In Germany, in the early part of this century, Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612) was the chief exponent of song. Hassler had studied in Italy and brought back to his native land something of the Latin lightness of touch, as well as the technical innovations which he had seen in process of development during his student days. At his hands the heavy and earnest German folk-song became lighter and the melody more prominent, especially in his dance songs. About this time many song collections made their appearance, testifying to the growing popularity of solo song. But it was Heinrich Albert (1604-1651) who gave the true national touch to German song and justified the title which later generations have given him, ‘Father of the German Lied.’ Germany, in the early part of the seventeenth century, was suffering from the effects of severe religious wars and was in one of its periodic states of national and cultural depression. Placed as it was in the centre of enemies, disrupted in political adherence and torn by fratricidal quarrels, it was peculiarly liable to lose its indigenous culture and to adopt its manners and art from surrounding nations. This was its estate in the first half of the seventeenth century, when the ‘poet patriots’ sought to revive national spirit in poetry. The group had much in common with that of more than a century later[15] which sought the same renaissance of German national life, but the time was not yet ripe for their full success. Germany was disrupted spiritually as well as politically and for still another century French letters and art dominated the upper classes. But beneath the superficial culture of the aristocracy there was the true national life of the common people, the force which has kept Germany one through darkest days and nights and has in the last fifty years brought to fruition such a glorious era of national culture. And it was to the folk-element in German culture that the ‘poet patriots’ were forced to appeal. Heinrich Albert, in setting to music the poems of this group, chose the German folk-song style, rather than that of the Italian aria. By this choice he made his work count for something in history. He may be called (at least so far as Germany is concerned) the creator of the _volkstümliches Lied_. This is the song which we meet with continually in the next century and a half--the song which is composed consciously and with a definite artistic effect in mind, but with the materials which are common to the people and capable of being understood by all. The ‘folk-like’ song, in fact, becomes a goodly share of the folk-song treasury of the succeeding generation. At its best it is little below true folk-song in quality. Often it fills a whole gap in the life of the people which true folk-song had neglected to fill. We may get a very fair estimate of the place of Heinrich Albert’s _volkstümliches Lied_ in the life of the people if we recall the work of Stephen Foster in America,--a work