The grand opera choruses have, until recently, been largely recruited from Italy and Germany, but now they include many young American men and women whose fresh voices and intelligent application are looked upon as welcome additions both by the conductors and the public. As interest in opera grows and as operatic institutions are established in a larger number of cities, this career will attract many young people whose voices are not of such quality as to promise success as soloists, but who are musical and prefer work along artistic lines to the more mechanical business or trade occupations. Finally, mention must be made of a kind of choral singing which, at its best, is to vocal music what chamber music is to instrumental, namely, _a cappella_ singing. Dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the old Italian and Flemish masters of church music laid the foundations of their wonderful contrapuntal style which culminated in the work of Palestrina, this form of unaccompanied choral singing has flourished to the present day, producing exquisite blossoms in every succeeding age and in nearly every country which has cultivated a love of music. Much of this class of music requires highly skilled singers, thorough musical training and expert leadership, and it is therefore desirable to secure professional singers when this is possible. The Musical Art Society of New York and other societies with similar aims devote themselves to this type of choral singing. Their choirs usually consist of professional singers and their programs embrace works by Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso, and their contemporaries and successors--Bach, Gibbons, Morley, Wilbye, and other English madrigalists; the masters of the German romantic school; Russian, Scandinavian, and Celtic part-songs; Cornelius, Brahms, and the modern composers of all nations. From the foregoing recital of the wide scope of this important branch of musical art and its general practice by all classes of people, it would appear that choral singing is that form of music which is best adapted to popular use and that it is one of the easiest and best means to promote the love and culture of good music in the community.