towards definiteness of that expression, the other towards the entirely new technique which was to supersede the contrapuntal technique of Byrde and Palestrina.  In making a mass or an anthem or secular composition, the practice of these old masters was to start with a fragment of church or secular melody which we will call A; after (say) the trebles had sung it or a portion of it, the altos took it up and the trebles went on to a new phrase B, which dovetailed with A. Then the tenors took up A, the altos went on to B, the trebles went on to a new phrase C, until ultimately, if we lettered each successive phrase that appeared, we should get clear away from the beginning of the alphabet to X, Y, and Z. This, of course, is a crude and stiff way of describing the process of weaving and interweaving by which the old music was spun, for often the phrase A would come up again and again in one section of a composition and sometimes throughout the whole, and strict canon was comparatively rare in music which was not called by that name; but the description will serve.  This technique proved admirable for vocal polyphony—­how admirable we have all the Flemish and Italian and English contrapuntal music to show.  But it was no longer available when music was wanted for the single voice, unless that voice was treated as one of several real parts, the others being placed in the accompaniment.  A new technique was therefore wanted.  For that new technique the new composers went back to the oldest technique of all.  The old minstrels used music as a means of giving accent and force to their poems; and now, as a means of spinning a web of tone which should not only be beautiful, but also give utterance to the feeling of the poem, composers went back to the method of the minstrels.  They disregarded rhythm more and more (as may be seen if you compare Campion with Lawes), and sought only to make the notes follow the accent of the poetry, thus converting music into conventionally idealised speech or declamation.  Lawes carried this method as far as ever it has been, and probably can be, carried.  When Milton said,

    “Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured notes
    First taught our English music how to span
    Words with just note and accent,”

he did not mean that Lawes was the first to bar his music, for music had been barred long before Lawes.  He meant that Lawes did not use the poem as an excuse for a melody, but the melody as a means of effectively declaiming the poet’s verse.  The poet (naturally) liked this—­hence Milton’s compliments.  It should be noted that many of the musicians of this time were poets—­of a sort—­themselves, and wished to make the most of their verses; so that it would be a mistake to regard declamation as something forced by the poet, backed by popular opinion, upon the musician.  With Lawes, then, what we may call the declamatory branch of the English school culminated.  Except in his avowedly declamatory passages, Purcell