Many beautiful and touching stories have come down to us, illustrating the passionate love of the monks for their songs, and the devout, even superstitious, reverence with which they regarded them. Among these are the tales of the Armorican monk Hervé, in the sixth century, who, blind from his birth, became the inspirer and teacher of his brethren by [123] means of his improvised songs, and the patron of mendicant singers, who still chant his legend in Breton verse. His mother, so one story goes, went one day to visit him in the cloister, and, as she was approaching, said: “I see a procession of monks advancing, and I hear the voice of my son. God be with you, my son! When, with the help of God, I get to heaven, you shall be warned of it, you shall hear the angels sing.” The same evening she died, and her son, while at prayer in his cell, heard the singing of the angels as they welcomed her soul in heaven.[59] According to another legend, told by Gregory of Tours, a mother had taken her only son to a monastery near Lake Geneva, where he became a monk, and especially skilful in chanting the liturgic service. “He fell sick and died; his mother in despair came to bury him, and returned every night to weep and lament over his tomb. One night she saw St. Maurice in a dream attempting to console her, but she answered him, ‘No, no; as long as I live I shall always weep for my son, my only child!’ ‘But,’ answered the saint, ‘he must not be wept for as if he were dead; he is with us, he rejoices in eternal life, and tomorrow, at Matins, in the monastery, thou shalt hear his voice among the choir of the monks; and not to-morrow only, but every day as long as thou livest.’ The mother immediately arose, and waited with impatience the first sound of the bell for Matins, to hasten to the church of the monks. The precentor having intoned the response, when the monks in full choir took up the antiphon, the mother immediately recognized the voice of her child. [124] She gave thanks to God; and every day for the rest of her life, the moment she approached the choir she heard the voice of her well-beloved son mingle in the sweet and holy melody of the liturgic chant.”[60]
As centuries went on, and these ancient melodies, gathering such stores of holy memory, were handed down in their integrity from generation to generation of praying monks, it is no wonder that the feeling grew that they too were inspired by the Holy Spirit. The legend long prevailed in the Middle Age that Gregory the Great one night had a vision in which the Church appeared to him in the form of an angel, magnificently attired, upon whose mantle was written the whole art of music, with all the forms of its melodies and notes. The pope prayed God to give him the power of recollecting all that he saw; and after he awoke a dove appeared, who dictated to him the chants which are ascribed to him.[61] Ambros quotes a mediaeval Latin chronicler, Aurelian Reomensis, who relates that a blind man named Victor, sitting one day before an altar in the Pantheon at Rome, by direct divine inspiration composed the response Gaude Maria, and by a second miracle immediately received his sight. Another story from the same source tells how a monk of the convent of St. Victor, while upon a neighboring mountain, heard angels singing the response Cives Apostolorum, and after his return to Rome he taught the song to his brethren as he had heard it.[62]
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In order to explain the feeling toward the liturgic chant which is indicated by these legends and the rapturous eulogies of mediaeval and modern writers, we have only to remember that the melody was never separated in thought from the words, that these words were prayer and praise, made especially acceptable to God because wafted to him by means of his own gift of music. To the mediaeval monks prayer was the highest exercise in which man can engage, the most efficacious of all actions, the chief human agency in the salvation of the world. Prayer was the divinely appointed business to which they were set apart. Hence arose the multiplicity of religious services in the convents, the observance of the seven daily hours of prayer, in some monasteries in France, as earlier in Syria and Egypt, extending to the so-called laus perennis, in which companies of brethren, relieving each other at stated watches, maintained, like the sacred fire of Vesta, an unbroken office of song by night and day.
Such was the liturgic chant in the ages of faith, before the invention of counterpoint and the first steps in modern musical science suggested new conceptions and methods in worship music. It constitutes to-day a unique and precious heritage from an era which, in its very ignorance, superstition, barbarism of manners, and ruthlessness of political ambition, furnishes strongest evidence of the divine origin of a faith which could triumph over such antagonisms. To the devout Catholic the chant has a sanctity which transcends even its aesthetic and historic value, but non-Catholic as well as Catholic may reverence it as a direct creation and a token of a mode of thought which, as at no epoch since, conceived prayer and praise as a Christian’s most urgent duty, and as an infallible means of gaining the favor of God.
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The Catholic liturgic chant, like all other monumental forms of art, has often suffered through the vicissitudes of taste which have beguiled even those whose official responsibilities would seem to constitute them the special custodians of this sacred treasure. Even to-day there are many clergymen and church musicians who have but a faint conception of the affluence of lovely melody and profound religious expression contained in this vast body of mediaeval music. Where purely aesthetic considerations have for a time prevailed, as they often will even in a Church in which tradition and symbolism exert so strong an influence as they do in the Catholic, this archaic form of melody has been neglected. Like all the older types (the sixteenth century a capella chorus and the German rhythmic choral, for example) its austere speech has not been able to prevail against the fascinations of the modern brilliant and emotional style of church music which has emanated from instrumental art and the Italian aria. Under this latter influence, and the survival of the seventeenth-century contempt for everything mediaeval and “Gothic,” the chant was long looked upon with disdain as the offspring of a barbarous age, and only maintained at all out of unwilling deference to ecclesiastical authority. In the last few decades, however, probably as a detail of the reawakening in all departments of a study of the great works of older art, there has appeared a reaction in favor of a renewed culture [127] of the Gregorian chant. The tendency toward sensationalism in church music has now begun to subside. The true ideal is seen to be in the past. Together with the new appreciation of Palestrina, Bach, and the older Anglican Church composers, the Catholic chant is coming to its rights, and an enlightened modern taste is beginning to realize the melodious beauty, the liturgic appropriateness, and the edifying power that lie in the ancient unison song. This movement is even now only in its inception; in the majority of church centres there is still apathy, and in consequence corruption of the old forms, crudity and coldness in execution. Much has, however, been already achieved, and in the patient and acute scholarship applied in the field of textual criticism by the monks of Solesmes and the church musicians of Paris, Brussels, and Regensburg, in the enthusiastic zeal shown in many churches and seminaries of Europe and America for the attainment of a pure and expressive style of delivery, and in the restoration of the Plain Song to portions of the ritual from which it has long been banished, we see evidences of a movement which promises to be fruitful, not only in this special sphere, but also, as a direct consequence, in other domains of church music which have been too long neglected.
The historic status of the Gregorian chant as the basis of the magnificent structure of Catholic church music down to 1600, of the Anglican chant, and to a large extent of the German people’s hymn-tune or choral, has always been known to scholars. The revived study of it has come from an awakened perception of its liturgic significance and its inherent beauty. The [128] influence drawn from its peculiarly solemn and elevated quality has begun to penetrate the chorus work of the best Catholic composers of the recent time. Protestant church musicians are also beginning to find advantage in the study of the melody, the rhythm, the expression, and even the tonality of the Gregorian song. And every lover of church music will find a new pleasure and uplift in listening to its noble strains. He must, however, listen sympathetically, expelling from his mind all comparison with the modern styles to which he is accustomed, holding in clear view its historic relations and liturgic function. To one who so attunes his mind to its peculiar spirit and purport, the Gregorian Plain Song will seem worthy of the exalted place it holds in the veneration of the most august ecclesiastical institution in history.
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