Litchfield enquirer., 1874-09-17

ial; and, in reality, the average church tune book bears about the same relation to Handel's Messiah, or Mendelssohn's Elijah, that the average Sunday School book bears to Milton's Paradise Lost. The one is the trivialest prose; the other the sublimest poetry known to music.
 So, too, melody, the merit of which consists in the pleasing succession of notes Q leading part, is more readily compre- hended and appreciated than harmony, the merit of which consists in the pleasing combination and succession of the chords of all the parts. So much does the natur- al ear prefer melody to harmony that there has never been so thoroughly popular a species of music as the old fashioned songs and the old fashioned dance and sentimental music of the violin. that were in vogue half century since, and which were performed always without accompa- niment. The minor melodies which pre- vail so largely in this music, aided by a more dramatic style of delivery, took hold of the feelings of the uneducated as none of our minor harmonies ever can. When in those times our lawyer and doctor. deacons and all, even the min ister-took their 'tfip" or ''sling'' togeth- CT at the village tavern on a winters even- ing, the singer would sing and oct his mi- nor song, or the fiddler play his minor air and draw tears from every eye. Then. in strong contrast, a few rollicking stanzas, none too moral in tone, sung to jolly tune, in the dramatic style of the man sing CT of those days, or the cranky Scotch jig that was the pride of the country fiddler, would stir up the Puritan blood of our ancestors to pitch of delight unknown to the colder music and manners of the modern Yankee. No doubt the 'sling" contributed to these remarkable effects, but it is also certain that this music came nearer the natural musical heart than any of our modern airs with accompaniment. This kind of song is now never heard. A few of the many old Scotch airs that so delighted our ancestors are still sung, but always with the impertinence of an &C., compartment. We have often longed to be set down in a sympathetic audience listening to 8 really powerful singer of this old time music. We have notion that our melodies are more or less cramp- ed by their accompaniment that, in the minor forms especially, there is pa- thos possible to the pure melody which any accompaniment would overload and spoil. The style of song which Col. Bou- dinot made so popular among us, last winter, in which the harmony was noth- ing, the melody and the dramatic dellv- cry everything, perhaps suggests, as forci- bly as anything modern can, the effective ness of the old fashioned melody ''pure and simple"
 Whatever may be the merit of pure mel ody, the modern musician is most attracted by harmony. We find sufficient evidence of this fact in the prevalent neglect of solo instruments for the more satisfying keyed instruments. The piano and the melo- deon have supplanted the violin, the flute, the clarionet, and the violoncello, in the New England household, in spite of the fact that vastly more efficiency can be at tained with the same practice on the solo than on the keyed instrument. Even such fiddlers as stick to their fddles play in quartette or with accompaniment, not alone. or together in unison: as was the way of the old Yankee musician.
 With the practice of music on keyed in. struments comes almost immediately a taste for higher harmonies than the few common chords that satisfy the unculti; vated ear. Their unvarying sweetness wearies him and he seeks force in the ad- dition of discords which require the most artistic treatment to be endurable, and which, even then, grate on the unaccus- toned ear. He begins, also, to range over great variety of keys and to seek out pleasing "modulations" from one to another. In the typical psalm tune, con- structed after the fashion set by the late Lowell Mason, we have about three chords and one modulation (the easiest possible). The musician expects this modulation at the end of the second line of the common meter hymn just as certainly as the law. yer expects the vi ct arnais in the middle of the declaration in trespass. But for the ease of the voice, 0 major, with the inevitable modulation to G, would be all of the twenty-four keys needed in th1s species of psalm. The musician, how ever, no sooner turns to Beethoven or Mendelssohn than he finds an infinite va- riety ofmodulations into even the remotest keys. Thus the range of the composer is
 wonderfully increased, but at the expense of shocking the natural musical ear to an extent the cultivated musician seldom re- alizes. It IS only when he attempts to sig, or to play on stringed instrument, scitho,a accompaniment, music abound ing in discords and abrupt modulations that be will appreciate their essential un- naturalness. He will then find that his ear, though partially reconciled to such harshness by long habit, refuses to guide him accurately and that his performance will often be grossly faulty in tune.
 The matter comes simply to this: the cultivated musician requires all the harsh ness oi oidiscord and modulation he employs
 so ireely,to give the requisite strength and Sas'esy to his work. The uncultiyated