M. Saint-Saëns, to illustrate the clever way in which popular songs were given an ecclesiastical or Plain Song character, has here added to his luminous lecture the following precious original composition, reproduced in facsimile, in which through ingenious contrapuntal treatment he gives a mock sacred form to an old French ditty, "I Have Some Good Tobacco in My Snuffbox."
"It is apparent here that by assigning the melody to the tenor part, it is unrecognizable. Oftentimes licentious songs were taken as the Plain Chant text, and on this account Pope Marcellus commissioned Palestrina to put an end to such practices."
In a note he adds: "It must be remembered that before popular songs were thus treated in counterpoint [which means that while the song is being produced by one voice, the other voice or voices are singing against it notes entirely different from the melody], the text for that kind of treatment was the Plain Song—the singing of which was always assigned to the tenor part. In my youth I have heard graduals treated in this fashion at High Mass in my parish church of St. Sulpice in Paris, which is still renowned for the splendor of its ceremonials."
There are here illustrations of (a) the difference between the written manner of Gluck, in a passage from his "Alceste"—and the actually correct way of interpreting and playing it; (b) a passage from the scherzo of Mendelssohn's string quartet,—to show how a gay subject can be treated in the minor mood—and M. Saint-Saëns adds: "Mendelssohn's scherzo of his 'Midsummer Night's Dream' is in sol minor but it evokes no idea of sadness, although oftentimes those who play it, deceived by its minor mood, give it a melancholy character, which is very far from what the composer intended."
Here M. Saint-Saëns has written a passage from a piano concerto of Mozart to illustrate how that composer wished the non-legato to be interpreted—namely, in a flute-like manner,—the piano repeating textually the passages indicated to be played first by the flutes.