Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/812

694 no more than "This beautiful mass is founded on one by Goudimel, Audi Filia. It is one of the best known to-day on account of its moderate length—It takes its title from the first note (breve) of the theme, and is in transposed Ionian."

To be sure, Miss Pyne has made a fairly scholarly assemblage of the facts gathered. The picture of Pierluigi left by her is co-ordinated and reasonable. She has not repeated the ancient legend that it was the beauty of Palestrina's music which dissuaded the Council of Trent from excluding all music other than plain-song from the services of the Church. She has not sought to make a Christ of her subject by giving exaggerated importance to her account of the miserable intrigues directed all during his life against Palestrina by his fellow-musicians in the Papal choirs. She has preferred a certain dryness to gratuitous melodrama. Indeed, because of restraint, Miss Pyne has the better succeeded in persuading us of the correctness of the picture as far as she has drawn it. In spite of her gallant contention that some of Pierluigi's persistent misrepresentations of the extent of his poverty are excusable for the reason that they were made to elicit from Pope Sixtus V and from the Gonzagas some of the same assistance in obtaining publishers for his works as that given by the Duke of Bavaria to Orlando di Lasso, or by the court of Spain to Vittoria, the Roman issues from her hands an avaricious Italian peasant. But this trait, like the traits of his almost astrally incorporeal music, only serves the better to place him.

And many bits of good criticism are scattered through the texture of the book. There is a very fine description of the Mass of Pope Marcellus. There are supplementary chapters on the characteristics of the Roman School in Sixteenth Century Art; and an Index to the Masses of Palestrina. Particularly just is the comparison made between the music of the Roman school and that which we call modern. "The moment instruments were employed to accompany part-singing, the perpendicular chord was all-important; the strong and weak beat controlled the accents; and a certain quality of indefiniteness which was as the very breath of the unaccompanied polyphonic school was gone for ever. Paradoxical as it may seem, modern music, while gaining in subtlety, colouring, and weight, has lost in size. An unaccompanied six-part mass (obviously there is no restriction in the multiplication of voices) is practically im-