which prevented the real nature of human song from being discovered
even after the vocal style had become more simple and rational. During
the period in which the vocalists were in the habit of singing from a
dozen to a hundred or more notes to a single syllable of the text,
they, as well as the public, had become so indifferent to the words
and their poetic meaning, that this habit could not at once be altered
when the _cantabile_ style came more into vogue. The singers continued
to be careless in regard to pronunciation of the words, and the opera
libretti were so very silly that the public really did not care
whether the singers spoke their words correctly and distinctly or not.
Hence even the _cantabile_ style of Italian song continued to be more
or less instrumental in character--telling the audience little more
about the text than the flute or the violins told them about it.

Mrs. Wodehouse, in her article on song in Grove's "Dictionary of Music
and Musicians," calls attention to the injurious action of Italian
opera on the English School by breeding indifference to the text.
"From Handel's time until a very recent date," she says, "Italian
operas and Italian songs reigned supreme in England; Italian singers
and Italian teachers were masters of the situation to the exclusion of
all others. And the habit thus contracted of hearing and admiring
compositions in a foreign and unknown tongue, engendered in the
English public a lamentable indifference to the words of songs, which
reacted with evil effect both on the composer and the singer.
Concerned only to please the ears of his audience, the composer
neglected to wed his music to words of true poetic merit; and the
singer quickly grew to be careless in his enunciation. Of how many
singers, and even of good ones, may it not fairly be affirmed that at
the end of the song the audience has failed to recognize its
language?"