The Evolution of Music. 397 



sentiment, which had themselves been evolved by advance 

 in civilization, and thereby to more just aesthetic concep- 

 tions. In Bach and Handel were focused whatever past 

 ages had achieved for music culture, and from them the 

 future of music received its grand impulse toward what it 

 has since attained. They stand like two pillars at the ves- 

 tibule of the temple of modern musical history. Indebted 

 for much to their predecessors already mentioned, and also 

 to the great organists Buxtehude, Pachelbel, Paumann, and 

 others, yet, even as Shakespeare wrought upon history, nar- 

 rative, and legend, and as Milton, with all his fervor of 

 poetic instinct, drew from the classics his most exalted 

 imagery, so these masters so concentrated and amplified 

 what they received that their work bears the clearest im- 

 press of individuality. 



In what we have called the melodic-polyphonic period 

 high and worthy melodic conceptions were united with, 

 and enforced by, rich and ample harmonic forms, through 

 which they were intensified and illustrated. For melody is, 

 and must ever be, the soul of music. It is what form is to 

 the statue and painting, and proportion in architecture, or 

 thought in poetry and oratory. With Handel was born the 

 highest form yet attained of dramatic melody and choral 

 effects. Bach was the musician's composer. His "Well-tem- 

 pered Clavichord has been said to be to the musician what the 

 breviary is to the priest. With Haydn appears what may be 

 called the melodic-artistic school i. e., melody developed in 

 pure tone form, though he was not the equal of Handel in 

 breadth of style. But in finished melodic and in melodic- 

 harmonic works Haydn marks an advance. He is further- 

 more entitled to the lasting credit of having established for 

 all subsequent time the symphonic form, as we now have it, 

 and thus m having delivered orchestral music from the bond- 

 age of mechanical fugal treatment, and in having thus made 

 possible the achievements of subsequent composers. With 

 Mozart the pure melodic art attained its most perfect and 

 finished exposition. Mozart united to Haydn's grace of form 

 the highest musical thought, and thereby surpassed the lat- 

 ter's too formal composition. Von Weber founded the ro- 

 mantic school, and finally in Beethoven the melodic-har- 

 monic style received its complete development. Beethoven 

 satisfies all the requisites of the most consummate musical 

 art i. e., simplicity of idea, unity in conception, and extra- 

 ordinary power of tonal development and harmonic coloring. 



