_Lazarus_ in June, 1898, and _The Resurrection of
Christ_ in November, 1898. Such an output of work takes us back to
eighteenth-century musicians.
But this is not the only resemblance between the young musician and his
predecessors. Much of their soul has passed into his. His style is made
up of all styles, and ranges from the Gregorian chant to the most modern
modulations. All available materials are used in this work. This is an
Italian characteristic. Gabriel d'Annunzio threw into his melting-pot
the Renaissance, the Italian painters, music, the writers of the North,
Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, Maeterlinck, and our French writers, and out of it
he drew his wonderful poems. So Don Perosi, in his compositions, welds
together the Gregorian chant, the musical style of the contrapuntists of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Palestrina, Roland, Gabrieli,
Carissimi, Schuetz, Bach, Haendel, Gounod, Wagner--I was going to say
Cesar Franck, but Don Perosi told me that he hardly knew this composer
at all, though his style bears some resemblance to Franck's.
Time does not exist for Don Perosi. When he courteously wished to praise
French musicians, the first name he chose--as if it were that of a
contemporary--was that of Josquin, and then that of Roland de Lassus,
who seems to him so great and profound a musician that he admires him
most of all.
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