When the development of instrumental music began to take a definite direction in Germany, chamber music pure and simple made its appearance, and Germany is the home of this kind of composition. John Adam Reinken (born at Deventer, Holland, 1623, died at Hamburg, 1722, an organist, studied under Swelinck, of the last period of the Netherlands school) wrote a composition called "Hortus Musicus" for two violins, viola, and bass, published at Hamburg, 1704. This composition is what we should now call a suite, and it shows that the art of writing music for a quartet had made considerable progress. We get some light as to the sort of encouragement given to this kind of music from the fact that instrumental performances by small bodies were cultivated earnestly at the ducal court of Weimar between 1708 and 1715, chiefly because the duke's nephew, Johann Ernst, "showed considerable talent for playing the violin and clavier, and even for composition" [Spitta's "Life of Bach"]. Frederick the Great played the flute, and it is thought that this had some influence with Sebastian Bach, who was much admired by the king. At any rate Bach wrote a sonata for clavier, violin, and flute. He also wrote a trio for two violins and bass, and other works which belonged to the chamber music class. Quartet writing had made its way into France, where François Joseph Gossec (1733-1829) published his first quartet in 1759, the year in which Haydn wrote his first symphony. Chamber music known to the modern concert room dates from the first quartet of Haydn, written in 1755. In the earlier works the form was uncertain, and it was not until the sonata took definite shape that composers discovered that the sonata form was the best adapted to the development of thematic ideas suitable for chamber music, as well as that of those suitable for symphonies. Scientific musicians were at first prone to scoff at the string quartet as too slight in texture to afford a vehicle for the display of genius. That was because they had not fully mastered the art of writing a four-part harmony with occasional transitions into the pure polyphonic style,--a method of writing which is indispensable to quartet composition,--and also because they did not yet thoroughly understand the scope and value of each individual instrument. It cannot be said that even Haydn penetrated the secrets of the capacities of his four instruments, for his quartet writing shows frequent baldness in this respect; but he did write in four-part harmony, and his quartets beyond all question set the pattern for all that have followed them. Haydn wrote seventy-seven quartets, and naturally his latest show an advance in style and treatment over his earliest. These quartets are characterized by the fluency and simplicity of their melodies, the conciseness and symmetry of their form, the clearness and balance of their part writing, and the sunny sweetness of their prevailing mood. There is nothing in the shape of instrumental