Progress, enlightened movement, new methods, a new outlook, in a word—growth, has been going on steadily in our public schools for many years past, and has been especially insistent in some schools, I think, during the last fifteen or twenty years. Music has not been left behind in this forward movement. Some people seem to think and talk as if it had. Far from it. As a fact, the place that music holds in most public schools, the amount of time given to it by boys, the importance attached to it by almost everyone connected with our schools, is most striking. I think some people would be really astonished if they were to look through the programmes of concerts given at some of our schools, and they would be still more astonished if they were to go and hear the performances. I am sure they would be impressed with the high standard, earnestness and ability they would encounter.

I can do no more than treat briefly the long story of the music at the English Chapels Royal.

It covers with certainty, a period of nearly eight centuries and embraces the musical activities of many of the most prominent musicians that our country has produced. I propose to concentrate mainly upon its early period: and deal concisely with the entries in the Chapel Royal Cheque Book, which you may like to see before leaving the building. Illustrations—which will be sung towards the end of this paper—will stretch from the Tudor period to the present day; and in this way I shall hope to cover, however briefly, the whole story of the music and musicians of the Chapels. We know, of course, that the English, at least as far back as the period of John Dunstable (roughly from 1390 to 1453) were celebrated for their love of music and good voices. Cathedrals, College chapels, and religious houses had their choirs in those comparatively early days. But this is not so remarkable when we realise that references to the choir of the English Sovereign date from 250 years before John Dunstable. Great as we know the influence of the King's Chapel to have been in the Tudor and Restoration periods, we cannot doubt but that it was an even greater incentive to musical effort and development in very early times.

There are three fruitful sources of error with regard to these problems. One is that many conductors proceed from a work like the B minor Mass to the church cantatas instead of in the reverse direction, and so get a wrong angle of vision. The second is that it is customary to try to adapt Bach to our modern conditions instead of trying to adapt our modern conditions to Bach. The third is that there has been a tendency to regard Bach as a crude and erring orchestrator and to think that his works are only palatable when modernised. Fortunately, these ideas, like many others concerning the composer, are passing away, though much too slowly.

“The music of Waits—rude as may be their minstrelsy—breaks upon the mid-watches of the night with the effect of perfect harmony.” So writes Washington Irving, and though the experiences of those present will perhaps fail to endorse this description, we may, I think, spend an hour profitably in considering the origin, history, decay and disappearance of this old musical combination.

Most of us have had occasion to lament the indifference and self-satisfied ignorance of literary authors when writing of Music in their novels, or poetry, as the case may be. It is pleasant to turn away from the many glaring examples of this sort of thing which are to be found in the works of the xxth, xixth and xviiith centuries, and enjoy the contrast with the treatment of Music by some of the xviith century writers.

It is a good thing to start with a definition of song. Of definitions I have seen that of Bourgault-Ducoudray's appeals to me. He says that a song “applies simple, spontaneous, rich form to a great poem.” “Simple” seems to negate “rich,” though I think we can guess what he means; “spontaneous” is the right word; what we all feel about the really successful song is that it comes to us in one gush straight from the composer's brain (even if that isn't the least the case). The words should be “great” if only from the singer's point of view; unless they are, he cannot sing with complete conviction. Mendel's Lexicon adds that a song “presents a single emotion to mind and feeling.” That is worth insisting upon; Schubert took a long time to find out how to give his song that unity which became its conspicuous merit.