THE RELATION OF MUSIC TO MENTAL PROGRESS. 379 



music with German, it is at once seen that the latter is developed more 

 highly in an intellectual sense. 



Our modern music is styled a new art, chiefly because it requires 

 advanced mental powers of a special kind on the part of composers 

 and auditors. Instead of being a succession of monotones, it is a 

 complex web of many tones, that the hearer must analyze to under- 

 stand and enjoy. In the ordinary church-quartet there are four such 

 interwoven threads ; in a symphony by Beethoven, many more. An 

 elaborate tonal plexus demands from the listener considerable mental 

 effort, unless he has acquired by study a "polyphonic ear," or the 

 power of perceiving the relationships of all the parts heard simultane- 

 ously, as clearly as one, looking down upon a ball-room scene, may 

 perceive the symmetrical forms of a mazy dance. 



It is interesting to consider the birth of a new art, and gratifying 

 to note that our modern civilization is marked by so rare an event. 

 We need not, therefore, lament that at the Renaissance no specimens 

 of Greek music were forthcoming ; for these might have influenced 

 the early composers, whose special duty it was to strive to express the 

 new thought and feeling of the time, and of the Latin and Germanic 

 races, not of Greeks or Orientals. When the mental sleep of the 

 dark ages passed to the waking dream or semi-consciousness of the 

 middle ages that led to the complete awakening, there was great pro- 

 ductive activity in all branches of art.* 



But, whereas, in architecture, painting, poetry, dancing, sculpture, 

 dramatic representation, etc., models of classic antiquity were at hand, 

 in the department of music nothing came to light but the didactic 

 treatises of the Greeks. These works, which were printed in Holland 

 in the original text and studied carefully by musicians, failed to ex- 

 ercise any marked influence on the art, for there were no actual com- 

 positions found that would illustrate the theories so carefully elab- 

 orated. Our modern art, therefore, is no Euphorion, born of a Faust 

 and Helen of Christian and pagan ancestry for there was no artistic 

 dualism in music at the Renaissance. 



Although the Church had, in the Bible, a foundation for poetical 

 and musical art, it neglected Hebraisms. Being reared on classic 

 ground, its first hymns and poetic forms were Greek and not Oriental. 

 But this early Church music could not supplant that which mission- 

 aries found in Western countries. Strong as the Church was, in many 

 senses, in those days, it could not hinder the introduction and recogni- 

 tion of. the new polyphonic style. In this one particular it seemed 

 powerless to dominate over the free spirit of man that thus formed 

 for itself its own mode of expression. The musician was left un- 

 hampered in his actions, while throughout the Renaissance there was 

 a constant struggle between the styles of the mediaeval artists and 



* See article in " The Popular Science Monthly " on the " Imperfections of Modern 

 Harmony," vol. xvi, p. 5l6. 



