itself beside a rising enthusiasm for secular music. Either the two styles will be amalgamated, and church music be transformed to the measure of the other, as happened in the case of Catholic music, or church song will stagnate, as was the case in Protestant Germany. After the War of Liberation, ending with the downfall of Napoleon’s tyranny, and when Germany began to enter upon a period of critical self-examination, demands began to be heard for the reinstatement of church music on a worthier basis. The assertion of nationality in other branches of musical art—the symphonies of Beethoven, the songs of Schubert, the operas of Weber—was echoed in the domain of church music, not at first in the production of great works, but in performance, criticism, and appeal. It is not to be denied that a steady uplift in the department of church music has been in progress in Germany all through the nineteenth century. The transition from rationalism and infidelity to a new and higher phase of evangelical religion effected under the lead of Schleiermacher, the renewed interest in church history, the effort to bring the forms of worship into coöperation with a quickened spiritual life, the revival of the study of the great works of German art as related to national intellectual development,—these influences and many more have strongly stirred the cause of church music both in composition and performance. Choirs have been enlarged and strengthened; the soprano and alto parts are still exclusively sung by boys, but the tenor and bass parts are taken by mature and thoroughly trained men, instead of by raw youths, as in Bach’s time and after. In such choirs as those of the Berlin cathedral and the Leipsic Thomas church, artistic singing attains a richness of tone and finish of style hardly to be surpassed. The most wholesome result of these movements has been to bring about a clearer distinction in the minds of churchmen between a proper church style in music and the concert style. Church-music associations (evangelische Kirchengesang-Vereine), analogous to the Catholic St. Cecilia Society, have taken in hand the question of the establishment of church music on a more strict and efficient basis. Such masters as Mendelssohn, Richter, Hauptmann, Kiel, and Grell have produced works of great beauty, and at the same time admirably suited to the ideal requirements of public worship.