My object in reading this paper before the British Musical Association is to describe certain observations I have made concerning the folk-lore and music of the south of Spain. I shall not attempt to deal with the great problem of Spanish musical history: that has been done by Professor Trend in his excellent books such as The Music of Spanish History and Manuel de Falla. My study of the music of the south of Spain is mainly based upon personal experience as a minstrel in the towns and villages of the country, where I had the opportunity of mixing with folk-singers, guitarists, gipsy minstrels and dancers. My main object in studying thus the music of the Andalusian folk was to enable me to arrive at a deeper understanding of that elusive Indian Romany race which has played such an important part in the history of European music. It will, therefore, not be amiss if to-day I consider briefly the history of the gipsies as minstrels.

Music is nothing if it is not alive. I happen to have chosen the harpsichord as my instrument—or it has chosen me, I am never quite sure which—and in consequence to have made a special study of the fine and extensive range of music written for it, most of which is largely incomprehensible if played on another instrument. But the music written now must have a far more, vital importance for those who are alive to-day than what is after all “museum” music; therefore I have chosen to speak of the Present and Future of the Harpsichord rather than of its past.

At the end of the seventeenth century the concert-symphony, as we now understand that term, was unknown; at the end of the eighteenth it was the most important form of purely orchestral music, and a moderate estimate is that considerably more than 1,500 such works had been written. The later and mature symphonies by Haydn and Mozart were then in existence, and the next quarter-century was to see the advent of all the Beethoven and of most of the Schubert symphonies. If we base our knowledge of symphonies only on those which are commonly played in our concert-rooms, we might reasonably suppose that this form of music came into being rather suddenly during the last quarter of the 18th century, and that Haydn and Mozart were its joint creators. The story of the symphony, however, begins before either of these two composers was born, and the establishment and consolidation of this vital orchestral form belongs to a period which predates that in which the mature and influential symphonies of both Haydn and Mozart made their appearances.

Your Association is so kind as to give me the opportunity to discuss some results obtained in the realm of musicology during recent years, and I will gladly use it to show you by a single example how much that branch of science is able to contribute to our knowledge of the history of civilisation.

On the philosophical side all that I need do is to enter a protest against the prevailing materialism. The earth life is a school. Its first lesson is to draw inferences from the known to the unknown. That way lie faith, imagination and truth. There are three necessary inferences. One is bound to draw them in order to live one's life as it should be lived. They lead, when followed to a logical conclusion, to a belief in three worlds instead of one. These worlds are the world of the body, the world of the sentient soul, and the world of the spirit. As a working hypothesis one may assume that there are three atomic systems in the ether, and that when they are brought together and material from them grows up so as to function as one individual, there is life. The art of music has its roots in mind or spirit. Its basis is intonation, and intonation, like creation itself, comes from the science of numbers. The musician who scorns what he calls mathematics and acoustics and prefers to follow the dictates of his own sentient soul, is likely to be the slave of his environment. He should look higher and learn the properties of numbers as applied to vibrations and the interference of vibrations. He will find that music depends on the contrast between beats or interference and no-beats or consonance. Without heeding that contrast his instrument cannot be tuned. And that contrast is presumably the same in all the worlds of existence.

The purpose of this paper is to make one or two corrections and additions to the account of Purcell's life as it is normally presented in modern biographies and works of reference. I am quite prepared to admit that a composer's life is infinitely less important than his music; and this is particularly true of Purcell, who moved in a very limited circle and pursued a comparatively unadventurous career. For all that, I see no point in discussing music as though it appeared, so to speak, out of the blue without human agency or without any connection with human society. A knowledge of a composer's life may often help us to determine the chronology of his works and so provide us with valuable evidence for tracing the development of his style; and the conditions under which a man lives and works affect his artistic output by limiting or enlarging the scope of his activities. Not only individual character and genius account for the particular range and style of a man's music, but also environment and circumstances. And if we are going to make use of the facts of a composer's life, it is essential that our knowledge of them should be as accurate and complete as possible.