It is on record that Haydn frequently told the publisher, Artaria, that he wished his string quartets to be reckoned as beginning only after the first eighteen, since these early works did not embody the true principles of quartet form.

It is also related that Haydn, as an old man, used to tell his friends that he had had “no real masters, but had taught himself entirely by listening and reading and by observing everything.”

What is it that makes the work of a composer classical? The question is no mere oratorical one, for it affects directly the discussion of the work, and the influences which made that work and put it into the position it holds to-day, of one whose name is more widely known than is his music, and yet whose name is far from being a household word even among musicians of some learning. “It is as an organist,” says Mr. Reginald Lane Poole, in his notice of Sweelinck which has run through several editions of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, “It is as an organist and the founder of a school of organists that Sweelinck had the most influence, an influence which made itself felt through the whole length of Northern Germany. In the next generation nearly all the leading organists there had been his scholars; his learning and method were carried by them from Hamburg to Danzig. His pupil Scheidemann handed down the tradition to the great Reincke—himself a Dutchman—from whom, if we are to accept a statement supported alike by unanimous testimony and by exhaustive analysis of the works, it turned to find its consummation in Sebastian Bach.” This summing up of the position of Sweelinck, although in itself absolutely accurate and the conclusion of an article that is one of the best studies of the life and work of the great Amsterdam master, combined with the fact that at the present time none of the manuscripts of his works are to be found in Holland, has led sometimes to a misapprehension of the national position of the man and his music. He has, among less accurate and careful writers, been classed as a great German, and as one merely “whose organ works are of great historical interest.” Thanks to the researches of Professor Max Seiffert and others and particularly lately to those of Bernhard van der Sigtenhorst Meyer, to whose recent book on Jan P. Sweelinck en zijn Instrumentale Muziek I am indebted for most of the facts contained in this paper, we know that he was essentially a Dutchman by birth and family, though it is not unlikely that some of his relations, as happens with most families in Holland, settled at one time or another in towns on the Eastern side of the frontier.

Experience has taught me to expect that the subject of my paper will be little, if anything, more than a name to my audience.

I have to introduce to you a very remarkable person, about whom there still hangs much mystery. We are told by his contemporaries that he was the best among them all for comedy, and that he was a poet of the highest order; yet not a single comedy bearing his name has come down to us; and of his poems, we have but a handful of short verses. I am going to trace to-day only a few threads in the elaborate tapestry of his life and times—his connection with the Court Revels—trusting to your familiarity with his period to supply the general background and atmosphere: and, to bring him to life as a person, I will first briefly sketch his story.

When the Council of the Musical Association were kind enough to invite me to address you this afternoon on the subject of Basque and Portuguese folk-music, I was at first in some doubt how best to present my material. I have already given a general account of Basque music in my Book of the Basques and of Portuguese music in two articles in Music and Letters. It occurred to me, therefore, that it might be better to approach the subject from some angle of general interest to musicians and to discuss the light which the folksongs of these two peoples throw on the general (and I must confess somewhat contentious) question of the origin and development of folk-song.

There are some people who maintain that all translation of vocal music into other languages is barbarous, and that no opera ought ever to be performed except in the language to which it was written. This position is a perfectly logical one, and I can sympathise very cordially with it in theory; I would certainly say that for the detailed study and criticism of any opera a knowledge of it in the original language is indispensable. But for practical purposes translation is a necessity, if opera is to receive any popular encouragement. In France, Germany and Italy, as well as in other countries such as Holland, Sweden, Poland and Hungary, where the native language is not one that is commonly learned by foreigners, opera is regularly performed in the language of the people; it is therefore only commonsense that opera in England should be performed in English, at any rate in those theatres where opera is performed regularly throughout the season. I shall therefore assume that I need waste no more words this afternoon in defending the principle of opera in English. I must however, make it quite clear to you that my paper deals solely with the translation of operas, and that it will not treat at all of the translations of any other kind of vocal music. It is necessary for me to mention this, because the conditions of opera require methods of translation which would often be quite inappropriate, or even utterly inadmissible, in such forms as oratorios and single songs. In these branches of music I have little experience as regards translation, and I do not intend to discuss them at all.

My paper is not concerned with the merits or demerits of Piainchant, or even of its organ accompaniment, but with its vocal accompaniment, or embellishment. We are also concerned only with practical musical considerations, and entirely apart from religious and liturgical ones. The latter are there, but must remain in the background. Something, however, must be said about Piainchant and its accompaniment.