College Physics 11th Edition Hugh D.

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 A Long Journey

At any rate the Gregorian chant flourished and was so loved that
Benedict Biscop, and other monks interested in music, came from
far-off England to learn the chant invented by St. Gregory. A long
journey! In 675 Biscop sent to Rome for singers and built
monasteries very close to a pagan temple, where the Anglo-Saxons
still worshipped the Roman Sun god, Apollo, also god of music.
These he filled with beautiful relics, paintings and stained glass
windows, Bibles and service books illuminated in gold and color,
which he brought from Rome.
Bringing things from Rome may sound easy to you, but fancy the
travel and inconvenience when there were no steamships, no
railroads, no aeroplanes, but only Roman roads, which however
marvelous, were long and wearisome by foot or by horse, or mule
and rude wagons. This shows how much the people of Britain desired
music and beauty in their church services.
 Venerable Bede

About this time, there lived a man in England so loved and

respected that he was called the Venerable Bede. Although music had
no such variety, melody and richness as today, just see what the
Venerable Bede says about it: “Music is the most worthy, courteous,
pleasant, joyous and lovely of all knowledge; it makes a man
gentlemanly in his demeanor, pleasant, courteous, joyous, lovely, for
it acts upon his feelings. Music encourages us to bear the heaviest
afflictions, administers consolation in every difficulty, refreshes the
broken spirit, removes headache and cures crossness and
melancholy.”
Isn’t it remarkable for a man to have said this so long ago, when
scientists, today, have just begun to think that music may have a
power of healing ills of the mind and of the body! Truly—“there is
nothing new under the sun!”
So Bede used the plain chant of Gregory and through his influence,
spread this dignified music throughout England, and wherever a
monastery was founded, a music school was started.
The Venerable Bede writes that Ethelbert of Kent, King of Britain,
was a worshipper of Odin and Thor, Norse gods, but he married a
French Princess who was a Christian. One day, writes the Venerable
Bede, forty monks led in solemn procession by St. Augustine, passed
before the king singing a chant. After hearing this marvelous hymn,
he became a Christian and gave permission to the English to become
worshippers of Christ instead of Norse and Druid gods. This hymn
which converted Ethelbert in 597 A.D. was sung thirteen hundred
years later (1897) in the same place, Canterbury, by another group of
Benedictine monks!
At first the songs were sung unaccompanied, but later as in the
time of David, the Church allowed instruments. The lyre and the
harp were used first but the cymbals and the dulcimer, somewhat
like our zither, were considered too noisy.
The Venerable Bede called music made by instruments artificial
music, and that of the human voice, natural music. Whether at that
time the viol, the drum, the organ or the psaltery (an instrument like
the dulcimer) were used in the Church, is not known positively.
After Bede’s death, Alcuin, a monk and musician, continued his
work. He was appointed by Charlemagne, Emperor of France, to
teach music in the schools of Germany and France to spread the use
of the Gregorian chant.
 A Curious Music System

In 900 A.D. an important thing happened, by which the reading

and learning of music was much simplified. A red line was drawn
straight across the page and this line represented “F” the tone on the
fourth line of the bass staff. The neumes written on this red line were
“F” and the others above or below, were of higher or lower pitch. This
worked so well, that they placed a yellow line above the red line and
this they called “C.” These two lines were the beginnings of our five
line staff, but much happened between the two-line days and the five.
At this time people did not sing in parts, known as they are to us—
soprano, alto, tenor, bass, but everybody sang the same tune, that is,
sang in unison, and when men and women or men and boys sang
together, the men’s voices sounded an octave lower than the
women’s and the boy’s. Some voices have naturally a high range and
others low, and no doubt in these plain chant melodies the singers
who could not reach all the tones comfortably, dropped
unconsciously to a lower pitch, and in that way, made a second part.
Soon the composers made this melody in the medium range of the
voice a part of their pieces instead of trusting the singers to make it
up as they went along. The principal tune sung or carried by most of
the singers was given the name tenor (from the Latin teneo, to hold
or carry). We use the same word to indicate the man’s voice of high
range.
 Hucbald and Organum

