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Here I saw the immense halls of Raphael, the staircases of Bramante and Bernini, and the Sixtine Chapel, containing Michael Angelo's masterpieces, the world-renowned frescoes. The immense wall behind the high altar represents the last judgment, while the ceilings are covered with prophets and sybils.
For some reason or other this chapel at one time ceased to be used, the door was walled up and the very existence of the place was forgotten. In the last century Bottari, having read about it in Vasari, set to work to find it, and at last got into it through the window which looks upon the roof of the Sixtine Chapel.
The only services of this kind in which he takes part are those held in the Sixtine Chapel on the anniversary of the death of Pius the Ninth, and on the anniversary of his own coronation, March 3.
And, after the mass, his Holiness, still standing at the altar, in person started the /Te Deum/, which the singers of the Sixtine Chapel and the other choristers took up, each party chanting a verse alternately. But soon the whole congregation joined them, forty thousand voices were raised, and a hymn of joy and glory spread through the vast nave with incomparable splendour of effect.
He was much surprised on entering the Sixtine Chapel, for it at first seemed to him small, a sort of rectangular and lofty hall, with a delicate screen of white marble separating the part where guests congregate on the occasion of great ceremonies from the choir where the cardinals sit on simple oaken benches, while the inferior prelates remain standing behind them.
In 1840 His present Holiness Gregory XVI ordered it to be again exposed to the public veneration in the Sixtine chapel: He gave it to the charge of the chapter of S. Peter's, who deliver it to M. Sagrista on Good-friday morning: and it remains in the Sixtine chapel till the end of Tenebrae on that day. Moroni Cappelle Pontificie etc.
During these masses motetts are sung by the famous Sixtine choir, under the direction of the old Maestro Mustafa, once the greatest soprano of the century, but at the same time so accomplished a musician as to have earned the common name of 'Palestrina redivivus. It is to be regretted that he has never allowed any of his beautiful compositions to be published.
But if the "Dispute on the Sacrament" and the so-called "School of Athens," both prior to the paintings of the Sixtine Chapel, seemed to him to be Raffaelle's masterpieces, he felt that in the "Burning of the Borgo," and particularly in the "Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple," and "Pope St.
And, after the mass, his Holiness, still standing at the altar, in person started the Te Deum, which the singers of the Sixtine Chapel and the other choristers took up, each party chanting a verse alternately. But soon the whole congregation joined them, forty thousand voices were raised, and a hymn of joy and glory spread through the vast nave with incomparable splendour of effect.
Observe his venerable figure in the Sixtine chapel; there he sits pensive and disconsolate, with his legs crossed, his wearied head resting upon his hand, and his eyes rivetted on the ground, as if nothing could engage his attention but the woes of the daughter of Sion . Then listen to the lamentations of this inspired and afflicted prophet: they are full of deepest pathos, and uttered in notes sweet as the warblings of philomel.
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