Our aim should be to efface the differences of race
in art, so that it may become a tongue common to all peoples, where the
most opposite ideas may be reconciled. We should all join in working to
build the cathedral of European art. And the place of the director of
the Sistine chapel among the first builders is very plain.
* * * * *
Don Perosi sat down to the piano and played me the _Te Deum_ of _The
Nativity_, which he had written the day before. He played very sweetly,
with youthful gaiety, and sang the choral parts in an undertone. Every
now and then he would look at me, not for praise, but to see if we were
sharing the same thoughts. He would look me well in the face with his
quiet eyes, then turn back to his score, and then look at me again. And
I felt a comforting calm radiating from him and his music, from its
happy harmony and the full and rhythmic serenity of its spirit. And how
pleasant it was after the tempests and convulsions of art in these later
days. Can we not tear ourselves away from that romantic suffering in
music which was begun by Beethoven? After a century of battles, of
revolutions, and of political and social strife, whose pain has found
its reflection in art, let us begin to build a new city of art, where
men may gather together in brotherly love for the same ideal.
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