Now, whether we look at nations or at individuals, we always find that simple beauty of tone and agility of execution in artistic singing are appreciated sooner than emotional expression and dramatic characterization. Hence it is that the Italian school came before the German school. Even in Germany, a few generations ago, the Italian school was so predominant that German composers of the first rank--Gluck, Weber, and Beethoven--found it difficult to assert their influence against it. In Vienna, during the season of 1823, the Rossini furore was so great that none but Rossini's operas were sung; and in Germany almost everyone of the three dozen big and little potentates supported his own Italian operatic company. To-day you look in vain through Germany or Austria for a single Italian company. The few Italian operas that have remained on the repertory are sung in German translations by German singers, and all of these operas together hardly have as many performances in a year as a single one of Wagner's. Here is a revolution in taste which may well excite our astonishment, and arouse our curiosity as to how it was brought about. It was brought about by the courage and perseverance of a few composers who, instead of stooping down to the crude taste of the _fioriture_-loving public, elevated that taste until it was able to appreciate the poetic and dramatic side of music; and it was brought about with the assistance of German singers, notwithstanding the great disadvantages, climatic and linguistic, under which these labor in comparison with Italian singers. Although the Germans are a more robust nation than the Italians, with more powerful muscles and voices, their climate is against them, leading to frequent throat troubles which endanger the beauty of the voice. Hence, the gift of mellow, supple song does not come to them so spontaneously as to the Italians. About a thousand years ago, an Italian compared the singing of some German monks to the noise made by a cart rattling down a frozen street; and even Luther compared the singing in cathedrals and monasteries at his time to the "braying of asses." At a more recent period, Frederick the Great, on hearing of the proposed engagement of a German singer, exclaimed: "What! hear a German singer! I should as soon expect to derive pleasure from the neighing of my horse!" Beethoven knew that the chief reason why he could not compete with Rossini on the stage was the lack of good German singers. He often lamented the inferiority of the German to the Italian singers, and one day exclaimed to the organist Freudenberg: "We Germans have no sufficiently cultivated singers for the part of _Leonora_; they are too cold and feelingless. The Italians sing and act with their whole souls." Nevertheless, Beethoven refused to adapt his music to the style of the Italian singers--fortunately; for, if he had, it would now be as obsolete as most of Rossini's and Donizetti's.