60 Professor C. Hubert H. Parry [Feb. 28, 



It is true the free lances of art and the secularists had done some- 

 thing towards defining the plan of movements by cadences like ours, 

 but matters did not come to a crisis till men began to alter their 

 point of view. The change of point of view was ultimately brought 

 about by one of the most deliberate and conscious revolutions ever 

 attempted in art. 



The beginning of our modern development of opera and oratorio, 

 and all the modern instrumental forms of art, was the fruit of 

 some speculations of a group of Italian enthusiasts at the end 

 of the sixteenth century, who hoped to be able to revive the 

 ancient manner of performing Greek dramas. They imagined that 

 it could be achieved by making a musical imitation of the cadences of 

 the voice in declamation, and adding the support of some simple 

 instrumental accompaniment. The result was one of the most chaotic 

 and formless specimens of art ever devised by the mind of man. 

 Their instinct for systematic progressions of chords was totally unde- 

 veloped, as was their sense of key in our modern sense ; and they 

 therefore had no principle by which to arrive at any effect of 

 design. Moreover, their radical idea almost precluded the pos- 

 sibility of musical design, as they thought nothing was needed 

 but recitation of the poetry, and that the dramatic situation and 

 the language would carry the attention along and sufficiently 

 occupy the mind without need of musical form. Their experiments 

 were all the more crude because the composers were practically 

 amateurs, with no knowledge of the technique of their art ; and 

 though they had great zeal, it was by no means zeal according to 

 knowledge, but often outran discretion. But it may be said, on the 

 other hand, that absence of knowledge of the traditions of their art left 

 them all the freer to experiment in the new country they had found, 

 and the obviousness of their mistakes led the sooner to their being 

 reformed. 



The situation is precisely analogous to that of the earliest stages 

 of scale-making, only in a different plane. The texture of the early 

 oratorios, operas, and cantatas was almost homogeneous. The recita- 

 tive winds helplessly along, page after page, in monotonous inconse- 

 quence, only occasionally varied by a fragment rather more expressive 

 than the rest, and by short fragments of very empty instrumental 

 music called " ritornellos," and equally pointless fragments of chorus. 

 The way in which nuclei began to form was through composers per- 

 ceiving what excellent opportunities for musical expression were 

 offered by salient points of special dramatic or pathetic interest in 

 the plays, and they soon saw that a point which was brought 

 out strongly in this manner, laid special hold of the audience. When 

 this was once discovered, it did not take them long to realise the 

 effect which was produced by repeating such a passage ; and though 

 it took them half a century to find the most suitable manner to dis- 

 pose of such a balance of phrases, it was within twelve years of the 

 first operatic venture that Montcverde made a great effect by the 



