124 



NATURE 



\Dec. 17, 1874 



fore, while reading the Greek authors on music, I con- 

 tinued to copy out such definitions of musical terms as I 

 then encountered. I began without expectation of success 

 as to understanding the music of the Greeks, owing to the 

 number of able men whom it had baffled ; but my little 

 glossary seemed to afford the clue, and soon made me 

 interested in the subject. It became evident that the 

 Roman perversion of Greek musical terms had been one 

 of the great difficulties in the way of previous inquirers 

 (although by no means the only one), for I could then 

 understand the system." 



All this confirms the character of the author as an 

 earnest, painstaking inquirer, and affords therefore a 

 guarantee for the value ol his historical investigations. 



Mr. Chappell comments on the two great English 

 musical histories of the last century by Burney and 

 Hawkins, and contends that much of the obscurity in 

 which they left the ancient music was caused by their 

 obtaining their information second-hand, namely, from 

 Boethius and other commentators, chiefly Latin, on the 

 Greek writers. Many of these had not sufficient know- 

 ledge of the subject to understand the original technical 

 terms, which they therefore rendered either erroneously 

 or obscurely, and thus error and obscurity have been 

 introduced into succeeding writings. 



"It may," says Mr. Chappell, "at first appear unac- 

 countable that, among the numbers of learned men who 

 made the attempt to understand the Greek system during 

 so many ages, no one should have succeeded, especially 

 considering that it would hereafter be shown, even to the 

 quarter-tone, to be our modern system of music. So 

 simple a result seems ludicrous. But this general failure 

 is to be accounted for by the fact that the Romans had 

 twisted round the meanings of the Greek words in so 

 extraordinary a fashion that perhaps ' tone ' and ' dia- 

 tonic ' are the only two which remain nearly identical in 

 the two languages. So that, to unriddle the subject, the 

 student had first to unlearn all that he had been taught 

 as to the meanings of musical terms, and then to begin 

 again, trusting only to the Greek authors. No Latin 

 treatise would avail, nor would any modern language in 

 which musical terms had been derived through the Latin, 

 or through the Western Church. The misuse of Greek 

 technical language by Romans was by no means limited 

 to music." 



To eliminate these errors, the author tells us, and we 

 believe him, that he has in every case, where possible, 

 gone to the fountain head, and that the information he 

 gives us may consequently be depended on. 



We have thought it right to show at some length what 

 are the author's qualifications for his work, and on what 

 grounds he lays claim to our attention and credence ; for, 

 in historical works this is all-important ; few of us have 

 opportunity, and still fewer have inclination, to grope for 

 ourselves among Ihe mouldy lore of antiquity ; we are 

 glad enough to find others who will do it for us, and are 

 ever ready to take as authentic whatever they tell us 

 they have found there. Hence correctness and care are 

 cardinal virtues in historical works ; the want of these 

 qualities renders such works worse than valueless, as 

 merely promoting the dissemination of error. 



The history of music, interesting as it is, is not, pro- 

 perly speaking, a subject to be treated of largely in 

 Nature ; but, in justice to the meritorious author, we 

 may venture to mention some of the results of his 

 labours. 



In tke first place, he shows that the system of music 



used by the Greeks did not originate with them, but was 

 borrowed from more ancient nations. He finds, for 

 example, that " the number of notes in the Egyptian scale 

 was precisely the same as the Greek, including the 

 three Greek scales, diatonic, enharmonic, and chro- 

 matic." No Greek writer alludes to any difference be- 

 tween the Egyptian and Greek systems of music, although 

 the best Greek works on the science of music, saving the 

 Problems of Aristotle, were written on the soil of Egypt." 

 Then he turns to the Chaldajans, or learned men of 

 Babylon, and again finds (through an astronomical 

 comment which, as usual, supposes the motion of the 

 planets to be regulated by musical intervals, and thus to 

 make everlasting harmony) that the Chalda;ans had the 

 same musical intervals of fourth, fifth, and octave, as the 

 Egyptians. From these he was led to Hebrew music ; 

 remarking that proofs are not wanting of the similarity 

 of this to the music of surrounding nations ; so that 

 "henceforth we may fairly conclude that we have at last 

 arrived at the musical system of ancient Asia, and that 

 it is our A, B, C, D, E, F, G." 



The author, of course, enters largely into the progress 

 of music in Greece. We read of the early tetrachord 

 lyre, of its enlargement by Terpander ; of the great 

 improvements made by Pythagoras in the addition of the 

 octave, the fifth, and other notes ; of his important 

 determination of the proportions of the lengths of strings, 

 subsequently transmitted to posterity by the great geo- 

 meter Euclid ; of the chromatic and enharmonic scales, 

 hitherto so perplexing ; of the improvements in certain 

 harmonic ratios made by Didymus and Ptolemy, and so 

 on ; from all which we undoubtedly gather a far clearer 

 view of what Greek music was than can be obtained from 

 either of our English histories. 



The result is that the ancients anticipated almost exactly 

 the diatonic scale of modern times. Their scale passed 

 over to the Latins ; it was adopted without change by the 

 early Church ; and by this means it has come down, un- 

 altered, to our time. If we run up two octaves on the 

 ivliite keys of the modern piano, beginning and ending 

 with A, we are playing the same notes as the Greeks 

 used, any time after Pythagoras. We may add that if we 

 use only the blaci; keys (and many modern tunes may be 

 thus played), we sound a scale precisely corresponding to 

 one of the Greek "chromatic" genera. 



The scale, be it remembered, is the material fro 11 

 which music is made. To discover what sort of melodies 

 the ancients constructed from this material is another 

 thing. Mr. Chappell has, however, presented us with 

 three real Greek tunes, set to hymns to Calliope, Apollo, 

 and Nemesis respectively. They have been, it is true, 

 decked out, by the skilful aid of Mr. Macfarren, in an 

 anachronous dress of modern harmony and rhythm, sug- 

 gesting the idea of Pythagoras in a periwig ; but, at any 

 rate, they are no more incongruous in this respect than 

 the so-called " Gregorian" chants, as sung with modern 

 embellishments at a Ritualistic church-service. 



The question has been often and warmly discussed 

 whether the ancients used what we call harmony, or 

 whether they did anything analogous to our singing or 

 playing in several parts. Our author believes that they 

 did, but in this matter he his not the argument all his 

 own way. The late M. F^tis, who devoted the last 



