At any rate, in spite of all this beautiful and comprehensive talk of harmony and the like, the fact is clear, that the Greek had no harmony worth the name; he knew nothing but the crude concords of the octave, the fourth and the fifth; moreover, his melody was equally meagre; and altogether his ultimate flight in music was where voices of men and women sang, accompanied in unison or octave by the lyre, the flute and the like.
And if we consider the state of music after the passing away of the Greek cultus up to the fifteenth century, we have much the same story to tell as was just now told of mediæval science. For a time the world's stock of tunes is practically comprised in the melodies collected by Gregory, known as the Gregorian Chant. Presently the system of polyphonic music arises, in which several voices sing different melodies so arranged as not to jar with each other. But when we now come down to the sixteenth century, we find a wonderful new activity in music accompanying that in science. Luther in Germany, Gondimel in France, push forward the song: in Spain, Salinas of Salamanca, studies ancient music for thirty years, and finally arrives at the conclusion that the Greek had no instrumental music, and that all their melody was originally derived from the order of syllables in verse. In Italy, Montaverde announces what were called his "new discords," and the beautiful maestro, Palestrina, writes compositions in several parts, which are at once noble, simple and devout. England at this time is filled with music; and by the end of the sixteenth century the whole land is a-warble with the madrigals and part-compositions of Weelkes, Wilbye, John Milton, Sr., and the famous Dr. John Bull, together with those of Tye, Tallis, Morley, Orlando Gibbons, and hundreds more. But as yet modern music is not. There is no orchestra; Queen Elizabeth's dinner-music is mainly drums and trumpets. It is not until the middle of the seventeenth century that Jenkins and Purcell begin to write sonatas for a small number of violins with organ accompaniment.
A curious note of the tendency towards instrumental music at this time, however, is found in the fact that people begin to care so little for the words of songs as to prefer them in a foreign language. Henry Lawes, one of the most famous musicians of the middle of the seventeenth century, he who suggested Milton's _Comus_ and set it to music, endeavored to rebuke this affectation, as he supposed it, by a cruel joke: he wrote a song, of which the words were nothing more than the index of an old volume of musical compositions, and had it sung amidst great applause. It must have been in the same course of feeling that Waller--several of whose poems had been set to music by Lawes--addressed to him the following stanza: