f its
scandalous laxities.

M. Saint-Saens, to illustrate the clever way in which popular songs were
given an ecclesiastical or Plain Song character, has here added to his
luminous lecture the following precious original composition, reproduced
in facsimile, in which through ingenious contrapuntal treatment he gives
a mock sacred form to an old French ditty, "I Have Some Good Tobacco in
My Snuffbox."

[Illustration: musical notation]

"_It is apparent here that by assigning the melody to the tenor part, it
is unrecognizable. Oftentimes licentious songs were taken as the Plain
Chant text, and on this account Pope Marcellus commissioned Palestrina
to put an end to such practices._"

In a note he adds: "It must be remembered that before popular songs were
thus treated in counterpoint [which means that while the song is being
produced by one voice, the other voice or voices are singing against it
notes entirely different from the melody], the text for that kind of
treatment was the Plain Song--the singing of which was always assigned
to the tenor part. In my youth I have heard graduals treated in this
fashion at High Mass in my parish church of St. Sulpice in Paris, which
is still renowned for the splendor of its ceremonials."

[2]

(Illustration: musical notation)

There are here illustrations of (a) the difference between the written
manner of Gluck, in a passage from his "Alceste"--and the actually
correct way of interpreting and playing it; (b) a passage from the
scherzo of Mendelssohn's string quartet,--to show how a gay subject can
be treated in the minor mood--and M. Saint-Saens adds: "Mendelssohn's
scherzo of his 'Midsummer Night's Dream' is in sol minor but it evokes
no idea of sadness, although oftentimes those who play it, deceived by
its minor mood, give it a melancholy character, which is very far from
what the composer intended."

[3]

(Illustration: musical notation)

Here M. Saint-Saens has written a passage from a piano concerto of
Mozart to illustrate how that composer wished the _non-legato_ to be
interpreted--namely, in a flute-like manner,--the piano repeating
textually the passages indicated to be played first by the flutes.

Again he illustrates the same subject with a passage taken from a piano
and violin sonata of Beethoven. The _non-legato_ passages here are not
to be played on the violin in a way approaching the _staccato_, although
they are written as detached notes; and the piano