Hucbald (840–930), a Flemish monk, first wrote a second part,

always a fifth above or a fourth below the tenor or “subject.” (The
Latin name for the subject is cantus firmus—fixed song.) Hucbald
probably used the fifth and fourth because they were perfect
intervals, and all others except the octave, were imperfect. There
were often four parts including the cantus firmus, for two parts were
doubled. This succession of fourths and fifths sounds very crude and
ugly (just try the example), but these people of the Middle Ages must
have liked it, for it lasted several centuries and was an attempt at
making chords. This music was called organum or diaphony (dia-
two, phony-sound: two sounds). As early as 1100, singers tried out
new effects with the added parts and introduced a few imperfect
intervals, thirds and sixths, and tried singing occasionally in contrary
motion to the subject,—this was called discant from a Greek word
meaning discord. Maybe at first it sounded discordant but soon it
came to mean any part outside of the cantus firmus or subject. (See
musical illustrations.)

Organum (IXth and Xth Centuries)

Diaphony
Discant (XIIth Century)

Example of Organum, Diaphony, Discant

There was also a kind of diaphony in which a third voice was

written as a bass, a fifth below the cantus firmus, but it was actually
sung an octave higher than it was written and sounded much better
that way. As it was not a bass at all it received the name of false bass
or faux bourdon. This was the beginning of chords such as we use.
So, Hucbald started the science of harmony,—the study of chords.
Hucbald called this ars organum—the art of organating or
organizing.
Hucbald also invented a system of writing music on a staff. It was
not a staff such as we use today for he wrote in the spaces the initials
T and S. T meant that the singer was to sing a whole tone, S, a
semitone or half-step. He used a six line staff and wrote words in
script instead of notes like this:
 Guido d’Arezzo and His Additions to Music

The next great name in music history is Guido d’Arezzo, a

Benedictine monk (995–1050), famous for his valuable additions to
music.
He invented the four-line staff, using both lines and spaces and
giving a definite place on the staff to each sound:

Yellow line C————————————

Black line .............
Red line F————————————
Black line .............

In the Middle Ages, the men did most of the singing so the music
was written in a range to suit their voices. C is middle C, and F the
bass clef.
All music had to be written by hand and the monks made
wonderful parchment copies of works composed for the church
services. They soon grew careless about the yellow lines and red
lines, so Guido placed the letters C and F at the beginning of the lines
instead of using the colored lines.
Sometimes there were three lines to a staff, sometimes four, five,
and even eleven! The use of clefs showing which line was C or F,
made reading of music much easier. At the end of the 16th century
the question of the number of lines to the staff was definitely
decided, then they used four lines for the plain chant and five for all
secular music. By calling the fifth line of the eleven, middle C, two
staffs of five lines resulted—the grand staff of today.
Here is a table to show you how clefs grew:
 Hucbald built his scales in groups of four tones like the Greek
tetrachords but Guido extended this tetrachord to a hexachord or
six-toned scale, and by overlapping the hexachords, he built a series
of scales to which he gave the name, gamut, because it started on the
G which is the first note of our grand staff (lowest line, bass clef) and
the Greek word for G is “Gamma.”

In the lowest hexachord, the B is natural, in the second hexachord

there is no B and in the third hexachord, the B is flattened. Our sign
(♭) for flat comes from the fact that this B was called a round B and
the sign ( ♮ ) for natural was called a square B. The sharp ( ♯ ) came
from the natural and both meant at first raising the tone a half-step.
Guido once heard the monks in the monastery of Arezzo singing a
hymn in honor of St. John the Baptist. He noticed that each line of
the Latin poem began on ascending notes of the scale,—the first line
on C, the second on D, and so on up to the sixth on A. It gave him the
idea to call each degree of the hexachord by the first syllable of the
line of the Latin hymn, thus:
Utqueant laxis,
Resonare fibris,
Mira gestorum,
Famuli tuorum,
Solve polluti,
Labia reatum.

Hymn to St. John the Baptist

Here is a translation:
Grant that the unworthy lips of Thy servant
May be gifted with due harmony,
Let the tones of my voice
Sing the praises of Thy wonders.

