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Show 108 THE CODE OF TERPSICHORE. was a musician, a poet, a mechanician, a geometrician, an architect, an engineer, an excellent modeller, and one of the greatest painters that Italy ever produced. His picture of the Lord's supper is considered a masterpiece of painting. 7- All the fragments marked with commas, and to which no author's name is subjoined, are extracted from the French Encyclopedia. The article that furnished them is the only one in the work that treats of dancing in such a manner as to be useful to our present dancers. Those observations concerning the mechanism of certain branches of the art, and especially those which relate to the physical constructions of many individuals, are full of judgment and sound reasoning. 8. Cadence * is that movement which, in good music, affords the performer a quick comprehension of its measure, so that he feels it gradually fall, and marks its decline without thinking, as if directed by a kind of instinct. Cadence is particularly required in tunes for dancing. W e commonly say " that minuet marks a good cadence, that chaccone has no cadence." Cadence moreover denotes the accord of the dancer's steps, with the time of the accom • panying music. But it must be observed that the cadence is not always marked precisely as the time is beaten. The music-master beats the time of the minuet by striking at the beginning of each bar ; the dancing-master only beats at the commencement of eveiy other bar, as it requires that time to perform the four steps of the minuet. (J. J. Rousseau, Diet, de Musique.) This applies only to Minuets. 9. Rythmus, in its general definition, means the proportions between the several parts of the same whole. In music it is that difference of movement which results from the slowness or vivacity of the time, and from the length or shortness of the bars. This is Plato's definition of it.- (J. J. Rousseau, Diet. de Musique.) Rythmus is a Greek word, signifying number: which number is applied in ennumeratingand measuring equal and unequal distance. Rythmus serves to mark musical composition more sensi lily ; for the varied and infinite combination of bars that music freely borrows of Rythmus, constitutes the difference of one air with another; and that difference also which subsists between the meaning, thoughts, and ideas, of the same subject. This caused Virgil to say, " That he could recollect an air, if the words were present to his mind." By the assistance of this number, or Rythmus (which is regulated by measured time), dancers can, without any other aecompani- * W e also call cadence that warbling in the throat, which the Italians term trillo. The terminations of musical phrases are also denominated cadences |