How Simple, Crude, and Poor in Consonances Music Was at Its Beginning

Since in the First Part sufficient account has been given of Numbers and of Proportions, it is reasonable that we should now treat in particular, and as the occasion shall require, of those things which Music considers in general: such as Sounds or Voices, Intervals, Genera, the Orders of Sounds, the Modes, the Mutations, and the Modulations. But before we come to such a discussion, I shall show in what manner Music was simple at its beginning, and how it was used by the ancients. Then, having seen in what way Sounds and Voices arise, and having made their division, I shall come to that which is my principal intention.

I say, then, that although in our times Music has attained such a degree and perfection of harmony — as regards the use of all those consonances which may be found, of which some were not under consideration among the ancients, so that it scarcely appears possible to add anything new to them — nevertheless there is no doubt that at the beginning (as befell the other sciences) it was not only simple and crude, but also very poor in consonances. That this is entirely true is shown to us by what Apuleius relates of it, saying: that at the beginning only the Pipe was used, not with holes, like those which are made in our time, but without them, after the likeness of a Trumpet. Nor were so many sorts of concords made, with varied instruments and varied manners; rather the ancients refreshed their spirits, and gave themselves pleasure and diversion among one another, with the aforesaid Pipe alone, without any variety of sound. And they used such a Pipe in their public spectacles and in their Choruses, when they performed Tragedies or Comedies; as Horace makes plain, speaking in this manner:

Tibia non, ut nunc, oricalcho vincta, tubæque Aemula, sed tenuis, simplexque foramine pauco Adspirare, & adesse choris erat utilis;

[The pipe was not, as now, bound with brass and a rival of the trumpet, but slender and simple, with few holes, and was serviceable to accompany and to support the choruses.]

To which afterwards Hyagnis the Phrygian, learned in Music in those times, who was the father and teacher of Marsyas, added the holes, and began to play it with varied sounds; and he was the first who made two Pipes sound with a single breath, and who played such an instrument with the right and with the left hand — that is, who mixed the low sound with the high, by holes on the right and on the left.

The ancients likewise used at the beginning the Cithara, or the Lyre, with three strings, or with four only, of which Mercury was the inventor (as Boethius will have it); and in it they were ordered in such a way that the first with the second, and the third with the fourth, contained the Diatessaron; and the first with the third, and the second with the fourth, the Diapente; and again the second with the third the Tone, and the first with the fourth the Diapason. And down to the time of Orpheus this order was preserved, which was afterwards increased upon various instruments: and first Coroebus of Lydia added to it the fifth string; then by the above-named Hyagnis the sixth was added; but the seventh Terpander of Lesbos added. And truly this number of strings (as Clement of Alexandria says) was contained in the ancient Lyre, or Cithara; afterwards by Lycaon of Samos the eighth was added — although Pliny attributes the invention of that string to Simonides, and of the ninth to Timotheus, and Boethius will have it that this string was added by Prophrastus of Pieria, the tenth by Histiaeus of Colophon, and the eleventh by Timotheus himself. But be that as it may, Suidas attributes the addition of the Tenth and of the Eleventh string to Timotheus the Lyric poet. And it is certain that by many others so many were added to them that they grew to the number of Fifteen. Afterwards they added to these the sixteenth string, and passed no further, but were content with such a number; and they set them in the order which we shall show further on, dividing them by Tones and Semitones into five Tetrachords, observing the reasons of the Pythagorean proportions found in the hammers by Pythagoras, in the manner which I have shown in the first Part; which contained those very ones that were found among the strings of the aforesaid Cithara, or Lyre invented by Mercury, and which are seen in the example set below:

[Editorial note: Here Zarlino’s original text contains a woodcut diagram of the four-stringed lyre. Four horizontal rules stand for the four strings, each labelled at the left with its Greek name — Parhipate hipaton, Parhipate meson, Lichanos meson, Trite diezeugmenon — and again toward the centre as Prima chorda, Seconda chorda, Terza chorda, and Quarta chorda; the numbers 12, 9, 8, and 6 are set at the right-hand end of the corresponding rules. At the left, nested arcs bracket the intervals these numbers form. The innermost tier gives Diatessaron between the first and second strings (12:9), Tuono between the second and third (9:8), and Diatessaron between the third and fourth (8:6); the next tier gives Diapente from the first string to the third (12:8) and Diapente from the second to the fourth (9:6); and the outermost single arc gives Diapason across all four (12:6). The figure is the visual demonstration of the claim just made in the text — that the hammer-weights attributed to Pythagoras and the string-divisions of Mercury’s lyre yield one and the same set of proportions.]

For the largest (as they say) weighed twelve pounds, the other nine pounds, and the third eight pounds; but the fourth and smallest weighed six pounds. From which numbers Pythagoras drew out the reasons of the musical consonances, which among the ancients were five, as Macrobius relates; and they arise from five numbers, the first of which they called Epitritus, the second Hemiolius, the third Duple, the fourth Triple, and the fifth Quadruple, together with one dissonant interval, which they esteemed to be the beginning of every consonance, and which they called Epogdoon. So that by the Epitritus was contained the Diatessaron, by the Hemiolius the Diapente, by the Duple the Diapason, by the Triple the Diapasondiapente, by the Quadruple the Disdiapason, and by the Epogdoon the Sesquioctave Tone. To which consonances Ptolemy added the Diapasondiatessaron, contained by the Duple-superbipartient-third proportion between 8 and 3, as may be seen in his Harmonics; which consonance is also set down by Vitruvius in chapter 4 of the Fifth book of the Architecture.

And truly the ancients knew no other consonances than those named above, all of which are called Perfect by the modern Musicians; nor did they hold for consonant those intervals which the moderns call imperfect Consonances — that is, the Ditone, the Semiditone, and the two Hexachords, namely the greater and the lesser — as Vitruvius manifestly shows in the place named, saying that upon the Third, the Sixth, and the Seventh string the consonances cannot be made; and this he says having regard to the lowest string of every Diapason. Which may also be seen in every other author, Greek as well as Latin. And from this we may comprehend the imperfection which was found in the ancient Harmonies, and how poor the ancients were in consonances and in concords.

And although someone, moved rather by the authority of the ancients — which is truly great — than by reason, should wish to say that beyond the perfect consonances named no other consonance may be found, I would not hesitate to affirm such an opinion to be false: for it contradicts the sense, from which every cognition of ours takes its origin. Since no one of sound intellect will deny that beyond the aforesaid perfect consonances the imperfect ones are also to be found, which are as delightful, lovely, sonorous, sweet, and harmonious to those who have not corrupted the sense of hearing as can possibly be said; and they are so far in use that not only skilled singers, and players of instruments of every sort, use them in their harmonies, but also those who, without having science, sing and play by practice alone.