The World's Earliest Music: Traced to Its Beginnings in Ancient Lands by Collected Evidence of Relics, Records, History, and Musical Instruments from Greece, Etruria, Egypt, China, Through Asyria and Babylonia, to the Primitive Home, the Land of Akkad and SumerSmith, Hermann
History
The World's Earliest Music: Traced to Its Beginnings in Ancient Lands by Collected Evidence of Relics, Records, History, and Musical Instruments from Greece, Etruria, Egypt, China, Through Asyria and Babylonia, to the Primitive Home, the Land of Akkad and Sumer
Smith, Hermann
Music -- To 500 -- History and criticism
as he left the _diatonic octave scale_, so it remains, practically the
same in the teachings of the theorists since: some scholiasts have
thought that preferably the minor tone should be placed between A and
B, transferring the major tone between G and A.
This distinguished astronomer and mathematician Ptolemy, like
Pythagoras, was the child of his time, given to much fanciful
speculation and mysticism, finding music analogies in the virtues, and
the sciences, in the parts of the human soul, and in the zodiac. He
wrote largely, and completed the foundations upon which European music
had been constructed, yet he had no conception of the structure that
would be raised by coming generations. The Greeks had in their scale
the elements of harmony yet they fell short of the realization, and it
must ever be a wonder that, intellectual as they were, they missed it.
Evolution was the destined way,—but it is so slow—so slow.
Except to the chosen few these questions of the scales fail to maintain
their interest, however fascinating such studies of the calculation
of theoretical niceties of numbers and ratios undoubtedly are to some
minds, gifted with an aptitude for figures, yet with the general body
of musicians a broad survey tells that old formalisms in study are
fast becoming obsolete. The advance of the System of Equal Temperament
in these later years throughout the two worlds will render necessary a
reconcilement between theory and practice, now widely at variance.
Historically the settlement of scale had its importance, although it
came too late in time to be for the Greeks an effective force in their
national music. The glory of Greece was fast departing, century after
century in the course we have looked upon during our survey, empires
had risen, empires had fallen, and in the disrupted state of social
conditions, chaos often came, the Greek race itself was worn down
and ultimately became absorbed amongst strangers, conquering races,
and in the end we have to speak of her Art as Greco-Roman. Out of
all these world changes we have isolated Music. To apprehend aright
the slow march along the path of progress, we should now and then
lift our thoughts to take account of the atmosphere and glance at the
environment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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