lute began to
sing his praises in impassioned extempore verse. After his election to
the Papacy, with the title of Pius IV., Angelo de'Medici took Silvio
into his service, and employed him in such honorable offices that the
fortunate youth was finally advanced to the dignity of Cardinal under
the reign of Clement VIII., in 1598.[209]

[Footnote 209: It will be remembered that this Silvio Antoniano was one
of the revisers of Tasso's poem, and the one who gave him most trouble.]

It was therefore necessary for the congregation of musical reform to
take the Pope's partiality for this art into consideration; and they
showed their good will by choosing his own nephew, together with a
notorious amateur of music, for their sub-committee. The two Cardinals
applied to the College of Pontifical Singers for advice; and these
deputed eight of their number--three Spaniards, one Fleming, and four
Italians--to act as assistants in the coming deliberations. It was soon
agreed that Masses and motetts in which different verbal themes were
jumbled, should be prohibited; that musical motives taken from profane
songs should be abandoned; and that no countenance should be given to
compositions or words invented by contemporary poets. These three
conditions were probably laid down as indispensable by the Cardinals in
office before proceeding to the more difficult question of securing a
plain and intelligible enunciation of the sacred text. When the
Cardinals demanded this as the essential point in the proposed reform,
the singers replied that it would be impossible in practice. They were
so used to the complicated structure of figured music, with its canons,
fugal intricacies, imitations and inversions, that they could not even
imagine a music that should be simple and straightforward, retaining the
essential features of vocal harmony, and yet allowing the words on which
it was composed to be distinctly heard. The Cardinals rebutted these
objections by pointing to the Te Deum of Costanzo Festa (a piece which
has been always sung on the election of a new Pope from that day to our
own times) and to the Improperia of Palestrina, which also holds its own
in the service of the Sistine. But the singers answered that these were
exceptional pieces, which, though they might fulfill the requirements of
the Congregation of Reform, could not be taken as the sole models for
compositions involving such variety and length of execution as the Mass.
Their an