584: EEPOKT — 1891. 



which chiefly depended for its success on unharmonized 

 melody, was bound to cease, and in its place arose a system 

 of part-singing so perfect, and a series of vocal compositions 

 so beautiful, that not only were they the delight and pride of 

 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but at the present time 

 they still hold their own amongst the most beautiful com- 

 positions of the kind. 



The oldest piece of music in existence which exhibits good 

 polyphonic writing, in excellent taste and style, was written by 

 an Englishman, probably a monk in the Abbey of Beading, in 

 Berkshire, about the year 1226. I will now ask the choir to 

 sing you this "rota," as it was called. The words are descrip- 

 tive of a summer's day as it should be in Old England. The 

 notation in the old original manuscript, found in Eeading Abbey, 

 and now in the British Museum, is similar to that of Franco. 

 The music is in the form of a canon, a very common device 

 amongst composers in those days. 



The rota you have just heard is said to be a proof that 

 musical culture was no longer the monopoly of the Church, 

 and a hundred years later we find still further proof that there 

 were decidedly two distinct currents of musical development, 

 the sacred and the secular, each progressing separately, until 

 the sixteenth century, when their union was brought about by 

 circumstances which I shall presently relate. 



Musical study became general both among the people and 

 the clergy by the end of the fourteenth century, each country 

 boasting — and rightly so — of its schools of music, its musical 

 productions, and of its musicians. It is therefore impossible 

 for me to give you other than a very short and brief . review 

 of the progress of the art in the fifteenth and sixteenth 

 centuries. 



For the beauty and perfection of their compositions at this 

 period, the musicians of Flanders were the earliest to distinguish 

 themselves. They wrote masses, motetts, and madrigals, 

 greatly admired in their day, but which would to modern 

 hearers sound more ingenious and clever than melodious and 

 inspired. When, in the fifteenth century, the prosperity of the 

 country began to decline, the musicians of Flanders emigrated 

 to Italy. Here the atmosphere was more genial, and the 

 result was the foundation of a school of vocal music of such 

 beauty that Italy became known as the " Land of Song," and 

 the most musical country in Europe. It was in Italy that the 

 oratorio and the opera had their origin. 



The first great Italian musician who came under the in- 

 fluence of the Netherlands was Festa, the master of the Pope's 

 choir in the Sistine Chapel. You shall now hear his well- 

 known madrigal " Down in a flow'ry vale," which is naturally 

 composed somewhat after the style of the Flemish school. 



