Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
NOVEMBER 26, 1921
Despite a Popular Be.ief to the Contrary, Music Is the Youngest of the Arts, ~~' - V T '
44
•
and Not Until the Beginning of the Fifteenth Century Was the Art of Music,|j|
as We Understand It, Placed on the Foundation Upon Which It Has Builded?
The earliest history of music may be reckoned
among those subjects which the ingenuity and
the patience of the learned and the curious have
as yet failed to explore to the bottom. Fanciful
and poetic explanations have frequently been
made and a deal of inflated nonsense has been
talked, but, as a matter of fact, very little has
been discovered. Yet the subject is extremely
interesting, despite its obscurities, and every per-
son who has access to the almost unlimited
riches of the musical literature available for the
player-piano, in whatever form, ought to know
something about it. A piece of music is always
much more fascinating and easier to understand
when those who hear or perform it are acquainted
with its position in the history of the art, know
how it came to be written as it was written and
what were the social and political conditions in
the course of which it was composed.
The Primeval Howl
The account given of the beginnings of music
by the popular evolutionists of the last genera-
tion is wholly absurd. Music could not possibly
have arisen through natural selection of those
primitive males who were best equipped to howl
in such a way as to delight the females whom
they wished to attract, for the very simple rea-
son that the desire was to attract for sexual
purposes and not to delight for aesthetic pur-
poses. Nor can it be supposed that the modern
feeling for music is the latest link in a chain
of causation which stretches back to that far-
distant day when first one of our primitive an-
cestors perceived that some strong emotion was
causing in him contractions of the muscles of
the abdomen, chest and vocal chords. These
muscular actions may have given rise, and doubt-
less did give rise, to sounds, and the evolutionists
would have us believe that from this coincidence
(emotion felt, with noises following) sprang ac-
cented speech, to be followed, as time went on,
by the first rudimentary ideas of musical pitch
and sequence. But, as Mr. Balfour has so crush-
ingly replied, if this were so—as perhaps it was— can judge by the scanty remains disinterred by
it would not show why to-day wholly different the patient labor of scholars. It may . seem
sounds please us and why the results of the origi- strange that the epics of Homer, the idylls of
nal coincidence do not please us at all. In a Theocritus, the lyrical dramas of /Eschylus,
word, we can talk all we like about physical should not have provoked the music which, to
causes of noise or sound, but with all our talk our judgment, naturally goes with them; but
we are not a whit closer to understanding why though music of some sort they undoubtedly
music pleases us. The aesthetic sense is not to involved, this was, at best, no more than a
be explained by materialistic philosophy. Nor, cadenced speech.
for that matter, is any other sense.
The Greek instruments, as was said, were
The Greek Work
primitive in the extreme. The flute was chief
It is difficult to find any branch of human in- among them, but we know that the Auletes, or
quiry in which so much misinformation has ac- flute player, was regarded as a person of little
cumulated as in this we are now pursuing. worth, who, if a man, was usually a slave; if a
Scarcely a historical novel dealing with pre- woman, usually an Hetaira. With such poor in-
Christian times can be opened which does not strumental aids it is no wonder that Greek music
contain references to the power of music and did not survive the passing of Greek greatness.
Music Is Young
to supposed great musical secrets possessed by
the ancients. Yet, in point of fact, the music
In fact, the sort of thing which we to-day think
of the Greeks, from which the later Romans took of when we talk about music is by no means
whatever in the way of musical thought ever rested old. Whatever Hebrew musicians may have done
upon them, was as infantile on the practical side when they performed at the opening of Solo-
as it was complex on the theoretical. The Greeks mon's Temple, whatever sounds may have accom-
had some sound notions on the physics of music, panied the chorus in Euripides' Alcestis, what
they knew the mathematical relations between we to-day call music was not of those genera.
string-length and pitch, but they were never able It was not, in fact, until the close of the Dark
to devise efficient instruments for producing Ages that modern music began to emerge from
musical tone. They had a scheme for musical the obscurity of ignorance and apathy which had
scales, both ingenious and scientific—a scheme crushed Europe from the fifth to the twelfth
which is to be found still embedded in modern centuries. The Church had preserved a tiny
systems as the remains of the carboniferous era spark of ecclesiastical music, taken from the tra-
are embedded in our coal measures. But they ditional scales adopted by St. Ambrose of Milan
never succeeded in combining three tones simul- upon the model of the Greek scales. Pope Greg-
taneously to form a harmony.
ory had gone further, and so the Church in its
It is certain, in fact, despite the flights of cathedrals, abbeys and monasteries preserved
fancy which have made so many of our notions the precious heritage as it preserved so much
of the subject absurd, that the feeling for music more of old learning, as if waiting for the sun
did not begin to come into anything like recog- of the Renaissance to burst forth and, at the
nizable form until well on into historic times. right time, reveal its brightness to a world now
Even the Greeks, as we have said, did very little ready and able to appreciate it.
in practical music. The race which gave us the
The Rebirth of Learning
finest literature the world has ever known could
not give us a music worth preserving, if we Even before the fifteenth century had begun
men's minds throughout Europe were being
leavened by the culture which was spreading in
all directions from the seat of the Eastern
Roman Empire, now tottering to its doom. Fifty
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(Continued on page 6)
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