ABSTRACT
These features were generally felt to clash with a Classical-Romantic idea of artistic creation. Indeed, they are scarcely compatible with such deep-rooted concepts as authorship, uniqueness of inspiration, organicity and the architectonic character of the art work. The situtation may also have encouraged in historians an implicit idea o f artistic morality difficult to locate in Italian opera. I hardly need recall how these presuppositions affected the best musical historiography of the past, from Hermann Abert to Alfred Einstein, from Edward J. Dent to Donald J. Grout, nor do I need to stress their continued currency in recent general histories.
