"We are flooded from every quarter with scientific musicianship; nothing is left undeveloped, save a basic feeling for music. I am haunted by infant prodigies, who, at the age of ten-and-a-half, can, and do, astonish us with full concertos on the violin; and yet a whole orchestra-full of mature and adult violinists is incapable of performing the accompaniment to the duet from Armida! Music, considered as a mechanical technique, is moving rapidly towards a state of perfection; music as an art is perishing by degrees. One is forced to conclude that, with people such as these, any increase in knowledge is accompanied by a proportionate decrease in sensibility."
— Stendhal, Life of Rossini
