CHAPTER II

THE POLYPHONIC PERIOD

The Gallo-Belgic School; the Netherlanders; the Mass and its liturgical significance; the use of secular subjects--Conditions that fostered continuity of development: the ‘Mass of Tournay’; Dufay and Okeghem; Hobrecht’s _Parce Domine_; Josquin des Prés’ masses and motets; his expressive style--The motet as an extra-liturgical form; its development; its later characteristic style; distinction between sacred and secular music--Orlandus Lassus: his ‘Penitential Psalms’; his tendency toward a simpler style; his _Gustate et Videte_ and other compositions--Palestrina’s reforms, methods, and style; his masses, _Papæ Marcelli_, _Brevis_, and _Assumpta est Maria_; his motets and other compositions: Vittoria and others--Madrigal writers of the sixteenth century: Festa, Arcadelt, Willaert, Byrd, Morley, etc.

I

Until about 1550 practically all art-music in western Europe was choral. Though the first important steps in the development of music were taken in Italy, devotion to the principles of unison Gregorian chant kept the polyphonic idea from gaining a foothold there until the fourteenth century. As we have seen, vocal counterpoint was the offspring of northern musicians, and under their care and guidance it developed into its most complex and perfected form. The first centre of

## activity was Paris, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. From

this point the art was gradually disseminated to the northward and its development was continued through the experimentation and theorizing of the musicians of northern France and Flanders (the Gallo-Belgic School, 1360-1460). After these zealous apprentices had made ready the crude tools of composition, there appeared real masters who strove earnestly to convert the elaborate technical forms and devices of vocal counterpoint into vehicles for the expression of musical feeling and religious devotion. These masters were the Netherlanders (from 1400 to 1550), whose mission it was to perfect the forms and material of musical composition, and, working from the standpoint of musical science, to compel these forms to serve the expressional purposes of the art. So well did they accomplish these two ends that for nearly two centuries all of western Europe gave musical allegiance to the Netherlanders and looked to them for teachers, composers, and choir leaders. During this period the Low Countries were the musical headquarters of Europe.

In the first period of polyphony the singers had followed the inspiration of the moment and certain general rules of intervallic movement in improvising their discant to the Gregorian chant. In the fourteenth century these unsystematic efforts gradually gave way to the definite writing of all the parts to be sung. In the fifteenth century the Netherlanders began systematically to develop and perfect the forms crudely outlined by their predecessors in the fields of both church and secular music. The forms of church choral music that held their chief attention were masses, motets, psalms, and hymns. Among the secular forms we find _chansons_ and madrigals. Of all these the mass, with its separate parts, was destined to become the form on which the composer expended his greatest care and skill and through which he sought to express his noblest thoughts. It was to the Netherland period and to the Roman Church composers thereafter what the sonata and the symphony were to the composers of the nineteenth century and the decades just preceding. In such reverence and respect was this form held that in the preface of a mass published in 1539 by Grapheus in Nuremberg it could be confidently asserted, ‘he who is not acquainted with the masses of the old masters is ignorant of true music.’ The great importance attached to the mass by composers was inevitable from its commanding position in the church service. At this point it may be opportune to discuss some of the essential features of the mass from the standpoint of the liturgy.

Among the several offices of the Roman Catholic Church the mass is the most fundamental and solemn--the chief doctrinal cornerstone on which is reared the whole superstructure of Catholic faith and worship. It was evolved from the dogma of the eucharist, to which was added at an early period the Jewish idea of sacrifice, which formed so vital a part of the old dispensation. Little by little it grew into the fair proportions of a great religious poem, magnificent in outline and texture, and breathing the religious ecstasies of the devout and holy teachers and leaders and saints of the church. Scriptural lessons, prayers, hymns, and responses are woven into the liturgic texture, all being brought into harmonious unity under the sway of the controlling idea of consecration and oblation. To the Roman Catholic the mass is ‘the permanent channel of grace ever kept open between God and his church.’ As often as the eucharistic elements of bread and wine are presented at the altar with certain prescribed prayers and formulas, the atoning sacrifice of Christ is repeated through the miracle of transubstantiation, ‘by which the bread and wine are transmuted into the very body and blood of Christ.’[14] The following sentences from Cardinal Gibbons’ ‘The Faith of Our Fathers’ make this central dogma of the Catholic faith still more clear: ‘The sacrifice of the mass is identical with that of the cross, both having the same victim and high priest--Jesus Christ. The only difference consists in the manner of the oblation. Christ was offered upon the cross in a bloody manner; in the mass he is offered up in an unbloody manner. On the cross he purchased our ransom, and in the eucharistic sacrifice the price of that ransom is applied to our souls.’

The mass is not the product of any one individual or council or hierarchical body, but, rather, is a gradual evolution,[15] a growth from the richest and holiest experiences of generations of pious and devout priests and monks, whose whole lives were dedicated to the service of the Most High and to the upbuilding of his visible kingdom on earth. Furthermore, in the mass the words of the liturgic text are not to be dissociated from the musical tones in which they are uttered by priest or choir. The spirit and meaning of the words so completely saturate the musical forms chosen for their expression that word and tone constitute an indissoluble artistic unit. And, while the aim of the church has always been to restrict the function of music in the service to a purely secondary place--to keep it in bondage to the ritual--the enormous value of music as an effective reinforcement of the poetic text was recognized from the very inception of liturgic forms.

In explaining the potent influence which the ceremonies and rites of the Roman Catholic Church have always exerted over the minds of men, whether believers in that faith or not, one must take into account the composite character of the appeal that is made. Exalted poetic text and alluring tone are by no means the only agencies employed. Through every avenue of approach and by means of a multitude of artistic agencies, the mind and heart of the worshipper are assailed with the one object in view to compel undivided attention to, and contemplation of, the supreme mysteries of religious faith which the Roman liturgy sets forth. The solemn magnificence of the ceremonial rites, with gorgeous vestments and dignified gesture and the grace of swinging censers, is enhanced by the grandeur of architectural proportions and decorations. Every resource of artistic genius that painter can throw upon glowing canvas or sculptor can chisel into marble forms is found on wall or niche or altar. Long before the Florentine reformers stumbled upon the principle of the union of all the arts in dramatic representation and centuries before Wagner gave such insistent reiteration to this principle, the Roman Church had given practical proof of the efficacy of the perfect union of all the arts as an aid in the expression of the religious idea. No one art existed for its own sake, nor did it measure its effectiveness by the merits and value of its own individual impressiveness; but each art borrowed something from its association with the other arts and with the time-honored forms and the hallowed memories which their universality and supposed divine nature always evoked. Thus, as has been frequently pointed out, there is much ecclesiastical art to which a largely fictitious value has been attached because of its sacred and revered association.

