SUBMISSION.
When the wide earth seems cold and dim around me,
And even the sunshine is a mocking thing;
When the deep sorrow of my soul hath bound me,
As the gloom swept from a dark angel’s wing;
When faces, dearer to my soul than being,
Like shadows faint and frozen past me flee,
I turn to thee—Almighty and all-seeing
God of the universe!—I turn to thee!
When in my chamber, lone and lowly kneeling,
I pour before thee thoughts that inly burn;
I lay before thy shrine that wealth of feeling
Whose ashes sleep in my heart’s funeral urn:
I pray thee, in a mercy yet untasted,
To raise my spirit from its dark despair;
To give back prospects crushed, and genius wasted,
That have no memory save in that wild prayer.
It may not be! O Father! high and holy,
Not thus thy chosen bow before thy shrine;
But with submission, beautiful and lowly,
Asking no boon save through thy will divine;
Bearing with faith the Saviour’s cross of sorrow,
Filling his bleeding wounds with tears of balm,
Seeking his cankering crown of thorns to borrow—
To make them worthy of the pilgrim’s palm.
THE ROMAN RITUAL AND ITS CHANT
COMPARED WITH THE WORKS OF MODERN MUSIC.
II.—CONTINUED.
RESPECTIVE AUTHORITY, ECCLESIASTICAL AND MORAL.
Natural religion attaches the idea of authority to God. God is King, “Dominus Exercituum,” the Lord of Hosts, the one supreme absolute source of all power and authority. Moreover, society implies authority, in order that it may exist. In social life there cannot be discordant purposes and independent wills. Now, God called all created society into being out of nothing, and through the principle of authority and subjugation of the will maintains his work in love, happiness, and mutual concord. And in the scheme of redemption he has sent his church, a working society upon earth, to heal by her sweet and divine yoke of a lawful authority the social anarchies and disorders of a fallen race. In the church, then, as sent by him who is the absolute source of authority and order, governed by him, and in continual correspondence with him through prayer, we expect to find all her important elements and modes of acting upon, and of dealing with, mankind under the direction of the principle of authority; and since God declares of himself that he is a God of order, and the “author, not of confusion, but of peace in the churches” (1 Cor. xiv. 33), we conclude that God will contemplate sacred song in the Christian Church as subject to the principle of authority, as an instrument placed by himself at the disposal of the church for carrying out her divine work, and as such to be used, under the guidance and direction of the authority which governs her.
To put, then, what is meant by the claim about to be made that the Ritual or Gregorian Chant possesses this authority, in its true light, it would be a misconception to suppose that the notion of a positive authority is identical with that of absolute monopoly. The positive authority of the chant of the Ritual by no means implies that the use of modern music cannot, under certain conditions, enjoy a just toleration, as will be plain from an instance. The sick man who is slowly recovering from a severe disease may be fully aware of the positive authority which his physician has for many reasons attached to a particular rule of diet, and may yet have the permission occasionally to deviate from it. But now, if it be asked, what is this authority which is claimed for the Roman Ritual chant-books? it may be replied, if a spectator, at a review of British military, were to ask what authority the infantry regiments had for wearing red coats, he, I suppose, would be answered at once, that in a disciplined army the regimental uniform could not be otherwise than authorized. In the same manner, in an organized state of society so perfect as that of the Catholic Church, the mere existence of such song-books as the Gradual and Antiphonary, and their immemorial use in connection with the Missal and Breviary, necessarily implies their authority. It would be in place here, if space permitted, to cite the various archiepiscopal and episcopal synods that have made these or similar song-books the subjects of their legislation, providing, down to the minutest details, for the different questions which might be liable to arise out of their use. But it may here suffice to refer to the fact, not perhaps sufficiently known, that the whole of the Roman Liturgy, the entire Breviary, the whole of the Missal, except the few parts which the celebrant himself recites in an undertone of voice at the altar, has its proper notation in music, which every efficient choir-singer and celebrant priest is required to know, as the necessary accompaniment of his functions.
The authority, therefore, of the Ritual chant is to a considerable extent identified with that of the Ritual itself in the character of the authorized form of its solemn celebration. No other music has been at any time published by the church. No other is co-extensive with the Ritual; and the use, therefore, of any other, however permissible it may have become through force of circumstances, can only be regarded as a deviation from perfect Ritual rule.
That such was the view of the fathers of the Council of Trent is evident from the fact, that they seriously debated whether it might not be advisable to put an end to the scandalous musical excesses that had found their way into the church through the partial abandonment of the Ritual chant, by rendering it henceforth imperative. But though this measure was vehemently urged by more than one father as the best remedy for the evil complained of, still the father of the council at length declined to pass the decree. They seemed to have judged it to be on the whole wiser to leave the Ritual chant to its claims as the acknowledged and authorized song of the Liturgy, and to have thought that the remedy required was rather to be sought for in prayer to God to give his people a better and more sober mind than in a severe and peremptory legislation, which might end in provoking the further and worse evil of a more formal and open disobedience.
But to return to the subject of the positive ecclesiastical authority of the Ritual chant-books. The truth and the reason of this authority appear at once, on reflecting how impossible it is that a kingdom directed by the Spirit of God, under the government of a divinely founded hierarchy, should employ sacred song to the extent which the Catholic Church does, without a sanctioned and authenticated form of it. That this form should be absolutely imperative, to the rigid exclusion of every other, could occur to no one to maintain. But still, without an acknowledged body and form of song, of such indisputable authority as to claim the willing confidence of those whose calling is with sacred song, its efficacy is certainly lamed and its mission impeded. Men that have work to do in God’s vineyard require to know not merely the general truth that what they are engaged with is in the main good, but they also desire to know that the blessing of God is with the manner of their work, and the means they employ. Now, such confidence nothing but an authorized body of song can supply.
For what reason do we trust the church in her definitions of faith? Because we feel our own weakness; because we feel how impossible it is for the mind to repose on its own conclusions. We know, from a voice that speaks from within the heart, that our heavenly Father could not have given a revelation without the conditions necessary to fit it to meet our wants. And because we feel the need of a positive authority in matters of faith, we believe it to have been given, and that the Catholic Church is the depository of it, as alone possessing the satisfactory credentials. Now, although it may be true that an equal need for a positive authority in matters of song cannot be asserted, yet if ecclesiastical music do really possess those many healing virtues which at once betoken its divine origin and heavenly mission, it may be asked, is it a wise, is it a self-distrusting, is it a pious course for each individual to imagine himself free from such an authority? Is it not rather true that, in proportion as his sense of the heavenly mission of the ecclesiastical chant deepens, the more vivid will become his perception of the need of an express living authority to which the individual can commit himself, in perfect confidence that that song which a divinely directed hierarchy shall put forth and acknowledge as their own work, will be sure to carry along with it the blessing of God upon its use.
I do not see how a reasonable person can refuse to admit that such is the positive authority attaching to the liturgical song-books, and that it is to the devout and skilful use of these books by her own priests, cantors, and devout people, that the church mainly looks for the fulfilment of the divine idea with respect to sacred music. How otherwise will you account for their existence? to what purpose has the wisdom of saints who contributed and collected their contents been exerted? Why has the church not let the Gregorian system of music alone, as she has the modern? why has she formed a complete system and body of song in the one, and not in the other, if her work, when complete, has no positive authority? Or will the advocate of modern art say, that this her work is defective and superannuated; and that it is time it should be locked up, out of the way, in collections of antiquities, and cease to be an offence to ears polite? Yet, if such be the case, an abrogation is not to be presumed; it must be proved. But the fact is, that the Council of Trent caused the song-books to be reissued, and directed the ecclesiastical chant to be taught in the seminaries of the clergy.[139] And when those very canonized saints, of whose conditional approbation of the use of modern art so very much is made, came to the dignity of obtaining a record in the church’s song of her warriors departed, here was surely a fit occasion, if, indeed the church had abandoned her former song, and disembarrassed herself of its defective scale and wearisome monotony, to call for the charms of modern art, that at least it might be identified with its votaries. Yet with this very natural supposition contrast the fact that the Ritual chant and its singers continue year by year to hand on the memory of the virtues of S. Philip Neri and S. Charles Borromeo; while for these, its supposed patrons, modern art has not even a little memorial. To the Ritual song it leaves what would seem to be to itself the unwelcome task of keeping up the record of their sanctity and their example.
