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The talk about the poets seems to me like a commonplace entertainment to which a vulgar company have recourse; who, because they are not able to converse or amuse one another, while they are drinking, with the sound of their own voices and conversation, by reason of their stupidity, raise the price of flute-girls in the market, hiring for a great sum the voice of a flute instead of their own breath, to be the medium of intercourse among them: but where the company are real gentlemen and men of education, you will see no flute-girls, nor dancing-girls, nor harp-girls; and they have no nonsense or games, but are contented with one another’s conversation, of which their own voices are the medium, and which they carry on by turns and in an orderly manner, even though they are very liberal in their potations. And a company like this of ours, and men such as we profess to be, do not require the help of another’s voice, or of the poets whom you cannot interrogate about the meaning of what they are saying; people who cite them declaring, some that the poet has one meaning, and others that he has another, and the point which is in dispute can never be decided. This sort of entertainment they decline, and prefer to talk with one another, and put one another to the proof in conversation. And these are the models which I desire that you and I should imitate. Leaving the poets, and keeping to ourselves, let us try the mettle of one another and make proof of the truth in conversation.
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The term 'chromatic' is understood by musicians to refer to music which includes tones which are not members of the prevailing scale, and also as a word descriptive of those individually non-diatonic tones.
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There let the pealing organ blow,To the full voiced quire below,In service high, and anthems clear,As may with sweetness, through mine ear,Dissolve me into ecstasies,And bring all heaven before mine eyes.
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There's a barrel-organ carolling across a golden street In the city as the sun sinks low;And the music's not immortal; but the world has made it sweet And fulfilled it with the sunset glow.
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There's music in the sighing of a reed; There's music in the gushing of a rill;There's music in all things, if men had ears:Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.
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There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'stBut in his motion like an angel sings,Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;Such harmony is in immortal souls;But, whilst this muddy vesture of decayDoth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
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Therefore the poetDid feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods;Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage,But music for the time doth change his nature.
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This art is music. It stands quite apart from all the others. In it we do not recognize the copy, the repetition, of any Idea of the inner nature of the world. Yet it is such a great and exceedingly fine art, its effect on man's innermost nature is so powerful, and it is so completely and profoundly understood by him in his innermost being as an entirely universal language, whose distinctness surpasses even that of the world of perception itself, that in it we certainly have to look for more than that exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi [exercise in arithmetic in which the mind does not know it is counting] which Leibniz took it to be.
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This music crept by me upon the waters,Allaying both their fury and my passionWith its sweet air.
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This section attempts to define music played at raves, in order to give police power to ban them. It was widely ridiculed at the time and since (see, e.g., Marcel Berlins, "Writ Large", The Guardian, February 1, 1994).
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Thomas Campbell, Pleasures of Hope, Part I.
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Thomas Carlyle, Essays, The Opera.
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Thomas Gray, Elegy in a Country Church Yard, Stanza 10.
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Thomas Haynes Bayly, Welcome Me Home.
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Thomas Haynes Bayly, You think I have a merry heart.