MUSIC 



s hut it wan a necessary 

 step in tin- evolution of the art and 

 led to the glorious era of t lu- 

 ll (10th to 17th centuries) 

 .UK! (lie zenith of the fugue form 

 in (In- early 18th century. 



Mi- ui! iinc, instrument* had Ix-cii 

 Mm; i.-ipiiily. Viols were 

 perfect by 1550 ; wind instruments 

 rntlicr leas so, but were very useful 

 fur contrast. The lyre, dul< iim-i, 

 and harp classes came under me- 

 cli.-ini<-;il control in the clavichord, 

 spinet, and harpsichord types, with 

 enormously enhanced possibilities. 

 A new problem presented itself 

 how to make use of these powers. 

 Viols could Mi-tain sounds, like 

 voices ; could represent various 

 vocal pitches by their different 

 sizes ; could vary tones expres- 

 sively. What more simple than to 

 make madrigals " apt for viols or 

 voices " ? Simple, yes ; but not 

 satisfying for long. Instruments 

 ci HI hi do so much more than 

 voices, and new methods of use 

 must be found to exhaust their 

 capabilities. Broken chords, scale 

 passages, and ornaments of all 

 kinds were added to the plainer 

 vocal outlines. This was especially 

 the case with the keyboard instru- 

 ments, which had little power of 

 sustaining or varying the tone. 

 Use of Wind Instruments 



Rather more vocal were the 

 wind groups, but even these gradu- 

 ally found their distinctive uses ; 

 flutes for suavity, reeds for in- 

 cisiveness, brass for brilliancy. 

 And so the orchestra was evolved, 

 a weirdly unbalanced mass in the 

 hands of Monte verde (" Orfeo", 

 1607), a thing of beauty with 

 Mozart, an engine of power in the 

 hands of Beethoven. Monteverde 

 gathered all the instruments he 

 could and hardly knew what to do 

 with them. His successors wisely 

 seized on the strings as the basis, 

 the more brilliant violin family 

 soon supplanting the gentle viols. 



The less manageable wind instru- 

 ments were thrown out for a time, 

 and then gradually reintroduced 

 on probation ; this process can be 

 traced through the scores of Lulli, 

 Purcell, Handel, Bach, Haydn, 

 Mozart, and Beethoven. Beetho- 

 ven's band, with amplifications in 

 the wind and percussion depart- 

 ments, remains the medium for the 

 most modern orchestral composers. 

 The greatest improvements in the 

 wind instruments are only about a 

 century old ; these include the 

 addition of new finger keys to the 

 woodwind, to complete the scale 

 and make quick passages more 

 manageable, and the additions of 

 pistons to horns, trumpets, etc., to 

 make them usable through all the 

 chromaticism of to-day. 



56OI 



As regard* forms of comport i,m. 

 it has been said above that the 

 iiiiit.iiiiui ( ,f vocal forms was tried 

 and found wanting. Florid orna- 

 mentation had its day and found 

 its level. A new language for in- 

 Mnmiental music was found in the 

 17th century in the forms of tho 

 dances, with their contrasts and 

 lialanee of phrases and keys. Com- 

 bined in sets or suites, these dances 

 formed agreeable works of satisfy- 

 ing length. From tho movements 

 of the suites came sonata-form in 

 its various manifestations, and 

 this has been the basis of nearly all 

 serious instrumental music until 

 recently, including chamber, sona- 

 tas, duets, trios, quartets, etc., 

 concertos and symphonies. A 

 great factor in this development 

 was the invention of the piano- 

 forte in the 18th century, offering 

 fuller tone, more varied expression, 

 greater sustaining power and larger 

 compass than its predecessors of 

 the harpsichord family. 



