[46] _Cf._ Naumann, ‘The History of Music’ (Eng. trans.), Vol. I, p. 473. [47] Cantors, however, had existed from early times in the ecclesiastical establishments and singing schools (_scholæ cantorum_). [48] Sternhold’s first incomplete collection of nineteen psalms was published in 1549, the year of his death. CHAPTER IV THE EARLY ITALIAN SECULAR CANTATA, THE GERMAN CLASSICAL CANTATA, THE ENGLISH ANTHEM, AND OTHER SHORT CHORAL FORMS The entrance of dramatic tendencies into music--Carissimi and the early cantata; Rossi, Cesti, and Legrenzi--A. Scarlatti, the culminating point in cantata-writing in Italy; later developments of the Italian cantata--The German church cantata and its relation to the Lutheran service; cantata-texts of Neumeister and others--Bach in the service of the church; his church cantatas--G. F. Handel; Joseph Haydn; W. A. Mozart--English church music in the eighteenth century; the anthem; Croft, Greene, Boyce, and others--Later history of the motet in England, Italy, and Germany; decadence of the madrigal; the glee, the part-song, the masque and the ode. The year 1600 is probably the most significant milestone in all the long history of the development of the art of music. By a strange coincidence this year witnessed the performance of the first oratorio, Cavalieri’s ‘The Representation of Body and Soul,’ in Rome and the first public performance[49] of opera, Peri’s _Euridice_, in Florence. These events were of tremendous import in that they not only emphasized and gave direction to the newly-developed dramatic tendencies, but made necessary the further and more complete development of two closely-related but subordinate activities--independent instrumental music and pure vocal art. The entrance of a consciously dramatic element into musical composition meant a comprehensive widening of the area of musical expression. Heretofore music had served its chief purpose and had found its justification in the service of the church. Though there are portions of the Roman Catholic liturgy that are essentially dramatic in their spiritual significance, the avowedly impersonal character of the whole liturgy had excluded the possibility of utilizing these situations for dramatic treatment, even in those parts specifically given over to elaborate musical settings. Had such a dramatic treatment been in consonance with the spirit of this liturgy, some of the many opportunities would certainly have been seized upon by such a genius as Palestrina, for there are many striking examples in his masses and motets of his wonderful ability to delineate the sentiment and mood of the text and reinforce the meaning and significance of a word by some expressive chord or dissonance. These instances serve to suggest how deeply he sensed the genius of the Roman liturgy and under what admirable artistic restraint he must have