Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/208

196 old masters does not please the public. It does not sufficiently tickle the pampered taste of these spoilt children, who can no longer take pleasure save in astonishment."

This inconstancy of taste, this perpetual restlessness, was the reason why no music worthy of mention was being printed in Italy.

Burney is even beginning to foresee, in the midst of the artistic splendour which he loves, the complete and by no means distant disappearance of Italian music. He believes, in truth, that the stupendous energy expended upon it will be transformed, that it will create other arts:

Burney's prediction was only partly realised. Italy has since then attempted, not without success, to establish "a theatre without music." She has, above all, spent the best of her energies, apart from the theatre and music, in her political conflicts, in the wonderful epopée of her Risorgimento, in which all that was great and generous in the nation was expended and often sacrificed in a spirit of exaltation.