WELSH MUSIC. 



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^ 





— (- 



=g — 



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'-'W- 



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:=5 





After twenty-four leflbns, or meafures, as they are called, of this kind, there follow twelve variations on a ground bafe. 



^ n /? n n n n n 



/ / y / 



^ ^ ^ ^ 



E^ 



fe^fefel 



3- 



This counterpoint, however artlefs it may feem, is too 

 modern for fuch remote antiquity as is given to it. The 

 falfe 5th, from B to F, in the firft example, has not been 

 long allovved in harmony; and the unprepared yth, from 

 B to A, in the fecond example, is a crudity that has been 

 but very lately tolerated. 



That the ancient inhabitants of Wales were great encou- 

 ragers of poetry and mufic, cannot be difputed, as many 

 fpecimens of Cambro-Britifh verfification of undoubted 

 antiquity ftiU fubfift ; and that thefe poems, as weU as 

 thofe of ancient Greece and Rome, were originally fung 

 and accompanied with inftruments, is very natural and rea- 

 lonable to beheve ; but that a rude and uncivihzed people, 

 dnven into a mountainous and barren country, without 

 commerce or communication with the reft of Europe, 

 Jhould invent counUrpoinl, and cultivate harmony, at a period 

 when it was unknown to the moft poLfhed and refined 



inhabitants of the earth, ftill remains a problem of difficult 

 folution. 



Dr. Burney gives a farther account of this curious MS. 

 in fpeaking of national mujlc, and the eftablifhment of 

 mufical games or contefts in Wales, before any other 

 mufic feems to have been much cultivated in the reft 

 of the ifland, except the ecclefiaftical or Gregorian chant, 

 which the Britons, driven into the mountains of Wales by 

 the Saxons, feem to have been very unwilling to receive 

 from the Roman miflionaries that were fent over to convert 

 their conquerors. The Britifh annals and fongs afcribe 

 with great refentment the flaughter of the monks at Ban- 

 gor, by Ethelbert, king of Kent, to the inftigation of 

 Auftin the monk, on account of their having refufed to 

 fubmit to the jurifdidlion of pope Gregory, and the regula- 

 tions he propofed. 



WELWIN, 



