by Stephen Fry
Pythagoras died in around 475??.?? was overlapped, so to?•peak, by a guy called Pindar, a great Greek lyric poet, possibly the greatest. He was a 'Boeotian' - that is, both a resident of central? i recce and a particularly nasty turn of the letters from Carol in ('.ountdown. Pindar was a well-travelled nobleman and enough fragments of his work survive to make it clear that he more or less invented the ode. He was also a bit of a wiz on the aulos, the cithara, and the lyre. Clever clogs, no doubt, but a bit B-list when you compare him to the chap who came along just eleven years after he died - Mr Lato: Mr P. Lato.
PLATONIC SOLFA
O
K, OK, I hear you read, just what is another philosopher doing in the Incomplete amp; Utter) Well, I'll tell you. Not only did Plato give us most of our info on Pythagoras, he also laid down a few 'philosophical' ideas about music, too, both in his Republic and Laws. Music consists of three aspects, he said: the word, the harmony and the rhythm. Instrumental music was out. Words were integral. He also had a few things to say about the nature of the different modes. The different modes were, more or less, the different scales that each piece was played in - not exactly scales, and not exactly keys, to be precise, but the groups of notes used to play any given piece. Plato believed he could define many of the characters of the modes, and, going one step further, could prescribe and recommend different modes for different things. The 'Mixolydian' mode, he said, was full of wailing and lamenting, while the 'Lydian' and even 'Ionian' modes were effeminate and relaxing - and therefore unsuitable for fighting men. Pieces composed in the 'Dorian' mode were heroic, while the 'Phrygian' character was persuasive. I wonder if anyone ever took his advice to heart and faced a marauding enemy of barbarians, armed only with a Lydian ode, hoping to relax them to death?
INSTRUMENTAL INSTITUTION
J
ust as Plato was? pupfl of Socrates, so Aristotle was a pupil of Plato.
Born in Stagirus, Macedonia, in 384??, Aristotle studied with Mr P. at his Academy in Athens. Aristotle (wouldn't it be lovely if we could find evidence to suggest he was known as Ari to his friends?) was not a great musician, as such, but, like Plato before him, he applied his thinking to many areas of life, one of them being music. He, too, thought that music was MUCH more important than the simple aural pleasure that it gave. It had real ethical power, and it was vitally important in the process of education. He disagreed with Plato, though, on the subject of words. He was prepared to accept instrumental music, because, he thought, it spoke directly to the listener's emotions, unhindered by a poet's words. To him, music was almost homeopathic and certainly cathartic. If he were in charge today, you'd probably be able to get a prescription at the chemist's for string quartets, to be taken two or three times a day, with food.
His????, Aristoxenus, a generation later, took his thoughts and, ignoring almost all other areas of philosophy except music, came up with 'Elements of Harmonics' and 'Elements of Rhythm'. One of his principal theories was that the soul is to the body what harmony is to the musical instrument. He also moved away from the ideas of his former teachers, the Pythagoreans, by saying that you shouldn't work out notes of a scale by mathematical ratio alone, but also by ear.
Aristoxenus' dates are not known, exacdy, but presuming, as most do, that he was dead and curried by, at the latest, 300??, then what we are left with is what Greek scholars call 'megalos trypa aimatodis1, or, to translate, a bloody big gap. Nothing much happened until around 50??.
GETTING ORGANIZED
' I?? be fair, 'The Bloody Big Gap of 300??' - as it's known in our 1 house - did contain the early stirrings of the organ. At some stage m this period, some clever sausage decided that the aulos, or pipe, had???- fatal flaw and that was the aulos players. They were always miming out of breath. So, a 'pumped aulos' was born, on much the name principle as the uilleann pipes, where a player would squeeze an air bladder with one arm, while playing the pipes with both hands. Then, in the third century??, an engineer called Ctesibus, working in Alexandria, was said to have gone one step further with the 'organon hydraulikon' or water aulos, which used air compressed by the weight of water. Came complete with galoshes.
