Still it may not have been wholly due to a cessation of musical activity that new music for the Mass gradually ceased to be written in the course of the seventh century, for a certain amount of music still continued to be written for the Hour Services. It may have been due to a feeling that the book was a closed and settled one after a final and authoritative revision such as St. Gregory’s is traditionally held to have been, and that it was presumptuous to add to it. But whichever view is taken of this, the Gregorian tradition is equally supported.
A further support to the claims of Gregory I. as against Gregory II. is to be found in an examination of the Communions of the Masses of Lent. These form a series taken from the Psalms in numerical order, I. to XXVI., with the exception of five for which have been substituted texts taken from the Gospel. The Thursdays in Lent, however, form an exception to this scheme; they are interpolations breaking the order of it. Now we know that they were added by Gregory II.; therefore the original scheme of the Masses of Lent, at least, was drawn up before the time of Gregory II. Of the twenty-four pieces contained in the masses for the first six Thursdays in Lent, twenty-one appear in the Sundays after Trinity. It seems certain that the Thursdays in Lent must have borrowed from the Sundays after Trinity, and not vice versa; this is supported by the fact that the Graduals and Offertories of the Thursdays in Lent are all borrowed, and of the Sundays after Trinity hardly any. So this addition, which we know to be of the date of Gregory II., was made to a scheme already in existence, and both words and music were borrowed from other parts of the Antiphonale Missarum.
As against the claims made for the Hellenic Popes of the seventh and eighth centuries, it is worth while to examine the music which it is probable was introduced by Hellenic influence during that time, and compare it with the bulk of the “Gregorian.” The tropes and the melodies from which the sequences developed probably come under this head, and some specimens of these may be seen in the Winchester Troper (Ed. Rev. W. H. Frere, H. Bradshaw Society, 1894). An examination of these melodies will show that their structure is entirely unlike the structure of the Gregorian melodies, especially in the close with a rise from the note below the final to the final, which continually occurs at the end of the phrases. This will be very clear from the accompanying melody, Cithara, from which the sequence Rex Omnipotens was formed. This form of close appears at the end of each of the first five sections, and again at the end of the seventh and eighth. In the rest of the sequence, the melody rises to a higher range, and the close appears a fifth higher in the ninth and tenth sections, a fourth higher in the eleventh and thirteenth, and a whole octave higher in the twelfth. This transposition of the range of the melody is more developed here than in most sequence melodies, but some such transposition is a prominent characteristic of many of them. There is nothing at all like it in the genuine Roman chant.
CITHARA
IN WHAT DID THE WORK OF ST. GREGORY CONSIST?
John the Deacon describes his Antiphoner as a “cento” (Antiphonarium Centonem compilavit), and speaks of him, as we have seen, as “Antiphonarium centonizans.” “Cento” is a Low Latin word meaning patchwork, combination, or compilation. “Antiphonarius cento” would therefore mean an Antiphoner compiled from various sources. And this is the character of the Gregorian Antiphoner of the Mass, even of the nucleus which remains after omitting the parts known to have been added since Gregory’s time. Indeed the whole phrase quoted above has a ring of truth about it, and makes the tradition which he reports of a more genuine historical character, for if it had been a mere vague tradition in glorification of St. Gregory, he would have been more likely to have spoken of him as the composer of the Antiphoner, and not as a mere compiler. The oldest part of the book is formed of the Feasts celebrated in honour of events and saints spoken of in Scripture, and of the oldest Roman Saints. The Masses for these are taken from Scripture, especially from the Psalms. For Feasts of non-Roman origin, the text is taken from the Church from which they are introduced; e.g., the Feast of St. Agatha from the Sicilian Church, or the Feasts coming from the Greek Church which were translated from the Greek. The want of uniformity in the arrangement of the text is seen by comparing the different classes of chants in Codex St. Gall, 329. As a rule, the words of one and the same Mass are all of different origin. The most ancient part of the Masses is the Graduals and Tracts, and all these (which are the most ancient solos of the Mass) in the Gregorian nucleus are taken from Biblical sources. This part of the “cento Antiphonarius” is put together in one system after an established tradition. In the oldest Feasts there are Psalm-graduals, but Introits taken from other books of the Bible. The parts other than the Gradual and Tract were chosen on a different system, a considerable number in fact have words not taken from the Bible at all. The Communions, again, form a class by themselves, and were sometimes chosen with special reference to the Gospel for the day, which is the case with no other class of the texts of the chants.
Now this editing of the texts must have implied the editing of the music also. In the middle ages the choir played a more important part than they do to-day in the Roman Church. For now the Service is complete without their part, as the priest says the whole Service whether the choir is there or not. But formerly it was different; all listened or took part, including the celebrant, while the choir sang. The latter had a very definite share in the liturgical order, which was incomplete without them; in particular, the soloists had full scope for their talents in the chants between the Epistle and Gospel. In view of this intimate relation between the choir and the altar, a revision of the text must almost necessarily have implied a revision of the music. And this is probably the chief part of his musical reform; in the saying about him, ascribed to Pope Adrian II., “Ipse Patrum monumenta sequens renovavit et auxit.”
What was the musical material on which he had to work, which he had to put into shape, and to which he added new pieces? It is probably substantially represented by the Ambrosian chant as we find it in the oldest MSS. It seems most likely that it is the musical counterpart of the primitive liturgy organized, as is supposed, about the epoch of Pope Damasus, of which the Ambrosian, Gallican, Mozarabic, and Celtic are so many variations, due to national characteristics. Documentary proof of this is but scanty, but a study of the Lessons used at Mass supports the theory as far as the text is concerned. It is further recorded that at Monte Cassino the Ambrosian chant was fused with the Gregorian by order of Pope Stephen IX. (1057-8). Here the Pre-Gregorian chant is simply called Ambrosian.