Musical Myths and Facts Volume II Part 24

I.) is | | elected President | | Lowe (Johann Carl), born 1796 near of the Republic | | Halle, died 1869. Many ballads and (1848). | | other songs, also several Operas, | | Oratorios, and pianoforte | | compositions.

| | Botta & Layard | 1850 | Beriot (Charles Auguste de), born excavate the | | 1802, at Louvain, died 1870.

a.s.syrian | | Violinist. Concertos and other mounds (about | | compositions for the violin. A violin 1840-1850). | | school.

| | | | Berlioz (Hector), born 1803, at La Death of Wordsworth | | Cote Saint-Andre, in France, died (1850). | | 1869. Requiem, symphonies, overtures, | | other orchestral works with and Great Exhibition | | without vocal music. A Treatise on in London | | Instrumentation, and many Musical projected by | | Essays.

Prince Albert | | (1851). | | | | Death of the Duke | | Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (Felix), born of Wellington | | 1809 at Hamburg, died 1847. Composed (1852). | | two Oratorios, other sacred | | compositions, 2 Operas, other dramatic The Prince President | | music, symphonies, overtures, ottett, of the | | quintetts, quartetts, etc., organ French Republic | | compositions, pianoforte concertos, is declared | | sonatas, etc., 'Songs without Words'

Emperor of the | | for the pianoforte, secular songs for French and a.s.sumes | | a single voice, and for several the t.i.tle | | voices, etc.

of Napoleon | | III. (1852). | | | | Historians:--Thos. | | Chopin (Frederic Francois), born Carlyle, | | 1810 near Warsaw, died 1849, in Paris.

Macaulay, Guizot, | | Pianist. Many pianoforte compositions, Thiers, Rotteck, | | studies, etc.

etc. | | | | Painters: Rosa | | Schumann (Robert), born 1810 at Bonheur, | | Zwickau, in Saxony, died 1856. Operas, Cooper, Landseer, | | symphonies, quartetts, etc. Pianoforte Millais, | | compositions, songs. Essays on W. von Kaulbach, | | Music.

etc. | | | | Thalberg (Sigismund), born 1812 at Novelists: Chas. | | Geneva, died 1871. Pianist.

d.i.c.kens, W. | | Compositions for the pianoforte, M. Thackeray, | | mostly on themes of other composers.

Lytton Bulwer, | | Also two Operas, etc.

George Eliot, | | (Mrs. Lewis), | | Bennett (William Sterndale), born Victor Hugo, | | 1816 at Sheffield, died 1875. Some Alexandre Dumas, | | sacred compositions, overtures, etc. | | pianoforte music, songs, etc.

| | Michael Faraday, | | chemist. | | | | Charles Darwin, | | During the first half of the present philosopher | | century great progress in the and naturalist. | | construction of musical instruments, | | especially of wind instruments.

Helmholtz, German | | philosopher | | Innumerable celebrated pianists, and writer | | violinists, flutists, etc.

on acoustics. | | Important discoveries.| | Celebrated female singers: Catalani, | | Malibran, Grisi, Persiani, Pasta, Alfred Tennyson, | | Pauline Viardot, Henriette Sontag, Poet Laureate. | | Sophie Lowe, etc.

| | Livingstone, | | Celebrated male singers: Lablache, African traveller. | | Rubini, Tamburini, Braham, Wild, | | etc.

Bismarck, German | | statesman. | | Monster Concerts.

| | Moltke, German | | Attempt of a reform of the Opera.

General. | | | | Great progress in | | There are among our living musicians sciences relating | | so many celebrated ones that it would to natural | | really be difficult to make a philosophy, and | | satisfactory selection of them for in practical | | incorporation into a concise arts. Gradual | | Chronology. Fortunately, the plan dying out of | | adopted in the compilation, as many old | | previously explained, renders this superst.i.tions and | | delicate task unnecessary.

prejudices. | | However, in | | As standard works on the history of some countries | | music, easily accessible, may be attempts to return | | recommended the treatises by Forkel, to a Mediaeval | | Kiesewetter, Bellermann, Ambros, state of | | Burney, Hawkins, Fetis, and civilization. | | Coussemaker.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE MUSICAL SCALES IN USE AT THE PRESENT DAY.

