Cantus firmus

“ A Mannerism
“Es ist nichts gesundes” is scored for three flutes, cornet, three trombones, two oboes, the usual strings and four voices. Here the cantus firmus is given out by the organ in the bass with figures,
and there is no further reference to it until long after the chorus have entered, and have been singing contrapuntal passages, when, without any warning as it were, the three flutes, cornet, and three trombones, which have hitherto been silent, bring in the chorale in four parts, the voices and strings continuing their contrapuntal course. ”

“ CHANT. To chant is, generally, to sing; and, in a more limited sense, to sing certain words according to the style required by musical laws or ecclesiastical rule and custom; and what is thus performed is styled a Chant and Chanting, Cantus firmus, or Canto fermo. Practically, the word is now used for the short melodies sung to the psalms and canticles in the English Church. These are either 'single,' i.e. adapted to each single verse after the tradition of 16 centuries, or 'double,' i.e. ”

“ MASS IN P MAJOR, 1774. [259] which is the groundwork of the whole movement, and—now entire and unaltered, now abridged or modified—appears in different positions as Cantus firmus; while the remaining parts, treated contrapuntally, give due emphasis to each change of mood, until the whole concludes with a grand Amen in unison. The same thing occurs in the Credo. The link here is a motif— [See Page Image] which, borrowed from the intonation of the Magnificat or of the Gloria in the third tone, has been often employed, by Al. ”

“ A little before evening Firmus was seen mounted on a tall horse, expanding his scarlet cloak in order to attract the notice of his soldiers, whom he was exciting with a loud voice at once to deliver up Theodosius, calling him a ferocious and cruel man—an inventor of merciless punishments—as the only means of delivering themselves from the miseries which he was causing them. ”

“ The barbarians rattled their arms in a savage [Pg 534] manner, and our battalions, with equal rage, pushed on, they also rattling their shields against their knees. Still the general, like a cautious and prudent warrior, aware of the scantiness of his numbers, advanced boldly with his army in battle array, till he came to a point, at which he turned off, though still preserving an undaunted front, towards the city of Contensis, where Firmus had placed the prisoners whom he had taken from us, as in a remote and safe fortress. ”

“ And after a fierce battle, in which the barbarians displayed extraordinary courage and ferocity, he threw his army into a solid circle; and then the Isaflenses were so completely overpowered by the weight of our battalions pressing on them that numbers were slain; and Firmus himself, gallantly as he behaved, after exposing himself to imminent danger by the rashness of his coinage, put spurs to his horse, and fled; his horse being accustomed to make his way with great speed over the most rocky and precipitous paths. ”

“ The reply of Victorinus, addressed to Candidus, the Arian, begins thus:—"Is it your great intelligence, O noble Candidus, which has so fascinated me? To say of God, that man is above him, would be audacious. ”

“ Firminger never went about without some potent witch-charm upon him, which at once protected him from the malice of such creatures, and enabled him to detect them when disguised, and upon this occasion he had nothing less than a relic of the great Kentish saint, Thomas à Becket, being a small piece of the hair-shirt of that holy man, cut off shortly after his death by one of the monks of Canterbury, who happened to be a Firminger, and religiously preserved in the Firminger family ever afterwards. ”

“ So there's for you. There is always some row or other previously to all our publications: it should seem that, on approximating, we can never quite get over the natural antipathy of author and bookseller, and that more particularly the ferine nature of the latter must break forth.
"You are out about the third Canto: I have not done, nor designed, a line of continuation to that poem. I was too short a time at Rome for it, and have no thought of recommencing. ”

“ It is the name of a poem in twelve cantos, by Phineas Fletcher (1633) . Canto i. Introduction. Cantos ii.-v. An anatomical description of the human body, considered as an island kingdom. Cantos vi. The “intellectual” man. Cantos vii. The “natural man,” with its affections and lusts. Canto viii. The world, the flesh, and the devil, as the enemies of man. Cantos ix., x. The friends of man who enable him to overcome these enemies. Cantos xi., xii. The battle of “Mansoul,” the triumph, and the marriage of Eclecta. The whole is supposed to be sung to shepherds by Thirsil, a shepherd. ”

