That the Sackbut was the predecessor and counterpart of the Slide Trombone of the present day is a matter of common knowledge, but, when we come to unravel the origin of the name, we are landed at once into the region of wild conjecture. Some writers have wisely passed the subject over in silence; others have propounded solutions more plausible than probable. Nares, for instance, in his Glossary (1822), writes: —“The modern Sackbut is a complicated instrument with sliding tubes answering the purpose of stops. Sackbut is corrupted from Sambuca, used in Latin for the same instrument (see ‘Coles’ Dictionary ‘).” Of this mistaken identification we shall speak presently. Kastner suggests a French etymology for the word, viz. : “saccades bouter,” to give little jerks, alluding to the movement of the slide. One of our latest dictionaries has again returned to a French derivation, giving the O.F. “saquier,” to pull, and “boter,” to push, as the source of “Saqueboute,” the French form of the word. But those writers seem to be nearer the truth who look for its origin in Spain, where the name, under the form Sacabuche, first appears. The Encyclopaedia Metropolitana (1848) so traces it, but gives a ludicrous, yet very generally accepted, explanation of its meaning. Sackbut is from “Sacar del buche,” “because they who use this instrument draw up their breath with great force, and blow with all their might.” Skeat (Etymological Dictionary, 1890) adopts the same derivation, explaining it literally as “that which exhausts the chest.” We pass by the suggested derivations from the Latin “Sacca-buccis” (chubby-cheeked), or that sac is “a bag” and bouche is “the mouth,” as due to the contortions of inexperienced players; but the following may perhaps recommend itself as a legitimate interpretation of the word. As several recent writers have reminded us, the word Sacabuche is also the name of a form of pump, the first half of the word being evidently derived from Sacar, “to draw out “; but while others have derived the rest of the word either from “buche,” the chest or maw, or from Boccine, a corrupted form of the Latin Buccina (neither of which meanings are applicable to the pump, which is apparently the older appellation), I would suggest that “buche” is identical with “bucha,” the Spanish form of the Latin “buxus,” used in the sense of a tube or pipe originally of boxwood, but even in classical days employed without reference to its material. This view is confirmed by the fact that in Portuguese the word is “Sacabuxa,” and the English equivalent would be “draw-tube” or “draw-pipe,” a meaning which also will apply to a pump, the body of which was often made of boxwood. The application of the word to the musical instrument first appears in Spain in the fourteenth century possibly as a nickname. At the end of that century we find it in France, but under the form “Saquebute,” a change due either to linguistic action or by confusion with a very similar word—“Saqueboute”—already in use as the name of “a lance armed with an iron crook, and employed for pulling a knight off his horse in an encounter.”∗ The word appears in England towards the end of the fifteenth century,” when it is written” Shakbusshe,” more in accordance with the Spanish pronunciation, therefore, than the French; early in the following century it takes the form Saykebud, Sacbut, or Sagbut.’ In Belgium the French form is used; in Germany and Italy the word is unknown.

The Gaceta Musical de Madrid published, thirty years ago, in its number of March 18, a quotation from M. Adrian de la Fage, in which he says : “How numerous are the difficulties and how obscure is the history of music, and how many points remain yet to be cleared up ! … A proof of this is the almost complete ignorance which we are in concerning the ancient school of Spanish music before Palestrina.'

The striking example of heredity shown in the evolution and development of the. Bach family is no doubt familiar to you all, so that a very brief mention of it will be sufficient. For generations, from the time of Veit Bach about 1555, they had been musicians, so well knówn that at one time town musicians in Erfurt were called “Bachs,” whether they included any of the family or not. This steady development of their art culminated in the person of John Sebastian Bach, born 1685, and it is one of the curious facts in musical history that after his death it ceased in so short a time. True, his sons were all musical, and two or three of them made some considerable mark; but with the exception of the eldest, Wilhelm Friedemann, it was in a totally different line from that in which their father's genius had moved, though it is easy to trace the influence which his work had on their compositions.

Although domestic music appears to have flourished in England during the Madrigalian Period, i.e., from 1588 to 1638, as witness well-known and often-quoted passages from Morley's “Plaine and Easie Introduction,” 1597, and Peacham's “Compleat Gentleman,” 1620 (a work, by-the-bye, just reprinted by the University of Oxford), any idea of a public performance does not appear to have suggested itself. The professional musician of that day was either a member of a Cathedral choir or was attached to some family of distinction, as, for instance, Christopher Simpson to that of Sir John Bolles. The pursuit of music as a relaxation was of necessity confined to those who possessed means and leisure. The political troubles effectually put a stop to such pursuits, with the result that several well-known musicians, among them Captain Cook and Wm. Lawes, found their occupation gone, and from a feeling of loyalty actually took up arms in the Royalist cause, in which the latter lost his life.

The statement that music is the most emotional of the Arts will not be denied by any one. While the other arts awaken ideas, which in their turn act on the feelings, music acts inversely. It affects, in the first instance, the emotions, creating dispositions which we translate by the vague terms joy, sadness, tenderness, serenity, tranquillity, &c. (cf. Ribot, “Psychology of the Emotions,” p. 103).

Perhaps no musical instrument has been subjected to greater constitutional changes during the last hundred years than has the English organ—in the various directions of size, compass of key-boards, character of stops and methods of controlling their use, and last (but not least) its system of tuning. Changes are still being made, even to the extent of affecting the uniformity of those “playing arrangements” which the College of Organists endeavoured to regulate, systematize and settle more than a quarter of a century ago. It is an open question if the organ is being developed at the present time upon logical and really artistic lines, as a musical instrument deserving a separate and individual existence of its own; or whether it is daily becoming a merely servile (and therefore a degraded) mechanical imitation of the orchestra. It may help us to see more clearly in which direction we are now moving if we turn our thoughts back to the English organ of the first decade of the nineteenth century—when it was a comparatively small instrument, but one with a character all its own, and in many ways admirably adapted to fulfil the one great purpose of its existence—the accompaniment of the human voice.

French opera before 1750 is interesting, apart from its intrinsic musical value. It affords an example, not uncommon in the history of music, of specialisation carried to a remarkable degree : an example of the establishment of a convention which, because it served admirably the purpose it was intended to fulfil, maintained an unbroken tradition for more than a century, and was affected by changes of detail only. With few exceptions, also, the composers were entirely devoted to its cause and made little reputation outside its sphere. The exceptions, strangely enough, were men who also achieved something of a reputation in Church music. None of them had any lasting fame in the realms of secular absolute music, the exceptions to this statement being Marin Marais, who is remembered rather for his solo music for viols than for his operas, and Rameau, whose works for the clavecin and researches in acoustics would by themselves have won him a niche in the temple of fame. Of the whole group of composers, only two, Lully and Rameau, have any existence in the minds of the average musical man of to-day, and even their personalities are but shadowy.

May I say at once that what I have ventured to call “my thoughts” upon Brahms, are not intended to be dogmatic, I do not presume to press with undue force any opinion of my own in regard to the position which Brahms does, or should, occupy among the great masters of music. With his high ideals of art and his lofty conceptions of duty in regard to it, he is assuredly the one composer who irresistibly commands our attention at the present time, and it is upon this fact that I rest the hope that I may ask you to spend a few minutes this evening in considering the question Why is there still some hesitancy to place him among the greatest composers ?