Part 5 (1/2)

In ”Twelfth Night” the following will be found:--

_Sir Toby_: Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch, that will draw three souls out of one weaver[12]? Shall we do that?

”_Sir Andrew_: An you love me, let's do it: I am a dog at a catch.

”_Clown_: By'r lady, sir, and some dogs will catch well.

”_Sir Andrew_: Most certain: let our catch be 'Thou knave.'

”_Clown_: 'Hold thy peace, thou knave,' knight? I shall be constrained in't to call thee knave, knight.

”_Sir Andrew_: 'Tis not the first time I have constrain'd one to call me knave. Begin, fool; it begins, 'Hold thy peace.'

”_Clown_: I shall never begin, if I hold my peace.

”_Sir Andrew_: Good i' faith! Come, begin.”

(They sing a catch.)

The ”catch” was a melody started by one singer and followed by another at an interval of one or more bars, singing identical notes, who would be succeeded by yet another in a similar manner. It depended upon the dexterity with which the performers would catch up their notes at the right moment as to whether harmony or chaos resulted.

It was a popular form of amus.e.m.e.nt, but we are hardly surprised when Malvolio appears on the scene and addresses the singers thus:--

”My masters, are you mad? or what are you? Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night? Do you make an ale-house of my lady's house, that ye squeak out your cozier's catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?”

To all of which Sir Toby, treating it as an aspersion on his skill in music, replies, ”We did keep time, sir, in our catches.”

The madrigal was an altogether more serious form of art, and, except for the words, might be identified with the best specimens of ecclesiastical music. It was polyphonic in treatment, and generally grave in character.

Indeed, to judge by some of the most celebrated examples, it seems almost savouring of jest to describe it as secular.

Of English composers, perhaps those who most excelled in this cla.s.s of composition were Byrd, Dowland, and Orlando Gibbons. The most splendid example being that ent.i.tled, ”The Silver Swan,” by the last-named.

The glee, although less serious in character, as its name implies, was a truly artistic type of concerted music, and there are numerous specimens of early date of great beauty and contrapuntal skill, but they are characterised by comparative simplicity.

The transition from one to the other would seem natural, seeing the extreme elaboration that rendered the madrigal difficult of interpretation to any but highly-skilled singers.

The beautiful ”Since First I Saw your Face,” by Thomas Ford, can hardly be described by either t.i.tle, for while it is removed in tone from the glee it lacks the atmosphere of the schools that the madrigal suggests.

The glee, as it is popularly known to-day, is of a later date, and came to perfection about the middle of the eighteenth century.

It is a remarkable fact that perhaps the most beautiful and certainly one of the most skilfully written specimens of mediaeval music, is also one of the most ancient. The date of it must be purely conjectural, although the scholar may to some extent be guided by the words as to the actual century of its origin.

The opening words, ”Sumer is ic.u.men in,” are probably familiar to most readers, since they are ever in evidence when the question of old English music is under consideration. Indeed, it would take many volumes to record what has been written about this extraordinary composition.

From whatever point of view it is judged it commands admiration and wonder.

It demonstrates that in the art of music England was then not only abreast of foreign nations, but probably in advance of them.

It shows that polyphonic writing must have reached to a high point of development even so far back as the thirteenth century, and there is every reason to believe, even long before then.

It seems to me to be only a very obvious deduction. Just as there must have been many great poets before Homer, so this work must be the fortunate survivor of a long-lost school that, unhappily for us, had no enduring medium for transmission of its genius to later ages.