“ Rome, still overwhelmingly pagan in its sympathies, had doubtless heard with bitter anger how the Emperor, the head of the old national religion, had been taking part in a General Council of the Christian Church, had admitted bishops and confessors to the intimacy of his table, and had boldly declared himself the champion of Christianity. Constantine’s pointed refusal to countenance a time-honoured ceremony which, while itself of no extraordinary importance, might yet be taken as typical of the ancient order of things, would easily serve as pretext for a hostile demonstration. ”

“ Peabody gives us a note of his own. In the First Canto, for instance; he explains the allegorical greyhound as "A looked for reformer. 'The Coming Man.'" The appropriateness and elegance of which commentary will be manifest to all readers familiar with the allusion. In the Fourth Canto, where Virgil speaks of the condition of the souls in limbo, our professed translator says: "Dante says this in bitter irony. He ill brooks the narrow bigotry of the Church," etc. etc., showing an utter ignorance of Dante's real adherence to the doctrine of the Church. ”

“ High as was our opinion of Channing,—of his intellectual and moral worth,—the perusal of this work has convinced us that we never duly estimated him.... His letters reveal his character more fully than his sermons and essays. In his letters he lays his heart entirely open; and no man, no matter what his opinions or prejudices, can read them without saying,—'Channing was, indeed, a great and good man,—one who lived for the world!'"—Christian Messenger. ”

“ When the sea, however, reached his feet, he turned with an angry frown to his panic-stricken courtiers, and exclaimed—
"Every being in the world is feeble and impotent; omnipotent power exists with God, in whose hands are all the elements of nature. He only can say to the sea—Thus far shalt thou go and no further; and his power will level with a nod the towering piles of ambition and greatness."
The only remarkable action which Canute performed after his return from Rome, was an expedition against Scotland in A.D. 1031. ”

“ The new and last Canto is 130 stanzas in length; and may be made more or less. I have fixed no price, even in idea, and have no notion of what it may be good for. There are no metaphysics in it; at least, I think not. Mr. Hobhouse has promised me a copy of Tasso's Will, for notes; and I have some curious things to say about Ferrara, and Parisina's story, and perhaps a farthing candle's worth of light upon the present state of Italian literature. I shall hardly be ready by October; but that don't matter. I have all to copy and correct, and the notes to write. ”

“ And to bring the same more clearly to pass, some have abused the name of me, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, bruiting abroad that I have set up the mass at Canterbury, and that I offered to say mass before the Queen's Highness at Paul's Cross and I wot not where. I have been well exercised these twenty years, to suffer and to bear evil reports and lies, and have not been much grieved thereat, and have borne all things quietly; yet where untrue reports and lies turn to the hindrance of God's truth, they be in no ways to be tolerated and suffered. ”

“ But the tide was disobedient and steadily rose and rose, until the feet of the king were in the water. Turning to his courtiers, Canute said:
“Learn how feeble is the power of earthly kings. None is worthy the name of king but He whom heaven and earth and sea obey.” ”

“ The philosophy of Kant—so famous, so commanding in Germany, from about the period of the French Revolution—already, in 1805, I had found to be a philosophy of destruction, and scarcely, in any one chapter, so much as tending to a philosophy of reconstruction. It destroys by wholesale, and it substitutes nothing. ”

“ I was immensely struck, a few days ago, by a passage in a speech recently delivered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he explained his method of dispelling those passing fits of ill-temper from which, alas! not even Archbishops are wholly free. "At times," so ran the report of His Grace's words, "anger or irritation came upon him, but on the table he kept a book of pleasant poems, of which he would read a few lines, and the irritation would melt away." ”

