0;j the first Principles of Music, 307 



correspondent H. Upington, Esq.; and I feel anxious to apprize 

 that gentleman, as well as your musical readers, that a very 

 plain and apparently correct illustration of his principles has made 

 its appearance some time ago in a little publication called " The 

 Piano-Forte Pocket Companion," which professes to investi- 

 gate the science and practice of music, not by drawing rules for 

 vocal melody from the mathematical measures of the monochord, 

 or the mere' artificial arrangement of intervals as expressed by a 

 keved instrument, but by investigating the laws of melody, and 

 even harmony, from plain and simple facts connected, with the 

 voice, the ear, and the mind, seeking in them for XhQ first prin- 

 ciples of music, finding a counterpart of these principles in the 

 monochord and other sonorous bodies, and applying them to 

 artificial imitative instruments. 



Mr. Upington, at page 40 of your Magazine for January last, 

 observes that, what the nature' a manner of transmission of 

 those particles may be, which, after being thrown off by the vi ■ 

 bratingbodv, arrive at the ear, has not been hitherto discovered; 

 — and yet that our organ of perception has been gifted by the 

 Creator with the faculty of comparing, through the medium of 

 the ear, the relative magnitude or number, or perhaps the pe- 

 culiar arrangement, of these particles, equally as the proportions 

 of a picture through the medium of the eye, appears too reason- 

 able to dispute. 



Most certainly; and Mr. Upington's difficulty is precisely that 

 which has hitherto puzzled all writers on nmsic. But that diffi- 

 culty is done away bv the little work alluded to ; and a theory 

 offered, which, if it is correct, bids fair to explain every musical 

 difficulty that has yet appeared in the science. 



Much light seems likely also to burst upon the science from a 

 radical distinction drawn between the major and minor ; the 

 one being stated to be naturally an ascending;, and the other a 

 descending octave— a distinction which at once explains why the 

 artificial ascending diatonic minor octave requires flats and 

 sharps which are rejected in descent. 



This distinction also seems capable of explaining many of the 

 points noticed by Mr. Upington ; whilst others, especially in re- 

 gard to the inte'rvals both in melody and harmony, are demon- 

 strated to have their origin in the musical conformation of man 

 himself, and not in the artificial arrangement of the key-board. 



Unus, 



i: 2 LIII. Notices 



