While in a strict sense all the vocal forms thus far mentioned are part-songs, in choral literature this term is restricted to apply only to those unaccompanied vocal compositions in which one melody stands out conspicuously, all the others being more in the nature of harmonic background. In this respect it differs sharply from the glee, though in general musical mood the two forms may be very similar. The part-song has its origin in Germany, where from early times the custom prevailed of giving simple harmonic setting to the folk-songs,[66] usually note against note. Modelled largely after the harmonized folk-songs, secular part-songs in profusion were written by German composers, particularly after the decline of the madrigal. As an importation from Germany the part-song was heartily welcomed in England, where it was cultivated side by side with the madrigal, the two forms often presenting many points of similarity and constantly reacting on each other. The great madrigalists wrote many such compositions (which they frequently called canzonets) on the borderland between the two forms. Such are Morley’s ‘My bonny lass she smileth’ and ‘Now is the month of Maying,’ and the canzonets of Thomas Ford mentioned above. The eighteenth-century part-song in England is, on the whole, unimportant; in Germany its chief value after 1800 lay in the incentive and impetus it gave to the formation of numerous choral societies and in the resultant diffusion of choral culture. The real glories of the part-song belong to the nineteenth century. Before that period the three principal secular _a cappella_ vocal forms may be thus briefly characterized: the madrigal, as the secular counterpart of the motet, is modal and contrapuntal; the glee is harmonic, devoid of strict counterpoint, but all the voices are melodically interesting; the part-song is harmonic, but concentrates the melodic interest in one part, usually the highest.