Concluded.
“Ah! but it is sad to think,” objects a friend at our elbow, “that your rigid principles deprive the church of the use of the best music. I think she ought to have the very best of all that this world can offer.”
We have already given our friend his answer, from one point of view, in a former article. We will endeavor to give a fair interpretation of the answer which the church herself would make:
“It is not the best music, as such, that I want for my divine offices, any more than I wish my priests to decorate the walls of my churches with the chefs-d'œuvre of painting and sculpture simply because they are masterpieces of art. I certainly want, and rejoice to possess, the best that is suitable in art, whether of melody, painting, or sculpture, and even of scientific discovery or invention; but my canons of suitability would be a besom of destruction to gas-lighted altar-candles and sanctuary lamps, fixed or portable opera-glasses for the use of distantly-placed worshippers, the manufactured mimic rain, hail, and thunder storms at the beck of organ pedals, the statues of the Apollo Belvidere or the Greek Slave, valuable paintings of first-class yachts, fast horses, or prize cattle, even if they came from the pencil of a Landseer or a Rosa Bonheur; and if I cared for melody of any style for its own sake, my child, I would strongly advise my American clergy to engage the services of Theodore Thomas or Patrick J. Gilmore, whose orchestral performances are truly delicious, and the best for their purpose that can be procured in my beloved dominions of the western hemisphere. But the purpose of these delightful concerts is not a part of my programme. The disciples of the Grand Lama, I am told, turn off their rosaries and other prayers by means of a crank, as music is often made by mechanical organs; but my prayers and melodies are not made in this fashion. Have your best music, as you define it, sung and performed where it suits the best; go and hear it, and God bless you; but please do not let me hear of your inventing and using a small patent steam-whistle to replace the acolyte's altar-bell, nor a large one either in lieu of the church-bell, for that would smack a little too much of the cotton-mill or the iron-foundry; and I do not think I would tolerate that.”
We must confess to having our patience severely tried when the question of “suitability” comes under discussion, and we burn to cry out, Where is the honest musician who is not so engrossed with, and mastered by, his art as to become, like it, deprived of ideas, or at least of the power of expressing them in one single logical affirmation, and who has a principle which he will fairly state and reason from instead of taking us into the pathless dreamland of sentiment, or enticing us for ever off the track on to side switches of individual tastes [pg 318] and special pleas that lead nowhere? Discussing the relative suitability of music and plain chant for the use of the Liturgy of the church is, in our experience, only equalled by the purgatory of suffering one's reason endures when talking “controversy” with a Protestant. Has art no first principles? Is there no relation between art and the nature and purpose of the object to be expressed or illustrated by it? Do you dare define “suitability” to be the harmony of the subject with your present mood, with the fashion of the hour, or with the demands of ignorance and prejudice, or presume to close all discussion with your “Sic volo, sic jubeo; stet pro ratione voluntas”?
But this is a digression. Let us return to our argument.
Thirdly. If we were to say that, contrasted one with the other, the expression of plain chant is unimpassioned, and that of modern music is impassioned—in other words, that the former has not much, if any, capacity for expressing human passions, and that the latter has not only a great capacity for expressing them, but also for exciting them, we think we are affirming what every one who knows anything of the philosophy of music, as well as every one who has been subjected to the influence of both, will readily acknowledge to be true. There is martial music for soldiers, to excite them to combat, or cheer them in victory, or stir their enthusiasm on the triumphant return from battle. There is music for the dancers, and distinct kinds of dance music which invite and sustain those who may wish to waltz or polka, thread the figures of the quadrille, or indulge in the lascivious mazes of other such-like enjoyments not worthy of our mention or consideration outside of our duty as confessor or preacher. There is funny music to make us laugh, and there are funereal dirges to keep us in fit mood as we march after a coffin. There is music which we know will rouse the wrath of our enemy, and there is amorous music which awakes the passion of love, pure and impure.
We have already signalized the cause which gave to music its sensuous character. Lest it may be supposed that we are endeavoring to create a theory without sufficient warrant, we quote from one who holds an undisputed post of honor in the musical world:
“Very well! that which musical doctrine had condemned, that which ages had proscribed, a man one day dared to do. Guided by his instinct, he had more confidence in what it counselled him than in what the rules commanded, and in spite of the cries of horror which arose from a whole nation of musicians, he had the courage to bring into relation the fourth note of the gamut, the fifth, and the seventh (the tritone). By this one act he created the natural dissonances of harmony, a new tonality, the kind of music called chromatic, and, as a consequence, modulation. What a world of things produced by one single harmonic aggregation! The author of this wonderful discovery is Monteverde.[84] He gives himself the credit, in the preface of one of his works, for the invention of the modulated, animated, and expressive style of melody. In fact, the impassioned accent (l'accent passionné) does not exist, and cannot exist, except in the leading note (la note sensible), and this cannot itself be produced, except by its [pg 319] relation with the fourth and fifth degrees of the gamut—in other words that any note placed in the harmonic relation of augmented fourth with another note produces the sensation of a new tone, without the necessity of hearing the tonic or making a cadence, and that by this faculty of the augmented fourth to create immediately a leading note, modulation—that is to say, the necessary succession of different tones—is rendered easy. Admirable coincidence of two fruitful ideas! The musical drama is born; but the drama lives on emotions, and the tonality of plain chant, grave, severe, and calm, could not furnish it with impassioned accents; for the harmony of its tonality does not contain the elements of transition. Hence genius found inspiration in the demand, and all that could give life to the music of the drama was brought into existence at one blow.”[85]
We cannot refrain from adding the reflections of another eminent musician—M. Jos. d'Ortigue: