DICTIONARY OF MUSIC - El Atril

HAEMONY HAEMONY 305
subdued by a thin board the under surface of
which is covered with swansdown or other soft
material ; this is replaced in England by a
covering of brown sheepskin or basil, also lined
with swansdown. The tongues are not made
of ordinary sheet rolled brass ; but of a metal
prepared expressly, and with some secrecy. The
best is believed to be from hanmiered wire reduced
by continued hanrmering to the thickness
required. A broader tongue is found to give a
bolder tone, but sacrifices quickness of speech ;
a narrower tongue is shriller. The tongues are
bent in various ways, longitudinally and later-
ally, to gain sweetness, but the speech suffers.
Tuning is elfected by scraping near the shoulder
to flatten the tongue, or near the point to sharpen
it. The air pressure some^'hat afl'ects the tuning
of the larger vibrators, but it is a merit in the
harmonium that it alters little in comparison
with the pianoforte or flue-work of an organ.
Double touch is produced by causing the back
organ to speak first, and is divided technically
into the ' ' upper ' and
' deep touches. The har-
monium has been combined in construction with
the pianoforte byDebain and other makers. The
timbres and nature of the two instruments are
so dissimilar, not to say antagonistic, that no
real benefit is to be gained by yoking them
together. A. .1. H.
HARMONY. The practice of combining
sounds of difterent pjitch, which is called Harmony,
belongs exclusively to the music of the
most civilised nations of modern times. It seems
to be sufliciently proved that the ancient Greeks,
though they knew the combinations which we
call chords, and categorised them, did not make
use of them in musical performance. This reticence
probably arose from the nature of their
scales, which were well adapted for the development
of the effective resources of melody, but
were evidently inadequate for the purposes of
harmony. In looking back over the history of
music it becomes clear that a scale adapted for
any kind of elaboration of harmonj' could only
be arrived at by centuries of labour and thought.
In the search after such a scale experiment has
succeeded experiment, those which were successful
serving as the basis for further experiments
by fresh generations of musicians till the scale
we now use was arrived at. The ecclesiastical
scales, out of which our modern system was
gradually developed, were the descendants of
the Greek scales, and like them only adapted for
melody, which in the dark ages was of a suffi-
ciently rude description. The people's songs of
various nations also indicate characteristic scales,
hut these were equally unfit for purposes of
combination, unless it were with a drone bass,
which must have been a very early discovery. In
point of fact the drone bass can hardly be taken
as representing any idea of harmony proper ;
it is very likely that it originated in the instruments
of percussion or any other form of noise-
TOL. II
making invention which served to mark the
rhythms or divisions in dancing or singing ; and
as this would in most cases (especially in barbarous
ages) be only one note, repeated at whatever
pitch the melody might be, the idea of using a
continuous note in place of a rhythndc one
would seem naturally to follow ; but this does
not necessarily imply a feeling for harmony,
though the principle had certa,in issues in the
development of harmonic combinations, which
will presently be noticed. It would be impossible
to enter here into the question of the construction
and gradual modification of the scales. It must
suffice to point out that the ecclesiastical scales
are tolerably well represented by the white notes
of our keyed instruments, the dittereut ones
commencing upon each white note successively.
In these scales there were only two which had a
leading note or major seventh from the tonic.
Of these the one beginning on F (the ecclesiastical
Lydian) was vitiated by having an augmented
fourth from the Tonic, and the one commencing
on C (the ecclesiastical Ionic, or Greek L^^dian)
was looked upjon with disfavour as the ' modus
lascivus. ' These circumstances afl'ected very
materially the early ideas of harmony ; and it
will be seen that, conversely, the gradual growth
of the perception of harmonic relations modified
these ecclesiastical scales by very slow degrees,
by the introduction of accidentals, so that the
various modes were by degrees fused into our
modern major and minor scales.
The earliest attempts at harmony of which
there are any examples or any description, was
the Diaphony or Organum which is described
by Hucbald, a Flemish monk of the 10th
century, in a book called EiKhiridion Musicae.
These consist for the most part of successions
of fourths or fifths, and octaves. Burney gives
an example from the work, and translates it as
follows :
Ta pa - tri3 semp - m
ter - nus es
The piractice of adding extra pjarts to a Canto
fermo at the distance of a fourth or fifth, with
an octave to make it complete, seems to have
been common for some time, and was expressed
by such terms as ' diatessaronare, ' or in French
' quintoier. ' This,
however, was not the only
style of combination known to Hucbald, for in
another example which consists chiefly of suc-
cessions of fifths and octaves the parallelism is
interrupted at the close, and the last chord but
one contains a major sixth. Further than this,
Burney gives an example in which the influence
of a drone bass or holding note is apparent,
whereby the origin of passing notes is indi-
cated, as will be observed in the use of a
ninth transitionally between the combinations
of the octave and the tenth in the following
example at *