ART AND SCIENCE.
A wild swan and an eagle side by side
I marked, careering o’er the ocean-plain,
Emulous a heaven more heavenly each to gain,
Circling in orbits wider and more wide:
Highest, methought, through tempest scarce descried,
One time the bird of battle soared;—in vain;
So soon, exhausted ’mid their joy and pride,
Dropped to one sea the vanquished rivals twain.
Then, o’er the mighty waves around them swelling,
That snowy nursling of low lakes her song
Lifted to God, floating serene along;
While she that in the hills had made her dwelling
Struggled in vain her wings to beat and quiver,
And the deep closed o’er that bright crest for ever.
Aubrey de Vere.
THE ROMAN RITUAL AND ITS CHANT
COMPARED WITH THE WORKS OF MODERN MUSIC.
II.—CONCLUDED.
VALUE AS A MEDIUM OR VEHICLE OF DIVINE TRUTH AMONG THE PEOPLE.
Popular national songs with their melodies are not, either in point of poetry or music, very elaborate or classical works of art. Consummate art is incapable of passing among a people, and must ever remain confined to the initiated and the connoisseur; yet national songs are not only characteristic of all people, but fulfil a very important function. They not only foster and preserve the national spirit, of which they are the expression, but also keep up, by tradition among the people, a knowledge of the history of their race, and of the exploits and noble deeds of its great men. In a word, the songs of a people have an influence over the growth of their moral character which it is not easy to overestimate, and which was well known to that statesman who was heard to say that they who have the making of a people’s songs will soon have the making of their laws; a sentiment fully confirmed by the proverb, “Qui mutat cantus, mutat mores.”
The above remarks, much too brief to put the importance of the ideas contained in them in their proper light, seem to issue in the conclusion that the song of the Christian kingdom will be necessarily something very different from an elaborate work of musical genius.
When our divine Redeemer lifted up his eyes, and beheld the multitudes going astray as sheep without a shepherd, he was moved with compassion. Surely in his judgment sacred song will be deemed to fulfil its mission when it passes current among the people, is domesticated in the laboring man’s cottage among his children, and there teaches the family the knowledge of their Saviour’s life and sufferings, of their redemption by these from sin, and the death of the world to come. Sacred song will, in his compassionate eyes, fulfil its mission of mercy when it takes up the words of eternal Wisdom, and puts them in the mouth of the people as a charm against the maxims of a world declared by the Word of God to be “lying in wickedness,” and as a shield against the assaults of a tempter, said in the same Word “to be ever going about seeking whom he may devour.” It will fulfil its mission when it enters into the heart and soul of the people, accompanies the departed with a requiem as man goeth to his long home and the mourners go about the streets, when it administers comfort to the survivors, while it bids them not to sorrow as they that have no hope, and, in a word, weeps with them that weep, and rejoices with them that do rejoice. Nor let it be said that this is a romantic notion—the making out of the earth an ideal paradise. Surely the actual and adequate fulfilment of such a mission of sacred song belongs to the idea of the mission of the Son of God, sent by the Father to re-establish order, piety, and sanctity on the earth. But what if this idea was not only familiar to the fathers, but that they actually saw the progress of its accomplishment?
“There is no need here,” says S. Chrysostom, exhorting his people to take part in the church chant, “of the artist’s skill, which requires length of time to bring to perfection. Let there be but a good will and a ready mind, and the result will soon be sufficient skill. There is no absolute need even of time or place, for in every place or time one may sing with the mind. Though you be walking in the Forum, or are on a journey, or are seated with your friends, the mind may be on the alert, and find for itself an utterance. It was thus that Moses cried, and God heard. If you are an artisan, you may sing Psalms as you sit laboring in your workshop; you may do the same if you are a soldier, or a judge seated on his bench” (Hom. on Ps. iv.)
A formal acknowledgment on the part of the church of this principle of teaching by means of song, which at the same time proves its antiquity, though it can be hardly necessary to cite it, may be found in one of the Collects for Holy Saturday: “Deus, celsitudo humilium, et fortitudo rectorum, qui per sanctum Moysen puerum tuum ita erudire populum tuum sacri carminis tui decantatione voluisti, ut illa legis iteratio fiat etiam, nostra directio,” etc., etc.—“O God! the loftiness of the humble and the strength of them that are upright, who wast pleased, through thy holy servant Moses, to instruct thy people by the singing of a sacred song,” etc., etc.
