36

Close of the First Period.

though the new art was practised, and to some extent developed, by the artists of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, no musical inventor or reformer to be compared with Ambrose, Gregory, Hucbald, Guido, or Franco appeared till the opening of the second period-the consideration of which we must defer till we meet again.

THE SECOND PERIOD.

FROM ABOUT A.D. 1400 TO ABOUT A.D. 1600.

MUSICAL SCIENCE IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY

FAUX

BOURDON AND EXTEMPORANEOUS DESCANT-ADAM DE LA HALE-THE FOURTEENTH

CENTURY-COUNTERPOINT

JEAN DE MURIS-GUILLAUME DE MACHAULT-THE

ORGAN-LANDINO-SECULAR

MUSIC-ITS INFLUENCE

ON ECCLESIASTICAL-BELGIAN EXPERIMENTS IN COUNTERPOINT-BELGIAN MUSICIANS IN ROME-DUFAY-CANON

OCKENHEIM-JOSQUIN DEPRÈS HIS CONTEMPORARIES
AND PUPILS-THE PUBLICATIONS OF PETRUCCI-MUSIC
IN ROME AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY-THE ORATORIO-FILIPPO NERI AND GIOVANNI
ANIMUCCIA-CLAUDE GOUDIMEL-PALESTRINA-CHURCH
MUSIC BEFORE PALESTRINA-THE
CELLI"-ROLAND DE

MISSA PAPE MARLATTRE-THE MADRIGAL-EX

TENSIVE CULTIVATION OF MUSIC AT THE END OF THE

SIXTEENTH CENTURY-LUCA MARENZIO-ENGLISH COM-
POSERS OF THE SECOND PERIOD.

THE SECOND PERIOD.

At our last meeting we were occupied with a very rapid, and of necessity slight, survey of the progress of music from the end of the fourth to that of the fourteenth century. After about eight hundred of these thousand years, i.e., in the twelfth century, we find the elements of what we now call music, and the apparatus without which it would have been impossible to turn them to account, at the service of the musician. Descant, though of a somewhat rude kind, was extensively practised; the two principles on which our modern notation is based, that the place of a note determines its pitch, and the shape its length, were recognised; and means were presented, in the flat and the sharp, of expressing every recognised variety of musical intonation. Much of this apparatus was too delicate for any hands into which, at this time, it could possibly have fallen; the majority of musicians did not at first attempt to avail themselves of it. Diaphony, the accompaniment of plain-song with consecutive octaves, fifths, and fourths, had died out in most places; but faux-bourdon, a somewhat improved variety of it, and extemporaneous descant were the nearest approaches to music made, even in the Pope's Chapel, by the best singers, up to the time of the return of the Papal Court to Rome, in the year 1377. Avignon, however, must then have fallen as much behind its age, in the matter of music, as Rome subsequently got ahead of it. In the first part of the thirteenth century the Déchanteurs, or harmonizers, were a separate class, who put into

form the musical ideas of others; but later in the century we hear of a Trouvère who was not only, as a matter of course, a poet and a melodist, but a harmonist also. This was Adam de la Hale, born in 1240, and surnamed "Le Bossu d'Arras." Some three-part songs of his were, some years since, discovered and interpreted by the eminent French critic M. Fétis. The originals are in the Bibliothèque Impériale. The structure of these songs, though still rude, is in advance of that of any known preceding or contemporaneous music. Adam de la Hale however has a claim on our notice much stronger than he would owe to these detached pieces. He is the composer, so far as has yet been ascertained, of the first comic opera. It is entitled "Li Gieus [le jeu] de Robin et de Marion," the same Robin Hood and the same Maid Marian who have been the subjects of so much poetical and plastic illustration among ourselves. The Bibliothèque Impériale contains two contemporary MSS. of this work, one perfect, the other incomplete; the music never having been filled into the spaces left for it in the latter by the copyist of the words. These MSS. I have carefully examined. You will find a perfect transcript of the libretto only in the "Théâtre Français au Moyen Age"* of Messrs. Monmerqué and Michel; and the Société des Bibliophiles, of Paris, had a facsimile of the complete MS. made in 1822, of which they printed only twenty-five copies. M. Fétis, also, has illustrated an article in an early number of the "Revue Musicale" with a specimen as well of this opera as of De la Hale's three-part songs. They are before you.

The trio (Fig. 13) is deserving of careful study. Traces of the barbarous diaphony, from which this composer was probably one of the first to try and emancipate himself, strike the eye and the ear more than once. The consecutive octaves and fifths are however found chiefly between the end of one phrase and the beginning of another; and some ingenuity is shown in *Paris. 1839.