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These men were as revolutionary in their day as Wagner in ours, many times as intolerant, and, some will say, perhaps equally visionary. They revamped the Hellenic myths concerning the power of music, not as containing a germ of verity wrapped in an ample cloak of poetical symbolism, but as very truth. What the ancient art had been they did not know, but they did not hesitate to say that compared with it the music of their own time (the time of Palestrina and the Netherland School) was a barbarism, the creation of a people whose natural rudeness was evidenced even in their uncouth names—Okeghem, Hobrecht, etc. They could not reconcile counterpoint with the theories touching the province of music laid down by Plato; and that fact sufficed to condemn it. Count Vernio himself published a tract stating the purposes of the reformers. The first step in the process of curing the evil which had come over music, he said, should be to protect the poetical text from the musicians who, to exploit their inventions, tore the poetry to tatters, giving different voices different words to sing simultaneously. The philosophers of old—Plato in particular—had said that the melody should follow the verses of the poet and sweeten them. "When you compose, therefore," said the noble amateur, "have a care that the text remain uninjured, the words be kept intelligible, and do not permit yourselves to be carried off your feet by counterpoint, that wicked swimmer, who is swept along unresistingly by the stream, and arrives at an entirely different landing-place than he intended to make. For, as much as the soul is nobler than the body, so much nobler are words than counterpoint; and as the soul must govern the body, so counterpoint must take its laws from poetry." Caccini, who was a famous singing-master, and the first professional musician to join the Florentine coterie, made many statements in the preface to his Nuove Musiche which Gluck and Wagner only echoed when they came to urge their reforms. Thus he recommends the choice of a pitch which will enable the singer always to use his natural voice, so that expression may be unconstrained. He advises that the singer emancipate himself from a too strict adherence to measure, fixing, instead, the relative value of notes by consideration for the words to which they are set. More striking than either of these utterances, however, is his condemnation of the roulades which had come into use even before the solo style had been invented. He calls these roulades "Long flights" (flourishes or whirlings) of the voice (lunghi giri di voce); and says of them, literally: "They were not invented as being necessary to good singing, but, as I believe, to provide a certain titillation of the ears for the benefit of such as have little knowledge of what expressive singing means; for if they understood this, they would unquestionably detest these passages, since nothing is so offensive as they to expressive singing. And it is for this reason that I have said the lunghi giri di voce are so ill applied. I introduce them in songs which are less passionate, and, indeed, on long, not on short syllables, and in closing cadences." Caccini further advises the avoidance of artificial tones, and the use of the natural voice in order that the feelings may have expression. Wagner urges his singers to leave off the affected pathos which they are so prone to assume with the song-voice, and to enunciate, breathe, and phrase as naturally and unconstrainedly as they would if they were speaking the dialogue instead of singing it. Caccini wished the singer to emancipate himself from the fetters of musical metre, and to consult the rhythm of the words. In Wagner's vocal parts the aim is to achieve through music an increased expressiveness for the poetry, and to this end he raises it to a kind of intensified speech, which retains as much as possible of the distinctness of ordinary dialogue with its emotional capacity raised to a higher power. He desires that the melody shall spring naturally from the poetry, but also that the poetry shall "yearn" for musical expression. Caccini recognized the beauty of embellished song, but restricted the introduction of vocal flourishes to songs which were wanting in expressiveness—in other words, to songs intended merely to charm the ear. Wagner (and here I should like to correct an almost universal misconception)—Wagner never condemned beautiful singing, even in the Italian sense, except where it stands in the way of truthful, dramatic utterance. But he raises the question of nationality and tongue as one which must first of all be considered in determining how poetry is to be set to music. Deference must be paid to the genius of the language employed, and also to the vocal peculiarities of the people who are to perform and enjoy the drama. This is really Wagner's starting-point. He aims to be a national dramatist. In the Italian opera the vocal adornments, favored by the inherent softness and beauty of the Italian language, gradually usurped the first place, while dramatic motive, which had inspired the invention of the opera, dropped out of sight. For such an art there is little natural aptitude in the German, and consequently only a modicum of sympathy. Sung to florid tunes, German words become worse than unintelligible; the poetry loses its merit as speech, and the music is robbed of all its purpose and most of its charm. Believing this, and having already striven to restore naturalness of expression in the spoken drama, Wagner wrote the vocal parts of his lyric dramas so as to bring out first the force of the poetry as such.