Ctesibus was the son of a barber and very popular with the emperors of Rome. As an engineer, he had worked on the restoration of the aqueducts. In fact, he had even designed machines of war for the emperor, intended to inflict maximum pain on those with whom they came into contact. So I suppose it was only natural that he turn his hand to the organ.
It was probably he who more or less invented it. Contemporaneous accounts tefl of his 'mechanike syntaxii, a pan pipe 'which is played with the hands and is known as the hydraulis' in which 'the wind mechanism forces the air into a pnigeus of brass placed in the water'. Got that? I think it's basically saying that he almost certainly developed the first organ, of sorts, and with it, presumably the first bandy-legged musician, with slighuy staring eyes, a somewhat mad smile and a tendency to invade your personal space. Or should I say, 'the organist'.
The organ was to prove a big hit at Delphi in 90?? when Antipatros won a big competition playing it. It was followed by the next big thing, some forty years later, just as Gaius Julius Caesar and Pompey were fighting it out for the laurel wreath, namely the oboe. In fact, although he is now almost always considered first and foremost a violinist, the Emperor Nero was almost certainly an oboe player. Sadly, when I think of the words 'Emperor Nero' now, I immediately see 'Emperor Christopher Biggins', swimming in a not-quite-voluminous enough toga in front of a set that's only just this side of shaky. I, Claudius has a lot to answer for.
Skipping blithely over the fact that the Chinese reordered their octave into sixty parts in 38?? - quite how or why, I've no idea - we get to another megalos trypa aimatodis. Although, in this instance, I should probably say 'grandis cavus sanguineus^.
JC. AND I DON'T MEAN BACH
T
his was ajrmndis cavus sanguineuswith a difference, though. This was a grandis cavus sanguineus ETCHRISTIANUS. Of course! AD is all the rage, now, and absolutely everybody is accessorizing with a fish. Music would prove useful in spreading what was at first no more than a sect. Statement and response psalms were a fantastic tool in the spread of Christianity, as was the soon-to-be-ubiquitous 'hymn'. Saints Augustine and Jerome were quick to see the benefit of being able to keep a message at the front of the mind with a catchy tune, although they did, at the same time, worry about the 'sensual pleasure' that the music gave and whether there was damage being done. Because of the essentially 'word of mouth' nature of the medium, too, it was frequendy the case that incorrect or even deliberately false info was getting through in these hymns. This is where the first big saviour of music stepped in. He was big, he was bold, he was brash - he was Bishop, to be fair, of Milan. And he went by the seductively sexy name of…
AMBROSE!
OK, not that sexy, I admit, but still, eh? Don't shoot Melinda Messenger, as it were.
I THINK THEREFORE I AMBROSE
t's fair enough, really. Ambrose was, indeed, the Bishop of Milan, elected in a bizarre manner when he was thirty-five. It's said during a gathering to find a new bishop, at which Ambrose was present but not actually a contender, a child from the crowd began to chant the words: 'Ambrose… bishop… Ambrose… bishop'. Taking this as divine intervention, of course, rather than, say, just plain odd, a rather reluctant Ambrose was given the office.
I lie reason a reluctant bishop makes it into the SFI amp;UHoCM is I» i.u use his big claim to fame was not theological or liturgical, at all, Inn musical. Up to Ambrose's time, music in church was generally performed by professional chanters, who would more or less monop-? ill/i- all the best tunes. Ambrose opened up the singing to the people, wiili antiphonal chanting, which was enough to move St Augustine, lor one, to tears.
It's blown now as 'Ambrosian Chant' and is still practised today in i IK- northern part of Italy, favoured over the now almost wall-to-wall t iugorian chant (after Pope Gregory IX - more on him in a minu
te). To put it into context, this was around the time that the Roman legions started the mass exodus from the inclement little outpost they i.illcd Britain - something to do with muttered complaints of 'It's,i I ways raining…' and 'You can't get a good latte…'.
Ambrosian chant, Gregorian chant - it all comes under the banner headline 'plainsong': generally sung by monks in monasteries, on one note, with occasional organ accompaniment. I always think it is an unfortunate phrase because it's often far from 'plain' at all. It's beautiful stuff.
