INTERNAL EVIDENCE.
The oldest Antiphoners that we possess are some two hundred years later than Gregory I. But they possess two peculiarities which raise a presumption in favour of an origin at least as old as St. Gregory.
The first peculiarity lies in the version of Scripture from which are taken the portions to which the music is set. This version is the old Latin one known as “Itala.” Now even if at the time of St. Gregory it had not entirely given place to the Vulgate, yet from his time onwards the latter prevailed universally (except for the Psalter, which was retained at Rome till the time of Pius V., and is still used at St. Peter’s), not only in Rome, but in all the West; so much so, that St. Isidore of Seville could assert in the first half of the seventh century, that St. Jerome’s version had already been taken into use by all the Churches as preferable to the ancient one. It is natural to seek the explanation of preserving an obsolete text of the words in the respect felt for the melodies to which they were set. It is, therefore, reasonable to conclude that these melodies existed for the most part before the definite abandonment of the Itala at Rome, that is to say before the middle of the seventh century.
The second peculiarity which supports this conclusion is to be found in the comparison of the Offices, known to have been added since the time of St. Gregory, with the older portion of the Antiphoner. With very few, and those very doubtful, exceptions, the materials for these are all taken from older Offices. Sometimes both words and tunes are transferred bodily; sometimes new words are set to the old melodies.
There are certain Masses of Saints, the chants for which were taken from those which later were collected together to form the Common. For the Feasts of the Annunciation, the Assumption, and the Nativity of the Virgin, all the chants were taken from older Masses, e.g., from the masses of Advent and of certain Virgins and Martyrs. The Procession of the Purification, both words and melody, was borrowed from the Greeks by Pope Sergius. For the Mass of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross all the chants were taken from elsewhere, with the possible exception of the Communion. The Introit and the Gradual were taken from Maundy Thursday, the Alleluia from Friday in Easter week, and the Offertory from Maundy Thursday, or the Second Mass for Christmas-day. The Introit for the Purification is borrowed from the Eighth Sunday after Trinity.
The compositions either in the Sanctorale or the Temporale of the Mass that can be definitely dated as introduced after the death of St. Gregory are very few, and may perhaps have been borrowed, with the Festivals themselves, from outside by the Roman Church.
It is a reasonable conclusion to draw, then, that the addition of these portions in the seventh century shows at least a great diminution of musical productive power, and that the bulk of the Antiphoner of the Mass must have been composed before this date. This inference is supported by the conclusion which M. Gevaert draws from his examination of the Antiphons of Divine Service (La Melopée Antique, p. 175), viz., that the Golden Age for compositions of this class was the period 540-600. The natural deduction from this is that the main settlement of the Antiphoner of the Mass fell within the same period.
Still it may not have been wholly due to a cessation of musical activity that new music for the Mass gradually ceased to be written in the course of the seventh century, for a certain amount of music still continued to be written for the Hour Services. It may have been due to a feeling that the book was a closed and settled one after a final and authoritative revision such as St. Gregory’s is traditionally held to have been, and that it was presumptuous to add to it. But whichever view is taken of this, the Gregorian tradition is equally supported.
A further support to the claims of Gregory I. as against Gregory II. is to be found in an examination of the Communions of the Masses of Lent. These form a series taken from the Psalms in numerical order, I. to XXVI., with the exception of five for which have been substituted texts taken from the Gospel. The Thursdays in Lent, however, form an exception to this scheme; they are interpolations breaking the order of it. Now we know that they were added by Gregory II.; therefore the original scheme of the Masses of Lent, at least, was drawn up before the time of Gregory II. Of the twenty-four pieces contained in the masses for the first six Thursdays in Lent, twenty-one appear in the Sundays after Trinity. It seems certain that the Thursdays in Lent must have borrowed from the Sundays after Trinity, and not vice versa; this is supported by the fact that the Graduals and Offertories of the Thursdays in Lent are all borrowed, and of the Sundays after Trinity hardly any. So this addition, which we know to be of the date of Gregory II., was made to a scheme already in existence, and both words and music were borrowed from other parts of the Antiphonale Missarum.
As against the claims made for the Hellenic Popes of the seventh and eighth centuries, it is worth while to examine the music which it is probable was introduced by Hellenic influence during that time, and compare it with the bulk of the “Gregorian.” The tropes and the melodies from which the sequences developed probably come under this head, and some specimens of these may be seen in the Winchester Troper (Ed. Rev. W. H. Frere, H. Bradshaw Society, 1894). An examination of these melodies will show that their structure is entirely unlike the structure of the Gregorian melodies, especially in the close with a rise from the note below the final to the final, which continually occurs at the end of the phrases. This will be very clear from the accompanying melody, Cithara, from which the sequence Rex Omnipotens was formed. This form of close appears at the end of each of the first five sections, and again at the end of the seventh and eighth. In the rest of the sequence, the melody rises to a higher range, and the close appears a fifth higher in the ninth and tenth sections, a fourth higher in the eleventh and thirteenth, and a whole octave higher in the twelfth. This transposition of the range of the melody is more developed here than in most sequence melodies, but some such transposition is a prominent characteristic of many of them. There is nothing at all like it in the genuine Roman chant.
CITHARA
