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ment, meet with but little notice or en- couragement, so that music here begins to degenerate and decline very much; to which the high salaries given to fine voices and singers of great abilities in the numerous operas throughout Italy, and, indeed, all over Europe, greatly contribute. By little and little, all those embellish- ments and refinements in the execution of ancient music, as well as the elegant simplicity for which that of this chapel is so celebrated, seem likely to be lost. Formerly, even the Canto Fermo was here infinitely superior to that of every other place, by its purity, and by the expressive manner in which it was chanted.
I had indeed been told, before my ar- rival at Rome, by a friend who had re- sided there nineteen years, that I must not expect to find the music of the Pope's chapel so superior in the performance to that of the rest of Italy, as it had been in times past, before operas were invented and such great salaries given to the principal
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