Small Compass in Early Use 



Until about 1600 the compass 

 of a voice which was called for by 

 composers was quite small, often 

 not exceeding an octave. The in- 

 vention of opera about that time 

 led to a study of the voice as a 

 medium for display, and doubtless 

 the newer florid instrumental 

 music had its influence also. In 

 Italy especially, the voice was 

 raised from a mere speech-medium 

 to an instrument of great compass 

 and flexibility, so much so as 

 almost to lose sight of its intention 

 as a vehicle of expression. 



For two centuries (1670-1870) 

 European music was dominated by 

 two nationalities Italian in opera, 

 and German in instrumental forms. 

 That period is past, and there has 

 come a healthy resurgence of the 

 other peoples. The revival of folk- 

 song has been a strong cause of 

 this, aided by the rise of local 

 schools. To-day each country can 

 educate its own students, and we 

 see the result in the groups of 

 young composers now occupying 

 the field, from Russia, Sweden, 

 Norway, Denmark, France, Hol- 

 land, the Czecho-Slovak countries, 

 America, and the British Empire. 

 British growth in this respect is 

 remarkable: whereas in 1821, that 

 country had Bishop and a few 

 church composers and ballad 

 writers to show against such names 

 as Beethoven and Schubert, she 

 has now had ~X) years of " Renais- 

 sance " which have gone far to 

 compensate for her loss when Pur- 

 cell died and the Italian opera and 

 Handel began their domination. 



COLOUR Music. A possible con- 

 nexion between colour and music, 

 based on the physical origin of both 



MUSIC 



from vibration, has long fascinated 

 certain minds, notwithstanding 

 that the two phenomena stand at 

 opposite ends of the vibrational 

 gamut, the vibrations being only a 

 few thousands for music at it* high- 

 est, and trillions in the case of 

 colours. Instruments played from 

 a keyboard have been invented 

 (e.g. the colour-organ, by A. Wal- 

 lace Rimington, and the tastiera 

 per luce forScriabin's Prometheus), 

 the various tints being projected 

 on a white screen. Red is chosen 

 arbitrarily to represent the note 

 middle C, from which other tints 

 arc arranged in order. Interesting 

 as these experiments may be, they 

 have failed so far to demonstrate 

 an intimate connexion between 

 colour on the one hand and melody 

 or harmony on the other, especially 

 as there is no possibility of securing 

 these musical effects due to the 

 different pitch of the various oc- 

 taves, the colours above and below 

 the spectrum not being perceptible 

 to the human eye. The association 

 of a particular colour with a given 

 object is termed photism. There 

 are photisms not only of musical 

 sounds, but of numbers, of names, 

 of the alphabet, etc., but they 

 seem to be individual and not gen- 

 eral, as they vary in different cases. 

 See Music : Its Laws and Evolu- 

 tion, Jules Combarieu, Eng. trans. 

 1910; Colour Music, A. Wallace 

 Rimington, 1912. 



Music OF THE MASS. From 

 earliest centuries in the history of 

 the Christian Church some form 

 of singing has been employed, 

 varying from monotone with slight 

 inflections, through inflected mono- 

 tone of a more elaborate type, to 

 the polyphonic music of the 15th 

 and later centuries. The portions 

 of the Mass which were chiefly 

 chosen for musical treatment were 

 the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, 

 Benedictus and the Agnus DeL 

 Polyphonic Mass Setting! 



In these polyphonic settings a> 

 plainsong melody was chosen and 

 other voice parts were woven 

 around it, in number from 2 to 12, 

 and even more ; sometimes the 

 melody was a secular one, and 

 this led to levity when irreverent 

 choirincn substituted the original 

 words of a love song or drinking 

 song for the Latin words of the 

 Mass. Occasionally a composer 

 provided his own Canto fermo, and 

 treated it in the same way by the 

 addition of cleverly interwoven 

 vocal parts. Composers of the poly- 

 phonic Mass, whose names may be 

 used as links for further reference, 

 include Dufay, Dunstable, Bin- 

 chois, Morales, Van Rore, Gou- 

 dimel, Willaert, Palestrina, Vit- 

 toria, Gabrieli, Orlando Lassus, 



r 7 



