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Mr. Henry Walford Davies 



[June 11, 



Table of Compakison. — I. 

 Identical Attributes of Verbal and Musical Expression. 



Attributes of 

 utterance. 



Verbal application. 



Musical application. 



1. Inflection. In rise and fall of the 



In melody. 



2. Ehythm. 



3. Emphasis. 



4. Quality. 



speaking voice. 

 In verbal quantities (metre). 

 In verbal accent. 



In rhythmics of every kind. 

 In loud and soft (as indicated 

 by so-called marks of ex- 

 pression). 

 In verbal colours and timbre In harmonv and timbre of 



of speaking voice. 



singing voice and of musi- 

 cal instruments. 



For purposes. of illustration the Oxford Book of Terse was opened 

 haphazard, and the passages printed in your programmes were 

 selected from the chance page. In these the working of the four 

 identities — [illustrations were here spoken and sung] — may so easily 

 be traced that it is hard to see how the language of music can escape 

 from becoming the Esperanto of all nations. The relation is so 

 intimate that many poems almost set themselves to music. But at 

 this point we may trace some interesting tendencies in the illus- 

 trations before us. Look at the biting satire and insistent 

 rhythm of No. 2 on your programme, with its savage accents 

 on the first word of each stanza, and then listen to Arne's setting ; 

 a startling discrepancy shows itself. Fortunately, an excellent 

 modern setting by Mr. Roger Quilter exists which preserves the 

 identities, and while it is perhaps less elegant or pleasing melody 

 than Arne's, it enhances Shakespeare's rhythms, inflection and em- 

 phasis in a way that convinces and makes the words more easily 

 memorable. 



The next illustration shows the constant tendency of musical 

 rhythms to repeat and extend themselves beyond all possible needs of 

 the words themselves, and shows also how the old composers met this 

 by ingenious use of the slender but light-hearted and good-nattu-ed 

 fa-la-la refrains. To these and like refrains we shall doubtless 

 return increasingly in future choral music. 



The next example directs your attention to a significant instance 

 of verbal colour or quality which calls for exact and faithful matching 

 of harmony and tone of voice in the musical setting : 



I've seen Tweed's silver streams glittering in the sunny beams 

 Grow drumlie and dark — 



