note on which the chord represented by the figures was to be played or sung.  A 5 over or under a bass note meant that with that note a perfect major triad was to be sounded, considering the note written as the root of the chord; a 3 was taken to stand for a perfect minor triad; a 6 for the chord of the sixth (first inversion of a triad), and 6/4 for the second inversion; a line through a 5 or 7 meant that the triad was a diminished fifth or a diminished seventh chord; a cross indicated a leading tone; a 4 stood for the third inversion of the dominant seventh chord.  This system of shorthand, as it may be called, was and is still of tremendous value to composers.  In the olden days, particularly, when many of the composers engraved their own music for publication, it saved a great deal of labour.  It is probably not generally known that the engraving of music by the composer was so common; but such was the case with Bach, Rameau, and Couperin.

And this reminds me that the embellishments, as they were called, which are so common in all harpsichord and clavichord music, were also noted in a kind of shorthand, and for precisely the same reason.  The embellishments themselves originated from the necessity for sustaining in some way the tone of the instrument, which gave out little, dry, clicklike sounds; if the melody were played in simple notes, these sounds would mingle with the accompaniment and be lost in it.  Therefore, the embellishments served to sustain the tones of the melody, and thus cause them to stand out from the accompaniment.  Their notation by means of symbols copied from the primitive neumes vastly facilitated the work of engraving.  Much confusion arose in the notation of embellishments, owing to the fact that each composer had his own system of symbols.

Alessandro Scarlatti and his son Domenico, both celebrated in their day, are the next to demand attention.  The former was born about 1650 and died about 1725.  He wrote many operas of which we know practically nothing.  His son was born about 1685 and died in 1757.  He was the most celebrated harpsichord player of his time; and although his style, which was essentially one of virtuosity, was not productive of direct results, it did nevertheless foreshadow the wonderful technical achievements of Liszt in our own times.  It is indeed a great pity that Domenico Scarlatti’s work did not bear more direct fruit in his day, for it would have turned Mozart, as well as many others, from the loose, clumsy mannerisms of the later virtuoso style, which ran to the Alberti bass and other degrading platitudes, paralleled in our comparatively modern days by the Thalberg arpeggios, repeating notes, Doehler trill, etc.

Two masters in music, Haendel and J.S.  Bach, were born the same year, 1685; their great French contemporary, Rameau, was born two years earlier and died in 1764; while Haendel died in 1759, and Bach in 1750.  Bach was destined to give to the world its first glimpse of the tremendous power of music, while Rameau organized the elements of music into a scientific harmonic structure, laying the foundation for our modern harmony.  Haendel’s great achievement (besides being a fine composer) was to crush all life out of the then promising school of English music, the foundation for which had been so well laid by Purcell, Byrd, Morley, etc.