If now you will take the trouble to learn two long words, later in
your study of music they will be of use to you. The first is
Polyphonic; the other is Monophonic. Both, like many other words in
our language, are made up of two shorter words, and come from another
language--Greek. In both we have "phonic," evidently meaning the same
in each case, limited or modified by the preceding part--_poly_ and
_mono_. Phonic is the Anglicized Greek for _sound_. We use it in the
English word _telephonic_. Now if we define mono and poly we shall
understand these two long words.

Mono means one, poly means many. We say _mono_tone, meaning one tone;
also _poly_gon, meaning many sides.

In the musical reference monophonic music means music of one voice,
rather than of one tone, and polyphonic music is that _for many
voices_. Simple melodies with or without accompanying chords are
monophonic; many melodies woven together, as in the Bach piece which
we have looked over, are polyphonic.

In the history of music two men surpassed all others in what they
accomplished in counterpoint--that is, in polyphonic writing. The one
was Palestrina, an Italian; the other was Bach, a German. Palestrina
lived at a time when the music of the church was very poor, so poor,
indeed, that the clergy could no longer endure it. Palestrina,
however, devoted himself earnestly to composing music strictly adapted
to the church use. The parts were all melodic, and woven together with
such great skill that they yet remain masterpieces of contrapuntal
writing. Later Bach developed counterpoint very much more in the
modern way. He did with polyphony for the piano and organ much the