MUSIC OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLES PASTOB. 695 



was a musical form wliich was known long before and commonly 

 practiced outside the church; se(;ond (and tliis is more important), 

 that the earlier form was more richly developed. What Scotus 

 Erigena described is a two-toned theme in its highest development, and 

 hence beyond mere third and sixth progressions. Thus the fact is 

 estabUshed that long before the church the people knew the two-part 

 theme and that the ecclesiastical recognition of this musical form did 

 not promote it, but on the contrary checked it. The reaction did not 

 stop with llucbald. Lederer remarked in his book, "On the Home 

 and Origin of Polyphonic Music," as follows: ''The church in the 

 Middle Ages evidently assumed the most hostile attitude toward 

 polyphony as an art foreign to its fundamental principles, and we 

 could produce instances from Germany, France, England, and even 

 from Iceland, m wliich the church authorities took action against 

 polyphony. Pope Jolui XXII fuially, m the year 1322, in the bull 

 'Docta Sanctorum,' solemnly expelled it, rooted it up from the 

 ground, and rejected it." Polyphonic music was disseminated 

 through Europe, not through but in opposition to the church. 



The question may be asked where its sources are in reality to be 

 looked for. This has re<^'eived dilTerent answers. Fetis has assigned it 

 to the Normans, Guido Adler to the old folk songs, and Lederer to the 

 people of Brittany, while Fleischer and Geraldus Cambrensis point to 

 the Danes and Norwegians. Others allud<^ to the construction of 

 certam secular instruments that can only be played in intervals. 

 The most important are the oldest violins, three-stringed instruments, 

 in which for a long time the bridge was wanting, but afterwards when 

 introduced was cut off hoiizontally so that the strmgs had to be played 

 in unison. Two things are common to all these investigations — fii-st, 

 that all j)()lyphonic music is north European, and, second, that it is of 

 secular, or at least of heathen, origm. As archeologists we must con- 

 tend against the acceptance of such an origin as inconceivable, and 

 if we have any hypothesis to pro]:)()sc it is that the beginnings of 

 polyphonic music lie very much further back, that the Luren people 

 were long famiUar A\dth it, and that it is not absurd to hold that the 

 two-voiced music is as old at least as the Germans. 



It is rather an idle rpicstion as to which uitervals were first clearly 

 grasped as such, which, to employ a comparison of Stumpf's, first 

 combined themselves into a firm skeleton, while the others still 

 remained the weak parts of the musical body. It is possible that in 

 the sound of the so naturally produced octaves, fifths, and fourths 

 the knowledge of intervals first dawned. Not in these fixed and 

 therefoi-c inexpressive intervals which are connnon to both kinds of 

 scales could music have become an art m the highest sense, but 

 through the active intervals by which the major and minor scales 

 change, especially the thirds and sixths. The sharp produces the 



