MUSIC.
The Madrigulian Feast, A Collection if Twenty Madrigals, with a Pianiforte Accompaniment.
'When the cultivation of vocal part music began to revive, about the middle of the last century, it was resuscitated in the form of Glees ; a very voluminous, and, in some respects, a most discreditable, collection of which, as well as Catches and Canons, was published by WARREN, the Secretary of the Catch Club. Occasionally a Madrigal stole into the periodical issue of time work ; and from this source, almost exclu- sively, the glee collection-makers have ever since derived their supply of these beautiful compositions. Seldom do such persons trouble them- selves to look beyond former collections ; and most probably their knowledge of the materials, thus dished up at third or fourth hand, ex- tends no further. The general impression, for example, seems to be that ORLANDO GIBBONS wrote one madrigal and no more ; for " The silver swan "is alone to be found in at least a dozen such collections. The same notion seems afloat about \FUME, whose "Flora gave me fairest flowers" has shared a similar fate. Until the Vocal Concerts disclosed, among other musical secrets, the fact that both these great composers had laboured as diligently as successfully in madrigal-writing, we have reason to believe that the current notion was such as we have stated ; nor was it ever suspected that of GianoNs's madrigals twenty were extant, and of IVILBTE'S sixty-four: all, too. worthy of their great talents. These men were two of the finest vocal part writers that this or any other country ever produced ; butt no publisher has ever ventured to encounter the certain loss of printing their works. Verily the English are a musical people ! However, as Lord DT RHAM'S motto says, "time time will mac.- Even such a republication as the present shows that there i, some demand for such musical ware, and that a growing conviction exists of what l3v no asserted in the preface to his first collection, almost three hundred years ago. that " there is not any nmsicke what- soever comparable to that which is made of voyces, where they are good, and well sorted and ordered." And as, in this case, " increase of appetite will grow by what it feeds on," so will the supply of musical nutriment be found equal to the demand, whenever that demand shall make itself felt. The riches of time Italian school in the golden age of PA LEST RINA will then be revealed ; the power of the contempo- rary Flemish school will be felt and acknowledged ; and Englishmen will at length understand and acknowledge that there was a time in which their countrymen could enter the lists even with these musical giants and bear off the palm of victory. The present collection is, almost exclusively, compiled from W-An- nEx's Collection and that of Mr. Riot:man NVEIIBE. It supplies a fair, lint not flattering example of the works of some of time most eminent madrigal writers. The pianoforte accompaniment, we suppose, was added at the publisher's request, and should be dispensed with if pos- siblo. It is a crutch to prop feeble. tottering singers, which should, in these compositions, be thrown away as soon as they can walk alone.
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