The History of Music #251375

Hitherto, in tracing the history of Church music, we have noticed how rigidly the melodic and rhythmical side only of the tonal art had been developed. Henceforth it was to be a free, self-existing art. The trammels of conventionality and clerical doctrines, by which it had been bound for so long, were now cast on one side, and in the development of polyphony, a new, independent, and unshackled existence was about to begin.