CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



tragedies, of which we neither do, nor (unfortu- 

 nately) can, know anything. 



CHURCH MUSIC AMBROSE. 



In the early Christian church, the singing was 

 no doubt unisonous. We read very early of 

 regular choirs, and earlier still of antiphonal sing- 

 ing, one choir or part of the congregation singing 

 alternately with another. It is not until the time 

 of Ambrose, however, in the end of the 4th cen- 

 tury, that we begin to see with any degree of 

 definiteness what church music was, and the name 

 of Ambrose himself is the first which stands out 

 clearly in relation to musical art : he was elected 



bishop of Milan in the year 374 A.D. In what 

 condition he found the music of the Western 

 Church it is not possible to say, but we know some- 

 thing of the condition in which he left it. He seems 

 to have studied Greek music a subject of very 

 great complication and to have adopted as the 

 basis of his system the Greek 'diatonic genus' 

 (which we have already mentioned), and greatly 

 simplified it, so that the people could use 

 it intelligently. He retained four only of the 

 Greek diatonic modes viz., those commencing on 

 D, E, F, and G, and called the Dorian, Phrygian, 

 Lydian, and Mixo-Lydian respectively. The 

 scales, therefore, in which church music had then 

 to be written were as follows : 



Dorian. 



Phrygian. 





But he discarded the Greek names (perhaps to get 

 rid of pagan associations), and called them the 

 first, second, third, and fourth modes respectively. 

 It is worth while to attempt to obtain a clear 

 understanding of what these modes, which were 

 destined to exert so powerful an influence on the 

 future of music, really were. The differences 

 between the four scales are two first, the differ- 

 ence in absolute pitch; and secondly, the differ- 

 ence in the position of the two semitones relatively 

 to the first note of the scale. 



4 



The first distinction is apt to be lost sight of : 

 the idea of key relationship is now taken so much 

 as a matter of course, that it is not easy to 

 imagine ignorance of it. But it seems evident 

 that the old modes consisted not merely of a suc- 

 cession of sounds bearing certain relations to 

 each other, but that these sounds were each of a 

 certain absolute, as well as relative, pitch. Our 

 ears, for instance, recognise at once that the fol- 

 lowing is only a repetition of the same phrase 

 in three different keys. But this idea, which 



Fig. 2. 



lies at the very root of modern music, was un- 

 dreamed of by Ambrose, and a composer wish- 

 ing to have used the phrase given in fig. 2, 

 could have employed it only in the Dorian mode 

 on the notes D, A, G, F, E, D. But the limits 

 within which the scales could be used were even 

 narrower than these, for it appears to have been 

 necessary that a melody, to be correctly written 

 in any mode, must lie within the octave of which 

 that mode consisted. It is not possible to con- 

 ceive that either of these totally artificial restric- 

 tions existed in the music of the people, or any- 

 where but in music written to conform with 

 ecclesiastical regulations. It is not known at 

 what time they were formally, as well as tacitly, 

 broken through ; but we may be sure that minstrels 

 and people's-singers at that time transposed and 

 altered melodies to suit the compass of their own 

 voices, just as they do now. 



It will be remembered that an octave in our 

 ordinary tempered scale is subdivided by universal 

 custom into seven intervals, five of them ' tones,' 

 and two 'semitones,' and also that these semitones 

 come (in major keys) always between the third and 

 fourth and the seventh and eighth notes in the 

 scale. The last especially, the semitone below 

 the key-tone (the eighth note being the octave or 

 higher duplicate of the key-tone), is essential to 

 give satisfaction to our ears. But an examination 

 of fig. i shews, that of the four Ambrosian modes, 

 only one (the Lydian) has a semitone below the 



706 



key-tone, for, very strangely as it seems to us, the 

 major scale of C was entirely omitted from the 

 church modes. In the Dorian mode, the semi- 

 tones occur between the second and third and the 

 sixth and seventh ; in the Phrygian, between the 

 first and second and the fifth and sixth ; in the 

 Lydian, between the fourth and fifth and the 

 seventh and eighth ; and in the Mixo-Lydian, 

 between the third and fourth and the sixth and 

 seventh. We have said that the basis of the 

 Greek diatonic genus, from which Ambrose selected 

 his modes, was the scale of C. There was one 

 important exception, however namely, the use of 

 Bb instead of Bfc| under certain circumstances. 

 The Bb seems to have been adopted into the 

 Lydian mode, which, therefore, became exactly 

 similar to our ordinary diatonic major scale 

 became, in fact, the scale of F major. Comparing 

 the rugged effect of the Dorian mode, with its 

 ascent of a full tone to the key-note, with the 

 sweetness of the Lydian scale, it can be readily 

 understood how the latter came to be spoken of as 

 if it were soft and effeminate. 



National music melodies handed down for cen- 

 turies unaltered might be expected to shew more 

 direct traces of the influence of these modes than 

 modern compositions, and in Scotch music, tunes 

 in them all are to be found abundantly. In the 

 Dorian mode, for instance, is My Boy Tammies 

 in the Phrygian, Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch ; in 

 the Lydian, the Reel of Tulloch and Ghilhe 



