Church Chant Versus Church Music.
An interesting colloquy took place in our mind as we finished the perusal of the paper entitled “Church Music” which appeared in the August and September numbers of The Catholic World. We transcribe it as faithfully as our memory serves us.
Scene—The cloister of a Benedictine monastery. Time, Anno Domini 1000. A number of monks rehearsing for a festival.
Gregorius, the choir-master dictating from an open Gradual. “Listen, my brothers all. To-morrow is the festival of S. Polycarp the martyr and the name-day of our good father, the abbot. On such a joyous festival we must not fail to make his heart right glad with our chanting. Let us begin the Introit. (Sings.) ‘Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, diem festum celebrantes.’ ”
(All the monks repeating in chorus) “Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, diem—”
(They are interrupted by a loud knocking at the floor leading from the cloister. Brother Gregorius, on opening it, is confronted by an aged stranger with a long, white, flowing beard, bearing in his hand a roll of printed music, on which the words “Boston,” “Ditson” and the date “1874” can be discerned.)
Gregorius. “Salve, frater.”
Aged stranger. “Prof. Hubanus, at your service; and having come from a great distance, and happily being born at a much later date, I guess you will find my services on this eve of your joyous festival of some value, for I am well acquainted with all the best Masses published. By the way, is one of the brethren lately departed this life?”
Gregorius (with astonishment). “No, God be praised! Brother Augustine yonder did leave the infirmary vacant this morning, thanks to Our Blessed Lady, that no voice might be wanting in the choir on the morrow; but wherefore the question, good domne Hubanus?”
Hubanus. “Because I heard you but just now rehearsing such a sorrowful, in fact, so lugubrious, a morceau—an Offertory piece, I presume, for a Requiem Mass—that I supposed you were getting up the music for some such occasion.”
(The monks regard the aged stranger with no little surprise, mingled with curiosity.)
Gregorius. “We must have made indeed sad work of it in our rehearsing. Worthy Hubanus, it was the Gaudeamus you heard.”
Hubanus. “The Gaudeamus, eh? (Aside. I don't remember seeing that in Ditson's catalogue. I wonder what it is. To Gregorius.) Would you mind repeating it once more?”
Gregorius. “With pleasure. Sing, my brothers.” (They sing the whole Introit.)
Hubanus. “Ah! fine; quite solemn! A Gregorian chant, I perceive. A very plaintive movement. The finale has an exceedingly mournful effect. In D minor, is it not? Still, for a Requiem Offertory I think Rossini's Pro Peccatis, or Gounod's Ave Maria, or ‘Angels ever Bright and Fair,’ for a change, would please the congregation better.”
All the monks. “Plaintive! Our Gaudeamus mournful! Calls an Introit an Offertory piece! Like a Requiem Offertory indeed! An Ave Maria for that too! What does he mean by D minor? (Blessing themselves.) Ab omni malo, libera nos, Domine!”
Hubanus. “Oh! beg pardon. That is an Introit, is it? Indeed! But, as I said, I have the honor to be born at a much later date than yourselves, and we don't bother ourselves with singing those things in my day and country. We bring out the finest music, however, in our choir of the Church of S. Botolph, in the United States, that you can hear. I'm the organist and director.”
Gregorius. “Not sing the Introit! Why, good domne Hubanus, our grand and joyous festival on the morrow would be robbed of one of its chief features if we failed to sing the Gaudeamus—I mean the Gaudeamus that you have just heard.”
Hubanus. “ ‘De gustibus non est disputandum.’ Hem! excuse my indulging in the classics; those old Latin fellows say a good deal in a few words, you know. But you don't seriously mean to say that such monotonous stuff—excuse my plain speaking on your plain singing—is fit for a joyous festival? As my friend, Dr. ——, says in his late paper on ‘Church Music,’ ‘to hear Gregorian chant for a long time, and nothing else, becomes extremely monotonous, and burdens the ear with a dull weight of sound not always tolerable.’ He says, moreover, that ‘this is admitted by all who in seminaries and monasteries have been most accustomed to hear it.’ ”
Gregorius. “Your learned friend did not seek our judgment, I assure you, and I am at a loss to know who could have made so silly an admission to him.”
