"Can we believe that the divine assistance can have failed her so far that her work, a discordant jumble of notes, should not be fit to be sung by us in our country and century? How different were the feelings and the belief of the people during the ages of faith! The monks and other holy men who wrote those sacred chants, set themselves to work sometimes after months of holy meditation and of watching, of fasting and of prayer; and then they composed those melodies, so little appreciated now, because so little known; but to the correct religious taste of our pious ancestors in the faith, so full of heavenly harmony that they sometimes thought, and not always without reason, the angels themselves had dictated them."[145]
That the Gregorian chant is yet, as it was in former times, the true musical expression of her Divine Office, and of those portions of the liturgy of the Holy Mass, and various public functions, appointed to be sung, is plain from the fact that, in despite of all the development of the musica ficta in the hands and with the influence of its composers and lovers, the Church still obstinately adheres to those ancient melodies. What can we say but that, as the Church is the best judge of her own language of prayer and praise, so she must equally as well be of the form of its expression?
But, as we said before, the Church never acts without reason. If she accepts this form of chant in the first place, it is because such a form of melody is appropriate, and well becoming her inspired language of prayer. If she retains it through so many ages, and has no thought of changing it now, it is because the same reason still holds good.
One of the most remarkable points in the character of the Gregorian chant is the fact that it has partaken, possibly by association, of the "perennial freshness" which is so strongly marked in the celebration of the rites and ceremonies of the Church. To every people, of all ages and countries, these rites and ceremonies possess a dramatic power of the highest order. Ancient yet ever new, they never weary by repetition as fast and festival recur in the ecclesiastical year. On this an English writer says,
"The very ruggedness of the Gregorian modes serves to impart to them a character of durability. These simple melodies, as we well know from the instance of the Vesper Psalms, to mention no other, somehow never pall upon the ear, and have, in fact, a perennial freshness which we can only account for by the circumstance of their having a variety of scale which modern melodies do not possess. This, too, is proved by the well-known fact that the most beautiful chants of the modern school (and we ourselves are fain to add also the most beautiful motets, Anthems, Glorias, Credos, etc.) become unendurable by constant repetition; and for this reason we find that even dissenters have been fain to adopt the old chant in their services."
This is, to say the least, a very strong practical confirmation of the wisdom of the Holy Church in preserving a treasure so precious that even time does not waste it, or use tarnish its beauty.
A second reason assigned by the same writer, we give for what it is worth. It possesses, indeed, no little vraisemblance:
"We may look upon it in its plaintive if not mournful character in fact, as a kind of pilgrim's song, by which it would seem as if the Church would have us remember, even in the midst of our festal joys, that we are the 'Exules filii Hevæ, gementes et flentes in hâc lacrymarum valle.' It is, we may say, the grave, sweet, pathetic note which the Church puts into the mouths of her children, lamenting with the Psalmist that 'their sojourning is prolonged;' the plaintive accent in which they confess that they are strangers upon earth, and that they 'seek another, even a heavenly city.' And so Father Faber sings in his well-known hymn—itself a kind of wayfarer's song—
'While we toil on, and soothe ourselves with weeping,
Till life's long night shall break in endless love.'"
This is by no means a quaint conception of modern fancy. St. Paschasius Radpert, a monk of the abbey of Old Corby, who lived about the year 800, says,
"There is no song to be found without a tone of sadness in it; even as here below there are no joys without a mixture of sorrow; for songs of pure joy belong only to the heavenly Sion, but lamentation is the property of our earthly pilgrimage."