J2. If the ancient diatonic genus, at least as described by theorists, appears so strange to us, their other genera are still less intelligible. It has already been observed that their different genera. arose out of the different ways in which they divided their favourite interval, the perfect fourth. In the diatonic genus, as already described, the scale ascended by a semitone and ovo tones. The chromatic ascended by two semitones and minor-third. The enharmonic by two quar ter tones and a major-third. The extreme sounds of the five tetrachords remained as in the diatonic genus. The scales filled up with their peculiar intervals were these.
The mark X like St. Andrew's cross, denotes the ele vation of the note before which it is set, a quarter-tone, dividine the semitone into two intervals, equal or nearly equal. This character is adopted in modern notation to de note the elevation of a sharpened note by another chroma tic semitone, and is called double sharp. Each of the three genera was subdivided into different species, but w-e shall not trouble the reader with the conjectures of learned men respecting them. " The distinctions of the genera," says Dr. Burney, 66 seem to have been long religiously observed in Greece: as the lyre was allowed but four strings to each tetrachord, and flutes were bored in a particular manner for each genus, in which no provision was made for producing the tones peculiar to the other two." The invention of the enharmonic genus is ascribed to Olympus the Mysian, the scholar of the unfortunate Marsyas, who disputed with Apollo. Dr. Burney, from a passage in Plutarch's Dia logue concerning music, has drawn a very ingenious conjec ture respecting the enharmonic of Olympus. It seems to have consisted merely in the omission of certain notes in the diatonic tetrachords. The quarter tones of the enhar monic he supposes to have been a refinement of later times. 66 It must be remembered," he observes, 66 that the Dorian mode in which Olympus is said to have composed his me lodies, answers to our key of D minor. Now in the tetra chords of this mode, if we omit every third sound, we shall have the following melody.
ing to complete the octave.
Now this is exactly the old Scots scale in the minor key, a circumstance which must strike every one who reads the passage of Plutarch, that is at all acquainted with the in tervals of the Greek scale, and with Scots music." For the passage itself, and for the reasoning with which Ile supports this conjecture, we must refer our readers to his Dissertation on the music of the ancients prefixed to the first volume of his History of Music. We only add, that, granting all that the Doctor supposes of the shnilarity of the scales, it does not follow that the celebrated Nomes, or airs of Olym pus, bore anygreat resemblance to the old Scottish airs. The rhythm of the former, w-hich most probably. was hexameter, must have given them a totally different dim acter. Besides, the old Scottish airs, though drawn from a. defective scale, and carefully avoiding the major seventh of the scale, at least in the minor mode, do yet in their closes plainly point at cadences in the harmony to which they belong, a thing of which, there is every reason to believe, the ancients had no knowledge.
13. The music of the ancients was entirely vocal, and en tirely regulated by the rhythm of the poetry; even their in strumental music was only vocal music played on instru ments, insomuch that they had no notation for time. The
poet and musician were long united in the same person. The hexameters of Homer were sung possibly to the same melody or recitative, which he himself composed. The lyric poets, Alcaeus, Sappho, Anacreon, literally sung their poems to the lyre. Pindar, it is well known, set his own poems to music and sung them himself in the public con tests ; and his skill in music, and the excellence of his voice, contributed their share to his victories. The entire subjec tion of the DIUSiC to the quantity of the syllables, must have made it resemble our recitatives rather than our airs, even in those verses which were composed of feet of equal quan tities, such as hexameters, and pure iambics, and trochaics. But the continual change from common to triple time, as we should express it, in their lyric versification, is a thine of such a nature, that it is extremely difficult for a modern mu sician to conceive that music, subjected to such measures, could be tolerable. That habit had formed their ears to find pleasure in such music, is not to be doubted; that it is not quite fair to try their taste by modern standards, we allow; but to give up our rhythm, and to return to that of the ancients, as learned men have contended we ought to do, would be returning to acorns after having enjoyed the gifts of Ceres. " Let the most inventive composer," says Dr. Burney, " try to set half a dozen hexameters, pure iambics, or any other verses that will fall into regular common, or triple time, and Ise will soon find that no resources of me lody are sufficient to disguise or palliate the insipid and tire some uniformity' of the measure ; and as to any thing like expression, we may as well expect to be affected by the me chanical strut of a soldier on the parade. In other metres, where feet of different kinds are intermixed, some variety is indeed acquired, but it is a misplaced variety, which, without obviating the tiresome effect of a confinement to no more than two lengths of notes, adds to it that of an awk ward and uncouth arrangement; the ear is still fatigued with uniformity where it requires chanze, and distracted by change where it requires uniformity. Modern music, on the con trary, by its division into equal bars, (measures) and its un equal subdivision of these bars by notes of various lentrths, unites to the pleasure which the ear is by. nature formed to receive from a regular and even measure, all the variety and expression v.-hich the ancients seem to have aimed at by sud den and convulsive changes of time, and a continual conflict of jarring and irreconcilable rhythms." 14. it is very surprising that so ingenious a people as the Greeks should have rested contented with so imperfect and so cumbrous a notation as theirs was. It was made up of the letters of the alphabet, which were not sufficiently nu merous for their purposes; they were therefore inverted and placed in various positions, mutilated and combined. Ncr analogy drawn from the octave or the tetrachord, from their genera or modes, is discoverable in these characters. Hence they amounted to 1620 different notes, and all this without any notation of time. The same sounds were differently noted for the voice and for instruments ; and the difficulty of learning to read music was excessive.