386 The Evolution of Music. 



can say that we know nothing which can serve as a basis for 

 a correct history of music in all its departments until sev- 

 eral centuries after the Christian era. The causes are not 

 only the destruction of musical manuscripts, but the imper- 

 fection in the progress of the art itself. Music is the last of 

 the arts to develop. It did not attain its possibilities of ad- 

 vancement until the eleventh or twelfth centuries as will 

 be shown further on. It is, moreover, pre-eminently the 

 emotional art the one which most of all appeals to the ab- 

 stract imaginative faculty, and which relies least for its 

 effects upon external form. It follows that a high civiliza- 

 tion only will be capable of producing great artistic, crea- 

 tive musical composition, a civilization higher than that 

 which attained perfection in the plastic arts. The evolu- 

 tion of the higher emotional faculties succeeds and does not 

 precede the development of the higher intellect. 



FIRST PERIOD. 

 Development of Melody. 



In the treatment of our subject it may be expected that 

 some discussion should be undertaken as to the remote ori- 

 gins of music. Such arguments as might be adduced 

 would, however, be wholly speculative. We may surmise 

 that imitation of the sounds of nature, or of the cries and 

 calls of animals, was a factor in the case ; or we can equally 

 well surmise that it was a development directly due to the 

 consciousness of possessing a faculty of vocalization which 

 led primitive man to his first exceedingly rude attempts at 

 what he might have called music. The invention of musi- 

 cal instruments was quite certainly a merely happy chance. 

 Noticing sounds produced by the wind over some distended 

 substance, or caused by its blowing through some hollow 

 reed or otherwise, man, from motives of curiosity, would have 

 endeavored to reproduce them by his own action, and in the 

 course of ages all our varieties of string and wind instru- 

 ments would be the result, under the law of evolution. 

 Judging, however, by analogy from existing savage and 

 half -civilized races, he satisfied his earliest musical instincts 

 by mere noise, produced by the rhythmical beating of hard 

 substances together, accompanied with gesticulation, danc- 

 ing, and clapping of hands, all of which arose from the 

 necessity of giving vent to his emotions in every way which 