Hubanus. “But do you not ‘resort to every device,’ as he says again, ‘to escape its monotony on festival days, by harmonies on the chant which are out of all keeping with it,’ and so forth?”
Gregorius. “We do not, I trust. What little harmony we sing is in strict keeping with the mode of the chant; and as to escaping anything, we know the rubrics, domne Hubanus, and respect them, and, what is more, we observe them.”
Hubanus. “On that score I have the advantage of you; for it doesn't require much knowledge of what you call rubrics to bring out a Mass and grand Vespers with us. However, this question of plain chant is settled long ago. It ought to have been settled long before you were born. For, as Dr. —— continues in his paper, ‘No one will deny the appropriateness and impressiveness of plain chant on certain solemn occasions, especially those of sorrow; but it is confessedly unequal to the task of evoking and expressing the feelings of Christian joy and triumph.’ Ah! Brother Gregorius, you should have been born later.”
Gregorius. “Then we monks, and the generations of the faithful throughout the world, have for the past thousand years been shut out from the feelings of Christian joy and triumph, have we? Verily, either we or you can have known very little of one or of the other, as the observation of your learned doctor may happen to be true or not. Did the church put a lie into the mouths of her cantors when she bade them sing, ‘Repleatur os meum laude tua, alleluia; ut possim cantare, alleluia; gaudebunt labia mea, dum cantavero tibi, alleluia, alleluia’?”[45]
Hubanus. “You are a trifle sarcastic, Brother Gregorius; but I willingly pardon it, for I'm a plain-spoken man myself, and call a spade a spade. Besides, you know, you can always fall back on the ‘De gustibus’—a quotation I often find very convenient; but I warrant me your prima donna doesn't find much satisfaction in exhibiting her fine soprano on your dull chant, which you must confess, with Dr. ——, ‘is of limited, very limited, range,’ and in my opinion as poor in expression as a kettle-drum.”
Gregorius. “I crave your pardon, worthy sir. You are a stranger and quite aged—”
Hubanus (interrupting). “Eighteen hundred and seventy-four.”
Gregorius (continuing)—“as the length and whiteness of your beard proclaim, while we have only the experience of one thousand years, the lessons of the church, and the taste as well as the examples of the saints to profit by; but we must confess that of a prima donna we have never yet heard.”
All the monks (very decidedly). “Never!”
Hubanus. “Never heard of a prima donna! Why, when were you born? I mean, of course, the chief lady soprano who sings in the choir.”
(Here all the monks burst out laughing.)
Gregorius (having got his breath). “Come, come, my ancient stranger, that explains all. We knew you must be ‘chaffing’ us, from the very first, with your ‘mournful Gaudeamus’ and your never singing Introits or obeying the rubrics and the rest. Ha! ha! Truly, a ‘chief lady in the choir’—prima donna, I think you named such a mythical personage—was only needed to cap the climax of your excellent joke.”
Hubanus. “Joke! I'm not joking at all. We have ladies in our choir—(aside) and it's no joke to manage them either—(to Gregorius) and pay them good salaries, as you must; for without that, you know, you never can have good music.”
(Here the laughing of the monks suddenly subsided, followed by loud and angry whispers, of which the [pg 148]word “heretic” was unmistakably heard. Brother Gregorius interposed.) “Judge not too hastily, good brothers. True, no church which oweth obedience to our Holy Father; the Pope, and which hath a right therefore to call itself Catholic, did ever yet permit women to sing in church choirs; but what she might have done in this matter in the country from which this aged stranger comes—be it ever so contrary to all the rubrics and traditions known unto us—we will the better learn from his own lips. Women, then, good domne Hubanus, do sing in the choir in the Catholic churches of your strange land, standing, perchance, beside the men-singers?”
Hubanus. “Where else would they stand? You see we put the sopranos and tenors on one side, and the altos and basses on the other.”
Gregorius (scratching his shaven crown in great perplexity). “We have yet to learn many wonderful things! Canst tell me, worthy Hubanus, how comes it? Does your learned friend, Dr. ——, speak of this matter in his celebrated ‘paper’? Doubtless he mentions some decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites which hath allowed this—this (another scratch) unheard-of novelty?”
Hubanus. “I cannot remember that he made any allusion to it. In fact, I fancy that he would rather not, and I am glad he didn't. But where's the use of making a fuss over it? Haven't women got voices as well as men, and what did the Lord give them voices for, if he did not intend them for use?”
Gregorius. “In the choir?”
Hubanus. “In the choir, or out of the choir, what's the difference?”
Gregorius. “Do the rubrics allow it?”
Hubanus. “Ma foi! I do not know. (Aside.) I hope they do, if old fogies like you are going to stir up that question. (To Gregorius.) No lady-singers! If that were to happen, my occupation, as well as theirs, would be like Othello's—gone. For hark you, Brother Gregorius, although I know but little of your old-fashioned, barbarous chant—can't read a note of it, to tell the truth—if women-singers are banished from the choir, music goes with them. The music I like requires the female voice. I wouldn't waste my time with a parcel of boys and on such music as they can sing.”
Gregorius. “What music is this of which you speak so often? Hath the church adopted a new style of melody which is not chant?”
Hubanus. “No, not adopted precisely, but there is a new music—everybody knows it—written by Mozart, Haydn, Mercadante, Peters, and several others, which organists and choirs make use of in our day. Some prefer one, some another, according to taste. ‘De gustibus,’ you know.”
Gregorius. “Yet tell me—for here the strangeness of your news almost surpasses belief—how dare the organists and choirs make use of any melody in accompanying the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and absolving the Divine Office which has not been adopted, or at least distinctly sanctioned, by holy church, to whom it appertains to dispose the ordering even of the most minute rubric in these important matters concerning the due praise of God and the sure edification of the people?”
Hubanus. “All I can say is, we do it. It is tolerated in some places, and my friend in his paper quotes some ‘Instructions’ which the [pg 149] cardinal vicar in Rome issued to his own clergy to prove the toleration; but, to my thinking, they sound very much like the careful mother's permission to her boy who asked leave to learn to swim—‘Certainly, my child, but don't you never go near the water, leastways any water that is over your ankles.’ ”
Gregorius. “I think I understand, for I have heard our good father, the abbot, say that ‘he who would be well carried must not drive with too stiff a rein’; and my holy novice-master, Father Ambrose—to whose soul may God grant rest!—did oft chide my hasty judgment upon my fellow-novices, saying in his sweet way, and after the manner of his wise speech, ‘Thou wouldst reform monks, good Brother Gregorius, before they are formed. All they need is a little instruction.’ At present every one is well pleased with your music?”
Hubanus. “Oh! that is quite another question. Dr. —— himself does not seem to think so, for he says in his paper: ‘In consequence of the failure of modern composers to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion, though their music has been introduced into our churches and given every chance of trial, complaints against it are heard on every side. We grumble about it in our conversations; we write against its excesses in the public journals; bishops complain of it in pastoral letters; provincial councils are forced to issue decrees about it; the Sovereign Pontiffs themselves not unfrequently raise their voices, sometimes in warning, sometimes in threats—in a word, the evil seems to have attracted a good deal of attention.’ ”
All the monks. “Ab omni malo, libera nos, Domine!”