But whatever may be said about the intrinsic artistic ineffectiveness of much ecclesiastical plastic and pictorial art, no one can deny the inherent beauty, power, and appropriateness of the music to which the Roman Catholic liturgy is wedded. Of all the arts that were called into the service of the church, music was best suited by its very nature to respond to the new ideals of Christianity. The pictorial and plastic arts were used to appeal to eye and imagination as reinforcements to the inherent symbolism of ceremonial and ritual. But music, which has no recourse to symbols or imagery and which has in its vocabulary no suggestion of the material world outside of man, was far better equipped, even in the infancy of the art, to lay hold of the essential spirit of the liturgy and express it in terms that not only acted directly and powerfully on the hearts and minds of the worshippers, but threw a glamour and fascination over all its allied agencies of expression. The spiritual and emotional appeals of the sublime ideals of the Gospel struck a note in human consciousness which responded in an outburst of artistic rapture that was unknown to pre-Christian periods, and music, as the freest and least material of the arts, was the first to develop a form of expression that was a fitting embodiment of the indwelling religious motive and idea. So wonderfully did the ancient creators of the religious melodies known as plain-song do their work, and so perfectly did they blend word and tone in priestly chant or choral response, that these melodies have not only been held in reverence by the church ever since that far-off time, but they are now the only musical forms permitted for certain important portions of the liturgy.

Although the word ‘mass’[16] is, strictly speaking, applicable only to the eucharistic service in its entirety, it has been used from the early centuries of Roman Church history to designate certain portions of the liturgy to which unusually solemn and impressive music has been set. With the growth of counterpoint the opportunities for increasing the impressiveness and elaborateness of these settings were obviously multiplied. The parts of the service which were thus subject to special musical elaboration were the _Kyrie_, the _Gloria_, the _Credo_, the _Sanctus_, the _Benedictus_, and the _Agnus Dei_. These six movements together comprise what was known as the ‘mass,’ and they still constitute, with slight variations, the essential portions in all musical masses, whether written for church or concert performance. During the period under consideration it was an almost universal custom to have one subject (_cantus firmus_) do service for all the movements of a mass, which accordingly took its name from this subject. These subjects, particularly in the earlier periods of polyphonic music, were plain-song melodies, whence we have such names for masses as _Missa Iste confessor_, _Missa Tu es Petrus_, and _Missa Veni sponsa Christi_. But, as has already been mentioned, sacred melodies were not the only ones chosen. Composers frequently invaded the domain of popular song for subjects for their masses. Such ardent love-songs as _Adieu, mes amours_ (‘Farewell, my love’) and _Baisez-moi_ (‘Kiss me’) seem strangely out of place in such surroundings, but these and similar names appear in the titles of many a mass of this period. The most famous of all the popular songs thus used was the old French love-song, _L’homme armé_ (‘The Armed Man’), which nearly every Netherland master from Dufay[17] to Palestrina wove with infinite skill into the texture of at least one mass, Josquin des Prés, indeed, into two. If the composer wished to conceal the source of his subject, for the ecclesiastical authorities naturally frowned upon the practice of using secular melodies, or if he invented an original subject, as he occasionally ventured to do, he affixed the title _sine nomine_ to his mass. If it had some uniform peculiarity of construction it was called _Missa ad fugam_ or _Missa ad canones_. Sometimes it would take its name from the number of voices for which it was written, as _Missa quatuor vocum_, or from the mode in which it was composed, as _Missa secundi toni_, or _Missa octavi toni_. Occasionally the subject would be constructed upon the six tones of the hexachord and the work entitled _Missa ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la_; or upon some practice-phrase from the choir-room, as Josquin’s _Missa la, sol, fa, re, mi_.

[Illustration: Music score] _L’homme armé_

The Netherlanders have been severely reproached for their frequent use of non-ecclesiastical subjects for their church compositions, and at first thought such a practice would seem to be entirely indefensible and reprehensible. The censure was undoubtedly merited when the secular words accompanied the folk-melodies in their forced journeys into such sacred regions. It was equally merited in the early periods when the meagre art of the discanters possessed so few resources either to conceal the identity of the secular tune or to expunge its secularity by rhythmic alterations. The case was quite different, however, with the complicated polyphonic structures into which the later masters of the ‘new art’ (_ars nova_) injected the secular melodies. With the early discanters ‘the _tenor_ (the voice that carried the subject) formed the foundation of the arches, now it became one of the arches which, united in harmonious structure, formed the bridge.’[18] With the contrapuntists the subject itself became more plastic and submitted to whatever rhythmic changes were desirable in the working out of their contrapuntal purposes; each part became entirely independent in its melodic and rhythmic movement. In the complex interweavings of voice-parts the identity of the subject itself became practically lost. The ear could no longer identify it in performance as a complete melody, though the eye could recognize it on the printed page. In such a case the secularity of its origin became a largely negligible element, swallowed up by the purely ecclesiastical manner in which the subject was handled. In an era when it was not the custom for composers to invent their own subjects, this practice of using merely the melodies of secular songs for church compositions was no more censurable than the later employment of folk-songs as the basis of many of the splendid chorales of the German Protestant movement. Moreover, it must be borne in mind, in justice to the Netherlanders, that during this whole period there were no essential differences of style or treatment to distinguish secular from sacred compositions.

But it should be further noticed that in the relation of text to music there is revealed the most glaring weakness of the Netherlanders. Until the brilliant close of this period was nearly reached, the text was of quite secondary importance. Starting from a basis of theory and science, counterpoint, in all its evolutionary processes, became largely a matter of mathematical calculation in which the sound, not the word, governed. So deeply were composers absorbed in working out the problems of pure sound-combinations and so little importance did they attach to the text that they did not deem it necessary to write down more than the opening word of each movement of the mass, as _Sanctus_ or _Benedictus_, leaving it to the intelligence of the trained singers to fill in the remainder of the familiar texts as they saw fit. This laxness in respect to the text invited many abuses, such as the mixing of secular and sacred words, the interpolation of unauthorized words, the blending of texts from various parts of the liturgy, to the danger of errors in dogma, which eventually placed the whole structure of polyphonic music under the reproach of the church authorities.

II

Notwithstanding faults due to the immaturity of the art and a certain false perspective, the church composers of this period displayed, up to their light, a rare devotion to the one supreme purpose of enhancing the impressiveness of the religious rites and their liturgic significance, thus making possible a line of unbroken continuity in the development of the art of unaccompanied vocal polyphony, which was destined to become the peculiar glory of the Netherland era. Trained in cloisters and choirs, acknowledging the church as their only patron and master to whose service they dedicated all their powers, these men were far removed from worldly affairs and especially protected from the distracting and corrupting influences of the savage strife and turmoil of the times. Every important ecclesiastical establishment maintained its own staff of composers, for, until the founding of musical publishing houses soon after 1500 made the multiplication and circulation of musical scores easy, the labor and expense of copying the manuscripts prevented any extensive exchange of musical compositions among the thousands of ecclesiastical establishments that dotted western Europe and each establishment was compelled to depend largely on its own resources for its more elaborate ritual-music. For the most part the ecclesiastical musicians passed their lives in the absorbing routine of their official duties, close to the heart of their religion and living constantly in an atmosphere permeated with austere ecclesiastical traditions. Thus the best Catholic music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, unaffected by the external conditions and influences that brought weakness and decline to some of the other arts, preserved its serene course of development toward its culminating point in the sublime creations of Palestrina. But before this zenith of the second great period of musical art was reached, there were two centuries of artistic yearning and searching, a period that Parry calls ‘the youth of modern music--a period most pure, serene, and innocent--when mankind was yet too immature in things musical to express itself in terms of passion or of force, but used forms and moods of art which are like tranquil dreams and communings of man with his inner self, before the sterner experiences of life have quite awakened him to its multiform realities and vicissitudes.’[19]

The Netherland period was one of quite astonishing musical activity. The number of musicians actually engaged in the composition of ritual-music constitutes an imposing array (the names of nearly 400 are recorded) and their actual output both in bulk and quality measures not at all unworthily with that of the other arts of this period, the names of whose masterpieces are household words. That the equally great masterpieces of polyphonic vocal art are not familiar, indeed, are almost wholly unknown even to musicians, is inevitable from the very limitations imposed upon music by the matter of performance, and from the inavailability of this music outside its special home--the church. Its speech was always idiomatic, a kind of developed specialty, and, for about two centuries after its culminating point was reached, it became archaic even in the church from whose bosom it sprang, so that the avenues to a wide public acquaintance with its peculiar beauties were largely closed soon after its greatest masterpieces were written.

