ct, everything points to the progressive development
of music in all respects, and the development of what we might call
self-consciousness in musicians, whereby each succeeding generation
sought to place upon record a greater number of particulars concerning
their music, and to leave less and less to accident or tradition. This
progress has gone on until the present time, when two particulars of
our music are exactly recorded--the pitch and the rhythm. The exact
relation of every tone to the key note is ascertainable from our
musical notation, and the precise degree of rhythmic importance
appertaining to each tone according to its place in measure and in the
larger rhythms. We are still lame in the matter of expression, and in
pianoforte music also in regard to the application of the pedals. Here
our notation affords only a few detached suggestions. If the master
works of the modern school could be noted for expression as completely
as for pitch and rhythm, the labor of acquiring musical knowledge
would be very greatly diminished.

The four-line staff has remained in use in the Catholic Church until
the present time, and with it the square notes. It is generally called
Gregorian, and by many is supposed to have been invented by Gregory
the Great; but as a matter of fact, about six centuries elapsed after
his death before this square-note notation came into use. The
five-line staff came into use about 1500. Information is wanting as to
the causes which led to its adoption in preference to the four-line
notation so long in use. The clef for do (C clef) remained in use
until very lately, and is still used by many strict theorists, being
written upon the first line for the soprano, the fourth line for the
tenor, the third line for the alto. The G clef, also, when first
introduced, was often written upon the third or the first line; the F
clef, moreover, was not definitely established on the fourth line
until toward 1700. In the scores of Palestrina's work, now published
in complete form, there are pieces written with the soprano in the G
clef upon the first line, the alto in the C clef upon the second line,
the tenor in the C clef upon the fourth line, and the bass in the F
clef upon the third line. This, while affording the eye two familiar
clefs, the treble and the bass, places them in such a way as to
practically make it necessary for the modern reader to transpose every
note of the composition in all the parts, and, in