many of the solemn phrases in long notes
which in Handel's choruses so often accompany quicker themes.

From the use of an old _canto fermo_ to the invention of an original one
is obviously a small step; and as there is no limit to the possibilities
of varying the _canto fermo_, both in the part which most emphatically
propounds it and in the imitating or contrasted parts, so there is no
line of demarcation between the free development of counterpoint on a
_canto fermo_ and the general art of combining melodies which gives
harmony its deepest expression and musical texture its liveliest action.
Nor is there any such line to separate polyphonic from non-polyphonic
methods of accompanying melody; and Bach's _Orgelbuechlein_ and Brahms's
posthumous organ-chorales show every conceivable gradation between plain
harmony or arpeggio and the most complex canon.

In Wagnerian polyphony canonic devices are rare except in such simple
moments of anticipation or of communion with nature as we have before
the rise of the curtain in the _Rheingold_ and at the daybreak in the
second act of the _Goetterdaemmerung_. On the other hand, the art of
combining contrasted themes crowds almost every other kind of musical
texture (except tremolos and similar simple means of emotional
expression) into the background, and is itself so transformed by new
harmonic resources, many of which are Wagner's own discovery, that it
may almost be said to constitute a new form of art. The influence of
this upon instrumental music is as yet helpful only in those new forms
which are breaking away from the limits of the sonata style; and it is
impossible at present to sift the essential from the unessential in that
marvellous compound of canonic device, Wagnerian harmony, original
technique and total disregard of every known principle of musical
grammar, which renders the work of Richard Strauss the most remarkable
musical phenomenon of recent years. All that is certain is that the two
elements in which the music of the future will finally place its main
organizing principles are not those of instrumentation and external
expression, on which popular interest and controversy are at present
centred, but rhythmic flow and counterpoint. These have always been the
elements which suffered from neglect or anarchy in earlier
transition-periods, and they have always been the elements that gave
rationality to the new art to which the transitions led. (D. F. T.)

FOOTN