Very much the same system was followed in the Temple at Jerusalem. Of the musical system developed there we have a highly complete and satisfactory record. Here the art of singing was carried to a very high pitch of development. At the time of Solomon there were 4,000 Levites attached to the Temple, whose office it was to sing and intone the various services. The elaborate ritual contained musical settings for the Psalms and certain of the historical and prophetic books, which demanded a high degree of vocal ability for their rendition. Both the priests and the Levites received a lengthy training in the singing of the music allotted to them. The music of the Temple is especially interesting to the student of the history of singing, for the reason that it included a remarkably developed system of vocal ornamentation. It would have been impossible to sing this music without a thorough command of the voice, and the education of the priests and Levites therefore included a comprehensive system of vocal cultivation. The experience of the early masters of the old Italian school taught them that the best means for training the voice in facility and flexibility is the actual singing of ornamental florid music. This was also the plan followed in the school attached to the Temple. A system of notation was in use, somewhat similar to that of the neumes used in Europe from the ninth to the thirteenth century. Every standard ornament and melodic phrase was represented by a letter, according to a strictly arbitrary system. A most important part of the Temple method of musical instruction was the memorizing of the various phrases, groups, runs, etc., represented by the significant letters. This was purely a matter of convention, that is, the meaning of the letters was recorded only in the memories of the instructors and the graduate students. The instructor taught the phrase for which a letter stood by singing it for his students and having them sing it after him until they had committed it to memory and learned to associate it with the letter. As the musical phrases were all melodious and in most cases ornamental, the voice thus received an effective training. One of the puzzling aspects of the first solo singing in European music is the difficulty found in tracing the origin of the vocal embellishments of which it so largely consisted. A possible explanation of this mystery may be found in the music of the Temple. How the traditions so carefully treasured there could have found their way into Italy after the lapse of nearly 2,000 years will be considered in a later section of this chapter.