and neglected the
libretto. Instead of exercising original invention, instead of suiting
melodies to words by appropriate combinations of sound and sense, the
composers chose any musical themes that came to hand, and wrought them
up into elaborate contrapuntal structures without regard for their book.
The first words of a passage from the Creed, for instance, were briefly
indicated at the outset of the number: what followed was but a
reiteration of the same syllables, and divided in the most arbitrary
manner to suit the complicated descant which they had to serve. The
singers could not adapt their melodic phrases to the liturgical text,
since sometimes passages of considerable length fell upon a couple of
syllables, while on the contrary a long sentence might have no more than
a bar or even less assigned to it. They were consequently in the habit
of drawling out or gabbling over the words, regardless of both sense and
sentiment. Nor was this all. The composers of the Flemish school prided
themselves on overloading their work with every kind of intricate and
difficult ornament, exhibiting their dexterity by canons of many types,
inversions, imitations, contrapuntal devices of divers ingenious and
distracting species. The verbal theme became a mere basis for the
utterance of scientific artifices and the display of vocal gymnastics.
The singers, for their part, were allowed innumerable licenses. While
the bass sustained the melody, the other voices indulged in extempore
descant (_composizione alla mente_) and in extravagances of technical
execution (_rifiorimenti_), regardless of the style of the main
composition, violating time, and setting even the fundamental tone at
defiance.

The composers, to advance another step in the analysis of this strange
medley, took particular delight in combining different sets of words,
melodies of widely diverse character, antagonistic rhythms and divergent
systems of accentuation in a single piece. They assigned these several
ingredients to several parts; and for the further exhibition of their
perverse skill, went even to the length of coupling themes in the major
and the minor.

The most obvious result of such practice was that it became impossible
to understand what words were being sung, and that instead of concord
and order in the choir, a confused discord and anarchy of dinning sounds
prevailed. What made the matter from an ecclesiastical point of view
still worse, was that these