osite extreme from the folk-song were the operations of the
thoroughly trained composer. While the folk-song developed itself
entirely by ear,--and the ear and feeling of the untaught musician were
his sole guide in the production of an agreeable melody,--the trained
composer for many centuries entirely disregarded the testimony of the
ear, or admitted it in only a slight degree. His principal care was to
carry out the rules which he had been taught; and in following this
tradition,--the operation of which was almost entirely unchecked by the
musical sense properly so called,--the tendency was constantly toward
greater and greater elaboration, since only in elaboration could the
mastery of the composer be shown. The art of combining tones had been
handed down for some centuries almost entirely in the form of what is
known as counterpoint, in which the relation of each voice melody to
the others was more considered than the chords resulting as the voices
moved from one tone to another. This art had its origin apparently in
France, and the most promising of the early compositions we know were
those produced at the Sorbonne about the eleventh century. By the
thirteenth or fourteenth century the pre-eminence had been transferred
to the Low Countries, and the Netherlands became the great hothouse of
contrapuntal development.

This tendency to extravagant display of learning manifested itself in
the Netherlanders in almost every department; and whoever will read the
accounts of their receptions and festivals, with the elaborate Latin
poems and processions which attended the ceremonies, will find in the
music of those times the same qualities brought to expression.
Nevertheless, the ear could not be entirely ignored, and now and then a
master arose with genius and musical intuition necessitating his
pruning his compositions more or less in accordance with the dictates
of the ear; and thus there were such masters as Adrian Willaert, who
founded a school in Venice somewhere about 1500, and Orlando di Lasso,
who founded that in Munich at about the same time. Among the
multitudinous works of these men are many which are simple, or at least
musical in the proper sense. Nevertheless, as yet, simplicity in this
so-called high art was accidental and momentary, and complication was
the rule of its being and the measure of its power.

The complication of the works of the contrapuntal school almost passes
belief. All kinds of im