Greek music, of which we know little, and the
music of the East and Far East.

Music, as we now understand the term, began with the attempts at harmony
in the Middle Ages. These attempts were labored and difficult, and the
uncertainty of their gropings, combined with the slowness of their
development, excites our wonder. Centuries were necessary before the
writing of music became exact, but, slowly, laws were elaborated.
Thanks to them the works of the Sixteenth Century came into being, in
all their admirable purity and learned polyphony. Hard and inflexible
laws engendered an art analogous to primitive painting. Melody was
almost entirely absent and was relegated to dance tunes and popular
songs. But the dance tunes of the time, on which, perhaps, erudition was
not used sufficiently, were written in the same polyphonic style and
with the same rigid correctness as the madrigals and the church music.

We know that the popular songs found their way into the church music and
that Palestrina's great reform consisted in banishing them. However, we
should get but a feeble idea of the part they played, if we imagined
that they naturally belonged there. Take a well known air, _Au Claire de
la Lune_, for example, and make each note a whole note sung by the
tenor, while the other voices dialogue back and forth in counterpoint,
and see what is left of the song for the listener. The scandal of _La
Messe de l'Homme arme_ was entirely theoretical.

We simply do not know how they played these anthems, masses, and
madrigals, in the absence of any indication of either the time or the
emphasis. We find a few directions for expression, as in the first
measures of Palestrina's _Stabat Mater_ but such directions are
extremely rare. They are simply the first signs of the dawn of the
far-off day of music with expression. Certain learned and
well-intentioned persons endeavor to compare this music with ours, and
we surprise in some of the modern editions instances of _molto
expressivo_ which seem to be good guesses. This exclusively consonant
music, in which the intervals of fourths were considered dissonant,
while the diminishing fifth was the _diabolus in musica_, ought from its
very nature to be antithetical to expression. Nothing in the _Kyrie, in
La Messe du Pape Marcel_, gives the impression of a prayer, unless
expressive accents, without any real justification, are introduced by
main strength.

Expression came into existence with the