Yet let us see if our comparison with the ceremonies of the liturgy and the character of the actors holds good as before.
There is no scenery, nor should there be any for any occasion. No, good reader, not even for the Repository of Holy Thursday. Those puppet-show “tombs,” with pasteboard soldiers sleeping and watching before pasteboard rocks, are not prescribed by the rubrics, or even tolerated, and are therefore entirely out of order and unmeaning. The Holy Mass is a continuation of the crucifixion and sacrificial death of our Lord on Mount Calvary; but there is no dramatic representation of that event, for the reason, among others that we have alleged before, that it is not a representation, but a reality. We could readily understand its propriety if the Episcopalians or other sects of Protestants were to have a stage erected with scenery of the “upper room,” and a supper-table with living actors or wax-figure ones, à la Mme. Tussaud or Mrs. Jarley, in order to vividly represent to their people the celebration of the Last Supper, because their “celebrations,” high, low, broad, or evangelical, expect to have nothing more at best than a representative sacrifice or commemorative supper; but the Catholic Mass is a perfect and real sacrifice in itself, and mimics nothing.
Apart from the Mass, we have a remarkable example in our own day of a sacred drama, the Passion Play of Ober-Ammergau, which is not a real but an imitative crucifixion, mechanical in the highest degree, passional, figurative, and dramatic. Music for that, à la bonne heure!
Let us again bring the chant into comparison. When we say that it is pre-eminently the chant of priests, each one of whom is “alter Christus,”[90] the chorus song of psalmists, we at once proclaim it as pre-eminently fitted for the expression of the liturgy, and therefore to be wanting in dramatic or word-painting capacity. There have been a few insignificant attempts made by late composers to express, after a musical fashion, the descendit de cœlis with square notes on a four-lined staff, in the hope, probably, that it would be mistaken for plain chant; but the guise is too thin!
Here is a fitting opportunity to explain our former intimation that horrifying, tearful, and groaning melody is not suitable even for a requiem. How often have we not heard it said, “Oh! Gregorian chant is admirable for occasions of sorrow; just the thing for a Dead Mass”; or again, “I think the chant is so lugubrious and solemn; every inflexion seems to be in the minor key,” to which we reply:
In the first place, they who suppose plain chant to be in the minor key are simply in ignorance of its tonality. These we advise to study enough of the chant of their church to avoid making ridiculous objections to it. The others evidently suppose, 1st, that the church intends to excite emotions of sadness at a requiem, and to perform, especially with the services of the choir, the office of a paid mute; and if the friends and relatives are moved to weep bitterly and for a long time, every one will say, “How impressive, how touching!” meaning, “How saddening! How depressing to the spirits!” 2d. That the Gregorian chant Requiem is most admirably suited to this purpose, being a melody of such a sorrowful character and of so lugubrious a tone.
On which we remark that they are most egregiously mistaken in both suppositions. The object which the church has in view at a requiem is not to make people weep and wail, but to console, comfort, and soothe the bleeding hearts of the bereaved mourners; to pray herself, and to excite them to pray earnestly, for the soul of the departed. Nothing could be further from her thought than to horrify them with visions of the grave and imaginations of the torments of the damned. No, it is rest, eternal rest, the rapture of the soul's enjoyment of the everlasting light of glory in heaven, that forms the burden of her funereal refrain,
“Requiem æternam dona ei Domine,
Et lux perpetua luceat ei!
Requiescat in pace!”