Scotish Songs Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1869 edition. Excerpt: ...one may superadd even if he meant that, ) his remarks must have been hazarded either from conjecture or report. That the national music, therefore, was either invented or improved by, or any way indebted to, King James I., there is every reason to disbelieve: unless by national we are to understand cathedral music, to which he certainly appears to have paid great attention. He introduced the organ into churches, together with a new method of singing, and gave great encouragement to those skilled in it; and that he might, as Tassoni asserts, compose " sacred pieces of vocal music," and even, like our own Henry VIII., a canon in the unison, is sufficiently credible; but will by no means prove that he was a cultivator or even admirer of what we now mean by Scotish music; between which and the compositions (whatever they were) of King James I. there was probably the same difference that must ever exist between pure nature and mere art.t "History of Music," iii. 218. If James VI., to whom a late writer, less remarkable, indeed, for the justice than for the singularity of his opinions, will have the above passage of Tassoni to refer, and who was certainly a writer of madrigals, had actually composed the music to them, there would remain little doubt of the fact. It is, however, possible that some of these identical madrigals, set to music by one does not know whom, might have fallen into the hands of Carlo Gesualdo, who, supposing the whole to proceed from the same royal genius, had immediately set himself to imitate some peculiarities in the composition, which, if one may judge by the character given of his own efforts, were altogether unworthy of imitation. Country dances appear, from this prince's own testimony, to have...