ancient, the order was analogous to all else of like kith and kin; that is to say, it was first the song, and then the rules. But with what we now speak of, it was confessedly the reverse. And the reason is not far to seek. Music is, incontestably, the child of Nature; but of the actual music that has come down to us, there can be no possible doubt that it was, in the saddest sense of the word, a foster-child. Its very cradle-existence was long and painful; its first dry food was mathematical proportions; its earliest exercises were the motetts and canons to which I have referred, and of which I will give presently the character. Its swaddling-clothes were never fairly taken off. For dreary centuries it had no soul; or was never intended to have one. Its whole recognised existence was counterpoint. It was not allowed to feel or think, but only to calculate. When, from time to time, life's impulsive promptings betrayed themselves, it seemed as if the very harmony of the spheres was insulted. When it grew impatient of monotony, the papal horror of all spontaneous action was at once aroused. We find-with something even yet of amazement, after all we have elsewhere learnt of popish nursing-that a Bull was launched by John XXII., in the year of grace 1322, in which it was complained that there were "persons who would rather have their ears tickled with semi-breves and minims, and such frivolous inventions, than hear the ancient ecclesiastical chant."* It was the old story-chains and fetters for swaddling-clothes-from first to last. Dr. Burney complains that "Ecclesiastical music was always inferior to secular at any given period; and that the mutilated and imperfect scales of the eight modes in Canto fermo had not only injured melody, but that bad harmony continued in the church long after it had ceased to be tolerated elsewhere."+ The reason is simple enough: the world had got the hearts, and the church retained the forms; the music, therefore, industriously called "Church music," had form for its sum and substance, its all in all. Of course the form expanded of sheer necessity, and became diversified. Men would have the "semi-breves and minims," and, in due time, other "frivolous inventions." But only of sheer necessity; and then, so far as ecclesiastical rule could contrive it, it was form still,-form in its essential formalities-form for form's sake. Learning, labour, skilful contrivance, and pedantic tricks-whatever could sophisticate the head and starve the heart, were the legitimate test and characteristic impress of church authority; till the very extravagances of this learned trifling grew up at length to a crisis, and unsanctified power and (I had almost said excusable) petulance began to throw themselves out into shapes that became a scandal; and music was condemned, and all but executed, in the very papal chapel at Rome itself. This was another of the great epochs of church music; the more remarkable since it exhibited a professed reformation by Ibid. vol. ii. p. 166. * Burney's Hist., vol. ii. p. 213. Vol. 59.-No. 275. 5 E papal authority. Whether it was really and truly what it professed to be, or whether, like the contemporaneous proceedings at Trent, it was a reformation that left the root of the matter unreformed, is worth some serious inquiry. Those who look into Ranke, will find certain eloquent expressions, that will be read, perhaps, with different eyes. The great facts may be stated in brief compass, and, with a little needful discrimination, in his own words. "Music," he tells us, "About the middle of the sixteenth century, had become lost in the most intricate perplexity. Prolongations, proportions, imitations, puzzles, fugues, made the glory of the composer. There was no longer any attention paid to the sense (this must mean plainly the mere general sense) "of the words. A great many masses were composed to the tunes of well-known profane melodies. The human voice was employed as a mere instrument. No wonder that the council of Trent took offence."* I call this a master passage. We need not lose time about parts that are either of obvious import, or that will explain themselves as we go on; let us keep our eye on those significant words, "music lost in intricate perplexity-prolongations, proportions, imitations, puzzles, fugues. These are, as I have already intimated, the very essential head and front of offence in so-called ecclesiastical music. Were they, I will not say mitigated, but really reformed? If so, when, where, and by whom? Of Palestrina-whom some call the Homer of ecclesiastical music, and who by the composition of his famous "Pope Marcello's Mass" interposed between the sentence and the act of its excommunication-it may be thought scarce compatible with ingenuousness, not to quote