a word which, as applied to music, I shall best define by reading you a passage which I have translated from an able French writer.

"M. Villoteau, a musician formerly attached to the French Opera, was among the number of Savans who accompanied Bonaparte in his expedition to Egypt. His occupation was to collect information about the music of the various Orientals who are to be found in that country. On his arrival at Cairo, he placed himself under an Arabian music master, whose lessons consisted in teaching his pupil to sing certain airs by ear and from memory; for in Egypt he is the most approved artist who knows the greatest number of tunes by heart. M. Villoteau, who proposed to collect all the national melodies he could find, set to work to write, under the dictation of his instructor; and observing, while he wrote, that the intonation of the latter was occasionally false, he took care to allow for his (supposed) inaccuracies, and to put on paper not exactly what his instructor sang, which indeed in our notation would have been impossible, but what it might be supposed he had meant to sing. This operation ended, M. Villoteau proceeded to test practically the accuracy of his own work; but the Arab stopped him in the middle of the first phrase, telling him that he (M. Villoteau) was singing out of tune. Thereupon followed a very lively discussion between master and pupil; each maintaining that his own intonation was unimpeachable, and neither allowing the other to sing half a dozen notes without protest. At last it occurred to M. Villoteau that there must be something in this discrepancy which required closer investigation. He procured a lute of native facture, the finger-board of which was divided (by frets), according to the rules of the Arabian musical scale. The mystery was explained in a moment. An inspection of this instrument showed him, to his great surprise, that the very elements of the music with which he was familiar, and those of the music with which he desired

The Musical Nations of Europe.

7

to make acquaintance, were absolutely different. The intervals. of the two scales were dissimilar, and the education of the European musician made it as difficult for him to seize or appreciate Arabian melody as to execute it."*

I shall have occasion, in another lecture, to allude to the various modes, or forms of scale, used in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is difficult enough for an ear trained in the nineteenth century, to reconcile itself to some of these. But to reconcile itself to another "system" seems not so much difficult as impossible. Happily it is not in the least necessary. The modern European system, though the exigences of practice prevent its being absolutely true, is nearer the truth than any other; and its inaccuracies are so slight as to cause little disturbance to the most refined ear. I mean by this that all our music is of necessity a little out of tune; for some of our intervals vary, however slightly, from those deduced from the division of a musical string into aliquot parts. But the discrepancy is so slight, and distributed by "equal temperament" over so many instances, that it is practically of no consequence.

To return. Not only does the history of modern music concern Europe only, but a very small portion of it. For though it is impossible to name any European people which has not contributed somebody or something to the progress of the art, that progress has been due chiefly to three nations :-the Belgians and Northern French, who as regards this subject must be considered as one people, and of whom I shall speak for the future as the Gallo-Belgians, the Italians, the Germans, and more recently the French. Doubtless we (English) have had, from an early period, a school, and a great one, of our own. Spain too has not been without its composers and performers; and Russia and Scandinavia are, and have long been, musical nations. But it would be hard to prove that any one Fétis, "Biographie Universelle des Musiciens." Bruxelles, 1837, p. xl.

tom. i.

8

The Four Periods of Musical History.

of these nations has contributed directly to the progress of the art; or that the art would have been other than it is, if none of them had ever practised it. It is a little mortifying to Durselves, but no less true, that foreigners "make a point" of ignoring our existence as a musical people. Of the works of English musicians little is known in Germany, nothing in France and Italy. Foreign musical histories, dictionaries and periodicals, when they notice us at all, which is not often, are pretty sure to tell their readers something or other about us which is not true. They misspell our names, credit us with works to which we have no claim, and kill us years before our time.

The history of modern music may be conveniently divided into four Periods. During the First there was little produced of any interest, other than historical, to the musician. But as a period in the history of the world is commonly assigned to its formation out of Chaos, so a period in Musical History seems due to those experiments in sound the result of which is what we now call music, and to those attempts at representing sound to which we owe modern notation. No date can be safely assigned to the beginning of this First Period; but it may be considered to have ended about the year 1400. The Second Period extends from this date to about the year 1600; the Third to about 1750. In the Fourth we are now living.

