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THE secular music of
Scotland was greatly improved by the ingenuity of one of her monarchs,
James I., who seems to have been born to excel in every art and science
to which he applied his mind. Walter Bower, Abbot of Inch-calm, who was
intimately acquainted with that prince, assures us that he excelled all
mankind, both in vocal and instrumental music; and that he played on
eight different instruments (which he names), and especially on the
harp, with such exquisite skill that he seemed to be inspired. King
James was not only an excellent performer, but also a capital composer,
both of sacred and secular music; and his fame on that account was
extensive, and of long duration. About a century after his death he was
celebrated in Italy as the inventor of a new and pleasing kind of
melody, which had been admired and imitated in that country. This
appears from the following testimony of Alessandro Tassoni, a writer who
was well informed and of undoubted credit: "We may reckon among us
moderns, James King of Scotland, who not only composed many sacred
pieces of vocal music, but also of himself invented a new kind of music,
plaintive and melancholy, different from all other; in which he hath
been imitated by Carlo Gesualdo, prince of Venosa, who, in our age, hath
improved music with new and admirable inventions." As the prince of
Venosa imitated King James, the other musicians of Italy imitated the
prince of Venosa. "The most noble Carlo Gesualdo, the prince of
musicians of our age, introduced such a style of modulation, that other
musicians yielded the preference to him; and all singers and players on
stringed instruments, laying aside that of others, everywhere embraced
his." All the lovers, therefore, of Italian or of Scotch music, are much
indebted to the admirable genius of King James I., who, in the gloom and
solitude of a prison, invented a new kind of music, plaintive indeed,
and suited to his situation, but at the same time so sweet and soothing
that it hath given pleasure to millions in every succeeding age.
A DRAWING-MASTER in
Edinburgh who had been worrying a pupil with contemptuous remarks about
his deficiency of skill in the use of the pencil, ended by saying, "ii
you were to draw me, for example, tell me what part you would draw
first." The pupil, with a significant meaning in his eye, looked up to
his teacher's face and quietly said, "Your neck, sir."
A RICH elder put half a
crown on the plate one Sunday by mistake, instead of the usual penny.
The plate was guarded by two brother elders, and he felt that he could
not rectify his error, but he afterwards thus described his conduct: "I
said, 'Gentlemen, it's dune noo, and it will no' be lifted'; but I booed
to them for twenty-nine Sundays after that." |
