THE GENIUS OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

After a Copperplate by j. Chapman.

HE central figure in the illustration is, of course, that of Apollo, the god of light, in all its forms,- forms in which the Greeks included music, poetry, and literature in general.

491

PIETRO BLASERNA

(1836-)

ROFESSOR PIETRO BLASERNA, of the Royal University of Rome,

is the author of numerous notable essays on scientific subjects. Among them are "The Principles of the Conservation of Energy" (1864); "Inductive Currents"; and "The Dynamic Theory of Heat" (1872). This latter essay was followed by "The Theory of Sound in Its Relation to Music » (1875), which was at once translated into French, English, and other languages.

Blaserna was educated at the University of Vienna and in Paris, where he was attached to the Laboratory of Regnault. In 1863 he became a professor in the University of Palermo, and in 1878 in that of Rome, where he was put in charge of the Italian Laboratory of the Physical Sciences.

PRIM

MUSIC, ANCIENT AND MODERN

RIMITIVE music is as ancient as history itself. From the high plains of Asia, where many ancient historical traces of it are found, it followed man in his wanderings through China, India, and Egypt. One of the most ancient books, the Bible, speaks of music often and from its earliest pages.

David and Solomon were very musical. They composed psalms full of inspiration, and evidently intended to be sung. To the latter is due the magnificent organizations of the singing in the Temple at Jerusalem. He founded a school for singers, and a considerable band, which at last reached the number of four thousand trumpeters, the principal instruments being the harp, the cithern, the trumpet, and the drum.

It is incontestably established that the Greeks had no true principle of harmony even in their most prosperous times. The only thing that they did in this respect was to accompany in octaves when men and boys executed the same melody.

Thus their instrumentation only served to reinforce the voice part, whether it was played in unison or in octaves, or whether

more or less complicated variations were executed between one verse and another, or even between the parts of a verse. With them music was an auxiliary art, intended to increase, by idealizing it, the effect of words.

The development of their music must be regarded only from this point of view, and in this respect it must be admitted that they arrived at a considerable degree of perfection, notwithstanding the truly primitive form under which it appears at the present time. It was, in fact, a sort of lofty declamation, with more variable rhythm and more frequent and more pronounced modulation than ordinary declamation. This music was much enjoyed by the Greeks, and when it is considered that the Greeks were the most artistic and most creative nation that has ever existed, it becomes necessary to look with care for the refinements which their music must, and in fact does, contain.

The Greek musical scale was developed by successive fifths. Raising a note to its fifth signifies multiplying its number of vibrations per second by . This principle was rigorously maintained by the Greeks; rigorously because the fourth, of which they made use from the very beginning, is only the fifth below the fundamental note raised an octave. To make the tracing out of these musical ideas clearer, recourse will be had to our modern nomenclature, making the supposition that our scale, which will be studied later on in its details, is already known to the reader; calling the fundamental note c, and the successive notes of our scale, d, e, f, g, a, b, c, with the terms sharps and flats for the intermediate notes, as is done in our modern music. In this scale the first note, the c, represents the fundamental note, the others are successively the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, and the octave, according to the position which they occupy in the musical scale.

If the c be taken as a point of departure, its fifth is g, and its fifth below is f. If this last note be raised an octave so as to bring it nearer to the other notes, and if the octave of c be also added, the following four notes are obtained:—

whose musical ratios are,—

c, f, g, c.

1, 1, 1, 2.

These four notes, according to an ancient tradition, constituted the celebrated lyre of Orpheus. Musically speaking, it is cer