ABSTRACT
The main characteristics of modern music as opposed to medieval are rhythm, harmony, and the key system. The evolution of our modern system of harmony from the weird "Organum" of Hucbald, and of our keys from the ecclesiastical modes, was so gradual that it is impossible to fix upon any date as the precise moment when one gave way definitely to the other. The idea of rhythm is, of course, as old as the human race itself. From the time of St Ambrose onward the river of music flowed in two channels, parallel but independent. The folk-songs of the Middle Ages, which happy accident has preserved to us, have all the freshness, melody, and rhythmic force that the Church music of the period is so conspicuously without. Nothing can express more vividly the narrow outlook upon life of the medieval Church than the fact that this rich store of music ready to every man's hand should have been allowed.
