To suppose that the chant in this period was sung exactly as it appears in the office books of the present day would be to ignore a very characteristic and universal usage in the Middle Age. No privilege was more freely accorded to the mediaeval chanter than that of adding to the melody whatever embellishment he might choose freely to invent on the impulse of the moment. The right claimed by Italian opera singers down to a very recent date to decorate the phrases with trills, cadenzas, etc., even to the extent of altering the written notes themselves, is only the perpetuation of a practice generally prevalent in the mediaeval Church, and which may have come down, for anything we know to the contrary, from remote antiquity. In fact, the requirement of singing the notes exactly as they are written is a modern idea; no such rule was recognized as invariably binding until well into the nineteenth century. It was no uncommon thing in Händel’s time and after to introduce free embellishments even into “I know that my Redeemer liveth” in the “Messiah.” In the Middle Age the singers in church and convent took great merit to themselves for the inventive ability and [116] vocal adroitness by which they were able to sprinkle the plain notes of the chant with improvised embellishments. “Moreover, there existed in the liturgic text a certain number of words upon which the singers had the liberty of dilating according to their fancy. According to an ancient Christian tradition, certain chants were followed by a number of notes sung upon meaningless vowels; these notes, called neumes or jubili, rendered, in accordance with a poetic thought, the faith and adoration of the worshipers who appeared to be unable to find words that could express their sentiments. These vocalizations or embroideries were sometimes longer than the chants themselves, and many authors complained of the importance given to these vocal fantasies.”[57] Among the mnemonic signs which, before the invention of the staff and notation system, indicated the changes of pitch to be observed by the singer, there were many that unmistakably point to the traditional flourishes which had become an integral element in the Plain Song system. Many of these survived and were carried over into secular music after the method of chanting became more simple and severe. Similar license was also practised in the later period of part singing, and not only in the rude early counterpoint of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but even in the highly developed and specialized chorus music of the sixteenth century, the embellishments which were reduced to a system and handed down by tradition, gave to this art a style and effect the nature of which has now fallen from the knowledge of men.
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Such was the nature of the song which resounded about the altars of Roman basilicas and through convent cloisters in the seventh and eighth centuries, and which has remained the sanctioned official speech of the Catholic Church in her ritual functions to the present day. Nowhere did it suffer any material change or addition until it became the basis of a new harmonic art in Northern Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The chant according to the Roman use began to extend itself over Europe in connection with the missionary efforts which emanated from Rome from the time of Gregory the Great. Augustine, the emissary of Gregory, who went to England in 597 to convert the Saxons, carried with him the Roman chant. “The band of monks,” says Green, “entered Canterbury bearing before them a silver cross with a picture of Christ, and singing in concert the strains of the litany of their church.”[58] And although the broad-minded Gregory instructed Augustine not to insist upon supplanting with the Roman use the liturgy already employed in the older British churches if such an attempt would create hostility, yet the Roman chant was adopted both at Canterbury and York.
The Roman chant was accepted eventually throughout the dominions of the Church as an essential element of the Roman liturgy. Both shared the same struggles and the same triumphs. Familiarity with the church song became an indispensable part of the equipment of every clergyman, monastic and secular. No missionary might go forth from Rome who was not adept in it. Monks made dangerous journeys to Rome from the remotest [118] districts in order to learn it. Every monastery founded in the savage forests of Germany, Gaul, or Britain became at once a singing school, and day and night the holy strains went up in unison with the melodies of the far distant sacred city. The Anglo-Saxon monk Winfrid, afterward known as Boniface, the famous missionary to the Germans, planted the Roman liturgy in Thuringia and Hesse, and devoted untiring efforts to teaching the Gregorian song to his barbarous proselytes. In Spain, Ildefonso, about 600, is enrolled among the zealous promoters of sacred song according to the use of Rome. Most eminent and most successful of all who labored for the exclusive authority of the Roman chant as against the Milanese, Gallican, and other rival forms was Charlemagne, king of the Franks from 768 to 814, whose persistent efforts to implant the Gregorian song in every church and school in his wide dominions was an important detail of his labor in the interest of liturgic uniformity according to the Roman model.
