' In other
words, as singing, notwithstanding all conventional modesty, is an
exhibition of the individual man of society, it is better that each
should be seen and heard separately. The tender feelings produced in
the fair listeners are taken for granted, and elderly people are
therefore recommended to abstain from such forms of art, even though
they excel in them. It was held important that the effect of the song
should be enhanced by the impression made on the sight. We hear
nothing, however, of the treatment in these circles of musical
composition as an independent branch of art. On the other hand it
happened sometimes that the subject of the song was some terrible event
which had befallen the singer himself.
This dilettantism, which pervaded the middle as well as the upper
classes, was in Italy both more widespread and more genuinely artistic
than in any other country of Europe. Wherever we meet with a
description of social intercourse, there music and singing are always
and expressly mentioned. Hundreds of portraits show us men and women,
often several together, playing or holding some musical instrument, and
the angelic concerts represented in the ecclesiastical pictures prove
how familiar the painters were with the living effects of music. We
read of the lute-player Antonio Rota, at Padua (d.
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