Two Unknown Letters of Charles BurneyAuthor(s): Charles Burney and Robert Müller-HartmannReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 3, No. 1/2 (Oct., 1939 - Jan.,1940), pp. 161-164Published by: The Warburg InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750208 .Accessed: 23/04/2012 03:29

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MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 161

he reproached the radical republican de- magogues. Again he felt that if these were the only alternatives to choose from, his sympathies would be with the atheists because they represented, in however dis- torted a form, the side of freedom. But he himself favoured a more personal and imaginative view-or, to put it in the favourite phrase of the romantique defroque', a more ironic view-of religion. In an entry in his notebook entitled "Notwendigkeit des Deismus" he says of God: " HE is as indispensable as Louis Philippe; HE is the Louis Philippe of Heaven."

As a "prodigal son" he returned to the idea of a personal god after having "fed the swine with the Hegelians."l Against the speculations of old Ruge, the "grimme TorhUiter des Hegelianismus", and against the deductions of "my even more obstinate friend Marx," he liked to quote the book of Daniel, the story of Nebuchadnezzar who thought he could rely on himself and did not require the fiction of a god, but who ended as a beast eating grass (which, as Heine comfortingly suggests, may have been salad). Heine's so-called 'conversion' before his death is really a return to what he had previously described as the religion of "little Samson" (der kleine Simson) who fought a duel in defence of Jehovah but was completely forsaken by the god whom he championed, and fell with the words: "Ach Gott!''2

The simple decision would have been either to raise oneself to a belief in a powerful God, or to reject the idea of God altogether. But Heine did neither. He deliberately sustained his mind in a state of suspense which enabled him to observe-more penetratingly perhaps than any of his contemporaries-the "mysteri6se Ybergangskrise" through which they were

passing. Conceiving of monarchy as an indispensable but ironic institution, he chose the fat face of Louis Philippe as most deserv- ing of a crown of thorns. This grotesquely distorted image of divinity was meant by him as a portent. "Das neue Geschlecht wird auch die Windeln sehen wollen, die seine erste Hiille waren."

E. W.

1 Preface to Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland. 2 Aus den Memoiren des Herrn von Schmabelewopski.

TWO UNKNOWN LETTERS OF CHARLES BURNEY

The manuscripts of both the following let- ters are in the possession of Mrs. Charles

Winnington-Ingram, to whose kindness I am indebted for permission to print them. Their publication is perhaps not unwelcome as a supplement to the selection of letters presented in the Appendix of the new edition of Burney's "A General History of Music"3 : To

Mrs. Chambers at Charles Grant's Esq.

Battersea Rise, Surrey.

Chelsea College, 3rd November I797.

My dear Madam, Nothing gives me more pleasure than to

be remembered by yourself and dear Mrs. Grant; particularly, when my limited powers enable me to be of the least use. I inclose a copy of the Minor Hexachords, in all the I2 keys so denominated. I have likewise added a lesson of common chords, in which the major and minor chords are mixed, to try the strength of your little scholars in this kind of simple harmony, before they proceed to the figures. You will remind them, that only one note in the chord is changed each time, and that that one note is always an octave to the new base. It will be necessary to practise these chords in 3 different parts of the Instrument, beginning with ' above the Base-next with 3 -and

3 8

lastly with 8. If no mistake is made, the 5

last chord of each series will be an octave above the first. This lesson includes every common chord on the instrument, major and minor.

I forget whether you and Mrs. Grant had proceeded so far in accompaniment before we parted, as to begin to learn to figure a base for yourselves, or to play without figures; a science which becomes more and more necessary every day, as the Bases of very few new compositions that are now printed, are ever figured. As I had a card to explain the use of figures over the base, I framed another for figuring most bases in modern music, or playing without figures.

3 With critical and historical notes by Frank Mercer (1935).

162 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

The first and principal rule for this is called by the French la Regle de l'octave, a rule for accompanying every sound in the octave, ascending and descending. The Hexachords give the Base and simple harmony to the 6 sounds of each key, ascending and descending gradually, in the treble; but this rule of the octave gives the harmony to all the several sounds of the scale in the Base ascending and descending gradually in each key. On the back of Hexachord paper I have given the rule in the Major key of C, and Minor key of A, as models of all the other keys. I write no more now, not being able to recollect whether this rule was ever entered into your book or that of Mrs. Grant before your departure for India. But if not, I shall have great pleasure in writing it out for your little pupils in all the transposed keys. You will observe, dear Madam, that in this rule, there are only 2 sounds in the scale accompanied by common chords and that these are the key note and the 5th of every key. My card for accompanying without figures has never been engraved, or I would send you a copy of it.

