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150 PREFATORY NOTICES. |
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of polishing the Greeks *, or that Aharis, the Hyperborean, was a_ native of the North of Ireland, f
By some of these archaeologists it has been imagined that the Irish were early acquainted with counter-point J; and they endeavour to support this conjecture by a well known passage in Giraldus, where he dilates, with such elaborate praise, upon the beauties of our national minstrelsy. But the terms of this eulogy are too vague, too deficient in technical accuracy, to prove that even Giraldus himself knew any thing of the artifice of counter-point. There are many expressions in the Greek and Latin writers which might be cited, with much more plausibility, to prove that they understood the arrangement of music in parts §; yet I believe it is conceded in general by the learned, that, however grand and pathetic the melody of the ancients may have been, it was reserved for the ingenuity of modern Science to transmit the "light of Song" through the va* negating prism of Harmony.
Indeed, the irregular scale of the early Irish (in which, as in the music of Scotland, the interval of the fourth was wanting ||,) must
* O'Halloran, vol. i. part iv. chap. vii.
t Id. ib. chap. vi.
X It is also supposed, but with as little proof, that they understood the diesis, or enharmonic interval.—The Greeks seem to have formed their ears to this delicate gradation of sound ; and, whatever difficulties or objections may lie in the way of its practical use, we must agree with Mersenne {PrHudes de VHarmonfe, quest. 7-), that the theory of Music would be imperfect without it; and even in practice (as Tosi, among others, very justly remarks, Observations on Florid Song, chap. I. sect. 16.), there fs no good performer on the violin who does not make a sensible difference between D sharp and E flat, though, from the imperfection of the Instrument, they are the same notes upon the piano-forte. The effect of modulation by enharmonic transitions is also very striking and beautiful,
§ The words troixiXtet and iri?*<pwmt in a passage of Plato, and some expressions of Cicero In Fragment, lib. U. de Republ., induced the Abbe Fraguier to maintain that the ancients had a knowledge of counter-point, M. Burette, however, has answered him, I think, satisfactorily. (Examen d'un Passage de Platon, in the 3d vol. of Histoire de PAcad.) M. Huet is of opinion {Pensees Diverses}, that what Cicero says of the music of the spheres, in hi3 dream of Scipio, is sufficient to prove an acquaintance with harmony j but one of the strongest passages, which I recollect, in favour of the supposition, occurs in the Treatise attributed to Aristotle — Tli$ Kotruou, — Movffixy $e o%ur nuet xxt p&ftie, x. r. A.
|| Another lawless peculiarity of our music is the frequency of what composers call consecutive fifths ; but this is an irregularity which can hardly be avoided by persons not very conversant with the rules of composition; indeed, if I may venture to cite my own wild attempts in this way, it is a fault which I find myself continually committing, and which has sometimes appeared so pleasing to my ear, that I have surrendered it to the critic with no small reluctance. May there not be a little pedantry in adhering too rigidly to this rule?—I have been told that there are |
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