Note 386 — Chapter II · THE ARTIST IN THEORY (continued 2)

This is a broadly true statement of the historical facts, though it has to be remembered that the theory that the first Florentine reformers aimed at a recitative-like delivery of a dramatic idea is only one of the errors of the popular historian. Their earliest attempts were more in the arioso form. See Hugo Riemann's Handbuch der Musikgeschichte, ii. 2, chap. xxiii.