The masses and motets of the period reflect all the changing phases of the gradually advancing musical art. They express the deep and serious things of the art; the madrigals and _chansons_ are the emanations of the composers’ lighter moments of relaxation, incidental deviations from the main course of artistic endeavor, written mostly for the entertainment of noble and wealthy patrons. The oldest known mass is the celebrated ‘Mass of Tournay,’[20] which Coussemaker ascribes to the thirteenth century. It is written in three parts with the subject (_cantus_) in the middle; one of the added parts moves almost constantly in parallel fourths or fifths with either the subject or the third part, while this third part generally has a contrary movement to one of the other parts. Historically it forms an interesting transitional link between the primitive organum and the crude counterpoint of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

It is customary for musical historians to distinguish two Netherland schools. The first was occupied with pioneer work; its music was severe and unmelodious, simple and unpretentious when compared with that of the succeeding school, with only faint attempts to attain euphonic beauty; yet earnestness of purpose coupled with much contrapuntal science and ingenuity are everywhere in evidence. William Dufay (1400-1474) was the principal master of this school, although the mass _Ecce Ancilla_, by Antoine Busnois (1440-1492), is regarded by Naumann as ‘the most important musical historical monument up to the year 1475.’[21] In this period the several movements of the mass began to take on a certain definiteness and individuality of form corresponding to the natural subdivisions of the texts, making several movements within each movement. Likewise certain modes of treatment came to be associated with certain movements. Thus, in the _Agnus Dei_, which was divided into two parts, the composer was expected to employ the utmost resources of his contrapuntal skill; the second part was usually written in canon or in intricate fugue and frequently with a larger number of voices than in the other movements of the mass. The _Benedictus_ came to be regarded as a composition for two, three, or four solo voices, usually followed by a choral _Osanna_. And so the various movements gradually assumed quite definite outlines as to form and character, which remained in force for a century and a half.

With Joannes Okeghem (about 1430-1495 or 6) the second Netherland school was ushered in. This master, to whom the laudatory title of ‘Prince of Music’ was given, appears to have carried the possibilities of contrapuntal ingenuity and contrivance to extremest limits. Comparatively few of his works are extant, and most of these display wonderful technical skill in handling musical problems rather than attempts at expression. Among those preserved is the famous _Missa cujusvis toni_ (mass in any tone or mode), which seems to have been composed as an intellectual exercise for the highly trained choristers of his time, demanding in its rendition perfect mastery of all the church modes and ability to transpose from one mode to another. He was rather a great teacher and theorist than a great church composer. His pupils carried the art of polyphony into all countries and Kiesewetter maintains that through these students he became ‘the founder of all schools from his own to the present age.’[22] One of the most prominent of Okeghem’s contemporaries was Jacob Hobrecht or Obrecht (1430-1505 or 6), who was a most devoted disciple and admirer, though not a pupil, of the learned master. He left many masses, motets, and _chansons_, in some of which, notably in the motet _Parce Domine_ for three voices, he attains a high degree of real expressive power. This fine work exerted a powerful influence on Josquin des Prés and reveals its creator as possibly the first composer to make polyphony bend to the necessity of musical expression as we understand it.

Okeghem’s most celebrated pupil was Josquin des Prés (about 1450-1521), who eclipsed his master’s fame in musical learning and wealth of ingenuity and became the most brilliant exponent of the musical art of the Netherlanders. He was the most popular composer and celebrated musician of his time, the spread of his music as well as his fame being greatly aided, no doubt, by the newly-invented process of printing music from movable type, which appeared at the very moment when he was at the height of his power. In his best works (he was a most prolific writer) we can detect a more flowing and emotional style and catch glimpses of a quality of sublime seriousness joined with fervid beauty that still makes a strong appeal to modern taste. Ambros well characterizes him as ‘the first musician who impresses us as having genius.’ His printed works consist of 19 masses (32 are extant), more than 150 motets, and about 50 secular works. Of his masses the most beautiful and the most advanced in style are the _Ad fugam_, the _De Beata Virgine_, the _Da pacem_, and the _La, sol, fa, re, mi_. In Naumann’s judgment, no master of modern times has surpassed the grandeur of the _Incarnatus_ from the _Missa Da pacem_. When not in a trifling or humorous mood, he rises above form and technique into the realm of expression where, among vocal contrapuntists, he is excelled only by Lassus and Palestrina. The music of Dufay and his contemporaries was frequently beautiful, but it was helpless to reflect the character of the words. Whether the words were gay or mournful, the music conveyed the same impression to the listener. But Josquin knew how to unlock the expressive power of music and henceforward music more and more assumed the function of definite delineation of mood and word.

But Josquin evidently possessed a light-heartedness and vivacity that would not always brook restraint and that led him to introduce bits of quaint humor into his church music that, to say the least, displayed a lack of reverence and marred an otherwise admirable style. It is related that he much desired to receive a church benefice from Louis XII of France, at whose court he held an appointment, but as often as he applied to the proper official he received only the answer, _Lascia fare mi_. At length Josquin wearied of the delay and, seizing upon the musical sound of the courtier’s words, composed a mass on the subject _La, sol, fa, re, mi_, which appeared again and again, mimicking the official’s curt and oft-repeated answer. The musician’s wit pleased the king and won his promise of a benefice, which promise, however, was straightway forgotten. But the composer was in nowise discouraged. He dedicated to the king a motet for which he took the text from the 119th Psalm (118th in the Vulgate), _Memor esto verbi tui servo tuo, in quo mihi spem dedisti_ (‘Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope’), thinking thereby to quicken the memory of his royal master. Louis was evidently dull of understanding, for yet a second time the musical joker dedicated to him a motet, _Portio mea non est in terra viventium_ (‘My portion is not in the land of the living’), which evidently won the object of his desire, for still another motet, _Bonitatem fecisti cum servo tuo_, is generally regarded as a polite thank-offering for the appointment. It is further related that the king, who was wholly unmusical and who possessed a very feeble voice, requested the great musician to compose a piece in which his Majesty could join. The sagacious Josquin forthwith wrote a canon for two boys’ voices, supplemented by a part for the king consisting of one note sustained throughout.[23] In his celebrated _Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae_, a quaint conceit prompted him to build his subject, _Re ut re ut re fa mi re_, on the succession of syllables whose vowels correspond to the vowels in the words _Hercules Dux Ferrariae_. These were innocent pranks, but he carried his musical trifling to unpardonable extremes in his _Missa didadi_ (‘Dice’ Mass), in which he set himself the profane task of solving a dice-problem in terms of musical technique. But the faults of Josquin were in large measure the faults of his period. In common with Okeghem and others, he was exceedingly fond of inventing riddle-canons and other musical puzzles. So much did this practice, especially in connection with ecclesiastical music, arouse the indignation of Martin Agricola that this worthy scholar even threatened the composers with the terrors of the last day ‘when all will certainly not go well with the outrageous riddle-makers.’

