The strongest motet writing of the eighteenth century, however, flourished in Germany. Many of the motets of the early German Protestant composers were simple polyphonic adaptations of chorales, and in the seventeenth century a simple, often trivial, style prevailed, but in the opening years of the eighteenth century a group of composers appeared who strove to revive the solid, elaborate style of the earlier masters. Beginning with Reinhard Keiser (1674-1739) and continued by Karl Heinrich Graun (1701-1759) and Johann Adolph Hasse (1699-1783), a Catholic composer of attractive style, this movement culminated in Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), who clothed the motet in all the dignity and elaborateness of the old sixteenth century period. His motets represent the most perfect type of unaccompanied music in the Protestant church-service, as Palestrina’s do in the Roman, and in their way are quite as incomparable. Bach wrote about 200 motets, among the best-known of which are _Komm, Jesu, komm_ (‘Come, Jesu, come’), _Jesu, meine Freude_ (‘Jesu, priceless treasure’), _Nun ist das Heil_ (‘Now shall the grace’), and _Singet dem Herrn_ (‘Sing ye to the Lord’). A score of others equally fine might easily be mentioned. The motets of Handel, which have only in recent years been snatched from obscurity by the German Handel Society, are works of transcendent beauty, full of youthful vigor and strength, and worthy of his best period. The madrigal also participated in the common ruin that befell the old polyphonic style, and after 1620 the true madrigal practically disappeared. In Italy it was displaced by the interest in the new chamber-cantata; it was wholly forgotten in Flanders and France; in England it merged into the glee; and in Germany the rise of the part-song compensated somewhat for its disappearance. [Illustration: St. Thomas’ Church, Leipzig, in Bach’s Time] _From on old print_