culminating point in the sublime creations of Palestrina. But before this zenith of the second great period of musical art was reached, there were two centuries of artistic yearning and searching, a period that Parry calls ‘the youth of modern music--a period most pure, serene, and innocent--when mankind was yet too immature in things musical to express itself in terms of passion or of force, but used forms and moods of art which are like tranquil dreams and communings of man with his inner self, before the sterner experiences of life have quite awakened him to its multiform realities and vicissitudes.’[19] The Netherland period was one of quite astonishing musical activity. The number of musicians actually engaged in the composition of ritual-music constitutes an imposing array (the names of nearly 400 are recorded) and their actual output both in bulk and quality measures not at all unworthily with that of the other arts of this period, the names of whose masterpieces are household words. That the equally great masterpieces of polyphonic vocal art are not familiar, indeed, are almost wholly unknown even to musicians, is inevitable from the very limitations imposed upon music by the matter of performance, and from the inavailability of this music outside its special home--the church. Its speech was always idiomatic, a kind of developed specialty, and, for about two centuries after its culminating point was reached, it became archaic even in the church from whose bosom it sprang, so that the avenues to a wide public acquaintance with its peculiar beauties were largely closed soon after its greatest masterpieces were written. The masses and motets of the period reflect all the changing phases of the gradually advancing musical art. They express the deep and serious things of the art; the madrigals and _chansons_ are the emanations of the composers’ lighter moments of relaxation, incidental deviations from the main course of artistic endeavor, written mostly for the entertainment of noble and wealthy patrons. The oldest known mass is the celebrated ‘Mass of Tournay,’[20] which Coussemaker ascribes to the thirteenth century. It is written in three parts with the subject (_cantus_) in the middle; one of the added parts moves almost constantly in parallel fourths or fifths with either the subject or the third part, while this third part generally has a contrary movement to one of the other parts. Historically it forms an interesting transitional link between the primitive organum and the crude counterpoint of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.