cradle of Instrumental Music. (historical Review.)

I.

Primitive men were no doubt impelled to give utterance to their feelings by a desire for awakening sympathetic response in their fellow beings. Vocal manifestation of feeling developed into incipient melody, hence rudimentary scales. Gestures of dancing suggested rhythm. A fusion of both melody and rhythm led to contrast, and contrast implies symmetry of design. To emphasize rhythm combined with euphony, musical instruments were needed. Relics of certain species of these instruments are analogous to subsequent species of civilized nations.

Another source whence music can be traced is in the religious rites of the pagans.

Ancient history reveals diversified and wide-spread musical activity. The oldest representations of musicians are to be found on Egyptian monuments. Through contact with Oriental nations, Egypt possibly founded her system of intellectual music on extraneous principles. On the other hand, she probably influenced the music of the Hebrews, certainly that of the Greeks. Exemplification of Oriental instrumentalists is seen on Assyrian bas reliefs. One of these, in the possession of the British Museum, represents performers on a drum, a double-pipe, a primitive species of the dulcimer, and seven harps. The preponderance of stringed instruments suggests sensitive appreciation for modulated quality of tone. Constant reference to Hebrew music is, of course, to be found in the Scriptures. The classification of singers for temple worship during the reign of Solomon and of David, and the especial importance attached to song with instrumental accompaniment will at once recur to the mind.

Greece during her ascendency elevated music to a plane of importance only secondary to that of her sister art, poetry, whose handmaiden she became. Indeed, though both vocal and purely instrumental music were practised independently, prominence was bestowed upon the welding together of poetry and music as embodied in the Athenian tragedies. The Greeks possessed but a theoretical knowledge of harmony. Instrumental accompaniment probably duplicated the vocal melody in unison or octave, and may have added some simple harmonic intervals such as the fourth or fifth.

With the disorganization of Greece, music was transplanted to Rome, and, being no longer looked upon as an art, sank into degeneracy. Nevertheless, the fundamental principles governing the science of music as promulgated by the Greek theoreticians were rescued from oblivion by early Roman writers. And these principles, leavened by fragments of melancholy and contemplative strains of Hebraic melody, devolved from the early Christian neophytes, were destined to constitute the rock upon which all subsequent Western ecclesiastical music, even to the present day, has been built.

Review thus far tends to show that the objective of prehistoric and ante-Christian musical thought was primarily the emotional expression of human feeling. The growth of musical art was, moreover, amazingly dilatory as compared with that of the other fine arts.

II.

The next step to record is that of incipient harmonic effects, musical notation, the principles of design. And for centuries the art was now developed exclusively under the beneficent patronage of the Roman Church--persistently along vocal lines. For the Church adolescent discountenanced anything suggestive of pagan worship, or traceable to depraved Roman orgies. Consequently instrumental evolution lay quiescent. This was the age of dreary speculation, of highly ingenious and elaborately scientific artifice. Yet the results were but puerile. For even such rudiments of modern musical grammar as are readily mastered in our day by a mere child, were far beyond the perspective of the early scholastic monks, who arrived at a few tangible results only by the most circuitous methods. Nevertheless progress, though sluggish, is to be traced in logical sequence.

Beginning with the establishment of singing-schools by Pope Sylvester, and the Antiphons and Hymns of Ambrosius in the fourth century, it is but necessary to recall the documents of Boëtius and of Isadore in the sixth century, the reforms of the Gregories in the seventh and eighth, the _sequentiae_ of Notker in the ninth. More specific were the crude attempts at harmony in the ninth and tenth centuries as typified by Hucbald's organum; Guido d'Arezzo's notation in the eleventh; finally the adoption of mensural writing as attributed to Franco de Cologne, thirteenth, and Johannes de Muris, fourteenth century.

Thus under the guardianship of the Church, and upon a basis of what has ever been known as the Gregorian Chant, a decade of centuries had been consumed in learning to perceive and to apply the fundamentals of melody and of harmony, to discover an adequate interpreter, notation, and an accurate though flexible regulator, rhythm.

III.

