[Letter from Jemima Yorke to Mary Gregory, 17^th April 1746]

Our Dispute about Music seems like the famous Controversy upon Ancient & modern Authors, & I am always (I think) partial to my Old Friends the Ancients. I allow however all the Merit of the Songs you mention, & have been as much pleased with them as you could be, but still even those want something of the Simplicity & Harmony that was the Taste twenty Years ago, that many of the Songs then had (tho' I suppose not all) & that those we had from Vienna of Bononcini still have. But I assure you, the Operas you speak of two or three Winters ago are as much if not more beyond those of this Winter as the Old Ones could surpass them: and yet we have had One of Galuppi & One of Lampugnani, but very indifferent both of them, light & noisy, & nothing in them, scarcely genteel, & really not above One or two Songs that you would wish to remember or hear again in this whole Season. Indeed the Singers are so bad they would spoil almost any Composition: One Women has a very good Voice, but she is young & not Half Taught, & it runs as Wild as a Tree would do without Pruning; she sings as Scramblingly as that would grow, & all the other Underlings are intolerable. They are quiet Singers indeed for they express Nothing, & you can scarcly hear them which is no great Loss. But now to go to the Other Side of the Argument. Tho' I have admir'd both Senesino & Cuzzoni & now Borosini as much as was possible & think it the true Taste in Musick, yet I own myself pleased with another Manner when it seems natural & easy & well done, as I think it in Farinelli & Monticelli. But since that manner is grown the Fashion all Pretenders to Singing have gone into it tho' without Genius (perhaps to do either well, the Composers have wrote in the same way with as little Genius, & Musick is now in general brought down to a Confused Mixture of Sounds without any Meaning. – In short 'tis no where to be found but in our Concert! – that is the best Conclusion I think to my Dissertation