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either as impracticable or displeasing.
The only opportunity a composer has for
introducing new modulation in songs, is
in a short second part, in order to fright
the hearer back to the first, to which it
serves as a foil, by making it compara-
tively beautiful. He likewise censures
with great severity the noise and tumult
of instruments in modern songs.
Signor Rinaldo di Capua has at Rome
the reputation of being the inventor of
accompanied recitatives; but in hunting
for old compositions in the archives of
S. Girolamo della Carità, I found an
oratorio by Alessandro Scarlatti, which
was composed in the latter end of the
last century, before Rinaldo di Capua
was born, and in which are accompanied
recitatives. But he does not himself pre-
tend to the invention; all that he claims
is the being among the first who intro-
duced long ritornellos, or symphonies,
into the recitatives of strong passion and
distress, which express or imitate what
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