Meanwhile the Folk-song, already mentioned in its primogenial character, reasserted itself as the annotator of lyric poetry, through the activity of the troubadours from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. Of these, the name of Adam de la Hale is, of course, best known. Just as combined Oriental and Greek traditions formed the substructure of the early ecclesiastical modes, so a fusion of the Gregorian Chant and the Folk-song resulted in the establishment of a second, and in this case more distinctly accretive nucleus. This was of incalculable service, primarily to subsequent secular music as a whole, eventually to instrumentation as a side issue. For the soul of the Folk-song finds expression in the melodic. And this natural mode of expressing natural emotion, amplified not alone by the peoples of the Romance nations and of the Teutonic races, but also quite especially by such as were of Celtic origin, infused life, color, and variety into the stiff and formal church style then in vogue. Again, _la gaie science_ required the art of accompaniment; consequently this long-neglected acquirement began to awake from its lethargy. So we find the troubadours accompanying their songs with a variety of instruments such as the crwth, the rebec, the lute, the harp, the viol.

The Folk-song has in the end proved to be the most enduring mode of expressing feeling, representing, as it does, the natural growth of a nation. Influenced by local temperament, climate, history, on every hand its distinctly indigenous characteristics have stood out in peaceful contrast to the eclectic polyphony of coexisting scientific attempts. And, as we know, although the Folk-song was eclipsed for a time by other forms, it was destined to play an important rôle. For its loftiest mission was realized not only in connection with the German Singspiel of the eighteenth century, but also through its application by the great classicists of the same period as contrasting theme for the Sonata-piece.

IV.

Continuing our chronological review, we trace the propagandism of Italian theoretical principles through France into the Netherlands. Here, during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, polyphonic vocal music was reared on the exalted pedestals of noble Gothic architecture. From Dufay--the connecting link between the French and Flemish Schools--through Ockeghem, Josquin des Près, Willaert, to Lasso, the supremacy of musical composition was conceded to the Low Countries, although simultaneous musical activity in Italy was by no means retrogressional. As for the labors of such men as Dunstable in England and Isaak in Germany, the former was not in the direct line either of technical or of æsthetic evolution, whereas the latter was trained in Italy and wrote in the Flemish style.

The concentrated results of this era consisted of the consecutive development of the technicalities of counterpoint, growing regard for euphony and expressive verbal interpretation, finally, the ascendency of objective emotionalism. Lasso, embodying in his works the highest ideals of polyphonic writing, transplanted them into Germany. Simultaneously, Palestrina, the greatest purist of Italian vocal writing, was at the zenith of his glory. France had produced Goudimel and Claude le Jeune. The music of England was prominently connected with such names as Merbecke, Tallys, Byrd, Morley. The Reformation was exercising a powerful influence upon the art of music in the development of the Chorale.

And thus in the second half of the sixteenth century, this wonderful array of coexisting phases of choral art stood prepared for something greater. Pure choral music had been perfected. The era of instrumental music was at hand. For in spite of the rare æsthetic beauty, the intricate yet lucid voice-leading, the admirable handling of human voices _en masse_ that signalize the works of Palestrina and Lasso, two essential elements, indispensable for further creative expansion, were lacking--rhythm and form. To attain these, new means and methods were necessary. Two possibilities presented themselves: solo singing, and instrumental music. Although both of these combined had been subjected to quasi-scientific experiment since time immemorial, the style of writing for them possessed as yet but little individuality. There was indeed much to be done before a permanent basis for modern tonality and modern instrumentation could be secured. The old modal system was still at the root of both sacred and secular music. Harmony was but the adventitious corollary of counterpoint. Only simple diatonic intervals were in use. Incipient harmony could not inspire men to think rhythmically. Pure church music was monotonous and vague. True, secular music in erudite form was influenced by the Folk-song, and showed some progress in rhythmic and simple harmonic effects. These in turn reacted favorably upon the sacred forms. Nevertheless, any attempt at developing motives as the synthetic germs of a composition was not to be thought of until the following century in connection with instrumental forms.

The pith of the conditions prevalent at the close of the era has been happily stated by Parry when he says: "It is as though the art was still in too nebulous a state for the essential elements to have crystallized into separate and definite entities."

(Summary on page 26.)