The modernity of Josquin’s art, his ability to interest us by intensity of expression in depicting the meaning of the words, is finely illustrated in his two motets _Planxit autem David_ and _Absolon fili mi_. In the latter especially he attains an expression of pathos, an effect of extreme sadness, which at times becomes poignant. In the closing measures there occurs a remarkably daring use of the augmented fifth, a dissonance whose introduction is ‘terribly effective.’ His psalm _Laudate pueri_, in contrasting mood, is pervaded by a persistent feeling of joy. The music, which moves happily along through a chain of pure concords without a disturbing dissonance, exhibits tranquillity and joyful confidence throughout.

By a strange perversion the mass, although the most solemn and sacred portion of the Roman service, was treated by church composers in their musical settings of it up to the middle of the sixteenth century as the proper parade-ground for all conceivable forms of musical riddles and extravagances that would display their technical learning and ingenuity. But these aberrations are found much less frequently in the motets and madrigals. Here the composer was governed by no such fancied necessity; he felt a much greater sense of freedom to follow musical impulses. Hence these forms were the first to profit from the remarkable awakening of the musical understanding that took place at the close of the fifteenth century and to be enriched with the accompanying first flashes of the dawning sense of harmonic propriety and characterization.

III

The motet[24] occupies a place in ecclesiastical music next in importance to the mass. It has always been extra-liturgical; the words, though not prescribed, are generally selected from the Bible (the Psalms, antiphons, etc.) or the office-books. In the Roman Church service it is intended to be sung at high mass, usually after or in place of the plain-song offertorium for the day to fill out the time while the priest is preparing the oblations and presenting them at the altar. The great antiquity of the motet is attested by the fact that Franco of Cologne in his epochal work on Measured Music gives it place in one of the three classes[25] of choral compositions in use in his time. The characteristic features of the early motet were separate texts for each voice and a subject (_tenor_) made up of some short phrase or group of motives repeated several or many times, according to the length of the composition.

These phrases were borrowed from either plain-song or secular melodies. Like the mass, the early motet was not an original composition, but the combination of existing chants or secular songs. Frequently it was frankly secular; more frequently all the texts were sacred, but sometimes, as in the mass, secular texts and melodies were mingled with the sacred. When the texts in the motet were various, they always bore some kind of mental relation to each other,[26] a condition which was by no means always present in the mass when different texts were used. The practice of providing each voice-part with a separate text, while it tended to confuse the listener, served, on the other hand, to emphasize the musical independence of the parts and so threw stress on a quality of utmost benefit to the advancement of contrapuntal methods.

A few motets by Philip of Vitry,[27] written about 1300, are the most ancient purely church motets of which we have authentic record. We are informed by Morley that this composer’s motets ‘were for some time of all others best esteemed and most used in the church.’ Beginning probably in France and cultivated with marked success by the great Netherlanders, the motet reached its highest point of perfection under Palestrina in Rome. It was adopted, with important modifications, into the services of the two great branches of the Protestant Church from their very beginning. In England, until the ‘full’ anthem finally superseded it, and in Germany from Luther until after Bach’s time, it held a high place in ecclesiastical music, but the words were almost invariably in the vernacular, while in the Roman service they were always in Latin.

In the period represented by Okeghem there may be noticed the beginning of a distinctive style for motet-music differing quite materially from that of the mass. It has been already stated that the disfiguring extravagances and learned complexities which composers felt in duty bound to lavish on the music of the mass, were more and more avoided in the motet. A solemnity, dignity, and breadth of style, of which one finds but few examples in the masses of the period, were encouraged in the motet. This different viewpoint led composers to focus their interest and attention on the portrayal of the meaning of the words rather than on the working of contrapuntal miracles and the church composers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries left a rich legacy of compositions in this form appropriate to their appointed use and permeated with the spirit of devotion and reverence. After the compelling genius of Des Prés had once revealed the expressive capabilities of music, this new power was evoked with so much enthusiasm by all his great contemporaries and successors among the Netherlanders that the richest period of motet writing is to be found between the years 1500 and 1600.

As soon as the text became a matter of solicitous care on the part of composers, there can be discovered a number of distinct groups of motets, distinguished from each other by the character of the texts employed, each group possessing certain individual peculiarities. There was a numerous class based on selections from the Gospels dealing with the various parables, as the Pharisee and Publican. The Passion of our Lord as given in the different Gospels formed the basis of another large group. One of the earliest of these Passion motets is Hobrecht’s, a work filled with deep pathos and tender sadness. The Passion motets of Loyset Compère (about 1450-1518) are spoken of as possessing extraordinary beauty. The Magnificat was frequently treated in motet form, the oldest known example of which is Dufay’s. A vast number of texts were drawn from the Book of Canticles, while the Lamentations of Jeremiah inspired the writing of numberless compositions in motet style. Carpentrasso’s Lamentations were sung in the Sistine Chapel once each year until 1587, when they were superseded by Palestrina’s superb compositions. Several of the sequences were also set as motets, among which must be especially noted two by Josquin des Prés--a _Victimæ Paschali_, in which he used parts of the old plain-song melody intermingled with two popular airs, and a _Stabat Mater_, the subject for which he borrowed from a secular air of the time, _Comme femme_. Less interesting were the laudatory motets inscribed to princes and nobles by the composers attached to their individual courts, and the countless motets written for the greater festivals and special occasions in the church calendar.

Reverence for the Virgin-mother inspired some of the most beautiful of all motets and a multitude of these fine compositions, delicate in texture and of impressive beauty, might be cited; such are Dufay’s _Ave Regina, Salve Virgo_, and _Flos florum, fons amorum_; Brassart’s _Ave Maria_; Bianchoys’ _Beata Dei genetrix_; Arcadelt’s _Ave Maria_, which is now probably one of the best known of sixteenth-century motets and which sounds wonderfully modern with its compact chords, sweet tunefulness, and simple pathos; Gombert’s _Vita dulcedo_; Josquin’s _Ave vera virginitas_. There remains to be mentioned the large group of funeral motets or _Næniæ_, comprising some of the finest examples of the pure motet style. One of the most celebrated of these is the dirge written by Josquin in memory of his friend and teacher Okeghem, which is scarcely exceeded in beauty by anything which this master has produced.

About 1500 the triad was recognized as a musical factor of importance and close upon this recognition came the discovery of modal harmony. Chord progressions, groups of closely-knit harmonies, appropriate to the church mode employed, now became common and in the relation of this new factor to musical expression is to be found the basis of distinction between secular and sacred music, a distinction which rapidly grew more marked as the harmonic sense unfolded and developed. From Josquin’s time secular music strove after the representation of specific moods of feeling suggested by the words, in which representation the new element of harmony was summoned to give warmth and color and dramatic significance, while sacred music sought to express only the general mood of the text, representing an unvariable and fixed aspiration, with little or no attempt at detailed delineation.

