We say that all such reflections are out of order, and are a valid argument against the use of musical compositions.
What of personal display in church ceremonies? It is not only in bad taste, but irrational, stupid, and contemptible, if it be not grievously scandalous, as it might very easily become. Does any one ever dream of applause to be either given or acknowledged? Why does not the church offer prizes for the composition of “Masses” which will vie with each other in their literary style, their devotional phraseology, and other characteristics, so that the people may have the enjoyment of hearing a Mass, now of the celebrated Dr. Brown, now of Dean Jones, and now of Canon Robinson, instead of being obliged to listen [pg 331] week after week to the same old, tiresome Masses of the Feasts of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the saints, the productions of the same “barbarous” age which formed the chant, and whose composers are not known to one in a million? Do not the exigencies of modern progress, and the aspirations to see themselves in print of more literati than she can find room for in her contracted temple of fame, demand that the church shall take this matter into serious consideration? We advise the American daily press to press this matter into the notice of the hierarchy at once, or at the reassembling of the Vatican Council at furthest.
As to plain chant, it corresponds exactly with this anonymous character of the present liturgy of the church, as every one can see—immortal works, that immortalize only the common faith which produced them—and then that will be got rid of, which is all we need or care to say on this point. Verbum sap.
Seventhly (and lastly, for the present). Modern music is essentially national and secular. It is the product of a natural and sensual civilization (a question we have not the space to fully discuss here), and advances in a degree corresponding to the cultivation of the arts for their own sake by this or that nation, besides receiving a marked impress from the national habits and tastes.
Art for art's sake! What else could we expect from a civilization which has ignored the supernatural and placed scientific investigation above the revelations of God, whose painters have abandoned the ideal for servile copying of nature, and whose highest type of beauty for the sculptor's chisel is a naked Venus?
The secular character of music—by which we mean its variability with succeeding centuries or still shorter periods of time—is also unquestionable. It is of this age or of that; now “all the rage,” and now “old-fashioned” and “out of date.” Modern musical airs enjoy a very short-lived popularity. Fashion is the autocrat, almost the divinity, of modern civilization. It is the logical expression of cultivated sensualism, and the art of music has basely given itself up to its tyrannical rule and whimsical lusts. Church music has been forced to bend its neck and go under the same yoke, and we do not believe it has the power to shake it off. Talk of making the style of music “alla Palestrina” popular now! We have been offered Chevalier Pustet's costly Musica Divina for a song; and Herr Franz may call the attention of church musicians to the works of Durante until he is hoarse. We tell you that such music is “out of fashion”; and fashion's ban in the kingdoms of this world is as blasting as the ban of the church's excommunication in the kingdom of Christ.
There must be nothing national or secular, nothing suggestive of the petty partisanship and strifes of the world, about the melody which expresses the universal and everlasting liturgy of the church. Kenelm Digby, whose judgment is of worth, says: “Sooth, no tongue can be adequate to give an idea of the impression produced by the plain song of the choir. It is full of poetry, full of history, full of sanctity. While the Gregorian chant rises, you seem to hear the whole Catholic Church behind you responding.”
Music may do for religions that are national or fashionable. Hymns [pg 332] in the German style may do for German Protestants; hymns and anthems in the English style may do for English Protestants; and American music (if there be such) may answer for all the requirements of devotion among the fifty odd sects that are struggling for existence amongst us—and we advise them, if they wish to make their churches “pay,” to keep their music well up to the fashion—but the Catholic Church, who knows no present, past, or future in her eternal faith, whose liturgy has never been subjected to the genius of national language, whose motto, “Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus,” has defied the attacks of fashion, as her rock-founded edifice defies the gates of hell, she must have, and, thank God, she has a melody no nation or age shall call “its own,” whose purity no soí-disant “civilization” shall ever be able to defile, which her faithful children shall always recognize as the voice of their true mother, and know it well from the voice of a foreign step-dame or of a hireling housekeeper—a voice which, through the mysterious link of divine generation, will ever speak to the child of the Father, who is his through the church, and whose Paternal compassion is sure to be moved by the tones of that song which the Mother taught him to sing.