old masters does not please the public. It does not sufficiently tickle the pampered taste of these spoilt children, who can no longer take pleasure save in astonishment."[1]
This inconstancy of taste, this perpetual restlessness, was the reason why no music worthy of mention was being printed in Italy.
"Musical compositions last such a short time, and the vogue of novelties is so great, that the few copies which might be required are not worth the expense of engraving or printing… The art of engraving music, moreover, appears to be entirely lost. One finds nothing in all Italy resembling a music publisher's."[2]
Burney is even beginning to foresee, in the midst of the artistic splendour which he loves, the complete and by no means distant disappearance of Italian music. He believes, in truth, that the stupendous energy expended upon it will be transformed, that it will create other arts:
"The language and genius of the Italians are so rich and so fertile that when they are weary of music—which will without a doubt happen very soon, from very excess of enjoyment—this same mania for novelty, which has made them pass so quickly from one style of composition to another, and which often makes them change from a better style to a worse, will force them to seek amusement in a theatre without music!"[3]
Burney's prediction was only partly realised. Italy has since then attempted, not without success, to establish "a theatre without music." She has, above all, spent the best of her energies, apart from the theatre and music, in her political conflicts, in the wonderful epopée of her Risorgimento, in which all that was great and generous in the nation was expended and often sacrificed in a spirit of exaltation.
