330 On the Music of the Middle Ages. 
He also remarks that singers were as careful to execute, as authors 
were to compose their Music, according to rhythmical principles; 
but that even in his time the practice had sadly fallen off: 
‘Que consideratio jamdudum obiit, imo sepulta est.” 
There can be no doubt that in those days, as at the present time, 
Music was often deplorably mangled through the ignorance, or 
perhaps what is still more common, the conceit of those who were 
entrusted with its execution; and towards the end of the 15th cen- 
tury, the fine old melodious and rhythmical Chant of St. Gregory 
had in many places degenerated into a slow drawling movement, 
perfectly intolerable to the cultivated ear. Of the ignorance of 
many of the singers, even in his day, Guido speaks with the hearty 
indignation of a real musician. 
‘¢ Musicorum et cantorum magna est distantia. 
Isti dicunt, illi sciunt que componit musica. 
Nam qui facit quod non sapit, diffinitur bestia.” 
Which I have attempted to translate, as follows: 
Twixt those who sing and who compose 
The space can’t be increased, 
The one prepare, the other serve, 
The sweets for Music’s Feast; 
And he who serves, but knows not what, 
Is aptly termed a beast. 
But besides the ignorance of some there was another abuse, 
arising from the conceit of others, described in the following quaint 
extract from an English writer of the time of Richard the Second. 
‘‘When there been fourty or fifty in a queer, three or four proud and 
lecherous Lords shullen knack the most devout service, that no man shall hear 
the sentence, and all others shallen be dumb, and look on them as fools: And 
then strumpets and thieves praisen Sire Jack or Hobb, and William the proud 
Clerk, how smallen they knacken their notes, and seyn they serven well God and 
holy Church, when they despisen God in his face, and letten (hinder) other men 
of their devotion and compunction, and stirren them to worldly vanity.” 
MS. of Prelates, apud. Lewis. 134. Quoted by Lingard. 
WYCLIFFE. 
Vol. ii. 266. 
The abuses, however, in the mode of performance do not affect 
the principles upon which the Music was composed, and having 
established that it was essentially rhythmical in its nature, I must 
