time to carry out the reform with a high hand, and, for a while, an enforced return to the plain, ungarnished Gregorian chant, in bare unison, seemed inevitable. The church seemed about to try to wipe out seven centuries of musical growth at one fell swoop, and begin all over again.

At the twenty-second sitting of the Council of Trent, in 1562, the question of music came up. Several bishops were strongly in favor of a return to the unison chant; but luckily many Roman cardinals, who were great music lovers, were present, and the movement was energetically opposed. Even the passage from Ecclesiasticus, "Hinder not music," was quoted in behalf of counterpoint, notwithstanding the fact that the Son of Sirach here refers to "music in a banquet of wine;" but then a text is a text, and this one may have done good service on this occasion. The conclusion arrived at at this twenty-second sitting. of the Council was that, whenever anything "lascivious" or "impure" was mixed up with the ritual music, it should be banished.

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The question of music came up again at the twenty-fourth sitting. The third proposition was to contain a direct prohibition of all overdelicate" music. The forty-two propositions at this twenty-fourth sitting of the Council were handed over to the Emperor Ferdinand II. The proposition concerning music. was sent back by Ferdinand, with the answer that "it would be well not to exclude figural music" (i. e., counterpoint), "as it often awakens the spirit of piety." This reply, coming from such a source, had considerable weight; and the only conclusion arrived at at the twenty-fourth sitting was that the provincial synods should give their attention to correcting musical abuses.

It will be seen from this that the decrees of the Council of Trent,

as far as church music was concerned, were sufficiently vague. Palestrina was not drawn into the affair until after the Council was over-it ended in 1563. Pius IV., intent upon carrying out the decrees of the Council, put the matter into the hands of a board of eight cardinals. This board. appointed two of its members-Cardinal Vitelli, then only thirty-three years old and an enthusiastic musical dilettante, and Cardinal Borromeoas a committee on music. These two cardinals called in eight singers of the pontifical choir as experts. You see that both the committee and the experts were as strongly in favor of retaining contrapuntal music in the church as possible. The main question to be decided was this: Could the text be plainly heard in elaborate contrapuntal music? This was discussed long, without any satisfactory conclusion being arrived at. At last, it was determined-probably on the motion of Borromeo, who was a nephew of Pius IV.-to refer the question to Palestrina, then high in favor with his Holiness. Palestrina was ordered to put the question to the test, and was earnestly besought "to do his uttermost to prevent the Pope and the cardinals from withdrawing their protection from music." The animus of the committee was pretty evident: They were only too anxious for a good excuse for not touching a hair on contrapuntal music.

Palestrina, as can readily be imagined, set to work with a will and wrote three test masses, instead of one. The last of these was the famous "Missa Papæ Marcelli," dedicated to the memory of Pope Marcellus II.

On April 28, 1565, the three masses were performed at Cardinal Vitelli's palace, in the presence of the eight cardinals. The result was the unanimous vote that the true church style was at last discovered, and Borromeo

reported this decision to his uncle the Pope.

Pius IV. was all anxiety to hear the Marcellus Mass; so it was sung in the Sixtine Chapel, at the Te Deum service in honor of the alliance between the papal chair and the Swiss confederates, on June 19, 1565, Carlo Borromeo officiating at the altar, and the Pope and all the high dignitaries of the church being present. After the ceremony, the Pope said to the cardinals: "These are the harmonies of the new song which the Apostle John heard sounding from the heavenly Jerusalem, and which an earthly John now lets us hear in the earthly Jerusalem!"

He appointed Palestrina "composer to the pontifical choir" and raised his monthly wages from $5.87 to $9.00.

The best of the story is that, unless some especial pains were taken in drilling the singers, .the good cardinals could not hear the words of the text any more plainly than in the greater number of masses, from the time of Josquin down! But the music itself was so divinely beautiful that they could not find it in their hearts to condemn it. So Palestrina and Emperor Ferdinand II. can fairly divide the title of "saviour of music" between them.

The unanimous vote of the board of eight cardinals, that "the true church style was at last discovered" (referring to the Marcellus Mass and its two companion-masses), can not bear very close inspection; for just the thing that was not new in the Marcellus Mass was its style. New beauty and grandeur there may have been in it; new perfection of mastery in contrapuntal writing there may have been; but the style was in all musical essentials quite the old traditional one. The Marcellus Mass ushered in no new era of musical composition, it was the point of departure for no new musical develop

ments; with it Palestrina simply fulfilled the task imposed upon him by Cardinals Vitelli and Borromeo: "To do his uttermost to prevent the Pope and the cardinals from withdrawing their protection from music." He simply proved to the satisfaction of all the authorities concerned that the traditional contrapuntal church style was intrinsically too good to be discarded-and this was essentially the very point at which the musical party in the Council of Trent had been driving from the first. The whole attitude of the music-loving Roman cardinals at the Council of Trent was directly antagonistic to the proposed reforms, in so far as they tended to impugn any specifically musical element in the existing church music of the day; they made a strong fight for counterpoint, as such, in opposition to a return to the plain Gregorian chant in bare unison. In this they were happily backed up by Emperor Ferdinand.

