"Almost at the beginning of the Netherland school, mechanical invention was made subservient to idea. It was no longer contrapuntal writing for counterpoint's sake. Excesses were toned down, and the desire unquestionable was that the contrapuntist's art should occupy its proper position as a means to an end. Euphony and beauty of expression were the objects of the composer. In part writing each voice was made to relate to the other in a manner totally unknown to the Paris masters. Such were the first beginnings of the 'canonic' form, and fugato system of writing, the herald of that scholarly class of compositions known as fugues, the end and aim of which it is to connect in the closest possible manner the various component parts. It was this complete mastery over counterpoint in all its varying details that gave to the tone-masters such unbounded artistic liberty. No longer was it necessary that they should, like the organists, cantors, and magisters of Paris and Tournay, exhibit their power over newly-acquired contrivances, but, as inheritors of a system of inventive skill, the devices and contrivances fell into their proper and natural channel, and were regarded as merely subordinate to a purer tonal expression of feelings than had hitherto been attempted. Henceforth counterpoint was but a means to an end, and art-music began to assume for the first time the characteristics of folk-music, i. e., the free, pure and natural outflow of heart and mind, with the invaluable addition, however, of intellectual manipulation." Naumann's comments are the result of his overvaluation of the purely tentative labors of the early French school and his manifest eagerness to find grounds for laudation of the writers of the first Netherland period. It is a plain fact, to which all evidence points, that the man looked up to as the chief master of the period was a profound academician and that he was greater as a teacher than as a composer. That his successors did achieve something in the way of euphonic beauty and freedom of style is certainly true, as can be demonstrated by an examination of the works of Josquin des Près. Even the Dutchmen Hobrecht and Brumel sometimes struggled toward a simpler and purer musical expression than was to be attained through Ockeghem's canonic labyrinths, but the famous teacher's influence prevailed over the spirit of his time, and the musicians were, for the most part, like the Mastersingers, slaves of the contemporaneous _leges tabulaturae_. The unbounded delight which they took in the solution of riddle canons is a proof of the view they took of their art. Dr. Langhans, who is too calm a critic to be led into special pleading, says: