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MUSIC. 



consequently the father of modern composition. 

 From what has been said, it appears that this is 

 rather more than he is entitled to. He doubtless 

 contributed much to the improvement of musical 

 composition in his day, but can scarcely be called 

 the inventor of an art previously existing in its 

 rudiments or simplest state. The praise to which 

 he is entitled, and it is no small amount, is for 

 having banished for ever the ancient names of the 

 notes, and substituted for them six syllables that 

 were found to predominate in the first verse of a 

 hymn of St John, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. When the 

 sixteen hundred and twenty tremendous names of 

 the ancient scale are recollected, such as nete 

 it/nemcnon, parypate meson, hypate hypaton, pros- 

 lambanomenos, &c., names which could be of no use 

 in singing! and which, if they were not Greek, we 

 should call Gothic and barbarous, it will readily be 

 conceived what an immense facility was afforded to 

 the student of music by the ingenuity of Guido. 

 The progress of his pupils in a few months was 

 equal to that made in as many years under the old 

 system, and he was repeatedly sent for by the pope, 

 to establish schools upon his plan at Rome. Such, 

 however, was the seclusion of the monasteries, 

 where alone, almost, music was then either taught 

 or practised, so infrequent were communications, 

 and so toilsome was travelling, that even this vast 

 improvement was long in making its way into gene- 

 ral use. It was not till ages after Guido's time, 

 that the octave was completed by the addition of 

 the syllable si, and still later that the Italians sub- 

 stituted the more open and euphonious sound of 

 do, for the contracted one of ut. 



Great as are the obligations of music to Guido 

 for giving simplicity to its arrangement and the 

 method of instruction in it, yet it may be reason- 

 ably doubted if he contributed so much to the pro- 

 gress of the art as the inventor of the time-table, 

 whoever he was. The regular subdivision of notes 

 was not fairly and fully accomplished till the 

 fourteenth century, three hundred years after the 

 time of Guido, and it is uncertain by whom it was 

 then achieved. Musical writers, according to Dr 

 Burney, have heretofore ascribed it to Jean de 

 Muris; but Jean de Muris himself attributes it to 

 Master Franco of Cologne, thus carrying the in- 

 vention back to the middle or end of the eleventh 

 century. The probability seems strong, that many 

 contributed their efforts, at different periods, to 

 the perfecting of that branch of the art, which 

 yields to none in importance. It was the proper 

 and accurate subdivision of notes, and the strict 

 observance of time, which made music a really in- 

 dependent art. Before that was studied, singing 

 must either have been guided by the intention of 

 the composer, and handed down by tradition, or it 

 must have been entirely ad libitum, and at the momen- 

 tary pleasure of the performer; and if a number of 

 vocal or instrumental performers were to execute a 

 piece of music together, nothing but the most im- 

 mense and laborious practice could have enabled 

 them to keep within harmonious distance of each 

 other. The difficulties of the art must have been 

 immeasurably greater than at present, and will ac- 

 count for the great number of years that were 

 thought necessary to attain reasonable skill even in 

 its then imperfect condition, and for the very slow 

 progress which was made in its improvement. 

 Think, fpr a moment, what would be the effect of 

 setting a piece of music before even a well-in- 

 structed choir at the present day, in the score of 



which no measures were marked, and in which but 

 one kind of note, of unvaried form, was used for 

 every tone introduced; a piece, in short, from 

 which nil marks of time were obliterated. It is 

 very much to be feared that the skill of the choir 

 would, for a time at least, be baffled, and that the 

 piece, however simple, would be rapidly converted 

 into a specimen of " most admired disorder." This 

 must be distinctly perceived, in order to attain an 

 idea of the condition of music as an art, both in 

 ancient times and in what are culled the middle ages. 

 The observance of time, if it does not itself con- 

 stitute harmony, is certainly a necessary attendant 

 on its existence; it is that, without which harmony 

 cannot be created; and it must be marked, either 

 by the distinctions of notes and rests, or by the 

 direction of a leader, or by the undirected taste of 

 the performer. In ancient days the time was indi- 

 cated, very imperfectly of course, but still in some 

 degree, by the length of the syllables to which the 

 music was set, and by a leader who beat the time 

 audibly. But in what way it was marked in the 

 chanting of the church, in the first thousand years 

 of Christianity, there are no means of determining. 

 It was, perhaps, a thing of tradition altogether. 

 No wonder, then, the progress of the art both of 

 composition and of performance was slow. No 

 wonder, where so much was left of necessity to 

 the unguided improvisation of the singer or player, 

 that bad judgment was more prevalent than good; 

 and that the art was more and more corrupted from 

 the simplicity which is the guide of correct taste. 



Five centuries elapsed from the time of Guido, 

 during which music was wandering in doubt, and 

 obscurity, and weakness, without a guide on whom 

 to rely, and without a definite object of pursuit. This 

 long period was not, however, wholly lost. The 

 caprices of even bad taste revealed some of the 

 powers of song, as the freaks of alchymy developed 

 some of the laws of nature. Rules of composi- 

 tion, and something like a regular system of nota- 

 tion, became of acknowledged authority ; and in 

 the fifteenth century the art of printing came 

 powerfully to its aid, as it did to that of every 

 other human pursuit. At length, in the sixteenth 

 century, appeared one of those truly illustrious 

 men, endowed with those great powers, with which 

 the Almighty from time to time adorns our nature, 

 for bringing beauty out of deformity, order out of 

 confusion, and for stamping the impress of his fer- 

 tile genius on his own and all succeeding ages. 

 This was Johann Pierluigi of Palestrina. He was 

 born at Praeneste in 1529, a period when, though 

 the rules of musical composition were beginning to 

 be settled, yet the taste and invention displayed in 

 it were not usually such as to excite admiration or 

 pleasure. So bad was the style of the music per- 

 formed in the church, that pope Marcellus II., in 

 1555, was about to issue an edict to abolish the use 

 of it in the sacred office, when Palestrina besought 

 him to hear a mass of a different character from 

 the frivolous, florid music then in vogue, and to 

 give the noble art still a place where it could be 

 most effective. He obtained the permission he 

 asked, and produced a mass, which, by its simpli- 

 city and dignity, completely conquered the strong 

 and probably not unjust dislike the pope had ex- 

 pressed for the more popular music of the day. 

 This signal triumph, obtained by a young man of 

 twenty five or twenty-six years of age, not only 

 saved music from the threatened banishment from 

 its sacred home, but placed Palestrina at once at 



