Music has significance only when fraught with messages from the composer to the hearer. Therefore those sounds which most clearly voice strong emotions are the most pregnant musical germs. Isolated shouts of triumph, rage, and joy, or cries of pain, fear, and entreaty, appeal to our sensibilities, but they do not suggest music, although its line of development from these primal elements is traceable. It began with the first intellectual recognition of the adequacy of tonal expression, when those sounds which had been involuntarily produced as the result of sensations, were placed by the human mind in the category of expressive means. At this point our germs came under the influence of deliberate purpose. Intellect took spontaneous shouts, cries, and moans in hand, and has gradually endowed them with continuity, life pulsation (rhythm), and _form_; has made them express sentiments surcharged with emotions, creating a definitely significant atmosphere (_stimmung_). This pervading atmosphere or mood, which is a vital element in successful musical effort, must be in no wise confounded with the situations incident to and arising through the descriptive (_program_) composer's art. The first is personal, a heart mood; the second is impersonal, a brain picture. From this first step in musical evolution intellect has been more and more closely associated with emotion, as the composer's intentions have become more definite and his _forms_ more extended. Music's progress has not been uniform, for it is most sensitive, and the conditions have often been unfavorable. It has followed, to a great degree, the tidal fluctuations of refinement and fine sensibility in the masses; for although its growth is dependent upon certain conditions, these necessary conditions, if confined within narrow limits, or when found only in isolated persons, will not suffice. It must breathe a free air, full of sympathetic feeling and impulse, and it must have a broad, deep soil in which to spread its roots, for it aspires heavenward, up through the material into the ideal. The growth of music from its initial stage to an art is quite analogous, except in time consumed, to the growth of each talent to maturity, or of each musical conception to full expression. They all move on towards realization, impelled by art instinct and imagination. The composer of to-day has a legendary past, full of romance and heart-throbs, and a warm, sympathetic present, to stimulate his fancy, but it required ages of joy, sorrow, love, and culture to quicken and refine man's stoical nature. The soil which nourishes our imaginations has been made fertile by the blood and tears of countless generations. CHAPTER II MUSIC'S FIRST ERA, AND THE INFLUENCES WHICH WERE OPERATIVE IN VARIOUS LANDS DURING ITS CONTINUANCE