After the invention of musical characters for time, different from those in poetry, the study of their relations became one of the most laborious and perplexed parts of a musician's business. These characters were of different value and velocity, according to other characters placed at the beginning of a musical composition, and likewise frequently occurring in the course of a piece, to anounce a change of measure : as from common time to triple, from quick to slow, or the contrary. These characters were called Moods, but they were so extremely embarrassing and ill understood, till the invention of bars, by which musical notes were divided into equal portions, that no two theorists agreed in the definition of them. These modes, by which the kind of movement, with respect to quick and slow, as well as the proportions of the notes, used to be known, serve for no other purpose, since technical terms, chiefly taken from the Italian language and music, have been adopted, than to mark the number and kind of notes in each bar. But by this invention of musical characters for time, and the use of bars, we have certainly advanced in the composition and performance of instrumental music, by giving to it more energy and accentuation ; it has now a cadence and feet of its own, more marked and sensible than those of poetry, by which it used to move. We have also, in our Airs, a distinct species of music for poetry, wholly different from Recitative and Chanting ; for in these we are less tied down to stated measure than the ancients, being only governed by the accent and cadence of the words. However, our florid-song, it cannot be dissembled, is not always sufficiently subservient to poetry ; for in applying music to words, it frequently happens that the finest sentiments and most polished verses of modern languages are injured and rendered unintelligible, by an inattention to Prosody.
Greco-Latin Musical Traditions: Musical Evolution of West
