becomes differentiated as a significant branch of musicianship, especially on the vocal side. Correlative with this is the tendency to transfer certain forms of music from private to public patronage, with consequent changes in the standards of musical ambition and in the social influence of the art. While the century presents no composer of the first order, it is of great interest as a preparation for the creativeness of the 18th century.
75. The Mediæval Plays.—All the fine arts have been powerfully
affected sooner or later by the universal craving for dramatic
impression. Dramaticness is a quality in art not easily
defined. It usually involves features or arrangements that represent
or suggest a story, with personages, action, developing
situations and a dénouement of some sort, predestined or unexpected.
The fascination of dramatic art in all forms rests upon
the fact that it recalls living experiences, continually piques
curiosity as to the outcome, and in its climaxes is sensationally
exciting. The impulse to it is universal in all ages.
In modern society the drama stands as a separate and independent
fine art. But it is not always remembered that other fine arts are constantly
handled dramatically, even the static arts of sculpture, painting
and architecture, and of course the mobile arts of poetry and music in all
their larger forms. This general thesis may be extensively developed.
It is here mentioned simply to justify references to the general taste for
drama, of which the musical drama was a result and by which at first it
was dominated.
The entire modern drama—theatre and opera—is immediately
descended from practices in the Middle Ages that were
instituted and sustained by the Church. The beginning was
doubtless in the liturgy itself—the Mass, for instance, being a
sort of reënactment of the sacrifice of Christ. But the connection
is clearest with the particular undertakings known as
Mysteries, Miracle-Plays and Moralities, all of which were originally
designed to give religious instruction and edification,
though from the first tending to pass over into secular diversions.
These were the direct precursors of the opera and
the oratorio, even though originally they may have contained
no important musical features whatever.
The Mystery was properly a representation of some Biblical story. Its
development was most natural in connection with the stories of Easter,
