Page:Selected letters of Mendelssohn 1894.djvu/59

Rh As Allegri has only composed a single verse, to which all the verses are sung, I have really heard the whole of the three compositions. However, they sing much the same thing throughout, for they give the same variations, “embellimenti,” in any case, an especial one for each harmony, so the composition in itself is not very apparent.

How these “embellimenti” found their way in, they decline to say, maintaining that they are traditional. I do not believe it; musical tradition, in general, is a dubious matter, and I do not know how a piece of five-voice part-singing could be well handed down by hearsay; it doesn’t seem probable. The variations have obviously been worked in by a later composer, and it seems to me the director must have had several good high voices, which he would naturally wish to bring out on the occasion of Holy Week, and so have composed these embellishments of the simple harmonies in order to give them free scope and an opportunity of display. Old they certainly are not, but they are written with great taste and skill, and produce an admirable effect.

There is one in particular which often recurs and is the most impressive of all, so much so that when it commences a slight movement passes through the auditory, whatever sort of people compose it; and in conversation whenever this style of music is spoken of, and you hear people talk of how the voices ring out as though less human than angelic, or of a harmony that one can hear but once, it is always this particular variation that is meant. Thus in the Miserere,