Morning and Evening Services and Anthems, for the use of the Church of England; composed with an Accompaniment for the Organ or Piano Forte, by Sir John Stevenson, Mus. Doc. In two volumes. London. Power.

The history of the music of all nations will be found to be very much connected, even where it is not primarily derived from and fixed upon the ceremonies of religion. Italy had her masses before her operas, though her fame seems now rather to be placed upon the dramatic than the ecclesiastical compositions of her most celebrated masters. And if the name of Rossini is now more popular and wide-spreading than that of Palestrina, the reason lies scarcely more in the distance of time at which the latter wrote, than in the change which has taken place in manners and in the nature of the affections to which these several works are addressed. When Palestrina lived and wrote, the church had not only a deeper and a stronger hold on men's minds than at present, but being almost the only seat of the arts, there was probably much of the same inducements to lead the population to the exercise of their devotions, which draw them now to places of amusement. In Italy, so far as music is concerned, the stage may fairly be said to have triumphed over the church.

But in England this can hardly be admitted to be the case. For if our noble cathedral service be fallen into comparative or complete neglect, nationally speaking—if half a dozen old men and women, or as many of the lame, the halt, and the blind, make up the entire numbers of the daily congregations, for whom such splendid architecture subsists, such noble establishments are formed, and such munificent endowments granted, we dare not form any other supposition than that the shame lies very much at the doors of the church-of those dignitaries, who declare themselves called of heaven, and who are appointed and paid, enormously paid, to preserve the venerable ceremony in all its beauty of holiness, as well as to support it with all the solemn science of which it is so supremely capable. If then we see that neither the duty of the observance nor the attraction that ought to surround so important an object has been found sufficient to keep alive in their

purity among mankind, the sentiments of the pious founders of all this vast apparatus, we dare not seek for a cause any where but in the shameless ignorance, indifference, and negligence which have but too often been observed to have gradually permitted the appropriation of the funds to other persons, if not to other purposes than those for whom and for which these endowments were intended, and which have prepared the way to the consequent decline of the respect such combinations of powerful influence are calculated to inspire. Yet notwithstanding we are compelled, by the most glaring and the most painful facts, to admit that such has been the fate of our noble cathedral service, we must still believe that sacred music still holds its pre-eminence in the estimation of the people of England. Our oratorios are the test of the truth of this belief. For when has any secular or dramatic music superseded the performance of Handel's sacred compositions? No not even his own secular works have lived to vie with his church music. The Messiah, the Dettingen Te Deum, the Coronation and Funeral Anthems, not to mention many others of his strictly ecclesiastical writings, have stood far above the competition offered by any of his opera songs or concerted pieces. If it be replied that the grandeur and sublimity of the one species is so far superior to the qualities of the other as to forbid comparison, the answer will prove the truth of our assertion. The English, it is thus demonstrated, are yet a people whose grave and strong minds are to be moved by serious and solemn thoughts, as well by light and voluptuous amusements, and this is the reason why the music of the church, or music of that sacred character which approaches so nearly as scarcely to be distinguished in sentiment from ecclesiastical composition, properly so called, still preserves an obvious ascendancy over the general mind, and a high place among the national entertainments.

While then we admit the decline of ecclesiastical composition, we would point out that there still subsists a strong national attachment to sacred music-sufficiently strong indeed to prove that a far greater share of veneration might have been kept towards it, had its conservators done their duty, and also that even now there is a basis wide enough to build the hope of renewed attention upon, if becoming efforts are made. When a work like the one before us appears, it affords some proof that

this hope yet lives in the breast of the artist, as well as in the belief of the publisher. With the view therefore of conveying some notion of the rise, progress, and present state of ecclesiastical composition in England, we shall go back to the early periods of its history, and trace it downward to the present time.

The earliest service prepared for the church of England, subsequent to the Reformation, was composed by John Merbecke or Marbeck, of whom Fox in his "Acts and Monuments," gives a curious biographical account. This service was entitled the

This book may truly be consi

Boke of Common Praier, noted." dered as the foundation of the musical service of the church of

England.

"It was formed, says Sir John Hawkins, on the model of the Romish ritual; there was a general recitatory intonation for the Lord's Prayer, the Apostle's Creed, and such other parts of the service as were most proper to be red, in a certain key or pitch: to the introitus, supplications, suffrages, responses, prefaces, post-communions, and other versicles, melodies were adapted of a grave and decent form, and nearly as much restrained as those of St. Ambrose or Gregory; and these had an harmonical relation to the rest of the service, the dominant in each being in unison with the note of the key in which the whole was to be sung.

"After a short explanation of the musical characters that occur in the book, follows the order of Mattins, beginning with the Lord's Prayer, which, as it is not required by the rubric to be sung, is set to notes that bespeak nothing more than a succession of sounds of the same name and place in the scale, viz. C sol fa ut, that being about the mean tone of a tenor voice. These notes are of various lengths, adapted to express the quantity of the syllables, which they do with great exactness.

