By that time the start had been made. Other concerts were given soon afterward. They became popular. There was a demand for skilled musicians and soloists. Performers began practicing for the sake of excelling in technical achievement. By swift and sudden steps a premium was put upon mechanical perfection in the handling of instruments. The old spontaneous methods of expression gradually became discredited. As a consequence of the new development, two sorts of music grew up in the world. On the one side stood concert music, professional music, virtuoso music. This was difficult and complicated, and it was impossible for ordinary people to sing it or play it. On the other side was the popular music--folk music, the music of the street, the nursery, the stable-shed and the taproom. As popular music was regularly deserted now for the concert school by those who possessed the greatest musical talent, it began to degenerate until it reached at last the degradation of "Grandfather's Clock," "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay," "Waiting at the Church" and the graphophone. On the other hand, concert music moved farther and farther away from the hearts and the comprehension of the people, until it has become a thing apart from their lives, to be enjoyed almost as much with the eye as with the ear, the interest lying chiefly in the production, in succession, of individual masters, each of whom visibly surpasses the mechanical achievements of his immediate predecessor. If those first concerts had not been given by the Philarmonia at Vicenza, and the idea had not slowly rippled outward thence, like spreading circles from a stone thrown into the water, until it reached Vienna, Paris and London, what would have been the state of music to-day? Manifestly the development of church music would have gone on. The people, no doubt, would have been taking part in magnificent chorals. The masses of the Catholic Church would have their correspondent feature in the anthems and hymns sung in the Protestant churches by the congregations. Every instrument that existed in the sixteenth century would have been perfected, but not one would have taken on the intricate development which musical mechanism exacts. In other words, the harpsichord would never have become a piano, and the electrical church organ would not have been heard of. We should all play some such instrument as the harp, the violin, the viol, the flute, the pipe or the dulcimer. All might have been composers, as the negroes and Indians are to-day, but on a higher plane. What popular music might be now but for that unlucky Philarmonia discovery is suggested by an extract from the writings of Thomas Morley, an Englishman who became a great amateur and introducer of Italian madrigals in his own country. In the year 1597 he wrote that, on a certain evening, in England,--