You can sing or play this through forward and then backward, and its counterpoint remains correct. They had also the inverted canon, in which the second part consisted of the first part turned upside down. The canon by augmentation makes the melody appear in a subsidiary part in notes longer than those in which it appeared in the principal part; and the canon by diminution is formed on the opposite principle. These old musical puzzle-workers had other forms far more complicated, and they took great delight in writing "riddle" canons. In these only the subject was given, with the motto, "Ex una, plures," meaning that the musician must work out the other parts from the one; and then some hint as to the manner of working them out would be given, as, "Ad medium referas, pauses relinque priores." The working out of these riddle canons became a mania with Okeghem and his immediate successors; and the result was that they acquired an immense command over the technics of contrapuntal writing. But "the highest praise that can be awarded to their works is that they are profound in their scholarship, not without evidences of taste in the selection of the formulas to be employed, and certainly imbued with a good deal of the dignity which would inevitably result from a skilful contrapuntal treatment of the church chant." It is, however, of singular significance in the history of this period that some of the works of both Hobrecht and Brumel show a tendency toward some conception of chord harmonies. Here is an example, which looks modern:—
BEGINNING OF A MOTET BY BRUMEL.
(From Naumann's "History of Music.")
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[O Do-mi-ne Je-su Christ . . . . . e.]
On the whole, however, the first period of the Netherlands school was characterized by a devotion to the mechanics of music. The second period was illuminated and dominated by the famous Josquin des Prés, whose music is still heard at times, and is still ravishing to the ear. Josquin was born at Condé in or about 1450, and was a pupil of Okeghem. He was a singer in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, and on the death of Sixtus IV., in 1484, went to the court of Hercules d'Est, Duke of Ferrara. He was afterward a short time in the service of Louis XII. of France, and finally of Maximilian I., Emperor of the Netherlands, who made him provost of the Cathedral of Condé. In that town he died, on August 27, 1521. A large number of his works exists. There are in print nineteen masses, fifty secular pieces, and over one hundred and fifty motets. Josquin is the first genius in the development of music who had sufficient musical material already formulated to enable him to write freely. His works are notable for their elegance of style, and for the firm mastery of the difficult counterpoint of his time. Martin Luther, noting how he moulded seemingly inflexible material to his purpose, said, "Josquin is a master of the notes; they have to do as he wills; other composers must do as the notes will." Baini, the biographer of Palestrina, in describing the immense popularity of Josquin's compositions, says that there was "only Josquin in Italy, only Josquin in France, only Josquin in Germany; in Flanders, in Bohemia, in Hungary, in Spain, only Josquin." In its technical aspect Josquin's music presents for consideration no special feature, except that he wrote always in more than two parts. His music is notable chiefly for its pure beauty, and he was the first composer to make a determined effort to secure that. He was able to do this because his predecessors had so fully developed the technics of polyphonic writing. Josquin, however, was not without grave faults. He continued the practice of using secular airs in the mass, and wrote a mass on "L'Omme Armée." He also had the bad taste twice to set to music the genealogy of Christ, a mere catalogue of names.
The third period was very rich in masters of ability. Of Gombert little is known save that he was a pupil of Josquin. Adrian Willaert, the most brilliant light of his period, was born at Bruges in 1480, and was a pupil of either Josquin or Jean Mouton. After many changes he settled in Venice, where on Dec. 12, 1527, the doge, Andrea Gritti, appointed him chapel master of St. Mark's. He carried the teachings of the Netherlands school into Italy, became the head of a great music school, was the teacher of many noted organists, and had a profound and wide influence on musical art. Claude Goudimel was born in 1510, founded a music school in Rome, and was the teacher of the great Palestrina. He subsequently went to Paris, became a Protestant, and was killed in the massacre on St. Bartholomew's eve, Aug. 24, 1572. Cyprian di Rore was born in Brabant in 1516, and succeeded Willaert as chapel master of St. Mark's in Venice. He died in 1565. Clement Jannequin was a native of Flanders. Little is known of his life, but some of his compositions are extant. Willaert's work must first claim our attention. Finding two organs in St. Mark's he introduced antiphonal writing into the music of his time. He wrote some of his grand works for two choruses of four parts each, so that each chorus could answer the other across the church. He paid much less attention to rigid canonic style than his predecessors had done, because it was not suited to the kind of music which he felt was fitting for his church. He sought for grand, broad mass effects, which he learned could be obtained only by the employment of frequent passages in chords. So he began trying to write his counterpoint in such a way that the voice parts should often come together in successions of chords. In order to do this he was compelled to adopt the kind of chord formations still in use and the fundamental chord relations of modern music,—the tonic, dominant, and subdominant. The tonic is the chord of the key in which one is writing; the subdominant is that of the fourth note of the scale of that key; and the dominant that of the fifth, thus:—