Nor do I see to what purpose a reference can be made to the anecdote of Pope Marcellus’ approbation of Palestrina’s composition, since named Missa Papæ Marcelli, with the view to establish an authority for the system of modern music; for the idea of deviation from the order of the Ritual chant once admitted to toleration, nothing can be more natural than that a pontiff, equally with any other person, might come to express his very high commendation of a particular composition. And if we allow that such a commendation is not without its weight, it would surely be a violent inference, singularly betraying the absence of better argument, if an instance of such approbation of a particular work were to be claimed as an ex cathedra legislative authorization of a whole system of music to which it cannot be said to belong.[140] For it should not be forgotten that Palestrina’s music is essentially different from the existing system of modern art, inasmuch as his works are either mere harmonies upon the Canto Fermo, or else consist of themes borrowed from it, which frequently preserve that distinct tonality of the modes of the ecclesiastical chant which modern art has quite abandoned.
It has been objected, “that an assertion that the church does not authorize the use of modern harmony, because she has not herself furnished her children with any individual compositions, is about as reasonable a conclusion as the notion that she does not authorize and sanction sermons, because their composition is left to the judgment, good or bad, of private clergymen.” But the objection fails, as there is a total want of parity between the office of singer and preacher. The preacher passes through a long course of training to the state of priesthood, before he receives a license to preach; and every person in the church who has the license to preach, is to be presumed to be duly qualified both to make known the divine law and recommend it by his words and example. This is not the case with the singer, who is not necessarily even in the minor orders, and whose duty is merely to sing what is placed before him correctly and with feeling. If the education of the priests were left to the same hazard and caprice that would seem to be desired for the choice of music for the church, it is easy to imagine the result. But very far from this, the most thoughtful care is bestowed by the church on the training of her future ministers: obliged to fixed and unalterable dogmas of the faith, versed in one sacred volume, bound to one uniform office of daily prayer and pious reading, trained in an almost uniform system of studies and external discipline, the preacher comes forth the living organ of a divine system, fitted to be the spokesman of a kingdom that is endowed with the power of drawing its manifold materials to a concordant and coherent system, and moulding multiform and varied minds to a unity of type and consistency of action. “Such was the strict subordination of the Catholic Church,” says the historian Gibbon (Hist., ch. XX.), “that the same concerted sounds might issue at once from a hundred pulpits of Italy or Egypt, if they were tuned by the master hand of the Roman or Alexandrian primate.” Carry the same principle of system and order into the song of the church, and it will be found impossible to stop short of the Ritual chant-books.
2. With regard to the moral authority of the chant: moral authority, in the legislation of the church, is ever a necessary companion of any act of her legislative authority. We should not, however, overlook what seems to be a distinct element of moral authority, in the historical connection of the Ritual chant with the generations now past and gone to their rest. It was their song, the song of saints long ago departed. It is the song which S. Augustine sang, and which drew forth his tears: “Quantum flevi in hymnis et canticis, suave sonantis ecclesiæ tuæ vocibus commotus acriter; voces illæ influebant auribus meis, et eliquebatur veritas tua in cor meum, et ex ea æstuabat. Inde affectus pietatis, et currebant lacrymæ, et bene mihi erat cum illis”—“How often have these sacred hymns and songs moved me to tears, as I have been carried away with the sweetly musical voices of thy church. How these sounds used to steal upon my ear, and thy truth to pour itself into my heart, which felt as if it were set on fire! Then would come tender feelings of devotion, my tears would flow, and I felt that all was then well with me” (Confess. lib. vi. cap. 6). It was the song of S. Augustine, the apostle of Saxon England, of S. Stephen the Cistercian, and of all the holy warriors of our Isle of Saints. Nor is it only the song which the saints sang, but it is the song that sings of the saints—the only song which cares to pour the sweet odor of their memory over the year, or to spread around them its melodious incense, as they too surround the throne of their Lord and King.
Again: a moral authority attaches to the Roman Ritual chant in the very name Gregorian, by which it is so generally known. S. Gregory was the first to collect it from the floating tradition in which it existed in the church, and to digest it into that body of annual song for the celebration of the Ritual which has come down to us. This work came to be called after him, Cantus Gregorianus, and forms at this day the substance of the Roman chant-books, enriched and added to by the new offices and Masses that have since then been incorporated in the Ritual. Nothing is known with any positive historical certainty as to the authorship of the several pieces in the song-books; but as to the main fact, that the music of the Ritual is the work of the greatest saints of the church—of the Popes Leo, Damasus, Gelasius, and S. Gregory himself—of many holy monks in the retirement of their cloisters—history leaves no doubt. This fact, then, is beyond dispute: that the Roman Ritual chant, which the present inquiry concerns, is the creation of the saints of the Roman Church, for the decorum and solemnity of the public celebration of the Liturgy.
