13 DECEMBER 1828, Page 10

TRADITIONAL MELODIES.

Fr has been said that airs which hit the taste of a great number of people, must contain something good. This we do not believe to be true of tunes which suddenly spread far and near among the population of a city, and gradually sink into oblivion ; but it appears eminently true of melodies which live in the memory like Sailors' ditties or the Christmas Carol. We must look at the comparative duration of the two, to find which is genuine and which sophisticate. The tearful chant with which poor people are now daily coming under our windows, telling us to "remember Christ, our Saviour," has not been sung since last year, and in a few weeks' time will not be sung again till the next, no copy assists the singers, and yet it will go on. This is the kind of immortality which a musician most vehemently desires for a melody. To write a tune which shall sink into the hearts of a people, is perhaps an achievement beyond the reach of art; and therefore few of our wellknown great composers are known to have signalized themselves in this way. The musician unawares—one who gives way to his feelings, and follows the rules of composition without knowing them—is the man to write a lasting popular melody. Musical mathematicians aver that the minor key is not in nature. How comes it then that Sailors' tunes, the Christmas Carol, and the old Monkish Chants, between which there is remarkable similarity, should partake so much of this mode ? These come down to us from remote periods ; the Argonauts might have invented the first, and the Shepherds of Bethlehem the second, for anything we know of the matter. It is hardly to be supposed that in the infancy of the language of sound, people who merely vented their feelings should affect a refinement beyond nature. But let us hear the two combinations. The major chord, which is the natural ad perfect combination, as mathematicians impress upon us, conveys nothing beyond a satisfactory sensation to the ear. The minor chord, on the contrary, carries the sentiment of melancholy in its sound ;—a shade passes over us as we hear it. It would be a pleasant deduction to draw thence, that all the misery, pain, or unhappiness that are to be found in the world, are but perversions of Nature's intentions, like the minor key ! Banish sorrow, and we should have no more sympathy with so sophisticate a mode, that could only have come into fashion at the fall of man l—We believe that none of those quaint minor tunes with which mariners are wont to sooth the dreary hours of their watch, have ever been pricked down in notes. The Christmas Carol has been written, and the subject has received some fine harmonies and masterly treatment by Mr. SAnUEL Wastav. No other proofs are lequisite of the innate worth of a melody, than that it shall admit of a good bass, and good treatment. But who would want more than his own ears to assure him of the expression of the last pluase in the Christmas Carol ? It runs the gauntlet annually through all the hoarse, out-of-tune, foggy-voiced, and wooden-legged performers of the metropolis ; yet its truth and siniplici!y remain as fresh as Mr.