Page:Selected letters of Mendelssohn 1894.djvu/51

Rh forced myself to attend to all the individual parts as well. The office commenced at half-past four on Wednesday with the antiphon—“Zelus domus tuae.” The little book containing the services appointed for the week explains the true meaning of the whole series of offices:—

“At that evensong three psalms are sung, that we may remember how Christ died for maidens, for matrons, and for widows; they also have reference to the three divisions of law, the natural law, the written law, and the law of the Gospel. The ‘Domine labia mea’ and the ‘Deus in adjutorium’ are not sung, since the wicked have robbed us of our one Head and Source. The fifteen candles symbolise the twelve apostles and the three Maries,” and so forth. The book contains great treasures of this kind, and I will bring it back with me. The psalms are sung fortissimo by all the male voices divided into two choirs, each verse being divided into two parts, as question and answer, or say simply a and b, so that one choir sings a, and the other responds with b. The whole sentence except the last word, is sung very fast on one note, and at the last word there comes a brief inflexion, which differs in each verse.

To this chant or “tonus,” as they call it, they sing through all the verses of the psalm, and I have noted down seven different ones, from one to another of which they changed during the three days. You cannot imagine how wearisome and monotonous this comes to sound, how coarse and mechanical is their way of getting through with it.