schools had done more to educate harmonic perception
than is commonly supposed. All the devices of counterpoint, as we have
them to-day, were invented by the various schools of this period, and
brought to a high degree of perfection. But the learning had somewhat
overshot its mark. The multiplicity of parts in the compositions of
Willaert, and the other masters of the polyphonic schools, served for
the cultivation of chord perception just as surely as if they had
intentionally written chord successions without troubling themselves
with imitative canon in any degree. For, when there were so many voice
parts as ten, fifteen or twenty within the limits of the compass of
the human organ, that is to say, mainly within the limits of two
octaves and a half, the parts had no recourse but to cross
continually, and since there was no aid afforded the ear by
differences in tone color between one voice part and another, it
necessarily followed that they fell upon the ear with the effect not
of voice parts, in which the melody of each could be followed
independently of the others, but rather as chord masses, in which here
and there a prominent melodic phrase occasionally emerged, only to be
lost the next moment by the prominence of a bit of the melody of some
other voice. The effect of a composition of this kind was no other
than that of a succession of chords, and the ear was as thoroughly
educated to chord perception by this class of music as if the composer
had intended only to write successions of chords. Still the training
of these schools, while incidentally affording education to the ear
upon the harmonic side, was thoroughly contrapuntal, and the study of
every composer was to make something more elaborate than anything that
had been written by his predecessors.

Nevertheless there was an influence in another direction. An art form
was invented, which by the end of this period had established itself
as the type of a musical form whenever the composer would arrive at
something more spontaneous than could conveniently be attained by the
way of a motette or conduit. That form was the madrigal. The meaning
of the name is unknown. Some have derived it from Mary, and point to
the sacred madrigals, many of which were composed by all the
contrapuntal writers. Others have assigned a different origin for it,
and it is not possible now to decide which is the true one. Enough if
we find this form emerging from obscurity by the middle o