Gregorius. “His account of your music—which you seem, nevertheless, to prize so much more highly than our dear holy chant, which hath the undoubted sanction of the church—gives pretty plain evidence that the church hath not adopted it in any wise. It rather suggests the thought that she would gladly be rid of it altogether, abstaining, however, like Father Ambrose, from reforming musicians before they are formed, and resolving, as he did often pleasantly say, to my comfort, ‘Thou shalt see, Brother Gregorius, that I shall make no change in our holy Rule.’ ”
Hubanus. “One would think you were born later, after all; for it would appear that our Holy Father, Pius the Ninth—pity you haven't lived to know him, Brother Gregorius, for he is the dearest pope that has ruled the church since the days of S. Peter—is in the van among the leaders of the ‘Gregorian movement,’ since a little while ago he made a decree that the Gregorian chant should be taught in all the ecclesiastical schools of the states of the church, to the exclusion of every other kind of music—‘Cantus Gregorianus, omni alio rejecto, tradetur.’ You see he wishes to get the Roman priests educated up to it—Rome rules the world—and the thing is done. ‘Othello's occupation is gone!’ But how in the world we shall ever get up a Christmas or an Easter Mass that is fit to listen to when that day comes is more than I can tell.”
Gregorius. “Despair not, good Hubanus. Remain with us past the morrow, and thou shalt hear a holy Mass and solemn Vespers which will warm the cockles of thy heart, [pg 150] chanted in strains of melody that belie neither the sentences of joyful praise which are uttered nor the exultation which doth lift the hearts of the brethren to heaven, and fill the festival hours with a divine gladness. (To the monks.) Brothers, let us rehearse the Gloria in Excelsis.”
As the curtains of our memory dropped upon the scene we have just been present at, our eyes caught sight again of the sentence quoted by Prof. Hubanus: “In consequence of the failure of modern composers to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion”—which failure is so utter that, in the judgment of the same writer, he “thinks it no exaggeration to say that, if all their compositions, except a very few, were burned, or should otherwise perish, the church would suffer no loss.”
But what of the figured musical compositions of those musicians who may in our time be honored with the title of “ancient,” such as Palestrina and his imitators? The music of this style forms, we are told, the staple of what is commonly heard in S. Peter's. The writer of the article we allude to evidently believes any attempt to make such music popular would be no less a failure. The intricacy of the style, the exceeding difficulties attendant upon its artistic execution, and its restricted vocal character, are “fatal” objections.
We fully agree with him. In our former articles on this subject (The Catholic World, December, 1869, and February and March, 1870) we not only pronounced modern figured music to be in practice a failure as church music, but intended also to be understood as asserting that the cause of this failure lay chiefly in the melodious form of such music—the necessary result of a tonality essentially sensuous, which renders it, despite every effort of the artist, intrinsically unsuitable for the expression of the “prayer of the church.” That there is prayerful music we do not deny, but it will never obtain any more positive sanction from the church than she gives to the hundred and one sentimental “prayers” and turgid “litanies” which fill the pages of our “largest books of devotion” ad nauseam, and are equally supposed by the uneducated Catholic and the ignorant Protestant to be the masterpieces of Catholic musical and liturgical art.
We did not think it necessary, writing as we did for a special class of readers, to explain the distinguishing characteristics of the church's “prayer,” being, as our learned friend says, fourfold—latreutic, impetratory, propitiatory, and eucharistic. To us the church was not wanting in wisdom in the adoption alone of plain chant to express her divine prayer, whether it happen to be latreutic, impetratory, propitiatory, or eucharistic. She never made any distinction that we know of. But our learned friend, while he cannot help but admit that for the purposes of adoration, propitiation, and supplication it is not only all that could be desired, but is also better than any other melody, denies, with an ipse dixit, its capability of expressing praise and thanksgiving. Argument does not seem to be worth seeking. “Plain chant,” he says, “is confessedly unequal to the task of evoking and expressing the feelings [pg 151] of Christian joy and triumph.” And again: “It certainly must borrow from figured music the triumphant strains of praise and thanksgiving.”
