ENGLISH VOCAL MUSIC. J5 



One would think that, with a view to bringing about a better 

 order of things,, the cultivation of a national school of truly English 

 music might well be made a public concern, an object deserving of 

 national protection. Other branches of the fine arts have been deemed 

 worthy of the national care, and why not our music ? A spark of 

 this feeling seems to have animated a few choice spirits, who, imbued 

 with the true feeling of the art, have lately organized a society, whose 

 object is to elevate the public taste from its debased condition, by 

 the revival and performance of those splendid productions, for which 

 this country stood unrivalled in its Augustan age of vocal harmony. 

 How noble and truly national would be an institution in which, the 

 mind expanded by a course of liberal study, the foundation should 

 be laid for a succession of such talents. We should then stand a 

 chance of hearing English music sung with a purity of expression, 

 accent, and pronunciation, which would, unlike most of the singing 

 of the present day, carry with it evidence of something more than a 

 parish education. A tithe of the patronage that has been bestowed 

 on the Tenterden-street humbug, directed to such an object, would 

 have produced a result that would have raised the character of our 

 music to have been the admiration, instead of the jeer, of Europe. 



Of the academy it is no secret to say, that it has been notoriously 

 a failure. At starting, its professed object was the education of a 

 constant succession of native talent, which should by degrees render 

 us independant of foreign artists for our operas and concerts. What 

 has been the result ? In ten years about three instrumental per- 

 formers have been produced who will probably attain to some emi- 

 nence ; but of its vocalists, not one has shown any indication of rising 

 beyond a barely respectable mediocrity. The young gentlemen seem 

 to have a greater penchant for exhibiting themselves in the streets, with 

 dress canes and cigars than for pursuing those severe studies with- 

 out which, though they may by dint of manual dexterity perchance 

 become fiddlers, they never can be musicians. A want of a regular 

 establishment of resident masters, as in the conservatoires of our con- 

 tinental neighbours, is a great cause of its ill success. The teachers 

 of the academy are the teachers of all the town ; absorbed in their 

 private pupils, their concerts, their theatrical engagements, these 

 hommes d'affaires give their hurried scrambling lessons to the academy 

 pupils who catch just what they can, and guess the rest. Mark the 

 trickery of their exhibition concerts. The same set of faces eke out 

 their inefficient ranks, year after year ; once a pupil always a pupil 

 veterans of threescore are still post-boys ! 



