alestrina with that of Bach; also the vast
strides made by music during the intervening century.

[Sidenote: _The motet._]

Of Bach's music we have in the repertories of our best choral
societies a number of motets, church cantatas, a setting of the
"Magnificat," and the great mass in B minor. The term Motet lacks
somewhat of definiteness of the usage of composers. Originally it
seems likely that it was a secular composition which the Netherland
composers enlisted in the service of the Church by adapting it to
Biblical and other religious texts. Then it was always unaccompanied.
In the later Protestant motets the chorale came to play a great part;
the various stanzas of a hymn were given different settings, the
foundation of each being the hymn tune. These were interspersed with
independent pieces, based on Biblical words.

[Sidenote: _Church cantatas._]

The Church Cantatas (_Kirchencantaten_) are larger services with
orchestral accompaniment, which were written to conform to the various
religious festivals and Sundays of the year; each has for a
fundamental subject the theme which is proper to the day. Again, a
chorale provides the musical foundation. Words and melody are
retained, but between the stanzas occur recitatives and metrical airs,
or ariosos, for solo voices in the nature of commentaries or
reflections on the sentiment of the hymn or the gospel lesson for the
day.

[Sidenote: _The "Passions."_]

[Sidenote: _Origin of the "Passions."_]

[Sidenote: _Early Holy Week services._]

The "Passions" are still more extended, and were written for use in
the Reformed Church in Holy Week. As an art-form they are unique,
combining a number of elements and having all the apparatus of an
oratorio plus the congregation, which took part in the performance by
singing the hymns dispersed through the work. The service (for as a
service, rather than as an oratorio, it must be treated) roots in the
Miracle plays and Mysteries of the Middle Ages, but its origin is even
more remote, going back to the custom followed by the primitive
Christians of making the reading of the story of the Passion a special
service for Holy Week. In the Eastern Church it was introduced in a
simple dramatic form as early as the fourth century A.D., the
treatment being somewhat like the ancient tragedies, the text being
intoned or chanted. In the Western Church, until the sixteenth
century, the Passion was read in a way which gave the service o