The best pieces for the pianoforte that have been lately published in London, are those of Haydn and Steibelt. Haydn Op. 75 printed by Longman & Broderip, Haymarket-- Steibelt op. I by the same. Haydn's Symphonies composed for Salomon's con- certs, adapted for the Pianoforte, make admirable lessons for that Instrument with one Violin accompaniment. These have been published by Salomon only, at the Hanover Square Music Room. There are 12. The first six are ?1.4.o-the second six, to nonsubscribers, are a Guinea and ?- They are dear, long and difficult; but deserve all the trouble they give the performer. A great many sets of sonatas for the P. F. with accompaniment have been printed in Eng- land by Steibelt since the author's arrival in this country, that are excellent. I am not sure, however, whether 3 printed by Preston No. 97 Strand, are not the most pleasing. This composer is a young man, with a great hand on his Instrument and possessed of knowledge and real Genius. He was a scholar of our old great favourite Emanuel Bach. But he is no imitator of Haydn, or even his Master. His melodies are always elegantly natural, and his rage for half notes is much tempered by better resources.

I am grieved to hear of Mrs. Grant's accident; I beg you will present her my

affectionate compliments and wishes for her speedy recovery, and I entreat you to present my best respects to Mr. Grant, and to believe me to be, with great regard,

Dear Madam, Your most obedient

and affectionate Servant Cha

. Burney.

Chelsea College, i9th January 1798.

Dear Madam, I am sorry to say (and a little ashamed

for my country) that I know not any one elementary treatise on musical composition, in our language, that I can heartily recommend. I shall try to recollect the principal tracts on the subject since the time of Queen Elizabeth; at the end of whose reign Morley's Introduction to the Skille of Musicke came out; this was in high favour long after it ceased to be understood, on account of the quaint and obsolete language in which it was written, in dialogue between a master and scholar. It was however become very scarce about the middle of the present century, and reprinted, without addition or correction of the language, about the year 177o, by Walch in Katherine Street Strand, and may probably, if not out of print, be had, at Wright's in the same street and shop, at present. But it contains little that is now wanted, and a great deal of pedantry, totally obsolete and useless. In the last century, Playford and Simpson published short and very deficient tracts on composition. I could name several other tracts of that period, but luckily they have been out of print, and if found now on a stall, would contribute but little to the musical knowledge of the purchaser.

A small Treatise on Harmony, by Dr. Pepusch, was published in I73I. It contains very orthodox principles of composition, as far as it goes; but the improvements, or at least changes, in Music since that time are so numerous, that it now wants a second Volume. Giminiani's Guida Armonica gives a great Number of possible chords for such as understand thorough-base, but no rules for melody, or progressive precepts for harmony. Rameau's Treatise on Harmony, was very ill translated in 1752. In the original, this work would be very obscure to an English reader, but in the translation, it is wholly unintelligible. Rameau himself afterwards new digested the work, and published it

TWO UNKNOWN LETTERS OF CHARLES BURNEY 163

under the title of Code de Musique. Many things might be learned from this book if it could be procured; but even in France, it has been long out of print.

Antoniotto's treatise of Composition 1760, if it could be found, would furnish a student with much elementary knowledge in harmony; but the author was a pedant, and being a foreigner, the English in which the work is dressed, is very incorrect, and not always intelligible.

In 177o a small work, well compiled, perhaps is not yet out of print-Holden's Essay towards a rational system of Music-- it contains many necessary rules, though deficient in many respects, at present.

Frick on Modulation and accompaniment, is a useful book for persons already initiated in the first principles of Harmony; it was published in 1782, and the author, a German, is I believe in London.

Bemetzrieder, of Strasburg, a scholar of Schobert, is a very voluminous writer on Music-He is in London. I have not a list at hand. Miller's Musical Institutes, I believe treats of the rules of Composition. I am not acquainted with the book.

But I was very near closing my letter without mentioning an excellent work on composition, published but last year. The author, a German, and Organist of the King's German Chapel at St. James's, has done me the honour to address this work to me-under the title of: An Essay on Musical Harmony, by Kollman. Folio to be had at Dale's Music-shop, Oxford Street. No one book can contain solutions of all the difficulties, which a young student in composition has to encounter; he must consult several; but I can recollect no work, on the same subject, in our language, that contains so much useful instruction as this. And so, with my best respects to dear Mr. and Mrs. Grant, and all the inmates at Battersea rise, I hasten to finish my long letter, with the assurances of being, dear Madam,

Your obedient and affectionate friend

and Servant Cha Burney.

Both the recipients of these letters, Mrs. Chambers and Mrs. Grant, are evid- ently pupils of Burney and music teachers themselves. The master takes his pedagogic task as seriously as do the ladies, who in their turn endeavour to teach their little

pupils not only manual skill but also the elements of practical harmony. At that time theory and practice were closely connected in general musical education, and instru- mental conceptions, mainly derived from keyboard music, prevailed in the theory of harmony. The harmony itself was not conceived as the result of several melodic vocal parts, but as the touch rendered by both hands. A well-educated music lover was expected to be able to translate figures over a given bass into chords or even to improvise an accompaniment over an un- figured bass. The exercises, invented by Burney, were intended to develop this capability. Unfortunately, the particular set of exercises mentioned in the first letter is not at our disposal; it is, however, easy to reconstruct these musical examples.

