In introducing for your consideration this afternoon the subject of memory in connection with piano playing, I can hardly doubt that my subject is one in which every earnest student and every competent teacher of the piano must feel no slight or passing interest. From the time the beginner learns the alphabetical names of the notes of the keyboard, by remembering their position in relation to the groups of two and three black notes, until he reaches — if he ever does — the highest summit of his profession as a pianist, does the cultivation of the power of memory, in one form or another, enter in no small degree into his studies.

May I start with the announcement that I claim no originality, no copyright whatever in the matter that I hope to place before you. There are, doubtless, several present to whom I shall say nothing that they did not already know. Yet if these remarks aid others less perfectly informed, and show them a most useful adjunct in sight singing teaching, and how it should be used, the end in view will be attained.

For nearly three centuries the name of Palestrina has been much more familiar than his works, especially in England. Comparatively few English musicians—we may even say absolutely few—professional or amateur, can claim a practical acquaintance with the writings of this composer, whose name is so well-known to them. On the Continent things are a little better; but only, I believe, in Germany can the works of Palestrina be often heard. Of course difference of religion has some influence in causing the ignorance in England; the recent performance of “Missa Papæ Marcelli,”in St. Paul's Cathedral, was epoch-making indeed, and not the least important of the general events which have so marked the year 1898 as an era in the religious history of England. Since so little is publicly heard of Palestrina's works here, and no trustworthy account of his life has been published in English, as far as I am aware, a paper upon both life and works will hardly require an apology.

Ladies and Gentlemen,—The study of the phenomena of nature in all her multitudinous aspects is and has ever been a source of delight and lasting interest to the human mind; and the pleasure derived from this study is one which is not restricted to the professional and trained naturalist, but is one in which all can share. Instances are numerous of men of humble origin and but limited education who, possessing an innate love of nature and keen powers of observation, paid attention to what they saw around them, and so developed into students of nature, and did good and original work in the field of natural science; and one of the charms of this study is, that as soon as we look beneath the surface of things, that which at first and to a superficial observer seems commonplace, becomes at once an object and source of fascinating interest and admiring wonder.

This instrument was captured in the Tirah country, at a place called Bagh, during the recent campaign on the Northwestern frontier of India. It came into the hands of Mr. S. Liddell, the Bandmaster of the 2nd Battalion Yorkshire Regiment, and by him was presented to Messrs. Boosey and Co., in June, 1898. It was described by him as an Afridi fiddle, but beyond this I have no clue as to its proper designation or classification, and bring it before you rather with a view to gaining information than because I have any remarks of importance to offer concerning it.

There is probably no department of human industry wherein the predominating influence of a master hand has been more forcibly and continuously displayed than in the case of Antonio Stradivari; and although my remarks are chiefly intended to be directed to the period subsequent to his death, it may nevertheless be well to preface them with one or two observations concerning this extraordinary man and his work.

When, on the 5th of April, 1897, Joseph Joachim made his appearance on the platform of St. James's Hall to lead the A minor Quartet of Johannes Brahms, who had died two days before, I think there can have been few persons present who did not feel that in these two names was summed up a particular aspect of music which, whether we like it or not, we cannot disregard. Brahms on the creative, and Joachim on the interpretative side, stand as the representatives of very definite—we might almost say, categorical—musical ideals, and the school of which they in their separate lines have been the leaders is that which, for want of a better name (and indeed the term is but a vague one), has been generally called the classical. If I interpret the signs of the times aright, the great majority of living composers have more or less definitely turned their energies into channels in which there is not much room for the active working of the principles which sufficed for Brahms, and it seems to me that, at the opening of what I personally regard as emphatically an era of decadence, it may not be without interest to try and formulate the ideas which formed the basis of the work of the last, so far as we can see at present, of the great composers.

In discussing Programme Music one may consider it in relation to those principles which apply to the conception and the expression of an art, whether that art be music or painting or sculpture. But as such a survey of æsthetical questions would demand for its consideration a space of time far exceeding that at our disposal at present, it seems more appropriate that we should limit ourselves to the purely musical aspects of the matter. I will content myself with saying in this connection, that while the most advanced school of music of to-day—that which begins where Wagner left off—insists on the paramount importance of a literary idea being the basis of the composition, the most advanced schools of sculpture and painting, those of Rodin and Whistler and Degas, assert that the literary idea is the least matter to be considered in plastic or pictorial art, and that the chief if not the only end is the display of technique. I may point out a very curious inconsistency in this connection—namely, that among musicians I constantly find men who, while proclaiming the supremacy of absolute music, see no beauty in absolute painting and sculpture, and admire the most flagrant instances of a programme in these arts.

Musical aesthetics is admitted to be a peculiarly occult branch of philosophy, and one in which little progress has been made. Prominent thinkers have wrestled with it without conclusive result. Among scientists and philosophers who have recently attacked it are Bain, Helmholtz, Darwin, Weissmann, and Herbert Spencer; and although their respective views remain authoritative utterances on the subject they still fail (probably because none of these thinkers gave more than a fraction of his attention to the problem) to supply a complete and convincing rationale of musical influence. The thinker on music perceives at the outset the distinction that music does not draw its general form from nature like painting and sculpture do, or from language like poetry does, but that this general form has been shaped gradually by man.