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Page 29
The teaching of Pythagoras was the first step in this
classification of sounds; and he went further than this, for
he also classified the _emotions_ affected by music. It was
therefore a natural consequence that in his teaching he should
forbid music of an emotional character as injurious. When he
came to Crotona, it was to a city that vied with Agrigentum,
Sybaris, and Tarentum in luxury; its chief magistrate wore
purple garments, a golden crown upon his head, and white
shoes on his feet. It was said of Pythagoras that he had
studied twelve years with the Magi in the temples of Babylon;
had lived among the Druids of Gaul and the Indian Brahmins; had
gone among the priests of Egypt and witnessed their most secret
temple rites. So free from care or passion was his face that
he was thought by the people to be Apollo; he was of majestic
presence, and the most beautiful man they had ever seen. So
the people accepted him as a superior being, and his influence
became supreme over science and art, as well as manners.
He gave the Greeks their first scientific analysis of sound.
The legend runs that, passing a blacksmith's shop and
hearing the different sounds of the hammering, he conceived
the idea that sounds could be measured by some such means
as weight is measured by scales, or distance by the foot
rule. By weighing the different hammers, so the story goes,
he obtained the knowledge of harmonics or overtones, namely,
the fundamental, octave, fifth, third, etc. This legend, which
is stated seriously in many histories of music, is absurd, for,
as we know, the hammers would not have vibrated. The anvils
would have given the sound, but in order to produce the octave,
fifth, etc., they would have had to be of enormous proportions.
On the other hand, the monochord, with which students in physics
are familiar, was his invention; and the first mathematical
demonstrations of the effect on musical pitch of length of
cord and tension, as well as the length of pipes and force of
breath, were his.
These mathematical divisions of the monochord, however,
eventually did more to stifle music for a full thousand years
than can easily be imagined. This division of the string
made what we call harmony impossible; for by it the major
third became a larger interval than our modern one, and the
minor third smaller. Thus thirds did not sound well together,
in fact were dissonances, the only intervals which _did_
harmonize being the fourth, fifth, and octave. This system
of mathematically dividing tones into equal parts held good
up to the middle of the sixteenth century, when Zarlino, who
died in 1590, invented the system in use at the present time,
called the _tempered scale_, which, however, did not come into
general use until one hundred years later.
Aristoxenus, a pupil of Aristotle, who lived more than a
century after Pythagoras, rejected the monochord as a means for
gauging musical sounds, believing that the ear, not mathematical
calculation, should be the judge as to which interval sounds
"perfect." But he was unable to formulate a system that
would bring the third (and naturally its inversion the sixth)
among the harmonizing intervals or consonants. Didymus (about
30 B.C.) first discovered that two different-sized whole
tones were necessary in order to make the third consonant;
and Ptolemy (120 A.D.) improved on this system somewhat. But
the new theory remained without any practical effect until
nearly the seventeenth century, when the long respected theory
of the perfection of mathematical calculation on the basis of
natural phenomena was overthrown in favour of actual effect. If
Aristoxenus had had followers able to combat the crushing
influence of Euclid and his school, music might have grown up
with the other arts. As it is, music is still in its infancy,
and has hardly left its experimental stage.
Thus Pythagoras brought order into the music as well as
into the lives of people. But whereas it ennobled the
people, it killed the music, the one vent in life through
which unbounded utterance is possible; its essence is so
interwoven with spirituality that to tear it away and fetter
it with human mathematics is to lower it to the level of mere
utilitarianism. And so it was with Greek music, which was held
subordinate to metre, to poetry, to acting, and finally became
a term of contempt. Pythagoras wished to banish the flute,
as Plato also did later, and the name of flute player was used
as a reproach. I fancy this was because the flute, on account
of its construction, could ignore the mathematical divisions
prescribed for the stringed instruments, and therefore could
indulge in purely emotional music. Besides, the flute was
the chosen instrument of the orgiastic Bacchic cult, and its
associations were those of unbridled license. To be sure, the
voice was held by no mathematical restrictions as to pitch;
but its music was held in check by the words, and its metre
by dancing feet.
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