| Citation |
BNL.764.031
12 Jul 1764:11 (3151 Supplement)
Messi'rs Draper, having seen lately advertis'd a variety of
musical instruments, which would serve those whose leisure &
purse can afford the expence of procuring them: I tho't it a
proper time just to transcribe, and request you to publish
the following
On Vocal Music.
Nature has given to man the first and finest of all
instruments in his own frame: Who is he then that shall
pretend to say, when and in what country music first saw its
origin ? it is doubtless cooeval with the human fabric, and
native of all countries where men have lived: Art in all
things will improve what nature has bestowed upon us: Art
is the offspring of our understanding, and she who gave them
designed them for this purpose. There is no one of nature's
endowments which may be more improved by art than music;
nor hath there been an age in which that improvement seemed
to promise a greater height than in the present;
but yet the rudiments are in nature. We have only to
correct some errors in our taste, in order to arrive at this
perfection in the most delightful of all the sciences. In
order to this let us trace it from its origin, not in remote
and idle history, but in our own breasts, and in networks of
those who have left us proof of their abilities, and we
shall not fail to discover all our mistakes, and to profit
of the discovery.
As the sweetest of all musical sounds is the human voice,
so the highest glory of the art is the directing and
accompanying it, the following its modulations and
expressing the sense of those words in which it adds meaning
to melody. the introducing this into music is the triumph
of the human voice alone: The music of the birds; the notes
of the sweetest instruments, are but dead sounds; they
tinkle in the ear, but they convey no appropriated idea.
The voice gives sentiments with its harmony, and on a double
score awakens every passion of which the heart is capable.
it was on this principle, that the immortalized musicians of
antiquity acquired that fame which has travelled down to us,
and which will live to all posterity. The harp of Orpheus,
and the shell of Linus were but accompaniments to that
voice, which poured forth, under all the charms of melody,
lessons that moved and that instructed the savage
inhabitants: It is on this principle, that they are said to
have tamed the beasts of the Desarts, and to have made the
lions and the tygers follow them.
Amphion sung the pleasures and the profits of society, the
dangers of a war, and the advantages of early security: the
hearers of the music gathered into a people, and it was thus
(though critics have not found it) his music built the
walls. It was on this principle that the performers and
composers of all nations in old time acquired their fame,
and it is on this that true honor is to be attained at
present. Concertos and sonata have their praise, and they
deserve it; but it is to the appropriation of sounds to
sense, that the supreme honors of the science always have
been and always will be paid. Your's, W.B.
|