If, then, this be a true and just view of the mission of the sacred song among the poor and the unlearned multitude, as contemplated in the divine idea; if it be true, as I suppose no one will deny, that the Ritual Chant is not only fitted to accomplish it, but has realized it in times past, and does still realize it in countries that might be named; and if the works of modern art are, from their very scientific character as music, incapable of being the medium in which divine truth can pass among the people; and, indeed, if it be their nature to give so much more of prominence to the beauty of mere sound than to the expression of intelligible meaning or sentiment, which every one knows is the case, we seem to gain this obvious result, on drawing the comparison, that the Ritual chant is a real medium or vehicle for the circulation of divine truth among the people, fitted with a divine wisdom to its end; while the great works of art that the musician so much admires are not, to any practical extent whatever, such a medium, and indeed, if the truth must be said, were probably never contemplated as such, either by those who composed or those who now admire them.
COMPARATIVE “MEDICINAL VIRTUE.”
“They that are whole need not a physician,” said our Redeemer (Mark ii. 17), “but they that are sick. I came not to call the just, but sinners to repentance.” It was part of the mission of the Son of God upon earth, that he should be the physician of the souls of men (Isaiæ lxi.): “Spiritus Domini super me, eo quod unxerit Dominus me, ut mederer contritis corde.” It will follow, then, that the music which the divine Physician of souls will desire to see employed in his church will be strongly marked with the medicinal character.
And this conclusion becomes the more natural, from observing the numberless indications which the literature of different countries affords that music has always been popularly regarded as a medicine for the spirit; as, for instance, the Greek pastoral poet, Bion:
Μολπὰν ταὶ Μοῖσαι, μοὶ ἀεὶ ποθέοντι διδοῖεν
Τὰν γλυκερὰν μολπὰν τᾶς φάρμακον ἅδιον οὐδέν.
Bionis, Bucolica, i.
“Song than which no medicine so sweet.” Among the Romans, the courtly Ovid:
“Hoc est cur cantet vinctus quoque compede fossor
Indocili numero, cum grave mollit opus.
Cantat et innitens limosæ pronus arenæ,
Adverso tardam qui vehit amne ratem;
Qui refert pariter lentos ad pectora remos,
In numerum pulsâ brachia versat aquâ.
…
Cantantis pariter, pariter data pensa trahentis
Fallitur ancillæ, decipiturque labor.”
Ovid, de Tristibus, Eleg. lib. i.
And, in our own literature, the great poet of human nature, Shakspeare:
“When griping grief the heart doth wound,
And doleful dumps the mind oppress,
Then music with her silver sound
With speedy help doth lend redress.”
Shakspeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
With this view of music, as permitted by a merciful Providence to retain a large share of healing virtue, even apart from religion, and in the midst of the disorders of heathenism, expectation will be naturally much raised on coming to inquire what have been the effects of the Christian music which the divine Physician of souls has given to his Church. Nor will there be any disappointment. S. Basil the Great, the well-known doctor and bishop of the East, speaks of the Plain Chant of his own day in the following terms:
“Psalmody is the calm of the soul, the umpire of peace, that sets at rest the storm and upheaving of the thoughts. Psalmody quiets the turbulence of the mind, tempers its excess, is the bond of friendship, the union of the separated, the reconciler of those at variance; for who can count him any longer an enemy with whom he has but once lifted up his voice to God? Psalmody putteth evil spirits to flight, calleth for the help of angels, is a defence from terrors by night, a rest from troubles by day, is the safety of children, the glory of young men, the comfort of the old, the fairest ornament of women.… Psalmody calls forth a tear from a heart of stone, is the work of angels, the government of Heaven, the incense of the Spirit.”
S. Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan in the West, in the preface to his Commentary on the Book of Psalms, speaks as follows:
“In the Book of Psalms there is something profitable for all; it is a sort of universal medicine and preservative of health. Whoever will read therein may be sure to find the proper remedy for the diseased passion he suffers from. Psalmody is the blessing of the people, a thanksgiving of the multitude, the delight of numbers, and a language for all. It is the voice of the Church, the sweetly-loud profession of faith, the full-voiced worship of men in power, the delight of the free, the shout of the joyous, the exultation of the merry. It is the soother of anger, the chaser away of sorrow, the comforter of grief. It is a defence by night, an ornament by day, a shield in danger, a strong tower of sanctity, an image of tranquillity, a pledge of peace and concord, forming its unity of song, as the lyre, from diversity of sound. The morning echoes to the sound of psalmody, and the evening re-echoes. The apostle commanded women to be silent in the church; yet the song of psalmody becomes them (S. Ambrose is speaking of congregational psalmody). Boys and young men may sing psalms without danger, and even young women also, without detriment to their matronly reserve. They are the food of childhood; and infancy itself, that will learn nothing besides, delights in them. Psalmody befits the rank of the king, may be sung by magistrates, and chorused by the people, each one vying with his neighbor in causing that to be heard which is good for all” (Præfatio in Comment in Lib. Psalmorum).
