The Evolution of Music. 391 



a droning, like that of a bagpipe, with the performance of 

 other parts in the upper scale ; and the descant, or discan- 

 tus (dis-cantus, something apart from the song), in which 

 the parts which accompanied the principal melody were ex- 

 temporized, though according to fixed rules. The leading 

 subject, or motive, thus became known, and is still known 

 in polyphonic composition, as the " cantus firmus," and was 

 also styled the " tenor," from the Latin " teneo," to hold, 

 since it was usually taken by the upper voice. The Eng- 

 lish "plain song" has the same signification. Following 

 closely the above forms, and partly contemporary with them, 

 were the canons and rounds, or catches. The latter were 

 of more formal and technical construction, but were an ad- 

 vance, harmonically, upon the former, in that there was a 

 simultaneous progression of all the parts, the theme being 

 taken up successively by different voices. This was the 

 germ of the immensely varied and differentiated music of 

 the following centuries, for these led directly to the inven- 

 tion of counterpoint and fugue, through which the utmost 

 possibilities in music were finally demonstrated and practi- 

 cally applied. Counterpoint, single and double, was direct- 

 ly an outcome of the discantus, the progression of the ac- 

 companying voices being committed to notation, instead of 

 being left to uncertain extemporization. As counterpoint 

 was born of the descant and motet, so fugue was born of 

 canon and counterpoint. A fugue, as the word fuga, its 

 Latin original, implies, is, as it were, a flying of the different 

 subjects or themes after each other ; these, known as sub- 

 ject, counter-subject, return, etc., being taken up in succes- 

 sion in the different parts and woven into an elaborate poly- 

 phonic movement, but subordinate to correct harmonic pro- 

 gression and interdependence. The fugue is the most 

 highly evolved and complex form which music has attained 

 or can attain, and is the final stage of polyphonic differen- 

 tiation, though not final in what constitutes the highest and 

 truest function of music viz., artistic, melodic, and har- 

 monic ideas, expressive of a well-defined musical thought, 

 such as are characteristic of what we here call the third pe- 

 riod that of the melodic-polyphonic school. 



In compositions of this second period England took a 

 leading part, for the earliest vocal part composition yet 

 discovered is the celebrated " Sumer is icumen in," for six 

 voices, and assigned to the early part of the thirteenth cent- 

 ury. John of Dunstable (about 1460) was one of many who 



