SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
the sweet music of Italy
DON LORENZO PEROSI
The winter that held Italian thought in its cold clasp is over, and great trees that seemed to be asleep are putting out new life in the sun. Yesterday it was poetry that awaked, and to-day it is music–the sweet music of Italy, calm in its passion and sadness, and artless in its knowledge. Are we really witnessing the return of its spring? Is it the incoming of some great tide of melody, which will wash away the gloom and doubt of our life to-day? As I was reading the oratorios of this young priest of Piedmont, I thought I heard, far away, the song of the children of old Greece: «The swallow has come, has come, bringing the gay seasons and glad years. Ear êdê.» I welcome the coming of Don Lorenzo Perosi with great hope.
[Illustration: greek207]
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The abbé Perosi, the precentor of St. Mark’s chapel at Venice and the director of the Sistine chapel, is twenty-six years old.[192] He is short in stature and of youthful appearance, with a head a little too big for his body, and open and regular features lighted up by intelligent black eyes, his only peculiarity being a projecting underlip.
[Footnote 192: This article was written in 1899, on the occasion of Lorenzo Perosi’s coming to Paris to direct his oratorio La Résurrection.] He is simple-hearted and modest, and has a friendly warmth of affection. When he is conducting the orchestra his striking silhouette, his slow and awkward gestures in expressive passages, and his naïve movements of passion at dramatic moments, bring to mind one of Fra Angelico’s monks.
For the last eighteen months Don Perosi has been working at a cycle of twelve oratorios descriptive of the life of Christ. In this short time he has finished four: The Passion, The Transfiguration, The Resurrection of Lazarus, The Resurrection of Christ. Now he is at work on the fifth–The Nativity.
These compositions alone place him in the front rank of contemporary musicians. They abound in faults; but their qualities are so rare, and his soul shines so clearly through them, and such fine sincerity breathes in them, that I have not the courage to dwell on their weaknesses. So I shall content myself with remarking, in passing, that the orchestration is inadequate and awkward, and that the young musician should strive to make it fuller and more delicate; and though he shows great ease in composition, he is often too impetuous, and should resist this tendency; and that, lastly, there are sometimes traces of bad taste in the music and reminiscences of the classics–all of which are the sins of youth, which age will certainly cure.
this was: The Sweet Music Of Italy
go to next chapter: descriptive mass
