Note 12 — Chapter I

These words were penned in 1449 by one whom a contemporary layman described on his death as "the wisest, the most perfect, the most learned, and the holiest prelate whom the Church has in our day possessed." His beautiful tomb is in the Minerva church in Rome. Exactly a century later (1549) Cirillo Franchi wrote on the same subject, and in the same vein, to Ugolino Gualteruzzi: "It is their greatest happiness to contrive that while one is saying Sanctus, the other should say Sabaoth, and a third Gloria tua, with certain howls, bellowings, and guttural sounds, so that they more resemble cats in January than flowers in May!"

Who recalls now Ruskin's famous invective against modern Italian music, in which, after lauding a part-song, "done beautifully and joyfully," which he heard in a smithy in Perugia, he goes on: "Of bestial howling, and entirely frantic vomiting up of hopelessly damned souls through their still carnal throats, I have heard more than, please God, I will endeavour to hear ever again, in one of his summers." It is fair to say that the reference here is probably not to church music.