Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 3, No. 7 (1929-04)

The Phonograph Monthly Review 221 April, 1929 ■« S>I . tion of sounds which strikes the ear harshly”. This is of course one of the eternal verities. But it leaves us exactly where we started, by making the changing ear of man the judge. There are two approaches to an answer: that of the physicist and that of the harmonist. Harmony being an empirical rather than an exact science, the answer of the harmonist will be the answer of the man who uses his ear, while the answer of the physicist will be the answer of the laboratory, of the counting and classification of sound vibra- tions. Let us try his way first. As has already been said, he will give us only an approach to an answer. To get the full import of his answer, “try this on your piano”. Let us say that a string is stretched to such a degree of tautness that it sounds low C. If the string is divided exactly into halves, and one of the halves sounded, the note will be the C exactly one octave above. If the string be divided into thirds, and one of the thirds sounded, the note will be the G above the last C, and the interval will be called the “fifth” (C-G, five notes). If the string be divided into fourths, the second octave above the original C is produced. Similarly, a fifth of the string produces the next E, with the interval of a “third,”—C-E; a sixth of the string, the following G, again a “fifth”; a seventh of the string the following B-flat,—a “seventh”, an eighth of the string, as might be expected, the next C, another octave; and so on as far as the experimenter chooses to go. Now the physicist says, the octave is the perfect consonance, the fifth the next most perfect and so on up the line, until we get to a point where it 1 is no longer possible to call the inter- val a consonance, where he must call it a dissonance. But there is nothing in the nature of the experiment to tell just where to draw the line. Shall he say that one-sixth of a string yields a consonance, and one-seventh a dissonance? If so,—and this is the usual dividing line of current text books on Har- mony—it must be evident that the division is a purely arbi- trary one. Moreover, the slighest amount of experimenting on a piano will show that there are other intervals than the above which sound to us just as well as the ones above men- tioned. We have enumerated the intervals C-C, C-G, C-E, C-B-flat. We have called the first three consonant and have found the fourth (arbitrarily) dissonant. But C-A, C-A-flat, C-E-flat, sound every whit as pleasant to us the above. These the physicist secures by accepting relationships be- tween notes already found: C-A is the equivalent of G-E; C-A-flat of E-C; C-E-flat of E-G. But on this basis the fourth (G-C), which harmony and counterpoint alike treat as a dissonance, would also be accepted as consonant. It will be seen that the path of the physicist in determining consonance is a thorny one; that his system contains in it no rational basis for making a division line between conso- nance and dissonance. The empirical “science” of harmony,—has changed it£ mind several times. And if some genius succeeds in codify- ing the harmony of the twentieth century, he will very likely admit more intervals as consonances than has ever been done before. Its very origin rests on no more secure basis than the basis of common consent. Says Mr. E. J. Dent, “Artistic harmony arose from the combined singing of dif- ferent melodies, through which certain intervals came to be recognised as having various degrees of pleasantness”. Curi- ously, the acceptance of the first intervals as consonances follows broadly the physicist’s order of consonances, as out- lined above. The use of the octave, as supplementing uni- son singing, by the Greeks as noted above, was called maga- dizing. The significant thing about it, from the point of view of this article, is that it was by no means a matter of course, as the casual musician of to-day might have expected. It was something new, and it took a while to gain acceptance, The next step was the insertion of the fifth between the two notes of the octave, known as organum. Its rules and prac- tises we are not concerned with here. Sufficient is it that it gave us a new interval,—really two new intervals, the fourth and the fifth. For in the combination C-G-C, for example, the fourth G-C is as much present as the fifth C-G. Franco of Cologne, of the eleventh century is generally quoted as the first writer to make a complete classification of intervals as to consonance and dissonance. He recog- nises five different kinds of intervals, perfect consonances, middle consonances, imperfect consonances, imperfect discords, perfect discords. There are some curious things in this classification. There is only one perfect consonance, the octave. Next come the middle consonances, fourths (as C-F) and fifths (C-G). Then come the imperfect con- sonances, the major and minor thirds (as C-E and C-E-flat, respectively). Franco’s first discords, the imperfect discords, give* one a distinct shock. One is prepared to find the minor seventh (C-B-flat) and the whole tone (C-D) among them. But it shows the slowness of acceptance of intervals as con- cords to read that the major sixth (C-A), which to-day is thought of very much in the same manner as the major third (C-E), is also an imperfect discord. Among the perfect dis- cords one is prepared to find the half-tone (C-D-flat), the augmented fourth (C-F-sharp), the diminished fifth (C-G- flat), the major seventh (C-B). It is surprising, however, to find the minor sixth (C-A-flat) as belonging to these extreme discords. Franco must have had some qualms about this. For though his sixths are both discords, he admits in a note that they are less disagreeable than half tones, or augmented fourths or sevenths. Marchetti of Padua (thirteenth century) classed fourths as dissonances, where both his period and the harmonic sys- tem of 1600-1900 A. D. kept them. Jean de Muris (fourteenth century) marks a step in the more liberal acceptance of con- cords in admitting the fifth into the sacred society of the octave as a perfect concord; further, in admitting the major sixth as an imperfect concord, along with the thirds. But the minor sixth is to him still a discord! Its later recognition as a concord brings the classification up to the point of the harmonic system of 1600-1900, which is still found in the text-books in harmony in use in the schools at the present time. The point of all which is that to define consonance and dissonance is a relative and historical, rather than an absolute matter. Again—“we get used to it.” One may ask whether there was a sharp differentiation in the use of concords and discords in the olden times to cor- respond with the care which theorists took in making their classifications. The unison singing and the magadizing of the Greeks certainly tolerated no discords, proceeding as it did in unison and octaves. The organum, in its earliest and strictest form, used only octaves, fourths and fifths,—again no dissonances. In its later and freer form (how “modern” this sounds in print!) it allowed dissonances in passing between consonances. That is, if a unison, C-C, was to be followed by a fourth, C-F, the intervals C-D and C-E might be touched lightly in passing between the C-C and the C-F, with the C sustained through the whole passage. Concords were re- quired at all points of stress in the words. No discord must ever be placed at any point where it would receive weight. Its only function was that of being passed over lightly in going from one concord to another. This was true for a number of centuries. When Marchetti of Padua in the thirteenth century classi- fied fourths as discords, he also (according to Grove’s Dic- tionary) “explains that the part that offends the ear (note well the phrase) by one of these discords must make amends by passing to a concord while the other part stands still.” This was revolutionary. It meant that a discord might be ad- mitted at a point of weight, provided that one of the notes of the interval passed smoothly step by step to a concord while the other of its constituent parts remained stationary upon one note, as C-F followed by C-E. This was a second and more advanced form of dissonance. It passed into the har- mony and counterpoint of the succeeding age under the name of “suspension”. These two were the principal forms of dissonance admitted into the older medieval system. Both were most circumscribed by the restrictions which governed their line. To-day they are among the smoothest effects possible. They are in truth for the most conservative, “con- course of sweet sounds”, no matter what may be their physi- cal or harmonic classification. Yes indeed,—“we get used to it”. In a subsequent article we will consider discord in the harmonic system of 1600-1900, and in the harmony of the present.