Music also was charged with enervating effects; some went so far as to call it an art of decadence, and maintained that the ancient Medes had perished through love of music. Castiglione almost gets into a passion on this subject. “What! Music effeminating! But, I ask you, were not Alexander, Socrates, Epaminondas, Themistocles musicians? Lycurgus was almost one! Did the harp prevent Achilles from shedding blood—if that is what you are driving at? Effeminating! Why, without music how can you praise God? What would comfort the sunburnt labourer at his plough, the peasant woman at her wheel, the sailor in the storm, the traveller on his weary way, the nurse in her tiring night-watches by a cradle? Music, on the contrary, is the charm of life—its light, its sunny grace! No art responds better to the demands of our emotional nature, none more liberally brings us vivid and various impressions. It softens, calms, penetrates us, it moves, indeed enraptures us; it raises us to heaven with the rapid, vehement, urgent beating of its wings!” Castiglione almost regards music as love itself: they were to him such nearly related terms that we cannot be sure but that in his opinion song was more excellent than love. In regard to what was expected of it, namely, a little happiness, music was a performance of feeling rather than of skill. Notes a little venturesome or even imperfect were pardoned if they blended, and had resonance and passion. People would boldly attack and smoothly carry to its conclusion a two-part fugue. The ideal was to hear in a drawing-room a pure and mellow voice, supported by a single lute; or rather to see the voice, for the lute, not an ungraceful instrument like the piano, seemed a living thing, and became one body with the fair singer; it was one personality thrilling with song. To idealists of the very highest order, Flemish, French, and German music was far superior to Italian music, because it expressed ideas, whilst Italian music barely went beyond sentiment or even sensation. Rome herself fell a willing victim to the northern races.[240] Among many distinguished and often admirable artists, the great figure of John of Ockeghem,[241] who died at Tours in 1495, stands out as that of the old master who more than anyone else ennobled his art.