Hello.. The following from Mr Pepys on Easter Sunday, 7 April 1667:
"...and then to walk in the Parke, and heard the Italian musique at the Queens chapel, whose composition is fine, but yet the voices of eunuchs I do not like like our women, nor am more pleased with it at all than with English voices, but that they do jump most excellently with themselves and their instrument, which is wonderful pleasant; but I am convinced more and more, that, as every nation has a particular accent and tone in discourse, so as the tone of one not to agree with or please the other, no more can the fashion of singing to words, for that the better the words are set, the more they take in of the ordinary tone of the country whose language the song speaks, so that a song well composed by an Englishman must be better to an Englishman than it can be to a stranger, or than if set by a stranger in foreign words." Some arguments never get old, do they? My guess is that the music was by the Albrici boys who were looking after "The King's Italian Musick" at the time. Anyone hazard a guess if that is correct? .. mark To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
