Editor's note: Giacomo Carissimi and Girolamo Zenti are historical characters. They both gave an important contribution to classic music. The first is considered the most important composer of the Roman baroque movement, an innovator of the era; the second was a well-traveled harpsichord maker, renown for the invention of the bentside spinet. Some of his instruments are still used and copied today.
In 1631 they are both in their prime and at the beginning of bright and important careers.
Then the Ring of Fire came. Its effects slowly but inexorably spread all over Europe, changing the lives of millions of people. This story, the first of several episodes, tells the beginnings of their new lives.
Maestro Giacomo Carissimi to Father Thomas Fitzherbert SJ of the Illustrissimus Collegium Anglicanum in Rome
June 1633,
Very Reverend Father Fitzherbert,
How are you?
I only now have time to write you this letter before leaving tomorrow morning headed for the Holy Roman Empire first and then to Thuringia, in Germany. My final destination is the town of Grantville where I am going to learn and study.
I hope this letter will find you once back from Amalfi as I hope your residence in the costiera gave you some relief from the sickness that affects your lungs. You know I have always preferred to sharpen my quills to write music and not words, but I feel the need to share with you all the events that brought me to leave Rome.
I'm writing you in English to show you how the months you spent trying to hammer this language into my hard head have not gone wasted.
This letter and the ones that will follow are maybe another way to make my English fluent, especially if you will feel free to correct any mistakes you will find in my prose with your usual and blessed Jesuitical iron discipline.
I have been told that many inhabitants of Grantville are Germans and, grazie alla Divina Provvidenza, the four years I spent as Master of Chapel at the Collegium Germanicum made my German more than passable and I can always use some French and some Latin. If I am lucky some of them will speak Italian, too!
Anyway, with the prices of parchment these times, I better stop rambling and go to the point. Sometimes it seems there isn't enough paper in the whole world to write all the thoughts and feelings, the joy and the turmoil, that are nowadays in my mind.
It's strange to think how a single evening can change a man's approach to life and how an encounter made a man who felt uncomfortable leaving the Aurelian's walls (you know how much I hated my position in Assisi) travel hundreds of miles to reach a far, almost mythical town. But if there is a man who can make a lazy, contemplative man leave all behind for adventure this is Messer Giulio Mazarini.
I had never met the man before. I only knew him for his fame of being one of the finest diplomats in Europe, a man with a golden tongue and of sharp wits. I have been told that he had just arrived from a mission in Germany. So I wasn't at all surprised once I came to know he would have lectured the students of our seminary in the latest developments in the Holy Roman Empire.
After all, the Collegium Germanicum, where I have the honor to teach sacred music and to direct the choir has been created to prepare the German clergy to better deal with the dangers of the Reformation.
I wasn't surprised when he attended a concert we gave in his honor in Saint Apollinare, as I wasn't surprised when he visited me in my studio after the cantate and motets were over. Paying compliments to the author is customary and polite behavior, after all. But it was what he brought with him that shocked me.
He handed me a parchment of paper and let me unroll it. While my hands and eyes were busy opening it, he asked: "Many say you are the brightest musician here in Rome, maestro. Can you tell me what is this?"
I stared at it for a while before answering. "It's part of a music composition, it seems. But the writing it is slightly different; some of the symbols are more complex than the ones I use, more structured, more evoluted. The printing quality is awesome. Where did you get this, if I may ask?"
"Grantville. You did hear about it didn't you?" Mazarini walked closer to the fireplace where I keep some comfortable armchairs.
"Of course I did. Everybody is talking about it. Yet I think most of what I heard are rumors, like the one that says they are a bunch of demons or warlocks riding monsters who spit flames." Then I added, shaking my head, "Are they really from the future?"
"Yes, they are, and the music you hold is from a piece called the Goldberg Variations, a series of sonatas composed by an artist who will live more than fifty years from now. I think his name is Bach."
I was completely amazed by his words. I confess that I don't know what was shaking more, my hands or my voice.
"Can I borrow it? I want to copy it and try to play it."
"Unfortunately, I am not sure you will be able to do it. The American lady who gave it to me described it as a transcription for pianoforte. It will need another adaptation to be played on an harpsichord or an organ."
"A pianoforte? What is that?"
