342 

 FINE ARTS.— MUSIC. 



VOCAL. 



Gresham Prize Composition, Anthem (for 1835), — My Soul doth 

 magnify the Lord. Composed by Charles Lucas. London : J. A. 

 Novello. 



The last chorus of this composition gives evidence of considerable 

 power over the resources of art, and of the proper application of 

 those resources : in all that precedes it, we lament to see this power 

 employed in learned trifling and pedantic dullness. An anthem 

 composed entirely of canons is certainly a novelty, and one which 

 we should be sorry to see imitated. The choral fugue is well de- 

 veloped, and terminates on a pedale almost worthy of Leo himself. 



The Chamois Hunter. Song. By Miss Eliza Porter. London : 

 Cramer & Co. 



One of the most pleasing evidences of the inarch of intellect is 

 to be found in the increasing mental cultivation of the fair sex, in 

 the gradual wearing away of the degrading prejudice that woman 

 is fit only to learn how best to bake a pudding or embroider a coun- 

 terpane, as well as in the determination which seems to have in- 

 spired her no longer to submit to the intellectual tyranny which 

 has hitherto smothered her talents, and kept her powers in abey- 

 ance. Mrs. Somerville, Mrs. Marcet, Miss Martineau, and many 

 others have shewn, that not only in Poetry, but even in science 

 itself, woman can come off with honour in the race, where man 

 has hitherto arrogated to himself the sole right of entering. If in 

 Music she has not yet been equally successful, we must assuredly 

 look for some other cause than mental inferiority ; and that cause 

 lies, we shall probably find, in the defective method of tuition and 

 study at present too universally employed in imparting and acquir- 

 ing a knowledge of the art. As no one, how great soever his geni- 

 us, can write what is worthy of lasting fame without much previ- 

 ous reading and reflection, so in Music, no one can hope to produce 

 what will stand the test of time (which should be the aim of every 

 composer who is not under the necessity of courting present popu- 

 larity), unless he has studied the classical works of other times, 

 and accustomed himself to regard them as models more worthy of 

 imitation than the ephemeral favourites of an unenlightened pub- 

 lic. The lady composers, however, appear to think themselves 

 exempt from this condition, which to them may seem to impose the 

 necessity of drudgery : but, let us tell them, that, as there is no 

 royal road to science, so there is no lady's road to music. To write 

 even correctly, much study is indispensable : to our fair friends, 

 however, correctness is evidently a point of very secondary import- 