And now, to come to the comparison: if to the adequate realization of the divine idea of sacred song, as an instrument placed at the disposal of the church, to aid in carrying out her work of sanctification and instruction, the notion of a definite authority, both defining what it should be, and prescribing and regulating the manner of its use, necessarily belongs, the conclusion I think is that this authority is found attaching itself to the Ritual chant; and, from the nature of the case, it is incapable of attaching itself to the works of modern music. First, because it would seem to be an inseparable principle as regards their use, that every individual must be at liberty to ask for or to demand their employment according to his own pleasure; and secondly, because a positive authority can attach to that alone which exists in a definite and tangible shape, which is far from being the case with the works of modern music. They not only do not form a definite collection, but, such as they are, are subject to perpetual change—that which is on the surface to-day and admired, being to-morrow nauseated and condemned; and hence there is no resting point whatever in them for the idea of a positive authority.
And as regards the comparison on the score of moral authority, the attempt to draw it will, I fear, touch upon delicate ground; for, to confess the honest truth, it cannot be drawn without bringing to light the degeneracy of our popular ideas respecting sacred music. Who is there who seriously thinks of claiming for the works of modern music any connection with the saints, past or present? or who is there who either cares to ask for, or to attribute any character of sanctity to its authors? or would even be likely to think very much the more highly of the music if the fact of its saintly origin could be established? And what kind of persons, for the most part, have its authors been? Mozart died rejecting the last sacraments; Beethoven is supposed by his German biographer, Schindler, to have been a pantheist during the greater part of his life; Rink was a Protestant; Mendelssohn a Jew, who cared very little for his Jewish faith; and the different maestri di capella who have been throughout Europe the chief composers of these works, were, for the most part, also the directors of the theatres and opera-houses of their royal patrons.
But enough has been said to make it evident upon how different a footing the chant of the Ritual and the works of modern art respectively stand, as regards moral and ecclesiastical authority.
RESPECTIVE CLAIM TO THE COMPLETENESS AND ORDER OF A SYSTEM.
The idea of a God Incarnate, manifesting himself in the nature of man on earth, necessarily contains the idea of a system and order displayed in his works. All apparent system, it is true, does not necessarily imply God as its author; but absence of system and its consequence, positive confusion and disorder, is undeniably a sign that the mind of the Almighty is not there. If, then, the Catholic Church be the kingdom of God Incarnate, and the abiding-place of his Spirit, it follows that her song is a system, if God is at all to acknowledge it in any respect of his own. But the idea of system leads at once to the Ritual song-books. Modern art has not as yet furnished even the necessary materials out of which to construct a system, not to speak of the hopelessness of forming one, when the materials should exist. Do but remove the Ritual chant from the church, and you remove a wonderful and perfect system, which an order-loving mind takes pleasure in contemplating—one that moves with the ecclesiastical year, that accompanies the Redeemer from the annunciation of his advent, the Ave Maria of his coming in the flesh, to his birth, his circumcision, his manifestation to the Gentiles, his presentation and discourse with the learned doctors in the Temple, his miraculous fast in the companionship of the wild beasts in the wilderness, his last entry into his own city, his betrayal, his institution of the Holy Eucharist, his agony in the garden, his death upon the cross, his resurrection from the dead, his ascension into heaven—a system of song which places around him, as jewels in a crown, his chosen and sainted servants, as the stars which God set in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth. Cœli enarrant gloriam Dei, et opera manuum ejus annuntiat firmamentum—“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork” (Ps. xviii.) Yet if we saw the heavens only in the way in which we are treated to the performances of modern music, the greater and the lesser light occasionally changing places, after the manner of the vicissitudes of Mozart and Haydn, the planets moving out of their orbits in indeterminate succession, at the caprice of some archangel, as the organist changes his motets and introits, the Psalmist would hardly have spoken of the “firmament showing God’s handiwork.” Where is there a trace of order and system in the use of the works of modern art? Where is the musician who regards “duplex,” “semiduplex,” or “simplex”? Mozart in one church, Haydn in another, Beethoven in a third, and a host of others whose name is Legion, taken like lots from a bag, as whim or fancy may at the moment direct, like the chaos described by the poet, where
“Callida cum frigidis pugnant, humentia siccis,
Mollia cum duris, sine pondere habentia pondus.”
—Ovid, Metam.
