The history of German Protestant church music in the seventeenth century and onward is the record of a transformation not less striking and significant than that which the music of the Catholic Church experienced in the same period. In both instances forms of musical art which were sanctioned by tradition and associated with ancient and rigorous conceptions of devotional expression were overcome by the superior powers of a style which was in its origin purely secular. The revolution in the Protestant church music was, however, less sudden and far less complete. It is somewhat remarkable that the influences that prevailed in the music of the Protestant Church—the Church of discontent and change—were on the whole more cautious and conservative than those that were active in the music of the Catholic Church. The latter readily gave up the old music for the sake of the new, and so swiftly readjusted its boundaries that the ancient landmarks were almost everywhere obliterated. The Protestant music advanced by careful evolutionary methods, and in the final product nothing that was valuable in the successive stages through which it passed was lost. In both cases—Lutheran and Catholic—the motive was the same. Church music, like secular, demanded a more comprehensive and a more individual style of expression. The Catholic musicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were very clear in their minds as to what they wanted and how to get it. The brilliant Italian aria was right at hand in all its glory, and its languishing strains seemed admirably suited to the appeals which the aggressive Church was about to make to the heart and the senses. The powers that ruled in German Protestant worship conceived their aims, consciously or unconsciously, in a somewhat different spirit. The new musical movement in German church music was less self-confident, it was uncertain of its final direction, at times restrained by reverence for the ancient forms and ideals, again wantonly breaking with tradition and throwing itself into the arms of the alluring Italian culture.