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notes, without the least intermission. The voice part is very slow, a kind of psalmody; the words, of which there are many stanzas to the same air, are in the Neapolitan language, which is as different from good Italian, as Welsh from English. It is a very singular spe- cies of music, as wild in modulation, and as different from that of all the rest of Europe as the Scots, and is, perhaps, as ancient, being among the common peo- ple merely traditional. However, the vio- lin player wrote down the melody of the voice part for me, and afterwards brought me something like the accompaniment; but these parts have a strange appearance when seen on paper together. I heard these musicians play a great number of Neapolitan airs, but all were different from other music.
A little before Christmas musicians of this sort come from Calabria to Na- ples, and their music is wholly different from this: they usually sing with a
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