nished the Canto Figurato, or chants composed of notes of two kinds, viz. one note double the length of the other;-these had been borrowed from the Greeks, whose notes, regulated by the syllables of their verse, were only of those two sorts. Gregory thought this a heathenish practice, and quite an abomination; and permitted notes, of one length only, to be used;-and hence the name of Canto Fermo, which was given to the chant introduced by him, from its grave and measured character.

It has been thought surprising that so few traces should be found, in the Canto Fermo, of the music of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which has been so extravagantly praised by all writers upon the subject: But we must recollect, that the persecution which the first proselytes to Christianity suffered at the hands of the Romans, compelled them to meet secretly and by night-and to celebrate their rites in caves and hidingplaces. Even the princes who at first gave the sanction of their protection to the new religion, stood too much in awe of the extensive power of the Roman empire, to set themselves openly against it, by countenancing a religion which it thought proper to oppose. Besides this, another cause operated to the exclusion of the Greek and Roman music. From the inveterate horror with which the first Fathers of the Church regarded the dissolute manners and idolatrous rites of the Pagans, they strictly forbade the adoption of any ceremonies connected, however remotely, with Paganism; and hence it was that they excluded, not only all imitations of the secular music, but also of that which, being used in the Pagan temples of worship, might have afforded better models on which to graft the chant of their own Church. The melody of the Canto Fermo was of the most simple kind. The uniform length of their notes, which, whether they are of the square or lozenge shape, always denote intervals of the same duration, prevented the variety of expression in the music, which the sense of the words frequently demanded: No accidental was allowed, excepting B flat, consequently there was a very great poverty in their modulation; * and their cadences were only such as were made by the flat seventh rising a whole tone before the final close. To this monotony in the Canto Fermo, owing to the ridiculous restrictions imposed upon it by Gregory, we must attribute the long infancy and child

The only major keys in the Canto Fermo, were C, and its dominant and subdominant; and the only minor keys were A, and its dominant and subdominant :-and of those six, four are deficient in their scale-as, by the exclusion of accidents, there is no sensible note, or seventh, to G, A, D, or E.

hood of music; and indeed it was not till the establishment of the Stage, requiring a music of its own, that the science was emancipated from the confinement of the cloister. At this period music was established in England. Austin, the monk, whom Gregory sent from Rome to convert the Saxons, is said to have been their first instructor in the mysteries of Ecclesiastical music. In 668, singers were sent into Kent by Pope Vitalian; and in 680, Pope Agatho despatched no less a person than the Precentor of St Peter's, to teach the monks of Weremouth, and to establish singing schools in the kingdom of Northumberland. About this time, also, organs began to be very generally used in Italy and Germany, and also in the English convents; and we apprehend that it was very much owing to the introduction of this instrument, that the scientific part of music began now to be cultivated.

Guido Aretinus, a Benedictine monk, who lived about the year 1020, is the reputed inventor of Counterpoint. He added some notes to the scale; and to these sounds he gave the names Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La; because these were the first. syllables of each hemistich, in a hymn to St John the Baptist, which, in the music, happened to form a series of six notes regularly ascending. + The note which he added below, was ex-pressed by Gamma, according to the Greek notation; and hence the scale was called a Gamut.

Franco, of Cologne, who lived also in the eleventh century, was the next person after Guido, who benefited music by his discoveries:-He invented the Time-table; and gave hints which afterwards led to the introduction of Bars: He also invented the dot, which, placed after a note, increases its duration by onehalf; and this was perhaps the greatest improvement which he introduced. Till this period, the only notes known, were the Maxima, or Large-the Long-the Breve-and the Semibreve; when Walter Odington, a Monk of Evesham, who flourished in the reign of Henry the Third, had the boldness to add another note-the Minim. He wrote a very elaborate

The verse which gave rise to these whimsical names, is—
Ut queant laxis Resonare fibris

Mira gestorum Famuli tuorum
Solve poluti Labii reatum

Sancti Johannis.

The Italians have substituted Do, instead of Ut, as being more open for the voice; and about 150 years ago, the French added the syllable Si, to express the seventh of the key :-and thus the scale remains to this day.

treatise on the art of Composition, in which he treats of florid counterpoint at greater length than any of his predecessors, In the same tract, he gives very admirable instructions for making Organ pipes, and excellent receipts for casting Bells. ‡ About this time, also, appeared the treatises of Marchetto, and of John de Muris (who is said by some to have been an Englishman), in which the use of Discords is recommended, as excellent to correct the cloying which attends a harmony of concords only. Explanations of the Resolution of Discords are also given.

