ENGLISH VOCAL MUSIC, 



To make a true musician, either as a composer or as a singer, much 

 more is requisite than is usually considered to be so. A natural 

 poetical taste, and a highly cultivated mind are essential components, 

 and a thorough knowledge of the capabilities of the language, and 

 of the application to it of the principles of elocution, are indis- 

 pensable. To these should be added, a full acquaintance with the 

 ancient and modern history of the science, and of the works of those 

 great men who have contributed to its development and progress. 



These things are not thought of, or even known of, by one in a 

 hundred, and the fruit of this ignorance is, an inundation of (mis- 

 called) vocal music, in almost every bar of which, is to be found a 

 violation of some canon of the musical, or of the common English 

 grammar. There is a well known instance of false accentuation in 

 the popular song, " The Death of Nelson," the emphasis being, 

 against all rule, laid on the words we print in capitals : 

 THREE cheers our gallant seamen gave ; 

 Too well the gallant hero fought 

 OUR hearts were bounding then. 



It is certain, however, that after-experience led the celebrated singer, 

 whose name also appeared as the author of the song, to correct, in 

 singing, such egregious errors; and it is more than probable that, at 

 that period, like Mr. Pack wood, he kept a journeyman composer. 



But what shall we say to the vitiated taste of the present day, which 

 has swallowed such a specimen of false accent as this ! 



DAY HAS gone | DOWN ON the | BALTIC'S broad | BILLOW. 

 What a splendid alliteration too 



Baltic's Broad Billow ! 



A course of study in general elocution ought to form an important 

 part in the education of a vocal performer. Instead of possessing 

 this or any other accomplishment, singers are, beyond the mere prac- 

 tice of their art, in general, the most uninformed, unintellectual 

 persons in society. To this shallowness of mind is mainly to be attri- 

 butable the unpopularity, among ordinary performers, of the sound 

 and vigorous compositions of the great German and elder English 

 masters, and the preference that is by the same class almost univer- 

 sally shewn for the fiddle-de-dees of the modern Rossinian school. 

 The giant conceptions and magnificent effects of such men as Handel, 

 Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven, are so far beyond the mental calibre 

 of our mere fashionable artists that, overwhelmed by a consciousness 

 of their own littleness, they regard with envy, even with hatred, that 

 excellence which they have not expansion of mind to comprehend. 

 With such men as these latter for our composers, our teachers, and our 

 concert-hatchers, what can be expected but that the national taste 

 should be, as it is, at the lowest pitch of degradation ? Hence the only 

 successful publications of the present day have been the vilest dog- 

 grel verse, or nauseating sickly sentiment, linked to the most com- 

 monplace strains, defaced with some hideous lithographic libel on 

 one or other of the works of God's creation, and the whole helped off 

 by two or three deliberate untruths on the title-page ; and a series of 

 advertisements, in which impudence, ignorance, and falsehood un- 

 blushingly contend for the pre-eminence. 