S. Augustine speaks thus of the Church Chant: “How my heart burned within me against the Manicheans, and how I pitied them, that they neither knew its mystery nor healing virtue; and that they should insanely rage against that very antidote by which they might have recovered their saneness (insani essent adversus antidotum quo sani esse potuissent)!” (Confess. lib. ix.) To which should certainly be added the fact that, in some degree, the church may be said to be indebted to this very medicinal power of her psalmody, and to the tears it drew forth from the young catechumen Augustine, for one of the profoundest among her saints and doctors.
And to come to times nearer our own, the well-known Massillon, in one of his charges to his clergy, delivered at the Conference at which he presided, earnestly recommends them to make the study of the Plain Chant a part of their recreation; for, adds he, “le peuple souvent se calme au chant du sacerdoce dans le temple.” (Conferences, vol. iii.) And our own times have witnessed a remarkable instance of the same medicinal power of the church chant when in the Champs Élysées of Paris, during the summer of 1848, the citizens met in the open air, to celebrate a Requiem Mass for the repose of those who had fallen in the great civil commotion of that year, which had been suppressed with such loss of life. Here were to be seen the murderer and the relations of the murdered, forgetting that strongest and deadliest feud of the human heart—the thirst for vengeance for the shedding of kindred blood—joining their own to the thousands of voices that poured forth the well-known church chant of the Dies iræ. Ten thousand voices supplicating Almighty God to pardon the past, to grant rest to the souls of the slain, to bear in mind that he had come on earth to save them, and to beg that he would remember them in mercy at the day of his judgment, in the language and song of the church! Of a truth, then, may the church chant say, Unxit me Spiritus Domini, ut mederer contritis corde.
It is also curious to observe in what a marked manner, even in the recent Protestant literature of our own country, this medicinal character of the church chant is still recognized. Mr. Wordsworth has the following lines in his Ecclesiastical Sonnets (xxx.):
CANUTE.
“A pleasant music floats along the Mere,
From monks in Ely chanting service high,
While—as Canute the King is rowing by—
‘My oarsmen,’ quoth the mighty king, ‘draw near,
That we the sweet song of the monks may hear.’
He listens (all past conquests and all schemes
Of future vanishing like empty dreams)
Heart-touch’d, and haply not without a tear.
The royal minstrel, ere the choir is still,
While his free barge skims the smooth flood along,
Gives to that rapture an accordant Rhyme.[151]
O suffering earth! be thankful; sternest clime
And rudest age are subject to the thrill
Of heav’n-descended piety and song.”
Henry Kirke White, in the fragment of a ballad entitled the “Fair Maid of Clifton,” bears even the still more remarkable testimony to a power over evil spirits. He is describing the death-bed of a female who, fearing that the demons would carry her away, had sent for her own relations to pray by her side, and for the “clerk and all the singers besides.”
“And she begged they would sing the penitent hymn,
And pray with all their might;
For sadly I fear the fiend will be here,
And fetch me away this night.
…
“And now their song it died on their tongue,
For sleep it was seizing their sense,
And Margaret screamed and bid them not sleep,
Or the fiends would bear her hence.”[152]
Southey’s edition, p. 281.
And now, in drawing the comparison, it is fair to ask, granting the exception where it may be justly conceded, in favor of particular compositions: What on the whole is the medicinal virtue of our modern figured music? how does it take effect? who are the persons whose sorrow it relieves? who are they who find themselves really made better by it, and inclined, through its influence, to feel in greater charity with the remainder of the congregation? To judge from the kind of remarks that are usually made by persons coming away from a church where one of these figured music Masses has been executed, one would certainly not say that they could be many. For what are these remarks but those of connoisseurs, who criticise the merits of a voice which has reached a very high or low note, or of a particular solo, trio, or quartet, to which those who are uninitiated in the mysteries of minim and crotchet pay positively no attention at all? Now, let us for a moment suppose a person to say, with S. Ambrose, in praise of Mozart’s famous No. XII., that it was a “defence by night, an ornament by day, a shield in danger, a strong tower of sanctity, an image of tranquillity, a pledge of peace”; or with S. Basil, that “it had the virtue of putting devils to flight”; would any experience more unfeigned surprise than those very persons who think this Mass the absolute ideal of church music? Or again: if, unknown to himself and to others, there were at this moment a future doctor of the church among our London club politicians, how much would it naturally occur to us to think that the performance of this same No. XII. would be likely to contribute towards effecting his conversion?
