Italy

Musicians here are concerned over what they deem the decline in prestige of Italian music and musicians. They say that the traditional great demand the world over for Italian singers and instrumentalists and Italian operas is diminishing. This is a matter of something more than mere national pride in Italy. For the Italians music has always meant a very fine profession. A great many musicians have regular and well-paid employment in Italy and a great many more find posts in other countries. The Italians have supplied musicians for a large part of the world.

That there is a decline all over the world in the demand for Italian opera seems doubtful when you consider the prodigious popularity of certain contemporary Italian composers, such as Puccini. Perhaps the point of the matter lies in the fact that no young Italian operatic composer has arisen who seems likely to succeed Puccini in popular vogue, and it may be that the reason for this is to be sought in the turning of newer composers of Italy from the traditional operatic form to symphonic music. Certainly there is a recent great increase in the demand--in America at least--for Italian orchestral compositions. Italian symphonic music was for centuries a byword for insignificance, but the new modernists of the peninsula are pushing forward at a great rate. Many of the copyrights on their works, however, are held by German and Austrian publishers, since Italian publishers have generally regarded symphonic publications as a loss of money.