694 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



beautiful ones were — after the octave — the fifth and the fourth. 

 We have seen that the octaves in our music have obtained a certain 

 value of expression. The same is the case with open fifths and fourths, 

 which for chaotic and terrifying parts are almost a kind of musical 

 hieroglyphics; for example, the introduction to Beethoven's ninth 

 symphony wliich the open fifth dominates, and the entrance of the 

 marble statije in Don Juan which the powerful fourth intervals of 

 the drums characterize. The fourths and fifths have such a value of 

 expression only in very rich and deep harmony. In themselves 

 both intervals are just as neutral and inexpressive as the octave. 

 It is quite intelligible that in part songs the upper or lower voices 

 are placed in the fifth or fourth and that in the alternations both 

 voices occasionally hit upon these intervals. Such a combined tone 

 would naturall}^, however, not be perceived as expressive, but only as 

 a more clearly accentuated unison. 



Notwithstanding, only recently musical theorists have asserted with 

 great definiteiiess that the polj^phonic European music began with 

 open fourths and fifths. The assertion was supported with many 

 noteworthy citations from the "De Harmonica Institutione, " dating 

 from about 880 A. J)., which is ascribed to the Flemish monk, Hucbald. 

 The organum, or diaphony, of Hucbald introduces as a novelty the 

 progression of the melody in open fifths and fourths, or diapentes and 

 diatessarons. Now in our textbook of harmony the first rule is a 

 strong prohibition of parallel fifths and fom-ths. The prohibition is 

 based not on cold theory but on the distinct recognition of the fact 

 that the sound of such parallels is extremely disagreeable. One 

 must be very obtuse musically not to perceive this. If Hucbald 

 enthuses over the "lovely harmony which arises from such a combi- 

 nation of tones," he may indeed have been a great scholar, but he was 

 certainly an extremely bad musician, and we must ask ourselves 

 whether the good monk did not involve his chuicli in a fundamental 

 misunderstanding by taking up the polyphony practiced outside the 

 church, of which, from the schooling he had received from Boetliius, 

 he had grasped only the merest rudiments. 



The newest investigations of music have fulh^ established this view. 

 The work ''De Harmonica Institutione'' appeared about 880 A. D. 

 At least 30 years earlier Scotus Erigena published his ''De Divisione 

 Naturae." We will, following Hugo Riemann's "History of the 

 Theory of Music," listen to a critical passage out of tliis old work. It 

 says: 



The pong called organum consists of tones of different kinds and pitch which now 

 sound separately from each other in wide intervals in a well-ordered relation, and 

 now, in accordance Avith a certain established rule of the art applicable to the different 

 styles of church music, come together and thus produce a naturally pleasing harmony. 



From this passage two things are clear — fh'st, that with the dis- 

 covery of the so-called organum Hucbald had nothing to do, that it 



