On Musical Nomenclature
Authors: Hullah John 
Published: January 2007

I propose in this address to deal with certain names or terms and epithets in use among English musicians. Many of these, it is certain, have outlived the ideas or things for which they once stood; others now represent to all of us ideas and things different from those they once represented. The time seems to have arrived when we should come to an understanding as to our musical nomenclature. It will not, I think, be found necessary to make any addition to it; at any rate, I have none to propose to you to-day. But I shall simply ask you to consider and, if possible, to decide, which out of many names or terms representing, and epithets qualifying, the same thing, it is desirable to adopt or recommend for adoption. Musical nomenclature has reference, of necessity, to time, to tune, and to expression. I will deal with its application to these separately. Under the head of time, let us first consider the duration names of musical notes. Those which at present concern us are—breve, semibreve, minim, crotchet, quaver, semiquaver, and demisemiquaver. Of these names, the first three have altogether lost their significance; the fourth is no longer appropriate; the fifth, sixth, and seventh are arbitrary. The breve is no longer short, but unusually long; the minim is not now the least or shortest note, but not unfrequently the greatest or longest; the crotchet has now no crotch or hook; and the quaver and its fractions might just as well be called the ‘shiver,’ the ‘half-shiver,’ and the ‘quarter-shiver,’ or by any other names as fantastic or irrelative. The Germans call these notes, beginning from our semibreve, the whole note, the half note, the quarter note, and so on. These appellations, so far as they express the proportion of the first note named to those which follow it, are convenient. They form themselves a time-table, but it is an imperfect one, for they do not show, without further calculation, any intermediate proportions. They show at once that eight quavers equal one semibreve, but not at once that four quavers equal one minim. But I have a much more serious charge to bring against them. They assume what, if not always false, is, as it seems to me, not always true—that the semibreve is, or that any form of note can be, absolutely a whole note. What is or what should be regarded as a whole note? If I were sure that the word ‘phrase’ represented to all of us the same idea as it does to me, I should answer, unhesitatingly, that a whole note was any note that could be divided into a phrase. Perhaps, however, a better definition would be, any note, divided or undivided, which would fill either an entire measure, or require as many beats as would make one. This would give us, practically, four claimants to the title of whole note: the breve, the average whole note of the 16th century; the semibreve, the average whole note of our own time; the minim, and even the crotchet. For that movements innumerable of four times or beats in a measure, each of which is a quaver, exist, I need not say, nor that the measure even of four semiquavers has been occasionally employed. It is certain that a sound lasting four beats may be expressed, and has been expressed, by six different forms—the maxim, the long, the breve, the semibreve, the minim, and the crotchet. Perhaps some musician of the future may think proper to express such a note by a quaver. Let us now consider the names used by the French, a people possessing in high perfection the power of clear exposition of what they themselves see clearly. As usual, they leave or throw on one side whatever they regard as uncertain or equivocal, or not commonly accepted, and proceed to deal with the undisputed and indisputable facts or portions of facts before them. And what are these, in respect to the forms which express the relative durations of sounds? First, that they are forms; and secondly, that they are different forms—that one is an oval or circle, that another is a circle with a stem, and another a circular spot, also with a stem; and that all other notes are opaque, and have not only stems, but hooks varying in number. They call these notes or forms—as they find them—round, white, black, hooked, twice hooked, and thrice hooked. I certainly prefer the German nomenclature, which, though raised on a false basis, is consistent, to our own, which is inconsistent as well as false; but I prefer the French to the German, because, not pretending to do so much, it does what it pretends to do perfectly. On the pitch names of notes—A, B, Do, Be, or what not—I do not propose to speak to-day. Perhaps on some future occasion you will allow me to bring some considerations about them before you. I pass on at once to another matter relating to the second division of our subject, tune—the nomenclature not of sounds, but of the relations between them—the nomenclature of musical intervals, on which English theorists and practitioners are by no means agreed. I believe that the seconds and thirds and their inversions, the sevenths and sixths, found in the so-called ‘natural’ scale, and all scales made like it, are very generally called among us major and minor; and that six of the fourths, and their inversions, the fifths, are as generally called perfect. Here, however, agreement ends. For the one exceptional fourth and the one exceptional fifth rejoice each in as many aliases as a swindler finally run down by the detective police. To the exceptional fourth—which, according to the old theorists, ‘diabolus est’—I have heard and seen