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?"

These remarks are quite as applicable to America as to England. We
hear singers every week to whom we can listen attentively for five
minutes without being able to tell what language they are singing in.
Most of these singers were trained by the Italian method: And yet we
are told every day that this Italian method, which has so little
regard for the distinctively vocal side of singing, is the only true
method for the voice. It is time to call a halt in this matter, time
to ask if the Italian method is really the one best adapted for
teaching pupils to sing in English. That it is the best and only
method for singing in Italian, and for interpreting the style hitherto
cultivated by the Italians, no one will deny. But whether it is the
proper method for those who wish to sing in English, French, or
German, and to devote themselves to the modern dramatic style, is
quite another question, which must be, partly at least, answered in
the negative.

A careful examination of the situation, leaving aside all national
prejudice, will show us that each of the two principal methods, as
exemplified by Italian and German singers, has its dark and its
bri