ABSTRACT
As this work is intended to treat of a branch of musical knowledge at present but little studied, it will be desirable to explain, somewhat fully, at the outset, what is meant by its title.
Music is peculiar among the fine arts, in that it requires special and very elaborate provisions for its presentation to the world. The painter and the sculptor have no sooner put the finishing touches to their works than they are at once in a state to be understood and appreciated. The poet and the author require but a printing press to render fully intelligible the ideas they have to convey. But the labours of the musical composer are, when he has completed them, only a mass of useless hieroglyphics until he can get them interpreted and made known by the process we call performance.
