=Emotion in Polyphony=.—This style is worthy of examination. As a preface we must remember that we have to deal with the Church and _human voices only_, for instruments had not been perfected sufficiently for church use, excepting the organ, and that we must consider a voice because of its peculiar tonal qualities and the adaptation of vocal forms and styles to its use. This vocal style had developed gradually, through a long course of reforms, until it reached its perfection in the later polyphonic schools, and expressed the peculiar emotion suited for the services. _Lack_ of _rhythm_ was a pointed _characteristic_; for, in the first place, it had been discarded as profane, and in the next place, a long course of treatment in the management of voices to avoid anything like concerted and accentuated dissonances had produced a peculiar flowing movement which, however smooth it might be, certainly possessed no rhythmic force. Then, too, the old scale forms caused anything written in their idioms to sound grave, severe and dignified, if not harsh. The transition to the modern major and minor in the Monophonic school of 1600 and the immediate cultivation of music by the people may be taken as an example of the musical qualities of the two modes. All of these causes tended to produce a suitable form of music and an emotional expression peculiarly suited to the Roman services. In this style there was little storm and stress, little of the personal appeal to God; on the other hand, it was grave, severe and immovable, or in a better sense, impersonal in its expression. Music of the polyphonic period, even until the time of Sebastian Bach, in whose works it is well exemplified, does not show us the appeal to God from the heart of the active Christian worker, but rather the appeal to a vast impersonal and majestic God far removed from the needs and supplications of the mere individual. It was this kind of emotion that developed in the Italian Polyphonic schools. The human and more expressive emotion of the schools of the Netherlands was transmitted, in the schools of the Italian, into the high, contemplative moods of religious expression; and it was well that it should be so, for polyphonic music could never have expressed the emotion of a Beethoven; and it was not only best that it should express its own peculiar style of emotion, but inevitable that it should do so. [Illustration: ORLANDO DI LASSO.]