in the palace of the Venetian Cardinal Pisani.  When the guests were assembled, the Cardinal Rannuccio Farnese put together a bouquet of flowers, and presenting these to the musician, bade him give them to that one of the Cardinals who should one day be chosen Pope.  Silvio without hesitation handed the flowers to Angelo de’Medici, and taking up his 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 answer proved conclusively to what extent the contrapuntal style had dissociated itself from the right object of all vocal music, that of interpreting, enforcing, and transfiguring the words with which it deals, and how it had become a mere art for the scientific development of irrelevant and often impertinent melodic themes.