There is no department of existing musical compositions which to me seems a more unending subject of interesting study than the chorale as it appears in Bach's works, vocal and instrumental. Bach's chorales have a value of their own, not only in a musical point of view, as a sheer pleasure to the cultivated ear, but as throwing light on the nature, limits, and functions of the tone-art. When the future Lessing appears and writes a new “Laocoön,” he will find that Bach's chorales will considerably assist him in any endeavour to fix the limits of our art and in discussing what the true aim of music should be. I shall have repeatedly to return to this point in the course of my paper. I cannot examine it in detail, as so many matters have claimed mention that I shall but slightly allude to each; and I must ask your pardon if the paper should appear discursive.

The Chairman.—Before I call upon Mr. Hadow to read his paper, I wish to say a few words of respect to the memory of our late friend and member, Mr. Banister, who was regular in his attendance at the meetings of the Association and took a deep interest in its welfare. He was in many ways a remarkable man, and one who has left his mark on the profession, especially through the large number of his pupils, to whom he was a most assiduous and enthusiastic teacher. I never met any of his pupils who did not always speak of him with great respect and affection. As members of this Association the least we can do is to pass a vote of condolence to the widow, and send to her our expression of the great appreciation and regard in which we hold his memory.

Mr. Southgate at the commencement said: Ladies and gentlemen, I am simply the mouthpiece of Dr. Maclean and I do not identify myself with all the statements in this paper—indeed, I dissent very much from some of them—but still I am very pleased to read the paper for him.

Ladies and Gentlemen,—In introducing to your notice this evening the Giorgi Patent Flute and the Giorgi Patent Flute Head as applied to other style cylinder flutes, I beg, on behalf of Messrs. Joseph Wallis & Son, to thank you for the opportunity you have afforded me of demonstrating the superiority which we claim the Giorgi flute possesses over other flutes.

It is proposed in this paper to examine briefly into the present state of our knowledge as to the musical structure of Plainsong. Until about twenty years since, when the Benedictine monks of Solesmes began to publish the results of their systematic study of the music, theories on the art were founded mostly on conjecture. The reason for this was that the chant was composed more than two centuries before the earliest and very rudimentary treatise on the subject was written; that the few later works treated of things from a different point of view to ours, so that they are not very easy to understand; and that by the time writers become more in accord with us moderns, say the fifteenth century, the rendering of Plainsong had become so corrupted that all theoretical treatises were completely worthless. Practically, therefore, all that we have to work upon is the music itself, with some vague indications in treatises of about the ninth century, which may or may not be comprehensible, and may often be twisted to mean anything we like. The notation in which the music has come down to us is in four forms—viz., the Alphabetic, the Dasiau, the Neumatic, and the Square notation. The alphabetic is but rarely met with, and was probably only used for instruction books. The Dasian is used in the MSS. formerly attributed to Hucbald, but these only contain a few examples illustrating the treatises. The neumatic was the notation in general use down to the eleventh century, when it was gradually converted into the ordinary square notation. Now this last shows us exactly the notes to be sung, but very little more. If properly printed in the style of all MSS. until the sixteenth century, the phrasing is fairly well indicated, and it acts very serviceably, far better than modern notation, for singers acquainted with the spirit of Plainsong; but by itself it is as useless as “Rule, Britannia,” written in minims would be. But when this square notation is collated with its forerunner, the neumatic, a different state of things appears. The square notation shows only the notes; the neumatic shows none of the notes but almost everything else that converts notes into music. The approximate time value (all that can be given in recitative), the phrasing, the expression, all is given in the neums as clearly as in a modern composition. For example, the podatus only expresses two notes of which the first is lower than the second, but neither the tonal value of the first note nor the interval of the second. But it has four different forms, which must necessarily mean four different renderings of the note-group—i.e., that the first note of the group is accented, but that each note may have a longer or shorter duration according to the form of the neum. And it has even a fifth variety, which I take to be a turn on the first note as indicated by the wavy form given to the lower limb (see neum at end of second line in the Alleluia, p. 70).

I had hoped that the MS. of the Memoir of Sir R. P. Stewart, which I have been engaged upon for more than two years, would by this time have been published; but for one reason I am glad of the delay, for the statue just erected to Stewart's memory is to receive its inauguration a week hence at the hands of His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, on Leinster Lawn, one of the best sites in Dublin, and to which the public there has liberally contributed. This important remembrance seemed rightly to claim the first place as an enduring memorial of the lamented professor, which those “who run can read” at a glance; whilst a memorial in the shape of a book requires some hours of leisure to peruse and some spare cash to procure. But I now hope that the publication of the Memoir of the lamented professor which I have written may not be much further postponed.

Cui bono ! may have been the exclamation of some on reading the title of this paper. We already know, they might say, from Spitta, that Bach was considerably indebted to his predecessors; we are content to leave the study of their works to evolutionists and examiners. To any such I would make answer thus: In order fully to appreciate the works of a great composer you must know at least something of what those who preceded him accomplished; and the greater those predecessors, the greater one's admiration for the man who not only assimilated what was best in them, but who rose to higher eminence. Surely acquaintanceship with the best symphonic work of Haydn and Mozart intensifies one's appreciation of Beethoven's symphonies. To such argument it may, however, be opposed that Haydn and Mozart were geniuses; that though Beethoven surpassed them he did not cast them into oblivion, whereas Bach practically put an extinguisher on his predecessors. But for a long time Bach himself, just as much as his predecessors, was neglected, ignored by the majority of musicians. He was resuscitated in the nineteenth century by Nägeli, Wesley, Mendelssohn, and others; and various publications or reprints of early publications of the works of his predecessors (Sweelinck, Scheidt, Frescobaldi, Buxtehude) appear from time to time in Germany. The predecessors of Bach are as important in the history of the development of fugue, as Haydn and Mozart in that of the symphony.

I have often been asked the question, “How can we know anything about ancient Greek music?” or “How can any fragments of it that may be discovered be translated into modern notation?” The answer is simple enough. Of actual specimens of ancient Greek music, the existing examples may be counted on the fingers of the two hands, but a fairly considerable amount of its theory has come down to us in the works of Aristoxenus of Tarentum (who wrote treatises on harmonics and rhythm), Cleonides, Euclid, Nicomachus, Alypius (who has given us the complete notation), Gaudentius, Bacchius, senior, Aristides, Quintilianus (the anonymous writer), and finally Claudius Ptolemy and Plutarch. These authors flourished at various times, from about 300 B.C. to 200 A.D., the most ancient and the most important being Aristoxenus.

What was a recorder ? How many different answers have been given to this question.

An Englishman in search of a reply would turn, as a matter of course, first of all to Johnson's Dictionary, where he would find that the cautious lexicographer, keeping on safe ground, pronounces a recorder to be “a kind of flute.” But if the inquirer, desirous of testing the correctness of the Doctor's statement by the light of a more modern authority, were to consult Webster, he would be told that a recorder was “a kind of flageolet,” for which, in a later edition, there is substituted another explanation: “an instrument resembling the flageolet.” Should this be deemed unsatisfactory, and recourse he had to the “Century Dictionary” (1889) for the latest declaration on the subject, a description of the instrument would come to light, but a description which adds at least one other to the statement in Webster which will not bear examination. A recorder is said to be “a musical instrument of the flageolet family, having a long tube with seven holes and a mouth-piece. In some cases an eighth, covered with gold beaters' skin, appears near the mouth-piece, apparently to influence the quality of the tone.”