SECT. IX.
XXXIII. What we have hitherto said of the irregularity and disorders of church music, does not extend to chants in the vulgar tongue only, but to psalms, masses, lamentations, and other parts of divine service, because the modes in fashion, have been introduced into them all. I have, in printed lamentations, seen the changes of the airs characterised in the same terms, which are used to describe them in comic music. Here you read grave, there ayroso, and in another place andante. What, can’t we admit of all the music being grave, even in a lamentation? And is it necessary to introduce light comedy airs into the representation of the most afflicting mysteries? If grief could find a place in heaven, Jeremiah would lament afresh, at seeing such music applied to his songs of mourning. Is it impossible, that in those complainings, where every letter is a sigh, corresponding with, and expressive of the various sensations, arising from the subjects of his lamentation; either the ruin of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, the destruction of the world for sin, the affliction of the church militant for the persecution of its martyrs; and, to sum up the whole, the anguish and sufferings of our Redeemer, for the salvation of mankind. I say, can the feelings produced by such sad and distressing calamities, be expressed with airy tunes and recitatives? In the mournful songs of Jeremiah, which some expositors call the Alphabet of the Penitents, should we hear the sound of festive airs and serenades? With how much more reason than him, ought we to exclaim here in the language of Seneca, when he censured Ovid, for having introduced into the description of so tragical an event as that of Deucalion’s flood, a verse which savoured of gallantry: Non est res satis sobria lascivire devorato orbe terrarum. The Cythara of Nero, while Rome was burning, had not so harsh a sound, as the harmony of dances in the representation of such affecting mysteries.
XXXIV. And besides offending in this particular against the rules of reason, they sin also against the laws of music, which prescribe, that the tone of the chant, should be suited to the meaning of the words; and therefore, when the language is solemn and expressive of sorrow, the tone of the music should be grave and affecting.
XXXV. It is true, that against this rule, which is one of the most cardinal, musicians very frequently sin in all sorts of compositions, some from being deficient, and others by exceeding. Those fall into the error of deficiency, who form music without any attention to the spirit or meaning of the words to which they apply it; but hardly any fall into those gross mistakes, except such as scarce deserve the name of composers, and who are capable of doing nothing more, than racking or weaving together, shreds and strips, of the compositions of other musicians.
XXXVI. Those err by exceeding or doing too much, who regulate their music with a puerile nicety, to correspond with the distinct or separate signification of each word, taken or standing by itself, without having regard to the meaning of the whole context. An example produced by father Kircher to illustrate this abuse, will explain what I mean. He instanced the manner, in which a composer had set to music the following verse: Mors festinat luctuosa; to the words mors and luctuosa, he applied a mournful solfa; but to the word festinat, which stood in the middle between them, as it seemed to him, to signify vivacity or quickness, he appropriated a career of allegros, that would have caused the most sluggish nag who heard them, to bound about and give cabriols.
XXXVII. I saw something as bad, or indeed even worse than this, in one of the lamentations I cited before; where to the music adapted to express the following sentence: Deposita est vehementer non habens consolatorem, was marked ayroso. How ill-suited is an airy movement, to express the lamentable fall of Jerusalem, and also that of all mankind bowed down and crippled with the weight of their sins; which misfortune, was aggravated with the additional and distressing circumstance, of their being destitute of comfort under the calamity? But the blame of all this, was imputable to the adverb vehementer, because to express vehemence, appeared to the composer to require a lively movement; and thus, when he came to that word in the sentence, he quickened his pace, and upon the adverb vehementer, expended in rapid notes, music to the amount of forty crotchets; but the word, in the sense it was there used, was intended to signify the same as gravissime, and to express with energy, the degree of grief and sadness, occasioned by the fall of Jerusalem, which, crippled and bore down with the crushing weight of its sins, came to the ground, temple, walls, and houses, all together.
XXXVIII. Nobody was more guilty of this fault, than the celebrated Duron, and he committed it to such a degree, that sometimes in the same couplet, just as the signification of the words of the verse varied, taken separately or by themselves, he would vary the affectations of the chant, six or eight times; and although it required great address and ability to do this, which he in reality was possessed of; such an exertion of his talents was ill applied.