We still call our scale degrees ut (frequently changed to do), re, mi,
fa, sol, la. The French today use these syllables instead of the letters
of the alphabet, and Guido is known as the man who originated this
solmization (the word taken from the syllables sol and mi).
Where did the syllable si, the seventh degree of the scale, come
from? This hymn was written to St. John and in Latin his name is
Sancte Ioannes, the initials of which form the syllable si which came
into use long after Guido’s time.
This system was very difficult for the singers to learn as it was
quite new to them, so Guido used his hand as a guide to the singers.
Each joint represented a different syllable and tone, and a new scale
began on every fourth tone. Look at the Guidonian hand on the next
page.
 Guido was so great a teacher and musician that he was given credit
for inventing much that already existed. He gathered all the
knowledge he could find into a book, that was sent to the
monasteries and music schools. He put in much that never before
had been written down, explained many things that had never been
clear, and added much that was new and useful.
Sometimes his name was written Gui or Guion. When he lived
people had no last names but were called by the name of their native
towns; as Guido was born in Arezzo, a town of Tuscany, he was called
Guido d’Arezzo; Leonardo da Vinci, the great painter, was born in
the village of Vinci; and the great Italian composer Pierluigi da
Palestrina came from Palestrina.
Guido’s work was considered revolutionary and not in accord with
the old ways which the church fathers reverenced. Because of plots
against him, he was cast into prison. But the Pope, realizing his
greatness and value, saved him. The inventors of new ideas always
suffer!
 Mensural Music or Timed Music

Before Guido invented it, there had been no system of counting

time.
If you are studying music, you know all about time signatures and
what metre a piece is in, from the ¾, ⁶⁄₈, ⁹⁄₈, ²⁄₄, ⁴⁄₄ or sign Ⅽ at the
beginning of the composition, but you probably do not know how or
when these signs came into use. In the Gregorian plain song and in
Organum, there was practically no variety of rhythm and no need for
showing time or marking off the music into measures. The accents
fell quite naturally according to the words that were sung, much as
you would recite poetry. But as music grew up and became more
difficult, it was necessary for a chorus singing in three or four
different parts, to sing in time as well as in tune, in order, at least, to
start and finish together!
The first metre that was used was triple (three beats to the
measure). It was called perfect and was indicated by a perfect circle,

, the symbol of the Holy Trinity and of perfection. Duple

metre (two beats to the measure) was imperfect and was indicated by

an incomplete circle, . Our sign for common time (four beats to

the measure), comes from this incomplete circle. ⁹⁄₈ was

written ; ¾ was ; ⁶⁄₈ was ; and ⁴⁄₄ was .

A monk named Franco, from Cologne, on the Rhine, early in the
twelfth century, invented these time signatures, and notes which in
themselves indicated different time values. Hucbald’s neumes were
no longer suited to the new music, and besides time signatures it
became necessary to have a music language showing very clearly and
definitely the composer’s rhythm.
 Franco used four kinds of notes. Here they are translated into the
time values of today.
 Organs

In the 10th century, organs came into use in the churches, but they
were ungainly and crude, sounding only a few tones, and were
probably only used to keep the singers on pitch. The organ had been
invented long before this, and had been used in Greece and Egypt. It
was built on the principle of Pan’s Pipes and was very simple. There
were many portable organs, called portatives, small enough to be
carried about.
One organ (not a portative!) at Winchester, England, had four
hundred pipes and twenty-six pairs of bellows. It took seventy men
to pump air into it and two men to play it by pounding on a key with
their fists or elbows. The tone was so loud that it could be heard all
over the town. Fancy that!
During these centuries, music was growing slowly but surely. Out
of organum and discant and faux bourdon, arose a style called
counterpoint, in which three, four or more melodies were sung at the
same time. The writing of counterpoint, or line over line, is like a
basket weave for the different melodies weave in and out like pieces
of willow or raffia forming the basket. Later will come the chorale,
written in chords or up and down music like a colonnade or series of
columns. Keep this picture in mind. (St. Nicolas Tune, Chapter XI.)
The word point means note so counterpoint means note against
note. The word was first applied in the 13th century to very crude
and discordant part-writing. But, little by little the monks learned
how to combine melodies beautifully and harmoniously and we still
use many of their rules.
Gradually great schools of church music flourished in France,
Germany, Spain, England, Italy and the Netherlands in the 14th, 15th
and 16th centuries.
Bit by bit this vast musical structure was built. It did not grow
quickly; each new idea took centuries to become a part of music, and
as often the idea was not good, it took a long time to replace it.
 CHAPTER VIII
Troubadours and Minnesingers Brought Music to Kings and People

