A Complete History of Music: for Schools, Clubs, and Private ReadingBaltzell, W. J. (Winton James)
History
A Complete History of Music: for Schools, Clubs, and Private Reading
Baltzell, W. J. (Winton James)
Music -- History and criticism
=Contribution of the Paris School=.—When the Paris school ceased to
be of utmost importance to the world of music it had bequeathed to
the later schools Measured Music, and its forms of Organum, Motet,
Conductus and Roundel, and the use of certain not unpleasing intervals,
though occasional consecutive fourths, fifths, and octaves appeared.
It was, then, the business of the Gallo-Belgic school to refine these
intervals, develop measured music, and so improve and develop these
old primary forms, eliminating some and evolving others, as to give
the school of the Netherlands, one century later, forms pleasing in
intervals and of sufficient unity and design to afford opportunity for
the infusion of the emotional. In the matter of intervals much was done
to develop and use the old ones, excepting the consecutive fourths and
fifths which were abolished never to appear again, and many new, or
previously unused intervals, were made use of. In the matter of forms,
we hear no more of the crude Organum and Conductus, but a little about
the Motet, and nothing at all in regard to the Roundel, as such. It
is, however, due entirely to this last form that polyphonic music
developed; though we hear no more of the Roundel, we do hear much in
regard to the Canon, and the Canon was but a highly developed species
of the Roundel.
=Imitation and the Canon=.—The use of Imitation, as we have seen,
gradually became more and more important. The old monks, in the very
beginning, imitated melody in the fourth and fifth; at the time of
the Paris school these melodies were combined with new ones making
Imitation with more than one melody, though the melody underwent no
real organic development. Now we see in the inception of the Canon a
development of real Imitation of only one melody, but given _Variety_
by use of the devices of Inversion, Augmentation, Diminution, etc. And
not only did this occur in the Canon, but we find it also in the other
forms, in a freer style, adding materially to the _Unity_. Imitation is
the foundation principle of polyphonic music, and this principle was
present in the crude efforts of the old monks, in the more intelligent
efforts of the Paris school, and now for the first time, receives, in
the Gallo-Belgic school, a partial recognition of its real value, and a
commensurate use.
[Music]
Naumann, History of Music, Vol. I, page 315, extract from a chanson by
Dufay. Figure 1 shows the principal melody, figure 2 shows the same
at the fifth below. The entire chanson is quoted in Naumann with the
various imitations fairly well marked; the student should refer to it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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