Neither one nor the other. We confess to nothing of the kind. And although, by the rule of argumentation, we are not called upon to prove a negative, we refer to the response good Brother Gregorius has already made, and would furthermore ask if the Te Deum, the Exultet, the Preface for Easter Sunday, the Alleluia of Holy Saturday, or the Lauda Sion, are confessedly unequal to the task assigned them?
As far as the question has any practical importance, we feel that not another word need be said. Plain chant is in lawful possession, and cannot be ousted by personal caprice or taste, nor by gratuitous assumptions of its inability to answer the end proposed by the wise authority of the church; still less by a proposed substitution of a system which, after three centuries of vain efforts to supplant the rightful possessor, is declared, even by its own friends, to be “a failure,” and the majority of its painfully-produced works fit only to be consigned to the flames.
We have, however, a question of more merit to discuss. If modern music has failed to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion, it will be not a little interesting to examine into the true cause of this failure. It will be found to lie in its melodic form (not in the use of harmony), which came into being with the introduction of the chord of the diminished seventh and the substitution of the instrumental, factitious scales called major and minor for the four natural vocal, authentic scales and their four correlative plagal scales. Like seeks like, and as this chord of the seventh was an inspiration of sentimental, languishing, passional feeling, the new music sought its language in poetry, and chiefly in lyric poetry, in which every sort of human passion finds smooth expression; and as this latter is divided into regular feet, with recurring emphasis and cadence, music soon found itself set to time. Its melody became measured. Pegasus found himself in harness. To express the sublime, [pg 152] the heroic, was only possible now by knocking down the bars, putting it all ad libitum, and calling the phrase recitative; and as the passage from the sublime to the ridiculous is proverbially short, the composition of many of these recitatives, in their leaping intervals and startling contrasts, vividly remind one of Pegasus let loose to scamper and roll unbridled in the open fields.
The invention and perfection of musical instruments are coincident with the rise and progress of the system of melody known as “modern music,” the organ and piano holding the mastery. To these are due, in great measure, the universal cultivation of the modern tonality, and the consequent loss of appreciation of the tonality of the ecclesiastical modes. It is heard in the lullaby at the cradle's side, whistled by boys in the streets, sung by children in popular melodies and hymns at school, confirmed by all the concerts given by orchestras in halls, theatres, and public meetings; every young lady strums it forth from her piano, every organist modulates it in church, while all bells, from thousands upon thousands of churches, jangle it forth from one end of Christendom to the other. That the church has been able to withstand the pressure of all this, and still dares to command her priests to chant “per omnia sæcula sæculorum” to her own ancient mode, is, even in that simple and significant sentence, a proof of her divine strength to resist the most alluring seductions and powerful onslaughts of the world, and a note of calm defiance to its “fashion which passeth away.”
We are now prepared to enter into a critical examination of the essential character of music as distinguished from plain chant. In the first place, we find, as we have already noted, that it is measured in its melody—that is, it is written, as it is said, in time; and, as a consequence of its lyrical movement, it became equally subjected to certain laws of versification and of phraseology corresponding to the stanza. When musicians began to write for the language of the church, and to set the sublime prose of her Gloria in Excelsis, Credo, etc., to its form of melody, this supposed necessity of making musical stanzas compelled the application of what is known in music as the theme, on which certain fanciful variations were built, shorter or longer, as the musician deemed necessary to complete his “work,” altogether forming a sort of Procrustean bed, on which the sacred words of the Liturgy were either dismembered or stretched by repetition in order to make them fit the melody. To make the “work” fit the words was not to be thought of; whence we judge it well for the peace of Mr. Richardson that Mozart and Haydn have departed this life. We remember, when a boy, long before we had made more [pg 153] than a child's acquaintance with the modern “Masses,” squeezing the Kyrie Eleison after this fashion on the framework of one of De Beriot's celebrated airs for violin and piano, and gave ourselves as much credit for the originality of the “adaptation” as we are willing to give to the man who first of all (to the misfortune of true church chant) tried to compose a musical theme for the same words of prayer. We refer our readers to the late paper on “Church Music” in the August and September numbers of this magazine, and to the translation of the Gloria in Excelsis of Mozart's Twelfth Mass, as given in one of our former articles, as proofs of the perfectly outrageous extent to which this “adaptation” has already been carried.
