Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1773 edition. Excerpt: ... THE INTRODUCTION. AMONG the numerous accounts of Italy, published by travellers who have visited that delightful country from different motives of interest or curiosity; it is somewhat extraordinary, that none have hitherto confined their views and researches to the rise and progress, or present state of music in that part of the world, where it has been cultivated with such success; and from whence the rest of Europe has been furnished, not only with the most eminent composers and performers, but even with all its ideas of whatever is elegant and refined in that art. Not a single picture, statue, or building has been left undefcribed, or an inscription B uncopied, uncopied, and yet the Confervas orios or musical schools, the Operas, or the Oratorios, have scarce been mentioned; and though every library is crowded with histories of painting and other arts, as well as with the lives of their most illustrious professors, music and musicians have been utterly neglected. And this is still the more unaccountable, as no one of the liberal arts is at present so much cultivated, and encouraged, nor can the Italians now boast a superiority over the rest of Europe in any of them so much as in music; for few of their painters, sculptors, architects, historians, poets, or philosophers of the present age, as in some centuries past, so greatly surpass their cotemporaries on this side the Alps, as to excite much curiosity to visit or converse with them. But music still lives in Italy, while most of the other arts only speak a dead language; classical and learned indeed, but less pleasing and profitable to slu& dents dents than in the days of Leo X. when Italy was as superior to the rest of the world, and therefore as well worth visiting, as Greece was..