Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/338

 culmination of the polyphonic idea of composition which had begun in the Netherlands in the 14th and 15th centuries, had come to a first culmination in the Italian a cappella style of the late 16th century, and had then gathered itself for a new and vigorous growth in the German organ schools of the 17th century. This majestic evolution now reached an unapproachable height in the comprehensive and unique genius of Bach. Its influence told mightily upon most of the German composers of the period, bringing forth numerous works in strict style and affecting the treatment of all sorts of other works. Its applications were on the whole more instrumental than vocal, thus supplying the counterpart to the earlier climax before 1700, but the advance of the contrapuntal chorus under Bach, Handel and others is significant, since it made vocal polyphony parallel in breadth and vigor of expression to that of both the organ and the orchestra. The facility displayed has remained a model and an inspiration for all later periods.

Meanwhile the expansion of dramatic music continued, with its distinctly unpolyphonic methods and its appeal to the popular taste for enjoyment and excitement. The vogue of the opera in all countries was not at once productive of works of enduring value, for reasons to be noticed in a moment, but it was useful in making the art of music a still more extensive popular power, in forcing composers to study persistently the ways and means of tonal effect, and in stimulating vocal and orchestral technique. It kept to the fore questions about vocal melody, about articulated harmonic and rhythmic accompaniment and about instrumental color. As dramatic music came to include the more elastic type of the opera buffa and as it gave birth to the Handelian oratorio, it gave tokens of a new vitality that was to rejoice many later generations.

Side by side with these movements and influenced by both, the advance of chamber music went on, calling to its aid the latest improvements in the members of the violin group, stimulating the betterment of other solo instruments, especially of the wood-wind class, and of keyboard instruments, especially the harpsichord and the immature piano, and differentiating the virtuoso as a new variety of musician. This type of composition had behind it no extensive traditions, but its progress in this period was notably rapid. The vigor of a few masters,