In 'An Introduction to the Study of National Music' (London, 1866) I have endeavoured to give some account of the musical scales of different nations. The subject requires, however, fuller investigation than the aim of that book would permit. The 'Introduction to the Study of National Music' is intended to acquaint the student with the facts respecting the music of foreign nations and tribes which have been transmitted to us by travellers and through other sources. It can therefore scarcely claim more than to be a collection of materials which will prove useful for the erection of an edifice called the Science of National Music, as soon as the necessary additional materials have been obtained, without which it would be premature to design in detail the plan of the edifice, and to determine precisely its dimensions and internal divisions. The acquisition of useful materials will probably be promoted by the step recently taken by the British a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science.[113] There can be no greater mistake in such pursuits than to form a theory before the examples which are to serve as ill.u.s.trations have been most carefully examined and verified. It is by no means easy to commit to notation a popular tune of a foreign country which possesses peculiarities with which we are unfamiliar. Even musicians who have had experience in writing down national songs which they happen to hear, find this difficult. How unreliable, therefore, must be the notations of many travellers who know but little of music!

Still, the student of National Music, by careful attention and comparison, is gradually enabled to discern what is genuine, and valuable for his purpose. He knows that if there prevails a certain peculiarity in the scale on which the tunes collected are founded, the cause may be owing to want of musical experience in the person who wrote the tunes down, or to an individual whim of the performer by whom they were sung or played to the writer of the notation. But, supposing the student examines several collections of popular tunes from the same country, the collections having been formed by different persons independently of each other, and he finds all exhibiting the same peculiarity, he has no reason to doubt that it really exists in the music of that country. Nothing gives to the popular music of a country a more distinctive feature than the order of intervals on which it is founded; when the scale has been clearly ascertained, such other characteristics as the music possesses are generally soon discerned with sufficient exactness to be definable by the experienced musical inquirer.

The notations of musical scales of uncivilized nations emanating from European travellers who have heard the people sing, are certainly to be received with caution. Of this kind of communication is, for instance, the notation of the vocal effusions progressing in demi-semitones of the Marquesas Islanders at their cannibal feasts, written down by Councillor Tilesius, and published in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, Leipzig, 1805; or the notation of songs of the New Zealanders containing smaller intervals than semitones, which Mr. Davies has written down, and which Sir George Grey has published in his 'Polynesian Mythology of the New Zealand Race' (London, 1855). It is, however, often possible to ascertain the musical scale of a nation with exactness by examining the musical instruments appertaining to the nation. Thus, for instance, the Chinese close some of the finger-holes of their flutes by sticking pieces of bladder over them, in order to ensure the pentatonic scale; the Javanese construct instruments of percussion with sonorous slabs of metal or wood, arranged in conformity with the pentatonic scale; the Arabs, and most Mohammedan nations who have cultivated their music after the system of the Arabs, possess wind-instruments of the oboe kind on which the finger-holes are placed in accordance with the division of seventeen intervals in the compa.s.s of an octave; and also several stringed instruments of the Arabs, which are supplied with frets made of gut wound round the neck or finger-board, exhibit the same order of intervals; again, certain stringed instruments of the Hindus contain a number of little bridges, stuck with wax beneath the strings so as to produce, on a string being pressed down on the bridges successively, twenty-two intervals in the compa.s.s of the octave. Other instruments have marks on the sound-board as a guide to the performer where he has to press down the strings in exact conformity with the established scale.

What we observe with different nations of the present day, respecting the diversity of musical scales, might evidently also have been observed in ancient time. The Greeks had several kinds of scales, the popularity of which changed at different periods. So also had our forefathers during the Middle Ages. There is no necessity to refer to the Tetrachord of the ancient Greeks and the Hexachord of Guido Aretinus for evidences of the mutability of taste in these matters, since it can be observed sufficiently by referring to the music of nations around us. However, the so-called Modes of our old ecclesiastical music require here, at any rate, a pa.s.sing notice.

Some theorists maintain that our diatonic major scale is alone a true scale, and that any other regular succession of tones in which the two semitones of the diatonic scale occur upon other intervals than 3-4 and 7-8 is, properly speaking, a Mode. According to this doctrine, which was evidently suggested by the ecclesiastical Modes, our minor scale must be called a Mode, and the scales with steps exceeding a whole-tone, of which some examples will presently be given, are Imperfect Modes. It is unnecessary to refute such pedantic definitions; suffice it to remember that they exist.

Again, the diatonic major scale is regarded by many musicians as the natural order of intervals on which the compositions must be founded whenever the art of music has attained to a high degree of development, and which will therefore be universally adopted in the course of time.

They form this opinion especially from the laws of Acoustics, since the intervals const.i.tuting the diatonic major scale are those which as harmonics stand in the most simple relation to the fundamental tone produced by a vibrating body. Here, however, it must be observed that the intervals of our diatonic scale are not all of them precisely the same as those harmonics, but are "tempered;" since, did we tune them pure, as nature gives them, we could not use our system of harmony as it has been developed by our cla.s.sical composers.

