the celebrated Conservatorio of Naples, and, as I have
been informed, was about to obtain a professorship in the Conservatorio
of Paris, when political circumstances diverted his course to America.
He was the friend of General Moreau and President Madison. Of noble
appearance, fine manners, and sensitive temperament, he for some time
received the consideration due to his talents and acquirements, but, in
after years, was sadly neglected, and finally died in Philadelphia,
almost literally of want. His musical knowledge perished with him; his
manuscripts (operas, oratorios, etc.) were, I believe, all burned by him
before his death. A sad history, and, in a land where there has been so
little opportunity for the beet musical instruction, a strange one!]
To define the provinces of _science_ and _art_, we may briefly say, that
science is concerned with the discovery of demonstrable principles, and
the deduction of undeniable corollaries; while art is occupied with
expression, performance, and the creative faculty with which man has
been endowed. Music and astronomy are both sciences, that is, founded
upon certain fixed and ascertainable laws; but astronomy is no art,
because man has not the power to create, or even remodel worlds, and
send them rolling through space; while he can produce sounds, and
arrange them in such a way as to result in significant meaning and in
beauty, two of the chief ends of art.
The music of different periods in the world's history has rested upon
the various scales recognized during those periods as fundamental, which
scales have been more or less complete as they have approached or
receded from the absolutely fundamental scale as given by nature. The
scales now in use are not identical with the natural scale, but are, in
different degrees, _derived_ from it.
The natural scale is, in its commencement, harmonic, and is found by the
consideration of the natural progression of sound consequent upon the
division and subdivision of a single string. It ought to be familiar to
every student of acoustics. The sound produced by the striking or
twanging of a single string (on a monochord) is called the tonic, and
also, from its position as the lowest note, the bass. If we divide this
string in half, we will obtain a series of vibrations producing a sound
the _same in character_, but, so to speak, _doubly high in pitch_. This
sound is named the octave, because it is the eighth note in our common
diatoni
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