Aix la Chapelle, Aug. 10. 1817.
Here at length, I find once more a few moments leisure to continue my narrative of our return journey from Italy.
On the 3rd April we at last heard the-long-wished-for Miserere in the Sixtine chapel. We had been told that females were admitted by tickets, and that men were required to appear in shoes. But a ticket for Dorette was now not to be had, and I was therefore obliged to make up my mind to go alone. But when I recognised among the Swiss guard at the entrance of the church one whom I knew and whose good will I had won upon a former occasion by a present for accompanying us up to the dome of St. Peter’s church; I enquired of him whether he could not assist to procure me an admission into the chapel for my wife without a ticket; and upon his assurance that he would do his best, I hastened home to fetch her. After some discussion with the other Swiss guards we were so fortunate as to be admitted, although several English ladies of rank who came unprovided with tickets were refused admittance and turned back. The Swiss cannot bear the English nor the French, and favour the Germans upon such occasions much more, particularly if one can talk to them in a few words of “Schwizerdütsch.”
We yet arrived in good time, and only regretted that we were not allowed to remain together, so as to interchange at the moment the impression which the music would make upon us.
Before the commencement of the singing, nineteen psalms were chaunted alternately by high and low voices, in the same manner unisono, and in the form of prayer, as we had already found so tedious at Christmas; and we had to bear with the last eight or nine of these: after every one, which lasted for five long minutes, one of the tapers is extinguished that burns upon a gigantic pyramidal-shaped candelabra in front of the high altar. How one wishes that the last of them also was extinguished! At length the wished-for moment comes, and by degrees a silence ensues which not a little increases the expectation of that which now follows. To this sentiment of expectation, the solemn twilight which now prevails in the church faintly illumined with the last gleam of the rosy tints of evening, and the repose felt at length by the ear after the hoarse bellowing of the psalms may be ascribed the delicious impression that I experienced from the first long-drawn chord of C flat, and which seemed to me like music from another world. But one was too soon reminded that it was an earthly music that fell upon the ear, and one indeed sung by Italians; for immediately after the second bar, the ear was rent by a horrid succession of quints! The theme was doubtless after this manner:
but was given by the singers in the following barbarous manner:
I could not have believed even my own ears, much more those of others, that they sing in such wise in the Sixtine chapel, had I not heard it subsequently repeated. Is this perhaps the mysterious method of executing these old compositions, of which it is related that it is known alone to this choir, and has been handed down traditionally? Impossible! Modern Italians only can sing in so barbarous a style, who may perhaps possess a feeling for melody, but who in all that is called harmony are grossly ignorant.