"
"Will you sing Stradella's 'Chanson d'Eglise' or will you sing
Schubert's 'Ave Maria'? Nothing is more beautiful than that."
"I will sing the 'Ave Maria.'"
The nun sat down to play it, but she had not played many bars when
Evelyn interrupted her. "The intention of the single note, dear
Sister, the octave you are striking now, has always seemed to me like
a distant bell heard in the evening. Will you play it so."
XXIII
And the idea of a bell sounding across the evening landscape was in
the mind of the congregation when Sister Mary John played the octave;
and the broken chords she played with her right hand awoke a
sensation of lights dying behind distant hills.
It is almost night, and amid a lonely landscape a harsh rock appears,
and by it a forlorn woman stands--a woman who is without friend or
any mortal hope--and she commends herself to the care of the Virgin.
She begins to sing softly, tremulous, like one in pain and doubt,
"Ave Maria, hearken to the Virgin's cry." The melody she sings is
rich, even ornate, but the richness of the phrase, with its two
little grace notes, does not mitigate the sorrow at the core; the
rich garb in which the idea is clothed does not rob the song of its
humanity.
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