be surrounded by an atmosphere of undying beauty.
But it is not so: the march of the arts has not been parallel in human
life; when sculpture had its Phidias, and had reached its climax,
painting had hardly passed that rudimentary stage that we see in
Pompeii, and music was only a childish babbling. Writing could not
perpetuate music, for there seemed as many musical styles as there
were peoples, and everything was left to the judgment of the
executant. You could not fix on parchment what mouths and instruments
played, and so progress was impossible. For this reason, though there
was a Renaissance for sculpture, for painting, for architecture, at
the revival of the arts after the Middle Ages, music was found in the
same elementary stage in which it was at the break-up of the ancient
world."

Gabriel nodded his head assenting to the words of the Chapel-master.

"This was the first Christian music," continued Don Luis. "Confided
to tradition and transmitted orally, the religious songs soon became
disfigured and corrupt. In every church they sang in a different way,
and religious music became a hotch-potch. The mystics leaned to
rigid unity, and in the sixth century Saint Gregory published his
'Antifonario,' a collection of all liturgic melodies, purifying them
according to his ideas. They were a mixture of two elements: the
Greek, rather oriental and florid, very much like the present debased
style; and the grave and rough Roman. The notes were expressed
by letters, the Phrygian and Lydian styles followed, and so the
intricacies of Greek music continued though much altered, with
fioriture, rests, and breathing pauses. The collection became lost,
and many who think a return to the old style would be best, much
regret it. To judge by the fragments that remain, if such music was
now executed it would have very little that was religious about it, as
we understand religion in art to-day; it would more resemble the songs
of the Moors, or the Chinese, or those of some schismatic Greeks who
still use the ancient liturgies. The harp was the principal instrument
in the churches till the organ appeared in the tenth century, a rough
and barbarous instrument that had to be played with blows, and was
supplied with wind from inflated skins. Guido di Arezzo made a musical
rule on the basis of Gregory's collection, and this was sufficient for
the invention of the pentagramma[1] to be assigned to the Benedictine.
They continued to use t