This whole period of Ambrose and Gregory is, to be fair, considered by many to be more or less the start of classical music, as we know it today, mainly because it is the first period where we really got anything like a sizeable chunk of the stuff written down. Of course, as we've seen, there had been music around long, long before this. The Sumerians playing from their wedge-shaped tablets, the Greeks on their aulos, and even the Egyptians on their flutes. See? Clever chaps, the Egyptians - even had James Galway before everyone else.
NON UNUS BOTULUS
ut then, quite suddenly and dramatically, and, it's got to be said, swholly without warning…nothing happened. In fact, immediately after this, it happened again. Nothing, I mean. To be fair, it went on happening for a good two centuries.
Nothing. Happening for two whole centuries! If you want to get any idea what that must have been like, try ringing a computer helpline. All the while, though, the world just kept on turning. Just. The years fairly creaked by. Turn ti turn.
In fact, before you knew it, it was already, ooh, later the same afternoon.
Eventually, though, the last Roman out of Britain had said '?????? ridensunf and now turned off the light, a rather angry young man name of Attila the Hun came and went, and the Ostrogoth navy, now split from the Visigoths, was defeated by the Byzantines.
There you are, see. Less 'the history of this period' and more a role-playing game.
Then, all of a sudden, before you could say 'bring out your dead', it was 600. ///c Anitphonar, a collection of church chants. To be fair, it's almost Hiiain, now, that he was just one of a bunch of mainly religious Igurcs who tried to move music on, generally, but, through a mixture ul legend and personal influence, it's he who is remembered for it.??- personal influence is obvious - he was Pope (from 590 to 604).Mid, back then, you probably couldn't have a safer bet for making sure you got your 'plus one' on a bouncer's guest list. The legend is more difficult to fathom. It appears that, despite being just one of a bunch? il important people in music, the passing of the years - and possibly the desire to blame someone - meant that he was seen as the person who not only gathered together plainchant, but also the one credited with writing most of it, which is almost certainly untrue. Still, it does Hive us a very convenient pivot point.
Gregorian chant had arrived and the last echoing spoonful of Ambrosian had faded away to nothing.
I'D LIKE TO TEACH THE WORLD TO SING… IN PERFECT MONODY
Y
ear 600, that is, and up pops another Pope. Step forward… Gregory I. He, as well as despatching St Augustine to Thanet with the words, 'Mmm, Gus, baby, I've got a cute little job for you… go get your brolly…', he it is who decides to get together a school, the Schola Cantorum, in Rome, to have another go at sorting the whole music business out.
Allegedly, it was also around now that a new breed was formed, the mcmagerius brandius or 'brand manager', as they came to be known. Or at least, it was the first known time that anyone used the phrase 'Let's make sure we're all singing from the same hymnsheet.' Greg One, as the numberplate on his horse and cart read, also published
BIRTH
S
o. We're officially off the mark. PLAINSONG. Beautiful, generally single-note stuff. Music has arrived, thanks to a mixture of Saints Ambrose and Gregory. The next chap who gets a look-in with regards to the 'Important people in Music History' Stars in Their Eyes Special is a man called Guido. No, not Fawkes.
Sorry to rush but I do have rather a lot of centuries to cover. I've taken the liberty of moving on a few hundred years, if that's OK? King Canute is now boss of Britain Pic, and paddling is in. Bigtime. And just as Mr and Mrs Khayyam put a small ad in the Persian Post announcing the birth of little Omar, the musical world was getting to grips with a new system invented by a man called Guido d'Arezzo. He it was who laid the groundwork for another mythically talented musician, the great aforementioned 'Julie of Andrews'.
As his name suggests, Guido spent a lot of his life in the Italian city of Arezzo, some 30 kilometres north of Lake Trasimeno. He was a Benedictine monk who had moved from his native Paris.
Guido's method invented a series of words to go with the notes, or in the words of Queen Julie herself, 'One shalt commence at the very outset, indeed a goodly place wherein to begin. When one dost peruse, one surely inaugurates the process by means of the initial three symbols, ABC, when thou singest, thou leadest with "Do re mi"'. Er, etcetera.
