General expo.&Possibly, in this Golden Age, all that glittered was not true gold,
and succeeding ages have somewhat embellished the picture. Yet, there
can be no disputing that the Middle Ages achieved unity of ideas,
religion and culture, and perhaps also the unity of a well-ordered social
life. We can be sure of one thing: that the Latin language, the Grego-
rian chant, music and musical education all played their part in the
establishment of this unified medieval Europe. The foundations were
sound; what followed?
What followed was an epoch notable for its contrasts of wealth and
poverty, hope and destruction, building and collapse. We shall do well
to emphasize the better aspects of our historical picture rather than the
bad. This is the age of the Renaissance-a word implying ‘self-remem-
brance’, consciousness of the best ideas that Europe’s history has to
offer; and the finest civilization so far known seemed to be the Greek.
In this turbulent age, music underwent development. The music of
the Low Countries, from Dufay to Josquin and Orlando di Lasso,
represents a form of ‘national’ art based on superb professional com-
petence. This European school, which embraced England, France,
Belgium, the Netherlands, Burgundy, Italy, Germany, Austria and the
countries to the east and west of them, was the remarkable result of
culture and education exchanged between master and pupil. Yet this
same epoch, which produced the pattern for professional training, was
also essentially the age of the cultured musical dillettante. Music was
a sine qaa non for anyone with any pretensions to culture; a life without
music was a life devoid of worth or merit. Ever since then we Euro-
peans have ranked music among the civilizing forces. Society in Eng-
land-we have only to think of the virginalists and the madrigalists
-and in Italy, Austria, France, Southern Germany and Spain was
m.usicaZ society. If we recall the words of Shakespeare, it is as though we
looked into a magic mirror; the whole age seems clearly displayed
for him who has ears to hear and wit to understand. Take this immorta
passage from The Merchant of Venice:
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treason, stratagems and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections as Erebus.
Let no such men be trusted. Mark the music1The end of this epoch saw the beginning of a new world fashion in
music, the baroque. This was the age of ‘exemplary’ music, of music