Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 by Various
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Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859
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No one lives long in Rome without loving it; and I must, in the
beginning, confess myself to be in the same category. Those who shall
read these slender papers, without agreeing to the kindly opinions
often expressed, must account for it by remembering that "Love lends a
precious seeing to the eye." My aim is far from ambitious. I shall not
be erudite, but I hope I shall not be dull. These little sketches may
remind some of happy days spent under the Roman sky, and, by directing
the attention of others to what they have overlooked, may open a door
to a new pleasure. _Chi sa?_ The plainest Ranz des Vaches may sometimes
please when the fifth symphony of Beethoven would be a bore.
CHAPTER II.
STREET-MUSIC IN ROME.
Whoever has passed the month of December in Rome will remember to
have been awakened from his morning-dreams by the gay notes of the
_pifferari_ playing in the streets below, before the shrines of the
Madonna and Bambino,--and the strains of one set of performers will
scarcely have ceased, before the distant notes of another set of
pilgrims will be heard to continue the well-known _novena_. The
_pifferari_ are generally _contadini_ of the Abruzzi Mountains, who, at
the season of Advent, leave their home to make a pilgrimage to Rome,--
stopping before all the wayside shrines, as they journey along, to pay
their glad music of welcome to the Virgin, and the coming Messiah. Their
song is called a _novena_, from its being sung for nine consecutive
days,--first, for nine days previous to the Festa of the Madonna,
which occurs on the 8th of December, and afterwards for the nine days
preceding Christmas. The same words and music serve, however, for both
celebrations. The _pifferari_ always go in couples, one playing on the
_zampogna_, or bagpipe, the bass and treble accompaniment, and the other
on the _piffero_, or pastoral pipe, which carries the air; and for the
month before Christmas the sound of their instruments resounds through
the streets of Rome, wherever there is a shrine,--whether at the corners
of the streets, in the depths of the shops, down little lanes, in the
centre of the Corso, in the interior courts of the palaces, or on the
stairways of private houses.
Their costume is extremely picturesque. On their heads they wear conical
felt hats adorned with a frayed peacock's feather, or a faded band of
red cords and tassels,--their bodies are clad in red waistcoats, blue
jackets, and small-clothes of skin or yellowish homespun cloth,--skin
sandals are bound to their feet with cords that interlace each other up
the leg as far as the knee,--and over all is worn a long brown or blue
cloak with a short cape, buckled closely round the neck. Sometimes, but
rarely, this cloak is of a deep red with a scalloped cape. As they stand
before the pictures of the Madonna, their hats placed on the ground
before them, and their thick, black, dishevelled hair covering their
sunburnt brows, blowing away on their instruments or pausing to sing
their _novena_, they form a picture which every artist desires to paint.
Their dress is common to nearly all the peasantry of the Abruzzi, and,
worn and tattered as it often is, it has a richness and harmony of tint
which no new clothes could ever have, and for which the costumes of the
shops and regular models offer a poor substitute. It is the old story
again. The new and clean is not so paintable, not so picturesque, as the
tarnished and soiled. The worn blue of the cloak is softened by the dull
gray of the threads beneath,--patches of various colors are often let
into the jacket or breeches,--the hat is lustreless from age, and rusty
as an old wall,--and the first vivid red of the waistcoat is toned by
constant use to a purely pictorial hue. Besides, the true _pifferaro_
wears his costume as if it belonged to him and had always been worn by
him,--so that it has none of that got-up look which spoils everything.
From the sandals and corded leggings, which, in the Neapolitan dialect,
are termed _cioce_, the _pifferari_ are often called _ciociari_.
Their Christmas pilgrimages are by no means prompted by purely religious
motives, though, undoubtedly, such considerations have some weight with
them, the common peasantry being a religiously inclined people, and
often making pilgrimages simply from a sense of duty and propriety. But
in these wanderings to Rome, their principal object is to earn a little
money to support them during the winter months, when their "occupation
is gone." As they are hired in Rome by the owners of the various houses
adorned with a Madonna-shrine (of which there are over fifteen hundred
in the city) to play before them at the rate of a paul or so for each
full _novena_, and as they can easily play before thirty or forty a day,
they often return, if their luck is good, with a tolerable little sum
in their pockets. Besides this, they often stand as models, if they are
good-looking fellows, and thus add to their store; and then again, the
_forestieri_ (for, as the ancient Romans called strangers _barbari_,
so their descendants call them _foresters_, wood-men, wild-men)
occasionally drop _baiocchi_ and pauls into their hats, still further to
increase it.
