should be ignored, simply because it may be difficult of attainment from large bodies of singers.  There is so much monotony in oratorio concerts because all oratorios and all parts of any single oratorio are sung alike.  Only when the “Hallelujah” is sung in “The Messiah” at the gracious Christmastide is an exaltation above the dull level of the routine performances noticeable, and then it is communicated to the singers by the act of the listeners in rising to their feet.  Now, despite the structural sameness in the choruses of “The Messiah,” they have a great variety of content, and if the characteristic physiognomy of each could but be disclosed, the grand old work, which seems hackneyed to so many, would acquire amazing freshness, eloquence, and power.  Then should we be privileged to note that there is ample variety in the voice of the old master, of whom a greater than he said that when he wished, he could strike like a thunderbolt.  Then should we hear the tones of amazed adoration in

[Music illustration:  Be-hold the Lamb of God!]

of cruel scorn in

[Music illustration:  He trust-ed in God that would de-li-ver Him, let him de-li-ver him if he de-light in him.]

of boastfulness and conscious strength in

[Music illustration:  Let us break their bonds a-sun-der.]

and learn to admire as we ought to admire the declamatory strength and truthfulness so common in Handel’s choruses.

[Sidenote:  Mediaeval music.]

[Sidenote:  Madrigals.]

There is very little cultivation of choral music of the early ecclesiastical type, and that little is limited to the Church and a few choirs specially organized for its performance, like those that I have mentioned.  This music is so foreign to the conceptions of the ordinary amateur, and exacts so much skill in the singing of the intervals, lacking the prop of modern tonality as it does, that it is seldom that an amateur body can be found equal to its performance.  Moreover, it is nearly all of a solemn type.  Its composers were churchmen, and when it was written nearly all that there was of artistic music was in the service of the Church.  The secular music of the time consisted chiefly in Madrigals, which differed from ecclesiastical music only in their texts, they being generally erotic in sentiment.  The choristers of to-day, no less than the public, find it difficult to appreciate them, because they are not melodic in the sense that most music is nowadays.  In them the melody is not the privileged possession of the soprano voice.  All the voices stand on an equal footing, and the composition consists of a weaving together, according to scientific rules, of a number of voices—­counterpoint as it is called.

[Sidenote:  Homophonic hymns.]

[Sidenote:  Calvin’s restrictive influence.]