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Tommaseo, in the preface to his 'Canti Popolari, mentions in particular a Beatrice di Pian degli Ontani, whose poetry was famous through the mountains of Pistoja; and Tigri records by name a little girl called Cherubina, who made rispetti by the dozen as she watched her sheep upon the hills. Salutatemi, bella, lo scrivano; Non lo conosco e non so chi si sia.
Far up the canal, a tenor voice could be heard, strong and melodious, and stray gondolas were tending toward it. Suddenly, more than one oar was stayed, and more than one face was turned toward the Canti barge. The music had begun, with a familiar Neapolitan melody, in which all the voices and instruments took part.
The business was all transacted on foot, that even Vittorio might be kept in ignorance of the great secret. Through the good offices of the Signor Canti the barge musicians were interviewed, and the details of the undertaking arranged.
And here I will not omit to tell that the same Lorenzo de' Medici, as I have said in another place, was the first inventor of those masquerades that represent some particular subject, and are called in Florence "Canti"; for it is not known that any were performed in earlier times.
Sitting among the "gallant hominies" was a figure in a sulphur shawl, with a cloud of Spanish lace about the head, so ingeniously disposed that the features were somewhat hidden, yet apparently with no intention of covering the face. "That looks like the Canti barge, Vittorio," the Colonel remarked. "Let us go nearer and find out who is to do the singing. Do you know the woman?" "No, Signore.
But from this philosophy the fervent soul of Savonarola turned with no less loathing, and with more contempt, than from the Canti Carnascialeschi and Aristophanic pageants of Lorenzo, which made Florence at Carnival time affect the fashions of Athens during the Dionysia. It is true that Italy owed much to the elevated theism developed by Platonic students.
The students have seen it and believe it so thoroughly that, when they meet one another in the Quattro Canti, they not unfrequently adopt it to the amusement of the bystanders. But the students make the mistake of slightly overdoing it. It might, however, be necessary for them to have more strings, and this would make them more difficult to manipulate.
At the same time the music of the mass itself received an important impulse from the Volkslied. The employment of well-known popular song-melodies as canti fermi in sacred contrapuntal compositions had a very beneficial effect upon those works, inasmuch as it introduced a bit of fresh popular life into music just at the moment when it was in danger of degenerating into pedantry and triviality.
Canti feared that she was really exhausted. "It is enough, Signorina," he said; "we will go home." As the barge turned, the gondolas made way for it, and then they pressed about it again, to offer more money and more. There was no longer any need of passing the hat.
They had gone that morning, she and Pauline, to carry the roses to the Signora Canti. They had found the poor singer weak and ill and disheartened. The doctor had told her she must not sing for some days yet, surely not this evening, and to-night was full moon, when the tourists throng the Grand Canal, and before another full moon should come the heat would have driven the pleasure-seekers away.
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