DR. CROTCH'S ELEMENTS 'OP MUSICAL COMPOSITION.
This treatise, printed in a cheap but clear and handsome form, is a number of the. serial publication entitled " Novello's Library for the Dif- fusion of Musical Knowledge." It is a good book, considering that it was written more than forty years ago. But the lapse of time has greatly diminished its usefulness, the modes of elementary instruction having been much improved and simplified by works of more modern date. Music as a practical art, too has greatly changed within these forty years; multitudes of chords, harmonic combinations, and changes of modulation either totally prohibited or admitted only as "licences," being now freely used as the results of recognized general principles. It was owing to the want of judicious generalization in old treatises, that the practical rules were unnecessarily numerous and minute, laying a heavy load on the pupil's memory, which has since been much lightened. The book is also encumbered by a somewhat pedantic ostentation of learning. It is absurd to perplex the pupil, on the very threshold of his studies with dissertations on the music of the Greeks, or the uncouth and obsolete harmonies-of the middle ages. There are errors, moreover, justifiable only by the date of the work. The author retains the so-called "enharmonic scale," containing smaller intervals than semitones,--As e, c sharp, D flat, tic. • whereas it is per- 'y understood that there is no such scale : c sharp and D flat cannot exist in the same scale. They are never used 4n succession except for the purpose of making what is called an "enharmonic transition," or a sudden passage to some very remote and unrelative key : but this kind of transition (rarely used for the sake of some startling effect) is allowed only on the principle that the difference between those notes is merely nominal and not perceived by the ear. Those minute divisions of the scale which can be discovered only by counting the vibrations of a sound- ing string, have no influence on practice, and are set at nought by the beet modern authorities. There is much valuable matter, nevertheless, in tbis treatise. The chapter on Canon, Fugue, and Imitation, is parti- cularly good; containing a succinct Summary of the rules, illustrated by excellent examples. Indeed, the whole book may be useful to the ad- vanced student, in the way of reference; but there are many better vade- mecums for the mere pupil.
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