Now, we affirm, as a principle, that the expression of the “Prayer of sacrifice and of praise,” as we may term the Holy Mass and the recitation of the Divine Office, should be consonant with, and conformed to, the manner in which the church directs the celebration of the acts of the same. The celebrant and his ministers, the acolytes and the chorus, do not march, halt, turn about, or otherwise conduct themselves like soldiers or like puppets on wires, neither do they hop and glide and go through set figures like dancers. Melody in measure is therefore wholly unsuited to the character and spirit of the acts of the performers.
In connection with the acts of Catholic worship, melody in measure is therefore incongruous, unmeaning, and absurd. For, to put the question plainly, if neither celebrant, ministers, chorus, nor people are to march—to do which, even in her sacred processions, would be shocking and profane—why sing a march? If they are not to waltz, why sing one? If the church does not want to
“Make the soul dance a jig to heaven,”
then, in the name of common sense, why shall Master Haydn be permitted to offer the church singers a musical jig? The truth of the matter is that such measured movements, added to the gymnastic feats of melody which characterize the phrasing of the greater number of modern “Masses,” are ignorantly supposed to faithfully express that Christian joy and triumph which plain chant is quite as ignorantly supposed to be unable to inspire.
Let any one examine the church's chant, and especially its movement, and he will not fail to be struck with its remarkable consonance with, and the sense of exact propriety of, its accompaniment to the movements and demeanor of the sacred ministers and of all who are appointed to assist them in carrying out the sacred functions of divine worship. How majestic and dignified, how modest and devout, are its measures! A sort of continuous procession of sound, resembling now the deep murmurings of the waves of the ocean, now the gentle breathings of the wind, now the prolonged echoes of distant thunder, now the soft whispering of the woods in summer! Always grave and decorous in its phrasing. Never indulging in trivial antics or in meretricious languishing and voluptuous undulations. Time and arithmetical measures do not straiten and confine its heavenly inspirations, for the thoughts of the soul, and chiefly the thoughts of prayer, do not move like clockwork. One does not adore five minutes, propitiate two minutes, supplicate half a minute, and give [pg 154] thanks ten seconds; and to do either in 2/4 3/4 or 6/8 time would be the height of the ridiculous. A friend tells us that the only time he ever had to do either at High Mass was during the performance of that part of the score called “point d'orgue.” Is it any wonder that music for the church is a failure, and that plain chant still holds its own?
Secondly. The melody of modern music is essentially mechanical. Formed as it has been upon improved instrumentation, it is neither more nor less than a musical performance. The melody is therefore the chief thing; the words and their expression are only secondary. From which, as a necessary result—if the music be worth listening to—the most accomplished vocalists that the pecuniary resources of the church can procure are called in to render the selections. Hence, also, the introduction of women into the choir, contrary to the laws and traditions of the church, the banishment of the chorus from the sanctuary, and the erection of the detestable Protestant singing-gallery over the doorway of the church. This latter flagrant innovation on the proper rubrical disposition of the choir has been lately specially condemned in the “Instructions” of the cardinal vicar at Rome. No one surely will have the hardihood to call modern music an “ecclesiastical song,” as it should be called or it has no place in the church. It is the song of professional singers, distinctly a mechanical performance, and open, without the possibility of reform, to the most shocking abuses. What organist cannot recall instances in which the male and female singers carried on and perfected their courtship in the choir, and where in the same holy (?) place eating and drinking were indulged in during the sermon, and the daily newspapers read? The drinking of water or the chewing of tobacco—well, we would like to see the priest who has been able to banish either from his singing-gallery. These and other numerous irregularities we think ourselves fully justified in adducing as argument in this connection, simply because they exist, are common, notorious, and are a tolerated incumbrance with the mechanism; and, if effectually banished, would leave the said mechanism subject to no little friction and the production of tones of complaint which, whether they proceed from unoiled hinges or choirs, are not agreeable, considered as music.
