As something had to take the place of monasteries, the universities became the centers for study and the cultivation of music. As far back as 866, King Alfred founded the first chair of music at Oxford! Do you remember that this was the time of the bards and minstrels? We do not seem very old in America, when we think of a college with a chair of music eleven hundred years ago! Before the printers were expelled from England, Wynken de Worde, printed the first song book (1530) which contained pieces by men important at the time: Cornyshe, Pygot, Gwinneth, Robert Jones, Dr. Cooper, and Fayrfax. MUSIC FOR THE NEW CHURCH As the kingdom changed its king at the death of each monarch, the country swayed from Catholicism to Protestantism and back again, and many a poet and musician lost his head or was burnt at the stake because he wrote for the Protestant Church. In the case of Marbeck who had made music for the _Book of Common Prayer_, he just escaped death for the crime of writing a _Bible_ concordance (an index)! Before Wynken de Worde’s song book came out, William Caxton, the great printer, published a book called _Polychronicon_ by Higden. In this, was an account of Pythagoras and his discovery of tone relations (Chapter IV); this proves the great interest in England for the science, as well as the art, of music. In Frederick J. Crowest’s book, _The Story of the Art of Music_, he tells very simply the state of music in England at this time: “When the adventurous Henry VIII plunged into and consummated (completed) the reformation scheme, it was at the expense of considerable inconvenience to musicians obliged, perforce, to change their musical manners as well as their faith. In double quick time the old ecclesiastical (church) music had to be cast aside, and new church music substituted.... This meant pangs and hardships to the musicians, possibly not too industrious, accustomed to the old state of things. Simplicity, too, was the order, a change that must have made musicians shudder when they, like others before them, from the time of Okeghem, had regarded the Mass as the natural and orthodox (correct) vehicle for the display of the contrapuntal miracles they wrought.” Now the Mass became the “Service,” and the motet was turned into the “Anthem,” which we still use in our churches. Most of the famous composers of the 16th and 17th centuries in England wrote for the new Anglican or Protestant Church, and made the new music lovely indeed. Many of them were organists or singers in the Chapel Royal, so they had been well prepared for their work. To make this new music different from the old, the writers were ordered to fit every syllable with a chord (in the harmonic style). In the old counterpoint, of course, the words were somewhat blurred. These experiments with chords did much to free music for all time.