the avoidance of secularity either in form or in spirit, and the employment of an unaffected, indescribable simplicity of expression as the best means of preserving the liturgic significance of the text and enforcing the impressiveness of the music on the worshipper’s mind. For its greatest effect this music must be heard in the particular religious environment for which it was created. ‘No sensuous melodies, no dissonant, tension-creating harmonies, no abrupt rhythms distract the thoughts and excite the sensibilities. Chains of consonant chords growing out of the combination of smoothly-flowing, closely-interwoven parts, the contours of which are all but lost in the maze of tones, lull the mind into that state of submission to indefinite impressions which makes it susceptible to the mystic influence of the ceremonial and turns it away from worldly things.’[32] In analyzing music of this type it will be found that each voice-part is equal in independence and importance with every other voice-part; that the voices enter, intertwine, and drop out with absolute freedom of movement; that one key is maintained throughout the whole composition, with no modulations in the modern sense; that the beginnings and endings of the melodic phrases usually occur at different points in different voices, producing a constant shifting in the rhythmical flux that baffles aural analysis and creates a feeling of vagueness and indefiniteness of design. The changes in dynamics or in speed are never startling or abrupt, but are accomplished through almost imperceptible gradations. Furthermore, certain values entered into the construction of these wonderfully plastic creations that were almost wholly dependent upon a perfect understanding of purely vocal effects. ‘The distribution of the components of a chord in order to produce the greatest sonority; the alternation of the lower voices with the higher; the elimination of voices as a section approached its close, until the harmony was reduced at the last syllable to two higher voices in _pianissimo_, as though the strain were vanishing into the upper air; the resolution of tangled polyphony into a sunburst of open golden chords; the subtle intrusion of veiled dissonances into the fluent gleaming concord; the skillful blending of the vocal registers for the production of exquisite contrasts of light and shade--these and many other devices were employed for the attainment of delicate and lustrous sound tints, with results to which modern chorus writing affords no parallel.’[33]