Sometimes it is a father and son who play together, but oftener two old
friends who make the pilgrimage in pairs. This morning, as I was
going out for a walk round the walls, two admirable specimens of the
_pifferari_ were performing the _novena_ before a shrine at the corner
of the street. The player of the _zampogna_ was an old man, with a sad,
but very amiable face, who droned out the bass and treble in a most
earnest and deprecatory manner. He looked as if he had stood still,
tending his sheep, nearly all his life, until the peace and quiet of
Nature had sunk into his being, or, if you will, until he had become
assimilated to the animals he tended. The other, who played the
_piffero_, was a man of middle age, stout, vigorous, with a forest of
tangled black hair, and dark quick eyes that were fixed steadily on the
Virgin, while he blew and vexed the little brown pipe with rapid runs
and nervous _fioriture_, until great drops of sweat dripped from its
round open mouth. Sometimes, when he could not play fast enough to
satisfy his eagerness, he ran his finger up and down the vents.
Then, suddenly lowering his instrument, he would scream, in a strong
peasant-voice, verse after verse of the _novena_, to the accompaniment
of the _zampogna_. One was like a slow old Italian _vettura_ all
lumbered with luggage and held back by its drag; the other panting and
nervous at his work as an American locomotive, and as constantly running
off the rails. Both, however, were very earnest at their occupation. As
they stood there playing, a little group gathered round. A scamp of a
boy left his sport to come and beat time with a stick on the stone step
before them; several children clustered near; and two or three women,
with rosy infants in their arms, also paused to listen and sympathize.
At last the playing ceased. The _pifferari_ took up their hats and
looked smilingly round at us.
"Where do you come from?" I asked.
"_Eh!_" said the _piffero_, showing all his teeth, and shrugging his
shoulders good-naturedly, while the other echoed the pantomime.
"_Dal Regno_"--for so the Abruzzi peasants call the kingdom of Naples.
"And do you come every year?"
"_Si, Signore. Lui_" (indicating his friend) "_ed io_" (pointing to
himself) "_siam' compagni per trenta tre anni. E siam' venut' a Roma per
far la noven' ogn' anno."[B]
[Footnote B: "He and I have been companions for thirty-three years, and
every year we have come to Rome to play the _novena_."]
To this the old _zampogna_ bent his head on one side, and said,
assentingly,--"_Eh! per trenta tre anni_."--
And, "_Ecco_," continued the _piffero_, bursting in before the
_zampogna_ could go on, and pointing to two stalwart youths of about
twenty-two or-three years of age, who at this moment came up the
street with their instruments,--"These are our two sons. He is
mine,"--indicating one with his reversed thumb; "and that other is
his,"--jerking his head towards his companion. "And they, too, are going
to play in company, as we do."
"For thirty-three years more, let us hope," said I.
"_Eh! speriamo_," (Let us hope so,) was the answer of the _piffero_, as
he showed all his teeth in the broadest of smiles. Then, with a motion
of his hand, he set both the young men going, he himself joining in,
straining out his cheeks, blowing all the breath of his body into the
little pipe, and running up and down the vents with a sliding finger,
until finally he brought up against a high, shrill note, to which he
gave the full force of his lungs, and, after holding it in loud blast
for a moment, startled us by breaking off, without gradation, into
a silence as sudden as if the music had snapped short off, like a
pipe-stem.
On further conversation with my _ciociari_, I found that they came
yearly from Sora, a town in the Abruzzi, about one hundred miles from
Rome, making the journey on foot, and picking up by the way whatever
trifle of copper they could. In this manner they travelled the whole
distance in five days, living upon onions, lettuce, oil, and black
bread. They were now singing the second _novena_ for _Natale_, and, if
one could judge from their manner and conversation, were quite content
with what they had earned. I invited them up into my room, and there
in the pleasantest way they stunned us with the noise of both their
instruments, to the great delight of the children and the astonishment
of the servants, for whom these common things had worn out their charm
by constant repetition. At my request, they repeated the words of the
_novena_ they had been singing, and I took them down from their lips.
After eliminating the wonderful _m-ms_ of the Neapolitan dialect, in
which all the words lay imbedded like shells in the sand, and supplying
some of the curious elisions with which those Abruzzi Procrusteans
recklessly cut away the polysyllables, so as to bring them within the
rythmic compass, they ran thus:--
"Verginella figlia di Sant' Anna,
Nella ventre portasti il buon Gesu.
