the ornamental department of music had to be achieved in the same fashion as that of all other features of the art; and there can be no doubt that the early stages of the invention of the rich and copious store of decorative material and of decorative principles, which are so characteristic of modern music, were achieved by the early composers for the lute. Even quite early in the sixteenth century, when the great choral style was by no means matured, lute music was already much cultivated; and though the forms of the movements, such as Ricercare, Passamessos, Preambules, and Pavanas, were at first crude and imperfect, and the ornaments childish and tame, yet such works and groups of movements formed the basis of a long and continuous improvement, ultimately finding highly artistic expression in the Ordres of Couperin and the Suites and Partitas of J. S. Bach.

The music for the harpsichord and its nearest relatives attained but slight independence in the days of the great choral composers. Arrangements were made of choral music, and imitations of the same were attempted; and a fair quantity of dance tunes similar to those written for the violins or viols was produced. Some lute music was adapted, and a certain number of independent fantasias and preludes were contrived; which were sometimes written in the choral style, and sometimes consisted of simple passages of runs and arpeggios. A certain amount of development of decorative material and of technique was achieved; but, on the whole, this branch of instrumental music was more backward than any other in those days.

On the other hand, organ music was relatively the most advanced, and the nearest to complete emancipation and independence. The requirements of ecclesiastical functions. must have made considerable demands on the powers of organists from comparatively early times; and though the backward state of the mechanism of the instrument prevented them from achieving much distinction by brilliant display, they had ample occasion for experimenting in solo music, and the results they attained to were as fruitful as they are instructive. As in other branches of instrumental music, they frequently imitated the contrapuntal methods of choral

music, and with more appropriate effect. But following the natural instincts of human kind, they endeavoured to adorn these movements with flourishes and turns and all the available resources of ornamental variation. They also developed a kind of performance which, without disrespect, may be compared to very bad and unintelligent modern extemporisation. The systematisation of chord progressions had yet to be achieved, and even the ablest composers were therefore, through lack of opportunity, in much the same position as any very inefficient modern organist is through lack of ability. They had little or no conception of genuine musical ideas of the kind which is adapted to instruments, and the need for purely ornamental performance was the more imperative. They therefore devised toccatas and fantasias, which consisted of strings of scale-passages, turns, and shakes, upon successions of chords which are for the most part completely incoherent. Few things could be more instructive, in respect of the fact that our modern music is purely the fruit of cumulative development of artistic devices, than the entire absence of idea, point, and coherence in these early works, which are often the productions of composers who were great musicians and masters of all the resources of refined choral effect. The movements were possibly effective in great churches, from the wild career of the scale-passages in treble, bass, or middle parts, which often rushed (no doubt in moderate tempo) from one end of the instrument to the other. Almost the only structural device which these early organists mastered was the effect of alternating passages of simple imitation, like those in choral music, as a contrast to the brilliant display of the scales. Further than this in point of design they could not go, except in so far as mere common-sense led them to regulate their passages so as to obtain different degrees of fulness in different parts of the movement, and to pile up the effects of brilliant display and gather them all into one sonorous roll of sound at the conclusion. Crude as these works are in design, they were a definite departure in the direction of independent instrumental music on a considerable scale, and were the direct prototypes of the magnificent organ

works of J. S. Bach. In fact, the branch of organ music has always continued to be more nearly allied to the great style of the choral epoch than any other instrumental form. / The first great representative organist, Frescobaldi, was born in the palmy days of choral music, and made his fame while it was still flourishing; and though the resources of harmonic music were a necessary adjunct to bring this branch to maturity in later days, their ultimate predominance did not obliterate the traces of the earlier polyphonic style so completely as was the case in violin and harpsichord music, nor did their concomitants entirely obscure the time-honoured dignity of the early contrapuntal traditions. In other branches of instrumental music harmonic conditions necessitated the development of an absolutely new style and new methods of art. In organ music the old methods and something of the ancient style were retained, and were only modified by the new conditions so far as was necessary to make the design of the movements systematic and intelligible in general and in detail.

