nually result from this deficiency, would be a previous agreement to give equal lengths to the harmonizing notes; that is, to begin and end the corresponding sounds at the same time, in the manner of a modern congregation singing in unison the equallized notes of the common parochial psalmody. Another partial resource would be in the observance of the long and short syllables of the verse; but still, the relative durations, not being precisely ascertained, but left to the loose determination of feeling, and the general rules of prosody, it would often happen that the harmonizing sounds would not meet, and that a discordancy would ensue as great as if the parts of which the composition consists, had been constructed without any view to a harmonized conjunction. Hence, there is no reason whatever to doubt, that the necessity of time in florid counterpoint first suggested its adoption." Vol. I. P. 295.

Of the invention of the time-table we have no certain knowledge; but there is sufficient ground for the opinion, that to John De Muris, (by some styled a Doctor of the Sorbonne,) it owed very considerable improvement; since one of his learned and numerous works, preserved in the Vatican, is a " Treatise on Time, or Measured ̃Music.” That Philippus de Vitriaco, the first distinguished musical writer after De Muris, advanced this object of his predecessor's labours, can scarcely be doubted, when we recollect, that he was the inventor of a new character of time,-the minim. From the successive efforts and ingenuity of these masters, it would appear, that the time-table gradually derived that efficient state by which the means of regular and consentaneous performance were provided, and the cultivation of polyphonic music promoted. To their able and well directed exertions, music owed its earlier improvements in the formation of its consonance, and its assumption of that systematic order in its motion, which laid the foundation for a richer and more elaborate harmony, and could not but lead to that artificial and complicated disposition of transient and protracted sounds, which, in the hands of genius, have since imparted to the higher species of composition so much sweetness, force, and sublimity.

The next chapter of this comprehensive and luminous work canvasses the province of the minstrels and troubadours; an order of men whose productions and performances, serving to elucidate history and awaken enthusiasm and courage, recommended them to the favour and protection of princes and barons; at whose courts and castles they found their presence desirable. The language in which our historian describes the importance attached to these itinerant poet-musicians, and the power of their effusions over their fascinated auditors, is elegant and forcible. "Patriots," says he, "heard with delight the interesting events of their country's career in power and civilization ; warriors listened with zeal and with pride, to the eulogies of valour and conquest; and the ears of beauty drank them with a rapture that was not always concealed, and a gratitude that was sometimes tenderly demonstrated." Yet, he tells us, that their music, like their poetry, was wild and unconnected, quaint and capricious: and it is well known, that the first real specimens of air were given by the genius of the troubadours. But there was a race of rhapsodists whose character wss more elevated in the public estimation, than that of the troubadours and minstrels. The bards were literary in a higher sense of the expression, than that in which it could be applied to their less

respected brethren. It was a bard, retained in his service, and enjoying his friendship, that led to the rescue of our first Richard from the bondage of the Duke of Austria. Blondel's gratitude survived the power of his royal patron to reward his talents, and, like Gaucelm, another bardic favourite of Richard, left a poetical testimony of his attachment to the memory of the taste and the munificence, by which he had profited.

The improved melodies of the bards and minstrels gradually imparted a freer and more agreeable style to the church music of the thirteenth century; and the organ, in its accompaniment of the choir, emulated the animation of the harp and viol, that sustained and embellished the vocal festivity of the hall.

Charlemagne, no less than our Alfred, was highly partial to the military songs of his time. It is to be regretted, that the strains which fired their hearts, and wound up their courage, have long since been lost. As the songs that recorded their glories superseded the former popular ballads, so did they yield in their turn to more modern lays, also born to die; and the oldest vocal panegyric of martial prowess is a French song of the fourteenth century, made and sung in praise of the valiant Roland. The words and music of this, as well as of some other similar compositions, Dr. Busby presents to his readers.

Without following our author through the extended course of his observations on the ancient music of France, we shall proceed to notice his remarks on the old Italian poetry. "The earliest numbers of Italy," says the Doctor, speaking after Conticelli," were lyrical," But we rather think, (and our opinion is sanctioned by Petrarch,) that the first songs of the moderns were of Sicilian origin; and that from Sicily, the arts of their composition and performance passed to Italy. In Italy, however, vocal music, in the fourteenth century, was chiefly dedicated to the service of the church. Among the remaining melodies of that country, none are so ancient as the Laudi Spirituali, a manuscript collection of which is preserved in the Magliabecchi library at Florence.