IV

The last great Netherlander, and indeed the greatest of them all, was Orlandus Lassus or Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594), who spent nearly the whole of the best creative period of his life outside the boundaries of his native land in Munich in the service of the art-loving Duke Albert V and his son Duke William of Bavaria. Next to Palestrina the greatest genius of the sixteenth century, he left a deep impress on the development of Germanic art. Though not so ideal in purely ritual-music as his great contemporary, he displayed a greater fertility, a wider sympathy, and a warmer human feeling. Proske’s estimate of him is noteworthy: ‘Lassus is a universal genius.... No one resembles so closely the great Handel, and, as in the latter, the German, Italian, and English genius of the eighteenth century were found blended, so in Lassus the entire glory of contemporary Germanic and Latin art was commingled in a single mighty personality.’ (_Musica Divina_, Vol. I, p. 52.)

Lassus was probably the most prolific composer of all time, having left the enormous number of nearly 2,500 separate compositions. As his master, Duke Albert, was a staunch and devout Catholic, by far the larger part of his creative energy was expended in the field of pure church-music, of which he wrote no less than 1,200 motets and _sacræ cantiones_, 51 masses, about 180 Magnificats, and over 150 lamentations, psalms, hymns, Requiems, Ave Marias, antiphons, etc. The most celebrated of his works and, according to Ambros,[28] the only other work of the sixteenth century worthy to stand beside Palestrina’s _Missa Papæ Marcelli_, are the ‘Penitential Psalms,’ which were composed at the duke’s suggestion prior to 1565, though not published until 1584. The establishment of the date of their composition definitely upsets the familiar legend that they were written for Charles IX of France to solace his troubled conscience after the horrors of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. It may well be, however, that they were sung before this unhappy monarch, for Lassus spent some time at the court of France at Charles’ invitation. Lassus’ masterpiece, though written comparatively early in his career, possesses in a marked degree all the qualities of strength, grandeur, dignity, repose, and especially impersonality and absence of what would now be called dramatic effects, that are the distinguishing characteristics of the maturest period of ritual-music of the great Netherlander and his Italian compeer, Palestrina. The ‘Penitential Psalms’ (the 6th, 32d, 38th, 51st, 102d, 130th, and 143d) were set for from two to six voices, according to the suggestion of the text, and the style of expression varies from the extreme simplicity of the opening chords to the massive and intricate tone-structures by means of which he depicts the remorse and fear of the penitent sinner. But, while a note of sorrow and wailing runs throughout, the master has with equal genius portrayed the strong consolation of sincere repentance and the sure hope of pardon from a loving God.

In all of Lassus’ works there is a noticeable breaking away from the intricacies and complicated forms of Josquin and the older Netherlanders in favor of a more direct and simple style. Secular music may well have exerted an indirect influence to produce such a result, but a more direct cause must be sought in the religious movements of his period. Lassus, like Palestrina, was a man of strong and sincere religious convictions. Zealous Catholics in Rome were seeking to reform the abuses in ecclesiastical government and procedure that had started the Reformation and given such astonishing strength to its progress. The court at Munich, in which Lassus was such a prominent figure, was the first in Europe to espouse the cause of this counter-reformation. Simplicity of style and directness of expression were the natural and logical consequences of the earnestness of purpose and religious conviction that breathes in the music of both Lassus and Palestrina and that sought to grasp the essential spirit of the Roman liturgy and body it forth in vitalizing tones. Indeed, the tendency toward a simpler and less ornate style was well under way before the Council of Trent undertook to discuss the defects in the prevalent church style.

Of Lassus’ 1,200 compositions of the motet type 429 were called _sacræ cantiones_, a term that is rather vague as to its inclusion and exact application. The most famous of the motets is the masterly _Gustate et Videte_, to which additional interest is attached from a pretty story related by Heinrich Delmotte, one of the most reliable of Lassus’ biographers, to the effect that, during the festival of Corpus Christi in 1584, the singing of this motet, as the solemn procession headed by the choir emerged from the church, caused the sun to shine forth brightly in the midst of a terrific thunder-storm, permitting the procession to traverse its accustomed course through the city. But when the procession returned to the church and the singing ceased, the storm burst forth again in all its fury. The multitude cried ‘A miracle,’ and for many years thereafter the singing of this motet always accompanied the offering up of prayers for fine weather. Though one might select a score of his fine motets for special mention, three may be spoken of here in addition to the _Gustate_, namely, _Dixit autem Maria_, _Improperium expectabit cor meum_, and _Timor et Tremor_ in six parts, replete with wonderful vocal effects. His simple, direct, and earnest style is well set forth in the _Adoramus te Christe_, a short chorale for four male voices, utterly devoid of contrapuntal artifice, yet breathing a spirit of humble adoration that maintains throughout an atmosphere of solemn tenderness. His motets were written for from two to twelve voices and the masses for four and five voices.

But Lassus had an open heart also for secular inspiration. The genius that could thrill us with the solemnity and pathos of religious aspirations and sentiments was also moved to expression by the pleasantries of human experience; no other composer of his century was so prolific in humorous works. One is a setting of the Psalm _Super flumina Babylonis_, in which the separate letters and syllables are sung in the fashion of a spelling-lesson, ‘S-U--Su--P-E-R--per--Super,’ evidently parodying the ridiculous handling of words by the older masters. It takes two movements of this comic procedure to get through the first verse. In some of his German songs his humor rises to the height of hilarious joy, though most of them are the expression of a simple naïveté. In one of his Italian villanellas he makes a German infantry captain sing a grotesque serenade to his lady-love. But he was especially famous for his drinking songs, one of the most celebrated of which was a setting of Walter Mapes’ convivial song _Si bene perpendi, causæ sunt quinque bibendi_, to which Dean Aldrich has given the following well-known translation:

‘If all be true that I do think, There are five reasons we should drink: Good wine, a friend, or being dry, Or lest you should be by and by, Or any other reason why.’

The remainder of his secular compositions comprise 233 madrigals, 34 Latin songs,[29] 370 French songs, and 59 canzonets, which formidable list reveals him as a lyric writer of great versatility. Notwithstanding his great fame during his lifetime and the succeeding generation, the last half of the seventeenth century witnessed a great decline in his popularity and his music fell into almost complete oblivion, from which it has been happily rescued by the recent revival of interest in the old masters and especially by the publication by Breitkopf & Haertel of a complete edition of his works which will comprise about sixty volumes.