RESPECTIVE CAPACITY FOR DURABLE POPULARITY.
God, who gave the Ecclesiastical Chant as a gift of mercy to the people, must needs contemplate it as popular. For except it were really popular, it would fail to attain its end. This, then, will be the place to examine what indications are to be found that the Ritual Chant is really, in this particular, the fulfilment of the Divine idea.
When an invention or an art is such that people come to borrow from it popular expressions, or when it gives birth to new phrases or metaphors, or a word or words come to be engrafted from it upon one or many languages, this becomes an argument for its popularity, such as no one will be inclined to dispute. Such phrases as those of “Go ahead,” “Get the steam up,” are quite sufficient to prove the fact of everybody being well acquainted with the steam-engine, from which they are derived. Now, if a similar fact can be found relative to the Gregorian chant, its popularity is in a manner placed beyond the reach of doubt.
When the poet Gray uses a well-known word in the lines,
“The next, with dirges due, in sad array.
Slow through the church-yard path we saw him borne,”
he bears testimony to such a fact. The initial word of the first Antiphon of the Matins for the dead, “Dirige gressus meos, Domine,” has given this well-known word to our language. It can be hardly necessary to refer to a similar reception of the word “Requiem” into many different languages, which is the initial word of the Introit in the Mass for the dead.
The following anecdote, related by Padre Martini, page 437 of the third volume of his History of Music, may be here to the point. It is of Antonio Bernacchi, the most celebrated singer of his day (the beginning of the XVIIIth century), and narrated to him by Bernacchi himself: that, as he happened to be on a journey in Tuscany, near a monastery of Trappist monks, he felt a desire to visit it, in order to become acquainted with the way of life of these religious. He entered their church exactly at the time they were singing Tierce. Bernacchi was overcome by the effect of a multitude of voices in such perfect union that they seemed to be only one voice. He admired their precision in the utterance of every syllable, and in the softening, swelling, and sustaining of the voice, that although no more than men, they seemed to him like angels occupied in praising God; whereupon Bernacchi fell into the following soliloquy: “How deceived have I been in myself; I thought that, after a long and diligent application to the art of singing under such a master as Pestocchi, and having the natural gift of a good voice, I might pretend to exercise my profession without any question. How have I been deceived, being obliged to confess that the psalmody of these religious has in it a value and a quality that renders their song superior to mine!”
Dom Martene relates that, in his travels to visit the churches of France, he passed by a church of Benedictine nuns, who met with a patron and benefactor in the following manner: The Duc de Bournonville retiring from Paris in disgrace to “Provins,” on his arrival inquired for the nearest church; and, upon being shown the church of these nuns, he entered it as they were singing Vespers. So charmed was he by the sweetness of their song, that he seemed to himself to be listening to angels, and not to human creatures. On hearing, in an interview that followed, that the community were in debt, he gave the lady abbess an immediate present of one thousand ecus, and ever afterwards continued to be a benefactor to the convent (Voyage Littéraire, etc., part i. p. 79).
Baini (Mem. Stor., vol. ii. p. 122) quotes a letter, which is thus addressed to some English gentlemen who had visited Rome: “To Mr. Edward Grenfield, Fellow of the Royal Academy of London, to Mr. Davis, Mr. Morris, and other learned Englishmen, whose ears have not been altered by fashion, and made obtuse by habit, and who have been more than once heard to say, that they felt themselves more moved by the Gregorian Chant than by all the noisy performances of the greater part of our theatres.”
Nor is this appreciation for Gregorian music confined merely to persons from among the multitude. The following are the sentiments of two of the most distinguished musical scholars of the day:
“All is worthy of admiration in the primitive Roman Chant. The tune of the ‘Kyrie,’ for doubles and feasts of the first class, runs out to some length, and is full of beautiful passages. That of Sundays is shorter and more simple, but not the less full of unction. In both the one and the other it seems impossible to change or to suppress a note without destroying a beautiful idea, where all hangs so perfectly together. With what natural, or rather inspired genius, has not this Kyrie, confined as it is to such narrow limits, been conceived to form a whole so complete” (Fetis, Des Origines du Plain Chant, ou Chant Ecclésiastique).
“Musicians may oppose and contradict what I say as they please; they have full liberty; but I am not afraid to assert that the ancient melodies of the Gregorian Chant are inimitable. They may be copied, adapted to other words, heaven knows how, but to make new ones equal to the first, that will never be done” (Baini, Memorie Storiche di P. Palæstrina, vol. ii. p. 81).
