The music of dances, songs, and instrumental pieces, which was soon to find its proper home in the clavier, is a child of the world, and, in the view of a serious theoretician like Pietro Bembo, it is exposed to all the dangers of emptiness and vanity. In 1529 he writes to his daughter Helena, who like many of the women in her position, intended to receive instruction on the clavier in her convent: “As to your request to be allowed to learn the monochord,[53] I answer that you cannot yet, on account of your youth, understand that playing is only suited for idle and volatile ladies; whereas I desired you to be the most pure and loveable maiden in the world. Also, it would bring you but little pleasure or renown if you should play badly; while to play well you would have to devote ten or twelve years to practice, without being able to think of anything else. Consider a moment whether _this_ would become you. And if your friends wish you to learn to play in order to give them pleasure, reply that you do not wish to make yourself ridiculous in their eyes; and content yourself with the sciences and domestic occupations.” A hundred years later chamber-music is at its zenith. The great Carissimi (d. 1674) put the flourishing chamber cantata[54]--that half-dramatic, half-lyric song of the seventeenth century--by the side of the monodic church-songs of Viadana; and Steffani added his renowned chamber-duets. The case was precisely similar with instrumental music; by the side of the “sonata da chiesa,” with its free and independent style, came the “sonata da camera,” as a suite of favourite dance forms;[55] and the “concerti,” with their several instruments playing to a small accompanying orchestra. Above all, the possibility is now realised of suitably accompanying monodies and concerted works on the clavier, from the figured bass; and this in its turn contributes not a little to the victorious advance of the melodic song. But as a solo-instrument, the clavier suns itself in the light of the chamber-style, in which brilliancy, dexterity of hand, and elasticity of form are not less admired than the many small and spirited caprices, which in the “grand” style of music have perhaps not yet been attempted. [Illustration: A Clavier Lesson. Painting by an unknown Dutch Master, 17th century, in the Royal Gallery at Dresden.]