Part 7

In point, see Hen. V. V, ii, 248, where Henry proposes to Katherine.

K. Hen. Come, your answer in broken music; for thy voice is music, and thy English broken; therefore, queen of all, Katherine, break thy mind to me in broken English: wilt thou have me?

Also see Troilus III, i, 52 and ff. (quoted further on).

An entirely separate use of 'break' is in the phrase 'broken time,' which has the simple and obvious meaning that the notes do not receive their due length and proportion. In this connection we will take the passage of King Richard's speech in prison at Pontefract--when he hears music without, performed by some friendly hands.

Rich. II. V, v, 41. King R. in prison.

K. Rich. Music do I hear? Ha, ha! keep time.--How sour sweet music is, When time is broke, and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men's lives. And here have I the daintiness of ear, To check time broke in a disorder'd string; But, for the concord of my state and time, Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.

* * * * *

This music mads me: let it sound no more: For though it hath holp madmen to their wits, In me, it seems, it will make wise men mad.

The simile is perfect, and the play upon 'time broke' admirable. In l. 45 Richard reflects on the sad contrast between his quick 'ear' for 'broken time' in music, and his slowness to hear the 'breaking' of his own 'state and time.' The 'disorder'd string' is himself, who has been playing his part 'out of time' ('Disorder'd' simply means 'out of its place'--i.e., as we now say, 'a bar wrong'), and this has resulted in breaking the 'concord'--i.e., the harmony of the various parts which compose the state.

A few words are necessary about 'Proportion.' This term was used in Elizabethan times exactly as we now use 'Time.' The 'times' used in modern music can practically be reduced to two--viz., Duple (two beats to the bar) and Triple (three beats to the bar). But in Elizabeth's day the table of various Proportions was a terribly elaborate thing. Of course many of these 'Proportions' never really came into practical use--but there was plenty of mystery left even after all deductions.

Morley (Introduction, 1597) gives Five kinds of proportions 'in most common use'--viz., Dupla, Tripla, Quadrupla, Sesquialtera, and Sesquitertia. The first three correspond to what we still call Duple, Triple, and Quadruple Time--i.e., 2 in the bar, 3 in the bar, and 4 in the bar. ['Bars' were not in general use till the end of the 16th century, but the principle was the same. The bars themselves are merely a convenience.]

Sesquialtera is more complicated, and means 'three notes are sung to two of the same kinde'; and 'Sesquitertia is when four notes are sung to three of the same kinde.' 'But' (Morley adds), 'if a man would ingulphe himselfe to learn to sing, and set down all them which Franchinus Gaufurius hath set down in his booke De Proportionibus Musicis, he should find it a matter not only hard but almost impossible.'

Ornithoparcus, in his Micrologus (1535), gives us an idea of the way this subject of proportion was treated by more 'learned' writers. He says (1) that music considers only the proportion of inequality, (2) that this is two-fold--viz., the greater and the lesser inequality. (3) The greater inequality contains five proportions, namely, multiplex, superparticular, superpartiens, multiplex superparticular, and multiplex superpartiens.

This is more amusing than instructive, perhaps. The three last lines of this passage refer to the various stories of real or pretended cure of disease by the use of particular pieces of music. One of the best known of these diseases is 'Tarantism,' or the frenzy produced by the bite of the Tarantula, in Italy.

Kircher, a learned Jesuit (1601-1680), gives an account, in his "Musurgia," of the cure of this madness by certain airs, by which the patient is stimulated to dance violently. The perspiration thus produced was said to effect a cure. In his "Phonurgia nova" (1673) Kircher actually gives the notes of the tune by which one case was cured.

In this connection, Kircher mentions King Saul's madness, which was relieved by David's harp playing. This is certainly to the point, and may well have been in Shakespeare's mind. [See George Herbert's poem, 'Doomsday,' verse 2.]

Our modern Tarantellas derive their name and characteristic speed from the old Tarantula.

Lear I, ii, 137. Edmund pretends not to see Edgar's entrance.

Edmund (aside). Pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy: my cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam.--O! these eclipses do portend these divisions. Fa, sol, la, mi.

Songs like 'Tom o' Bedlam,' mad-songs they were called, were very commonly sung in England in the 17th century. The tune and words of the original 'Tom a Bedlam' are to be found in Chappell, Vol. I. p. 175. Its date is some time before 1626, and verse 1 begins, 'From the hagg and hungrie Goblin,' and the whole is as full of ejaculations of 'Poor Tom' as Act III. of Lear.

The last sentence has yet another play on the double meaning of 'divisions.' A few lines further on Edmund explains what kind of 'divisions' he expects to follow the eclipses--namely, 'between the child and the parent ... dissolutions of ancient amities; divisions in state,' etc. But the very use of the word in the quoted lines brings its musical meaning into his head, for he promptly carries off his assumed blindness to Edgar's presence by humming over his 'fa, sol, la, mi.' [Burney, Hist., Vol. III. p. 344, has a sensible observation on this passage--that Edgar alludes to the unnatural division of parent and child, etc., in this musical phrase, which contains the augmented fourth, or mi contra fa, of which the old theorists used to say 'diabolus est.']

Guido d'Arezzo (or Aretinus), in his Micrologus (about 1024), named the six notes of the Hexachord (e.g., C, D, E, F, G, A), thus--Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La. These were the first syllables of certain words in the Hymn for the feast of St John Baptist, the words and tune of which are in Hawkins, p. 163.

"UT queant laxis RE-sonare fibris MI-ra gestorum FA-muli tuorum SOL-ve polluti LA-bii reatum, Sancte Joannes."

A rough translation of which is--

'That thy servants may be able with free hearts to sound forth the wonders of thy deeds; release us, O Holy John, from the guilt of a defiled lip.'

In the ancient tune of this verse, the notes assigned to the syllables in capitals were successively those of the scale, C, D, E, F, G, A, and these same syllables were still used in singing in the 16th century. It was noticed, however, that the scale could be easily expressed by fewer names, and accordingly we find Christopher Sympson (1667) saying, in his 'Compendium,' that Ut and Re are 'superfluous, and therefore laid aside by most Modern Teachers.' In his book, the whole scale of eight notes is named thus--Fa, Sol, La, Fa, Sol, La, mi, Fa. A modern Tonic Solfaist would understand this arrangement quite differently. C, D, E would be called Do (instead of Ut), Re, Mi; then would follow F, G, A, under the names Fa, Sol, La; and the 'leading note' [top note but one] would be called Ti (instead of Si); the octave C beginning once more with Do.

The reader will remember that the tonal relation of C, D, E is exactly the same as that of the next three notes, F, G, A--viz., C--D, a tone; D--E, a tone; and similarly with F--G, G--A. Therefore the two blocks of three notes (which are separated by a semi-tone) might have the same names--viz., Fa, sol, la. Thus we have the first six notes of the scale, Fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la. There only remains one note, the 'leading note,' the B; and this, in Sympson, is named Mi. So the principal thing in the sol-fa-ing of a passage was to 'place the Mi,' or, as we should now put it, to find 'what key' it is in. Thus, in the key of C, Mi is in B: in G, Mi is in F sharp: in F, Mi is in E, and so on, the remaining six notes being named Fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la, as explained above.

Edmund's 'Fa, Sol, La, Mi,' therefore, corresponds to F, G, A, B; or C, D, E, F sharp; or B flat, C, D, E, etc.; according to the pitch taken by the singer.