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📖 POEM: A HYMN IN PRAISE OF MUSIC

Praise, pleasure, profit, is that three-fold band
Which ties men's minds more fast than Gordian's knot:
Each one some draws, all three none can withstand
Of force conjoined - conquest is hardly got.
Then music may of hearts a monarch be
wherein praise, pleasure, profit so agree.

Praiseworthy music is, for God it praiseth,
And pleasant, for brute beasts therein delieght;
Great profit from it flows, for why it raiseth
The mind overwhelmed with rude passions' might:
When against reason passions fond rebel,
Music doth that confirm, and these expel.

If music did not merit endless praise,
Would heavenly spheres delight in silver round?
If joyous pleasures were not in sweet lays,
Would they in court and country so abound?
And profitable needs we must that call
Which pleasure linked with praise doth bring to all.

Heroic minds, with praises most incited,
Seek praise in music, and therein excel:
God, man, beasts, birds, with music are delighted;
And pleasant 'tis, which pleaseth all so well:
No greater profit is then self content
And this doth music bring, and care prevent.

When antique poets music's praises tell,
They say it beasts did please, and stones did move,
To prove more dull than stones, than beasts more fell,
Those men, which pleasing music did not love;
They feigned it cities built, and states defended.
To show that profit great on it depended.

Sweet brids (poor men's musicians) never slake
To sing sweet music's praises day and night:
The dying swans in music pleasure take
To show that it the dying can delight:
In sickness, health, peace, war, we do it need,
Which proves sweet music's profit doth exceed.

But I, by niggard praising, do dispraise
Praiseworthy music in my worthless rhyme,
Ne can the pleasing profit of sweet lays
Any save learned Muses well define:
Yet all by these rude lines may clearlu see,
Praise, pleasure, profit in sweet music be.

Sir John Davies

Lectures on Piano and Music in General

Have you explored iTunesU? There are various interesting series of university lectures on different field of music studies which are available for free.

Andreas Schiff on Beethoven's Sonatas

Heinrich Neuhaus

Heinrich Neuhaus