We need but point to our discourse upon the music of primitive peoples (Chap. I), the traces of musical culture left by the ancients (Chap. II), and especially the high achievements of the Greeks (Chap. IV), as evidence that, whatever the stage of a people’s intellectual development, music is a prime factor of individual and racial expression. Furthermore, at almost every period there is recognizable the distinction between folk music proper—the spontaneous collective expression of racial sentiment—and the more sophisticated creations which we may designate as art. Thus the music transmitted by the Greeks to the Romans, if added to ever so slightly, no doubt was continued with the other forms of Greek culture. The symposias, scolia, and lyrics of Hellas had their progeny in the odes of Horace and Catullus; the bards, the aœds, and rhapsodists had their counterpart—degenerate, if you will—in the histriones, the gladiators, and performers in the arena of declining Rome. Turning to the ‘Barbarians’ who caused the empire’s fall, we learn that already Tacitus recorded the activities of the German bardit who intoned war songs before their chiefs and inspired them to new victories; while Athenæus and Diodorus Siculus both tell of the Celtic bards who had an organization in the earliest Middle Ages and were regularly educated for their profession.

I

Because of the fact that our earliest musical records are ecclesiastical, the impression might prevail that modern music had its origin in the Christian church. But, although almost completely subjected to it as its guardian mother, and almost wholly occupied in its service, the beginnings of Christian music antedate the church itself. Pagan rites had their music no less than Christian. Just as we find elements of Greek philosophy in the teaching of Christianity, so the church reconciled Pagan festivals with its own holidays, and with them adapted elements of Pagan music. Thus our Easter was a continuation of the Pagan May-day festivals, and in the old Easter hymn O filii et filiæ we find again the old Celtic may day songs, the chansons de quête which still survive in France. We here reproduce one above the other:

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O fi-li-i et fi-li-æ
Rex cœ-les-tis rex glo-ri-æ.

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En re-ve-nant de-dans les champs,
En re-ve-nant de-dans les champs.