foundation on which to
build their contrapuntal structures. I have no doubt that it was the
spirit which speaks out of Luther's words which brought it to pass
that in Germany contrapuntal music with popular melodies as
foundations developed into the chorale, in which the melody and not
the counterpoint was the essential thing. With the Lutheran Church
came congregational singing; with congregational singing the need of a
new style of composition, which should not only make the participation
of the people in the singing possible, but should also stimulate them
to sing by freeing the familiar melodies (the melodies of folk-songs)
from the elaborate and ingenious, but soulless, counterpoint which
fettered them.

[Sidenote: _Counterpoint._]

[Sidenote: _The first congregational hymns._]

The Flemish masters, who were the musical law-givers, had been using
secular tunes for over a century, but only as stalking-horses for
counterpoint; and when the Germans began to use their tunes, they,
too, buried them beyond recognition in the contrapuntal mass. The
people were invited to sing paraphrases of the psalms to familiar
tunes, it is true, but the choir's polyphony went far to stifle the
spirit of the melody. Soon the free spirit which I have repeatedly
referred to as Romanticism, and which was powerfully encouraged by
the Reformation, prompted a style of composition in which the admired
melody was lifted into relief. This could not be done until the new
style of writing invented by the creators of the opera (see Chapter
VII.) came in, but as early as 1568 Dr. Lucas Ostrander published
fifty hymns and psalms with music so arranged "that the congregation
may join in singing them." This, then, is in outline the story of the
beginning of modern hymnology, and it is recalled to the patrons of
choral concerts whenever in Bach's "Passion Music" or in Mendelssohn's
"St. Paul" the choir sings one of the marvellous old hymns of the
German Church.

[Sidenote: _The Church and conservatism._]

[Sidenote: _Harmony and emotion._]

Choral music being bound up with the Church, it has naturally
participated in the conservatism characteristic of the Church. The
severe old style has survived in the choral compositions of to-day,
while instrumental music has grown to be almost a new thing within the
century which is just closing. It is the severe style established by
Bach, however, not that of Palestrina. In the Church compositions
prior to