And again, describing Palæstrina as engaged in the task of revising the Gradual, he says: “But the Gregorian chant claims a character wholly its own, has a beauty and a force proper only to itself. It is what it is, and does not change. But to remain ever the same, and to be susceptible of a change contrary to its nature, would be impossible. In a word, it may be said that heaven formed it through the early fathers, and then fractured the mould.”
“Palæstrina applied himself with the zeal of one who had deeply at heart the majesty of divine worship. But having completed the first part, De Tempore, his pen fell from his hands, and more wearied than Atlas under the weight of the sky, he abandoned his attempt; and nothing was found at his death but the incomplete manuscript.… And thus we may see the greatest man ever known in the art and science of figured music become less than a mere baby when he wished to lay a profane hand on the fathers and doctors of the Holy Roman Church. …And how wise at last was he, after having fruitlessly attempted in so many ways to correct this divine song according to human ideas, to abandon the enterprise for ever, and to conceal up to his death the useless result of his labor, which he himself acknowledged to be unworthy of being made public” (Mem. Stor. vol. ii. p. 123).
Next, as slightly illustrating its power of pleasing even a modern European people, and that in contrast with the most elaborate products of modern art; in 1846, at the centenary Jubilee of the Feast of Corpus Christi at Liege, Mendelssohn’s Lauda Sion was sung at one of the offices. Yet the general opinion of the people who heard it (and who, by the by, from its constant use in processions, are well acquainted with the old Gregorian melody of the same sequence) was, that it was not to be compared to the ritual Lauda Sion. At the Metropolitan Church of Mechlin, on Easter Day, 1846, the students of the great and little seminaries united together to sing at the evening Benediction. The pieces sung were from Italian masters, Baini and a second, and the third was the Gregorian sequence, Victimæ Paschali Laudes. One of the singers himself told me that the people thought nothing comparable to the old melody, sung in simple unison.
The Collegiate Church of S. Gudule, in the city of Brussels, may also be cited as an existing proof of the power of the old chant. Whoever has heard the Requiem Mass and the Te Deum sung in that church by two hundred voices in unison, must cease to think of the idea of its popularity as if it were strange.
In the church of Notre Dame, in Paris, the simple melody of the Stabat Mater is sometimes sung by a congregation of four thousand persons, at the conclusion of the annual retreats, with an effect that can never be forgotten.
Again, as has been already said, the Requiem Mass, which took place in the Champs Elysées after the terrible days of June (1848), it was proposed that the Mass should be sung in music; but the Republican authorities, in conjunction with the bishops, forbade it, and the Plain Chant was ordered instead. Tens of thousands joined in singing the Dies iræ, and their voices seemed to rend the heavens.
In Germany, among the melodies that pass by tradition among the people, are many that are derived from the Ritual Chant of different localities, as may be seen by merely looking into their numerous printed collections of these melodies.
The Gregorian modes, again, as has been said, are far from being unpopular in their nature. Many of the Scotch and Irish melodies, traditional among the people, belong to neither of the modern major nor minor modes. The French in Egypt found many traditional Arab melodies in the Gregorian modes; and no doubt the same would be found to be the case over the whole world.
The chant of the Vespers is exceedingly popular among our congregations in England, though they are acquainted with it only in a form of disguise, shorn of its antiphons, and encrusted with the deposit of a long bandying about from organist to organist, like Ulysses, returning home in rags and tatters after his many years’ wandering. Why should not the popularity of the whole, when it shall become known, by the kind efforts of such as will feel a pleasure in devoting themselves to teach it to the poor, be believed in, upon the augury of the known popularity of a mutilated and tattered part?
This idea has long since found a home among English Catholics. Charles Butler, Esq., in his Memoirs of English, Irish, and Scottish Catholics, after reviewing the chief Catholic composers of modern music, says: “But, with great veneration for the composers and performers of these sacred strains, the writer has no hesitation in expressing a decided wish that the ancient Gregorian Chant was restored to its pristine honors.” And again:
“There (in the church) let that music, and that music only, be performed, which is at once simple and solemn, which all can feel, and in which most can join; let the congregation be taught to sing it in exact unison, and with subdued voices; let the accompaniment be full and chaste; in a word, let it be the Gregorian Chant” (vol. iv. p. 466).