Compare, again, the character and movement of those upon whom the ceremonies devolve. They are not at all mechanical, but strictly personal. In the first place, the actors are of a restricted class. They must be either men or boys. Women and girls are not permitted to celebrate or serve in any capacity at the sacred functions. The services of a graceful and intelligent acolyte are exceedingly pleasant and edifying to behold, but the stupidest and most awkward, blundering and unkempt boy would be preferable, and must be preferred, before any number of the brightest, most beautiful and quick-witted girls, because he alone possesses the one personal qualification requisite for that office—he is of the male sex. Intelligence, beauty, and graceful manners are not employed by the church for their own sake.
Again, the celebrant must be a priest, the deacon must have received deacon's orders, and all others who, although laymen, may, [pg 155] as acolytes and choristers, aid the consecrated personages in their duties, are invested with a quasi-ecclesiastical character while in office. No one should ever dream of engaging the services of Jews, Protestants, or infidels, or even of Catholics whose lives were notoriously bad, or who scandalously neglected receiving the sacraments, as our “gallery-choirs” are constituted in many a church in this country.
In the event of the priest not been able to sing, through any infirmity, no layman of the congregation could take his place, although he were the finest singer in the world, the very prince of cæremoniarii, and a greater saint than S. Peter himself.
From which considerations it will readily be seen how unsuited music is for the use of such persons acting in such a capacity.
Practically, music is the song of women. We shall show further on that it is essentially effeminate. There is music which men and boys can perform, it is true, but it is not the genuine article. The want of the female voice for the soprano is always felt; and in some countries where women are not yet admitted as church singers, and “church music” is highly prized, this want is supplied by castrati. It is not the song of ecclesiastics. That the use of it is tolerated, we know; that the singing of women and castrati in church is also tolerated, we know; but the “Instructions” (we guarantee that nineteen out of twenty would agree with us in saying that “Restrictions” would be their better title) of the cardinal vicar on “church music,” referred to by the writer of the late articles on that subject in The Catholic World, remind us of the probable “instructions” that would be given if the abuse of female acolytes were to creep in to any great extent. We would find, without doubt, prohibitions against the wearing of the hair in curls, or frisée, or à la Pompadour, short sleeves, low necks, and crinoline. They would be instructed also, without doubt, to wear a plain black cassock and linen surplice, be shod like men, and let not their courtesies savor of the débût of actresses upon the stage of a theatre. If these instructions would be faithfully observed ex animo, and boys were not extinct as a sex in the congregation, we do not think they would very long have any practical application.
Contrast now the character of plain chant with music as a suitable song for the duly-qualified church singers, from the priest down to the humblest cantor. That it is the only song fit for the consecrated priest needs no argument. Thank God, there is no “toleration” of “priests' music,” “sacerdotal solos,” “Prefaces,” and “Pater Nosters,” à la Mozart, Haydn, Cherubini, or Peters! It is distinguished especially by that gravity of movement, that modestie ecclesiastique, in its intonation, which becomes the sacerdotal character. Any other melody from the mouth of a priest at the altar would scandalize not only the least ones of the brethren of Christ, but the greatest also; and however terrible the “woe” our Lord would pronounce upon those who might scandalize the latter, we are not left in ignorance of what is reserved for those who fall under his judgment for scandalizing the former. Any one who has had the good fortune of assisting at a Mass chanted by a properly vested chorus, in strict Gregorian melody, with organ accompaniment, [pg 156] if you will—that is, nothing more than an accompaniment, as the cardinal vicar desires—will assuredly bear testimony that it was not a musical performance—that is, a melodious concert performed for its own sake in any degree—but a religious performance, a chant of priests and the “likes of them,” suggesting nothing of this world's vanities or luxury, and as unlike modern music and its mechanism as the melodious whisperings of an æolian harp are unlike a hand-organ with monkey obbligato.
