She snatched up the nearest newspaper.
It was then the height of the London concert season.

Morning performances of music were announced in rows.

Reading the advertised programmes, Carmina found them, in one remarkable respect, all alike.
They would have led an ignorant stranger to wonder whether any such persons as Italian composers, French composers, and English composers had ever existed.

The music offered to the English public was music of exclusively German (and for the most part modern German) origin.

Carmina held the opinion--in common with Mozart and Rossini, as well as other people--that music without melody is not music at all.