It was in the domain of organ music, the organ being itself the liturgical instrument "par excellence", that Portugal's composers of the 16th and 17th centuries achieved particularly high standards. Portuguese organs, as well as Spanish ones, usually had just one manual, without pedalboard. (Or, if a pedalboard was included, it was very basic, and it forbade any melodic complexity of the sort that German composers of organ music from the early 16th century, such as Arnolt Schlick, took for granted in their own pedal parts.) Nevertheless, the surviving music conceived for these organs does often show considerable contrapuntal ingenuity as far as the writing for keyboard is concerned.