Benedict XIV., after expressing his own decided opinion of the superior fitness of the Plain Chant, accounts, by means of it, for a fact, that those who think the Gregorian Chant an unpopular one, would do well to study. This, says he, is the chief cause why the people are so much more fond of the churches of the Regulars than the Seculars. And then he quotes a very remarkable passage from Jacques Eveillon: “This titillation of harmonized music is held very cheap by men of religious minds in comparison with the sweetness of the Plain Chant and simple Psalmody. And hence it is that the people flock so eagerly to the churches of the monks, who, taking piety for their guide in singing the praises of God with a saintly moderation, after the counsel of the Prince of Psalmists, skilfully sing to their Lord as Lord, and serve God as God, with the utmost reverence” (Encyclical Letter, p. 3).
The same Dom Martene who has been quoted above, often speaks, in the narrative of his journey, of the different churches which he visited, and in which he was present at the celebration of any of the solemn offices of the Liturgy. The following passages are specimens of his opinion on the comparative merits of the Plain Chant. Describing the Cathedral of Sens he says: “Pour ce qui est de l’Eglise Cathedrale, elle est grande,” etc. “La musique en est proscrite, on n’y chante qu’un beau Plain Chant, qui est beaucoup plus agréable que la musique.”—“As regards the cathedral church, it is large and spacious, and figured music is banished from it. Nothing but a beautiful Plain Chant is sung in it, which is far more agreeable than music” (Part i. p. 60). Again, speaking of the Cathedral of Vienne (Dauphinois), he says: “L’Office s’y fait en tout temps avec une gravité qui ne peut s’exprimer. On en bannit entièrement l’orgue et la musique; mais le Plain Chant est si beau, et se chante avec tant de mesure, qu’il n’y a point de musique qui en approche.”—“The divine Office is sung there with a gravity that cannot be surpassed. The organ and all figured music are banished from it; but the Plain Chant is so beautiful, and is sung with so much rhythm, that there is no music that can come near to it” (Part i. p. 256).
Even Rousseau, in his Lexicon Musicum, article, “Plain Chant,” says: “It is a name that is given in the Roman Church at this day to the Ecclesiastical Chant. There remains to it enough of its former charms to be far preferable, even in the state in which it now is (he is speaking of the falsified French edition of it), for the use to which it is destined, than the effeminate and theatrical, frothy and flat, pieces of music which are substituted for it in many churches, devoid of all gravity, taste, and propriety, without a spark of respect for the place they dare thus to profane.”
Here it occurs to reply to a remark that I have seen made, which unless it be founded, as is not impossible, on some very faulty version of the Roman Chant, seems to betray some little inexperience. After having admitted a superiority of the Gregorian melodies for hymns written in the classical metre, the writer proceeds to say: “But, on the other hand, let us take any one of the hymns of the church, in which, though the words are Latin, the classical quantities are wholly disregarded, while the verse proceeds in the measured beat of modern poetry, and the lines are all in rhyme, and let us make an effort to sing it to an unmutilated Gregorian Chant. What an absurd effect is the result! The ear is distracted between two principles of rhythm and versification. The structure of the poetry forces us, whether we will or no, to mark the divisions of the song in accordance with its beat and its rhyme; while the unmeasured, unmarked cadences of the music refuse to yield any willing obedience, and produce no melodious effect, except at an entire sacrifice of the principles on which they were framed. A wretched, hybrid, unmeaning series of sounds is the result, neither recitative nor song, neither classic nor rhyming, neither Gregorian nor modern, but wholly barbarous.”
Now, if the writer of this passage be here speaking of the adapting of melodies to words for which they were not composed, he is himself to blame for a result of which he is the sole cause. Dress a city alderman in the uniform of an officer of marines, and send him afloat on duty, if you will, but do not lay it to his charge if the result is neither very civic nor very nautical. But if the writer in question really means his words to apply to the melodies to which these hymns are set in the Roman Chant-books, he is confronted by the fact that, among these, and they are now but few, chiefly in the Feast of Corpus Christi, are found the gems of Gregorian melody. Who is there that has heard the Ave verum and the Adoro te, and the other hymns of S. Thomas on the Blessed Sacrament, sung to their original melodies, without feeling their exquisite rhythm and expressiveness? Again, the Gregorian melody of the Dies iræ, in the Requiem Mass, has Châteaubriand’s express commendation as among the most masterly adaptations of music to words. Lastly, the touching and most plaintive melody of the Stabat Mater, which brings tears into the eyes of all who hear and sing it.
