L. H.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] See Riemann, Handbuch der Musikgeschichte, I², p. 144 ff.
[66] See article by Dom Germain in Revue de l’art chrétien, 1888.
[67] Strict ‘imitation’ would be extremely difficult in the tetrachordal system. A subject given in one tetrachord could not be imitated exactly in another, because the tetrachords varied from each other by the position of the half-step within them. Compare, for instance, the modern major and minor modes. The answer given in minor to a subject announced in major is not a strict imitation. If, on the other hand, the answer to a subject in a certain hexachord was given in another hexachord, it would necessarily be a strict imitation, since in all hexachords the half-step came between the third and fourth tones, between mi and fa.
[68] Op. cit., Part II.
CHAPTER VII
SECULAR MUSIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES
Popular music; fusion of secular and ecclesiastic spirit; Paganism and Christianity; the epic—Folksong; early types in France, complainte, narrative song, dance song; Germany and the North; occupational songs—Vagrant musicians; jongleurs, minstrels; the love song—Troubadours and Trouvères; Adam de la Halle—The Minnesinger; the Meistersinger; influence on Reformation and Renaissance.
However slim the records of early church music they still suffice to give some clews to the origin and nature of the first religious songs. But, when we turn to the question of secular song at the beginning of our era, we are baffled by an utter lack of tangible material. For the same monks to whom we are indebted for the early examples of sacred music were religious fanatics who looked with hostile eyes upon the profane creations of their lay contemporaries. Yet we may be confident of the continued and uninterrupted existence not only of some sort of folk music, but also of the germs at least of an art music, however crude, throughout that period of confusion incident to, and following, the crumbling of the Roman empire.