there is a distinct gain in smoothness of melody, and there are
occasional appearances of truly expressive quality in this part of the
music, even in the most elaborate of the contrapuntal compositions.
Meanwhile the various forms of popular minstrelsy, whose general
course we have already traced, were powerfully appealing to this part
of the musical endowment of the hearers. But the great means of
cultivating an ear for melody, both in players and hearers, was the
violin, which, contemporaneously with the present point of our story,
had reached its mature form and nearly all of its tonal powers. In
fact, the tonal education of the mediaeval musicians had been carried
forward in several directions by the instruments in use. The harp and
its influence upon the development of chord perceptions have already
received attention, but there was another instrument which, during the
period subsequent to about 1400, exerted even a more powerful
influence--I mean the lute. The lute and the violin appear in crude
forms at nearly the same time in Europe. The violin was the instrument
of the north, the lute of the south. Later they move together
geographically, sharing the popular suffrages. By the time of
Palestrina the lute had come to its full powers and most complete
form. Within twenty years after the death of Palestrina orchestral
music started upon the career which has never since stopped, the
violin at the head of the forces, thanks to the insight of the great
musical genius, Monteverde.

The lute belongs to the same class of instruments as the guitar,
differing from that, however, in important details of construction. It
has a pear-shaped body, composed of narrow pieces of bent wood glued
together; the sounding board is flat, and of fir. The neck is longer
or shorter, according to the variety of lute. It was strung with from
eight to eleven strings, which in the east were of silk, but in Europe
were catgut down to the end of the seventeenth century, when spun
strings were substituted for the bass. The finger board was marked by
frets, indicating the places at which the strings should be stopped.
There were four or more of the longest strings which were not upon the
finger board, and were never stopped. They were used for basses.
Melodically the instrument had little power, although its tone was
gentle and sweet. Its influence, like that of the guitar of the
present time, was in the direction of simple harmony, mainly
restr