the history of music. The art of polyphony had its origin at the
same period as the pointed arch and the great cathedrals of Europe,
which our architects strive in vain to surpass. In the province of
music it represents the same bounding movement of mind, filled with
high ideality, which gave rise to the crusades, and poured out in
their support such endless treasures of life and love. And in the same
country, too, arose the Gothic arch, the beauties of the shrine of
Notre Dame in Paris, and the involved and massive polyphony of music.
_Polyphonic_ is a term which relates itself to two others, as the
leading types of all effort toward the expression of spirit through
organized tones. They are _Monodic_ and _Homophonic_. The musical art
of the ancients was an art in which a single melodic formula was
doubled in a lower or higher octave, but where no support of harmony
was added, and where the only realization of variety could come
through the province of rhythm alone; or, perhaps, to a very limited
extent through changes in the mode or color of the scale from which
the melody had been derived. Monodic art was an art of melody only,
rhythm finding its explanation and source in the words, and so far as
we understand the case, scarcely at all in the music. Our modern art
of homophony is like that in having but a single melody at each moment
of the piece; but it differs from the ancient in the important
particular of a harmonic support for the melody tones composed of
"chords in key." This harmonic accompaniment rules everything in
modern music. It is within the power of the composer to confirm the
obvious meaning of the melody tone by supporting it with the chord
which would most readily suggest itself, within the narrowest
limitations in the concept of key; or, second, it is within his reach
to impart to any tone, apparently most commonplace, a deeper and a
subtler meaning, by making it a peculiarly expressive tone of some
related key. Instances of this use of harmonic accompaniment are
numerous in Wagner's works, and form the most obvious peculiarity of
his style, and the chief reason why the hearers to whom his works were
first presented did not recognize the beauties and the novelties of
poetic expression in them. Half way between these two types of musical
art stands polyphony, which means etymologically "many sounds," but
which in musical technique means "multiplicity of melodies." In a true
polyphony not only has eve