What a day. The long and the short of it is that the Mother Abbess of the Monastero di Corpus Domini didn’t let me see the archive, although I’m not sure all is lost. She was very beautiful and gentle, but when I asked if I could come in she just slowly shook her head, saying that there wasn’t anything in the archive that I needed, and that it wasn’t possible to consult it. I asked if that was just for now (because, I told her, although I’m leaving Ferrara tomorrow, I could come back sometime in the spring) or for forever, and she said, “Mai.” So I thanked her, said I was sorry to disturb her, and then gave her a copy of Sacred Hearts, Secret Music that I had brought along. She took it and turned it over in her hands, and just as I was about to leave she asked for my address so that she could contact me if things changed.
I knew when she turned me down that it wasn’t exactly true that there was nothing in the archive – I could, after all, give her the reference to the buste I wanted to see. But I had been led to expect such a response from a sweet PhD student that I met at the Curia on Monday – she said that the nuns have an attitude; and what she meant was not just a clausura of the body but also of the mind. Nevertheless, I think I understand why the abbess wouldn’t let me come in. She is responsible for a community that has existed, more or less enclosed, for nearly six hundred years. It is up to her to ensure that the tenor of its life is not disturbed and that its reputation is protected. She knows nothing about me, or what I might write or reveal about her convent. I can feel profound sympathy for this. If someone I didn’t know, who made stupid mistakes when she tried to speak my language and who didn’t know how properly to address me, knocked on my door and asked if she could rifle through my family’s stuff, would I let her in? No, I probably wouldn’t. I just hope that our music speaks for itself (and that she doesn’t find anything in the booklet notes to offend – she spoke excellent English!), so that she might, in the end, invite me back.
But there is also such a thing as Providence. Weird, but good and helpful, things happen to me on research trips. There was the time in 1996 that I arrived at an archive, the day before I was due to leave Italy, and found it closed, even though I had rung them only a couple of days before to make sure it was open. I returned to England without seeing the book of madrigals I needed. I went back some five years later, just because I had a morning to kill, to look at the book I’d wanted to see. And I found something incredibly important in it that I wouldn’t have been able to identify had I seen it in 1996, because at that time I didn’t have the skills. And of course if I’d been successful in getting into the archive back then, I wouldn’t have tried again in 2001. Providence. Maybe it’s just not the right time to visit Corpus Domini.
So, I mosied over to the Biblioteca Ariostea and sidled past Lodovico’s bones to have a look at a book, just for daft. And then, finding myself still with plenty of time, finally took myself off to the Pinoteca Nazionale. What wonders awaited me there! Nothing less than a sixteenth-century painting of Saint Cecilia, complete with a very legible, and I now know very viable, canon. And, of course, there is a connection with a convent – the painting was obtained from the (male) canons regular who had responsibility for one of Ferrara’s most renowned musical convents. I had to borrow a pen from one of the staff, so I could scribble the canon down on some scrap paper; while the rain has tipped down this afternoon, I’ve been playing with it in Sibelius. Its rubric is, “Qui intelligit, legat.” Well, quite. Maybe when I have a better understanding of what awaits me in Corpus Domini, I might have a better chance of getting in to read it.