It is related that the use of musical notes was found first in the abbey of Corby, in Saxony, about 945. Alfanus, a monk of Mount Cassino, was also considered eminent in the art. In the abbey of St. Gall three great musicians were found at the same time. One of them, Tutilo, seemed to excel in every work of art. He had a clear voice, was an admirable painter, an architect and a preacher, and also could play on flutes and pipes, and taught the children of the nobles how to play on the flute. He was most effective in the choir, and expert at composing verses and melodies. During the ninth and tenth centuries, the monks of St. Gall were famed for their musical compositions. Once a composition sung by a monk of St. Gall on Easter Day before King Conrad I. was rendered with such power that all the audience were roused to ecstasy. The King, the Queen, and the King’s sister called the performer before them, took off their rings, and put them on his fingers, to signify their intense admiration. It used to be said that the beginning of this excellence at St. Gall was owing to a Roman musician who had fallen sick there while on a journey to Germany, and he was so hospitably treated that, out of gratitude, he instructed the monks in his art. The St. Gall scores were copied in many other monasteries, and musical science was carried to a high pitch of excellence by the modern composer Zingarelli, who used to prepare himself for his finest work by reading some treatise of the Fathers.
NICHOLAS PEREGRINUS, WHO SANG “LORD, HAVE PITY” (A.D. 1094).
About 1094 Nicholas became famous in Apulia, when he was eight years old tending his mother’s sheep, for he had an irrepressible tendency to sing aloud incessantly, “Kyrie eleïson” (“Lord, have mercy”), and he never left off this all his life long. His mother sent him to a monastery to have him imprisoned and chastised till he gave up singing his song. But he took his punishment patiently, and went on singing as zealously as before. He made himself a hut, living by himself, but praising God aloud continually. He went to Lepanto, where another monk joined him. He fasted every day till evening; his food was a little bread and water, and yet he did not grow lean. He wore a short vest, his head, legs, and feet being naked. He carried a light wooden cross, a scrip at his side to receive alms, and the alms he converted into fruit to distribute among the boys who willingly joined him in his excursions and in singing his favourite hymn. His oddities provoked some contumely, in which bishops did not scruple to join. But he performed various miracles and had a large following, exhorting the people to repentance. At his death great multitudes joined in his funeral, and many miracles were said to be wrought at his tomb in the cathedral.
HERESY PROPAGATED BY MUSIC (A.D. 1150).
Harmonius, son of the famous heretic Bardesanes, a Syrian who lived in the twelfth century, contributed greatly to the propagation of heresy by the fascinating sweetness of the melodies which he composed and applied to odes and canticles written against the religion of Christ. So struck was St. Ephraim with their mellifluousness, and so persuaded that they were qualified by their beauty to recommend and spread any doctrine in support of which they might be employed, that he set the same tunes to different words, and ordered them to be publicly sung, so as to bring back the people to orthodoxy, which at that time was identified with the doctrine of the Trinity.
THE POPE REFORMING CHURCH MUSIC (A.D. 1545).
The introduction of instrumental music into the Church services once greatly perplexed the Pope and the councils of the clergy. Music had become so artificial and so wasted in frivolous and intricate airs, that the Council of Trent expressed its protest against using such profane aids. Pius IV. thereon appointed a commission to inquire whether music should be tolerated at all in churches. Fortunately at that time a great composer named Palestrina appeared at Rome. He was a priest, but had been expelled from the Church for marrying, and he still clung to his favourite art. He composed sacred airs for the services in the Sistine Chapel, and he seemed to comprehend with an original genius the kind of music appropriate to the Mass. He devoted his whole soul to this work. His first two efforts were thought to be failures, but at last in a happy moment he completed a masterly work known by the name of “The Mass of Pope Marcellus.” It had passages of blended grandeur and self-prostration, with rich and varied melodies interspersed, which delighted the Pope, who said the airs were such as the Apostle John may have heard in his ecstatic vision. The success of Palestrina set at rest the vexed question of Church music. It showed that music was capable of being made to subserve and enhance the most fervid devotion and religious enthusiasm. The soul was elevated by the exulting bursts of jubilee and the adoring strains of lowly reverence. The art then came to be firmly wedded to the service of the Church, and every grade of elevated feeling found its appropriate expression, and piety was quickened into rapture and a diviner ecstasy by the masterpieces of a succession of great composers.
SINGING OF THE MISERERE IN THE POPE’S CHAPEL.
One of the most impressive performances of sacred music is the singing of the Miserere or fifty-first Psalm in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, and the musical score is kept secret and no copy allowed to be given to strangers under pain of excommunication. There are thirty-two voices employed in the singing, without any organ or other instrument to accompany it. The performance was supposed to be at its greatest height of excellence about 1780, before the growing practice of opera withdrew the choicest voices from the service of the Church. This celebrated piece is sung twice during Passion Week, and was composed about 1627. When it begins, the Pope and cardinals prostrate themselves on their knees. The grand picture by Michael Angelo of the Last Judgment which is over the altar is then discovered to be brilliantly illuminated by tapers. These are gradually extinguished till the pale light scarcely reveals the forms of the miserable creatures as they listen to the slow and dirgelike wail of the voices. It sounds as if the sinner, confounded before the majesty of God and prostrate with fear, awaited in silence some awful doom. The sublimity of the music is heightened by the peculiar manner of repeating the same melody in every verse of the psalm, and yet by retarding the tune and swelling or diminishing the sound according to the sense, never allowing the ear to feel the least tediousness. The music score is said to be no correct record of the peculiarity of the melody, and the mode of managing the voices is said to be a secret kept by the chapel-master alone, who hands down the tradition to his successor. It is performed only in the Sistine Chapel, and those who have heard it never forget the grand and solemn impression it produces.
LUTHER’S VIEW OF CHURCH MUSIC.