“ I might have sent you a dozen cantos of 40 stanzas each,—those of 'The Minstrel' (Beattie's) are no longer,—and ruined you at once, if you don't suffer as it is. But recollect that you are not pinned down to any thing you say in a letter, and that, calculating even these two cantos as one only (which they were and are to be reckoned) , you are not bound by your offer. Act as may seem fair to all parties.
"I have finished my translation of the first Canto of 'The Morgante Maggiore' of Pulci, which I will transcribe and send. ”

“ And yet Firminius, born in a high estate in his parents’ house, ran his course through the prosperous paths of this world, was increased in wealth, and elevated to honours; whereas that slave—the yoke of his condition being unrelaxed—continued to serve his masters, as Firminius, who knew him, informed me. ”

“ The poem has not sold well, so Murray says—'but the best judges, &c. say, &c.' so says that worthy man. I have never seen it in print. The third Canto is in advance about one hundred stanzas; but the failure of the two first has weakened my estro, and it will neither be so good as thePg 250 two former, nor completed, unless I get a little more riscaldato in its behalf. I understand the outcry was beyond every thing.—Pretty cant for people who read Tom Jones, and Roderick Random, and the Bath Guide, and Ariosto, and Dryden, and Pope—to say nothing of Little's Poems! ”

“ There are two documents which are both (the one with much reason and the other with certainty) ascribed to Francis. Utterly different as they are, each still remains a clear expression of his spirit. The one is the Lauds, commonly called the Canticle of the Brother Sun, and the other is the saint's last Testament. One may think of the Canticle as the closing stanza of a life which was an enacted poem:
Most High, omnipotent, good Lord, thine is the praise, the glory, the honour and every benediction ”

“ His name, Firminius (I suppose) in Latin, Firmin in French,—so to be remembered here in Picardy. Firmin, not Firminius; as Denis, not Dionysius; coming out of space—no one tells what part of space. But received by the pagan Amienois with surprised welcome, and seen of them—forty days—many days, we may read—preaching acceptably, and binding with baptismal vows even persons in good society: and that in such numbers, that at last he is accused to the Roman governor, by the priests of Jupiter and Mercury, as one turning the world upside-down. ”

“ When the proconsul Saturninus invited Speratus to swear by the genius of the emperor, the proconsul promising the Christians mercy if they would do this and return to the worship of the gods, Speratus answered, 'I know of no genius of the ruler of this earth, but I serve my God who is in heaven, whom no man hath seen nor can see. ”

“ They make me laugh, or lull me to sleep. Nor is this the case only, when I read the orations of Canutus [a] , Arrius, Furnius, Toranius and others of the same school, or rather, the same infirmary [b] ; an emaciated sickly race of orators; without sinew, colour, or proportion. But what shall be said of your admired Calvus [c] ? He, I think, has left no less than one and twenty volumes: in the whole collection, there is not more than one or two short orations, that can pretend to perfection in the kind. ”

“ Canning, such as he was, will remain one of the most brilliant and striking personages in our historical annals. As a statesman, the latter passages of his life cannot be too deeply studied; as an orator, his speeches will always be models of their kind; and as a man, there was something so graceful, so fascinating, so spirited in his bearing, that even when we condemn his faults, we cannot avoid feeling affection for his memory, and a sympathetic admiration for his genius. ”

“ The surest token that these hearts were all lying fettered in the eternal dungeon of need and necessity, was that none could make a single witty allusion either to the bird or the kingship. It is only concerning matters which leave our souls free and unshackled that we notice similitudes and connection.
“This bird,” thought Firmian, “is the decoy of all these men, and the money is what baits the lure.” But he himself had three reasons for desiring to be king: firstly, to laugh himself to death at his own coronation; secondly, on account of his Lenette: thirdly, on account of the Saxon. ”

“ After the great periods of Roman literature, after Cicero and Virgil, the Romans in their turn had their classics, who became almost exclusively the classical authors of the centuries which followed. The middle ages, which were less ignorant of Latin antiquity than is believed, but which lacked proportion and taste, confused the ranks and orders. Ovid was placed above Homer, and Boetius seemed a classic equal to Plato. The revival of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries helped to bring this long chaos to order, and then only was admiration rightly proportioned. ”