honoured him with a signal proof of admiration and esteem. This famous society, founded in 1666, upon the presentation by Wolfgang of a memorial, and his accomplishment of a prescribed task, elected him a member of their body as _Com-positore_. This honour was eagerly sought after by the most distinguished composers. For composers of church music it was important, since Benedict XIV., in a bull of 1749, had given a kind of overseership to the Philharmonic Society; only its members could become kapellmeisters to churches in Bologna, and by a Papal decree this membership was allowed to take the place of any examination.[45] The distinction was the greater since members were required[46] to be twenty years old, to have been admitted into the first class of compositore, and to have been a year in the second class of cantori and sonatori. Leopold describes the election as follows:-- At 4 o'clock in the afternoon of October 9 Wolfgang was required to appear at the hall of the society. There the Princeps Academiæ and the two censors (who are old kapellmeisters) gave him an antiphon from the Antiphonary; he was then conducted by the verger to a neighbouring apartment and locked in, there to set it in three parts. When it was ready it was examined by the censor, and all the kapellmeistem and composers, who voted on it by means of black and white balls. All the balls being white he was called in, and amid clapping of hands and congratulations the Princeps Academiæ in the name of the society announced his election. He returned thanks, and the thing was over. I was all the time on the other side of the hall cooped up in the Academical Library. Every one was astonished that he was ready so soon, for many have spent three hours over an antiphon of three lines. N.B.--You must know that it was not an easy task, for this kind of composition excludes many things of which he had been told beforehand. He finished it in exactly half an hour. The task was, according to the old statute, a Cantus firmus from the Gregorian Antiphonary, to be elaborated contrapuntally for four, five, or eight voices _a capella_ (in duple time); it was to be executed strictly according to rule, adhering to the singular treatment of the harmonies belonging to the old {THE ITALIAN TOUR.} (128)