MUSIC OF PEIMITIViE PEOPLES PASTOR. 693 



The bishops and popes, moreover, knew how to preserve the simpHcity 

 of their <^ranite style. 



Our picture would bo incompleto if wo did not bring to mind what 

 tho ecclesiastical authority made out of the social position of sing- 

 ers and performers. Wo know how liighly singers were appreciated 

 in tho old courts, what esteem tho "Skopen" had, and tho noble 

 forms of Volker and Horand are familiar to us from tli,e Nibelungen 

 Lied. Tho churcli know how to break down this universal respect. 

 In tho eyes of its authorities tho singers and performers were worth- 

 less vagabonds. Though they were tho prido of the hall, they were 

 branded by tho church as ''the children of the devil," and as home- 

 less " Himmelsreicho " were chased into the highways, where they 

 might associate with other wandering people, jugglers, quacks, and 

 jesters. 



A tribe of really worthless vagabonds, it is true, associated with 

 the minstrels. They were the musicians of 'the South, who left Rome 

 and Italy because the church was uncongenial to them. One knew 

 how to distinguish sharply between these wandering and worthless 

 peojile and the respected native musicians. But as the church then 

 also counted these northern musicians among the worthless, in so far 

 as they clung to heathenish traditions, these distinctions were oblit- 

 erated. In the " Saxonspiegel " the interpretation of the church 

 became a law, according to which a player was as much an outlaw 

 as a thief or an outcast. Under the Swabian and Bavarian law he 

 was only allowed in cases of violent assault to strike the "shadow of 

 his tormentor." Those were quite other times than the ones in 

 which the ''Lex Angliorum et Warinorum hoc est Thuringorum" 

 punished those who injured tho hand of a harper four times as 

 severeh^ as those who injured the hand of another freeman. 



Just as little as the good heathenish practices and legends could 

 be taken away from the people by the most heedless fanaticism, just 

 so little could the heaviest ban of tho church destroy that which the 

 despised and condemned musicians took with them out onto the 

 highways. In the midst of their necessities these musicians kept 

 pure the traditions of European music and we have to thank them, 

 before all, that finally in tho unwelcomed introduction of polyphonic 

 music Europe had again resisted the Orient as regards musical art. 



4. EVOLUTION OF POLYPHONIC MUSIC. 



It is tho last musical phenomenon with wliich wo are occupied 

 here. Tho erroneous views which are current even in many scien- 

 tific circles regarding tlio origin of liarmony oblig(^ us to digress a 

 little further. According to an old assumption, the first intervals 

 which were perceived both as connected tones and as expressively 

 85360°— SM 1912 45 