Among the convent schools which performed such priceless service for civilization in the gloomy period of the early Middle Age, the monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland holds an especially distinguished place. This convent was established in the seventh century by the Irish monk from whom it took its name, rapidly increased in repute as a centre of piety and learning, and during the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries numbered some of the foremost scholars of the time among its brotherhood. About 790 two monks, versed in all the lore of the liturgic chant, were sent from Rome into the empire of Charlemagne at the monarch’s request. [119] One of them, Romanus, was received and entertained by the monks of St. Gall, and was persuaded to remain with them as teacher of church song according to the Antiphonary which he had brought with him from Rome. St. Gall soon became famous as a place where the purest traditions of the Roman chant were taught and practised. Schubiger, in his extremely interesting work, Die Sängerschule St. Gallens vom VIII.-XII. Jahrhundert, has given an extended account of the methods of devotional song in use at St. Gall, which may serve as an illustration of the general practice among the pious monks of the Middle Age:
“In the reign of Charlemagne (803) the Council of Aachen enjoined upon all monasteries the use of the Roman song, and a later capitulary required that the monks should perform this song completely and in proper order at the divine office, in the daytime as well as at night. According to other rescripts during the reign of Louis the Pious (about 820) the monks of St. Gall were required daily to celebrate Mass, and also to perform the service of all the canonical hours. The solemn melodies of the ancient psalmody resounded daily in manifold and precisely ordered responses; at the midnight hour the sound of the Invitatorium, Venite exultamus Domino, opened the service of the nocturnal vigils; the prolonged, almost mournful tones of the responses alternated with the intoned recitation of the lessons; in the spaces of the temple on Sundays and festal days, at the close of the nightly worship, there reëchoed the exalted strains of the Ambrosian hymn of praise (Te Deum laudamus); at the first dawn of day began the morning adoration, with psalms and antiphons, hymns and [120] prayers; to these succeeded in due order the remaining offices of the diurnal hours. The people were daily invited by the Introit to participate in the holy mysteries; they heard in solemn stillness the tones of the Kyrie imploring mercy; on festal days they were inspired by the song once sung by the host of angels; after the Gradual they heard the melodies of the Sequence which glorified the object of the festival in jubilant choral strains, and afterward the simple recitative tones of the Creed; at the Sanctus they were summoned to join in the praise of the Thrice Holy, and to implore the mercy of the Lamb who taketh away the sins of the world. These were the songs which, about the middle of the ninth century, arose on festal or ferial days in the cloister church of St. Gall. How much store the fathers of this convent set upon beauty and edification in song appears from the old regulations in which distinct pronunciation of words and uniformity of rendering are enjoined, and hastening or dragging the time sharply rebuked.”
Schubiger goes on to say that three styles of performing the chant were employed; viz., a very solemn one for the highest festivals, one less solemn for Sundays and saints’ days, and an ordinary one for ferial days. An appropriate character was given to the different chants,—e. g., a profound and mournful expression in the office for the dead; an expression of tenderness and sweetness to the hymns, the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei; and a dignified character (cantus gravis) to the antiphons, responses, and alleluia. Anything that could disturb the strict and euphonious rendering of the song was strictly forbidden. Harsh, unmusical voices were not permitted to take part. Distinctness, precise conformity of all the singers in respect to time, and purity of intonation were inflexibly demanded.
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Special services, with processions and appropriate hymns, were instituted on the occasion of the visit to the monastery of the emperor or other high dignitary. All public observances, the founding of a building, the reception of holy relics, the consecration of a bell or altar,—even many of the prescribed routine duties of conventual life, such as drawing water, lighting lamps, or kindling fires,—each had its special form of song. It was not enthusiasm, but sober truth, that led Ekkehard V. to say that the rulers of this convent, “through their songs and melodies, as also through their teachings, filled the Church of God, not only in Germany, but in all lands from one sea to the other, with splendor and joy.”
At the convent of St. Gall originated the class of liturgical hymns called Sequences, which includes some of the finest examples of mediaeval hymnody. At a very early period it became the custom to sing the Alleluia of the Gradual to a florid chant, the final vowel being extended into an exceedingly elaborate flourish of notes. Notker Balbulus, a notable member of the St. Gall brotherhood in the ninth century, conceived the notion, under the suggestion of a visiting monk, of making a practical use of the long-winded final cadence of the Alleluia. He extended and modified these melodious passages and set words to them, thus constructing a brief form of prose hymn. His next step was to invent both notes and text, giving his chants a certain crude [122] form by the occasional repetition of a melodic strain. He preserved a loose connection with the Alleluia by retaining the mode and the first few tones. These experiments found great favor in the eyes of the brethren of St. Gall; others followed Notker’s example, and the Sequence melodies were given honored places in the ritual on festal days and various solemn occasions. The custom spread; Pope Nicholas I. in 860 permitted the adoption of the new style of hymn into the liturgy. The early Sequences were in rhythmic prose, but in the hands of the ecclesiastical poets of the few centuries following they were written in rhymed verse. The Sequence was therefore distinguished from other Latin hymns only by its adoption into the office of the Mass as a regular member of the liturgy on certain festal days. The number increased to such large proportions that a sifting process was deemed necessary, and upon the occasion of the reform of the Missal through Pius V. after the Council of Trent only five were retained, viz., Victimae paschali, sung on Easter Sunday; Veni Sancte Spiritus, appointed for Whit-Sunday; Lauda Sion, for Corpus Christi; Stabat Mater dolorosa, for Friday of Passion Week; and Dies Irae, which forms a portion of the Mass for the Dead.