It was in Italy that music in parts, or figurative counterpoint, first arrived at any respectable degree of excellence. In the account of Petrarch's coronation, we are told, that the procession included " two choirs of music, one vocal and the other instrumental, which were constantly singing and playing by turns in sweet harmony." But in the middle of the fifteenth century, the harmonic science had reached, in England, an importance and consideration that were thought to entitle it to academical honours; and in 1463 John Hambois, the first musical graduate, was admitted to a doctor's degree at the University of Cambridge. Our author's reflections on the march of the science of harmony, to this honourable distinction, are creditable to his learning, talents, and discernment.

"The discrimination between the liberal and the manual, or popular arts, is at least as ancient as the fourth century. But in how barbarous a manner the sciences were then taught, the treatise on them by the famous Alcuin, the preceptor of Charlemagne, sufficiently demonstrates. In most of the schools the public teachers, four centuries Tater than the time of that scholar and philosopher, ventured no further than grammar, VOL. III. NO. I.

C

rhetoric, and logic; though, in a few instances, they proceeded to arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy, and thence to the study of Cassiodorus and Boethius. This exhibits to us the track then prescribed to the musical student. Utterly ignorant of the language in which the rules of harmony were originally delivered, only qualified to view them through the medium of a Latin version, he studied Marcianus Capella, Macrobius, Cassiodorus, Boethius, Guido Aretinus, and other writers on the tones and on the Cantus Mensurabilis; and to this species of musical learning it was that the honour of degrees was granted; and even to this species, only by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The honour, however, was nominally awarded to music; it was therefore only necessary to give the statutes a new form in order to divert that honour from the professors of dry speculation to those who are learned in harmonical combinations and evolutions; and who, by their genius, impart life and meaning to embodied sounds, and teach them to raise the mind and interest the heart." p. 383.

Vol. I.

Passing those periods when melody was nearly confined to the plain chant, and consonance limited to a few meagre and false combinations, we proceed with our historian to an æra in which were discovered and employed materials for more regular composition. The invention of printing arrived; the pride, interest, and artifice of the monks were no longer able to secrete from the laity such laws of harmony as were already known, and the propagation of these opened a way to a farther and a rapid improvement. No longer locked up in the obscurity of a dead language, they traversed, unveiled, the various countries of Europe. The treasures of translated tracts, freely and widely diffused, speedily augmented the general stock of harmonical knowledge. Of the works circulated by the press, the Theoricum opus Armonica disciplinæ, published at Naples, was the first. From this and other similar publications, it would appear, that of the ancient music, only the Pythagorean intervals were at this time retained. The sixteenth century produced musicians whose ears, not satisfied with an uninterrupted series of perfect harmonies, tempted them to venture on discords; and the relations and dependencies of concords and dissonances became every day better understood, and more intimately felt. The arts of imitation, fingering, and canonizing made considerable progess. While the Dodecachordon of Glareanus expounded, and gave new extension to the existing theory, the artificial cantus of Okenheim, framed on the principle of the Catholica, and the forty-part polyphonic productions of our countryman Bird, demonstrated the bold and rapid advance of harmonical construction.

Though the first reformers were so little friendly to the ancient ornaments of the Church service, as to gradually reduce, if not entirely abolish its exterior appendages, and almost banish from their choirs the grander species of musical composition, genius persevered, and so far triumphed over the tyranny of puritanism, that by the time Elizabeth ascended the throne, a school of counterpoint was formed in England that can scarcely be said to have yielded to that of any other country. "It must not, however," to use Dr. Busby's emphatic and perspicacious language, "be forgotten, that if music, like commerce, then flourished in this island, like commerce, it first reared its head in Italy, whence it spread to the Hanseatic towns, the Netherlands, and every part of Europe; that the choir of the papal chapel was its ori

ginal and great generator, and that it was only left to other countries to receive the model, and by its excellence to be instigated to its imitation." To this circumstance, in fact, is it to be attributed, that, notwithstanding the severity of reformative principles, a considerable number of able English musicians enriched with their knowledge, and adorned with their talents, the ecclesiastical music of this century.

While letters and science were indebted to the genius and industry of this island, theory continued to flourish on the continent. Among those to whom its progress may be said to have been under the greatest obligations, was the far-famed Swiss Henricus Loritus Glareanus, (the pupil and friend of Erasmus,) who, to speak after the manner of Gerard Vossius, was a man of great and universal learning. This native and honour of Switzerland, in his Dodecachordon, contended for the doctrine of the twelve modes, in opposition to the opinion of Ptolemy, whose theory allows only of three; and so far did he succeed as to excite a general, though idle, wish for the revival of the ancient Greek system.