Except for the first few chapters in this book, we have told you of
music made by men who wanted to improve it. You have seen how
the fathers of the Church first reformed music, and gave it a
shorthand called neumes; before that, the music laws of the
Egyptians, the scales and modes of the Arab, the Greek scales which
the churchmen used in the Ambrosian and the Gregorian modes.
Then came the two-lined staff, and the beginnings of mensural or
measured music by which they kept time. Then you saw how two
melodies were fitted together and how they grew into four parts. All
this we might call “on purpose” music. At the same time, in all the
world, in every country, there was Song ... and never have the world
and the common people (called so because they are neither of the
nobility nor of the church) been without folk song which has come
from the folks of the world, the farmers, the weavers, and the
laborers.
The best of these songs have what the great composers try to put
into their music—a feeling of fresh free melody, design, balance, and
climax, but more of this in the chapter on Folk Song.
This chapter is to be about Troubadours, Trouvères, and
Minnesingers, who have left over two thousand songs. In most of
these, they made up both words and music, but sometimes they used
new words made up for folk tunes that everyone knew, or for
melodies from the plain-chants which they had heard in church;
sometimes they used the same melody for several different poems,
and often they set the same words to several melodies. Many of these
troubadour songs and minnelieder became the people’s own folk
songs.
But now you must hear of the folk who lived hundreds of years
before these poet singers. Unknowingly, out of the heart and soul
and soil of their native lands, they made songs and sang poetry and
played sometimes other peoples’ song, scattering their own wherever
they went.
 From these traveling singers and players, in all countries, came the
professional musicians who were minstrels, bards, troubadours, etc.,
according to when, where and how they lived.
 The Why of the Minstrel

The people sang and played not only because they wanted to, or
because they loved it, but because they were the newspaper and the
radio of their time, singing the news and doings of the day. These
minstrels who traveled from place to place “broadcasted” the events.
No music was written down and no words were fastened by writing
to any special piece. The singer would learn a tune and when he sang
a long story (an epic) he would repeat the tune many times so it was
necessary to find a pleasing melody, or singers would not have been
very welcome in the courts and market places. These musical news
columns entertained the people who had few amusements. The
wandering minstrels with their harps or crwth (Welsh harps), or
whatever instrument they might have used in their particular
country, were welcomed with open arms and hearts.
This sounds as if these singers and players traveled, and indeed
they did! They sprang up from all parts of Europe and had different
names in different places. There were bards from Britain and
Ireland, skalds from the Norse lands, minstrels from “Merrie
England,” troubadours from the south of France, trouvères from the
north of France, jongleurs from both north and south who danced
and juggled for the joy of all who saw them, and minnesingers and
meistersingers in Germany.
 Druids and Bards

