But not at all! This apparent monotony exists in reality only for those who see not with their eyes, neither hear with their ears.
Plain-song is of a complex species; it has two faces, like Janus.[4] To be understood, it must be listened to at once from a literary and a musical standpoint. It is this synthesis which the "decadent" poets or musicians have, in late years, striven to revive.
The superb rhythm of the pedal when the organ responds to the choir[5] should emphasize the text, sustain it in outbursts of exaltation, and not vulgarize it by a continual and unintelligent abuse.
The organ is a wind instrument; it requires opportunity to take breath. Like the literary sentence, the musical phrase has its commas, its periods, its paragraphs. As a speaker changes his intonation, so must the organ vary its "designs." Is anything more exasperating than an improvisation in four parts, wandering now here, now there—monotonous in color, devoid of determination, repose, contrast, or purpose, having neither beginning, middle, nor end? A veritable macaroni au fromage!
Cornets and mixtures, and the other registers of the organ of Bach's time—these furnish the proper tone-material for Plain-song, assimilating perfectly with the polyphony of the masters of the sixteenth century.
Distributed to a certain extent over all lands, coming originally from Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome, Plain-chant is our heritage from the Middle Ages, assiduously cultivated within that sunny domain of counterpoint, of which Palestrina was the last custodian. As it has been bequeathed to us by the old masters, so must we preserve it for our descendants. The teachings of the Paris Conservatory during the past fifty years will always be perpetuated; the treatment in florid counterpoint, be the melody in soprano or bass, or the accompaniment in strict counterpoint, note against note, as in the Church.
Some of our contemporary organ builders in France have made a serious mistake in regarding as a foregone conclusion the undesirability of perpetuating the characteristics of registration of earlier days, and in thus considering them hardly worthy of further notice. What a pity!
In July of this year at Notre-Dame, whose superb instrument has just been restored by Cavaillé-Coll, we admired the effect produced by different specimens of those mutation stops, producing in the Pedal a fundamental of 32, upon the Bombarde one of 16, and upon the Grand-Chœur one of 8-foot pitch. Indescribable is the effect of the Chorales of the great Sebastian Bach, reverberating with crystalline sonority under those wonderful arches.
The days of "deluges" upon the organ are over; of thunder and tremulants, of choruses of goats called the vox humana, and all such childish trifles. "At the opening of the organ in X, Mr. Z. contributed to the programme a tempest, which he really should have prefaced by a few flashes of genius!..."