"A musical instrument from the future I listened to while in the American town. It looks like an harpsichord or a spinet but it sounds quite different: richer, more full, less metallic. They told me it will be invented by an Italian at the beginning of the next century. But that's not the only amazing mechanical thing these people have. You should hear their music recordings, too; it's like... Well it's hard to explain. The sound of a whole orchestra coming out loudly from a box. They call it a 'CD player.' It can play music and sounds over and over again."
"What?"
"I'm not sure how it works, but it's as if you play something on the organ and somebody captures this sound and writes it down on a machine like printing does with words. Then, then to listen again what you played, they only have to use again the machine."
"It's hard to believe. A machine that captures sounds?"
"Hard to believe, but nonetheless perfectly real. One of them told me they had been a good help in beating the Spanish army last year."
"A music that defeats an army! Sounds like some kind of joke. That's something I'd like to hear!"
I think he realized how much he had succeeded in capturing my interest and offered to stay longer to talk about that strange place if I had more of my questions. I couldn't quiet my curiosity, so I went to one of the drawers and took a bottle of that smooth muscat from Montefiascone called "Est Est Est" you know I love so much. I poured the wine into two pewter cups I keep at hand and lighted a series of candles to have more light in the room.
At the moment I didn't realize it, but we must have been talking for hours. He got my complete attention and I learned many more things about that remote place, all uncanny and extraordinary.
I learned how the people of Grantville allied themselves with the Swedish and the German Protestant princedoms. I learned of their skill in manufacturing things, of their religious tolerance, of their fantastic knowledge of many new subjects in matter of science and medicine and, at the end, Mazarini, suddenly reluctant, told me a few things of their strange and almost utopian ideas about the government of a state.
Only when the night was beginning to turn into a new morning, did our meeting come to an end. Mazarini, smiling, made his offer.
"It would be a fine thing if one of our most talented young musicians traveled there to learn more about music, and maybe get familiar with these up-timers, as they call themselves. There is a lot to gain from an unofficial exchange of knowledge."
Some way I knew it was coming, but I wasn't the more prepared for it.
"But, Messer Mazarini, I have my job here and I'm not accustomed to travel for such a long distance."
"I know, I know, but think about how much your natural talent can gain from such an experience. You don't have to make any decision now, of course. Nevertheless should you agree with me, contact me at the Basilica of San Giovanni and maybe I will be able to help you with your travel."
He is pretty important now but I feel like that man will make an even better career! He knew how to cast the hook, how to make the bait irresistible and in what exact moment I did bite. A master in human behavior.
Indeed I don't know if it was my curiosity or my love for music, but I suddenly realized that if music from the future, strange new musical instrument and music in boxes existed. I had to see it in person no matter how much I had to travel.
The weeks that followed have been full of frantic activity and preparations for this trip. I live a simple life and I earn well, but my savings were not enough to sustain myself for a long time. So the first thing was to find funds.
The Company of Jesus didn't help with them. They still had not adopted a position about Grantville and told me to wait. If I wanted to go, they would let me do it without losing my job, since it is not uncommon for teachers to take a long sabbatical for study. But the only thing they could have helped with was granting me hospitality in their houses along the way. This was quite satisfying, I must honestly say. Considering the extension of the network of their houses, such an offer looks like a very relevant asset for a traveler.
Besides that, the Rector of the Collegium Germanicum invited me to travel for part of the road with a delegation of Jesuits directed to Wien. It would have been safer for me, he said. But, he added, once I left them I would be on my own.
When I was not busy preparing for my trip I passed my time studying the music sheets Messer Mazarini brought me. Some of the symbols were different, but the pentagram, the notes, the clefs and most of the rest were the same.
The more I studied the music, the more I realized how rich and amazingly moving it was. All my compositions seemed simple, elementary in comparison.
The piece of music I had in my hands was a canon whose voices were not only written at the distance of only half note (one of the most difficult forms of canon) but also they moved as they were the freely conceived voices of a trio sonata.
And if this was something written not so far away in the future, I was wondering, what about the music written in the later centuries? My resolve to visit this town in Germany grew day by day.
Unfortunately my financial problems were unchanged, even with Mazarini's help.
