Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/213

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Burney concludes that the Germans must owe their knowledge of music not to nature but to study.

He will gradually change his opinion, on discovering the hidden wealth, the originality, the powerful vitality of German art. He will come to realise the superiority of German instrumental music. He will even take pleasure in German singing, and will prefer it to any others, Italian excepted. But his first impressions make it clear enough that the choice spirits of the period, the princes and amateurs, favoured the Italians at the expense of their own compatriots, with an exaggeration that even the Italianate Burney recognised.

Italian music had several centres in the heart of Germany. These, in the seventeenth century,