his one was the chief. First of these, in the Roman
empire, or in the south of Europe more particularly, for about 800
years the Greek principles remained more or less in force. The Church
is here the foremost influence, and its part in the transformation
already noted will be considered presently. In the north of Europe the
Goths, Celts and Scandinavians built mighty empires and impressed
their enthusiastic and idealistic natures upon the whole form of
modern art. The Saracens conquered a foot-hold in the south of France
about 819, and remained there for twenty years. Their influence was
very important in the development of music, and became still more
active after the crusades, where the armies of the west came again in
contact with this peculiar civilization. Besides these three sources
measurably unprofessional and outside of music, or amateur, as we say
now, there was the work of the professional musicians strictly
so-called, who, from about 1100 in the old French school, commenced
the development of what is now known as polyphony, which culminated in
the hands of the Netherlanders, about 1580, Palestrina himself being
one of the latest products of this school. These influences reacted
upon each other, and all have entered into modern art, and have
imparted to it their most essential elements.

All modern music differs from the ancient in two important
particulars--_Harmony and Tonality_. Harmony is the use of combined
sounds. These may be either dissonant, inharmonious in relation to
each other, or harmonious, agreeable. All points of repose in a
harmonized piece of music must be consonant; or, to say it
differently, the combined sound (chord) standing at the beginning or
end of a musical phrase must be harmonious. All the elements in it
must bear consonant relations to all the others. Between the points of
repose the combined sounds may or may not be consonant. Under certain
conditions dissonances make an effect even better than consonance--better
because more appealing. The law of the introduction of dissonances is
that every dissonance must arise out of a consonance, and subside into
a consonance. When this law is observed there is hardly any
combination possible in the range of music which may not be employed
with good effect. Here already we have a progress in perception of
tones, in the ability to discriminate between those which harmonize
and those which dissonate. All consonance and dissonance are purely