If I desired a precedent for a paper on Monteverde, I could not do better than look back to that read in 1916 by Sir Hubert Parry, then President of the Musical Association, on The Significance of Monteverde. And if I were looking out for a suitable way of introducing the subject I could not do better than quote his introduction. He said:—

Used geographically, the title “Chapel of King Henry VI” may naturally turn the mind, especially the musical mind, to King's Chapel at Cambridge; but, as you will have seen from the printed syllabus, I am using the title in the historical sense, as applied to the Chapel of St. George in Windsor Castle, the chapel in which Henry worshipped, and for which he actually wrote music.

The Bible is not only a monument of religious thought, not only poetical creation, but also a great musical heritage. In common with many other sacred books of the ancient races, it is chanted in a specific recitative, usually termed “cantillation.”

The changed position of music in English life during the present century should profoundly modify accepted views of history. Even conservative historians are placing more and more emphasis on what we may call the progress of civilisation; on the formation and disintegration of cultural traditions. Political history is being dwarfed not only by economic history but by the study of the important aspect of man's mind that is represented by the arts. In this tendency there is still a time-lag from the 19th century in that music has so far played only a minor part. The Victorian period knew little of music and cared less: musicians were specialists who were hardly ever invited to join in any discussions on general culture. We recognise the importance of musical history, but have not yet gone far towards digesting it with other kinds of cultural history. When we have accomplished that process it will probably cast fresh light on the traditions of English culture and on our judgment of its present position.

The history of musical England's attitude to Mussorgsky's music can be summed up simply by mentioning two landmarks. In 1905 appeared the sixth volume of the Oxford History of Music, devoted to the Romantic period, by Dannreuther, who dismissed Mussorgsky's music with these words, “wilfully eccentric and barbarously ugly,” without a word of qualification. In 1928, when the genuine full text of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunof was published for the first time, the musical critic of The Times devoted the major portion of a very long article to showing how very uncalled for, and indeed how wrong, was the alteration by Rimsky-Korsakof of one single note at a certain spot in a scene in the opera Boris Godunof.