simply from the German professor. I cannot do this, for sufficient reasons. On its own principles, unquestionably, the music of Palestrina is beyond all praise. But then, those principles were neither new principles, nor, as I am prepared to show, sound principles,-their professed object duly considered in the light of conscience and the word of God. Palestrina's music avoided, no doubt, the grosser faults that had brought down the papal thunder. It made the voices sing; and not imitate musical and unmusical "instruments." It made them sing what was written for the church, and not "profane melodies" from out the streets. It made them sing so as to produce certain effects; and not as if they were only playing Bo-peep with one another. Himself had shone as a musical punster in his mass called "The Armed Man." But now there were no quirks and quibbles. The music was grave, harmonious, and majestic. It was not only profoundly learned, but profoundly solemn-some have dared to say profoundly simple. There was even a certain * Ranke's History of the Popes, vol. i. p. 362. earnestness that seemed to savour of devotional feeling. then was wanting? Let us return to our German Professor. What Ranke says, "the meaning of the text is exquisitely brought out." May we understand this in a particular, or only, as I have hinted, in a mere vague and general sense? Why, not to refer to tests beyond the reach of your readers, Dr. Burney actually gives us, as a curiosity, what he calls "an attempt at particular expression." This was in a secular, not an ecclesiastical composition of Palestrina; and, however successful, it should seem to have been uninfluential as it was unusual-for the ingenious Henri Beyle (who took "to mathematics because they did not admit of hypocrisy ") does not hesitate to tell us that, "at length, about 1740" (i.e. 146 years after the death of Palestrina) "and not till then, Durante conceived the idea of marking the sense of the words;" and that "the revolution produced by this very natural idea was general on the other side of the Alps."* This is an extreme statement, but it has, I take it, substantial truth. Be this, however, as it may, the music of Palestrina did not touch the hereditary inherent vice. It wanted rhythm. The words were given without their proper accent, quantity, and proper force. They were made subservient to effects, musical rather than theological, or, I might say, even logical. It was, indeed, but in a mere general sense that they were correctly given at all. The subject of the text, "its profound meaning, its symbolical significancy, its application to the soul and to religion," may have been, if Ranke will have it, apprehended by the composer. It may be as if nature were endowed with music; as if the elements spoke, and all living things had united in one spontaneous concert of prayer." And yet this marvellous, many-voiced utterance (supposing it to be really what is here described) may just want, amidst all its solemnities, the very essential quality of liturgical music. It may be, as Ranke says, "most beautiful and most affecting, even to persons of another faith." None may be able to "hear it without being enrapt." And yet it may be just that Popish music that suits Popish devotion; and, I fear we must add, German sentimentalism - but which we straightforward Bible Christians cannot mistake for true Church music. We do not go to church to see others pray, or to listen, "enrapt," to elemental prayer, but to pray ourselves. As an introductory invocation, solemnization, reverential excitement of our spirits, mere instrumental music, under godly conditions, may be of inestimable value. Beyond this all music in the house of God must be regarded with wholesome jealousy. We do not want "the voice of nature, and all living things," however glorious; but the very actual words of prayer and praise in our own personal lips. Those histrionic impersonations of prayer will not do for us. That dramatic extasy is not what we mean by our "common supplica * Lives of Haydn and Mozart, p. 207. tions." If there be anything, therefore, in the very texture-the warp and woof of the professed marriage garment which stiffens and impedes the free actings of our finer nature at the feast of love, we have just a snare and not a help; such "church music is not liturgical music." But have we really got, after all, beyond that awful category of the German professor" intricate perplexity, prolongations, proportions, imitations, puzzles, fugues?" And here, though I could not pass unnoticed the "Homer of church music," yet, since our real subject is not all church music, but our own church music, we must leave Palestrina and come nearer home. Our own contemporaneous music, then, here in Old England, had the same rudimental source and training, the same professed object and character, and, if Dr. Burney is to be trusted, the same precise merits with that we have been glancing at. Our Taverners, Fayrfaxes, Farrants, Burtons, and Tyes, produced music, cognate and co-worthy, before Palestrina had acquired a name.