8320 On the Music of the Middle Ages. 
when those two notes formed the extreme notes of a musical phrase. 
It has been a subject of very keen controversy whether the F sharp 
and C sharp were not also used; but it is quite clear to me that 
they were unknown to the best periods of Gregorian Music, and 
owe their introduction chiefly to the organists of the 14th and 15th 
centuries, who made their final cadences on the Chord of the 
Dominant. I shall not lead you through the labyrinth of this 
vexed question, but I cannot help referring to a posthumous work 
of the Peré Lambillotte, recently published at Paris, in which the 
authority of Guido, which would be quite conclusive on the point, 
is attempted to be introduced in proof of the use of these two 
additional accidentals. Now having, on previous occasions, had 
some experience of the lengths to which even the best disposed 
persons will sometimes go in support of a darling theory, I have been 
induced to examine the passage quoted with the original text, and 
so far from Guido’s meaning being that which is attributed to him, I 
found that it is the very reverse. These are his words:! 
«When you have divided the Monochord into nine parts, and 
have found out a, then divide the string from that point into seven 
parts, and at the end of the first division you will find the first 
Diesis;’’ (which word is improperly translated by Lambillotte as 
sharp,) “between d natural andc. In like manner if you divide 
the string from the d into seven parts, in the same order, you will 
find the second Diesis between e and f.” 
So that in point of fact instead of the notes spoken of by Guido, 
being C sharp and F sharp, or notes between C and D, and F and G, 
they are intervals between ¢ and }, and / and e, and would be more 
properly described as ¢ flat and / flat. 
An instance such as this ought not to be lost upon Archeologists, 
who if they really desire to find out what our ancestors thought, 
said, and did, will seek for it in the works and monuments of the 
past, and not rely with too much confidence upon quotations, even 
when given by authors of celebrity, especially when an opponent 
has to be silenced, or a favorite theory defended. 
From the Scale, as given above, were constructed the Modes of 
the medieval Music, each Mode commencing on a different note, 
1 Micrologus, c. 10. 
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