MUSIC is the science of combining tones in melodic, rhythmic and harmonic order, so as to excite the emotions or appeal to the intel lect. For untold ages it was purely emotional With its development as a science, in the Mid dle Ages, it appealed almost entirely to the intellect, this species of music culminating shortly before 1600. At the present time that music is considered best which appeals both to mind and emotion. It is the combination and equipoise of these two factors which causes Beethoven to be considered one of the chief masters, and the music of Wagner, with all its intensity of passion, to appeal also to the men tal processes by its peculiar treatment of Leif motiven Spencer and Huxley suggested imitations of nature (bird-songs, etc.) as a possible com mencement of emotional music. Palaeolithic man had his music, even instrumental music, as may be deduced from a primitive flute of reindeer's horn, found in a cave which was in habited during the Stone Age. Many prehis toric horns of metal have been unearthed among the relics of the Bronze Age./ From two or three notes the scaler grew into various intricate and widely differing forms. The five-toned (pentatonic) scale is the most primitive now in use among civilized nations. It was chiefly employed by the Chinese, even 4,000 years ago, but is also used in some hymns ((There is a Happy Land') and in many Scot tish songs, such as 'Ye Banks and Braes,' or 'Auld Lang Syne.' About 600 a.c. Pythagoras (see Prrisnoo RAS) established the proportions of the inter vals, and Music, always an artificial and a human product, was given a natural foundation.
(See MODE; INTERVAL). It may be doubted whether harmony existed at all in the ancient world. It is absolutely certain that the Chinese, who were well advanced in the art in ancient days, and who formulated many acoustical prin ciples before the. time of Pythagoras, used melody without supporting harmonies. It is possible that the Greeks had a crude accom paniment of drone bass to some of their songs. The Scriptural music, loud ecstatic, and of an improvisional character, is a blind alley and does not lead to modern development of any kind. The music of both the old and new Testaments was orally transmitted and is not to be traced. Ancient Rome copied the Greek music but without fully understanding it. Rome conquered Greece but could not assimi late its culture, and in the first centuries of our era the musical art was retrogressing. The
influence of the Christian Church stayed the decadence and gave a new direction to the art. Ambrose (about 340-398) and Gregory (540 604), stemmed the tide of decay and rescued some part of the ancient systems or modes. The power of music in the early Christian ritual is not only shown by the praises of the Fathers of the Church, but by the fact that the Emperor Julian in 361 endeavored to found a musical conservatory in Alexandria to educate boys to sing in the pagan rites as his adver saries were singing in the Christian churches. The Roman influence now extended the Gre gorian chants all over the civilized world. Boethius (475-524) had written a treatise on the Roman system which became the misty textbook of the earliest days (see Boerusus). In 790 Pope Adrian sent singing teachers into France with missals illustrating the Gregorian modes. An antiphonarium was left at Saint Gal len which still exists and proves the earnestness of the musical mission. The music of this early period, however, is still very vague to us, since no practical notation existed. The musicians of this epoch sometimes employed alphabetical letters as notes (which could be deciphered) but more frequently a system of lines, curves, dots and dashes, called the Neunsas, which were only to aid the memory of one who had learned the song orally, but meant nothing definite to anyone who had not thus studied it.
A step forward was made by a monk named Hucbald, in Saint Amanda, who improved the notation somewhat by using a staff (it is very doubtful if he invented it) and by writing cer tain rules regarding the union'of different parts in music simultaneously. The reform seems, at first, to be a very great one, meaning nothing less than the birth of part-music, the evolution of a new science; but, when one knows that these parts were simply consecutive fifths or fourths, or other equally harsh progressions, one can only marvel that the men of the Middle Ages bore it so patiently. The new system was called the Organum, since it was often played upon the great wind instrument which had dis appeared when Rome went down, and reap peared in Europe in the reigns of King Pepin and the Emperor Charlemagne.