Savonarola went so far as to affirm: 'Che questo canto figurato l'ha trovato Satanasso,' a phrase quite in the style of a Puritan abusing choirs and organs.] It must not be thought that this almost unimaginable state of things indicated a defect either of intellectual capacity or of artistic skill.
It was due rather to the abuse of science and of virtuosity, both of which had attained to a high degree of development.

It manifested the decadence of music in its immaturity, through over-confident employment of exuberant resources on an end inadequate for the fulfillment of the art.

Music, it must be remembered, unlike literature and plastic art, had no antique tradition to assimilate, no masterpieces of accomplished form to study.

In the modern world it was an art without connecting links to bind it to the past.

And this circumstance rendered it liable to negligent treatment by a society that prided itself upon the recovery of the classics.