Everyone who has any idea at all of what the name of Monteverde represents must see that a proposal to discuss him fully in a single paper, even of abnormal length, would be absurd. So I must assume that you already know enough about him to make it safe for me to dispense with personal biographical matters, except so far as they have bearing upon his work, and confine myself to the salient facts which minister to the understanding of his peculiar importance in the development of modern music. The attention of the musical world has been concentrated on one side of his career only, one might almost say on one single vocal piece of some dozen bars in length. Yet he is referred to as the fountain-head of modem opera, as the originator of modern orchestration, the prototype of the noble band of artistic revolutionaries, the triumphant vindicator of the right to break rules. And all the while people know nothing of him but what they get at second hand. There is certainly not one man in a million who has ever heard a single bar of his compositions: so it is difficult to bring what is said about him to a practical test; and this makes him a safe subject for that familiar type of explorers who want to tell travellers' tales which are unlikely to be found out He is indeed quite exceptionally inaccessible. A great number of his compositions have been lost, and a further large number exist only in rare part-books in libraries in scattered parts of Europe; and till such works are scored from the part-books it is idle to pretend that anyone can get any idea of them. And even when they are made accessible in substance they are still inaccessible in spirit; for in order to understand Monteverde's compositions one has to have a clear understanding of the kinds of music he did not write, and capacity to see into the spirit of many crude and venturesome experiments, and to free oneself entirely from the conventions of mechanical theory. Indeed, to understand a man like Monteverde one must be able to guess what he wanted to do even when he did not succeed.