"
Many new psalm-books appeared about the time of the Revolutionary War, and
many church petitions have been preserved asking permission to use the
new and more melodious psalm and hymn books. Books of instruction also
abounded,--books in which the notes were not printed on the staff, and
books in which there were staffs but no notes, only letters or other
characters (these were called "dunce notes"); books, too, in which the
notes were printed so thickly that they could scarcely be distinguished one
from the other.
"A dotted tribe with ebon heads
That climb the slender fence along,
As black as ink, as thick as weeds,
Ye little Africans of song."
One book--perhaps the worst, since it was the most pretentious--was "The
Compleat Melody or Harmony of Sion," by William Tansur,--"Ingenious
Tans'ur Skilled in Musicks Art." It was a most superficial, pedantic, and
bewildering composition. The musical instruction was given in the form of a
series of ill-spelled dialogues between a teacher and pupil, interspersed
with occasional miserable rhymes. It was ill-expressed at best, and
such musical terms as "Rations of Concords," "Trilloes," "Trifdiapasons,"
"Leaps," "Binding cadences," "Disallowances," "Canons," "Prime Flower
of Florid," "Consecutions of Perfects," and "Figurates," make the book
exceedingly difficult of comprehension to the average reader, though
possibly not to a student of obsolete musical phraseology.
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