The Madness of Perosi

Dispatches from Italy announce that Don Lorenzo Perosi, head of the Vatican Choir, has been judged insane by the Italian courts, and has been placed in the custody of his brother. This is the culmination of series of extraordinary episodes, which, curiously have found little space in the American press. Perosi ranks as the world's foremost composer of ecclesiastical music. While a young priest, his oratorios and pieces of ritual music attracted the enthusiasm of the highest church dignitaries. He became the friend and protege of several successive popes, was elevated to the leadership of the Sistine Choir, and received such success and honor as come to few musicians. But a strange trouble came upon Don Lorenzo. He began to feel that all who came near him were hostile to him. He imagined at his triumphal concerts that the audiences were filled with anger against him, that their tumultous applause was ironical. This convinced him that his compositions were bad--that was why the people were aroused against him. He said he was going to rewrite all he had written. He had a large volume of manuscript composition. He hid this away jealously, and worked, rewriting piece after piece, but the rewriting pleased him no more than the original work. During the war he accused himself. He could not fight. He was doing nothing for his country. He tried to make amends by aiding war sufferers. He gave money to everyone who seemed to need it. A flock of beggars beset him. He gave to them all. They besieged his house, followed him wherever he went. Soon all his money was gone, all of the large fortune that he had earned from his compositions. The beggars continued their demands. When he could not give, it filled him with a sense of guilt. He sank deeper and deeper into self-accusation. He came to the idea that his whole life had been wrong. He turned against everything that formerly he had held beloved. He, priest and friend of popes, conceived this singular notion--that the Catholic Church was secretly in league with the Free Masons. That turned him against the Church, and he announced that he was going to become a Protestant. A Calvinist congregation in Rome received the head of the Vatican Choir with some enthusiasm, but soon found embarrassment in Perosi's fantastic ideas. The Vatican understood that the unfortunate musician was mad. They did not depose him from his leadership of the Sistine Choir. The chief concern was to get his manuscript compositions from him, so that he could not destroy them.

And now Don Lorenzo has been legally pronounced insane, and his belongings placed in the custody of his brother, who, like himself, is an ecclesiastic.