Si parturisti sotto la capanna,
E dov' mangiav'no lo bue e 1' asinello.
"Quel Angelo gridava: 'Venite, Santi!
'Che andato Gesu dentro la capanna,
Ma guardate Vergine beata,
Che in ciel in terra sia nostr' avvocata!
"San Giuseppe andava in compagnia,
Si trovo al partorir di Maria.
La notte di natale e notte santa--
Lo Padre e 1' Figliolo e lo Spirito Santo.
'Sta la ragione che abbiamo cantato;
Sia a Gesu bambino rappresentata."
The sudden introduction of "_Quel Angelo_" in this song reminds us of a
similar felicity in the romantic ballad of "Lord Bateman," where we are
surprised to learn that "_this Turk_," to whom no allusion had been
previously made, "has one lovely daughter."
The air to which this is sung is very simple and sweet, though
monotonous. Between the verses and at the close, a curious little
_ritornello_ is played.
The wanderings of the _pifferari_ are by no means confined to the Roman
States. Sometimes they stray "as far away as Paris is," and, wandering
about in that gay capital, like children at a fair, play in the streets
for chance _sous_, or stand as models to artists, who, having once been
to Rome, hear with a longing Rome-sickness the old characteristic sounds
of the _piffero_ and _zampogna_. Two of them I remember to have heard
thus, as I was at work in my studio in Paris; and so vividly did they
recall the old Roman time, that I called them in for a chat.
Wonderful was their speech. In the few months of their wandering, they
had put into their Neapolitan dough various plums of French words,
which, pronounced in their odd way, "suffered a change into something
peculiarly rich and strange." One of them told me that his wife had just
written to him by the hand of a _scrivano_, lamenting his absence, and
praying him to send her his portrait. He had accordingly sent her a
photograph in half-length. Some time afterwards she acknowledged the
receipt of it, but indignantly remonstrated with him for sending her a
picture "_che pareva guardando per la fenestra_" (which seemed to be
looking out of the window,) as she oddly characterized a half-length,
and praying to have his legs also in the next portrait. This same
fellow, with his dull, amiable face, played the role of a ferocious
wounded brigand dragged into concealment by his wife, in the studio of
a friend next door; but, despite the savagery and danger of his
counterfeited position, he was sure to be overpowered by sleep before he
had been in it more than five minutes,--and if the artist's eye left him
for a moment, he never failed to change his attitude for one more fitted
to his own somnolent propensities than for the picture.
The _pifferari_ are by no means the only street-musicians in Rome,
though they take the city by storm at Christmas. Every day under my
window comes a band of four or five, who play airs and concerted pieces
from the operas,--and a precious work they make of it sometimes! Not
only do the instruments go very badly together, but the parts they play
are not arranged for them. A violone grunts out a low accompaniment to a
vinegar-sharp violin which saws out the air, while a trumpet blares in
at intervals to endeavor to unite the two, and a flute does what it
can, but not what it would. Sometimes, instead of a violone, a hoarse
trombone, with a violent cold in the head, snorts out the bass
impatiently, gets ludicrously uncontrollable and boastful at times, and
is always so choleric, that, instead of waiting for the _cadenzas_ to
finish, it bursts in, knocks them over as by a blow on the head, roars
away on false intervals, and overwhelms every other voice with its
own noisy vociferation. The harmonic arrangements are very odd. Each
instrument seems to consider itself ill-treated when reduced to an
accompaniment or bass, and is constantly endeavoring, however unfitted
for it, to get possession of the air,--the melody being, for all
Italians, the principal object. The violin, however, weak of voice as
it is, always carries the day, and the other instruments steal
discontentedly back to their secondary places, the snuffy old violone
keeping up a constant growl at its ill luck, and the trombone now and
then leaping out like a tiger on its prey.
