... I went to the hospital de' Mendicanti, for orphan girls, who are taught to sing and play, and on Sundays and at festivals they sing divine service in chorus. Signor Bertoni is the present Maestro di Capella. There was a hymn performed with solos and chorusses, and a mottetto à voce sola, which last was very well performed, particularly an accompanied recitative, which was pronounced with great force and energy. Upon the whole, the compositions had some pretty passages, mixed with others that were not very new. The subjects of the fugues and chorusses were trite, and but slightly put together. The girls here I thought accompanied the voices better than at the Pietà: as the choruses are wholly made up of female voices, they are never in more than three parts, often only two; but these, when reinforced by the instruments, have such an effect, that the full complement of chords is not missed, and the melody is much more sensible and marked, by being less charged with harmony. In these hospitals many of the girls sing in the countertenor as low as A and G, which enables them always to keep below the soprano and mezzo soprano, to which they sing the base; and this seems to have been long practised in Italy, as may be seen in the examples of composition given in the old writers, such as Zarlino, Glariano, Kircher, and others, where the lowest part of the three is often written in the counter-tenor clef. << less