musical instruments. The instruments are
an indispensable ingredient in musical progress, since it is only by
means of instruments that tonal combinations can be exactly repeated,
the voice mastering the more difficult relations of tones only when
the ear has become quick to perceive tonal relations, and tenacious to
retain them--in other words, educated. Hence in the pages following,
the instruments peculiar to each epoch will receive the attention
their importance deserves, which is considerably more than that
usually allotted them in concise accounts of the history of this art.

8. The conditions of a satisfactory Art Form are three: Unity, the
expression of a single ruling idea; variety, the relief of the
monotony due to the over-ascendency of unity (or contrast, an exact
and definite form of variety); and symmetry, or the due proportion of
the different parts of the work as a whole. These principles,
universally recognized as governing in the other fine arts, are
equally valid in music. As will be seen later, all musical progress
has been toward their more complete attainment and their due
co-ordination into a single satisfactory whole. Every musical form
that has ever been created is an effort to solve this problem; and
analysis shows which one of the leading principles has been most
considered, and the manner in which it has been carried out. Ancient
music was very weak in all respects, and never fully attained the
first of these qualities. Modern music has mastered all three to a
very respectable degree.

9. The art of music appears to have been earliest of all the fine arts
in the order of time; but it has been longer than any of the others in
reaching its maturity, most of the master works now current having
been created within the last two centuries, and the greater proportion
of them within the last century. Sculpture came to its perfection in
Greece about 500 B.C.; architecture about 1200 to 1300 A.D., when the
great European cathedrals were built; painting about 1500 to 1600 A.D.
Poetry, like music, representing the continual life of soul, has never
been completed, new works of highest quality remaining possible as
long as hearts can feel and minds can conceive; but the productions of
Shakespeare, about 1650, are believed to represent a point of
perfection not likely to be surpassed. Music, on the other hand, has
been continually progressive, at least until the appearance of
Beethoven, about the beginnin