#Enchiridion mod wiki tab full#

Guide's description of the Organum is essentially the same as the succession of fourths and fifths given by Hucbald he does not however consider it very satisfactory, and gives an example of what was more musical according to his notions but as this is not in any degree superior to the second example quoted from Hucbald above, it is clear that Guido's views on the subject of Harmony do not demand lengthy consideration here. This might be through Hucbald's notions of combination being more vague than those of Guido, and his attempts at harmony more experimental for, as far as can be gathered from the documents, the time which elapsed between them was a period of gradual realisation of the qualities of intervals, and not of progress towards the use of fresh ones.

#Enchiridion mod wiki tab full#

The use of tenths in this example is remarkable, and evidently unusual, for Guido of Arezzo, who lived full a century later, speaks of the 'symphonia vocum' in his Antiphonarium, and mentions only fourths, fifths, and octaves. Burney gives an example from the work, and translates it as follows:. The earliest attempts at harmony of which there are any examples or any description, was the Diaphony or Organum which is described by Hucbald, a Flemish monk of the tenth century, in a book called 'Enchiridion Musicæ.' These consist for the most part of successions of fourths or fifths, and octaves. Of these the one beginning on F (the ecclesiastical Lydian) was vitiated by having an augmented fourth from the Tonic, and the one commencing on C (the ecclesiastical Ionic, or Greek Lydian) was looked upon with disfavour as the 'modus lascivus.' These circumstances affected very materially the early ideas of harmony and it will be seen that, conversely, the gradual growth of the perception of harmonic relations modified these ecclesiastical scales by very slow degrees, by the introduction of accidentals, so that the various modes were by degrees fused into our modern major and minor scales. In these scales there were only two which had a leading note or major seventh from the tonic. It must suffice to point out that the ecclesiastical scales are tolerably well represented by the white notes of our keyed instruments, the different ones commencing upon each white note successively, that commencing on D being the one which was more commonly used than the others. It would be impossible to enter here into the question of the construction and gradual modification of the scales. In point of fact the drone bass can hardly be taken as representing any idea of harmony proper it is very likely that it originated in the instruments of percussion or any other form of noise-making invention which served to mark the rhythms or divisions in dancing or singing and as this would in most cases (especially in barbarous ages) be only one note, repeated at whatever pitch the melody might be, the idea of using a continuous note in place of a rhythmic one would seem naturally to follow but this does not necessarily imply a feeling for harmony, though the principle had certain issues in the development of harmonic combinations, which will presently be noticed. The people's songs of various nations also indicate characteristic scales, but these were equally unfit for purposes of combination, unless it were with a drone bass, which must have been a very early discovery. The ecclesiastical scales, out of which our modern system was gradually developed, were the descendants of the Greek scales, and like them only adapted for melody, which in the dark ages was of a sufficiently rude description. In the search after such a scale experiment has succeeded experiment, those which were successful serving as the basis for further experiments by fresh generations of musicians till the scale we now use was arrived at. In looking back over the history of music it becomes clear that a scale adapted for any kind of elaboration of harmony could only be arrived at by centuries of labour and thought. This reticence probably arose from the nature of their scales, which were well adapted for the development of the effective resources of melody, but were evidently inadequate for the purposes of harmony. It seems to be sufficiently proved that the ancient Greeks, though they knew the combinations which we call chords and categorised them, did not make use of them in musical performance. The practice of combining sounds of different pitch, which is called Harmony, belongs exclusively to the music of the most civilised nations of modern times.