Historically speaking, the first great culmination of the polyphonic style is found in the ecclesiastical choruses of Palestrina (1528-1594); but it was not until somewhat later that this style was applied to instrumental music. In the inventions, canons, preludes, toccatas, and fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), we get the first great examples of polyphony as applied, not to merely ecclesiastical music, but to music which by its secular character and its variety of emotional expression is universal in scope.

II. AN INVENTION BY BACH.

Such is the ingenuity and the perfection of detail in Bach's works in the polyphonic style that a life-time might be spent in studying them. They have that delicacy of inner adjustment more usually found in the works of nature than in those of man; their melodies grow out of their motive germs as plants put forth leaves and flowers; their separate voices fit into one another like the crystals in a bit of quartz; and the whole fabric of the music stands on its elemental harmonies as solidly as the mountains on their granite bases. We can hope to see as little of this august country of Bach's mind by analyzing a few pieces as a man may see of the hills and moors in a day's excursion—but, nevertheless, a beginning must be made.

The essential features of this music may be seen in even so simple a piece as the Invention in F-major, number 7, in the two-voiced inventions, though it is written for only two voices and is but thirty-four measures long.

EXAMPLE FOR ANALYSIS, No. 1.

Bach: Two-voice Invention No. VIII., in F-Major.

The subject or theme of this invention is a melody of two measures' length, first given out by the soprano, and consists of two motives or characteristic figures, one in eighth-notes, staccato, making a series of leaps, thus:

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and one a graceful descending run in sixteenth-notes, thus