Although the reforms in church music proposed at the Council of Trent were thus prevented from affecting the traditional church style in a purely musical way, no little real good was done in purifying church music in another way, and correcting some crying traditional abuses. The somewhat vague decrees at the twenty-second and twenty-fourth sittings-that "whenever anything lascivious or impure was mixed up with the ritual music, it should be banished," and that "the provincial synods should give their attention to correcting musical abuses"-bore excellent fruit. These decrees, vague though they were, were carried out with considerable energy and thoroughness, and wholly in the right spirit-all the more so, perhaps, that the music-loving party had succeeded in carrying its point in the matter of counterpoint. All sorts of farcitura were strictly forbidden for the future. Tampering with the ritual text

was no longer to be allowed. How important this was to the purity of the church service is hard to appreciate fully now, unless we consider what monstrous license had been taken with the ritual text for over a century, partly by the older composers themselves, but more especially by singers.

Church choirs sang, for the most part, from manuscript copies. As every singer in a choir was supposed to know the text of the mass by heart, this text was seldom copied out entire into the singers' parts. Only the first few words of a movement were written out in the parts, such as 66 Kyrie eleison," or "Agnus Dei ;" the rest was left to the singers' memory. They were to fit the text to the music according to their own fancy, and the result was that even singers on the same part would not sing the same words at the same time. Then again there was that old matter of secular cantus firmi. Composers did not always take the melody of a church canticle or other sacred piece for their cantus firmus, but would often take a secular melody. Indeed, some old secular tunes were especial favorites with composers, and were used over and over again as cantus firmi in masses and in motets. The masses, according to the fashion of the day, were named after them. There was hardly one of the older composers who did not write at least one "Missa l'homme armé," or "Missa malheur me bat," not to mention other secular tunes of more than dubious character. Indeed, the original secular texts of some of the songs used as cantus firmi in church compositions were of the most scurrilous description. Now, it would often happen that choir singers, when they came across a secular cantus

firmus in a kyrie or a gloria, took it into their heads to sing the original secular text to the well-known tune, much to the scandalization of pious listeners. This was another, and far worse, result of the ritual text not being fully written out in the singers' parts. The singers sang pretty much what they pleased, and what they so sang was often very sorry stuff. So, after the Council of Trent, the use of secular cantus firmi in sacred compositions was strictly forbidden. This put a stop to the singing of scandalous verses in church.

This taboo of secular cantus firmi was not, however, invariably obeyed by composers. Even some time after the Council of Trent, composers would now and then adhere to the old practice, and write a mass on an old secular cantus firmus. But they would take care not to announce the fact in the title of their mass-that was the only difference! Palestrina himself included a "l'homme armé" mass in a collection dedicated to the Pope, some time after the Council of Trent, and the dedication was accepted and the collection published. Likely enough, the Pope did not happen to recognize the tune. The fact, however, goes to show what sort of respect Palestrina had for the decrees of the Council, and how little he troubled himself about doing anything "new" in church music.

In fact, his whole feat of "saving the art of music" resolves itself, in the last analysis, into "saving the art of strict vocal counterpoint" from being banished from the church. This feat he performed, not by introducing any new musical element or style, but by obstinately and pertinaciously proving the ecclesiastical viability of the old.

THE

HE heading to this article suggests numerous volumes of matter; but let my distressed readers be consoled, I shall touch only on the French branch of the subject, for, -humiliating as is such a confession for an American girl to make-although I have mastered the mysteries of French elocution, I never have been able to fathom the depths of English elocution. I listen to lectures on English elocution with the same respectful awe that fills my soul when I wrestle with Browning's later poems. I know that there is a great truth hidden somewhere, but my foreign training and peculiarly constituted brain prevent me from grasping it.

An experience also served to addle me still further. I once took to my French elocution teacher, M. DupontVernon, of the Comedie Française, an exquisite poem by François Coppée, which I had unearthed and which struck me as having great capabilities for effective recitation. Dupont Vernon was intensely delighted.

This is a treat," said he; "I am too busy to read up things for myself, so when my pupils bring me new pieces, I am simply enchanted."

He read it over and nodded sententiously.

"A most exquisite poem, and I think it will go as a recitation. You have memorized it? Well, then, stand in that corner and let me hear you recite it and I will give you suggestions."

At the end of an hour, the poem was mapped out and developed into a thoroughly effective recitation which has always made a hit in French circles, where it has been re

I

"My dear girl," said he, dismally, "I can not teach you that poem. never heard it recited in my life.' "But," I objected, timidly, "it seems effective.”

"I dare say," he rejoined, "but then if it had been effective, someone would certainly have recited it long ago, and I would have known how to work it up, but as it is bring me something else. How would you like to study 'The Raven?'

Do

Now as I loathe "The Raven" as a recitation, and always flee into outer darkness, whenever I hear it started up, I declined. The great Italian actor, Modena, used to reduce his audience to tears and to terror by his weird and pathetic way of reciting the alphabet, but English elocutionists apparently "do not do so." It is only fair to observe that possibly it is because they know the style of audience they have to work upon.

In Paris everybody has studied. elocution. Happily for a distracted public, everybody does not recite; but the veriest stick knows how things ought to be done, though he is not encouraged to do them himself, for a French audience, though the most appreciative in the world when good work is concerned, is equally as intolerant to mediocrity of