whole. The rest is a final happy refrain of all the
strains, where the husband's themes are clearly dominant.

CHAPTER XIX

ITALIAN SYMPHONIES

The present estate of music in Italy is an instance of the danger of
prophecy in the broad realm of art. Wise words are daily heard on the
rise and fall of a nation in art, or of a form like the symphony, as
though a matter of certain fate, in strict analogy to the life of man.

Italy was so long regnant in music that she seems even yet its chosen
land. We have quite forgotten how she herself learned at the feet of the
masters from the distant North. For music is, after all, the art of the
North; the solace for winter's desolation; an utterance of feeling
without the model of a visible Nature.

And yet, with a prodigal stream of native melody and an ancient passion
of religious rapture, Italy achieved masterpieces in the opposite fields
of the Mass and of Opera. But for the more abstract plane of pure tonal
forms it has somehow been supposed that she had neither a power nor a
desire for expression. An Italian symphony seems almost an anomaly,--as
strange a product as was once a German opera.

The blunt truth of actual events is that to-day a renascence has begun,
not merely in melodic and dramatic lines; there is a new blending of the
racial gift of song with a power of profound design.[A] Despite all
historical philosophy, here is a new gushing forth from ancient fount,
of which the world may rejoice and be refreshed.

[Footnote A: In the field of the _Lied_ the later group of Italians,
such as Sinigaglia and Bossi, show a melodic spontaneity and a breadth
of lyric treatment that we miss in the songs of modern French composers.

In his Overture "_Le Baruffe Chiozzote_" (The Disputes of the People of
Chiozza) Sinigaglia has woven a charming piece with lightest touch of
masterly art; a delicate humor of melody plays amid a wealth of
counterpoint that is all free of a sense of learning.]

In a SYMPHONY BY GIOVANNI SGAMBATI,[A] IN D MAJOR, the form flows with
such unpremeditated ease that it seems all to the manner born. It may be
a new evidence that to-day national lines, at least in art, are
vanishing; before long the national quality will be imperceptible and
indeed irrelevant.

[Footnote A: Born in 1843.]

To be sure we see here an Italian touch in the simple artless stream of
tune, the warm resonance, the buoyant spring of rhythm. The first
movement stand