As the seventeenth century dawned, the fashionable art of _coloratura_ waned and the old solid style of organ-playing inaugurated by Schlick and continued faithfully by his followers, which had really never been lost by the more obscure musicians, was gradually revived and gained new strength. A new life-giving element of greatest importance to organ music was the Lutheran chorale; from it the inane art of the ‘colorists’ received its real death-blow. Its introduction into the church-service and the important place it held there opened up a new perspective for German organists and offered an artistic opportunity which finally they began to take advantage of. The people loved not only to sing the chorales but to hear them played on the organ; the organists naturally desired to please their listeners, and out of the custom of organists to render the chorales about to be sung with all the resources of their art, gradually arose the _Choralvorspiel_ or prelude. The more abstract contrapuntal treatment or elaboration of chorale-melodies was abandoned and a new method of treatment adopted that even up to the present time has failed to exhaust their possibilities. The great plasticity of these chorale-preludes was first revealed by Pachelbel; the elaboration of them was brought to the highest perfection of expression and poetry by the immortal genius of Sebastian Bach and their present-day possibilities have been grandly demonstrated in the _Choral-fantasias_ of Max Reger. In the chorale-prelude is to be found the basis of the solidity of style that after Scheidt’s time has characterized German organ music, and in the cultivation of this form the German organist has found the most ample and satisfying opportunity for the exercise of his highest artistic abilities. The Lutheran service gave far greater opportunities to the organist than did the Roman service; in this fact is to be found one powerful reason, among others, why German organ music advanced rapidly while Italian organ music remained at a standstill.