While the various discoveries and improvements in organs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were slowly progressing, almost the only vocal music the world knew were the Gregorian tones, or plain song of the Early Church. Harmony was entirely unknown, and indeed remained so for many a long year in anything like our modern significance. It is not my purpose here to enter into even a partial examination of the parallel progress of melody and harmony at this age of the world. You have already heard it treated by an abler pen than mine; nor does it properly belong to this department, except in so far as it becomes necessary to note any decided influence exerted by the one upon the other. This influence, as exerted by the organ upon Church music, did not begin as early as might be supposed. Rimbault, in his work on the "History of the Organ" (which I shall have occasion frequently to quote), states that "even in the thirteenth century, the priests of both the Greek and Roman Churches thought the use of organs in divine service scandalous and profane. They preferred rendering divine worship as simple as possible, in order to distinguish it from that of the Jews and Pagans. Even to this day the Greek Church does not tolerate the use of organs in their public services. Notwithstanding these opinions, the use of organs, and even other instruments, gradually became almost universal, not only in great churches, but in those of monasteries, convents, and small towns. The historians of this era celebrate several monks distinguished for the art of playing on the organ. For some time, however, organs were not used in the ordinary celebration of the offices, but only on great feasts and solemn occasions. These first monastic and conventual organs were very small, being only used to play the melody of the plain song in unison with the voices." In spite of the disrepute into which the whole monastic system fell, there is no question but that the monks and friars were the great conservators and preservers of all the fine arts, and even mechanics, during the troubled times of the Middle Ages. As the prejudice against the employment of instrumental music in the church services began to disappear, nothing was more natural than that the monks, having both the leisure and pecuniary means, and containing among their number the best educated men of the day, should turn their attention to organ-building, animated by the same spirit which led them to decorate and ornament their churches and monasteries. Thus we find that it is to them we owe the improvement of the hitherto clumsy key-board, extending its compass both upward and downward to the extent of some three octaves, and so reduced both fall and breadth of the keys that they could be pressed down by the fingers, instead of struck by the fist; certainly no small improvement. The first organ possessing keys to give the chromatic tones or semitones was built by a priest--Nicholas Faber by name--about 1360.