The progress which had now been made in the scientific part, tended very much to advance and embellish the practical parts of music. A species of composition called Motets, of a livelier nature than the sombre and monotonous Canto Fermo, was invented; and attempts were made to introduce it into the service of the Church. But the rigid zeal of the holy fathers manfully opposed an innovation which savoured so much of secular profanity. They had beheld, with very jealous eyes, the addition of the semibreve and minim; but when motets were suggested, they could no longer contain their indignation. They petitioned Pope John XXII. that he would adopt some measures to check the spirit of libertinism which was so dangerously manifesting itself; and, in compliance with their urgent entreaty, his Holiness issued a decree, in which he severely animadverts upon the abuses which had crept into the Sacred Music of the Church; and setting forth, that some profane persons had been daring enough to introduce wanton modulations, and to butcher the melody by indecorous divisions; * and that others, with no less hardihood, had been so captivated by these vagaries, and by the new notes and novel measures of the disciples of the modern school, that they liked better to have their ears tickled with the semibreves and minims, and such frivolous inventions, than to hear the orthodox and established ecclesiastical chant:-he strictly forbids the use of such innovations, under the penalty of his apostolical malediction. With the same praiseworthy detestation of improvement, Odo, archbishop of Rheims, admonished the nuns of the monastery of Villars, to avoid such indecent

See a biographical account of this learned monk, in Moreri. * In the original Bull, the words are Melodias hoquetis interse. cant.' His Holiness alludes, we presume, to the Neuma, or Bars, which were used about this time, and were first employed in church music as breaks or pauses, to allow the singers to take breath: and for this interruption in the monotonous drawl of the chant, the performers were censured as hiccuping in their song.

music, which was no better than a scurrilous and jocose song, and quite unfit to make a part of the devotional exercises of so pious a sisterhood.

We cannot therefore wonder that the progress which music made was so slow, when the churchmen, who were then the principal cultivators of that or any other art, were restricted by the arbitrary bigotry, and timorous scruples of their superiors, But the time was now at hand, when the various causes, which had been gradually effecting a change in the languages of the South of Europe, began in like manner to produce a revolution in its music. The improvements in the languages of the South, which, since the destruction of the Roman Empire, which occasioned an incorporation of the Latin with the corrupt dialects of the Northern invaders, had such important effects on the poetry and music of those countries, that they deserve some attention.

Some time before the birth of the Italian language, there had been established in Gaul, the Romanesque or Romance, so called from having had its basis in the Roman tongue. After the southern provinces were subdued by the Visigoths and Burgundians, and the northern by the Franks and Normans, there was not in that country any further irruption from the Northwhile Italy continued, for some ages after, a prey to invaders from all countries,-Germans, Hungarians, Saracens;-and thus, while each district retained its own peculiar dialect, no general language could be consolidated, and hence it was behind Gaul in the formation of its language. The poetry and music of Provence were the boast and model of all Europe for several centuries after the time of Charlemagne. But this supremacy survived only till about the time of the crusades, when the Italian poetry and literature having acquired a strength which made it known to the rest of Europe, superseded that of the Troubadours,-which continued, for a short period longer, to linger in Catalonia and Arragon, and then expired for ever. It had, however, wrought an important change in the character of the music of that period; and its effects on this were of a more lasting nature than on the poetry-as, being transmitted by the minstrels who came into the north of Europe, the improvements were pursued in the music of the fabulous songs and romances, which succeeded the Provençal, in the northern provinces of France.

Although the French were in the habit of writing their language earlier than the Italians, they were much longer in bringing it to perfection. In Italy, the use of the Latin was preserved in the courts of law, and very generally in polite conversation, but universally in composition, such as sermons, discourses

and familiar letters, down to a very late period. The Italian was not used in poetry till the twelfth century. Indeed it must have been late in that century; for Dante, who flourished towards the end of the thirteenth, declares that the language was not 150 years old. Their first attempts in verse were short picces of Lyrical Poetry, whose origin may be, satisfactorily traced to the poetry of Provence; the Kings of Sicily succeeded the Spaniards in the sovereignty of Provence; and from the intercourse thus formed with the Troubadours, arose the poetry which the Italian language imbibed during its progress at the courts of the Sicilian monarchs, and which was afterwards transmitted into Tuscany, and other parts of Italy. Before the usurpation of Tuscany by the family of Medici, the form of Government at Florence had been Democratic. The numerous opportunities thus afforded to the citizens of speaking in public, and the consequent encouragement given to popular oratory, and to a free communication of opinion, may account for the care bestowed upon the language of that particular province, and the polish it so early received.

Little is known of the secular music of Italy, at this early period. A few specimens of the Canzoni, or songs of the Tuscan Giocolari, have been preserved in the Florentine collections of MSS., and also of the Madriali, *-alla Madre,-hymns to the Virgin: We are told also that the populace went about the streets singing the verses of Dante, so delighted were they with genuine poetry, the first they had ever heard. But the character of their music was not yet established; and although, in the time of Petrarch, poetry had acquired nearly its highest perfection, the progress of music had by no means been corresponding. Indeed, in its advance towards perfection, music appears to differ from all the fine arts. In painting, in poetry, in sculpture, there has been but one step from childhood to maturity-from invention to perfection;-from the roughness of the unhewn block to the high finish and masterly polish of the statue. Take away Milton, and we find all the greatest geniuses, born in the infancy, and still alive in the maturity of their respective arts :-Since the days of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dante-of Raphael, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and their gigantic contemporaries, there have been no such constellations of unrivalled genius. Men of high fame have indeed appeared in after-times; but it has been only at intervals-and they have come sparingly. Milton, Tasso, Guido, Rembrandt, are

* Whence our Madrigals, which certainly do not abound with religious sentiments.