and heightening its effects.

This period of Italian song prevailed throughout Europe until the time
of Rossini. And in all the annals of music there is nothing quite so
strange as the extraordinary craze which existed during this time for
_the instrumental style of vocalism_. A special class of singers--the
male sopranists--was artificially created, in order to secure the most
dazzling results in brilliant, ornamental vocalization. Various kinds
of trills, grace notes, runs, and other species of _fioriture_, or
vocal somersaults, were introduced in every song, in such profusion
that the song itself was at last barely recognizable; and this kind of
stuff the audiences of that time applauded frantically. Everybody has
heard of the vulgar circus tricks performed by the most famous of the
sopranists, Farinelli--how at one time he beat a famous German
trumpeter in prolonging and swelling his notes, and how, at another
time, he began an aria softly, swelled it by imperceptible degrees to
such an astounding volume, and then decreased it again in the same way
to pianissimo, that the public wildly applauded him for five minutes.
Thereupon, Dr. Burney relates, he began to sing with such amazing
rapidity that the orchestra found it difficult to keep up with him.
Dr. Dommer justly comments on this story that, for such racing with an
orchestra, a singer would be hissed to-day by musical people.

It was not only quick and animated songs that were thus overloaded
with meaningless embroideries by the sopranists and the prima donnas
that followed them. Slow movements, which ought to breathe a spirit of
melancholy, appear to have been especially selected as background for
these vocal fireworks. I need not dwell on the unnaturalness of this
style. To run up and down the scale wildly and persistently in singing
a slow and sad song, is as consistent as it would be for an orator to