Moreover, if the diatonic major scale is thus suggested by nature, the minor scale with its flat third must be more artificial, and less likely to be universally adopted. Howbeit, the minor scale is especially popular, not only with several uncivilized races, but also with several who have cultivated the art of music to a high degree. Some of our most eminent composers have written perhaps more beautiful music in minor than in major keys.

Besides, certain deviations from the diatonic major scale, which we meet with in the music of foreign nations, possess a particular charm, which we are sure to appreciate more and more as we gradually become familiar with them. This, for instance, is the case with the Superfluous Second introduced as an essential interval of the scale. Many of our musicians regard such intervals as whimsical deviations, which ought not to be liked because they do not well agree with the rules laid down in our treatises on the theory of music. To such learned Professors the scale of the Arabs, with its seventeen intervals in the compa.s.s of an octave, instead of twelve semitones, as in our own system, is of course a flagrant misconception--not to speak of the twenty-two demi-semitones of the Hindus, which ought to be twenty-four. Those nations have musical systems very different from ours, for which their order of intervals is well suited. Our rules of harmony and forms of composition are unknown to them; still, their popular legends and traditions clearly prove that they appreciate the beauty and power of music not less keenly than we do; and they demonstrate the superiority of their scales with the same confidence as any of our theorists are capable of displaying.

Could we trace our diatonic Major Scale in the songs of birds and in the euphonious cries of certain quadrupeds, we should have a more cogent reason for regarding it as the most natural scale than is afforded by a comparison of the vibrations required for the production of its several intervals. The songs of various birds have been written down in notation, from which it would appear that these feathered songsters possess an innate feeling for the diatonic major scale; but, unfortunately, unless the melodious phrases, or pa.s.sages, thus noted down are distinguished by some remarkable rhythmical peculiarity, they are seldom easily recognizable when they are played on a musical instrument. There may be among the numerous birds a few which in their natural song, untaught and uninfluenced in any way by man, emit a small series of tones strictly diatonic; but no such musicians are to be found among our own birds, although we have in Europe the finest singing birds in existence. The nightingale, it is true, produces occasionally a succession of tones which nearly corresponds with the diatonic Major Scale in descending, and which might possibly be mistaken for it by a listener charmed by the exquisite purity and sweetness of the tones which he does not investigate with the ear of a pianoforte-tuner. Even the two melodious sounds of the cuckoo cannot be properly written down in notation; nor can they be rendered on the pianoforte, because they do not exactly const.i.tute a Major Third, for which they are generally taken, and still less a Minor Third. A certain ape of the Gibbon family is said to produce exactly the chromatic scale through an entire octave in ascending and descending. Darwin, who in his work on 'The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals' (London, 1872; p. 87) mentions the astonis.h.i.+ng musical skill of this ape, remarks that some quadrupeds of a much lower cla.s.s than monkeys, namely Rodents, "are able to produce correct musical tones," and he refers the reader to an account of a "singing Hesperomys" [a mouse] by the Rev. S. Lockwood, in the 'American Naturalist,' Vol. V., December, 1871; p. 761. Notwithstanding the great authority of Darwin, the musical inquirer will probably desire to ascertain for himself whether the "correct musical tones" are exactly in conformity with our diatonic and chromatic intervals. However, even if this should be the case in a few instances, it can only be regarded as quite exceptional.

During the present century, our musical composers have so frequently employed in the diatonic major scale the Minor Sixth instead of the Major Sixth, that some theorists--among them Moritz Hauptmann--notice this order of intervals as a new and characteristic scale, and desire to have it as such generally acknowledged by musicians. A. Krauss, a teacher of music in Florence, has recently published a pamphlet, ent.i.tled 'Les Quatre Gammes diatoniques de la Tonalite moderne,' in which he designates this new scale with the name 'La Gamme semimajeur'

(The Half-major Scale,) which is at any rate better than that suggested by Moritz Hauptmann, in his 'Die Natur der Harmonik and der Metrik,'

which is 'Die Moll-Dur-Tonart' (the Minor-Major-Key, or scale).

We possess then, according to these theorists, now four diatonic scales, namely:--

[Music: 1. THE MAJOR SCALE.]

[Music: 2. THE HALF-MAJOR SCALE.]

Or also with minor seventh in descending:

[Music: 3. THE MINOR SCALE.]

[Music: 4. THE HALF-MINOR SCALE.]

