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Prelude. |
5 |
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the kind should be. A couple of new tuning forks had been prepared under precisely identical conditions, and with perfect agreement as to result. One was subjected to heat, and on being withdrawn from the oven was found to have changed its pitch beyond mistake. It was cooled, but it never returned to the old identity with its comrade. Thus, to be unimpeachably accurate in recollecting the tones of ill-cultivated and variable voices, or to be dogmatic in maintaining that the relic of to-day is identical with the complete instrument of by-gone ages, seem to me two impossibilities; or at least, presumptions, not warranted by reason and experience.
Another question arises, in respect to national music considered traditionally—the testimony on which we accept our knowledge of ancient instruments. This is mainly derived from monumental drawings and sculptures; which I cannot but think have been too largely accepted as literal, seeing that into every record of the kind so much of what is decorative and emblematical enters. It is true that in a certain class of objects Gothic structure may be relied on as documentary; seeing that the vine, the hawthorn, the rose, the oak leaf, the herba benedicta are, in its best examples, displayed with remarkable, |
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