Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/54

42 country is to be known and understood by the hearer, or he will never be a good judge of the vocal musique of another country, so that I was not taken with this at all, neither understanding the first, nor by practice reconciled to the latter, so that their motions, and risings and fallings, though it may be pleasing to an Italian, or one that understands the tongue, yet to me it did not. …

I am convinced more and more, that, as every nation has a particular accent and tone in discourse, so as the tone of one not to agree with or please the other, no more can the fashion of singing to words, for that the better the words are set, the more they take in of the ordinary tone of the country whose language the song speaks, so that a song well composed by an Englishman must be better to an Englishman than it can be to a stranger, or than if set by a stranger in foreign words.

This is full of good sense, and reminds us of what Addison was to write some fifty years later. This wholesome mistrust should have put the English dilettanti and musicians on their guard against foreign imitations, above all against Italian imitations, which were about to prove so deadly to English music. But Italian art was extremely vigorous, and we have just seen within what narrow limits English taste was restricted. It abandoned the greater part of the field to foreign art, to shut itself up in its little house; a course of extreme imprudence. Foreign music, once it had a foothold in England, sought to complete its conquest. A few of Pepys' remarks show that he himself was beginning to give ground: