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Our first recognized triumph in the marvellous modern development of
music, the first great masterpiece which taught the world the beauty
of which the art is capable, was Bach's _Das Wohltemperirte
Clavier_. The production marks, therefore, "the first great climax
of musical art."

Like the other arts and sciences, the story of music is that of a
slow building up. Music "divinest of arts, exactest of
sciences"--for music is both an art and a science--has developed
from the crude two-or three-note scale melody, without semitones, to
the elaborate, ornate lucubrations of the modern oratorio, opera, or
symphony. From the beginning the "half-sister of Poetry" has been
the handmaid of Religion. The ancients ascribed miraculous
properties to music. Of the actual system of the Egyptians our
information is very scant; but we learn from the monuments depicting
the number and variety of their instruments that they had advanced
from childish practice to orchestration and harmony. According to
Plato, "In their possession are songs having the power to exalt and
ennoble mankind." The harp is undoubtedly of Egyptian origin.

In Israel plastic art was discouraged; the natural emotion of the
people was, therefore, expressed in poetry and music. Miriam, the
daughter of Jephthah, Deborah, and later the Virgin, whose grand
chant, the _Magnificat_, is ever being upraised from Christendom's
heart, portray the deep emotional temperament of this great
religious race.

The artistic standard of the music of the Greeks was far behind that
of their observation and intelligence in other matters. Their
theories on the combinations, of which they never made use, and
analysis of their scales show much ingenuity, but their accounts are
so vague that one cannot get any clear idea of what these were
really like. When art is mature, people do not tell of city walls
being overthrown, of savage animals being tamed--as run the stories
of Orpheus and Amphion. One Greek there was, Pythagoras, who
discerned the association between the distant music of the spheres
with the seven notes of the scale. "He discovered the numerical
relation of one tone to another."[28] It was about the time of
Pythagoras that a scheme of tetrachords which did not overlap was
adopted.

In Persia and Arabia was obtained a per