582 REPORT— 1891. 



used by us, but he certainly used lines and spaces, thus giving 

 to the world the first idea of our stave — a stave which was at 

 first allowed to consist of any number of lines. It was not till 

 about the sixteenth century that it was decided that a stave of 

 five lines would suffice for vocal music, four lines being suffi- 

 cient for ecclesiastical music only. At the present day four 

 lines are considered sufficient for the representation of Gre- 

 gorian music. 



Vocal comj)osition made little advance in Guido'stime, part- 

 singing being very similar to that in the time of his prede- 

 cessor, Hucbald. 



Numerous other reforms and inventions are sometimes 

 placed to Guido's credit, but I have given the most important 

 of those bearing on our subject this evening. The perfection 

 of the scale, the stave, the clef, and solmisation, were rendered 

 possible, and did, indeed, follow as a natural consequence of 

 these inventions, but yet one great feature remains to be 

 added to render the system complete. 



Guido and his predecessors had been content to leave to 

 the singers the entire control of the time in which to sing. 

 They were guided probably by the demands of the words as to 

 accent and rhythm. But as the art of part-singing grew more 

 complicated it became imperative that the composer should 

 have the power of giving to the singer the proper idea of rhythm 

 and time ; and we come to another landmark in our history — 

 viz., the invention of notation, or what is more familiarly 

 known to us as the time-table. 



Franco, a monk of Cologne, about fifty years after Guido 

 invented a system of notation so perfectly clear and to the 

 purpose that it has successfully stood the test of more than 

 eight hundred years. I give an illustration of his ideas of 

 notes and rests. He did not think of using bars, but he 

 used breath-marks, which divided the music into phrases, and 

 which may have suggested bars later on. Franco also wrote 

 valuable treatises on harmony, and through his exertions part- 

 singing made immense strides. 



From the examples which I have shown you, you see that 

 Franco and his contemporaries had ideas which contained the 

 germs of the music perfected and used by their successors until 

 the sixteenth century, and even then Franco's ideas of notation 

 were not discarded, and, as I have said before, are but slightly 

 modified in the present day. 



I have now spoken of the works of St. Sylvester, Bishop 

 Ambrose, Pope Gregory, and the monks Hucbald, Guido, and 

 Franco, and have thus shown you that the clergy were the 

 originators, inventors, and composers of all ecclesiastical music 

 prior to the twelfth century. I may also add that it is to 



