Nor is this appreciation for Gregorian music confined merely to persons from among the multitude. The following are the sentiments of two of the most distinguished musical scholars of the day:
“All is worthy of admiration in the primitive Roman Chant. The tune of the ‘Kyrie,’ for doubles and feasts of the first class, runs out to some length, and is full of beautiful passages. That of Sundays is shorter and more simple, but not the less full of unction. In both the one and the other it seems impossible to change or to suppress a note without destroying a beautiful idea, where all hangs so perfectly together. With what natural, or rather inspired genius, has not this Kyrie, confined as it is to such narrow limits, been conceived to form a whole so complete” (Fetis, Des Origines du Plain Chant, ou Chant Ecclésiastique).
“Musicians may oppose and contradict what I say as they please; they have full liberty; but I am not afraid to assert that the ancient melodies of the Gregorian Chant are inimitable. They may be copied, adapted to other words, heaven knows how, but to make new ones equal to the first, that will never be done” (Baini, Memorie Storiche di P. Palæstrina, vol. ii. p. 81).
And again, describing Palæstrina as engaged in the task of revising the Gradual, he says: “But the Gregorian chant claims a character wholly its own, has a beauty and a force proper only to itself. It is what it is, and does not change. But to remain ever the same, and to be susceptible of a change contrary to its nature, would be impossible. In a word, it may be said that heaven formed it through the early fathers, and then fractured the mould.”
“Palæstrina applied himself with the zeal of one who had deeply at heart the majesty of divine worship. But having completed the first part, De Tempore, his pen fell from his hands, and more wearied than Atlas under the weight of the sky, he abandoned his attempt; and nothing was found at his death but the incomplete manuscript.… And thus we may see the greatest man ever known in the art and science of figured music become less than a mere baby when he wished to lay a profane hand on the fathers and doctors of the Holy Roman Church. …And how wise at last was he, after having fruitlessly attempted in so many ways to correct this divine song according to human ideas, to abandon the enterprise for ever, and to conceal up to his death the useless result of his labor, which he himself acknowledged to be unworthy of being made public” (Mem. Stor. vol. ii. p. 123).
Next, as slightly illustrating its power of pleasing even a modern European people, and that in contrast with the most elaborate products of modern art; in 1846, at the centenary Jubilee of the Feast of Corpus Christi at Liege, Mendelssohn’s Lauda Sion was sung at one of the offices. Yet the general opinion of the people who heard it (and who, by the by, from its constant use in processions, are well acquainted with the old Gregorian melody of the same sequence) was, that it was not to be compared to the ritual Lauda Sion. At the Metropolitan Church of Mechlin, on Easter Day, 1846, the students of the great and little seminaries united together to sing at the evening Benediction. The pieces sung were from Italian masters, Baini and a second, and the third was the Gregorian sequence, Victimæ Paschali Laudes. One of the singers himself told me that the people thought nothing comparable to the old melody, sung in simple unison.
The Collegiate Church of S. Gudule, in the city of Brussels, may also be cited as an existing proof of the power of the old chant. Whoever has heard the Requiem Mass and the Te Deum sung in that church by two hundred voices in unison, must cease to think of the idea of its popularity as if it were strange.
In the church of Notre Dame, in Paris, the simple melody of the Stabat Mater is sometimes sung by a congregation of four thousand persons, at the conclusion of the annual retreats, with an effect that can never be forgotten.
Again, as has been already said, the Requiem Mass, which took place in the Champs Elysées after the terrible days of June (1848), it was proposed that the Mass should be sung in music; but the Republican authorities, in conjunction with the bishops, forbade it, and the Plain Chant was ordered instead. Tens of thousands joined in singing the Dies iræ, and their voices seemed to rend the heavens.
In Germany, among the melodies that pass by tradition among the people, are many that are derived from the Ritual Chant of different localities, as may be seen by merely looking into their numerous printed collections of these melodies.