"Will you play upon this pipe?"
"My Lord, I cannot." So say we; but some novel instruction on the
subject may not be unacceptable to our piping friends. We recommend to
them "The Elements of Flute-playing, according to the most approved
principles of Fingering," by Thomas Lindsay, as containing more
practical and preceptive information than is usually to be met with in
such works. The advantage in the present treatise arises out of one of
the many recent improvements in the art of printing, viz., the adoption
of movable types for printing music, instead of by engraved pewter
plates; which method enables the instructor to amplify his precepts, or
didactic portion of his work, and thus simplify them to the pupil.
According, in Mr. Lindsay's treatise, we have upwards of forty pages of
elementary instructions, definitions, and concise treatises, copiously
interspersed with musical illustrations; whereas the engraved treatises
are generally meagre in their instructions, from the difficulty of
punching text illustrations. The article on _accentuation_ is, we are
told, the first successful attempt in any elementary work on the Flute,
to define this important subject. It is written in a lucid and popular
style, and is so attractive, that did our room allow, we might be
induced to insert part of it. Appended to the treatise are thirty pages
of Duettinos and Exercises, and altogether the work, (of which the
present is Part I.,) is well worth the attention of such as study
Flute-playing, which, as Mr. L. observes, is "one of those elegant and
delightful recreations, which constitutes, at once, the grace and the
solace of domestic life."
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The sweetest flowers their odours shed
In silence and alone;
And Wisdom's hidden fount is fed
By minds to fame unknown.
_Bernard Barton._
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