Biblioteca Casanatense
We got an early start, packed and left our stuff with the hotel and went out into the Monday morning streets, empty apart from cleaners. Places don’t open early in Rome, and we would have to have a long breakfast and several coffees. But I needed to find that library! Thinking back now, I believe that the order of things that hectic Monday before getting to the airport was as described here.
We actually found the Biblioteca just before it closed for lunch – and would reopen at three thirty. It had a beautifully panelled and carved door leading directly off the cobbled narrow alleyway. We had walked up about ten meters from the street, having noticed an elevated passage at the first floor linking the two sides of the building. It was glazed and an attractive feature giving a sense of vaulting.
The small stone plate on the wall simply stated Biblioteca Casanatense. [1] It didn’t say anything about ‘magica’ but stepping through the portal we entered into a surprising volume and a quite magical space with beautiful light filtering down through skylights. Lined with rows of huge leather-bound volumes from earlier centuries, it really was from a different time, and I felt as though I was in a totally different life! And then I learnt that housed in this library, was a very particular and unique collection of musical manuscripts of Italian composers from the period covering the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. It was a Biblioteca Musica!
Taking in the scene, the rows of catalogue trays in polished wood with brass handles, stacked high and running the length of the reception area, I asked about the process for consulting these treasures. There were request forms to be filled in, and an hour later one could consult the desired material in the adjacent reading room. It was five to twelve and they would soon be closing. Oh my word, a real sense of urgency, and I didn’t even know what it was we were looking for.
We returned to Tre amicis to while away the hours and work out a plan. The Biblioteca, so elusive the day before was in reality very close – just around the corner from the Pantheon. We had a delicious slow meal, insalata verde, scampi with tagliatelle, formaggio, dolce vino de casa. Later, after a coffee we strolled around the piazza, went to the Pantheon, had another coffee and finally it was time for the doors to open again. We had one and a half hours maximum, and had worked out that if we could get back to the hotel and take a taxi by 18.00, we would be ok. With no idea of traffic in Rome at that time, we gave ourselves a good margin. We stepped back into the Biblioteca with our ‘system’ (the amethyst pendulum)and swung into action.
It was fascinating to observe how it swung this way and that, and then suddenly stopped dead still to consider, and then moved again emphatically. In the first part of this exercise, we were in front of the catalogue trays of authors/composers/musicians. And gradually, as we moved down the trays, the pendulum became more steady, focused. Was there someone I needed to be introduced to, with whom I had some connection and affinity?
Moving through the trays alphabetically, it seemed that we were to concentrate our research on the section of trays A-D, and there were many of these. A finer focus brought us to several trays containing cards with names starting with “C”. We progressed through names CA.. and then got to names CE. The pendulum became very excited at this stage, spinning wildly and rotating almost horizontally. Amazing. And as Beth’s fingers touched each card, one by one, suddenly there it was.
Centi, Antonio born….. died…. and a brief description of a composer and choirmaster.
Of course the text was written in Italian and I quickly copied it in my little notebook, not fully taking in the significance of what I was writing down. Until later.
And then we moved across to the shelves and trays cataloguing the works. We worked fast; time was ticking away. I wrote furiously in my notebook each time we found another composition by Antonio Centi. Fortunately they were mostly grouped together but were classified according to some criteria and were located in clusters in several trays. Then, when I thought we had found everything attributed to him, the amethyst insisted No, there was more… more? Yes, in trays of Miscellanea – under Anonymous. There were many more works even here which, according to the pendulum, were his or with which he was directly involved.
I liked this fact. That the creative energy of Antonio Centi was embedded anonymously in so many more works than the ‘Partitas’ and ‘Sonatas’ bearing his name. These were choral works, which now I realised had been worked on with voices in resonant church and chapel spaces. How fitting that this was considered a collective effort; no single name implying origin or claiming ownership. He was part of a co-creation. I liked this man. This part of me.
What does it feel like when one actually finds the name held in a previous life? Incredible, really. There was a sense of inner knowing. It fitted comfortably.
***
I wonder when I realised that the dream I’d had prior to this visit to Rome of the black-cloaked male figure from an earlier century who had merged with me so easily in the train compartment, was perhaps no other than Antonio Centi?
I was certainly getting to know my Self (merci Ronald) .
[1] I need to find my journal from this time, as I have a memory that the sign said ‘Biblioteca Musica’. There are a number of points I had written down, which now eight years later as I try to recall these times, are merging into impressions. In a later discussion with Katherin, the exhibition on esoterica which she had explored years before was titled ‘Magica’.