394 The Evolution of Music. 



and conceits. Troubadour music, as it was thus exclusive 

 and personal, decayed with the rise of the feudal system. 

 The nobility and chivalry withdrew to their castles in iso- 

 lated pride. Local and petty warfares and jealousies were 

 fatal to art culture, and the protection and furtherance of 

 musical art passed from the aristocracy to the free cities. 

 For the permanence of art there must exist a well-organized 

 society to foster and maintain art-sentiment. What the no- 

 bility lost, the burghers of the free cities secured. In the 

 North the Troubadours had their brethren of song and 

 poetry in the Minnesingers, the greatest names among whom 

 were Wilhelm Stade, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Wal- 

 ther von der Vogelweide. Both were indebted to the epoch 

 of the tumultuous influences of the Crusades for their in- 

 centive, and to contact with Oriental poetry and fancy. But 

 here once more spontaneity yielded to formalism. The 

 Minnesingers gave place to the Meistersingers, and elo- 

 quence was lost in grammar. Under the pedantic technics 

 of the schools of the Meistersingers free art was stifled. The 

 Meistersinger was he who could compose new music to his 

 own new poem. Should he either borrow or imitate, he 

 was a "tone thief," and was banished in disgrace at the 

 public competitions were he "outsung and outdone" by 

 the commission of any one of the manifold sins against 

 poetry and composition which the masters had invented. 



Oratorio (or the germ of oratorio) dates from the sixteenth 

 century. In 1556 San Filippo Neri engaged a distinguished 

 musician of his time, Animuccia, to write short hymns to be 

 performed at intervals during the discourses which Neri was 

 accustomed to deliver in the oratory of his church. . Hence 

 the name oratorio. The hymns, in course of time, were 

 lengthened, and the discourse itself was replaced by passages 

 of music, or the words of the discourse were themselves adapt- 

 ed to music, resulting in the form of the oratorio substan- 

 tially as we have it now. Concurrently with the use of sa- 

 cred oratorio was that of dramatic oratorio, in which, as in 

 our modern opera, interest is centered upon dramatic action, 

 and music and action were accompanied with scenery and 

 stage effects. This was simply setting the older miracle and 

 mystery plays to music. The first of its class was Cavalieri's 

 composition, the Eepresentation of the Soul and the Body 

 (1600). Dramatic oratorio passed ultimately into the opera 

 seria. The perfection in oratorio was due to Germany. It 

 was more in sympathy with German seriousness, and their 