The Half-Minor Scale contains the Minor Third, while its other intervals are identical with those of the Major Scale. This is the case in descending, where the seventh and sixth are lowered, as well as in ascending.

Furthermore, we have the Chromatic Scale, a regular progression in semitones, which is much used by modern composers; and the Enharmonic Scale, which may be said to exist only in notation, since it is not executable on most of our musical instruments, but which is likely to become important in the music of a future period when our instruments have been brought to the degree of perfection which permits the most delicate modifications in pitch by the performer, and which is at present almost alone obtainable on instruments of the violin kind.

[Music: 5. THE CHROMATIC SCALE.]

[Music: 6. THE ENHARMONIC SCALE.]

Furthermore, we find at the present day the following scales in use among foreign nations:--

[Music: 7. THE MINOR SCALE WITH TWO SUPERFLUOUS SECONDS.]

If the lover of music is acquainted with the popular songs and dance-tunes of the Wallachians, or with the wild and plaintive airs played by the gipsy bands in Hungary, he need not be told that the Minor Scale with two Superfluous Seconds is capable of producing melodies extremely beautiful and impressive. Indeed, it would be impossible to point out more charming and stirring effects than those which characterise the music founded on this scale.

[Music: 8. THE PENTATONIC SCALE.]

The Pentatonic Scale was in ancient times apparently more universally in use than it is at present. It is still popular in China, in Malaysia, and in some other Eastern districts. Traces of it are found in the popular tunes of some European nations, especially in those of the Celtic races. Its charming effect is known to most of our musicians through some of the Scotch and Irish melodies. Also among the Javanese tunes, which have been brought to Europe by travellers, and which are generally strictly pentatonic, some specimens are very melodious and impressive.

[Music: 9. THE DIATONIC SCALE WITH MINOR SEVENTH.]

The Diatonic Scale with Minor Seventh is likewise an Eastern scale.

Among European nations, the Servians especially have popular tunes which are founded on this scale. The Servian tunes frequently end with the interval of the Fifth instead of the First or the Octave. As the leading tone of our diatonic order of intervals--the Major Seventh--is wanting, our common cadence, or the usual harmonious treatment of the conclusion of a melody to which our ear has become so much accustomed that any other appears often unsatisfactory, cannot be applied to those tunes.

Nevertheless, they will be found beautiful by inquirers who are able to dismiss prejudice and to enter into the spirit of the music. Although the scale with Minor Seventh bears a strong resemblance to one of our antiquated Church Modes, called Myxo-Lydian, it is in some respects of a very different stamp, since its characteristic features would become veiled if it were harmonised like that Church Mode.

In addition to the nine scales which have been enumerated, some others could be pointed out which are popular in European countries; but, as they resemble more or less those which have been given above, and as they may be regarded as modifications, it will suffice here to refer to them only briefly. There are, for instance, in the Irish tunes many of a pentatonic character in which one of the two semitones of the diatonic scale is extant, and the scale of which therefore consists of six intervals, either thus

[Music: C, D, E, F, G, A, C], or thus [Music: C, D, E, G, A, B, C]

We also meet with a pentatonic order of intervals in which the Third is flat like in our diatonic minor scale.

Again, some nations which have the diatonic order of intervals deviate slightly from it by habitually intoning some particular interval in a higher or lower pitch than it occurs in our tempered system. For instance, careful observers have noticed that the Swiss peasants in singing their popular airs are naturally inclined to intone the interval of the Fourth sharper than it sounds on the pianoforte. Thus, in C-major it is raised so as to give almost the impression of _F sharp_. This peculiarity is supposed to have arisen from the Alphorn, a favourite instrument of the Swiss, on which the interval of the Fourth, like on a trumpet, is higher than it is in our Diatonic Scale. No doubt many peculiarities of this kind are traceable to the construction of certain popular instruments. This is perhaps more frequently observable among uncivilized nations than with Europeans. Professor Lichtenstein, who, during his travels in South Africa, in the beginning of the present century, investigated the music of the Hottentots, a.s.serts that these people sing the interval of the Third slightly lower than the Major Third, but not so low as the Minor Third; and the Fifth and Minor Seventh likewise lower than in our intonation. He found that the same deviations from our intervals exist on the _Gorah_, a favourite stringed instrument of the Hottentots.

Other peculiarities of the kind are more difficult to explain. In the Italian popular songs of the peasantry, for instance, we not unfrequently meet with the Minor Second, where to an ear accustomed to our Minor Scale it appears like a whimsical subst.i.tution for the Major Second. It occurs, however, only occasionally. When it is used, the scale is as follows; the Seventh being Major in ascending, and Minor in descending:--