 Such music allowed for highly dramatic effects, with sudden shifts in volume, articulation, timbre and texture, for not all of the choirs were the same size, and could be made up of radically different combinations of voices and instruments.With the addition of the "basso continuo" in the early seventeenth century, the concertato style ("stile concertato") had essentially been developed, featuring a larger overarching ensemble out of which smaller groups were selected at will to play successive musical phrases in different styles, or to perform simultaneously in different manners.Thus, one phrase might be soloistic, the next set in imitative polyphony, the next homophonic, the next an instrumental tutti, and so on.