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Rh great men, ilesires to introduce natural sounds, does so on patterns of his own invention. They are never conclusive, for except with regard to certain of the animal creation whose utterances are restricted to definite intervals, no one has yet succeeded in fixing in musical sounds, with any degree of satisfac- tion, the melodies of the song of birds, so that they may be clearly distinguished. Many of the great masters of musical art have endeavoured to reproduce by means of musical instruments, the effects of the convulsions of nature during a storm. If either or all of them were dis- ciples of a school, their efforts woidd have been moulded upon one pattern. Beethoven, Haydn, Rossini, Verdi, and Wagner, to name only a few among the best, have each made attempts in this direction, and each attempt is regarded as more or less successful, because each conveys to the informed mind the desired impression. Yet, each has gone to work in a totally different way, and has attained his end by means independent of the others. None, however, has done more than suggest the effect aimed at, so as to obviate the necessity of calling- special attention to it. On the other hand, a painter may faithfully reproduce a momenfs existence of a scene of natural grandeur or terror, or the form of a bird or animal upon a canvas, and by his skill so endow each with animation that it may seem to be lacking in no particular but that which marks the difference between a picture and the existence it re])resents. There is then no complete parallel between the two arts. They possess many points in common, it must be admitted ; but those who, reasoning from analogy, would restrict the progress of music to the productions of schools, may be credited with a greater knowledge of the value of arithmetical tables than of the history and progress of music. Advance is only possible where trammels do not exist. Those trammels may be necessary under certain conditions. The precepts of the Gregorian School, the earliest attempts at music, were legisla- tive, and, to a certain extent, penal. The character of the scales upon which the ' tones ' were founded showed the ' School ' to which they belonged as in- caj)able of expansion. The ' Gregorian song ' was a sliaped and concrete matter, capable of deterioration and not of improvement. It is even now vaunted as an artistic thing by those who are interested in the retention of anachronisms. Futile attempts have been made to show that it is conformable to the progress of art, but as a school it has in no way contributed to that end. It was only when musicians shook off its chains that they were enabled to make further researches in hitherto forbidden directions. For a time, however, the semblance of a school was maintained, inasmuch as musicians clothed the archaic melodies of the Gregorian song with the subtleties of newly dis- covered harmonic combinations, and looked no further afield for a basis for new operations. They soon exhausted their means, and the crudity of the foundation upon which these were superimposed could not be wholly concealed even bj' the rich and varied graces of newly formed art. Such produc- tions represented an influence rather than a school. In the endeavour to try fresh conclusions, the musicians, unwilling or unable to invent new melodies of their own, selected those which were already popular, and whose construction was not hampered by formal rules. They clothed the tunes, not always associated with such decent or worthy words as those of the ' Gregorian song,' with fresh and freer harmonies, and made some progress in art impossible before. Still no school existed. The Flemish musicians of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries gathered up the scattered fragments of melody distributed by the Troubadours, and upon them formed their new harmonies which were too secular in character to be used in association with Gregorian song. The Troubadours called certain of their own effusions by the name of ' motes." Upon the melodies of these the Netherlandish musicians fonned their ' motets.' The fulminations of ecclesiastical thunder were levelled at these new inventions. The Churcli, at first the chief en- courager of enterprising musical art, made a wrong .step in the endeavours to check the new growths. In the ' birthplace of modern musical art,' as the Low Countries are justly called, the 'nourishing mother' can scarcely be said to have existed. The hardy scions of the race of thoughtful musicians, among whose ranks the names of Willem Dufay, Okenheim, Jacques Obrecht, and Josquin de Pres stand pre-eminent, were the pioneers of the Flemish advances in musical art, and from their teaching, and those of their immediate successors, the whole knowledge of musical science in Europe proceeds. Adrian AVillaert, Cyprian von Roor or De Rore, Berchem, Van Boes, and others settled in Venice and Upper Italy : Arcadelt, Goudimel, and Verdelot were the chiefs of that branch w^ho found their sphere of action in Rome and Central Italy ; Jacob Vaet, Philip da Monte, Christian Hollaander, and Orlando Lassus or di Lasso, settled in Germany, and even carried their musical mission into the regions of Bohemia. Joliii Hamboys, a noted Eng- lish musician of the reign of Henry the Fourth, and the first graduate in music in Oxford, was said to be of Flemish origin, like Crequillon and others