The Musical Institute of London has resumed its weekly conversazioni,
held on Saturday evenings during the season. This pleasant club is in a flourishing state, and is beginning to accomplish its objects of bringing the professors of the art into a closer and more friendly intercourse with the amateurs than has hitherto existed, and of combining literary with musical entertainment. At the first meeting of the season, Mr. Thomas Oliphant read a paper on the English dramatic music of the seventeenth century ; in which, amidst other interesting matter, the question of the authorship of Macbeth was discussed. Mr. Oliphant's view was unfavourable to the generally admitted claim of Matthew Lock : but he failed, we thought, to invalidate the evidence on which it rests, and did not even attempt to put forward a claim for any one else. Two things, however, Mr. Oli- phant did—he showed that the composer had borrowed many ideas from the music of Middleton's old play The Witch, written in the time of Shakspere ; and that the music has undergone many alterations since it first appeared : propositions which he proved by curious vocal illustra- tions, admirably given by the vocalists present.
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