Some months since, while visiting the celebrated abbey of Fitero and
entertaining myself by turning over a few volumes in its neglected
library, I discovered, stowed away in a dark corner, two or three old
books of manuscript music, covered with dust and gnawed at the edges by
rats.
It was a _Miserere_.
I do not read music, but it attracts me so that, even though I do not
understand it, I sometimes take up the score of an opera and pore over
its pages for hours, looking at the groups of notes more or less crowded
together, the dashes, the semi-circles, the triangles and that sort of
_et cetera_ called keys, and all this without comprehending an iota or
deriving the slightest profit.
After this foolish habit of mine, I turned over the leaves of the
music-books, and the first thing which attracted my attention was the
fact that, although on the last page stood that Latin word so common in
all compositions, _finis_, the _Miserere_ was not concluded, for the
music did not go beyond the tenth verse of the psalm.
This it was, undoubtedly, that arrested my attention first; but as soon
as I scanned the pages closely, I was still more surprised to observe
that instead of the Italian words commonly used, such as _maestoso_,
_allegro_, _ritardando_, _piu vivo_, _à piacere_, there were lines of
very small German script written in, some of which called for things as
difficult to do as this: “_They crack--crack the bones, and from their
marrow must the cries seem to come forth_;” or this other: “_The chord
shrieketh, yet in unison; the tone thundereth, yet without deafening;
for all that hath sound soundeth, and there is no confusion, and all is
humanity that sobbeth and groaneth_;” or what was certainly the most
original of all, enjoined just under the last verse: “_The notes are
bones covered with flesh; light inextinguishable, the heavens and their
harmony--force!--force and sweetness._”
“Do you know what this is?” I asked of the old friar who accompanied me,
after I had half translated these lines, which seemed like phrases
scribbled by a lunatic.
My aged guide then told me the legend which I now pass on to you.