Borodine's "Romance" and "The Sleeping Beauty," Cui's "Hun gersong," Rimsky-Korsakov's famous "Hindu song," "Believe me not" and Zuleika's song are all good. To this group of composers must be added the names of the more cosmopolitan Tschaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Grechaninov and Glazunov. Tschaikovsky's "Nur wer die Sehnsucht is probably the best of his numer ous songs; "The Dreary Steppe" and "Slumber Reigns" are char acteristic of Grechaninov; Rachmaninov's "To the Children" is truly Russian and of rare tenderness and beauty.
Medtner (b. 1879), a Russian composer of German descent, is in his music both German and Russian. He has composed songs in both languages, orthodox in form, but elaborate in texture, difficult to play and, at first, to understand, but both on musical grounds and for their serious import well worth unravelling. They are the work of an impressive and forceful personality, not making experiments, but recording convictions. If a successor to Brahms were to be named, it would certainly be Medtner. Among his Russian songs may be cited "Whisp'ring Nature faintly stirring," "O'er thee I bend," and "I have come to say, Good-morning" Op. 24, "The Singer" and "The Muse" (Pushkin) Op. 29, "The Valse" and "To the dreamer" (Pushkin) Op. 32, "Sleepless Nights" (Tutchev) and the Valse, Op. 37; among his settings of Goethe, "Die Sprode," "Die Bekehrte" and "Einsamkeit"; of Nietzsche, "Verzweiflung"; of Eichendorf, "Winternacht," and of Chamisso, "Die Quelle" and "Frisch gesungen." England.—The beginnings of English song have already been alluded to in speaking of Dowland, Campion, Rosseter and Jones. The subsequent work of H. Lawes, and his contemporaries Wil liam Lawes, Coleman and Wilson, was unpretentious and simple. Gems here and there, such as "Gather ye rosebuds" (W. Lawes) and others contained in two small vols. edited by Dolmetsch (Boosey), are the student's reward for a good deal of uninspired and tentative work, in which the main object of composers was to "follow as closely as they could the rhythmical outlines of non musical speech : they listened to their post friends reciting their own verses and then tried to produce artificially exact imitations in musical notes," (Ernest Walker, History of Music in England, p. 13o), producing what was neither good melody nor good declamation.
Such work, in spite of Milton's Sonnet to H. Lawes, could only have a passing vogue, especially with a Purcell so near at hand to show the world the difference between talent and genius, be tween amateurish effort and the realized conceptions of a master of his craft. Songs like "Let the Dreadful Engines" and "Mad.
Bess of Bedlam" reach a level of dramatic intensity and declama tory power, which is not surpassed by the best work of contempo rary Italian composers.
"I attempt from love's sickness to fly" is so familiar in its quiet beauty, that we are apt to forget that melodies so perfectly pro portioned were quite new to English art (though Dr. Blow's "The Self-banished" deserves to stand side by side with it). Monte verde's "Lament of Ariadne" has already been alluded to, and it is interesting to contrast its emotional force with the equally intense but more sublime pathos of Purcell's "Lament of Dido," in which song a ground bass is used throughout. The "Elegy on the Death of Mr. John Playford" (quoted in full by Dr. Walker, p. 176 of his history) exhibits the same feature and the same mastery of treatment. The "Morning Hymn" is scarcely less remarkable, and has likewise a ground bass. A large collection of his songs is to be found in the last volume (published in 1928) of the Pur cell Society's Edition, edited by Sir Arthur Somervell (Novello). Purcell died, aged 37, in 1695 ; Bach and Handel were then but ten years old, and Scarlatti, born in 1659, had still 3o years to live— facts of which the significance may be left to speak for itself.
It is among the ironies of musical history that so great a begin ning was not followed up. There are echoes of Purcell, stronger ones still of Handel, in the generation that succeeded him, in Croft, Greene and Boyce; but they quickly died away. From the death of Purcell to the Victorian era there is no consistent development of artistic song that is worth recording in detail. Arne, it is true, composed many fine songs that deserve to be better known ; those which have survived are mostly of the melodi ous order, still acceptable for an air of freshness and gracefulness that marks them as his own, e.g., "Where the Bee sucks," "Blow, blow thou winter wind" and "Lovely Phyllis." Song writers that followed him, Bishop, Shield, Hook, Dibdin, Storace, Horn and Linley (the elder), were all prolific melodists, who have each left a certain number of popular songs by which their names are re membered, and which are worth hearing occasionally, but there is little attempt to advance in new directions, no hint that song could have any other mission than to gratify the public taste for tuneful melodies allied to whatever poetry, pastoral, bacchanalian, patriotic, or sentimental, lay readiest to hand.