The golden age of ecclesiastical music begins to dawn with the second Roman school and the appearance of Giovanni Pierluigi Sante Palestrina, one of the greatest and most original geniuses the world of art ever produced. Numerous changes had taken place in musical style up to the time of Palestrina's appearance. When the rude forms of discant and organum, practiced by Hucbald and Guido of Arezzo, had been abandoned in consequence of the invention of counterpoint, the composers of the time, following the course of development already indicated, struck out in an entirely new art-form, called fugue. There were two kinds of fugue,--the free or unlimited, and the strict or limited. Both kinds still exist, but not under the same names. The former is now called real fugue, to distinguish it from modern deviations from the classical model. The latter kind we now call canon. In earlier times the polyphonic styles, as well as the secular and ecclesiastic, had each enjoyed a separate existence and undergone a separate development; but the work of the Flemish masters did much to counteract these natural tendencies, and to bring, as it were, all musical grist to one mill. These writers not only made use of secular tunes, in order, as they thought, to give more variety to their music, but they often gave these tunes undue prominence, and thus rendered impossible a really artistic performance. We meet with innumerable masses based on secular themes, such as the first line of a well-known romance. "L'homme armé," for instance, a very popular song of the period, was thus used. It would be wrong, however, to attribute any irreverence to these composers. They were merely following the promptings of laudable and genuine artistic feelings, in employing that which should readily appeal to the musical sense of their listeners. Nor are we without examples of similar practices in other arts. In the works of the old Flemish painters, for instance, not only do we see anachronisms in their "Nativities," their "Marriages at Cana" or their "Festivals of Simon of Bethany," but the scene is laid in some well known inn; we find in the background a faithful copy of kitchen utensils of every description; and through an open door we descry the familiar face of a tradesman, or the portrait of the stout and coarse-looking innkeeper. It was a sign of the times, and no one dreamed of censuring the artist who thus worked. Those great painters threw on their canvas what they saw in every day life, never thinking that it should be otherwise; and the composers did likewise in their art. They used in an elaborate way the melodies most frequently heard; but in the course of time this manner of writing had disgraceful consequences. Musical degeneracy became so great and so general that it could only be termed musical debauchery. It was against absurdities such as these that the Council of Trent protested.