But to approach the comparison. If in the divine idea of the Christian song there is necessarily contained the notion of a working and efficient system, the simple truth is, that there is no such system, either in the works of modern music themselves, or in the manner of their use. On the one side is the important fact, that the modern art of music leaves the vastly larger portion of the Ritual without any music at all, embracing positively not more than its merest fraction; on the other, the equally great fact of a total absence of any thing like rule to determine their selection. As a working system, then, full and complete in all its points, the Ritual chant stands alone the only realization of that part of the divine idea which contemplates order and system in the use of Christian song.
RESPECTIVE MORAL FITNESS: I. AS A SACRIFICIAL SONG; II. AS A SONG FOR THE OFFICES OF THE CHURCH.
I. As a Sacrificial Song.
It has been already remarked that ecclesiastical song is not everything or anything that is beautiful in music, nor merely a work of art. It is, strictly speaking, a sacrificial chant, the song of those engaged in offering sacrifice to God, Tibi sacrificabo hostiam laudis. Such a song is obviously not any kind of song, but one that possesses a moral type and character, rendering it a fit companion for the holy and bloodless victim offered on the Christian altar; becoming an offering, offered not to man, but to the ears of the Most High, and akin to the solemnity of its subject—redemption from sin and death through the blood and sufferings of a sinless victim, the crucified Son of God. The divine idea may then, I think, be said to contemplate sacred song as possessing a sacrificial character.
And the reason, if required, will appear, on considering to how great an extent music possesses the remarkable gift of absorbing and becoming possessed with an idea. When song has been successfully united to language, the ideas contained in the latter are found to take possession of the music, and to form the sound or tune into an image and reflection of themselves, in a manner almost analogous to the way in which the mind within moulds the outward features of the face, so as to make them an index and expression of itself. What I mean by this alleged power of music to absorb, and afterwards to express, ideas, even those the most opposite to each other, may be exemplified, if an instance be wanted, by contrasting any popular melody from the Roman Gradual, as the Dies Iræ, or the Stabat Mater, with one of our popular street tunes, “Cherry ripe,” or “Jim Crow”; and it will be seen at once, on humming over these tunes, with what perfect truth and to how great an extent music is able to ally itself to the most opposite ideas, and how, through the ear, it has the power, not merely to convey them to the mind, but to leave them there, firmly and vividly impressed. If, then, by virtue of this power, music may, on the one hand, become the channel of the most exquisite profaneness in divine worship, so it certainly may, on the other, contribute wonderfully to its majesty and power of attraction. And since the music of the field of battle, the military march, and the roll of the drum, has a character not shared by other kinds, as the song of the banquet, and of the dance, of the drunkard over his cups, of the peasant at his plough, of the sailor at sea, of the village maiden at her home, have each their own stamp and form: so also in the song of Christian worship, God will regard it as the song of men offering sacrifice to himself, as having a character inherent in its subject—the life, sufferings, and death of him who died to take away the sins of the world—in a word, as a sacrificial chant.
Now that a sacrificial chant has in all ages accompanied the offering of sacrifice, is a truth to which history, if examined, will be found to bear abundant testimony. In the sacrifice described by Virgil in the Æneid,
“pueri innuptæque puellæ
Sacra canunt.”
When, at the command of Nehemias, on the return of the captive Jews from Babylon, sacrifice was solemnly offered after their custom in Jerusalem, the priests, it is said (2 Machab. i. 30), sang psalms until the burnt-offering was wholly consumed. Nor is it the whole truth to say that this sacrificial chant has passed over in its more perfect reality to the Christian Church, but even in the Song of Heaven among the redeemed, the sacrificial character still continues, a point well worthy of the notice of those who are so confident that the type of the modern music is alone that which is found in heaven. “And they [the twenty-four ancients] sang a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book and open the seals thereof, for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.”
If, then, the ideas which suggest themselves and arise naturally on reflecting upon what, in the nature of things, would be the type and character of the Christian sacrificial chant; if these ideas find themselves absorbed, then expressed, embodied, and brought out into life and being in the music of the ecclesiastical chant; and if, on the other hand, they are not to be found in the variety of modern compositions such as are now in partial use;[141] if it be possible to conceive our Lord’s apostles, upon the supposition that they could return to the earth, standing up in any church of Christendom to sing the song of the Ritual in honor of the Holy Sacrifice, and in company with the celebrant priest;[142] and if there be something obviously unbecoming in the mere thought of their taking bass or tenor in such music as that of Mozart’s or Haydn’s masses, neither of which will be denied; then, I think, it is not extravagant to infer that the Plain Chant of the Ritual is far the most adequate fulfilment of that part of the divine idea which contemplates Christian music as a sacrificial song.
