e, however, the
composer is sure to feel that everything does not sound equally well in
all keys and therefore must decide each individual case separately, in
conformity with his artistic ear and instinct; I will merely add--also
in conformity with the ear of his time. For Quantz, by declining to make
a theoretical decision, shows that his ear had fallen captive to the
Italian musical school which strove not so much to hear the
characteristic in music as the simply beautiful, and, indifferent to the
prevailing lively controversy over the keys, composed its melodies as
was most convenient for the voice of the singer and the fingers of the
accompanist.

In the first half of the eighteenth century people still possessed a
very keen ear for dance music. The great majority of the dance melodies
of that time are moderately animated. To our modern ear and pulse-beat,
on the contrary, slow dance music seems to be a contradiction in itself;
a melody which in those days inspired people and started their feet to
dancing would now lull us to sleep. We desire stormily exciting dance
music; our ancestors gave the preference to the gayly stimulating kind.
How entirely differently constituted, how differently qualified
historically, politically, and socially, was that generation in whose
ears sounded the dance rhythm of the majestic _sarabande_, the solemnly
animated _entree, loure_, and _chaconne_, the delicate pastoral
_musette_, the staid gliding _siciliano_, and the measured, graceful
minuet, compared to a generation who dance the whirling waltz, the
stormy skipping _galop_, and the furious _cancan!_ In the opera the
tragic hero could dance a _sarabande_, and even in choral songs of the
church the ear of the eighteenth century could distinguish dance music.
Matheson made (1739) out of the choral song "When we are in dire
distress" a very danceable minuet; out of "How beautifully upon us
shines the morning star" a _gavotte_; out of "Lord Jesus Christ, thou
greatest gift" a _sarabande_; out of "Be joyful, my soul" a _burree_;
and finally out of "I call to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ" a _polonaise_, by
preserving the choral melodies note for note and only changing the
rhythm, just exactly in the same way as we now make marches, waltzes,
and polkas out of operatic arias. What colossal contrasts of the musical
ear in the course of a single century! In them is marked not only a
revolution of artistic development, but a much greater revolutio