It remains to consider shortly the essential artistic methods and principles of this great era of art. The prevailing influence which regulated all things in every department of art was fitness for choral performance. There was practically no solo singing, and, as has been pointed out above, the feeling of musicians for instrumental effect was extremely crude and undeveloped. Harmony was primarily the result of voices singing melodious parts simultaneously; and the highest skill was that which could weave good vocal parts so as to obtain beautiful and interesting successions of chords. In the conception then formed of good vocal parts only the simplest diatonic intervals were admissible, and only the very simplest chords. It was unnatural for voices to assume discordant relations with one another directly, so the only discords allowed were such as were purely transitory, or such as were obtained by the pretty device of holding one or more notes of a harmonious combination while others moved to positions in the scale which made the stationary ones discordant, till they again resolved themselves into the unity of the harmony. All such discords have a double function; they supply contrast,

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and make that departure from unity which serves as impulse. They impel the movement onward, because it is impossible to rest upon discord, and the mind is not satisfied till the source of disquiet is intelligibly merged in a more reposeful combina✓ tion. In a perfect work of musical art there is no absolute point of repose between the outset and the close. To make an entirely satisfying and complete close is to make what follows superfluous. The perfect management of such things, even in early stages of art, is much more subtle than it looks. really great master so adjusts the relative degrees of movement and repose that each step has its perfect relation to the context and to the whole. Every discord must have its resolution; but till the moment of complete repose which brings the work to conclusion, each resolution is only so far complete as to satisfy the mind partially. The problem is so complicated and delicate that it is quite beyond the powers of mere calculation ; and its difficulty-combined with hundreds of other artistic problems of similar delicacy-accounts for the great length of time that human instinct has taken to arrive at the status of modern music. The difficulty also accounts for the variety of standards which are presented at different periods in musical history which are more or less mature in their way. The great composers of choral music dealt in the very simplest and slenderest materials. They reduced the prominence of their points of repose to a minimum by using extremely few discords, even of the gentle kind above described; and they obtained variety by making use of the more delicate shades of difference in the actual qualities of various concords, whose resolutions were not so restricted; and they evaded the feeling of coming to an end in the wrong place, by keeping their voice parts constantly on the move, and by avoiding the formulas of their conventional cadences in those parts of the scale which suggested complete finality.

It was natural that the representatives of typically different races should adopt artistic methods which led to somewhat different results. The Netherlanders, who took the lead so prominently in the fifteenth century, always had a taste for ingenuities and for subtleties of artistic device. It was the

Netherland composers who carried the homogeneous form of the canon to such extremes of futile ingenuity; but it was also their great composers who achieved all the most arduous part of the early development of their craft, and handed it on to the Italians to complete. In the end the work of the Netherlanders is the most characteristic, but that of the Italians most delicately beautiful; while the English school, which followed both, is far more comprehensive in variety, definiteness, and character, though never attaining to the extraordinary finish and perfection which is met with in Palestrina's work at its best. In the greatest triumphs of Palestrina, Vittoria, and Marenzio, the smooth, easy, masterly flow of separate voice parts seems naturally to result in perfect combinations of sound; in Lasso's work it is easy to see the deliberate ingenuity which contrives some weird unexpected successions, and makes chords melt into one another. in ways which have a touch of magic in them; and Josquin and Hobrecht, notwithstanding the disadvantages of a less mature state of art, suggest the same attitude. With Byrd and Gibbons there is a touch of English hardness and boldness ; and in others of the same school, a bright and straightforward freshness which is peculiarly characteristic. The English school came to its best days so late as compared with foreign schools that it is no wonder that its works show many traits of a later order of musical art than do the purest Italian examples. But the same premonitions of a great change are also plentifully shown in the works of the adventurous composers of Venice, especially those of the great Giovanni Gabrieli; who, besides producing many superb examples of the true old choral style, endeavoured to introduce the element of direct expression both by harmony and figure, and tried effects of instrumental accompaniment which belong to a different order of art from that of the pure choral era, and made many experiments which were among the precursors of the great change which brought the period of pure choral music to an end.

In a general survey of the aspects of this important period of art, the condition of homogeneity and indefiniteness appears to be universal. This is especially the case in respect of the