It was, we must now once more insist, these peculiar qualities of feeling to be expressed in mystical art, that reacted to determine the peculiarities of the technique in which they had to be embodied, just as a man’s spirit reacts to determine the nature of the body in which its purposes have to be wrought out. That “ineffable calmness,” that “chastened exultation,” of the mystical temper, could be voiced in sound only through the medium of clear, ethereal vocal tones, combined in chords prevailingly consonant and void of harshness. Such a translucent fabric of tones as was produced by human voices, singing, without instrumental accompaniment, the purest consonances, was best fitted to merge with the vast, cool arch of the cathedral, with the unlocalized murmur and reverberation that stirred in it, and with the somnolent fumes of incense, to form a background apt for mystical contemplation. And then, against this background, the phrases of aspiring but unimpassioned melody which one by one sounded above the general murmur, traced, as it were, arabesques of more definite human feeling. One by one they rose into momentary prominence, to hover above the other voices as prayers hover among the tranquil thoughts of simple and devout minds. There was about them a celestial clarity, an unearthly plangency of accent, but no turmoil or confusion, no hint of mortal pain.
Complete impersonality was attained by the exclusion of dissonance and of meter. The emotional function of dissonance is to suggest, by its harshness, and by its sharp contrast with the consonances by which it is surrounded, the struggle and the fragmentariness of all finite existence. Like a cry of incompleteness yearning to be completed, it is eloquent to us of our loneliness and bitter self-consciousness. Meter similarly insists on reminding us of our petty human selves by stimulating us to make those gestures and motions that bring into full activity our muscular expression, with all its mental consequents. To hear a strong rhythm is to be irresistibly reminded of all those active impulses in us which underlie our sense of finite personality. It was, then, by its negative peculiarities, by its avoidance of all harmonic mordancy and definition, and of all rhythmic vigor, that Palestrina’s music secured its impersonality, its freedom from “profane suggestion,” and from “every trace of struggle.” Its positive and negative qualities thus cooperated so efficiently as to make it an incomparable exponent of the mystical mood. It not only could induce that rapt attitude of worship which was the kernel of mysticism, but it also skilfully avoided all disturbing hints of personal, finite, and secular activities. It comes to our modern ears like a voice from some grey mediæval cloister, tremulous with a divine passion, but utterly void of all those earthly passions in which the sweet is subtly mingled with the bitter, and human pathos is more audible than heavenly peace.
Palestrina marked the culmination of his school; the pure polyphonic style ended with him. Was this merely because his younger contemporaries, overawed by his perfect skill, dared not enter the lists in rivalry with such a master? Or was it rather that men’s minds had arrived at the period of a fresh insight, and that the time was ripe for an obliteration of hard and fast distinctions between sacred and secular, spiritual and carnal, eternal and temporal, and for a proclamation of the native dignity and worth of man himself, in the fullness of his sensuous, intellectual, and emotional life?
FOOTNOTES:
[7] “Renaissance in Italy.” Part III. The Fine Arts, p. 6.
[8] See, for a complete description of the Church ritual, Mr. Edward Dickinson’s “History of Music in the Western Church,” Chapters III and IV.
[9] Op. cit., p. 96.
[10] See Chapter I, p. 25.