He directs that while the singing is going on the instruments must merely accompany, never take the place of, the voices.
He allows suitable symphonies when these are dissociated from the office proper—probably meaning the pieces played at the beginning and the end of service, and to fill up pauses when the choir is silent.
He closes by urging the Italian bishops to comply with these instructions faithfully, that foreign bishops coming to Rome may see in Italian, and especially in Roman, churches the public offices properly carried out, and thus be induced to imitate them.
The present vicar-general of Pius IX., Cardinal Patrizzi, by order of the Pope, wrote two letters to composers of church music in Rome, on the 18th and 20th of November, 1856, and in them he so far supplements the directions of Benedict XIV. that we have wherewith to determine without much difficulty what music is, and what music is not, admissible in Catholic choirs.
In his first letter he says:
“The most sustained gravity is to be observed, and nothing introduced suggestive of theatrical pieces, either by the arrangement or by the melody; too many repetitions, and all changes and arbitrary inversions of the words are to be avoided.
“At Mass, Exposition, and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and other sacred ceremonies, organists are forbidden to execute the whole or parts of theatrical pieces, or to play in a too florid or distracting style; and their music ought to be such as to promote the recollection and devotion of the faithful.
“As we consider an interruption between the various parts of the words of the liturgy very unbecoming, even when any verse is finished, as being an occasion of distraction and noise among the musicians and hearers, we order that every part of the offices, especially at Mass, shall be sung through continuously, so that the Kyrie, Gloria, and other parts may each have a unity of structure.”
In his second letter he teaches composers the necessity of their having for their object the praise [pg 789] of God and the devotion of the faithful, and shows how church music in its whole construction ought to differ from that of the stage.
“If all composers,” he says, “drew their inspirations from piety and religion, as some of them have the good spirit to do; if they always kept before their minds that their music ought to tend to praise God in his holy temple, and to excite the devotion of the faithful, there would have been but little need to make rules for musical composition. But it is only too true that, in some instances, to the great surprise of the truly religious among the faithful, there has been heard in the churches certain music unworthy of the house of God, and showing that the composer, far from having in view the service of the divine Majesty and the edification of his hearers, has only aimed at displaying his own imagination, and that he has forgotten the church and written for the theatre, not only by borrowing its style of melody, but also by introducing portions of theatrical music, to which he has sometimes violently adapted the words of the sacred liturgy. In order that so great a scandal may not be renewed, and that those who write music for the church may have a rule to keep them within due bounds, we prescribe as follows: