Complete Encyclopedia of Music, Elementary, Technical, Historical, Biographical, Vocal, and Instrumental (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Complete Encyclopedia of Music, Elementary, Technical, Historical, Biographical, Vocal, and Instrumental

The complete encyclopedia or music, now offered to the public, enters an unoccupied field, no such work having been compiled before either in this country or in England, and nothing like it existing in the English language excepting a small Lex icon published by the author of this work in 1845. In all the foreign musical works which have come to my knowledge there is a neglect and almost supercilious disregard of modern musical pretensions, which have led me to believe that a correct and modest record Of them (in this, and another similar volume which is to follow at a future day) may assist to preserve much historical and biographical information which but for this effort might be forever lost.

The better music is known and understood, the more it will be valued and esteemed and a love of the higher schools of musical composition is one of the surest tests of a re fined and elegant state of society. The reading and study of music and the use of mu sicel instruments have become so general among all classes of people in this country that books treating of the subject begin to have a ready sale. Musical progress in the United States, since 1850, has been very extraordinary, and has more than kept pace with the other arts and sciences. Music propagates itself with great rapidity: from the pleasure it gives, and from the facilities afforded in our day for acquiring a knowledge of it in a country so prosperous as ours, a country the great mass of whose people can afford to hear the performances of the greatest musical artists of the age and can afford the best musical education for their families, the rapid extension of the art may be anticipated. The great European vocalists and artists who have followed each other to this country in quick suc cession have produced a remarkable effect in raising the standard of musical taste and spreading the science and practice of music over the land. Critics talk of the want of a national music in America: a national music is the spontaneous growth of ages of insu lated life and feeling. It is impossible that American music can do more than reproduce the music Of other ages and nations. We are too open to the world, too receptive of all influences from abroad, too much a nation made up of others to possess a music of our own. We are for along time yet to remain in the position of learners; let us not, then, fear the charge of imitation; it is too stale a. Charge to be pungent. We must imitate while we continue in a state of pupilage.

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