V

We are now face to face with one of the greatest geniuses of all time, Palestrina,[30] or to give his real name, Giovanni Pierluigi (1526-1594). Into his hands it was given not only to restore to Italy, for a time at least, its leadership in the domain of musical art, but also to carry to completion the magnificent structure of polyphonic ecclesiastical music founded and fashioned into stately proportions by the Netherlanders, and to utter the final words in the art of unaccompanied vocal counterpoint. Thus the cycle of development in Roman ritual-music was consummated on the very spot where just ten centuries before it had found its first definite formulation under the guiding hand of Gregory the Great and in perfect consonance with the spirit and best traditions of the great liturgy around which Christian worship had centred through all the intervening centuries, until Luther’s momentous break with Rome had caused a deflection in the current of religious thought. He summed up all the best qualities in the art of his predecessors. He added nothing new to its technique, but, child as he was of the land whose peculiar gift is melody, he crowned this art with a radiant richness of melodious charm and graceful movement which none of his masters could achieve. Palestrina’s peculiar greatness seems to lie in the supreme fact that, through a perfect sympathy with and understanding of the mysteries of the Roman system of worship and through an unequalled mastery of the Netherlanders’ art of contrapuntal expression, he was able to restore music to its proper relation to the service as established by the Early Church, a relation that had been lost by the incongruous and disturbing intricacies of the musical forms which by their very elaborateness had so overlaid the text as to render it unintelligible and thus obliterate the religious significance of the words and warp the whole function of music in the larger organism of the mass. This reform was brought about by a return to the simpler methods of the ancient church. While the musical world around him was teeming with signs of the new spirit of impending change and progress, his genius, the richest of them all, was satisfied to dwell within the sanctuary of tradition. While all his contemporaries were facing forward, filled with the rapture of discovery and innovation, ‘the Palestrina style belonged rather to the mediæval world, with its emphasis upon monastic reveries and contemplation.’[31] What has been termed ‘the Palestrina style’ had existed before his time in isolated church compositions, but, since his whole life was dedicated with singular fidelity and purity of purpose to the development of an exalted and chaste style that would perfectly reflect the inner spirit of the church ceremonies, his name has become attached to a type which is peculiarly his. Its external characteristics are the repudiation of mere intellectual cleverness, the avoidance of secularity either in form or in spirit, and the employment of an unaffected, indescribable simplicity of expression as the best means of preserving the liturgic significance of the text and enforcing the impressiveness of the music on the worshipper’s mind. For its greatest effect this music must be heard in the particular religious environment for which it was created. ‘No sensuous melodies, no dissonant, tension-creating harmonies, no abrupt rhythms distract the thoughts and excite the sensibilities. Chains of consonant chords growing out of the combination of smoothly-flowing, closely-interwoven parts, the contours of which are all but lost in the maze of tones, lull the mind into that state of submission to indefinite impressions which makes it susceptible to the mystic influence of the ceremonial and turns it away from worldly things.’[32]

In analyzing music of this type it will be found that each voice-part is equal in independence and importance with every other voice-part; that the voices enter, intertwine, and drop out with absolute freedom of movement; that one key is maintained throughout the whole composition, with no modulations in the modern sense; that the beginnings and endings of the melodic phrases usually occur at different points in different voices, producing a constant shifting in the rhythmical flux that baffles aural analysis and creates a feeling of vagueness and indefiniteness of design. The changes in dynamics or in speed are never startling or abrupt, but are accomplished through almost imperceptible gradations. Furthermore, certain values entered into the construction of these wonderfully plastic creations that were almost wholly dependent upon a perfect understanding of purely vocal effects. ‘The distribution of the components of a chord in order to produce the greatest sonority; the alternation of the lower voices with the higher; the elimination of voices as a section approached its close, until the harmony was reduced at the last syllable to two higher voices in _pianissimo_, as though the strain were vanishing into the upper air; the resolution of tangled polyphony into a sunburst of open golden chords; the subtle intrusion of veiled dissonances into the fluent gleaming concord; the skillful blending of the vocal registers for the production of exquisite contrasts of light and shade--these and many other devices were employed for the attainment of delicate and lustrous sound tints, with results to which modern chorus writing affords no parallel.’[33]

It is quite characteristic of the inherent and unostentatious greatness of Palestrina that the _Missa Papæ Marcelli_, the singing of which before the Commission of Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel on the nineteenth of June, 1565, caused this mass to be chosen as a model in style and in structure of what all future music of the Roman liturgy should be, was written several years before that event as an ordinary item of routine loyalty in the service of the church which he so devoutly loved.[34] It did not come into being, as has been persistently proclaimed by legend and history,[35] at the request of the Commission nor as a specific answer to the warning of the Council of Trent that all figured or polyphonic music would be excluded from the Roman service because of the current abuses. The name by which this famous mass has been known was not given to it until 1567. The Pope to whom it was dedicated, Marcellus II, had died in 1555, ten years before fame and immortality had been accorded to this composition by the award of the Cardinal Commission, but, though he had reigned only twenty-three days, Palestrina did not forget his earnest efforts in behalf of church-music while he was a Cardinal. This mass stands by universal consent as an unrivalled monument to the piety, depth of feeling, and intensity of expression, as well as the technical skill, of its creator. All technical contrivances, the devices of fugue and canon, are in complete subjection to the demands of expression, and the listener is never for a moment conscious of the consummate art with which the parts are fashioned. Its subjects are all original and all are of great simplicity, but treated with infinite variety. It is written for six voices--soprano, alto, two tenors of equal compass, and two equal basses--which are so grouped as constantly to suggest the effects of antiphonal choirs. Though an atmosphere of solemnity pervades the whole, each movement has individual characterization. Baini, Palestrina’s biographer, calls the Kyrie devout, the Gloria animated, the Credo majestic, the Sanctus angelic, and the Agnus Dei prayerful.

Palestrina wrote in all ninety-three masses for four, five, six, and eight voices, many of them of surpassing beauty, but only a comparatively few are sung outside the Sistine Chapel. The six-part _Assumpta est Maria_, composed in 1585 for the Papal Choir, is accounted by many critics to be even more beautiful than the celebrated _Missa Papæ Marcelli_. It possesses all the fine qualities of the latter and is certainly its equal. The _Missa Brevis_[36] was composed upon subjects taken from the plain-song melody _Audi filia_, upon which Goudimel had written a fine mass of earlier date. The mass _L’homme armé_ is one of the very few of his church compositions into which he introduced secular melodies. It is quite possible that he took this means of demonstrating that he could excel the Netherlanders on their own ground, for it is apparently conceived throughout in the Netherland style and is tremendously difficult and elaborate.

Among the most superb of his church compositions must be named the motets, of which 179 for from four to twelve voices appear in the complete critical edition published by Breitkopf & Haertel in 33 volumes. Some of these are as unapproachable in their beauty as are the masses which gave Palestrina his title of _Musicæ Princeps_. Among the finest may be mentioned _Peccantem me quotidie_, filled with an indescribable sweetness and tenderness of feeling, and _Super flumina Babylonis_, written soon after the death of his wife Lucrezia, in which can be detected the expression of the pathetic grief of ‘the heart-broken composer mourning by the banks of the Tiber’ for his lost wife. His other church compositions include 45 Hymns for the whole year, 68 Offertories, and a large number of Lamentations, Magnificats, Vesper-psalms, and Litanies. His setting of the _Stabat Mater_, for which Dr. Burney had a boundless admiration, is one of the most effective in existence and one of his most celebrated works. The fine _Improperia_, which are still among the greatest treasures of the Papal Choir, probably reflect the experiences of his inner life during the anxious period following his dismissal from the Papal Choir by Paul IV in 1555, when physical and mental ills attacked the over-sensitive master.

