28 
idea,” as it may be termed, remained, and has been turned to 
very great account. 
The psychological features in music first became prominent 
in the middle of the 16th century, when Palestrina, Orlandus 
Lassus, and their English contemporaries attempted to produce 
compositions which should arouse feelings in harmony with the 
words set. This produced a culminating epoch of ecclesiastical 
and madrigal music which has been unsurpassed even to the 
present day. The older style of pure vocal composition had thus 
passed through the stages of differentiation from other arts, of 
integration in itself, and finally of equilibration. It had com- 
pleted the round of its evolution, being transformed from the 
perfectly homogeneous, such as was shown in the African 
repetitions, up to the heterogeneous, bound into a complete 
entirety by the resources of melody, harmony, design, and 
rhythm, and affording the psychological interest of an expression 
in concordance with the words, and exactly suited for the means 
at command for its performance. It had thus reached a point 
which may be called perfection, when any change could only be 
for the worse. The change it did undergo was a very rapid decay 
and the complete equilibration, death, which was hastened by 
external circumstances. 
Pure instrumental music first appeared not long before the 
equilibration of pure vocal music ; at first they were not differen- 
tiated. The English madrigals were published as “ apt for viols 
and voices,” that is, they were equally intended to be sung or 
played. The dance music was also sung or played. The 
organ was used to assist the voices in the churches; it had 
no independent music. But in the 16th century the idea 
of instrumental variations on a tune grew familiar, and there are 
also cases of illustrative music, in which the associative interest 
already alluded to is employed. Some attempts to depict battles 
and thunderstorms were made. Since it is possible to produce notes 
very much more rapidly upon instruments than upon voices, in- 
strumental music is specially distinguished by its multiplicity of 
notes, and throughout the 17th century there was a continuous 
progress in execution, accompanied by great improvements in the 
violin and the keyed instruments. Also the rapidity of execution 
upon instruments began to be emulated by voices, and the powers 
of both coalesced in forming extensive works, to understand which 
it is necessary to look again at vocal music. 
The dividing line between the medizeval and modern schools of 
composition may conveniently, and with tolerable accuracy, be 
drawn in the year 1600. The unaccompanied vocal music then 
gave way to solo songs with instrumental accompaniment and 
dramatic declamation. This new style, invented at Florence, 
exaggerated the intellectual interest, and neglected beautiful 
