Orlando Gibbons was undoubtedly one of the greatest of English composers. Indeed, his music ranks among the finest written by any European composer of the day. His musical gifts received early recognition, and in 1605, at the age of twenty-one, he was appointed an organist of the Chapel Royal. John Bull and Edmund Hooper were among his colleagues. Doubtless, much of the organ music was written at this time, but since it is all stylistically mature it is impossible to date it accurately. However, some of the best keyboard music was included in Parthenia, and this dates from 1612–13. It is likely that much of the dance music—both for keyboard and for strings—was written after his appointment in 1619 as a musician of the Privy Chamber, for dancing was much in vogue at court and dance-music was enjoyed also in its own right. In 1623 Gibbons was appointed organist of Westminster Abbey, and two years later he died, at Canterbury.

I Must confess to feeling a certain trepidation, confronting you here this evening to talk about Frederick Delius. I could scarcely feel more uneasy if your committee had been unwise enough to let me offer you some thoughts on the art of Amy Woodforde-Finden, or Albert W. Ketélby, or Irving Berlin.

The Peacefulness and longevity of the Venetian Republic prove that it had solved one of its greatest problems—that of poverty. Not that it was rid of its poor even in times of prosperity: but at least they were cared for by a wealth of charitable organisations, and that desperation which leads to civil insurrection never gained a hold. The chronically sick, the girls having no dowry, the orphans and the beggars were each helped by various confraternities which were supported by the more fortunate. Some of these were specifically for members of a trade who had fallen on difficult times, like that founded in 1340 by a German cobbler called Henry, who left money to help infirm and needy shoemakers. Others, looked after ‘widows without male issue’; and old people attracted a great deal of money to provide homes for them.

In his study of Turner's great picture of the sea, The Snowstorm, Sir Kenneth Clark draws attention to Turner's preoccupation with ‘visions’ and ‘dreams’. These words, he says, ‘were commonly applied to Turner's pictures in his own day, and in the vague, metaphysical sense of the nineteenth century they have lost their value for us. But with our new knowledge of dreams as the expression of deep intuitions and buried memories, we can look at Turner's work again and recognise that to an extent unique in art his pictures have the quality of a dream. The crazy perspectives, the double focuses, the melting of one form into another and the general feeling of instability, all these are forms of perception which most of us know only when we are asleep. Turner experienced them when he was awake’.

The Picture of Gottfried van Swieten which is found in musical literature can scarcely be described as wholly favourable. It has long been recognised that his tastes in music influenced Mozart profoundly, but his close-fistedness has been blamed for contributing to the composer's poverty, and finally for giving Mozart only the cheapest possible funeral. In his dealings with Haydn, Swieten is acknowledged as the leader of that group of the nobility which sponsored the Creation and the Seasons, but this credit is more than balanced by criticism of his libretti to the two oratorios. At the best, it would seem, van Swieten's presence in Vienna was a mixed blessing.

Well before the time that Dvořák was beginning to make a name for himself as a composer, a vigorous struggle had taken place in Bohemia to secure for indigenous literature, art and music a secure position in the cultural life of the country, a struggle that had been brought to a successful conclusion. Smetana had returned from Gothenburg; the Provisional Theatre, especially built for the performance of Czech operas and plays, was well established, and already in 1866 Smetana was installed as conductor of the theatre. It was not until six years later that Dvořák wrote his first successful work, The Heirs of the White Mountain. Smetana, in collaboration with Mánes the painter, was an active protagonist in bringing about this cultural revolution following a sudden weakening of the power of the Austrian Empire, and in consequence he wore the cloak of nationalism more consciously and deliberately than Dvořák did.

If one reads the text-books of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it becomes obvious that in those days the practical knowledge of harmony and counterpoint was a sine qua non for all musicians. Most performers, indeed, of any reputation composed music habitually, either to play themselves, for teaching, or to make some profit from publication. It may be that this universal education in the making of music is one of the reasons for the astonishing amount of much more than tolerable music which has come to us from this period. Even singers, that variety of homo sapiens which is often classified apart, were so trained, if only to decorate the repeats of da capo arias with their ‘incredible graces’.