I have again been twice to Sirletti’s music parties. A week ago some parts of the Requiem were repeated and the Halleluja; but the rest of the evening was wholly devoted to Marcello’s Psalms. With regard to the latter, I find my former opinion still more confirmed. In the fine edition of these Psalms, there is also a biography of Marcello, in which the reason is given for his relinquishing theatrical compositions, to which alone he had previously devoted himself, and taking all at once to sacred music. On visiting a church in a retired part of Venice, he had the misfortune to fall through a badly covered opening into one of the subterranean dead-vaults, and remained there a long time before his cries for assistance were heard. This accident induced so serious a tone of mind, that ever after he would write nothing but sacred music.
I have again been to Ruffini’s music parties also, and heard a tragic opera by a young and early deceased composer, who had much native talent but evinced also a complete deficiency of study. The singer showed to more advantage in this opera than in the one they gave previously; but the orchestra was just as unbearable. I sat next to the formerly so celebrated singer Crescentini (but, who is said to have now wholly lost his voice, although he is scarcely fifty years of age), and I had the satisfaction to find that his opinion upon the present state of music in Italy agreed in every respect with mine. His conversation evinced the highly cultivated artiste, free from the trammels of prejudice. He deplored that at the present day the good school of vocal music, the only one in which Italians had distinguished themselves, had become more and more rare every day, and upon his last return to Italy (I think he had been in Paris) he had found so frivolous and bad a taste, that it no longer bore the least trace of the former simple yet noble style of his time. To him, also, who had heard much good music in Germany and France, the insipidity and incorrectness of modern Italian music are abominations.
December 23.
Now that the festival of Christmas is approaching, begging, with which one is plagued here at all times, will be carried on on a large scale. Wherever you go, you are greeted with the cry of “Pleasant holidays!” and you are then expected to pull out your purse. This system of begging occurs, it is true, in Germany at New Year, but is by no means so general as here. For instance, the servants of all the nobility and gentry at whose houses have shewn yourself, if but once, come to beg of you; and indeed at other times as well, foreigners are laid under contribution by them. If you have paid the master a visit, the servant comes the next day and asks you for a present. As one cannot give less than three Paoli, it becomes a dear amusement to deliver many letters of introduction here. The poor devils are certainly very badly paid, and must resort to such a system of begging if they would not starve.
Yesterday Meyerbeer and his mother arrived here. He received a letter in Florence from Carl M. von Weber, and read to me from it the gratifying intelligence that my Opera “Faust” had already been twice performed at Prague with marked approbation.
December 25.
Last evening we were present at a service in the Sixtine chapel preparatory to the approaching high festival. I had anticipated something very effective but I found myself very much mistaken. The illumination was by no means effective, for the chapel was soon so filled with the smoke of the tapers that you could not see distinctly ten paces before you. Instead of the four-voice Psalmody which I had hoped for, the singers of the choir recited merely a rather long Litany of prayers in unison, without any melody, something as the following:
To listen to this for almost half an hour without interruption was the greatest musical penitence that I ever endured. At length, in the midst of a silent prayer, we were refreshed by a four-voiced solo, in which the splendid soprano-voice before alluded to was again remarkable. But immediately after this, the monotonous chaunt was again resumed, and now we thought it preferable to work our way through the compact crowd at the expense of great exertion rather than to endure it any longer.
This morning early we at length saw the head of the catholic church in the highest ecclesiastical pomp perform mass in the church of St. Peter. The high altar under the dome, divested of its habitual covering, was radiant with gold and precious stones; the clergy and cardinals, habited in their richest gold-embroidered stuffs, the body-guard in their splendid uniform, the Swiss guard in their bright polished old German armour, in a word all converted with the pope contributed to render this service the most splendid spectacle ever performed in a church. For more than a theatrical spectacle it was not to the surrounding crowd: not a sign of emotion or spiritual elevation was to be seen among the many thousand spectators! The appearance of a spectacle got up for amusement was more especially given to it by the circumstance that for the accommodation of the high personages who were present—the king of Spain, the queen of Etruria, the princes of Prussia, Gotha and others—a sumptuously decorated box had been erected, and, that upon the amphitheatre the fashionable world of Rome was present in full dress. A singular contrast with this splendour was presented by the rags and dirt of the riff-raff of the Roman populace who had pressed to the very step of the high altar. As the “service” became tediously long, and what the singers sang was neither very interesting, nor could be heard distinctly for the noise in the church, we preferred to take a walk, as the weather was so mild and bright, but returned in sufficient time to the church to see the procession, which forms the close to the whole performance.