| Citation |
NHG-P.764.027
20 Jul 1764:11 (407)
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 coceval 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 at 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 the works of those
who have left us proof of their abilities, and we shall not
fail to discover all own 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 fourth 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 deserts, 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.
Yours, W. B.
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