Gregorius. “Yet tell me—for here the strangeness of your news almost surpasses belief—how dare the organists and choirs make use of any melody in accompanying the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and absolving the Divine Office which has not been adopted, or at least distinctly sanctioned, by holy church, to whom it appertains to dispose the ordering even of the most minute rubric in these important matters concerning the due praise of God and the sure edification of the people?”
Hubanus. “All I can say is, we do it. It is tolerated in some places, and my friend in his paper quotes some ‘Instructions’ which the [pg 149] cardinal vicar in Rome issued to his own clergy to prove the toleration; but, to my thinking, they sound very much like the careful mother's permission to her boy who asked leave to learn to swim—‘Certainly, my child, but don't you never go near the water, leastways any water that is over your ankles.’ ”
Gregorius. “I think I understand, for I have heard our good father, the abbot, say that ‘he who would be well carried must not drive with too stiff a rein’; and my holy novice-master, Father Ambrose—to whose soul may God grant rest!—did oft chide my hasty judgment upon my fellow-novices, saying in his sweet way, and after the manner of his wise speech, ‘Thou wouldst reform monks, good Brother Gregorius, before they are formed. All they need is a little instruction.’ At present every one is well pleased with your music?”
Hubanus. “Oh! that is quite another question. Dr. —— himself does not seem to think so, for he says in his paper: ‘In consequence of the failure of modern composers to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion, though their music has been introduced into our churches and given every chance of trial, complaints against it are heard on every side. We grumble about it in our conversations; we write against its excesses in the public journals; bishops complain of it in pastoral letters; provincial councils are forced to issue decrees about it; the Sovereign Pontiffs themselves not unfrequently raise their voices, sometimes in warning, sometimes in threats—in a word, the evil seems to have attracted a good deal of attention.’ ”
All the monks. “Ab omni malo, libera nos, Domine!”
Gregorius. “His account of your music—which you seem, nevertheless, to prize so much more highly than our dear holy chant, which hath the undoubted sanction of the church—gives pretty plain evidence that the church hath not adopted it in any wise. It rather suggests the thought that she would gladly be rid of it altogether, abstaining, however, like Father Ambrose, from reforming musicians before they are formed, and resolving, as he did often pleasantly say, to my comfort, ‘Thou shalt see, Brother Gregorius, that I shall make no change in our holy Rule.’ ”
Hubanus. “One would think you were born later, after all; for it would appear that our Holy Father, Pius the Ninth—pity you haven't lived to know him, Brother Gregorius, for he is the dearest pope that has ruled the church since the days of S. Peter—is in the van among the leaders of the ‘Gregorian movement,’ since a little while ago he made a decree that the Gregorian chant should be taught in all the ecclesiastical schools of the states of the church, to the exclusion of every other kind of music—‘Cantus Gregorianus, omni alio rejecto, tradetur.’ You see he wishes to get the Roman priests educated up to it—Rome rules the world—and the thing is done. ‘Othello's occupation is gone!’ But how in the world we shall ever get up a Christmas or an Easter Mass that is fit to listen to when that day comes is more than I can tell.”
Gregorius. “Despair not, good Hubanus. Remain with us past the morrow, and thou shalt hear a holy Mass and solemn Vespers which will warm the cockles of thy heart, [pg 150] chanted in strains of melody that belie neither the sentences of joyful praise which are uttered nor the exultation which doth lift the hearts of the brethren to heaven, and fill the festival hours with a divine gladness. (To the monks.) Brothers, let us rehearse the Gloria in Excelsis.”
As the curtains of our memory dropped upon the scene we have just been present at, our eyes caught sight again of the sentence quoted by Prof. Hubanus: “In consequence of the failure of modern composers to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion”—which failure is so utter that, in the judgment of the same writer, he “thinks it no exaggeration to say that, if all their compositions, except a very few, were burned, or should otherwise perish, the church would suffer no loss.”