II. Fitness for the Offices of the Church.
With regard to the fitness of the ecclesiastical chant for the offices of the church, it must be remarked, that the ideas of the modern musician touching the use of music in the church are very widely removed from those of the fathers of the church. In their idea, a church-singer would somewhat answer to what would be a ballad-singer in the world, inasmuch as he has a great deal to convey to his hearers in the way of narrative. Almighty God has been pleased to work many wonderful works, and the fathers of the church appointed singers for the churches, to celebrate these works in song, in order that the people who came to worship, or even the heathens who came as spectators, might hear and learn something of the works of the Lord Jehovah, into whose house they had come. What can be more reasonable than this? “My song shall be of all thy marvellous works,” says the Psalmist. But, according to the notions of a modern musician, if a Brahmin priest, or the Turkish ambassador, were to come to Mass, and to hear a choral performance, in which the concord of voices should be most ravishingly beautiful, but in which not a single one of the marvellous works of God could be understood from the concert, he is still to consider that he has heard the perfection of Christian music, and ought, according to them, to go away converted. Out of two so contradictory notions one must necessarily be chosen as the one which best answers to the divine idea. And if persons are prepared to say that the ideas of the fathers are become antiquated, and that they would have acted differently had they known better, they are certainly called upon to make this good.
But, in the meantime, it will be both reasonable and pious to acquiesce in the belief that the fathers acted in conformity with the divine idea, and under the direction of God’s Holy Spirit, in appointing a song for the church, in which the marvellous and merciful works of God might be set forth in a charming, becoming, and perfectly intelligible manner, for the instruction of the people. A serious person, when he goes into the house of God, is supposed to go there with the intention of learning something respecting God, and it is to be supposed that Almighty God desires to see every church in such a condition as that the people who frequent it may learn all that they need to know respecting God and his works. To this use the fathers employed chant, and considered that it was, by the will of God, to be employed to this end. If any candid and serious person will take the trouble to examine the language and sentiments of the Ritual apart from its musical notation, he will be struck with it as a complete manual of popular theology. He will see that it is full of the works of God, the knowledge of which is the food of the faithful soul, particularly among the poor and the unlearned. Next let him examine its notation in song, as contained in the Gradual and Antiphonary, and he will be struck with a solemnity, beauty, and force of melody fitted to convey to the people the words of inspiration, to which melody was annexed in order that they might be the better relished, and pass current the more easily. And lastly, let him consider them, in both these respects, as forming one united whole, and he cannot refuse to acknowledge the fitness of the chant which the fathers selected for the purpose they had in view. Musicians must be equitable enough to abstain from complaining of a work on the score of its unisonous recitative character, if they will not be at the pains to understand or to sympathize with the end for which it was formed and destined. Have the fathers ever troubled themselves to criticise what was innocent and allowable in the world’s music? Then why should musicians go out of the way to find imaginary faults with that of which they seem indisposed to consider either the use or the efficacy? The church chant was framed generations before they and their art were known; and it has helped to train up whole nations in the faith, and fulfilled its end to the unbounded satisfaction of the fathers, who adopted, enlarged, and consolidated it into the form in which it has come down to us, and may therefore claim a truce to such criticism.
But here, again, the comparison fails for want of a competitor, and we are again brought back to the fact that the works of modern art embrace too small a fraction of the whole Liturgy to be in a condition to challenge any comparison. And could the comparison be admitted, it would still remain to insist on the equally certain truth of experience that the idea of a lengthened and continual recitation of the works of God, intended to be popularly intelligible, is one unsuited to the employment on any great scale of even the simplest counterpoint vocal harmonies, and fundamentally averse to the prevailing use of the canon and fugue of modern musical science.
RESPECTIVE FITNESS TO PASS AMONG THE PEOPLE AS A CONGREGATIONAL SONG.
Upon this point of the comparison the result, I think, will be tolerably obvious, if it be admitted that the divine idea contemplates the chant of the church as designed to pass to some considerable extent among the people in the form of congregational singing. It will not, however, be out of place to show briefly on what grounds this assumption rests.
