458 « JVhelher Music is necessary to the Orator,—' 



with tlie Tiiiiid, being comj3arativcly the lot of all. Nature, so 

 termed, can by no means command the intervals ; neither can 

 she at all times command the qualities: the frequently deep, 

 yet sufficiently varied and expressive intonations of the enraged 

 Spani'irJ, like those of the ancient Roman the gravity of whose 

 speaking haljits, or rather of whose accentuation he apparently 

 inherits [some consider these habits oriental] are terrific as 

 thunder when compared with the insignificant monotonous squeak 

 of the American savage'^. 



Reverting to that part of my observation which represented 

 the apparently contracted scale of the Stkaker, whose melody 

 was almost confined to the limits of the JiJ^th, called by the 

 Greeks the diapente, — is there not in this case a curious coin- 

 cidence between the polite usages of the modern and the ancient? 

 Thai well-known passage of Dionysins of Halicarnassus, sq 

 twisted and perverted by modern theorists, is a memorable testi- 

 mony of this interesting fact. The literal translation, from Up- 

 ton's edition, sect. xi. is this : 



" The melody of discourse [JiaXsjcrou]," says Dionvsius, " is 

 measured by very nearly [oag eyyto-raf] that interval called the 

 diapente [or fiftli] neither strained to sharpness beyond three 

 tones and a semitone, [which is the extent of that interval,] nor 

 relaxed to gravity [after the ascent is accomplished] beyond that 

 space." 



But after all, is not every desirable tone (for speech) con- 

 tained ti'ithin the diapente ? Does it not comprise our second, 

 thirds, dLwAJiflh, with all the intermediate semitones ? And for 

 majesty, what interval can surpass the fourth ? I &ha.\\ give an 

 example. 



What a noble anapcest, and how indicative of war ! depicting 

 most strikingly to cur imagination the steady determined onset 



* Rousseau iu his Musical Dictionary, article Accent, spealcing of the 

 habitual difference among Europeans themselves in expressing the various 

 l)assions, saj's : " L'Allemand hausse egalement et foitcment la voix dans 

 Ja colere; il eric toujours sur le mcme ton: lltalicn, que niille mouveniens 

 divers agitent rapidement ct succcssivement dans le mene cas, nioditie sa 

 voix de inillc maniercs. Le meme fond de passion rcgne dans son ame ; 

 mais quelle varicto d'cxpressions dans ses Accens !" 



•f- These words, though in my opinion material to the sense, by acknow- 

 ledging the impossibilily of nieasurhig our extremes wiith accuracy, have 

 been omitted by Mr. Mitford, in his otherwise faithful translation. See " Har- 

 mony in Language." As to the general meaning of melodizing within the 

 diapente, [or bet-.veen C and G, these extremes being included,] it is suf- 

 ticrentlv obvious. 



of 