Far better and more characteristic are the ballad-singers, who generally
go in couples,--an old man, dim of sight, perhaps blind, who plays the
violin, and his wife or daughter, who has a guitar, tamborello, or at
times a mandolin. Sometimes a little girl accompanies them, sings
with them, and carries round a tin box, or the tamborello, to collect
_baiocchi_. They sing long ballads to popular melodies, some of
which are very pretty and gay, and for a _baiocco_ they sell a sheet
containing the printed words of the song. Sometimes it is in the form of
a dialogue,--either a love-making, a quarrel, a reconciliation, or a
leave-taking,--each singer taking an alternate verse. Sometimes it is a
story with a chorus, or a religious conversation-ballad, or a story of a
saint, or from the Bible. Those drawn from the Bible are generally
very curious paraphrases of the original simple text, turned into the
simplest and commonest idioms of the people;--one of them may be found
in the Appendix to Goethe's "Italienische Reise." These Roman ballads
and popular songs, so far as I am able to learn, have never been
collected. Many of them do not exist in print, and are only traditional
and caught from mouth to mouth. This is particularly the case with those
in the Romanesque dialect, which are replete with the peculiar wit
and spirit of the country. But the memory of man is too perilous a
repository for such interesting material; and it is greatly to be wished
that some clever Italian, who is fitted for the task, would interest
himself to collect them and give them a permanent place in the
literature of his language.
But to return to our ballad-singers, whom we have left in the middle of
their song, and who are now finishing. A crowd has gathered round them,
as usual; out of the windows and from the balconies lean the occupants
of the houses near by, and the _baiocchi_ thrown by them ring on the
pavement below. With rather Stentorian voices they have been singing a
dialogue which is most elaborately entitled a "Canzonetta Nuova, sopra
un marinaro che da l' addio alla sua promessa sposa mentre egli deve
partire per la via di Levante. Sdegno, pace, e matrimonio dilli medesimi
con intercalare sull' aria moderna. Rime di Francesco Calzaroni." I give
my _baiocco_ and receive in return a smiling "Grazie" and a copy of the
song, which is adorned by a wood-cut of a ship in full sail.
Here is another, of a moral character, containing the sad history of
Frederic the Gambler, who, to judge from the wood-cut accompanying the
Canzonetta, must have been a ferocious fellow. He stands with his legs
wide apart, in half-armor, a great sash tied over his shoulder and
swinging round his legs, an immense sword at his side, and a great
hat with two ostrich-feathers on his head, looking the very type of a
"swashing blade."
The singers of longer ballads carry about with them sometimes a series
of rudely-executed illustrations of different incidents in the story,
painted in distemper and pasted on a large pasteboard frame, which is
hung against a wall or on a stand planted behind the singer in the
ground. These he pauses now and then in his song to explain to the
audience, and they are sure to draw a crowd.
As summer comes on and the evenings grow warm, begin the street
serenades,--sometimes like that of Lindoro in the opening of the
"Barbiere di Sevilla," but generally with only one voice, accompanied by
a guitar and a mandolin. These serenades are, for the most part, given
by a lover or friend to his _innamorata_, and the words are expressive
of the tender passion; but there are also _serenate di gelosia_, or
satirical serenades, when the most impertinent and stinging verses are
sung. Long before arriving, the serenaders may be heard marching up the
street to the thrum of their instruments. They then place themselves
before the windows of the fair one, and, surrounded by a group of men
and boys, make proclamation of their love in loud and often violent
tones. It seems sometimes as if they considered the best method of
expressing the intensity of their passion was by the volume of their
voice. Certainly, in these cases, the light of love is not hidden under
a bushel. Among the Trasteverini, particularly, these serenades are
common. Some of them are very clever in their improvisations and
imitations of different dialects, particularly of the Neapolitan, in
which there are so many charming songs. Their skill in improvisation,
however, is not generally displayed in their serenades, but in the
_osterias_, during the evenings of the _festas_ in summer. There it is
that their quickness and epigrammatic turn of expression are best seen.
Two disputants will, when in good-humor and warmed with wine, string off
verse after verse at each other's expense, full of point and fun,--the
guitar burring along in the intervals, and a chorus of laughter saluting
every good hit.
In many of the back streets and squares of the city, fountains jet out
of lions' heads into great oblong stone cisterns, often sufficiently
large to accommodate some thirty washerwomen at once. Here the common
people resort to wash their clothes, and with great laughter and
merriment amuse themselves while at their work by improvising verses,
sometimes with rhyme, sometimes without, at the expense of each other,
or perhaps of the passerby,--particularly if he happen to be a gaping
_forestiere_, to whom their language is unintelligible. They stand on
an elevated stone step, so as to bring the cistern about mid-height of
their body, and on the rough inclined level of its rim they slash and
roll the clothes, or, opening them, flaunt them into the water, or
gather them together, lifting their arms high above their heads, and
always treating them with a violence which nothing but the coarsest
material can resist. The air to which they chant their couplets is
almost always a Campagna melody. Sharp attacks are given and as sharp
_repliques_ received, in exceeding good-humor; and when there is little
wit, there is sure to be much laughter. The salt is oftentimes pretty
coarse, but it serves its purpose.
