Before passing to the consideration of nineteenth-century choral music, it remains to give brief mention to two other forms, the masque and the ode, both of which are characteristically English and belong essentially to the seventeenth century. The masque occupied a place midway between the cantata and the opera, and enjoyed great popularity at court and among the aristocratic classes as a kind of private entertainment from the time of the early Tudors to the Civil War. Originally an importation from Italy, it received special development at the hands of the best English poets--Ben Jonson, Fletcher, Chapman, Campion, Milton, and others. It was an elaborate dramatic entertainment based on some mythological or allegorical subject, calling for dialogue, declamation, airs, madrigals, much dancing, and gorgeous scenery and costume, and performed for the most part by personages of high rank in disguise, whence the name. The best English composers of the seventeenth century gave their talents to the writing of masque music--Nicholas Lanier, Matthew Locke, Pelham Humfrey, Henry Purcell, John Eccles, and, in the next century, Dr. Thomas Arne. The ode also found much favor with the English seventeenth and eighteenth-century poets, such as Milton, Dryden, Gray, and Collins, but the composer whose name is most closely allied with it is Henry Purcell (about 1658-1695), who alone wrote twenty-nine odes and welcome songs for various public and royal occasions, among them four for St. Cecilia’s Day festivals and four in consecutive years (1690-1693) for Queen Mary’s birthday. Handel wrote four--‘Alexander’s Feast,’ ‘Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day,’ ‘Birthday Ode,’ and _L’Allegro ed il Penseroso_,[67] two of which have been already analyzed. FOOTNOTES: [49] Peri’s first opera, _Dafne_, composed in collaboration with Caccini, had been privately performed in Florence in 1597 (1594?). [50] The success of Cavalieri’s _La Rappresentazione_ was apparently swallowed up by the greater interest in the success of opera, so that twenty years elapsed before a second oratorio was written. [51] ‘History of Music,’ Vol. IV, p. 144. [52] ‘Oxford History of Music,’ Vol. III, p. 153. [53] The library of the Paris Conservatoire alone possesses eight volumes of his cantatas in MS. [54] Grove’s ‘Dictionary of Music and Musicians,’ Art. ‘Scarlatti,’ by E. J. Dent. [55] ‘Oxford History of Music,’ Vol. III, p. 393. [56] For example, Beethoven’s _Ah, perfido!_ and Mendelssohn’s _Infelice_. [57] Andreas Hammerschmidt published ‘Dialogues between God and the Believing Soul’ (Dresden, 1647) for various groups of voices from two up to six. [58] Mattheson, _Das beschütze Orchestre_, p. 142. [59] Philipp Spitta, ‘The Life of Johann Sebastian Bach,’ Vol. I, p. 484. [60] _Op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 486. [61] Bach seldom used the word ‘cantata,’ preferring the terms ‘concerto’ and ‘dialogue.’