fth lower. These two orchestras and
these two choruses then certainly were reduced to a very small number of
performers.

In all very ancient music, from the time of Lully, one finds constantly
a little cross marked over the notes. Often this certainly indicates a
trill, but it seems difficult to take it always to mean such. However,
perhaps fashion desired that trills should thus be made out of place. I
have never been able to find an explanation of this sign, not even in
the musical dictionary of J. J. Rousseau. This dictionary none the
less contains a great deal of precious information. Does it not inform
us, among other things, that the copyists of former times were veritable
collaborators? When the author indicated the altos with the basses, the
hautbois with the violins, these copyists undertook to make the
necessary modifications. Times have unfortunately changed since.

In Rameau's music, certain signs are unintelligible. Musical treatises
of that time say that it is impossible to describe them, and that to
understand them it was necessary to have heard them interpreted by a
professor of singing.

With clavecinists the multiplicity of grace notes is extreme. As a rule
they give the explanation of these at the head of their works, just as
Rameau did. I note a curious sign which indicates that the right hand
should arrive upon the keys a little after the left. This shows that
there was not then that frightful habit of playing one hand after the
other as is often done nowadays.

This prolixity of grace notes indulged by players upon the clavecin is
rather terrifying at first, but one need not be detained by them, for
they are not indispensable. The published methods of those times inform
us in fact that pupils were first taught to play the pieces without
these grace notes, and that they were added by degrees. Besides, Rameau
in transcribing for the clavecin fragments of his operas, has indicated
those grace notes which the original did not contain.

Ornaments are much less numerous in the writings of Sebastian Bach.
Numberless confusions have been produced in the interpretation of the
mordant,[5] or biting note. It should be executed above or below the
principal note depending on whether the notes which precede the mordant
are superior or inferior to it.

With reference to the difficulties in interpreting the works of Rameau
and of Gluck, I would point out the change in the diapason or pitch
which at that ti