I applied to Cardinal Scipione Borghese for a donation of two hundred scudi, enough to live well for three years, I thought. The cardinal had always been very liberal with money when arts are involved. But it seems that any patron I could find wasn't very much at ease with the idea of financing trips to such a place of mystery. A place whose soldiers had repeatedly whipped Catholic armies.
Besides, it appears that sponsoring something that sounds like cultural contamination is not appreciated in today's Rome, when a Protestant country is involved. Obtaining a loan from a bank was altogether impossible without some aristocrat or some church institution backing my request.
So, at the end, I got many suggestions, but funds none.
One of the suggestions I decided to follow was to have a partner in this enterprise. Somebody with more financial means. Both Mazarini and my Dutch friend Pieter, the painter know as Il Bamboccio, pointed out that maybe an instrument maker would be interested in studying musical instruments of the future. He could be talked into to reproducing and selling them. Pieter told me that one of his patrons had just bought a new spinet from Girolamo Zenti, who now resides in Rome.
Girolamo Zenti is to instrument making what Caravaggio was to painting: a genius, but with an unruly and crazy life. Despite his being a gambler and womanizer, his harpsichords and spinets are among the best produced. And he is just twenty-six years old.
When I was shopping for a new spinet for the Oratory I'd been told that the waiting time to have a Zenti is more than two years. I had not met the artisan previously, but I knew one of his apprentices who had come to Sant Apollinare to fix the pedal of the old harpsichord. So I knew where his shop was: Rione Monti, built in part over the old Suburra of the ancient Romans. With so many brothels and inns nearby, it was the perfect place for an unrepentant sinner like Girolamo.
Curiously his shop is just between the two churches of Santa Maria dei Monti and San Salvatore, where is taking place another of the endless restoration and building works that are filling the town today. Even if since the jubilee the situation has improved, I believe Romans are doomed forever to share their living space and their roads with scaffolds, bricks and debris.
The first impression one gets when entering the Zenti enterprises is one of business. The shop occupies a whole building. I had to cross a small, sunny courtyard, full of cats and stacks of timbers protected by tarps, to reach the working rooms at ground level.
A man was idly waiting at the front door. His long hair collected in a net and the large knife and sling at his belt showed without chance of mistake he was one of the many braves who haunt the city today. Hired muscle, probably there to protect Maestro Zenti from unwanted visitors.
He let me into a big room where three people were working to the frames of some instruments. The place was filled with sawdust and the noise of people sanding wood. Shelves were filled with tools and pieces of timber seasoning. I could recognize cypress, walnut, linden and maybe sorb. Sitting by a desk under a dusty window an artisan was skillfully working on a piece of ivory, carving it, while another was shaping a rosette. There was a rich smell of lakes and varnish.
"Maestro Zenti is in the next room," the bravo told me in a very grim tone of voice, perfectly tuned by many years of threatening people. "He is giving the last touches to one of his creations."
I hurried where told to go and I finally saw Girolamo.
I can understand why women lose their heads for him. He is tall, with broad shoulders, a slim and muscular body that seems more fit to a warrior than an artisan. He has long, finely-cut ash-blond hair, well enhanced by a perfectly cured goatee. He was wearing work clothes, just breeches, a shirt and a leather apron, but he seemed unusual in that simple outfit.
"Good morning, Maestro Zenti," I began, with a small bow and my best smile on my face. "My name is Giacomo Carissimi, Maestro of music and Master of Chapel of Sant'Apollinare. Servo vostro."
He was sideways tuning a spinet, a magnificent one, I may add. Black, very linear, with an ivory and oak keyboard. And, dear Father, I am sure it was not for a church or an oratory, as the painting on the lid was... well, let's say that libertine is an understatement, with all those satyrs and maidens busy in sinful activities.
Blushing, I asked him if it was one of his new bentside spinets.
"Yes it is, Maestro Carissimi," he answered, obviously proud of his work. "As you can see, the strings and spine run transversely to the player and are not parallel to the key levers. The strings are plucked much closer to their center points than on a normal spinet or harpsichord. This helps in producing a strong and sustained tone. But the sound remains less brilliant than the normal spinet no matter how many variations I'm trying to do."
He stood up, lightly touching the spinet with his hand as if to caress it and bowed slightly.