But, to be fair… it more or less sums it up. So next time you're talking about The Sound of Music, maybe drop into the conversation, 'Ah, yes, the old tonic solfa system, as pioneered by Guido d'Arezzo in the eleventh century. Or was it Steps?'
In fact, old Guido was a busy little sausage. In this same year, just as the Chinese were putting the finishing touches to their pleasant albeit lethal mix of charcoal, sulphur and potassium nitrate - aka gunpowder - and the weird sounding poem on everyone's lips was Beowulf (well, either that, or they were all drunk), our man in the music world was also developing that cute litde five-line thing that all music is now written on, called 'the stave', also known as the staff. This thing. With this litde thing, musicians need never get lost again. Unless they were male and driving with their girlfriends, of course. Anyway, the stave was from year 1000.
It was left to sad music students hundreds of years later to make up mnemonics like 'All Cows Eat Grass', 'Every Good Boy Deserves Favour', and my personal favourite, 'Guinevere Eats Cordelia's Aardvaark for Dinner'", to remember the notes. Guido needed someone to work on his PR though, because most people have never heard of him. Maybe add a power initial to his name… let's see, Guido G. d'Arezzo. That would have done it. That would have made them sit up and take notice. No doubt had he been living today, he would have been called something like the Guid-o-stave, just to make sure his name survived the years.
Guido d'Arezzo died in 1050. Just forty-eight years later, there came another musician working in a similar world - days spent in prayer and thought. This person, too, would make a significant contribution to music - maybe not in quite the same tangible and enduring way as Guido and his five famous lines, but important all the same. This person, born in 1098, really did move music on to new heights, made sure it got noticed. But the truly shocking thing about this particular composer, arranger, poet and dreamer is… she was a woman! fi Which is, of course, the spaces downwards on the treble clef. 'All Cows Eat Grass3 is the spaces upwards on the bass clef, and 'Every Good Boy Deserves Eavour' is the mnemonic for the lines upwards on the table. Glad to have cleared that up.
FROM 'STAFF' TO DISTAFF
O
ne of the things I've always found curious about the abbess, composer, 'see-er of dreams' and general all round eccentric I lildcgard of Bingen is that, well, she wasn't. From Bingen, I mean. She wasn't born in Bingen, she didn't live in Bingen, and she didn't die in Bingen. If, at this point, you're thinking you may as well, just as.u curately, from now on, refer to her as Hildegard of Basingstoke, or I hklegard Von Symonds Yat, then, well, sorry. No, although she was born in Rheinhessen and died in Rupertsberg, at least Rupertsberg -which is around sixty kilometres south-west of Stuttgart - is near ltingen. Good. Glad to clear that up.
Hildegard was clearly a remarkable woman, someone just as happy doling out advice to bishops - popes even - as she was preparing a soothing poultice of plant extracts, mixed to her own recipe. She had visions from an early age, and was sent off to become an 'anchor' very early on. An 'anchor' was a
sort of cross between a nun and an SAS survival expert - Ray Mears meets Sister Wendy - and Hildegard would have experienced a last rites ceremony before being shut off in solitary confinement.
When she was forty-two, she had a vision which she said gave her total understanding of religious texts, and, from this point on, she wrote down everything she saw in her dreams and visitations. Today, her major contribution is considered her musical one. She left behind her a large number of plainchants, often to her own texts, rather than the existing settings so common at the time. I still find it sad that Hildegard is famous now not only because she was one of the first important composers of whom we have any record, but also because she was one of the ONLY female ones. Still. As Mr Brown said, it's a man's world. Verily, be it the globe of a gentleman. But, moreover, he would, amounteth to little…
…NAUGHT, indeed,… minus a woman or a nun. At least I think that's what he said. Hard to tell, when he shouts so much.
Her story is all the more remarkable when you stop for a moment and think how hard it must have been not just to be a female composer in those days - jeepers, that's hard enough now - but, well, how hard it must have been to be a female ANYTHING! 'Yes, I am a woman. Yes, I am a composer. Yes, as it happens, I do have visions, which I write down as soon as I can. Er, no, actually, I'm not a witch, thank you very much!'