DON LORENZO PEROSI

Don Lorenzo Perosi was the most famous composer of sacred music in Italy at the turn of the last century.

Perosi hailed from an extremely musical and religious family. For nearly 200 years before him, all of Lorenzo’s ancestors were church musicians. His father was Giuseppe Perosi (1849-1908), Maestro di Cappella (Choir Director) of Tortona Cathedral and one of Italy’s most prominent church musicians. Giuseppe was the first teacher of Lorenzo as well as his other two sons, Carlo (who became a priest and then a cardinal) and Maurizio (who was Maestro di Cappella at Milan’s fabled Duomo from 1930 to 1949).

In Milan Lorenzo studied with one of Italy’s greatest professors, Michele Saladino of the Milan Conservatory. Even when he was not enrolled at the Conservatory, Perosi kept up a correspondence course with Saladino.

In 1890, 18 years old and still a student, Perosi obtained his first professional post: organist and “teacher of the piano novices” at the famous Abbey of Montecassino. He received his diploma from the Milan Conservatory in 1892, following which he spent an extremely important year of study with Franz Xaver Haberl in Ratisbon (Regensburg), at the Kirchenmusikschule that Haberl had founded in 1874. A noted musician and musicologist, Haberl was the pioneering editor of the complete works of Palestrina and Lassus. Perosi’s development was such that Haberl offered him a cattedra (“chair,” or permanent teaching position) in the Kirchenmusikschule. The homesick Perosi politely declined, in favor of a post as teacher and director of sacred music at Imola. As Perosi himself explained, he “desired and prayed at length to the Lord to be able to do something for the music of God in Italy.” Perosi served in Imola from November 1892, to August 1894.

In 1894 Perosi went to the Abbey of Solesmes to study with the celebrated Gregorianists Dom Mocquerau and Dom Pothier. The Renaissance polyphony he learned from Haberl, and the Gregorian chant he studied in Solesmes - these were the two pilars upon which the entire œuvre of Perosi rested.

From Imola, Perosi obtained a much more important post, that of Maestro of the Cappella Marciana at San Marco in Venice. This Venetian appointment resulted from the deep friendship between Perosi and Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto, then Patriarca di Venezia (Patriarch of Venice). Sarto was a profound music-lover who was disturbed by the roughly hundred years (c.1800-1900) that Gregorian Chant was absent from the Church. A more “operatic,” entertaining style of music prevailed, attracting congregants the same way that incompetent guitar-strummers draw American Catholics today. Therefore, it was only natural Perosi found in Sarto not only a devoted friend and a great kindred spirit, but also a staunch sponsor.

Perosi’s Venetian appointment (1894) unleashed a torrent of great music that lasted at least until 1907. He continued to compose prolifically till his death, but his works within that 13-year time period were his greatest and most beautiful.

In 1895, Perosi became a priest, having been ordained by his good friend Cardinal Sarto himself. It should also be mentioned that St. Luigi Orione was, like Perosi, born in Tortona in 1872. The three men - Orione, Perosi, and Sarto - were all dear friends and mutual inspirers.

In 1898, Cardinal Sarto used his influence with Pope Leo XIII to get Perosi the prestigious post and Maestro Perpetuo della Cappella Sistina, or Perpetual Director of the Sistine Choir, in Rome. Five years later, Sarto’s patronage paid off in an even more monumental way: he was ordained Pope Pius X. Music was such a priority for Pius (later St. Pius) that mere months after his coronation he unveiled a Motu Proprio on sacred music (of which Perosi was a co-writer). The 1903 Motu Proprio was nothing short of a papal declaration that Gregorian Chant must be immediately reinstated in all Catholic churches around the world. The century of “operatic” church music was officially over. (Incidentally, so was the era of castrati. Pius was against the sordid practice of human castration and decreed that only “whole men” would be allowed to be priests or singers in the Church.)