The general radiance of the sixteenth century was not lightly aug mented by the science and abilities of Orlando de Lasso. The generous treatment which the illustrious native of Hainault experienced at the hand of Albert Duke of Bavaria, whose chapel-master he became, contributed to the publicity of his great merit; and long continued to increase the lustre of his fame. This celebrated master, the only musician besides Zarlino, whose pretensions Thuanus has condescended to record, was the first principal improver of figurative counterpoint; in which province the scientific and elegant Palestrina was his only equal. His age, however, was illumined by other, though inferior lights, whose annals would have enriched the pages of history, but of whom the only remaining memorials are a few of their compositions. The general destruction of pious books and manuscripts which accompanied the suppression of religious houses, accounts for the loss of many sacred pieces; but it is far from intelligible, why the secular music of those times should have universally perished. The sentiment so prevalent at the reformation, that to move the mind through the medium of the senses was unworthy the pure spirituality of religion, had no reference to the objects of mirth and recreation; and therefore presents no solution of the problem. The songs, ballads, and other compositions dedicated to public and private amusement, must have been very numerous; but, as our author remarks, perhaps "their subjects were too temporary, and their texture too slight to enable them to survive the ever-changing fashion, and constant depredations of time."

Another reason may be found for the preservation of sacred compo sitions, in preference of the lighter species of amusement. The church had been supplied by the great talents and profound science of such composers as a Tallis, a Bird, a Taverner, and a Dr. Bull; while, of the multiplicity of songs, ballads, dances, and other casual effusions, the great mass was destitute of any merit save that of novelty, and seemed no way calculated to survive its several temporary occasions. Some of these, however, had the good fortune to be enlisted in the

service of the church, and obtained from their new and holy employment, a somewhat longer life than they would otherwise have been en-titled to expect. It was "from Germany, through the media of Swisserland and France, Dr. Busby remarks, that the practice of metrical psalmody arrived in England. As early as the reign of Henry VIII., several of the psalms were translated by Sir Thomas Wyatt ; much about the same time appeared the first edition of Sternhold's version of fifty-one of the royal canticles, all of which, it is supposed, were sung to such ballad melodies as were best accommodated to their several metres."

In this part of his history, which takes a general view of the music and musicians of the sixteenth century, our author begins to enliven his pages with specimens of his powers in biography. After describing the merits of the ingenious harmonist Robert White, and the polished and profound Tallis, he, in the life of William Bird, makes the following observations on the genius and scientific skill of that extraordinary master, the composer of the immortal canon, “ Non nobis Domine."

"Of all the composers of his time, no one was more successful than Bird in vanquishing the abstruse style and quaint and affected difficulties of figures and canons. But his powers in this species of composition did not rest here. In his harmonical structures, he sought after, and discovered new complications, perplexities, involutionary motions, and adjustments. And his fecundity was as conspicuous as his diligence. This age was distinguished not only for its addition to these scientific eccentricities, but by its rage for variations, or multiplying the notes of well-known airs by every artifice within the range of the composer's fancy or caprice, a fact which the contents of the Royal Virginal Book (of Queen Elizabeth) would be sufficient to prove, were we without the numerous evidences still remaining of the influenza or corruption of air, that so greatly prevailed in the sixteenth century. But no less in these than in the more solid productions of elaborate and closely-embodied harmony, did the science and resources of Bird display their superiority. In the volume just mentioned, La Volta an Italian dance, Wolsey's Wilde, and Callino Castorame, are wrought anew by the ingenuity of Bird, and form the most meritorious and pleasing portion of its contents."

“While, however, we regard these efforts as testimonials of his great abilities, it is impossible not to lament, that, in respect to the nobler objects of music, they were so inferiorly employed. In a later age, such a genius as Bird's would have ramified into exertions of taste, elegance, and expression; would have launched into the bright and florid regions of pathos and passion, and have delighted and interested the lovers of nature and her pure appeals." Vol. II. P. 24.

The life of Bird, and the memoirs of his pupil, Thomas Mosley, "the flow and polish of whose melodies, exceed those of all England's antecedent compositions," would alone be adequate to evince Dr. Busby's striking, facile, and ornate style as a biographer. We perceive in them, that it is a property of his talents, to rise with his subject; and it is in his delineations of a Purcell, a Handel, a Boyce, or an Arne, accordingly, that the reader is to seek for the best demonstrations of his competency to employ in his painting the fairest draught, as well as the richest and most glowing colours.

From the English music of the sixteenth century, our historian passes to the consideration of that of Italy, and enters pretty minutely into the pretensions of the theorists, Francisco Doni, and Gioseffo Zarlino. Referring to the multitudinous acquisitions required by the