The second half of the sixteenth century has been aptly called ‘The Golden Age of Ecclesiastical Music.’ Further progress was impossible along the line of vocal counterpoint brought to such astounding perfection by Palestrina, yet the Palestrina style found zealous imitators for a half-century at least after the passing of the great Roman master. But the spirit of the Renaissance, now rampant in every field of human thought, refused to be held in check by church doors, and the glories of the ‘Golden Age,’ the products of an art rejoicing in the full maturity of its power, were almost immediately followed by a period of decadence, in which secular sentimentality was mingled in strange fellowship with what remained of the majestic devotional style of the old masters. The triumphant progress of secular music, instrumental as well as operatic, soon broke down the opposition of the ecclesiastical purists, and after Allegri the Palestrina style practically disappeared. Gregorio Allegri (about 1580-1652) is remembered now almost wholly by his celebrated _Miserere_ for nine voices in two choirs, which is considered to be one of the finest compositions ever conceived for the Roman service. Until recently at least, it has been sung annually during Holy Week at the Sistine Chapel, where it was prized as so rare a treasure that to copy it was punishable with excommunication.[37] Up to the year 1770 only three copies are known to have been legally made. In that year, it will be recalled, the fourteen-year-old Mozart wrote it down with marvellous accuracy from the memory of a single performance. Much of the ineffable sadness of this piece, which, as it is performed in the Sistine Chapel, has always aroused the unbounded enthusiasm of musicians, is said to be due to certain traditional embellishments or florid passages which were introduced in the form of elaborate four-part cadenzas to take the place of the simple endings of some of the verses. Mendelssohn, in a letter to Zelter during his Italian journey in 1831, described in great detail the music of these beautiful _abbellimenti_. Of one of these he says: ‘It is often repeated, and makes so deep an impression that when it begins an evident excitement pervades all present.... The soprano intones the high C in a pure, soft voice, allowing it to vibrate for a time, and slowly gliding down, while the alto holds its C steadily, so that at first I was under the delusion that the high C was still held by the soprano. The skill, too, with which the harmony is gradually developed is truly marvellous.’

It must not be supposed that Palestrina was the only great church composer of his period. There were others during his lifetime and immediately following, whose genius would have been proclaimed of the first magnitude had it not been for the greater effulgence of Palestrina’s. Giovanni Maria Nanino (about 1545-1607) ranks as second only to Palestrina among the Italian church composers, as witness his motet for six voices, _Hodie nobis cœlorum rex_, annually sung in the Sistine Chapel on Christmas morning; his mass, _Vestiva i colli_, for five voices; and particularly his Lamentations set in simple melodious style for four male voices. His brother, Giovanni Bernardino Nanino (about 1560-about 1618), wrote a remarkable _Salve Regina_ for twelve voices in which the new spirit of striving for unusual effects is noticeable. Viadana (about 1564-1645) introduced into church music the _concerti ecclesiastici_, which were a kind of monodic chant or song for from one to four voices with organ accompaniment indicated by a _basso continuo_, or figured bass. Most of his church music, however, was written in the old contrapuntal style. Following the trend of the times, Francesco Soriano or Suriano (1549-about 1621) permitted the dramatic style of the monodists to enter very perceptibly into his ‘Passions for Holy Week,’ probably his best work. Among the greatest of Palestrina’s contemporaries was Tomasso da Vittoria (about 1540-about 1613), sometimes called ‘the Spanish Palestrina.’ His greatest masterpiece is the elaborate six-part Requiem Mass, composed for the obsequies of the Empress Maria, widow of Maximilian II. Next to Palestrina’s Mass for the Dead, this is the most important and profoundly moving among the many settings of this office as pure ritual-music. Its subjects are all taken from plain-song melodies, yet it has an astonishingly modern quality, due to Vittoria’s employment of powerful, sonorous chords and especially to a warmer and more direct and personal mode of expressing his religious emotions than composers of the polyphonic school were wont to assume. Palestrina’s religious music is the music of a soul of immaculate purity, as though, to use Ambros’ figure, his strains were messengers from a higher world; Vittoria’s music was the responsive utterance of a saintly soul on earth, struggling amid poignantly human emotions for a heavenly estate. Among his other works, the _Improperia_ gained great renown for their purity of church style and warmth and tenderness of expression.

Before leaving the field of church music of this period, something must be said of the worthy rival to the Roman school that had sprung up and flourished mightily in Venice. Here in the midst of the prosperity, luxury, and splendor of this cultured ‘Queen of the Seas’ was a group of earnest musicians who did not fear to loosen the bands of tradition or to accept new ideals and venture on untrodden paths that led in new directions; so that the products of the Venetian school, rather than the Roman, formed the natural bridge between the mediæval and modern conceptions of religious music. The masters of Venetian music, Willaert and the two Gabrielis, seemed to borrow for their music something of the brilliant coloring of the Venetian painters. Luxuriant harmonies, massive and bold chord-effects, the employment of numerous chromatic tones which assisted powerfully in changing the old modal system into the modern key system, a desire for greater sonority and contrast in color and expression--all these qualities, with their emphasis upon individual characterization, opposed themselves strikingly to the calmness, the delicacy, and the impersonality of the Palestrina style. All the great Venetian masters occupied the post of chapel-master at St. Mark’s, then one of the most important musical appointments in Europe. The use of several choirs, which was introduced by Adrian Willaert (about 1480-1562) and became a characteristic feature of Venetian church music, owed its origin to the architectural structure of this church, which contains two opposing choir lofts, each with its own organ. Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli added a third choir and with this elaborate mechanism produced unprecedented choral effects by ingenious groupings of voices, heard now as separate choirs, now in answering alternation, now as selected voices from each choir, and now in magnificent masses of tone. A twelve-part psalm, _Deus misereatur nostri_, written by G. Gabrieli (1557-1612) for three choirs--one consisting of deep voices, one of higher, and the third of the usual four parts--is one of the most imposing examples of this type of grandiose many-choired music. He is one of the few church composers who have left no masses. His most famous work, two volumes of _Sacræ Symphoniæ_, consisted of motets for from six to sixteen voices, to which he added free accompaniments written for various combinations of orchestral instruments with organ. In thus broadening the scope of church music to include instrumental groupings and effects in combination with voices, he stands as the pioneer of a dawning movement fraught with greatest possibilities for the future development of both ecclesiastical music and independent instrumental music. The chief work of Andrea Gabrieli (1510-1586), uncle of Giovanni, was, according to his own testimony, the six-part ‘Penitential Psalms,’ though this was outdone in magnificence and tonal beauty by his many compositions for several choirs. One of the most notable and popular of the Venetian composers was Giovanni Croce (about 1560-1609), whose masses, written in a style of noble simplicity, are still favorites with Catholic church choirs.

VI

The century which culminated in the ‘Golden Age of Ecclesiastical Music’ was also the period of greatest glory for the madrigal. In the first half of the century its leading exponents were Jacques Arcadelt (about 1514-about 1555), Philippe Verdelot (dates of birth and death unknown), Huberto Waelrant (about 1518-1595), and especially Adrian Willaert (about 1480-1562), in the madrigals of all of whom there are revealed a lucidity of style, a graceful melodic flow, and, when the character of the words demanded, a simplicity of treatment, which together constituted the true sixteenth-century madrigalian style. Arcadelt, a Netherlander by birth and education, lived for many years in Italy, where his madrigals became so popular that his First Book, published in Venice in 1538, passed through sixteen editions in eighty years, the first to win marked success. Though he wrote much church music, his fame rests on his charming madrigals, only a few of which, unfortunately, are accessible in modern form. Waelrant’s _Vorrei morire_ (published with English words ‘Hard by a fountain,’ which, however, have no relation to the Italian text) is a beautiful example of this type. Orlandus Lassus was the last of the great Netherland madrigalists and he left many books of splendid compositions in this style.

In art-loving Venice an especially brilliant group of madrigalists appeared who brought added renown and honor to this centre of culture and learning. Adrian Willaert, one of the many gifted migratory Netherlanders, was the first to make the Venetians acquainted with this form, of distinctly northern origin, and its popularity quickly spread all over Italy. Under Italian influences the severity of its melodic outlines softened and it readily responded to the national love of color and warmth. While Willaert can no longer be called the ‘Father of the Madrigal,’ he was one of the first strong writers in the madrigal-form, and his transplantation of it from Flanders to sunny Italy gave to it just the genial quality needed to bring it to full maturity. He was especially influential in developing a freer style and a taste for chromaticism. This tendency found strongest accentuation in the ‘Chromatic Madrigals’[38] of Ciprian de Rore (1516-1565). He published five books of these and, while many were in the nature of experiments, they served to prepare the way for the mastery of chromatic elements so conspicuous in later composers. His madrigals, written in an original and genial style of great richness, enjoyed enormous popularity. Giovanni Croce paid homage to the spirit of the times in a notable collection of humorous part-songs (_Triaca musicale_, _Capricci_) for from four to seven voices. The Gabrielis were also generous contributors to the development of the madrigal, which, in its adopted home in Italy, attained its fairest and most luxuriant flowering.

The earliest of the Italians to achieve notable success in madrigal-writing was the Roman, Constanzo Festa (died 1545). One of his madrigals, ‘Down in a flowery vale’ (_Quando ritrovo la mia pastorella_), attained the distinction of being for a long time the most widely-known piece of its class in England. Palestrina showed his supreme command over all styles by freeing the madrigal from Flemish influences and contributing in goodly measure to the literature of this fascinating form. Among them are many _madrigali spirituali_--compositions midway in seriousness between the motet and the light _chanson_, which aimed to bring into church music more of the warmth and grace of the best secular music. In the new style of madrigal-writing Palestrina was followed with splendid results by his successor in office as ‘composer to the Papal Choir,’ Felice Anerio, by Francesco Anerio, brother of the preceding, by the Naninis, and, in

## particular, by Luca Marenzio (about 1560-1599), who devoted himself

especially to the advancement of secular art and whose madrigals were of such captivating beauty and expressive power that he earned for himself the title of ‘the sweetest swan of Italy.’ His reputation was far-extended and his popularity[39] in England was so great that Dr. Burney not only places him among the greatest of all madrigal writers, but traces the passion for this form of secular music that spread over England beginning about 1590, directly to the wide appreciation of his highly-perfected madrigal style.

The madrigal was carried to Germany by Netherlanders and German students of the Venetians, but it never succeeded in making much headway against the national fondness for the folk-song (_Volkslied_), from which it radically differed. Neither was it seriously valued in France, although here the _chanson_ had long enjoyed great popularity and had furnished the type from which the early Flemish madrigals were evolved. English soil, however, was especially favorable to its development, and it was no sooner transplanted thither from Italy and Flanders than it took deep root and flourished with a luxuriance that did not lose its splendor beside the best works of Rome or Venice. Richard Edwards (1523-1566) and William Byrd (1543-1623), the latter the greatest English composer of the sixteenth century, had both written polyphonic secular songs of the madrigal type that had achieved wide fame, but the national love of part-songs received an extraordinary stimulus from the publication in 1588 of _Musica Transalpina_,[40] a collection of over fifty madrigals selected from the best Flemish and Italian composers of the time and adapted to English words. These were received with such astonishing favor that the madrigal at once leaped into the importance almost of a national institution, fostered by a numerous school of composers who devoted themselves almost wholly to perfecting it. All the best English composers delighted in producing madrigals in countless profusion. Between the years of 1590 and 1630 no less than 2,000 pieces in this form were published, so that at the beginning of the seventeenth century the madrigal stands out as the clearest expression of the contemporary English national taste, the favorite of composers and public alike. The flowering period of the English madrigal was the first two decades of the seventeenth century, when a truly brilliant galaxy of native composers developed characteristics that distinguish it quite clearly from its continental relatives and place it on a secure vantage-ground where it need fear no rival. In delicacy, simplicity, and a delicious naïveté, some of the English madrigals of this period are unapproachable. During the Elizabethan era English church-music reached a high standard, but it sounds restrained and almost perfunctory beside the joyous, fresh, spontaneous flow of these madrigals.

Chief in importance among the English madrigalists was Thomas Morley (1557-about 1602), whose music revels in irrepressible cheerfulness and sweet tunefulness. He showed an especial fondness for the light canzonets and ballets, or fa-las, in which latter form, introduced by him into England, he is unrivalled. His contemporary, John Dowland (1563-1626), was equally successful in his canzonets and ‘Songes or Ayres of foure parts.’ But the inspired pieces of John Wilbye (dates of birth and death unknown) are universally considered to be the best representatives of the English madrigal in its purest and most characteristic and comprehensive form. Other great masters of this form were George Kirbye (died 1634), Thomas Weelkes (about 1575-1623), John Bennet (dates unknown), Michael Este (dates unknown), Thomas Ravenscroft (about 1582-about 1635), and Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625). There can be no doubt that the splendor of this era of madrigal-writing was made more lustrous by the sympathetic interest taken in this popular form by many of the best poets of the brilliant Elizabethan period. The works of many of the inspired makers of these sweet old melodies are still sung with delight and dearly prized by the numerous choral societies and clubs that zealously cultivate unaccompanied vocal part-music. Since madrigal-writing has experienced somewhat of a revival in recent years, it will be of interest to enumerate some of the most beautiful and most famous of these old compositions which still retain an imperishable charm and undying appeal. Among such will be found the following: Dowland’s ‘Awake, sweet Love,’ ‘Come again,’ and ‘Now, oh! now, I needs must part’; Weelkes’ ‘In pride of May,’ ‘The Nightingale,’ and the bold ‘Like two proud armies’; Wilbye’s ‘The Lady Oriana’ (in praise of Queen Elizabeth), ‘Flora gave me fairest flowers,’ ‘Lady, when I behold,’ ‘Down in a valley,’ ‘Draw on, sweet Night,’ and ‘But Sweet take heed’; and Bateson’s ‘In Heaven lives Oriana.’

Some of the English madrigalists of this period, as Edwards and Gibbons, were close kin to the Netherlanders in style and feeling. Many of the madrigals of Byrd, Weelkes, Wilbye, and Kirbye are elaborate in design and display ingenious and delightful imitation, but in general there is discoverable a clear tendency to discard the burdensome rules of ecclesiastical writing. With the development of this tendency the passing of the madrigal proper began, for the prime essentials of a true madrigal, no matter what it may be called, are that it must conform to the general feeling of some ecclesiastical mode and must be written in accordance with contrapuntal procedure. Without these qualities the madrigal flavor is lost. After 1620 it began to merge into the simpler and lighter glee and part-song, which forms will be considered in