What is, to say the least, astonishing, if not lamentable, is to see so many priests devoted with ardor to the study of music, and so many more sanctioning and furthering its inroads upon the domain which it behooves them to cultivate, whilst remaining wholly ignorant of the chant, and unable to intone the Gloria in Excelsis or to sing a Collect or Gospel without blundering at every inflection. We see no impropriety in pressing these facts home upon those who are bound by the laws of their profession to interest themselves in the claims which Gregorian chant makes upon them, in order that they may decently perform the sacred functions committed to their care—how sacred one single reflection will show. For what is the song of the priest? It is not a private performance of his own, but rather an inspired expression of the mind of the church, herself the divine voice of God. When she prays and sings, she prays a divine prayer, and sings a divine song. God prays and sings within the walls of the church, the New Jerusalem, which has come down like a bride out of heaven upon the earth. True, it is the priest who prays and sings; but let him not forget that there is a Voice of supplication which ascends to the throne of the Almighty and Eternal Majesty that is not his, and a song which sounds sweetly in the ears of the Divine Mercy, and celebrates the praises of the Most High, whose melody is not the inspiration of his soul.
The Divine, Incarnate Victim of Calvary is the Suppliant, and the Son of David and of Mary is the Singer. And we are told—do our senses not deceive us?—that his song is become extremely monotonous, and burdens the ear with a weight of sound not always tolerable! No, we will not allow in excuse that this sneer of disdain and expression of contempt is only for the chorus, and is not meant for the consecrated priest. There is a divine unity and faultless harmony in the “prayer” of Jesus Christ as the church utters it. It is the seamless garment which clothes his mystic body; who shall dare to rend it?
What master-mind conceived and executed the magnificent and inimitable spectacle which that prayer presents in a solemn Mass and Vespers to the minds and hearts of devout worshippers? What cunning artificer devised the harmony of a composition so complete? Who breathed into all those prayers and anthems, hymns and psalms, Epistles and Gospels from Holy Writ, that spirit of devotion and piety, and informed them with those lessons of the purest morality and professions of the universal faith of Christendom? What more than angelic Artist knew how to dye the martyr's chasuble in blood, and transfer the spotless purity of the lily to the stole of the confessor and the virgin; to weave the robes of penance with the violet's [pg 157] mournful hue, and paint the verdure of the grass upon the ferial vesture? Who is that heavenly Musician whose soul gave birth to that sweet, intellectual, majestic melody espoused so happily to those chosen words of devout contemplation, of lofty praise, of innocent joy, of dolorous compassion, and of sanctified sorrow? We must look to other sources than mere human science or artistic skill for a solution of these questions. The mind and hand of a divine Artist must be in that work whose unity and harmony the hand of man will not sooner or later disfigure, mutilate, reject, or destroy. That artist is the Holy Ghost, who is the Lord and Life-giver of the church, in whom the mystic life of Jesus Christ is perpetuated by the like ineffable overshadowing which wrought his conception in the womb of the Immaculate Virgin—that Spirit of wisdom, from whom come all those inspirations of genius whose matchless productions and marvellous power are the wonder of the world, the envy of the flesh, and the hate of the devil.
But, no; we must believe that the divine Artist has failed, “confessedly” failed, in this one of his masterpieces. Its noblest, highest purpose found no adequate expression. Jesus Christ has been unable to manifest the joy and triumph of his Sacred Heart, the sublimest purpose of his eucharistic life, and his song is fit only to be chanted as a wail over the dead or as groans of penance in sackcloth and ashes!
Do you believe it? We don't.
To Be Concluded Next Month.