Critical and Historical Essays
story of Daniel in the lions' den, another form of the legend of
Orpheus taming the wild beasts; in Jonah, they recognize Arion
and the dolphin; and the symbol of the Good Shepherd, carrying
home the stray lamb on his shoulders, is considered another
form of the familiar Greek figure of Hermes carrying the goat.
Be this as it may, it is certain that this crude beginning
of Christian music arose from a vital necessity, and was
accompanied by an indomitable faith. If we look back, we note
that until now music had either been the servant of ignoble
masters, looked upon as a mathematical problem to be solved
scientifically, or used according to methods prescribed by
the state. It had been dragged down to the lowest depths of
sensuality by the dance, and its divine origin forgotten in
lilting rhythms and soft, lulling rhymes.
On the other hand, the mathematicians, in their cold
calculation, reduced music to the utilitarianism of algebra,
and even viewed it as a kind of medicine for the nerves and
mind. When we think of the music of Pythagoras and his school,
we seem to be in a kind of laboratory in which all the tones
are labelled and have their special directions for use. For
the legend runs that he composed melodies in the diatonic,
chromatic, and enharmonic styles as antidotes for moods such
as anger, fear, sorrow, etc., and invented new rhythms which
he used to steady and strengthen the mind, and to produce
simplicity of character in his disciples. He recommended that
every morning, after rising, they should play on the lyre and
sing, in order to clear the mind. It was inevitable that this
half mathematical, half psychologically medicinal manner of
treating music would, in falling into the hands of Euclid
(300 B.C.) and his school, degenerate into a mere peg on
which to hang mathematical theorems. On the other hand, when
we think of Greek dances, we seem to pass into the bright,
warm sunshine. We see graceful figures holding one another by
the wrist, dancing in a circle around some altar to Dionysus,
and singing to the strange lilt of those unequal measures. We
can imagine the scheme of colour to be white and gold, framed
by the deep-blue arch of the sky, the amethyst sea flecked
with glittering silver foam, and the dark, sombre rocks of the
Cretan coast bringing a suggestion of fate into this dancing,
soulless vision. Turning now to Rome, we see that this same
music has fallen to a wretched slave's estate, cowering in some
corner until the screams of Nero's living torches need to be
drowned; and then, with brazen clangour and unabashed rhythms,
this brutal music flaunts forth with swarms of dancing slaves,
shrilling out the praises of Nero; and the time for successful
revolution is at hand.
The first steps toward actually defining the new music took
place in the second century, when the Christians were free to
worship more openly, and, having wealthy converts among them,
held their meetings in public places and basilicas which were
used by magistrates and other officials during the day. These
basilicas or public halls had a raised platform at one end, on
which the magistrate sat when in office. There were steps up to
it, and on these steps the clergy stood. The rest of the hall
was called the "nave" (ship), for the simile of "storm-tossed
mariners" was always dear to the early Christian church. In the
centre of the nave stood the reader of the Scriptures, and on
each side of him, ranged along the wall, were the singers. The
Psalms were sung antiphonally, that is, first one side would
sing and the other side would answer. The congregations
were sometimes immense, for according to St. Jerome (340-420
A.D.) and St. Ambrose (340-397 A.D.) "the roofs reechoed with
their cries of 'Alleluia,' which in sound were like the great
waves of the surging sea."
Nevertheless this was, as yet, only sound, and not music. Not
until many centuries later did music become distinct from
chanting, which is merely intoned _speech_. The disputes
of the Arians and the Athanasians also affected the music of
the church, for as early as 306 A.D., Arius introduced many
secular melodies, and had them sung by women.
Passing over this, we find that the first actual arrangement
of Christian music into a regular system was attempted by Pope
Sylvester, in 314 A.D., when he instituted singing schools,
and when the heresy of Arius was formally condemned.
Now this chanting or singing of hymns was more or less a
declamation, thus following the Greek tradition of using one
central note, somewhat in the nature of a keynote.
Rhythm, distinct melody, and even metre were avoided as
retaining something of the unclean, brutal heathenism against
which the Christians had revolted. It was the effort to keep
the music of the church pure and undefiled that caused the
Council of Laodicea (367 A.D.) to exclude from the church all
singing not authorized from the pulpit.
A few years later (about 370 A.D.) Ambrose, the Archbishop
of Milan, strove to define this music more clearly, by fixing
upon the modes that were to be allowed for these chants; for
we must remember that all music was still based upon the Greek
modes, the modern major and minor being as yet unknown. In the
course of time the ancient modes had become corrupted, and the
modes that Ambrose took for his hymns were therefore different
from those known in Greece under the same names. His Dorian
is what the ancients called Phrygian, [G: d' d''] dominant,
A; his Phrygian was the ancient Dorian, [G: e' e''] dominant,
C; his Lydian corresponded to the old Hypolydian, [G: f' f'']
dominant, C; and his Mixolydian to the old Hypophrygian,
[G: g' g''] dominant, D. These modes were accepted by the
church and were called the Authentic modes.