1. Almighty God has created in people a strong love for congregational psalmody, and has attached to it peculiar feelings possessed of an influence far more powerful for good than the somewhat isolated pleasure that the musician feels on hearing beautiful artificial music, inasmuch as congregational singing is a common voice of prayer and praise; and being, as Christians, members one of another, in congregational psalmody we gain a foretaste of heaven, where it will be far more perfect.
2. There are obvious benefits arising from it. It is an union of prayer and praise, and as such is more powerful with God. It kindles in the individual a livelier sense of Christian fellowship. It is a voice that expresses the union of the many members in the one body; many voices, one sound.
3. The argument from history. The worship of God has always been that of congregational psalmody; and where trained choirs of singers existed, their song was always such as to admit of the people at times taking part with them. This is an undeniable fact of history. “Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord” (Exodus xv.) “Then sang Israel this song, Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it, etc.” (Numbers xxi. 17). The psalm CXXXV. was composed for the people to sing the chorus. The Book of Psalms is a kind of historical testimony, in many of its passages, to the fact of that congregational song to which it so often exhorts. Fleury, in his History of the Manners of the Jews and Christians (page 143), acknowledges congregational song as a fact among both. He cites the testimony of S. Basil, that all the people in his time sang in the churches—men, women, and children—and he compares their voices to the waters of the sea. S. Gregory of Nazianzen compares them to thunder. But it is impossible to conceive such to have been the practice both of Jews and Christians, without inferring that it was so with the approbation of Almighty God.
4. The apostles and the fathers of the church have sanctioned it. “Teaching and admonishing yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with melody in your hearts unto the Lord” (Col. iii. 16).
“Wherefore, since these things are so, let us with the more confidence give ourselves to the work of song, considering that we have obtained a great grace of Almighty God, to whom it has been given, in company with so many and so great saints, the prophets, and the martyrs, to celebrate the marvellous works of the eternal God.”—An old author in the first volume of Gerbert’s Scriptores Musici.
“Quocunque te vertis, arator stivam tenens Alleluia decantat, sudans messor Psalmis se evocat, et curva attollens vitem falce vinator aliquid Davidicum cantat. Hæc sunt in provincia nostra carmina, hæc ut vulgo dicitur amatoriæ cantationes, hic pastorum sibilus, hæc arma culturæ.”—“Wherever you turn, the laborer at his plough sings an alleluia; the reaper sweating under his work refreshes himself with a psalm: the vinedresser in his vineyard will sing a passage from the Psalmist. These are the songs of our part of the world. These are, as people say, our love-songs. This is the piping of our shepherds, and these are the arms of our laborers.”—S. Jerome, Epist. 17 ad Marcellum.
“Alas!” observes Mgr. Parisis, upon this passage of S. Jerome, “where are now the families who seek to enliven the often dangerous leisure of long winter’s evenings with the songs of the Catholic Liturgy; where are the workshops in which an accent may be heard borrowed from the remembrance of our divine offices; where are the country parishes which are edified and rejoiced by the sweet and pious sounds which in the times of S. Jerome echoed through the fields and vineyards?”[143]
S. Augustine: “As for congregational psalmody, what better employment can there be for a congregation of people met together, what more beneficial to themselves, or more holy and well-pleasing to God, I am wholly unable to conceive?”—Letter to Januarius, towards the end.
A passage of S. Chrysostom, exhorting the people to psalmody, will be found elsewhere. It is unnecessary to do more than to refer to the example of S. Basil and S. Ambrose, encouraging their people in the same manner; to which may be added a passage from the life of S. Germanus:
“Pontificis monitis, psallit plebs, clerus et infans.”
Venantius, vita S. Germani.
Lastly, the moral reason of the thing.
This is expressed by S. Basil in the words: “O wonderful wisdom of the teacher! who hath contrived that we should both sing, and therewith learn that which is good.”
Now, if it be considered that Providence could not possibly have meant that the people at large should be formed into singing classes, in order to be initiated into the mysteries of minim and crotchet, tenor and bass, and that the one only practical means of bringing them to pick up by ear the more popular parts of the church chant is by encouraging, as the system of the Ritual chant does, that clear enunciation of language and melody which easily fixes itself upon the ear, and which the prevalence of unison singing gives;[144] it follows at once that the only hope of procuring general congregational singing in the worship of the Catholic Church lies in the increased use and zealous propagation of the unison execution of the Ritual chant. Experience is clear to the point that the use of the works of modern art, with their rapid movements, elaborate fugues, scientific combinations of sound, necessarily tends to stifle the voices of the people, and this is certainly not the will of our merciful God.
