Maturity is a relative term altogether. If a man's ideas are
worth expressing, and are capable of being expressed com-
pletely within the limits- of his resources, his productions may
be in a certain sense completely mature at almost any epoch
in the progress of artistic development. If Palestrina had
introduced discords more freely and treated them with less
reserve, and had aimed generally at a stronger type of expres-
sion, the balance of his work would have been destroyed ; he
would have gone beyond the limits which were then inevitable
for completely artistic work. Part of his greatness consisted
in his feeling exactly where the limitations of his kind of art
were, and achieving his aims within the field of which he was
complete master. The position of the composers in Bach's

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1 76 THE ART OF MUSIO

time was much the same; and part of his own particulai
greatness consisted in seeing within what particular range
the technical resources of art, which preceding development
had placed in his hands, were most fully available.
