The first phase is that in which short musical “subjects,” called motifs, are made the elements of contrapuntal forms such as the canon, free prelude, invention, madrigal, and fugue. This phase, in which pure music makes its first appearance, emerging from the choral music which needed no musical principles of design because it took its shape and meaning from words, grew naturally out of the choral music which preceded it. Imagine any bit of melody springing into existence in connection with a verbal phrase or sentence; then fancy it sounded without the words which gave it reason for being: it is easy to see that the only way it can now be given significance is by being made the subject of a _musical_ design, that is, by being repeated, either literally or in modified form. Even the most primitive savages have always felt this. In Sir Hubert Parry’s book on “The Evolution of the Art of Music” we find many examples of formulas of notes used by savages as motifs, and developed simply by endless repetition. Such formulas as the following, for example, become, by mere repetition, true music of a primitive type: [Music: score] [Illustration: FIGURE VI. FROM PARRY’S “EVOLUTION OF THE ART OF MUSIC,” p. 49.] The earliest attempts at pure music, though infinitely more advanced than these childish forms, were, like them, built up out of short motifs, of anywhere from two to a dozen tones, given definiteness by fixed metrical and harmonic relationships, and developed by means of repetition. All through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries such contrapuntal forms were being developed to a high pitch of perfection, and they reached their culmination in the great fugues of J. S. Bach (1685-1750). Let us, then, instead of poring painfully over the obscure steps by which this vantage-point in art was reached, make a brief analysis of the consummated fugue-form, as it was treated by this supreme master. The fugue of Bach, as it is represented, for example, in the forty-eight fugues of his “Well-Tempered Clavichord,” is a contrapuntal or polyphonic form; that is, it is made up of from two to five voices or parts, progressing with complete melodic independence of one another, yet in entire harmony. It is based on, or proceeds out of, a short motif or subject, often but a measure or two in length, but subjected to the most ingenious, varied, and exhaustive manipulation. It has certain structural divisions, and always ends in the key in which it began; yet its form does not, strictly speaking, depend on its sectional structure, as is the case with the song, dance, and sonata forms, but rather on the logical exploitation of the motif. The motif, in a word, is the primary fact of the fugue, the seed from which is germinated all the luxuriant florescent life of the subsequent music.