"I'm sorry if I didn't greet you as I should, Maestro. When working, I tend to be too much engrossed in what I do. I'm a great admirer of your work and very honored to meet you."
"The admiration is mutual. I wish there were more artisans of your skill in this world. Now I know why many people deeply appreciate your creations and speak so highly of your work. But, if I'm not wrong this instrument has just one choir of strings at eight foot pitch. Five octaves compass?"
"Yes, you are right. You have a good eye. Do you want to play it? I'm just finished tuning it."
"It would be my pleasure, but I came here to talk to you."
"I'm sure you can do it while playing. Please! I'd love to have the opinion of such a renown master as yourself."
"Oh, you are too generous with my fame. I'm not Monteverdi or Stefano Landi!"
"And yet you played many times in front of His Sanctity and other important people."
"If everything goes well, not in the next future," I said wryly.
"What do you mean? Are you leaving Rome?"
"Yes, I am planning to take a sabbatical to make a long trip to Germany."
"You make me curious. Why should someone like you, with such a position, risk his life to go to that unfortunate land plagued with war and famine?"
I began to play the first notes of what I transcripted of that future rich music, and I tried to explain my reasons. I told him about my conversation with Mazarini and my intentions to study the works of the great composers of the future.
Only then I told him about the pianoforte and how he could be the first in learning how to build one in this century and how I would have appreciated to have him accompany me in this trip. He looked astonished and in some way saddened.
"My dear Maestro Carissimi, I would love to visit with you this place of wonder of yours and I'm really honored by your desire to have me as a road companion. But not now. My business is going so well that I don't dare to leave it, no matter how much I may trust my helpers. I've been wandering the last ten years. Now I want to settle in one place and do my job as best as I can. Maybe in the future, yes; maybe some years from now. but please don't despair. If you want, when you come back you may bring some drawings of the pianoforte with you and I will be more than glad to study them with you. Or, better, you may write me, if you wish, and I will see what can I do from here."
He must have understood my sorrow because he walked closer and put an hand on my shoulder. "I wish you the best of luck, for traveling such a long distance won't be easy. Try to never travel alone, especially in Germany. You would be an easy prey for brigands, deserters and God only knows what else! But if it is meant to be, you will find what you are looking for."
I didn't have any further arguments to use so, after the usual courtesies I left Zenti's shop. Before leaving I told him to send me a message at Saint Apollinare should he change his mind. While walking back home, my mood was sorrowful because I felt that, despite his terrible fame, Messer Zenti could have been a good travel companion. I felt an immediate liking for the man, no matter how different from mine his lifestyle was.
Nevertheless, my sadness never turned to despair. On the contrary, my resolve to go grew even more, if possible. I don't know if I became so stubborn in my youth during the endless hours I spent studying music in Rome and in Tivoli.
Some way I know that Euterpe, the muse of music, is waiting for me and I can't ignore her call. I need to go.
It appeared that I was left only with my prayers. So I did what I could do and prayed to Saint Christopher and the newly appointed Saint Francis Xavier as I never prayed before. Only later did I discover that my requests had been listened to and that Saint Christopher had some fun in doing it.
Two weeks has passed by since my meeting with Zenti. I was rehearsing the next Sunday concert in the Church's Oratory with the whole group of singers and musicians when I saw walking down the hall, using a tall cane for a terrible gout limp, the best dressed Master of Chapel of the whole Eternal City.
I must admit that, despite his pompousness and haughtiness, Stefano Landi is a great composer of the Stile Moderno. His second opera Il Sant'Alessio is an ingenious and inventive masterpiece. The opening, the poignant harmonies and the fantastic settings made it an amazing success last year. And one needs to possess some titanical leverage to have Bernini designing the sets!
I stopped the music and I moved to meet the old composer. When the favorite artist of the Barberini family comes for a visit one usually stops and listens.
"Ah, Carissimi, eccovi qua. Please find me a comfortable place where I can rest my tired legs. And—please!—let the music start again. I'm sure your musicians can play something without your help. We have to talk." After a moment of silence and a look around, he added, "In private."
I did as he asked, and I walked with him to the near sagrestia, the music of a cantata behind us. A little anxiously, I asked him what brought him there.