* But it was all of the true "church" stamp, "harmony wonderful, labour distressing; effect, in general, grave and sedate, sometimes solemn." This is Burney's account of it; but, with just so much of what I must claim to call the solemnity of true liturgical music, that, as the historian goes on to tell us, "the ears of the congregation must seem to have had much less to attend to than the eye of the performer, who was to solve canonical mysteries, and discover latent beauties of ingenuity and contrivance." All this sounds very like the "intricate perplexities" we have the Professor's authority for complaining of. But here it may be well to put into more explicit language, an essential something the historian has left in general terms. Of these "canonical mysteries," then, the most uninitiated may have sufficient notion from the following definitions of the words "fugue and canon," in Dr. Busby's well-known Dictionary of Music:- J "Fugue. A multisonous composition, the plan or purpose of which is to support, through its several parts," (the several instruments or voices) "the subject" (air or phrase) "with which it commences, and which is always led off by some one of its parts, it being the office of the other parts to pursue the subject; and the Latin substantive fuga, signifying a flight, such a composition is called a fugue." The definition of the "canon " will now be easily understood:"Canon. A Rule. A word announcing a species of composition, so called because every bar of it is written agreeably to certain rules previously prescribed. These rules, whatever the number of parts, dictate a perpetual fugue, which fugue may be simple, double, or triple; reversed or inverted, resolved or unresolved, finite or infinite." Whether the intrinsic power, beauty, and interest of music, in See this asserted again and again, vol. ii. pp. 554, 555, 583; vol. iii. pp. 11-13. † Hist. vol. ii. p. 479. itself considered, be really heightened by the employment of all this "ingenuity and contrivance," or whether such work belong properly to music, mathematics, or the game of dominoes, is not the matter before us. We have to do with liturgical music; with music, that is to say, as the articulate channel of certain words of actual prayer. Two simple and practical questions, therefore, at once suggest themselves; viz., first, Do those words exhibit, or suppose, this continual wishing not to fly unseen? And if not, then, secondly, does the music which does exhibit it, which consists of it, and makes a merit of it-does such music comport with its title of liturgical music? Can, in fact, the socalled musical faculty be occupied in chasing musical subjects in cunning mazes and endless flight, and the devotional faculty, absorbed the while in its professed intercourse with things unseen? There can be but one answer to these inquiries. Your readers, then, have only to add to the above definitions the simple fact, that the music both of Palestrina and the abovenamed fathers of our English school is, from one end to the other, constructed, whatever the subject of the words, on the principles thus described; the several voices, and the words along with them, pursuing, one after the other, the hunted "subject," or, as it was ominously called, "motive," in this absorbing "flight," and all with a sleepless ambition of difficult contrivance, and all but impossible success-I say, your readers have but to put these things together, and they are perfectly qualified, though without the slightest knowledge of counterpoint, to pronounce whether such music is, in the light of the sanctuary, liturgical music. Thus, then, it was at our own Reformation. If it be asked, as well it may, whether, in that shaking of our spiritual "heaven and earth," such a state of things was not shattered in pieces, the reply demands only a little discrimination, and almost as little research. But I have already occupied my full share of your valuable columns. . PRESBYTER. THE RHETORIC OF CONVERSATION. The Rhetoric of Conversation: with Hints, especially to Christians, on the Use of the Tongue. Edited, with Introduction, by the Rev. Stephen Jenner, M.A., Author of "Essays on the Errors of the Day," &c. &c. London: Bentley. 1860. THIS volume treats of a subject of no common importance. And yet it is a subject that has never before, in this country at least, been taken for discussion, and handled in any set treatise. Conversation, in the modern sense of the word, has been regarded as a |