Books › The violin and its music, 1881 › scan 53
Scan 53
The violin and its music, 1881
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 31. See the scan on archive.org.
1from his patronymic, the state of music with us in the days of Edward the Black Prince was certainly not sufficiently advanced to admit of the reception of contrapuntal laws. The road opened up by De Muris was soon trodden by William Dufay (the earliest composer of masses written in counterpoint), by Binchois, and others, comprised under the designation of the Old Netherlands School of Music.
3The people of the Low Countries were at a very early date attached to pursuits of an elevating and humanizing character. They had in the fourteenth century their various trade associations and guilds of rhetoric; the members of the latter belonging for the most part to the working section of the community; but sometimes they had enrolled among them men at the top of the social scale, as instanced by Philip the Fair having been a member of their body. They were essentially associations instituted for the very laudable purpose of occupying the leisure time of their members with useful and rational amusement, the drama and music receiving much attention. The passion for rhetorical display among the Netherlanders was fed mainly by these associations, and during two centuries their friends and foes were deluged with its showers, whenever an opportunity seemed to present itself.
5Tritely does Mr. Motley tell us "no unfavourable opinion can be formed as to the culture of a nation whose weavers, smiths, gardeners, and traders found
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