If space permitted, it would be no very difficult task to multiply such proofs and examples as these of an inherent popularity, both in the general character or effect, and in the particular parts of the Ritual Chant. But I think enough has been adduced to indicate that the popularity is one that is co-extensive with mankind, that it finds an echo in the human heart of every age, nation, or state of life. Of course, God, who gave the ecclesiastical song to work a work of mercy among the people, contemplates it as capable of popularity; and I think we have evidence that this part of the divine idea is really fulfilled by the Ritual chant. And, without prejudging the result, I would wait to see whether indications of a similar popularity can be found for the works of art with which I have been engaged in comparing it. However, I think this is impossible; and for this reason: Things come to be popular by being often repeated; and suitableness for perpetual repetition is the test of popularity. But if I am not mistaken, the perpetual production of novelties, which appear and then disappear, is a first and indeed indispensable principle in the mode of dealing with these works of art.
SECURITY AGAINST ABUSE.
All things human are certainly liable to abuse and degeneracy, yet all are very far from being on a par with each other in this respect. In all human undertakings, order, discipline, and system are the divinely-appointed securities against abuse. Now, the Ritual Chant, as all who are acquainted with it know, is, like the ceremonial of the church, a perfect system. It has two large folio volumes of music, embracing the whole annual range of canonical offices, and a body of rules prescribing even the minutiæ of their celebration. On the other hand, the modern art has no such system, no such rules. Its use is, in practice, altogether subject to the dominion of individual taste. The choir-master who likes Haydn’s music, takes Haydn; another, who likes Mozart, takes Mozart; another, who takes a trip on the continent, comes back with the newest French, German, or Italian novelties. I am not here insisting on the singularly small portion of the liturgy that is set to compositions of modern art, but on the entire absence of all system in the use of the pieces themselves, on the complete subjection of the whole thing to individual caprice and taste.
It is quite true that the Bride of Christ is encompassed with variety (circumdata varietate). But the church is also the kingdom of the God of order; and I apprehend that between the varietate characteristic of such a kingdom, and the variety actually introduced into Catholic worship by the unrestrained dominion of individual taste in music, there is the widest possible difference.
The obvious exposure of modern music to the easiest inroads of every kind of abuse, in consequence of this absence of system, has been felt by its best-disposed advocates; and an able writer has maintained the notion, that the compulsory use of the organ alone, to the exclusion of all orchestral instruments, especially the violin, would be an all-sufficient safeguard. But it is not very easy to see upon what principle orchestral instruments are to be excluded, when the whole thing is built on the principle of the supremacy of individual taste; and even could they be excluded, it would still remain to be seen whether the organ itself were really the impeccable instrument it is represented.
Let us hear a witness in the Established Church, where, according to this writer, its dominion has been so unexceptionable. In the Ecclesiastic for July, 1846, the following remarks occur: “How intolerable to such saints (Ambrose and Gregory) would have been the attempt to give effect, as it is called, to the Psalms, by the organist’s skilful management of the stops. What would they have thought of the mimic roll of the water-floods, and the crash of the thunder, and the hail rattling on the ground, the lions roaring after their prey down in the bass, and the birds singing among the branches, represented by a twittering among the small pipes? From a heathen poet these gentry might learn a lesson of reverence—Virgil seems to make it a point of natural piety not to counterfeit the thunder of the Highest—
“Vidi et crudeles dantem Salmonea pœnas,
Dum flammas Jovis et sonitus imitatur Olympi.
Demens qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen
Ære et cornipedum pulsu simularat equorum.”
Æneid, vi. 585.
A real thunderstorm interrupting one of these mimic tempests on the organ, makes one feel the profaneness of the imitation.”
Now, it is fair to ask, if the organ is to be the guardian of the sobriety and gravity of modern art, who is to keep the organ in order?
“Quis custodiet ipsum
Custodem?”
There were great abuses in the use of modern art at the Council of Trent. Yet the fathers of the council declined altogether to forbid its use. They tacitly allowed its continuance, as it had come into existence, and could not be removed without serious evils. And with regard to the favorable light in which its use was viewed by some of the bishops of that council, and by some other men of authority who have since spoken in its commendation, it should be borne in mind that all such commendation has had annexed to it the condition, provided that such music be grave and decent, that the meaning of the divine words be not disguised in it, and that it possess nothing in common with the theatre (Benedict XIV., Encyclical Letter). Of which conditions the subsequent history of the use of modern music in the church is, to say the least, a very inadequate fulfilment, as the ensuing testimony will show.
Bishop Lindanus, quoted in the same Encyclical Letter on the subject of church music, says: “I know that I have often been in churches where I have listened most attentively to learn what it was that was being sung, without being able to understand one single word.”
