This was founded upon the same basis as the theory of Caccini, which condemned emphatically the indiscriminate employment of swelled tones, exclamatory emphases and other vocal devices.

Caccini desired that the employment of all these factors in song should be regulated by the significance of the text.

In other words these reformers were fighting a fight not unlike that of Wagner.

They deplored the making of vocal ornaments and the display of ingenuity in the interweaving of parts for their own sakes, just as Wagner decried the writing of tune for tune's sake, and on one of the same grounds, namely, that nothing could result but a tickling of the ear.

Yet these young reformers had no intention of throwing overboard all the charms of floridity in song.