These rules, if adhered to, would [pg 790] give us music which would meet the requirements both of devotion and of art; nor do they exclude such variety as the diversity of our feelings calls for. It could, by its placid, quiet, and smooth-flowing measures, soothe and subdue us into that mood which best fits us to offer to God reverential homage, and to make acts of resignation when we feel the hand of affliction bearing heavily upon us; but also, by more joyous and inspiriting strains, dispose us to praise God according to the immensity of his greatness, in joy and gladness, on loud-sounding cymbals (in cymbalis jubilationis), and send us back to the battle of life with renewed courage and strength.
IV.
But, it will be asked, can this style of music which we have just sketched be had? Most certainly.
It is true our organists do not know it; for they are lamentably ill-read in musical lore. They seem to imagine that whatever is published as music for the service of the Catholic Church is to be regarded as “Catholic music,” and perfectly proper, and they scarcely dream of looking further than to the publications or importations of Ditson, Peters, and Novello, or of critically examining these to test their fitness for the purposes of divine worship. To take the two best composers of their class, how few organists have taken the trouble to study critically the Masses of Haydn and Mozart. Of the sixteen Masses composed by Haydn, there are only four in which the words are all correct. These are Nos. 4, 5, 6, and 9. All the others are consequently defective.
In Nos. 7, 8, and 11, although all the words are to be found in one or other of the voice parts, yet each voice is often singing different words at the same time.
In Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 16 the words Qui ex patre filioque procedit are altogether omitted. In Nos. 3 and 16 the words et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, filium Dei unigenitum, are wanting. In No. 2 the words Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur are omitted. In No. 10 the words Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris, qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis, are omitted. In the Credo all the words from et in unum Dominum as far as per quem omnia facta sunt (inclusive), and again all the last part of the Credo from et in Spiritum to the end, are altogether omitted.
In No. 12 the words Qui tollis peccata mundi (secundo) are omitted.
In No. 13 the words Jesu Christe, Domine Deus, are omitted. The words Filius Patris are immediately followed by miserere nobis, quoniam tu solus, etc.
Again, in the Credo of this same Mass, after the words et invisibilium we find the text read thus: credo per quem omnia, etc., with all the intermediate part left out. No. 14 consists of a Kyrie and Gloria only. In the Gloria the words Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe, etc., qui sedes, etc., are omitted. In No. 15 the words Qui tollis peccata mundi (secundo) are omitted. In the Credo of this Mass, beginning with Et resurrexit, different words are sung simultaneously by each part, as remarked above of Nos. 7, 8, and 11.
While it cannot be denied that much of the Mass music of Haydn is the most beautiful in the world, some of it is trivial and undevotional, and it would seem as if, by some of his movements, he wished to