Almost two centuries later, Gregory the Great added four
more modes, which were called Plagal or side modes (from
_plagios_--oblique). These were as follows:
(Keynote)
Hypodorian, [G: a (d') a' ] dominant, F.
Hypophrygian, [G: c (e') b' ] dominant, A.
Hypolydian, [G: c' (f') c''] dominant, A.
Hypo-mixolydian, [G: d' (g') d''] dominant, C.
It is easy to see that these so-called new modes are simply
new versions of the first four; although they are lowered a
fourth beneath the authentic modes (hence the _hypo_), the
_keynote remains the same_ in each instance. Still later two
more modes were added to this list, the Ionic, [G: c' c'']
dominant, G, which corresponded to the ancient Greek Lydian;
and the Aeolian, [G: a' a''] dominant, E, which, strange to say,
was the only one of these newer modes which corresponded to
its Greek namesake. Naturally these two newly admitted modes
were also accompanied by their lower pitched attendant modes,
the Hypoionic, [G: g (c') g'] dominant, E, and the Hypoaeolian,
[G: e' (a') e''] dominant, C.
SUMMARY
Mode. Key. Dominant.
Dorian. D A
Hypodorian. D F
Phrygian. E C
Hypophrygian. E A
Lydian. F C
Hypolydian. F A
Mixolydian. G D
Hypo-mixolydian. G C
Aeolian. A E
Hypoaeolian. A C
Ionian. C G
Hypoionian. C E
Dominants
[G: a' f' c' {a (a')} c' a d' c' e' c' g' e']
Now all these lower, or derived modes, Hypodorian, Hypophrygian,
Hypolydian, etc., received the name Plagal modes, because
there was but one tonic or keynote in the scale; consequently
a melody starting on any degree of the scale would invariably
return to the same tonic or keynote. They differed from the
authentic modes, inasmuch as in the latter a melody might end
either on the upper or lower tonic or keynote. Thus the melody
itself was said to be either authentic or plagal, according
to whether it had one or two tonics. The theme of Schumann's
"Etudes symphoniques" is authentic, and the first variation
is plagal.
Between the sixth and tenth centuries there was much confusion
as to the placing of these modes, but they finally stood as
given above. The Greek names were definitely accepted in the
eleventh century, or thereabouts; previously, they were known
also as the first, second, third, etc., up to the twelfth,
church tones or Gregorian modes.
At this point it is necessary to refer again to Ambrose.
Apart from having brought the first four authentic modes
into church music, he composed many hymns which had this
peculiarity, namely, that they were modelled more on the actual
declamation of the words to be sung than had hitherto been
the case. We are told that his chants--to use the phrase of
his contemporary, Francis of Cologne--were "all for sweetness
and melodious sound"; and St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.),
speaks of them with ecstasy. The words in these hymns were
used in connection with small groups of notes; consequently
they could be understood as they were sung, thus returning
in a measure to the character of the music of the ancients,
in which the word and declamation were of greater importance
than the actual sounds which accompanied them. But now a
strange thing was to happen that was to give us a new art.
Now, at last, music was to be separated from language and dance
rhythms, and stand alone for the first time in the history of
civilization as _pure music_.
To appreciate the change made by Gregory (540-604 A.D.), it is
necessary to bear in mind the state of the church just before
his time. As the Ambrosian chant had brought something of the
old declamation and sweetness back into the church ceremonial,
so also in the church itself there was a tendency to sink
back into the golden shimmer that had surrounded the ancient
pagan rites. Already Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch (260
A.D.), had striven to bring a certain Oriental magnificence
into the church ceremonials. He had a canopied throne erected
for himself, from which he would address his congregation;
he introduced applause into the church, after the fashion of
the Roman theatres; he also had a chorus of women singers, who,
as Eusebius tells us, sang not the Christian hymns, but pagan
tunes. Later, in Constantinople, even this luxury and pomp
increased; the churches had domes of burnished gold, and had
become gigantic palaces, lit by thousands of lamps. The choir,
dressed in glittering robes, was placed in the middle of the
church, and these singers began to show the same fatal sign
of decadence that we saw before in Rome and Greece. According
to St. Chrysostom (347-407 A.D.), they used unguents on their
throats in order to make the voice flexible, for by this time
the singing had become a mere vehicle for virtuosity; when
they sang their _tours de force_, the people applauded and
waved their handkerchiefs, as they did also when the preaching
pleased them. The pagans pointed the finger of scorn at the
Christians, as being mere renegades from the old religion,
and said, plausibly enough, that their worship was merely
another form of the Dionysus tragedy. There was the same altar,
the same chorus, the priest who sang and was answered by the
chorus; and the resemblance had grown to such an extent that
St. Chrysostom (350 A.D.) complained that the church chorus
accompanied its singing with theatrical gestures, which,
as we know, is simply the first step towards the dance.
This was the state of things when Gregory became Pope in
590 A.D. His additions to the modes already in use have been
explained. His great reform lay in severing the connection
between the music of the church and that of the pagan world
before it. Casting aside the declamation and rhythm, which
up to now had always dominated pure sound, he abolished the