A remarkable trait among the Italians is the good-nature with which
they take personal jokes, and their callousness to ridicule of personal
defects. Jests which would provoke a blow from an Anglo-Saxon, or wound
and rankle in the memory for life, are here taken in good part. A
cripple often joins in the laugh at his own deformity; and the rough
carelessness with which such personal misfortunes are alluded to is
amazing to us of a more sensitive organization. I well remember the
extreme difficulty I once had in breaking an Italian servant of the
habit of announcing an acquaintance, whose foreign name he could not
pronounce, and who had the misfortune to be humpbacked, as "_quel
gobbo_" (that hunchback). He could not understand why he should not call
him a _gobbo_, if he was a _gobbo_; and in spite of all I could do, he
would often open the door and say, "_Signore, quel gobbo desidera farle
una visita_," (that hunchback wishes to make you a visit,) when "_quel
gobbo_" was right on his heels. The Italians are also singularly free
from that intense self-consciousness which runs in our English
blood, and is the root of shyness, awkwardness, and affectation.
Unconsciousness is the secret of grace, freedom, and simplicity. We
never forget ourselves. The Italians always forget themselves. They are
sometimes proud, very seldom vain, and never affected. The converse
peculiarity follows, of course. Having no self-consciousness, they are
as little sensitive to their defects as vain of their charms. The models
who come to the studios, and who have been selected for their beauty,
despite the silent flattery incident to their very profession, and
the lavish praise they constantly hear expressed, are always simple,
natural, and unaffected. If you tell them they are very beautiful, they
say, _"Ma che?"_ deprecatorily, or perhaps admit the fact. But they are
better pleased to have their dress admired than their faces. Of the
former they are vain, of the latter they are not. For the most part, I
think they rather wonder what it is we admire in them and think worthy
of perpetuating in stone or color. The other day I was so much struck
with the ear of a model, from whom I was working, that I said to
her,--"You have, without exception, the most beautiful ear I ever saw."
She laughed somewhat derisively, and said, _"Ma che?"_--"It does not
seem to give you any pleasure," I continued, "to know that you have a
very handsome ear."--_"Che mi importa,"_ answered she, _"se sia bello o
brutto? E sempre lo stesso, brutto o bello, bello o brutto. Ecco!"_[C]
--"You don't care, then, whether you are handsome or ugly?"--_"Eh! cosa
a me m'importa,--se sono brutto o bello non so,--a me e lo stesso."_
This was all I could get from her.
[Footnote C: "What do I care whether it is handsome or ugly? It's all
the same to me,--ugly or handsome,--handsome or ugly. There!"]
But to return to our washerwomen. In every country-town a large
washing-cistern is always provided by the authorities for public use,
and, at all hours of the day, the picturesque figures of the peasants
of every age, from the old hag, whose skin is like a brown and crumpled
palimpsest, (where Anacreontic verses are overwritten by a dull, monkish
sermon,) to the round, dark-eyed girl, with broad, straight back and
shining hair, may be seen gathered around it,--their heads protected
from the sun by their folded _tovaglia_, their skirts knotted up behind,
and their waists embraced by stiff, red _busti_. Their work is always
enlivened by song,--and when their clothes are all washed, the basket
is lifted to the head, and home they march, stalwart and majestic, like
Roman caryatides. The sharp Italian sun shining on their dark faces and
vivid costumes, or flashing into the fountain, and basking on the gray,
weed-covered walls, makes a picture which is often enchanting in its
color. At the Emissary by Albano, where the waters from the lake are
emptied into a huge cistern through the old conduit built by the ancient
Romans to sink the level of the lake, I have watched by the hour
together these strange pictorial groups, as they sang and thrashed
the clothes they were engaged in washing; while over them, in the
foreground, the great gray tower and granary, once a castle, lifted
itself in strong light and shade against the peerless blue sky, while
rolling hills beyond, covered with the pale green foliage of rounded
olives, formed the characteristic background. Sometimes a _contadino_,
mounted on the crupper of his donkey, would pause in the sun to chat
awhile with the women. The children, meanwhile, sprawled and played upon
the grass, and the song and chat at the fountain would not unfrequently
be interrupted by a shrill scream from one of the mothers, to stop a
quarrel, or to silence a cry which showed the stoutness of their little
lungs.
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