Crieff; Its Traditions and Characters, with Anecdotes of Strathearn (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1881. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... ftart I. BIOGRAPHICAL AND CHARACTERISTIC John Cuthbert, Violinist, Crieff.--Our music, like its sister sciences, is improving with improving tastes. The further back we trace its existence, the more we understand how difficult it was in less enlightened times to preserve the melodies which enchanted in "the days of other years." One age produced part of a scale, another completed it. One age invented eleven lines for the stave; another reduced it to five, with the use of the spaces between. Upwards of three hundred years ago the tonic stave sol-fa notation was in use, and succeeding ages consigned it to oblivion. Recently, however, it has been revived on exactly the same principles as then, and called new. For centuries notes were used without any indication of time or accent. It is only very recently that the bars came into use. Almost all the older tunes in the old notations cannot in modern phraseology be called music, and they have long ceased to delight any but those who love to trace music in its different phases. Musicians by name in all districts float like phantoms in the dawn; and since the days when Ossian sung, hosts of minstrels have come and gone of whom we know nothing; but they had their influence, and, like the verging wavelets on the lake, they influenced all within reach, and A each generation in succession, down to our times. To the present generation, in our own district, even the names of Peter and Alexander Rogie, who flourished in the early part of the century, are myths; but they were realities, and musicians besides. They seem as guards set to prevent us from seeing further into the past; so much have their shadows darkened the vista beyond. Their mantle fell on their nephew, Peter M'Gibbon, who, though he died when manhood was reached, ...