Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/100

Rh MUSIC [HISTORY. pion, Ives, and William and Henry Lawes. The name of Henry Purcell (1658-1695) figures brightly in this class of composition ; but, except his Dido and Eneas, written when he was eighteen, his so-called operas are more properly spoken dramas interspersed with music music of highly dramatic character, but episodical rather than elemental in the design. This is due to an axiom of Dryden, the principal and indeed the model dramatist of the day, that music is not the natural medium of speech, and hence may only be assigned in dramatic representation to preternatural beings, such as spirits, enchanters, and witches, maniacs also, through the abnormality of their condition, being admitted into the privileged category of those who may sing their conceits, their spells, their charms, and their ravings. The &quot;frost scene&quot; in King Arthur, the &quot;incantation&quot; in the Indian Queen, and the cantatas for Altisidora and Cardenio in Don Quixote are masterpieces of lyrical art that give warrant of the success that might have been achieved had PurcelPs librettists given range in the province of humanity for his vivid imagination. Puritan Earlier in the history of English opera Avas the pro- influ- duction of The Siege of Rhodes, an entirely musical com- lce position, the joint work of Dr Charles Colman, Captain Henry Cook, Henry Lawes, and George Hudson, Avhich was performed at Rutland House in Charterhouse Square in 1656, under the express licence of Cromwell to Sir William Davenant, and retained the stage until some years after the Restoration ; the existence of its music is unknown, but a copy of its libretto in the British Museum amply details its construction. Separate mention is made of this remarkable historical incident as serving to refute the common supposition that Puritan influence impelled the decadence of music in England. In truth, this influence stirred the spirit of opposition in persons of a different tendency and was virtually the cause of a very powerful counteraction, and through this of many highly-significant things as to the perpetuation of our music of the past, if not of the continuance of our music in the future. It was during the Commonwealth that John Playford printed Ayres and Dialogues, a book that comprises with many pleasant pieces the first three that ever were defined by the word glee, a term that later times have wontedly acknowledged and boasted as the designation of a class of music specially English. It was during the Common wealth that the same publisher issued several editions of The Dancing Master, each being a variation of the fore going ; and this is the work to which we owe the preserva tion of all the beautiful English ballad-tunes of earlier date that are, many of them, not to be found in previous print or manuscript. It was in that very opera, The Siege of Rhodes, that Mrs Colman, daughter-in-law of one of the composers, sustained the character of lanthe, she being the first female who ever took part in a public musical or dramatic performance in England. Cantata. Notice must not be omitted of the application of recita tive to other than theatrical purpose. The cantata of Galilei has been cited ; it was followed by many a piece under the same designation, dramatic monologues in which the mainly prevailing declamation was relieved by occa sional rhythmical strains, and in the composition of these Carissimi, Stradella, Clari, Purcell, and Blow have left admirable specimens. Later, the term acquired a widely- changed meaning, it having been applied in Germany to compositions comprising matter for solo voices and for chorus, expressly for church use, and in England to works equally extensive on sometimes sacred, sometimes secular subjects. Cantatas are sometimes didactic, sometimes narrative, and sometimes dramatic, though never designed for theatrical use. The music of the English Church might demand a English separate history, because of its importance by the side of the church art of other lands, because of the longer permanence of music - its examples than of works in other branches, and because of its unbroken succession of contributors, covering a period of beyond three centuries, whose style has varied with the age in which they wrought, but who in this department have ever aimed to express themselves at their highest. Here, however, only the names of the most noted writers, with an approximation to chronological order, can be given Tallis, Byrde, Farrant, Orlando Gibbons, Dr Child, Dr Benjamin Rogers, Dean Aldrich (as distinguished in logic and in architecture as in music), Dr Blow, Michael Wise, Pelham Humphrey, Henry Purcell, Dr Croft, Dr Greene, Dr Boyce, Dr Nares, Dr Cooke, Battishill, after whom the art sank in character till it received new life from the in fusion of the modern element by Attwood, coeval with whom was Samuel Wesley, and lastly are to be noted Sir John Goss, Dr S. S. Wesley, Dr Dykes (popular for his hymn- tunes), and Henry Smart, who bring the list down to recent personal remembrance. Well esteemed among living re presentatives of this department of music are Barnby, J. B. Calkin, Sir G. J. Elvey, Gadsby, Dr Garrett, Dr Gladstone, Dr H. Hiles, Dr Hopkins, Dr E. G. Monk, Dr W. H. Monk, Sir F. A. G. Ouseley, Dr Stainer, Dr Steggall, Sir Arthur Sullivan, and E. H. Turpin, to which names many might be added. It must be owned, however, that the vast increase of facilities for publication within recent years have multi plied church music almost immeasurably, and exercised the pens more than the wits of writers who prove themselves to be amateurs less by love of music than by love of com posing, and still more by love of notoriety, which is gratified in the circulation among their own connexions of works that gain no acceptance by the world at large. The style, in strictly technical sense, of music for the church is and always has been, in England and elsewhere, identical with that which characterizes contemporaneous music on lay subjects. Some English musicians have of late aimed at, or perhaps only spoken of, a distinction of styles for the church and for the chamber, and this under a supposition that to be archaic was to be sacred, a supposition seemingly founded on the present use of, and high respect for, more ecclesiastical music of early date than of secular music of like age. The supposition overlooks the facts, however, that the church appropriated the tunes of the people eight hundred years ago, while the people framed some of their tunes on the peculiar church modes, that harmony was practised by the people before it was employed by the church, that the style of madrigals appears coincidently in sacred writing, that recitative was first applied to the opera and to the oratorio in the same year, that Monteverde s innova tions in musical combination were at once adopted by church composers, that Purcell, Handel, and Bach wrote in onefold style for both situations, that the glee-writing of the latter half of the 18th century is undistinguish- able from the services and anthems of the period, that Attwood had no different phraseology for the cathedral and the theatre, and that even now, though disguised to the glance by the antiquated notation of minims instead of crotchets, the thoughts expressed and the idiom which is their medium belong not more or less to the one than to the other purpose. Though contention be strong for the contrary, this is true art, presenting the feelings of the time in the time s own language and not making the sanctuary walls a boundary between art and artifice. Attention must now be directed to the natural as Har- opposed to the artificial basis of music. Marin Mersenne had great love and much practical knowledge of music ; he directed his profound learning and rare mathematical attain ments to the investigation of the phenomena of sound ; and