Another sharp controversy he took part in was in answer to Mr Thomas Salmon, M.A., of Trinity College, Oxford, who had written and published An Essay to the Advancement of Music by casting away the perplexity of different cliffs and writing all sorts of music in one universal character.
The desire to simplify musical signs seems to have been an old theme and one that gave rise to a fierce controversy between Matthew Locke and Mr Salmon. It is only fair to say that Mr Salmon was not over judicious in his method of recommending his scheme. He seems to have purposely hit out at music masters (of whom Locke was one of the most eminent), and suggested that their opposition to his ideas sprang from the sordid desire to make as much as they could out of their pupils, by keeping them as long as possible under tuition.
Matthew Locke replied to this in a treatise entitled The Present Practice of Musick vindicated against the exceptions and new way of attaining music lately published by Thomas Salmon, M.A. The controversy was very warm. You shall hear a short address "To the Reader" which will give some idea of the style of discussion Locke adopted.
Though I may without scruple aver that nothing has done Mr. Salmon more kindness than that his books have had the honour to be answered, yet I have been forced to afford him this favour rather to chastise the Reproaches which he hath thrown upon the most eminent Professors of Musick than for anything of learning that I found in him. Those gentlemen he accused of ignorance for not embracing his illiterate absurdities for which it was necessary to bring him to the "Bar of Reason" to do him that justice which his follies merited. Though for the fame he gets by this, I shall not much envy him, with whom it will fare as with common criminals, who are seldom talked of above two or three days after execution.
A little farther on he gets angry and says:
Had I been "purblind," "copper-nosed," "sparrow-mouthed," "goggle-eyed," "hunch-backed" or the like (ornaments which the best of my antagonists are adorned with) what work would there have been with me?
Attention has already been directed to Locke's association with dramatic music, and so it would be well to glance briefly at the claim he possesses to be considered the "Father of English Opera." The work which entitles him to be ranked as the writer of the first English Opera is Shadwell's Psyche; this, with the music to The Tempest, was produced in 1673, with the title of The English Opera. It contained a Preface, setting forth Locke's opinions on real Opera. North calls his works in this branch of Art "semi-Operas," but from the title just quoted it may be inferred that Locke, at any rate, considered them full-grown specimens. It should be added that the Act tunes in Psyche were written by Draghi. The writer on Opera in Grove's Dictionary marks Purcell as the originator of English Opera. "Henry Purcell (he says) transformed the Masque into the Opera, or rather annihilated the one and introduced the other." Perhaps Roger North's term "semi-Opera" is the best expression for Locke's essays in this connection.
With regard to Locke's other dramatic music, reference must be made to the Macbeth music, which has for so many years been associated with his name. For long the matter has been the subject of conjecture as to whether he was really the author of it or not.
The music of Psyche is so good that there is no ground for saying he could not have written the Macbeth music. He was exceedingly dramatic and also melodious. There is a beautiful Dialogue on the death of Lord Sandwich, the great patron of Samuel Pepys, which is to be found in the Pepys Library of Magdalene College, Cambridge. No doubt this was written at the suggestion of Pepys. And there is a remarkable setting of Hamlet's soliloquy, also in MS., in Pepys' book, which I firmly believe is by Locke.