The bibliography of the subject is a scanty one. In all not more than a total round dozen of really useful works have been published in this country, on the Continent, and in the New World.

Apparently these, everyone of them touching on Military or Army Bands and their music, represent the sum total. I know of none on what soldiers call civilian wind band music that have seen the light. If I except the researches of Professor Bridge on “Waits” I believe I except all.

I offer no apology for introducing an academic subject to the attention of the Musical Association. Our Association is unique among Societies which employ the musical lecturer. Whereas all others that I know call on him either to instruct or amuse an audience (which may have to be cajoled into giving him its attention), the Musical Association allows its members to instruct or amuse themselves; to talk about their own interests in their own way. It is generally understood that there will be an audience of some sort, a few members and their guests, who will be sufficiently long-suffering to sit the lecturer out, in the hope that he will be equally complaisant towards them on some other occasion.

On the last occasion on which the subject of Spanish music was discussed at a meeting of this Association, we were able to listen to the finished product—a product “finished” in every sense of the word, for, as members will recollect, the illustrations, consisting of a number of Spanish madrigals, were beautifully performed by the English Singers. This time, I should like to begin at the other end, as it were—with the remains of early Spanish music as they confront the researcher, and the traveller. For the researcher is not confined to musical MSS. or to the statements of the theorists. Sculpture, ivories, miniatures and contemporary descriptions in prose or verse, often throw more light on the conditions of performance and the character of the music itself, than the actual MS. with the musical notation (supposing it to exist and to be intelligible), and they are certainly more illuminating than the treatises on musical theory.

When I had the honour of receiving your Council's invitation to read a paper on present-day music, I will not pretend that I felt nothing but pleasure. Naturally I was greatly pleased, and very grateful for the opportunity of talking about a subject on which I am intensely keen. At the same time I felt very much alarmed. It seemed to me that a man could not reasonably be expected to know enough about such a subject to address your Association until he had been a concert-goer for at least a couple of hundred years. Two reflections, however, gave me courage to accept the invitation. The first was that, long before a man has been attending concerts for two hundred years, he is apt to lose his interest in modern music. At the best he probably only retains an interest in the music that was modern when he was young. The second comforting reflection was that age is apt, not only to diminish one's enthusiasm for modem music, but to diminish also one's enthusiasm for rushing in where angels fear to tread. And that, I think, fairly describes this afternoon's enterprise. In other words, we have to discuss points on which no wise man would offer an opinion.

The whole circle of musical science includes the science of sound, as a necessary part of the process of the production of music. But many parts of that process are silent, and yet they are none the less essential for its completion.

In the Book of Ecclesiastes it is written “There is no new thing under the sun.” Even our word “invent” in its Latin derivation means “find “—not “create.” However, if we can say or write nothing “new,” we can nevertheless ‘take stock’ of our position now and then, question our premises, test our foundations, and see what is transient and what is abiding in the faith that is in us upon any given subject. Some sort of “spring-cleaning” is a good, if an uncomfortable operation, for all of us, particularly at this period of our English year. Let us see if our mental shoots and blossoms are likely to wither or to be fruitful.