3 AUGUST 1867, Page 22

Six Lectures on Harmony. By G. A. Macfarren. (Longmans.)—The lectures

which compose this volume were delivered at the Royal Insti- tution to a mixed audience, and in the face of an inexorabla clock. Mr._ Macfarren apologizes for the incomplete treatment of the subject which resulted from these two incidents of his position. We think his apology- was needless. The reader would hardly gather from the work itself that the audience was anything but skilled in the art of music, or unwill- ing to enter into its technicalities. Indeed, Mr. Macfarren's lectures are hardly to be read without some knowledge of the kind, and they ought to be read over a piano. He begins by stating that he shall not emulate those lecturers who adopt the form of concerts interspersed with anec- dotes of the masters whose compositions are included. His object is to communicate some insight into musical principles and into the laws by means of which they operate. If this object is necessarily somewhat abstruse, and the means of attaining it dry and technical, we must say that Mr. Macfarren shows thorough mastery of his subject, and breaks out into occasional felicity of language. We may refer especially to the illustration of the pertinacious beauty of an April note, that frowns and smiles changefully as a discord and a concord, in the Christmas oratorio of Sebastian Bach. Bat we were amused to find such a learned writer as Mr. Macfarren censuring the revival of Gregorian chants in the pre,, sent clay and in the Church of England, as evincing "mistaken zeal, false antiquarianism, illogical deductiveness, artistic blindness, and ecclesiastical error." In another place, he says, "The law of the Refor- mation that the service should be celebrated in the vulgar tongue, in order that it might be understanded of the people, applies as forcibly to the exclusion of the Gregorian chant, as of the Latin words that were' originally sung to it in this and in all other Western countries." What_ will Mr. Helmore say to this ?