"For the reasons of this uniform kind of intonation it is neces

* Marbeck was organist of Windsor, and with other persons favourable to the Reformation, had formed a society. Upon intimation that they held frequent meetings, Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, obtained a commission to search for heretical books. Anthony Person, a priest; Robert Testwood, a singing man; John Marbeck, and Henry Filmer, a tradesman of the town, were apprehended. Amongst the papers of Marbeck were found, in his hand writing, some notes on the bible and an English concordance. He explained his possession of these things by his own pious industry and his poverty, which induced him to copy and compose what he could not afford to purchase; but he was nevertheless tried for heresy, with his three friends, and condemned. They were burned on the day succeeding the trial, and Marbeck appears to have been saved by the personal regard entertained for him by Gardiner, to whom his sentence was remitted. After his escape he applied strenuously to his professional studies, and two years after, on the death of Henry VIII. he made a public profession of his faith, and completed and published his coucordance.

cesary to recur to the practice of the church at the time when choral or antiphonal singing was first introduced into it, when it will be found that almost the whole of the liturgy was sung; which being granted, the regularity of the service required that such parts of it as were the most proper for music, as namely, the Te Deum and other hymns, and also the evangelical songs, should be sung in one and the same key; it was therefore necessary that this key, which was to pervade and govern the whole service, should be fixed and ascertained, otherwise the clerks or singers might carry the melody beyond the reach of their voices. As the use of organs or other instruments in churches was not known in those early times, this could no otherwise be done than by giving to the prayers, the creeds, and other parts of the service not so proper to be sung as red, some general kind of intonation, by means whereof the dominant would be so impressed on the ears and in the memories of those that sung, as to prevent any deviation from the fundamental key; and accordingly it may be observed that in his book of the Common Praier noted, Marbeck has given to the Lord's Prayer an uniform intonation in the key of C, saving a small inflexion of the final clause, which here and elsewhere he makes use of to keep the several parts of the service distinct, and prevent their running into each other.

"The objections of particular persons, and the censure of the thirty-two commissioners in the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum against curious singing had made it necessary that the new service should be plain and edifying. In order that it should be so, this of Marbeck was framed according to the model of the Greek and Latin churches, and agreeable to that tonal melody, which the ancient fathers of the church have celebrated as completely adequate to all the ends of prayer, praise, thanksgiving, and every other mode of religious worship.'

During the reign of Edward VI. the liturgy was twice regulated; Mary rescinded and Elizabeth re-established the second form. She insisted on the retention of the solemn church service, and in the forty-ninth of those injunctions concerning the clergy and laity, published in the first year of her reign (A.D. 1559), she especially provides "for the continuance of syngynge in the church." The article expresses that by this means "the laudable scyence of Musicke hath been had in estimation and preserved in knowledge ;" and while it especially provides, "neither to have the same in any parte so abused in the churche, that thereby the common prayer should be the worse understande of the hearers," her Majesty ordains that "for the comforting of such as delite in musicke, a hymn may be sung either at the beginning or end of the service." Marbeck's may henceforward be considered as the general formula of church service. The people however were

probably dissatisfied with mere melody, and in 1560 a musicalservice for three and four parts was published, by John Day. The difference between Marbeck's and Day's services appear to be, that in the former the whole was set as a single part; in the latter, the offices in general were composed in four parts, and in the following order-Venite exultemus, Te Deum, Benedictus Dominus, the Letanie, the Lorde's Praier, the Communion, containing the Kyries after the Commandments, Gloria, Nicene Creed, Sanctus, and the Blessing. The book also contains prayers and anthems in five parts. Tallis, Caustin, Johnson, Oakland, and Taverner, appear to have assisted in the composition of the music. The base of the anthems, it is remarkable, is set for children's voices. Five years afterwards Day printed a second collection. These being published in single parts the books are now unfortunately dispersed.

We have adverted to these particulars concerning the formation and introduction of the liturgy, though in truth our concern is with the composition of the cathedral service. But the names of the early framers of the music of the one are also those of the composers of the other. Dr. Christopher Tye, Marbeck, Tallis, Bird, Shephard, Parsons, and Wm. Mundy, were probably the men who wrote the tunes to the early national versions of the psalms, as well as those anthems and services which have come down to us from several of them, and which are the early and excellent models upon which almost all the subsequent writers have wrought. Many collections of tunes appeared soon after the Reformation.

Thomas Tallis is held to be the father of English compositions for the church. He is commonly said to have been organist to Henry VIII. Edward VI. and Queen Mary; but if he exercised that office it does not appear that any regular appointment of such a functionary was made, but that he performed the duties as one of the choir. Harmony and contrivance are the principal attributes of the works of Tallis, and there yet exists an extraordinary specimen of ingenuity in his " song of forty parts," which is described at length by Dr. Burney. Upon the compositions of this "admirable contrapuntist," as Dr. B. calls him, and as

*This effort of thought and labour has however been exceeded by our learned cotemporary, Mr. Worgan, in his motet of forty-five parts.