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There was no one capable of forming it in the province, where no music was ever heard but that of the local band, which played nothing but marches, or on its good days selections from Adolphe Adam, and the church organist who played romanzas, and the exercises of the young ladies of the town who strummed a few valses and polkas, the overture to the Caliph of Bagdad, la Chasse du Jeune Henri, and two or three sonatas of Mozart, always the same, and always with the same mistakes, on instruments that were sadly out of tune.
Two of these sections one cannot call them chapters are omitted in the translation, namely, "Allegory of Impudence" and, "Apprenticeship of Manhood." By FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL Smiling with emotion Petrarch opens the collection of his immortal romanzas with a prefatory survey. The clever Boccaccio talks with flattering courtesy to all women, both at the beginning and at the end of his opulent book.
When the song is over, to the success of which he feels he has materially contributed, he will inform you that you may talk of your "arias," and your "romanzas," "but for music, sir, music " at which point he becomes incoherent and unintelligible. It is this gentleman who suggests "China," or "Brattle Street," as a suitable and cheerful exercise for the social circle.
Campana and Gordigiani were prolific composers of romanzas and canzonettas of a popular type. Their works are drawing-room music, very innocuous, very sentimental, very insignificant, and very far from the conception of chamber-music generally prevalent now. How they could have been thought to have influenced so virile a composer as Verdi, it is difficult to see.
As I have said, if you have access to a variety of amateur pictures created during the mid-Victorian era, of whatever style or subject, you will find in them the most admirably sincere qualities of painting as well as singularly enchanting gifts for simplication and the always engaging respect for the fact itself out of which these painted romanzas are created.
The distinguished lady considered that no cities were inhabitable except the capitals that have a court. Pshaw! Venice! A shabby town that no one liked but writers of romanzas and decorators of fans, and where there were nothing higher than consuls. She liked Rome with its Pope and kings.
It was beautiful to see how girlish the sensible and serious lady became in her efforts to be companionable to her young protégée. Day after day, her intimate friends found her playing battledoor or the Graces, or practising pretty French romanzas, flowery rondeaux, or lively dances.
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