applied the name ‘tritone,’ and the epithets sharp, superfluous, redundant, and augmented; to the exceptional fifth the epithets flat, false, imperfect, diminished, and equivocal. Others might possibly be added to this list. To the name ‘tritone’ no objection is, I think, open. It expresses the contents of the interval—three tones, but it carries with it the disadvantage of there being no corresponding name for its inversion, the exceptional fifth. Augmented and diminished are no doubt antonyms, but both are epithets which, as I shall try to show, ought to be reserved exclusively for another class of intervals—the chromatic. Superfluous and redundant are, I think, clumsy epithets; but if either is to be applied to the exceptional fourth, its antonym scanty, or insufficient, should be applied to the exceptional fifth. If this last interval is to be called false, its inversion (the tritone) should be called true. Only one of these epithets seem to me quite unobjectionable—imperfect, as applied to the exceptional fifth. As an antonym to this I have long used the epithet pluperfect, which has been very largely adopted. I objected just now to the epithets augmented and diminished as applied to these particular intervals, the exceptional fourth and fifth. I think these should be reserved exclusively for chromatic intervals. I know, of course, that my objection involves a principle, or rather begs a question,—What is a chromatic interval? This question, as often happens, throws us back on another,— What is a chromatic scale? A chromatic scale I should define, with Dr. Crotch, to be a scale containing more than two semitones. The so-called ‘natural’ scale, and all other scales made like it, is not a chromatic scale, neither are any of the ancient scales formed from the arrangement of the same series of sounds in a different order. Of these last the ‘natural’ minor scale is one, and the only one familiar to the modern musician. Only, however, by means of a most serious alteration has it been reconciled to modern tonality, which, above all things, demands, as the unequivocal sign, seal, or confirmation of a key, the combination known as the ‘discord of the dominant seventh.’ Such a combination on the fifth of the natural minor scale is only possible by an alteration or nonnaturalisation, which at once brings it under Dr. Crotch's definition. In the series A, B, C, D, E, F natural, G sharp, and A we find three semitones, and one interval greater than a tone. Moreover, by skips from one note to another of a scale so constituted, we get three other intervals alien to the natural scale,—the inversion of the altered second formed by F—G sharp, and the altered fifth formed by C—G sharp, and its inversion. These intervals are, I conceive, augmentations or diminutions of intervals which would have remained unaltered but for the artificial process needed to reconcile the minor key with modern tonality; they are therefore, I believe, generally called augmented and diminished accordingly. So all intervals which the cultivated ear does not reject as cacophonous, formed by notes one or both of which are foreign to the key to which they are introduced, are but augmentations or diminutions of those that are natural to it. Without change of key we can augment certain of the unisons, seconds, fifths, and sixths, and diminish certain of the octaves, sevenths, fourths, and thirds. Now, as we have seen, in the unaltered or natural scale, major or minor, we find no examples of any one of these intervals; they are uniformly the result of artificial treatment. But with the exceptional fourth and fifth the case is altogether different. They are not the results of artificial treatment—we find them ready to our hands; and they are as much constituent parts of the scale in which we find them, as is the semitone between the third and fourth sounds. How, then, can the interval F—B, in the scale of C, be augmented, or B—F diminished? Of what are they augmentations or diminutions? Of F—B flat, or of F sharp —B? Are B flat or F sharp constituents of the scale—I do not say the key—of C? If they are, our modern tonality must be reconstructed de fond en comble, and every scale must be allowed three dominants instead of one. Again, we find that the intervals of the natural scale which bear augmentation are the largest of their kind in it, and those which will bear diminution the smallest. Of the seconds we can augment only the major, of the thirds we can diminish only the minor. Can we augment the tritone, the largest fourth in the scale, or diminish its inversion, the smallest fifth? Both have reached their utmost limits, and resist and defy all attempts to put them farther asunder, or bring them nearer together. If it be answered that they are already augmented and diminished, I ask again, what was their original condition? The tritone and its inversions are, I repeat, constituents of the diatonic scale; and they are diatonic intervals accordingly. For the latter an epithet, imperfect, is already largely accepted. I submit to you, in the absence of a better, the epithet pluperfect for its inversion. Before quitting this second division of my subject—pitch—I will ask you to give me your attention for a few moments longer. It seems to me, that musicians have much cause to complain of the way in which not merely general litterateurs but even scientific writers employ words to which, since music has been an art, musical artists have agreed in attaching certain definite significations. Perhaps the most glaring instance of this, and it is only one which I shall give, is the employment of the word ‘tone’ to express the thing or sensation which we and they also sometimes call ‘sound.’ A tone with us is not a sound, but the relation or difference between one sound and another. This acceptation of the word would seem to be, if not as old as the musical art itself, at least of great antiquity, as is shown in the coexistence of two such words as tetrachord and tritone—the one, of course, representing a passage of four sounds, or strings which produce them; the other an interval which, though it includes four sounds, is named after the three intervals—tones—which separate them. We hear now of overtones, or the acute sounds resulting from spontaneous vibration; and of undertones, meaning grave sounds resulting from the combination of others. Some of us have occasionally been at a good deal of pains to explain that a major third consists of, or includes, two tones; if a tone be sound, a major third must consist of three, or even of five tones, or of both three and five. The most recent and extravagant employment of this word, in this sense, is in its application to great composers. Beethoven, especially, we often hear of as a great ‘tone poet.’ I should say that if this terminology is to be accepted at all, it should be graduated or made more precise, so as to express the rank of the poet to whom it is applied. If Beethoven be a tone poet, some of our contemporaries should be authorised to call J. S. Bach an ‘augmented tone poet,’ and, e converso, Rossini a ‘semitone poet.’ What designation should be applied to the vast crowd of less successful aspirants to musical fame I know not. Perhaps they might be put off with some of those minute intervals, the excess or insufficiency of which disturbs the minds of those who still generously devote themselves to the search after that ‘philosopher's stone’ of our art—perfect intonation. I pass on now to the consideration of expression, under which term we may class words and songs indicative of pace, intensity, and style. A growing disposition has been observable of late among the different musical people of Europe to use their own languages as vehicles for these indications. I think this is to be regretted—(1) as inconvenient to foreigners among whom their music is likely to go. It seems hard on an English, French, Italian, Hungarian, or Bohemian musician that, to understand a piece of music by any eminent modern German master, he must not only be a musician, but a linguist; that he should not merely be able to appreciate the musical sound of the notes in the score before him, but have also a vocabulary—practically unlimited—of German words. He opens, say, Schumann's overture to ‘Genoveva.’ He sees, by the position of the stave headed by the C clef, and designated ‘Bratsche,’ what is the meaning of that word; he need not have much doubt about the stave similarly headed, and holding three parts, against which is written ‘Posaunen’; by the shapes of the passages intended for them he may construe ‘Ventilhorn in Es,’ ‘Waldhorn,’ and ‘Pauken,’ and by the help of the metronome mark he may come at the meaning of ‘Langsam.’ But a little farther on he encounters ‘Leidenschaftlich bewegt,’ which is harder upon him; and, a little farther still, ‘Sehr frisch,’ which is really too bad. This example has lately found imitators among the Scandinavians, who express their musical intention in words which a German of philological tastes and pursuits could doubtless make out, but which to the average German must be as unintelligible as to the average Englishman. Strange to say, the French, who take it for granted that everybody understands their language, or ought to, have not sinned in this way so much as the Germans. It is true that the scores of their operas are covered with phrases like ‘avec chaleur,’ ‘très simplement,’ ‘à demi-voix,’ ‘avec ironie’; but these may be regarded as ‘stage directions,’ addressed to, and inevitably intelligible to, those who are to play the parts as well as to sing the music to which they refer. Otherwise French composers limit themselves in their scores to a few native words—such as ‘detachée,’ ‘doucement,’ and the like. As for ourselves, our modern musical publications would indicate, what certainly is the reverse of true, that we are the greatest linguists on earth. It is needless to present examples of what everybody is familiar with; we have all seen, and see daily, title-pages, for instance, in which two, three, and even four languages are employed. (2.) Irrespective of its actual inconvenience, which I do not wish to overrate, this practice takes from music its noblest characteristic—its catholicity. We musicians are able to discourse in a language touching to the hearts, if not clear to the intelligence, of every people on the face of the globe; and we are furnished with an alphabet in which to write this language, which is not the invention of a single mind, but of a thousand minds; a thing which has marched on to its present perfection pari passu beside music itself; an alphabet so clear—to him who knows how to read it—that a musical composition, no matter of what intricacy, composed, let us say, at Moscow can, without any serious violations of the intentions of its author, and without his personal assistance, be performed within a few days, weeks, or months, in London, Paris, New York, or Melbourne, wherever there are artists to interpret it. Let us cherish this precious possession, and do what we can to prevent its acquiring a sectarian, provincial, or even national character, through the introduction of any peculiarities whatever.