Centuries before this, Homer the great Greek poet was called the
Blind Bard and he chanted his poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, to
the accompaniment of the lyre, the favorite instrument of the Greeks.
But when we speak of bards in this chapter we mean the poets and
musicians of ancient Britain, when that island was inhabited and
ruled by the Druids, 1000 B.C. We do not know when the bards first
began to make music or when they were first called bards, but it is
certain that for many centuries before the Christian era, these rude,
barbarous people of the countries we know as Wales, England,
Ireland and Scotland, had many songs, dances and musical
instruments.
Look at a map of France, and see how much like a teapot it is
shaped. The western part, the spout, is Brittany! As its name shows,
this part of France was inhabited by the same race of people as were
in Britain, they spoke the same language, had the same religion and
made the same music. These people were Celts and their priests were
called Druids. Much we said about primitive people is true of these
early Britons. They expressed their feelings, and tried to protect
themselves from Nature and human foes by means of religious rites
and ceremonies in which music and dancing played the leading part.
They had no churches, but held religious services in the open
under the oak trees. They piled boulders on top of each other to form
altars, or built large circular enclosures of huge flat rocks, inside of
which they gathered for worship, or to assist at some ceremonial in
which sacrifices of animals and occasionally of human beings were
made. These human sacrifices occurred once a year at the Spring
Festival which was celebrated in much the same fashion as in Greece.
These masses of stone are found not only in the British Isles, the
most famous of which is Stonehenge (which was recently bought by
an American), but there are also many of these so-called cromlechs
and menhirs in Brittany.
It is curious how often men and women do the same things at
times and places so completely separated that they could not have
been influenced by each other, but did what was natural for them. It
seems that between the state of being primitive or savage and of
being cultured, mankind must pass through certain states of mind
and certain bodily actions common to all men. In tracing the growth
of any habits and actions of people,—in government, religion,
amusements, art, music, manners and customs, and language, we
find the same customs constantly repeated among different races. If
you remember this point, you will be interested to watch, in this
book, the difference between these experiences common to all
mankind and those which later on, were caused by the influence that
one race had on another through meeting, through conquest and
through neighborly contact.
The bards belonged to the priesthood and were Druids. They sang
in verse the brave deeds of their countrymen, praises of the gods and
heroes, and legends of war and adventure, accompanying themselves
on primitive harps, or on an instrument something like the violin
without a neck, called a crwth. They wore long robes and when they
were acting as priests, these were covered with white surplices
somewhat like the gowns of our own clergy. From a bit of
information handed down by the bards, we learn that in Ireland, the
graduate bard wore six colors in his robes, said to be the origin of the
plaid of the Scotch Highlanders; the king wore seven colors; lords
and ladies, five; governors of fortresses, four; officers and gentlemen,
three; soldiers, two, and the people were allowed to wear only one.
Even their dress seemed important and marked the rank!
There were three kinds of bards: priestly bards who took part in
the religious rituals and were also the historians, domestic bards who
made music in honor of their masters, and heraldic bards whose
duties were to arouse patriotism through songs in praise of their
national heroes. They had to pass examinations to become bards,
and the lower ranks were tested for knowledge and ability before
being promoted to the higher ranks. Recently there has been a
revival in Wales of the Eisteddfod, or song contests of the Druids.
“Minstrelsy,” or singing to the crwth or harp, lived on long after
Druidism had been replaced by the Christian faith. Did you ever
wonder where the custom came from of mistletoe at Christmas time?
Or of dancing around a Maypole? Or building bonfires for May-day
and St. John’s eve? Celebrating All-Hallowe’en with pumpkins and
black cats? And of having Christmas trees? Well, these customs are
all relics of Druidism of 2000 or more years ago.
 Skalds

In the land of the fierce Vikings or Norsemen, who inhabited

Scandinavia, Iceland and Finland before and during the Middle Ages,
there were bards called Skalds or Sagamen. They recited and sang
stories telling of their Norse gods, goddesses and heroes, Woden,
Thor, Odin, Freya, Brynnhild, and of the abode of the gods, Walhalla.
These ballads formed the national epics called sagas and eddas,
from which Richard Wagner drew the story for his immortal music
dramas, the Nibelungenlied.
Odin, who was considered a Norse god, probably was a Saxon
prince who lived in the 3rd century, A.D. He revived the Norse
mythology and rites with the aid of minstrels, seers, and priests. His
teachings lasted until the reign of Charlemagne, a devout Christian,
who put an end to pagan rites.
In the 5th century came the Saxons, Hengist and Horsa,
descendants of Odin, and much of Britain fell under their rule; with
them, came the skalds whose duty it was to celebrate the deeds of
their lords. They appeared at the great state banquets, and also on
the battle fields, encouraging the warriors with their songs of
heroism, and comforting the wounded soldiers.
When the Danes, the Angles and the Jutes came to Britain in this
same century, the country was called England or Angle-land.
Harpers and gleemen followed in the footsteps of the Scandinavian
skalds. These musician-singers went as honored guests from court to
court, and received valuable presents. A popular gleeman was given
the title of poet-laureate, and crowned with a laurel wreath.
The songs were taught orally and learned by heart, as there was no
notation at this early date (500 A.D.). They accompanied themselves
on small harps which could be carried easily. The harp was handed
around the banquet table so that each guest in turn might sing a song
as his share of the entertainment. Singing and composing poetry
were a necessary part of a gentleman’s education.
The “Venerable” Bede (Chapter VII) wrote that “Cædmon the poet
(600 A.D.) never could compose any trivial or vain songs, but only
such as belonged to a serious and sacred vein of thought ... he was