THE CORROTTO.
Here the miserable translation ends. But I would that I could summon from the deeps of memory some echo of the voice I heard at Perugia, one dark Good Friday evening, singing Penitential Psalms. This made me feel of what sort was the Corrotto, chanted by the confraternities of Umbria. The psalms were sung on that occasion to a monotonous rhythm of melodiously simple outline by three solo voices in turn—soprano, tenor, and bass. At the ending of each psalm a candle before the high-altar was extinguished, until all light and hope and spiritual life went out for the damned soul. The soprano, who sustained the part of pathos, had the fullness of a powerful man's chest and larynx, with the pitch of a woman's and the timbre of a boy's voice. He seemed able to do what he chose in prolonging and sustaining notes, with wonderful effects of crescendo and diminuendo passing from the wildest and most piercing forte to the tenderest pianissimo. He was hidden in the organ-loft; and as he sang, the organist sustained his cry with long-drawn shuddering chords and deep groans of the diapason. The whole church throbbed with the vibrations of the rising, falling melody; and the emotional thrill was as though Christ's or Mary's soul were speaking through the darkness to our hearts. I never elsewhere heard a soprano of this sort sing in tune so perfect or with so pure an intonation. The dramatic effect produced by the contrast between this soprano and the bass and tenor was simple but exceedingly striking. Englishmen, familiar with cathedral music, may have derived a somewhat similar impression from the more complex Motett of Mendelssohn upon Psalm xxii. I think that when the Umbrian Laud began to be dramatic, the parts in such a hymn as Jacopone's Corrotto must have been distributed after the manner of these Perugian Good Friday services. Mary's was undoubtedly given to the soprano; that of the Jews, possibly, to the bass; Christ's, and perhaps the messenger's also, to the tenor. And it is possible that the rhythm was almost identical with what I heard; for that had every mark of venerable antiquity and popular sincerity.
I now pass to the Hymn of Divine Love, which Tresatti entitles Cantico dell'Amore Superardente (Book vi. 16). It consists of three hundred and seventy lines, all of which I have translated, though I content myself here with some extracts: