As regards this pre-eminence, it is enough to remember that Spain was anciently one of the regions most thoroughly penetrated by Roman civilisation.  It is not too much to say that this art has never sunk into decadence in Spain.  During the sixteenth century the archives of the Pontifical chapel show the important place occupied by Spanish composers in the musical history of the Vatican, and among the artists who gained celebrity away from their own country were Escoledo, Morales, Galvey, Tapia, and many others.  To the end of the seventeenth century a galaxy of brilliant names carried on the national history of Spanish music, both on religious and secular lines; and though in the eighteenth and part of the nineteenth centuries there was a passing invasion of French and Italian fashion, the true and characteristic native music has never died out, and at the present time there is a notable musical renaissance in touch with the spirit and natural genius of the people.

A Royal Academy of Music has, within recent times, been added to the other institutions of a like kind, and native talent is being developed on native lines, not in imitations from countries wholly differing from them in national characteristics.  Spaniards are exacting critics, and the best musicians of other countries are as well known and appreciated as their own composers and executants.  Wagner is now a household word among them, where once Rossini was the object of fashionable admiration.  The national and characteristic songs of Spain have been already referred to.  They are perfectly distinct from those of any other nation.  There is about them a dainty grace and pathos, combined frequently with a certain suspicion of sadness, which is full of charm, while those which are frankly gay are full of life, audacity, and “go,” that carry away the listeners, even when the language is imperfectly understood.  The charming songs, with accompaniment for piano or guitar, of the Master Yradier, are mostly written in the soft dialect of Andalucia, which lends itself to the music, and is liquid as the notes of a bird.  The songs of Galicia are, in fact, the songs of Portugal; just as the Galician language is Portuguese, or a dialect of that language, which has less impress of the ancient Celt-Iberian and more of French than its sister, Castilian, both being descendants of Latin, enriched with words borrowed from the different nations which have at one time or another inhabited or conquered their country.

The guitar is, of course, the national instrument, and the songs never have the same charm with any other accompaniment; but the Spanish women of to-day are prouder of being able to play the piano or violin than of excelling in the instrument which suits them so much better.  The Spaniard is nervously anxious not to appear, or to be, behind any other European nation in what we call “modernity,” a word that signifies that to be “up-to-date” is of paramount importance, leaving wholly out of the question whether the change be for the better or infinitely towards the lower end of the scale.