These Periods may be thus described :—the First, as a period of preparation; the Second, as that of the old tonality, and of (to us) the old masters; the Fourth, as that of the modern tonality, and the modern school; and the Third as a transition period from the Second to the Fourth.

The boundary lines of these Periods you will find, here and there, somewhat devious and faint. One musician may have to be included in a period which had nominally ended ere his career was fairly begun. For another it is hard to find a place at all; such an anachronism does he present. But on a

First Public Use of Music.

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moment's reflection, you will cease to wonder at this; seeing that in all ages there have been men before, as well as men behind, their age; prospective, as well as retrospective, men. The most striking examples of this latter class are to be found, appropriately enough, in the Roman School. The Roman School attained its highest development in the second half of the sixteenth century. It does not so much belong to as con stitute the Second Period. Yet it can scarcely be said to have expired till the middle of the last century, when Pitoni, among musicians "ultimus Romanorum," finished a career which would seem to have been misplaced by two centuries. Nevertheless, with the aid of these divisions, we shall be enabled to arrange our musical chronology much better than without them. They admit, as you will find, of considerable subdivision.

The first public use of music, by every people, has been a "religious" use. The means presented by the art of amplifying and prolonging ceremonial; of raising, and of sustaining, in great multitudes, a similar state of feeling; above all, of giving simultaneous expression to this feeling, be it what it may;-all these qualities would at all times have recommended music to those on whom the arrangement of rites and ceremonies has fallen. That the early Christians loved and practised music we know from sacred as well as profane history. We are told that Paul and Silas, when in captivity, "prayed and sang praises to God," at midnight. We know, too,† that St. Paul distinguishes singing" with the spirit," from singing "with the understanding also." The principal charge of Pliny the Younger against the Christians was, that they sang hymns to Christ as to God-"quasi Deo."

We have no authentic record, nor could such be expected, as to the kind of music in which the piety of the early Christian converts found expression. Its origin, too, in spite of diligent enquiry, is still involved in obscurity, still matter of doubt.

*Acts xvi. 25.

+1 Cor. xiv. 15.

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Early Christian Music.

The music of the Primitive Church may have been inherited from the Jews, or borrowed from the Greeks; or it may have been an altogether original creation, itself the result of a new faith.

In regard to the first hypothesis it has been argued that the Service of the Jewish Temple was interrupted by the Captivity; and that the Jewish melody, not being noted, would, on the return of the Jews to their native land, prove difficult if not impossible to recover. After the Captivity, too, the Jews became more like other people in customs and externals. The new Temple, for example, was built in the Corinthian style. Surely Greek melody might easily have found its way into it. Moreover, this difficulty even surmounted, and proof afforded that Jewish melodies were known to and used by the Apostles, how could they have been transmitted to new churches, and taught to new converts, at Ephesus, Corinth, Rome, and elsewhere? Again, the early Christians would be too anxious to steer clear of anything that might even seem like Judaism, to take what they could get from others from the Jews.

In regard to the second hypothesis it has been argued that the early, or at least earliest, converts to Christianity were for the most too poor, too simple, and too prejudiced against Greek art and life, to adopt or imitate anything belonging to either. On the other hand, it is certain that this condition of feeling or of things was not, could not be, long maintained. The Christians early participated in many indifferent heathen customs. They adopted the ram-bearing Hermes as the Good Shepherd, and used Orpheus as a symbol, if not a representation, of our Lord. They made sarcophagi of pagan forms, and adopted the Basilica, essentially a secular structure, as their first church. Prudentius wrote in the language and metre of Virgil. Then again has not the poverty and ignorance of the early Christians been exaggerated? To be "poor in spirit," in the scriptural sense, is not surely of necessity to be poor in intelligence or even in circumstances. Persons of high rank and