Although our chief attention to-night is to be given to Purcell's Sonatas, I feel it would add to the interest of these illustrations if I asked you to listen to an earlier specimen of his writing for strings.

When I was invited by the Association to read a paper on Mechanical Piano-players, my memory carried me back to a lunch party of some twenty people that I attended in New York shortly before I left there some three years ago, at the end of the second lecture season that I had spent in that interesting country. The hotel at which the lunch was given bears a deservedly high reputation for its' cookery, but what was my surprise on glancing at the menu to see that it contained not a list of things to eat, but a series of topics suggested for conversation! After each course our hostess would rap on the table and address some leading question to some particular guest, who was expected to reply briefly, and then that particular topic lasted till the next course. All the people at the lunch were supposed to be qualified to talk interestingly on some particular subject, and the question to which I had to reply was directed to ascertain my opinion as to the value of the Pianola in musical education. I remember that I replied that I considered the “Pianola” as great an aid to the proper appreciation of fine music as was the invention of printing to the wide spreading of knowledge of the great literature of all ages.

The reason underlying my appearance before you this afternoon may be ascribed to an after-dinner talk I once had with Sir John Stainer (then the President of this Association) on the usefulness of the group of musical instruments possessing sets of sympathetic wire or catgut strings, in addition to their main strings played upon by the bow.

Everyone who has any idea at all of what the name of Monteverde represents must see that a proposal to discuss him fully in a single paper, even of abnormal length, would be absurd. So I must assume that you already know enough about him to make it safe for me to dispense with personal biographical matters, except so far as they have bearing upon his work, and confine myself to the salient facts which minister to the understanding of his peculiar importance in the development of modern music. The attention of the musical world has been concentrated on one side of his career only, one might almost say on one single vocal piece of some dozen bars in length. Yet he is referred to as the fountain-head of modem opera, as the originator of modern orchestration, the prototype of the noble band of artistic revolutionaries, the triumphant vindicator of the right to break rules. And all the while people know nothing of him but what they get at second hand. There is certainly not one man in a million who has ever heard a single bar of his compositions: so it is difficult to bring what is said about him to a practical test; and this makes him a safe subject for that familiar type of explorers who want to tell travellers' tales which are unlikely to be found out He is indeed quite exceptionally inaccessible. A great number of his compositions have been lost, and a further large number exist only in rare part-books in libraries in scattered parts of Europe; and till such works are scored from the part-books it is idle to pretend that anyone can get any idea of them. And even when they are made accessible in substance they are still inaccessible in spirit; for in order to understand Monteverde's compositions one has to have a clear understanding of the kinds of music he did not write, and capacity to see into the spirit of many crude and venturesome experiments, and to free oneself entirely from the conventions of mechanical theory. Indeed, to understand a man like Monteverde one must be able to guess what he wanted to do even when he did not succeed.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I must thank you for the honour you do me by inviting me to speak to you. Though you will not fail to discover the fact very shortly for yourselves, I would rather confess at once that I am only an amateur—and, I hope, a humble one. I come here as much to learn my mistakes as to state my opinions; and if I do the latter with that certainty and emphasis which are the special privilege of the partially instructed, I hope for equally emphatic contradiction from those who know far more than I do. Having then begun—as do some preachers—by begging for charity, I will start with one of the many curiosities of criticism that I had the pleasure of discovering in that home of delightful curiosities, animate and inanimate—the British Museum Reading Room. One of the best musical critics of the 19th century, Mattheson, of Hamburg, has described in detail the effect of music upon different animals. He does not worry about scientific proof, but says that crabs follow the pipe, hares the transverse flute, camels a small bell, trout and carp a large bell, bees the cymbals, and spiders the lute. “Pigs,” he says, “will go anywhere after a zither.”

I have been asked to give a minimum of “history” in this paper, and therefore, although from the very nature of the subject-matter it must be dealt with historically, I will only very briefly trace the evolution of this, the youngest of the wood-wind of the orchestra. But by “youngest” I mean the last to reach such a stage of development as entitled it to a place in the orchestra. For the clarinet—and this is the important point to remember about it in any discussion of its peculiarities—is a cylindrical tube sounded by means of a single beating reed, and such instruments are of great antiquity. They were in common use in the early civilisation in Egypt.

A year ago when addressing this Association I dealt with the subject of John Wilbye, who by general consent is regarded as the greatest figure in the English Madrigal School. This afternoon I propose to say something about another of the English madrigalists, Thomas Weelkes, whose work in this class of composition closely approaches the excellence attained by Wilbye, although in many details the styles of these two madrigal-writers are dissimilar. I should mention that Weelkes also composed quite a considerable amount of Church music which has survived to our day, although I believe I am right in stating that not a single note of it is sung in any cathedral or collegiate church in this country at the present time; my paper this afternoon will, however, be confined exclusively to the consideration of his secular vocal work.

When I was honoured by an invitation to read a Paper before the Musical Association, the suggested title was “The Evolution of the String Quartet” But the word “evolution” has a scientific flavour which hardly accords with the, I am afraid, very unmethodical discourse which I am to present to you this evening. A practising musician has no leisure for learned research, and my acquaintance with String Quartets is no greater—is in fact very probably less—than that of many now present One slight qualification I may possess for talking on this subject may lie in the fact that I have written a certain amount of music in this form, and although the result has been to me disappointing, still the mere endeavour, however bungling, gives the writer a certain insight into the difficulties and perils of this form of musical composition, and increases his admiration for the performances of those great artists who have successfully surmounted the one and avoided the other. I wish, then, to treat of the String Quartet mainly from the composer's point of view, and particularly of the works of the classical masters. The use of the word “classical” in its musical application is rather strange. It may be taken as describing works that by their perfection of structure, as distinct from their purely emotional qualities, recall the sculpture of classical times,—or it may import that the works in question were written long ago (as time is reckoned in musical matters) and have become classical by reason of their survival. But it comes to much the same thing, I think. No piece of music, least of all a String Quartet is likely to have a long life which does not satisfy our sense of symmetry and proportion.