MUSIC.
The Gresham .Prize Composition, .2Vo. 8. Anthem for Five Voices. By E. J. HooleeNs, late of leer Majesty's Chapel Royal.
The Gresham prize is, we believe, the .yearly donation of a lady, whose love of music, and of church music especially, induces her to adopt this, among other ways, of promoting its cultivation. The name given to the prize is chosen solely from the benefactress's respect for the memory of one whose patronage of the art, extending through more than two centuries, is beneficially felt at the present day. Cathe- dral music never needed patronage more than now ; never was it at so low an ebb. The plundered revenues of our choirs, their reduced numbers, their inefficient state, are disgraceful evidences of the rapa- city of those who ought to he their guardians and protectors. This composition is a pleasing evidence that the true style of church music yet finds its votaries, few and portionless though they be. In fact, what encouragement hems any man to labour in this part of the musical vine- yard? Here is a boy, just out of the Chapel Royal, proving himself at once superior to the person advanced by the Queen, or by somebody in her name, to the highest musical office she has it in her power to be- stow. The duty of the Queen's Composer is " to produce a new Anthem or Service for the first Sunday of his month in waiting." But Aneither nthent nor Service has yet been composed by the present holder of that office, nor ever will. Truly are the heads of the Church, Royal, Right Reverend, and Very Reverend, any thing but "nursing fathers and mothers" of music. Upon their heads be all the disgrace of its present degradation.
But let us pass to the more grateful task of noticing young HOP• MRS'S Anthem. It is grateful once more to see an anthem coming from "tine Chapel Royal," the birth-place of so much that is excellent in church music—the school of Beau and Blow, of PURCELL and CROFT, of GREENE and BOYCE ; the school in which the author of the present composition has evidently studied to good purpose. It is a juvenile composition, but one of considerable promise ; and persever- ance will give to his future productions that skill in the contexture of a vocal score which practice alone can impart. Yet it is almost cruel to exhort a young man to perseverance. It is, in fact, to say, " Toil, la- bour, study, write—and you shall reap disappointment and neglect ; there is no market for your produce ; not a Dean in the kingdom will patro- nize you to the extent of a single copy, if even you rival the greatest of your predecessors in eminence. These shall be the fruits of your industry, this the reward of your genius."
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