Salvator Rosa, the celebrated painter of the XVIIth century, gives the following account of the church music of his day—the middle of the century:
“An effeminate and lascivious music is the only thing that people at all care for. The race of musicians eats up all before it, and princes do not scruple to lay burdens on their subjects to glut them according to their desires. The churches are made to serve as nests for these owls. The Psalms become blasphemies in passing through the mouths of these wretches; and no scandal can equal that of the Mass and Vespers, barked, brayed, and roared by such fellows. The air is so filled with their bellowings that the church resembles Noah’s ark. At one time it is a Miserere sung to a chaconne (a sort of polka of that day); at another, some other part of the Office adapted to music in the style of a farce.” (Quoted in M. Danjou’s Revue de Musique, 3d year, page 119.)
Again, Abbot Gerbert, in 1750, complains so deeply of the degradation of the church music of his day as to say, in the preface to his learned work De Musica Sacra, that the evil had grown to so great a pitch that, unless God in his mercy applied the remedy, which he had daily besought him to do, all was over (actum est) with the decorum and solemnity of the Catholic worship.
Yet this result ought really not to be a matter of surprise; for how can it be expected that the majesty and solemnity of worship should long survive when its music is left to the control of individual tastes?
Musicians, therefore, when they plead for modern music, must plead for it as it exists in an ideal form in their own minds; and the advocate for the use of the Ritual Chant objects to it, not as it might be if every organist and company of singers were other Davids and the sons of Asaph, but for being what he hears it to be with his own ears wherever he goes; for being what he knows it to have been, and still to be, from the testimony of writers and travellers; and, lastly, from what he foresees it will be to the end of time. The one has before his mind’s eye the harmonies of heaven and the choirs of angels, and hopes to attain to these with the elements of earth. A vision of glory flits before him, and, forgetting that the earth is peopled by sinners, he thinks it may at once be grasped. The other remembers the sad reality of what it is; he thinks of the churches in which he has been present, where he has heard the sounds of the theatre—the fiddle, the horn, and the kettle-drum; where he has heard the song of dancing-girls rather than of worshippers, and choruses rather of idolaters than of men believing in the mysteries at which they were present.
Ἠΰτε περ κλαγγὴ γεράνων πέλει οὐρανόθι πρὸ,
Αἵτ’ ἐπεὶ οὖν χειμῶνα φύγον καὶ ἀθέσφατον ὄμβρον.
Κλαγγῇ ταίγε πέτονται ἐπ’ ὠκεανοῖο ῥοάων,
Ἀνδράσι Πυγμαίοισι φόνον καὶ κῆρα φέρουσαι.
Iliad, b. iii.
Or, in the more humble words of an English poet—
“As if all kinds of noise had been
Contracted into one loud din.”
Hudibras, canto ii. book ii.
And I would ask, considering the endlessly varying caprices of the human mind, how any thing else except confusion and disorder is to be expected from the principle of the supremacy of individual taste; and if music in the Christian Church is to be regarded as called to fulfil the intention of a God of order, in what way it is expected that this end will ever be realized, where the safeguards of a fixed order and system are discarded, and individual discretion enthroned in their stead?
LAST POINT OF THE COMPARISON.
Catholicity of the Ecclesiastical Song, or its Companionship of the Catholic Doctrines over the whole Globe.
This last point of the comparison, though far from the least weighty, to those who will fairly consider it, may happily be much more shortly stated. The Prophet Malachi predicted that, from the rising of the sun to its setting, God’s name should be great among the Gentiles, and a “pure offering” (munda oblatio) should be offered to him; a prediction fulfilled by the fact of the Christian missionaries having carried the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass over the globe. If, then, there be a song which has ever been the faithful companion of this Holy Sacrifice, wherever it has been conveyed; that has ever been present with it when solemnly offered; which has survived the passing away of generations; has undergone no change, but is now what it was of old; is the same to the priests of one nation which it is to those of another—if such a song there be, it will hardly be disputed that such is an accredited and authentic song of the Christian kingdom. Yet such is the Ritual Chant, which, at least in its well-known parts, has literally overspread the whole globe. A French traveller in Russia, finding there the Ecclesiastical Chant, and that the Greek Church had preserved it equally with the Latin, speaks of it as a part of the “Dogme Catholique”—these church traditions of song seeming to him as great a bondage as the church traditions of faith. (See a very well written paper in the Ecclesiastic for July, 1846, a magazine conducted by clergy of the Established Church.)
If, then, the advocate for modern music be unable to point to any such fact as this for his art—if he be compelled to acknowledge that it is necessarily confined to people either of European origin or education; that it is no song for the Caffre of Africa, the Tartar of Asia, the savage of Australia, the Red Indian of North America, the Esquimaux, the Paraguay Indian—nothing but the luxury of the European; there can be little room to doubt that, on this last particular also, the Ritual Chant is the only adequate fulfilment of the divine idea.