NEW MUSIC.
The Flutist's Magazine and Pianoforte Review. (Published quar- terly.) Edited by W. N. JAMES. Nos. 19 and 20.
The existence of this work is a proof of the unexampled and rapid ad- vance of flute-playing. A short recollection carries us back to the time when WRAGG'S Flute Preceptor was the gradus employed by almost every learner, and when the Duetts of DEVIENNE and other composers of the same calibre formed the principal contents of the flutist's library. The former is now useless ; the latter would he scorned by most even of the amateur-players of the present day. The quantity of flute music at present published in this country, we should imagine, is as much in a month as twenty years ago it was in a year ; and in addition to all the accidentals, a work wholly devoted to that instrument appears to find a profitable sale. The contents of the Numbers before us, (if they are a fair specimen of the work), are sufficient to entitle it to the patronage of flutists in general. BER- BIGUIER and DRO UE T deservedly rank among those who for a knowledge of the strong as well as the weak points of the instrument for which they write, are accounted chiefest and best. Of the Adagio and Rondo by the latter, (No. 20) we have already spoken in our notice of the first City Amateur Concert.
Into the dispute between Mr. NICHOLSON and Mr. JAMES we are not disposedlo enter. We will only express our regret that any professors of a liberal art should have embarked in so profitless an employment as a per- sonal dispute, about which the public cares not one straw; and that it should have been conducted with a degree of acrimony too well calculated to strengthen the common (and we believe mistaken) opinion, that musi- cians are of all others the most quarrelsome of their species.
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