From the rarity of MSS. in early times, one is led to believe that the Troubadours extemporised the discant[1] which they added to their secular melodies, and which was as undoubtedly the origin of the madrigal as the combination of plain chant and discant was the fount from which sprang the motett. The connection of the term with a poem of a popular character certainly existed as early as the fourteenth century, and perhaps earlier. There appear to have been three classes of secular composition, for which madrigal became the general term—viz., madrigals for one voice, with accompaniment; madrigals for several voices, in parts and unaccompanied; and, lastly, madrigals accompanied by many instruments, and sometimes described as “apt for viols and voices.” The English writers preferred the second class, and excelled in it. In the fifteenth century the madrigal was well known in the Low Countries, being at that time invariably constructed according to the ancient ecclesiastical modes, and sometimes containing great features of elaboration. I complained, when speaking of the history of the mass, that musical subjects originally associated with profane words were introduced as canti fermi, but we find in the case of the madrigal that the reverse happened, and that passages of plain chant were used in connection with some light secular counter-subject. Petrucci, before mentioned as the inventor of movable music types, was the first to publish these works, composed by such representatives of the early Flemish madrigal school as Okenheim, Tinctor, Josquin des Prés, Agricola, and several others. I should like once again to quote that learned writer on music, Mr. Rockstro, who considers this first period “no less interesting than instructive to the critical student, for it is here that we first find science and popular melody working together for a common end.” From 1530 to the end of the sixteenth century a great advance was taking place in art generally. Appropriate treatment of words, and, if it were necessary, simplicity itself, restrained that desire to show contrapuntal complexity and other conceits at the selfish expense of truth and honesty. This advance in the right direction was supported by the last composers of the old Flemish school, Archadelt, De Wert, Waelrant, and that great writer Orlando di Lasso, at whose death the madrigal school of the Netherlands ended; but not so the madrigal itself, which long ere this had been transplanted into other countries, and had commenced to grow most healthily in Italy. In fact, Archadelt’s first collection of madrigals was published in Venice in 1538, and was speedily followed by five other sets, in some of which we find specimens by the first really good Italian madrigal writer, Costanzo Festa. In his work, and until Palestrina, vestiges remain of the Flemish style; but gradually the Roman or Italian element destroyed all foreign character and influence, and alone remained.