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melody of his own creation. The support of melody by melody (instead of by chords) constitutes counterpoint, and it is not too much to say that the earliest skilful music of this kind sprang directly from the folk-song.
The composers at this time (always excepting the Troubadours and Minnesingers) were almost all in the direct service of the church. In the wedding of melodies as above described (too often, at first, a "mesalliance") they sought to accentuate their skill by using sacred words only in the parts that they added as counter�point, preserving the original words in the folk-song that they had chosen to embellish. Thus it was not impossible to hear in the church service the tenor trolling out a love song while the other voices sang '' Kyrie Eleison'' or other sacred texts. In a little while certain songs became especial favorites for contrapuntal setting, and occasionally different composers would enter into direct competition by choosing the same melody as the core of their masses, each one trying to excel the other in the ingenuity of his added parts, or counterpoint.
There was one canto fermo, as the chief melody of counterpoint is called, that was an especial favorite with the great composers during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This was the old folk�song entitled " L Homme Anne." A host of composers, extending from the time of Dufay to the epoch of Carissimi, and including Palestrina, Des Pres (who wrote two masses on the theme), Busnois, Tinctor, and many others, composed masses of which the simple folk-song was the core. The original of the old "chanson" can not now be determined. Some imagine it to be an old Provencal folk�song, others believe that it was the original melody of the '' Song of Roland," quoted above.
Some two hundred masses are said to have been composed with this old folk-song for their central theme.
It must be remembered, however, that in this early musical epoch the melody was not of such supreme importance as at present, for it was given, not to the highest voice, then called discant, but to the tenor. We find an indication of this in the names given to the parts themselves. Bass (basis'), meant the fundamental part, the foundation; Alto (altisonus), the high-sounding part, for it was then sung by men, and was, of course, in the highest register; Discant (dis cantus), a part derived from the melody; Tenor (teneo), the part that held the melody.
In an old part-song book the present writer once found the following verses defining the duty of the voices in the contrapuntal
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