Although Herr Hey is a disciple of Wagner, he is a cosmopolitan admirer of all that is good in every style of the past and present. In the elaborate scheme for the establishment of a conservatory in Munich which Wagner submitted to King Ludwig, he dwells on the fact that every student of song, whatever his ultimate aims, should be instructed in Italian singing, in conjunction with the Italian language. Herr Hey, too, admits that there is no branch of the Italian method which the German teachers can afford to ignore. In the emission of a mellow tone, the use of the portamento, in the treatment of scales, of trills, and of other ornaments, and in facile vocalization in general, all nations can learn from the Italians. But the Italian method does not go far enough. It does not meet the demands of the modern opera and the modern music-drama. It delights too much in comfortable solfeggios, in linked sweetness long drawn out, which soon palls on the senses. The modern romantic and dramatic spirit demands more characteristic, more vigorous, more varied accents than Italian song supplies. These dramatic accents are supplied by the German method, and in this chiefly lies its superiority over the Italian method. Herr Hey uses a very happy comparison in trying to show the bad consequences of relying too much on the Italian principles of vocal instruction which have been current until lately in Germany as in all other countries. Students, he says, are taught to fence with a little walking-cane, and when it comes to the decisive battle they are expected to wield a heavy sword. A most happy illustration this, I repeat, for it indicates exactly what vocal teachers of the old school are doing. They choose the easiest of the vowels and the easiest melodic intervals, and make the pupils exercise on those constantly, ignoring the more difficult ones; and the consequence is, that when, subsequently, the pupils are confronted with difficult intervals in a dramatic role, they sing them badly and make the ludicrous protest that the composer "doesn't know how to write for the voice;" and when they come across difficult vowels they either change them into easier ones, and thus make the text unintelligible, or else they emit a crude tone because they have never learned to sing a sonorous U, I, or E (Latin).