There is no organ or
instrumental music, and the absence of contralto voices is poorly
compensated for by the unnatural accents of the Papal substitutes for
female vocalists.
The music itself may be very fine,--competent critics declare it is, and
I have no doubt they are right; but I say, unhesitatingly, it is not
music that addresses itself to popular tastes, or produces any feeling
save that of weariness on nine-tenths of its hearers. You can mark
clearly the expression of satisfaction which steals over every face as
candle after candle of the stack of wax-lights before the altar is put
out successively, at intervals of some twenty minutes. If the ceremony
were reduced to one-tenth of its length, it might be impressive, but a
dirge which goes on for three hours, and a chandelier which takes the
same time to have its lights snuffed out, become an intolerable nuisance.
The dying cadence of the Miserere is undoubtedly grand; but, in the first
place, it comes when your patience is exhausted; and, in the second, it
lasts so long, that you begin to wonder whether it will ever end. The
slavery to conventional rules in England, which causes one to shrink from
the charge of not caring about music as zealously as one could, and from
pleading guilty to personal cowardice, makes Englishmen, and still more
Englishwomen, profess to be delighted with the Miserere; but, in their
heart of hearts, their feeling is much such as I have given utterance to.
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