Now, if this be the case, I do not see how we are to avoid the conclusion, that any extensive use of these works of modern art tends to the clear frustration and the making void one great and important popular end, viz., congregational singing, which the divine idea contemplates in the song of the church, and which, in the song of the Ritual, is efficiently realized, as the history of the progress of the faith abundantly testifies. Might it not, then, be well that those who advocate the continued cultivation of these elaborate works of art should consider the full meaning of Mardocheus’ prayer, Ne claudas ora te canentium: “Shut not the mouth of them that sing thy praise, O Lord” (Esther xiii. 17).
RESPECTIVE MORAL INFLUENCE IN THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER.
The influence upon the mind of sounds that habitually surround the ear is a fact well known to all moralists. “Whosoever,” says Plato, in his treatise De Republicâ, quoted by Gerbert, “is in the habit of permitting himself to listen habitually to music, and to allow his mind to be engaged and soothed by it, pouring in the sweet sounds before alluded to through the ears, as through an orifice, soft, soothing, luscious, and plaintive, consuming his life in tunes that fascinate his soul; when he does this to an excess, he then begins to weaken, to unstring, and to enervate his understanding, until he loses his courage, and roots all vigor out of the mind.” Cicero observes, “Nihil tam facile in animos teneros atque molles influere quam varios canendi sonos, quorum vix dici potest quanta sit vis in utramque partem; namque et incitat languentes, et languefacit excitatos, et tum remittit animos, tum contrahit” (lib. ii. De Legibus). These remarks seem very much to have their exemplification at this day in the effeminate tone and temper of polished society in all the nations of Europe, who seem to be befooled with their love for pretty airs and opera music. Now, if the fathers, observing this power of music insensibly to mould and form the character, and acting, as it is more than pious to believe, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that his divine intention might be fulfilled, designed the song of the church to form a character very different from that of the musical voluptuary—one who was to be no cowardly skulker from the good fight of faith, but the soldier of Jesus Christ, the disciple patiently taking up his cross and following his crucified Master—those who do not participate in these ideas ought not to wonder that they find so little in the church chant with which they can sympathize; but above all let them at least have the modesty not to blame the fathers of the church for adapting it, after their wisdom, to a purpose the need for which they do not comprehend. The historian Fleury has a pertinent remark: “Je laisse à ceux qui sont savants en musique à examiner si dans notre Plain Chant il reste encore quelque trace de cette antiquité [he is speaking of the force of character of the old chant]; car notre musique moderne semble en être fort eloignée” (Fleury, Mœurs des Chrétiens, page xliii.)—“I leave to those who are versed in music to determine whether there remain any traces of this ancient vigor in our Plain Chant; for our modern music seems very far from it.”
Is it a thing to be wondered at if the Christian Israel’s Song of the Cross should have in it something a little strange to the ear of Babylon? Or are we to content ourselves with the conclusion that nothing but what is dainty and nice, nothing but that which is as nearly like the world as possible, will go down with Christian people? On the contrary, is it not to be presumed that the multitudes, with whom, in the main, the Christian teacher’s duty lies, are of that sickly, degenerate tone of mind that nauseates the strong, peculiar, and supplicating energy of the ecclesiastical chant?
But on this point the comparison may be drawn in the words of Mgr. Parisis:
“External to the Ritual chant, that is to say, the Gregorian, or Plain Chant, little else is now known except the works of modern music, that is to say, a music essentially favoring what people have agreed to call sensualism. It is this, almost exclusively this, which, under the austere title of sacred music, is sought to be introduced into our sacred offices. Now, without desiring to enter deeply into the matter, we need but few words to point out how grievously it is misplaced.
“Worldly music agitates and seeks to agitate, because the world seeks its pleasure in stir and change. The church, on the contrary, seeks for melodies that pray and incline to prayer. The church cannot wish for any others, since her worship has no other object than prayer.
“In vain will it be said that this is the work of one of the greatest masters, that it is a scientific and a sublime composition; it may be all this for the world—it is nothing at all of this for the church. And especially when this worldly music, by its thrilling cadences or impassioned character, leads directly to light ideas, sensual satisfactions, and dangerous recollections, it is not only a contradiction in the house of God, but a formal scandal.” (Instruction Pastorale, p. 45)
TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.