Rowbotham John. A History of Music. Volume 3

London: Trübner & co. 1887. — 648 p.The decline of paganism and the dark ages.
"Such was the state of Tragedy at the time of Sophocles ; and the chorus, and the acting, and the solo singing, and the flute-playing were all knit together into one beautiful whole, and each in turn grew naturally out of the action of the drama in the part that it came, and there was no visible effort in producing this symmetry, but it all had the ease of nature. And it was the power of Rhythm which effected this masterly union of the various parts, and kept them all together, that is, the Rhythm of Character, which is otherwise called Strength, and abides in eternal repose ; so that to us, at this distant time, the Tragedy and its makers seem like a gallery of gods, or like those marble figures, that are the other relics which have come down to us from that age of repose and beauty."
The Middle ages, the Arabians, and troubadours.
"But the i,oooth year came to an end, and brought no Judgment Day ; and the world, disabused of its terrors, began to laugh. The prophets and fanatics could scarce raise their head under the flood of ridicule and merriment that was heaped on them; even the religious orders did not escape their share of contempt, many of whom had lent themselves to the propagation of the opinion, which had turned out so silly a fear. A spirit of levity and almost of ribaldry seemed to infect all classes alike. And the Feast of Asses, the Pope of Fools, the Boy Bishop,
and other such travesties of the religious rites, are a witness to the feelings that animated all, down even to the clergy themselves. There was gaiety too and blitheness now, and men seemed to forget their troubles in the general feeling of relief that possessed the world. And the peasants might be seen dancing and singing in the fields, and the church itself became secularised, and its Kyvic Eleisons began to pass into Carols, and its Hymns and Sequences into Popular Tunes. And this is the way that the Kyrie Eleisons passed into Carols : the words of the petitions were first written in metre, as we have seen Notker write them, and at the end of each verse, "Kyrie Eleison" was sung, which at last seemed quite to lose its mournful
meaning, and passed into the burden of a song."