Perosi remained Maestro Perpetuo till his death over 50 years later, in spite of interruptions in his directorship. After 1907, Perosi began to suffer more intensely from psychological and neurological problems, undoubtedly caused by his problematic (probably breach) birth. These afflictions reached their apex in 1922; many declared him “incurable.” Yet the next year Perosi was already back in action, composing up a storm. He was not “crazy.” In fact, in the last decade of his life, he maintained a busy conducting schedule.

Despite the relative obscurity of his name today, Perosi was a famous and prominent member of the Giovane Scuola, of which the most important Verismo composers or Veristi (Puccini, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Giordano, and Cilea) were all considered members. An entire chapter is dedicated to Perosi in Romain Rolland’s famous volume, Musiciens d’Aujourd’hui (1899), which was translated into many languages. Perosi was deeply admired not only by Rolland and by the above-named Veristi, but also by Boito, Toscanini, and many other Italian icons. Caruso sang his music, as did Sammarco, Tagliabue, Gigli, and innumerable other great singers from that era, and also quite a few in modern times, such as Fiorenza Cossotto, Mirella Freni, Renato Capecchi, and fellow Tortonese Giuseppe Campora. His French admirers included Debussy, Massenet, Guilmant, and D’Indy, all of whom were deeply impressed by the 1899 French première of La Risurrezione di Cristo.

Unlike the other members of the Giovane Scuola, Perosi was the only one to be significantly influenced by pre-Classical repertoire. His so-called “eclectism” was and still is misunderstood by critics, but it was his greatest trait. It was almost with naïveté that Perosi wondered to Romain Rolland why it is that composers feel so fettered by time and geography. Why couldn’t music be universal, not shackled by the ephemeral trends or fads of a particular country or century?

In his day, Perosi was best known for his oratorios, large-scale works for chorus, soloists, and orchestra based on Latin texts. Today the works can seem slow-paced and dated today, but at the time the world was galvanized, not only by the fusion of Renaissance polyphony, Gregorian chant, and lush, Verismo melodies and orchestrations, but also by Perosi’s deep-seated faith in the words that he had set. No doubt Perosi’s own impassioned conducting created many goosebumps.

In addition to the oratorios and masses for which he is best known, Perosi also wrote secular music - symphonic poems, chamber music, concertos, etc. In his youth, he also wrote beautiful and useful pieces for organ. According to Perosi scholar Arturo Sacchetti, Perosi wrote a total of three or four thousand compositions. A great many still await publication; some have not yet been located.

Perosi said, “Someday my time will come.” That time may be very soon. One needs only to listen to one of Perosi’s masterworks from the 1894-1907 time period to realize that this was one of the greatest and most unique musical geniuses in history.

From Don Lorenzo Perosi Copyright © MMV Leonardo A. Ciampa. All rights reserved.

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One of my prized possessions: Perosi’s first letter to Martucci!

Venice, 15 May [18]98

Devoted servant,

D. L. Perosi

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Excerpt from DON LORENZO PEROSI

Introduction: Il Momento Perosiano

“It’s not easy to give you an exact idea of how popular Lorenzo Perosi is in his native country.”
                             Romain Rolland, Le Journal des Débats (21 November 1899)

“The great and ever-increasing success which has greeted the four new oratorios of Don Lorenzo Perosi has placed this young priest-composer on a pedestal of fame which can only be compared with that which has been accorded of late years to the idolized Pietro Mascagni by his fellow countrymen.
                             Opening sentence of a 19 March 1899 New York Times article entitled, “The Genius of Don Perosi.”

In 1897, a shy, 25-year-old priest/composer became the hottest name in Italian music. He was every bit as famous as his friend Puccini. In 1899, Perosi and La Risurrezione di Cristo took Paris like Alexander the Great took Egypt. The Germanophonic countries put up an equally ineffective resistance. And if Perosi didn’t complete win over the Americans, at least he elicited their top critics (W. J. Henderson) to pen lengthy articles (1875 words) in major newspapers (New York Times). Perosi’s celebrity was international and indisputable.