"You know, we have a common friend in the diplomatic corp. I met Mazarini two years ago when I was preparing Il Sant'Alessio. As you probably know, he has personally taken part in the staging of the opera. What you probably don't know is that once he was back from Germany, he asked me to go visit these Americans."
He must have seen the surprise on my face. "Oh, don't worry, I turned his suggestion down. I'm too old and sick to make such a long and dangerous travel. I'm rich and renowned and I want to enjoy here, as long as I can, the fruits of my work. But while turning down the offer I advanced your name. It was you or Luigi Rossi, so you should be grateful"
"Thank you, Maestro." I confess I felt a little stupid.
"Please don't interrupt me—and relax. I'm tired and I want to go home. Make it easy for me. The fact is that it seems you are unable to find the funds necessary, while I can do that easily. There are some very highly born gentlemen that we may call F. and A. who would be very interested in lavishing some money if they could remain anonymous. And I can serve as intermediary."
"That would be wonderful. But I wouldn't know how to repay you for your great generosity."
"Oh, that would be easy! You see, I'm getting old and I don't have much left to live. So I think I can afford a little vanity and know what will be of my fame in the future. I want to know what posterity will think of me. I want to know how and when I'm going to die and I want to know what I will compose in the next years. And, oh yes!" He touched quickly his forehead with the palm of his hand, as if he had forgotten something. "If you can find these compositions and spare me the fatigue to write them it would be even better! Probably our gentlemen patrons would like that you look around, observe things, and report once you will be back in Rome."
"But, Maestro, I don't think I can be like a spy. It's really not one of my talents"
"Oh, no, not a spy, it's obvious that you can't do that. Too naïve. I just ask you to be careful in what you see around you. As I think you will be anyway. Besides, better doing it fully aware and reporting it willingly, than being interrogated in a less pleasant way upon your return, don't you think?"
I must have then gulped visibly because he started a silent laugh and that was almost scarier.
"This is why you can't be a spy. You must just observe things you could see anyway, learn what you can about their customs and habits and remember it. Nothing forbidden or secret. Those who sent me don't want you hanged, but they are curious to know more about the daily life of that place. So do you accept?"
Of course I did; what else could I do? After all, as the Pasquino's satiric poem says: quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini.
So, Father, as this letter proves, despite all difficulties tomorrow I will leave for Granville, Thuringia with sufficient funds to stay there for years.
Am I nervous? Terribly. Excited? More than ever. Scared? Yes I am. I have three centuries of music in front of me. I will see the works of people who right now exist only in the great mind of the Creator and all this unknown makes me feel frail, uncertain. But at the same time inebriated, slightly intoxicated by all the possible developments I can bring to the art of music.
There is not a day when I don't wonder if I cannot deal with it.
What I have seen is just a fragment of their music and already it seems so much more complex than what I have learned for all my life. Will I be able to understand it? How would a minstrel have reacted, coming into Rome for the first jubilee in the year 1300, if he had to listen to Palestrina's music or to my humble compositions? Would he be able to understand it?
These people seem to have brought a new world into our old Europe. Will I learn from them or will I look just like a savage to them? Just like one of those Indians traveling around the courts of half of Europe without really knowing what is happening. I have in front of me a great opportunity, but a great danger, too. Dealing with all these future composition may enrich me, but it may also destroy me. What is the sense in creating new music, in experimenting with new compositions if people greater than I have already written this music? I feel we are witnessing great changes. I want to try to ride them, but I cannot avoid fearing being trampled by them.
I am finally ready to leave. I have letters of introduction to the Americans by Mazarini and some letters of credit by my Florentine bankers. In case of misfortune, the rest of my money is hidden in secure places. I will travel light, bringing with me just a chest of clothes and my old faithful traveling spinet.
I will be with the Jesuit delegation, so hopefully safe, up to Austria. Then I will be alone and may the Holy Ghost be with me!
My plan is to follow the Via Claudia Augusta to Donauworth. From there it will be less than two hundred miles to Grantville. I hope the war will leave me alone. Upon your return, you can answer my letter by addressing it to the Jesuitkirche in Wien. They will provide a way to forward it to Thuringia.
All my best wishes and prayers for your recovery. May Mother Mary smile upon you.
Your servant and student
Giacomo Carissimi