The principal reason of this absorption of composers in the
cultivation of choral music is obvious. It is a well-ascertained
law of human nature, that men will not go out and labour
In the desert at haphazard when they are fully occupied in
extracting unlimited gold from a rich mine. Neither will
they (in a healthy state of existence) abandon an occupation
which is full of absorbing interest, and constantly presents
fresh problems most tempting to solve, for the mere chance
of amusement in some other direction. At the time when
the great era of pure choral music was beginning, musical
human beings, earnestly disposed, were just awakening to the
singular possibilities of beauty which the combinations of
many singing voices afforded. They were awakening to the
actual beauty of the sound of chords sung by voices — to the
beauty of delicate variety between one chord and another,
and between chords in different positions (partly owing to
the various qualities of the different registers of the voices) —
to the beauty of the actual human expression of the individual
voices, and to the beauty of the relations of the melodic
forms of the different parts to one another. To win the
delight of realising the various phases of these effects was
enough to keep them fully occupied on even severer labour
than the development of artistic technique; but the incite-
ment quickened their musical instinct marvellously, and in a
short time developed in them a delicacy of perception of
artistic means and a sense of style which is almost unique
in the history of the art. In later times composers are dis-
tracted by the varieties of style and "taste which have been
developed, in the necessary course of musical evolution, for
different artistic purposes, such as the theatre and the concert-
room ; and they often introduce the formulas which belong to
one kind of art into another to which they are quite unsuited ;
but in the early days there were no such distractions. 