In the lesson which includes every major and minor common chord the chord of C major is to be followed by those of A minor, F major, D minor, B flat major, G minor, and so on, the bass alternately falling a major and minor third or rising a sixth in order not to exceed its compass.

The harmonization of the scale in the bass, ascending and descending, according to the Rigle de l'octave, is to be found in a great many textbooks of that time, for instance in The Elements of Thorough Bass and Composition (1787) of Edward Miller (a pupil of Burney), and later in Hugo Riemann's Geschichte der Musiktheorie (1898) and in the Musiklexikon by the same author.

The example on hexachords has probably been restricted to the use of the primary chords (tonic, subdominant, and dominant). The term "Minor Hexachords" certainly does not refer to the ancient hexachords associated with solmization as these latter are major scales of six notes starting from G, C or F. When instructing beginners in harmony, Burney left out the seventh degree of the so-called harmonic minor scale evidently to avoid the awkward interval of the augmented second which was and is still forbidden for students by a traditional rule.

On the whole Burney holds the opinion of his time on music and its theory, and thus he is himself, in spite of his great merits as a historian, an interesting and significant subject of musical history. He does not hesitate to mention Haydn and Steibelt in one breath. This Daniel Steibelt caused a sensation as a pianist and as a composer when he made his first appearance in Vienna (1798), and a considerable portion of the

164 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

public thought of him as a rival of Beethoven. He was, however, soon forgotten, and his name is seldom quoted without derision. Purely musical criteria would not suffice to mark the distance between Steibelt's compositions and the art of Haydn or Beethoven. It is not only their more comprehensive technique and greater power of imagination, but their spirit and character which raise Haydn and Beethoven above this favourite then in vogue.

The second letter begins with a faint regret for the want of recommendable theoretical books in the English language. England held then no predominant position in any branch of music. Burney lived in the "dark age" of England's musical history. Most of the names which he mentions in the letter are those of Germans and Italians who enjoyed England's hospitality or regarded her as their second home. An English musician who resented the credit and influence of these foreigners could have found consolation for the present, and hope for the future in the thought of England's glorious musical past. But Burney, devoted to an evolutionistic idea of history, approved of the artistic standard of his period alone, and was not endowed with full understanding and appreciation of Elizabethan music. He entertained an unconcealed aversion particularly towards the madrigalists. "There is no one that towers above the rest sufficiently to give a modern ear the least idea of invention and originality. However, it is but candid and natural to suppose, that many passages and traits of harmony, which now seem dull, vulgar, and common, were compara- tively ingenious, elegant, and new at the beginning of the seventeenth century". His onesided criticism of the most outstanding textbook of that period (Thomas Morley's A plaine and easie introduction to practicall musicke 1597), a detailed discussion of which Burney gives in his History of Music, corresponds completely with his dislike of the madrigal. To-day, two centuries after its publication, nobody would recommend Mor- ley's Introduction' for ordinary educational purposes. Nevertheless it is invaluable as a historic document and as a source of real understanding of the art of the madrigal, the love and appreciation of which is growing daily.

Burney's chief work also contains detailed accounts of the treatises by John Christopher Pepusch (who is better known in connection with the history of the Beggar's Opera than as a theorist), by Francesco Geminiani, the famous violinist and composer, and by Jean Philippe Rameau. Burney's attitude to- wards Rameau, the founder of the harmonic conception of music, is amazing. "If anyone," says Burney, "were to ask me to point out what was the discovery or invention on which his system was founded, I should find it a difficult task. . . . Indeed, it may be further asked, what good music has been composed, even in France, in consequence of Rameau giving a new name to the base of a common chord, or a chord of the seventh?"

The praise given by Burney to August Friedrich Kollmann's work (1796) is not merely an expression of gratitude for the honour bestowed on him. The preface of the Essay on Musical Harmony includes a justification of theory which is still worth reading. Kollmann has adopted the prin- ciples of Kirnberger, a pupil of J. S. Bach, whilst part of his book betrays the influence of Marpurg, a follower of Rameau. Fetis (in his Biographie Universelle) attacks Koll- mann for the inconsistency of his explan- ations.

Amongst the remaining authors of text- books stands Anton Bemetzrieder, an ex- Benedictine from Alsace, the most interesting figure. He had the good fortune to become the music teacher of Diderot's daughter. In 1771 appeared his Lefons de clavecin et principes d'harmonie with a foreword by the philosopher. The work was a success, although its examples ("phrases harmoniques") are amateurishly bad. Some years afterwards it was translated into English under the title Music made Easy. Diderot assures the reader that he had only assisted in the correction of Bemetzrieder's German-French, but hardly anybody believed him. In any case the charm of the dialogue of the Lefons was thought more important than the principles of harmony, and so this treatise is now included in the complete edition of Diderot's works.2

ROBERT MOLLER-HARTMANN

1 Republished as The Shakespeare Association Facsilime No. 14, edited by Edmund H. Fellowes ('937). 2 (Euvres Complites, ed. J. Ass6zat, 1876, XII.