The Shadow of the Cathedral

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

The Perrero had moved off when he heard that the Chapel-master, whose loquacity was indefatigable when he spoke of his art, had started on the theme of music. He had formed his own opinion of Don Luis and told it to everyone in the upper cloister. He was a simpleton who only knew how to play melancholy ditties on his harmonium, without ever thinking of enlivening the poor people in the Claverias by playing something to which they could dance, as the niece of Silver Stick had asked him.

The priest and Gabriel walked slowly through the silent naves talking the while; the only people to be seen were a group of the household at the door of the sacristy, and two women kneeling before the railing of the high altar praying aloud. The early twilight of the winter evenings was beginning to darken the Cathedral, and the first bats were coming down from the vaulting and fluttering through the columns.

"Ecclesiastical music," said the artist, "is a real anarchy; but in the Church everything is anarchy. I believe there is a great deal to be said for the unity of the Catholic worship throughout the world. When Christianity began to form itself into a religion it did not invent even a single bad melody; it borrowed its hymns and the manner of singing them from the Jews, a primitive and barbarous music that would shock our ears if we heard it now. Out of Palestine, and where there were no Jews, the earliest Christian poets—Saint Ambrose, Prudencio and others—adopted their new hymns and psalms to the popular songs that were then in vogue in the Roman world, or possibly to Greek music. It seems as though that word 'Greek music' ought to mean a great deal; is it not so, Gabriel? The Greeks were so great in their poetry and in the plastic arts that anything that bears their name would seem to be surrounded by an atmosphere of undying beauty. But it is not so: the march of the arts has not been parallel in human life; when sculpture had its Phidias, and had reached its climax, painting had hardly passed that rudimentary stage that we see in Pompeii, and music was only a childish babbling. Writing could not perpetuate music, for there seemed as many musical styles as there were peoples, and everything was left to the judgment of the executant. You could not fix on parchment what mouths and instruments played, and so progress was impossible. For this reason, though there was a Renaissance for sculpture, for painting, for architecture, at the revival of the arts after the Middle Ages, music was found in the same elementary stage in which it was at the break-up of the ancient world."

Gabriel nodded his head assenting to the words of the Chapel-master.

"This was the first Christian music," continued Don Luis. "Confided to tradition and transmitted orally, the religious songs soon became disfigured and corrupt. In every church they sang in a different way, and religious music became a hotch-potch. The mystics leaned to rigid unity, and in the sixth century Saint Gregory published his 'Antifonario,' a collection of all liturgic melodies, purifying them according to his ideas. They were a mixture of two elements: the Greek, rather oriental and florid, very much like the present debased style; and the grave and rough Roman. The notes were expressed by letters, the Phrygian and Lydian styles followed, and so the intricacies of Greek music continued though much altered, with fioriture, rests, and breathing pauses. The collection became lost, and many who think a return to the old style would be best, much regret it. To judge by the fragments that remain, if such music was now executed it would have very little that was religious about it, as we understand religion in art to-day; it would more resemble the songs of the Moors, or the Chinese, or those of some schismatic Greeks who still use the ancient liturgies. The harp was the principal instrument in the churches till the organ appeared in the tenth century, a rough and barbarous instrument that had to be played with blows, and was supplied with wind from inflated skins. Guido di Arezzo made a musical rule on the basis of Gregory's collection, and this was sufficient for the invention of the pentagramma[1] to be assigned to the Benedictine. They continued to use the letters of Boccio and Saint Gregory as notes, but they placed them on lines of three different colours. The imbroglio continued; to learn music badly took twelve years, and then they could not manage that singers from different towns could read from the same score. Saint Bernard, dry and austere as his times, ridiculed this music as not being solemn enough; he was a man antagonistic to all art; he would have liked to see the churches dismantled and without any architectural adornments; and the slower the music was, the better it seemed to him. He was the father of plain song, and he maintained that the more drawn out the music was, the more religious it became. But in the thirteenth century Christians found this chant most wearisome. The cathedrals in those days were the point of attraction: the theatre, the centre of all life. People went to the church to pray to God and to amuse themselves, forgetting for the moment all the wars and the violence and confusion outside. Once again popular music came into the churches, and you could hear intoned in the cathedrals all the songs most in vogue, and which were often obscene. The people took part in the religious music, singing in different tones, each one as seemed best to him, and these were the first beginnings of concerted singing. In those days religion was joyful, popular—democratic as you would say, Gabriel; there was no Inquisition, nor suspicion of heresy to embitter the soul with fanaticism and fear. All the coarse wind and stringed instruments that the artisans had in the towns, or the labourers in the fields, came into the churches, and the organ was accompanied by violas, violins, bagpipes, flutes, guitars and lutes. The plain song was the established liturgy almost throughout Europe; but the people disliked it, and interspersed it with songs, and at the great festivals, religious hymns were sung, adapted to the popular melodies then in fashion, such as 'The song of the armed man,' 'Morencia, give me a kiss,' 'I know not what confuses me,' 'Weep for me, lady,' 'Bad luck to him who married you,' and others in the same style. And Rome, you will ask, and the Church? What did it say about such disorders? The Church lived without artistic perception: it never had any. What are the boundaries between religious and profane music? From the sixteenth to the seventeenth century all critics have asked themselves this question, but the Church let them talk, accepting everything without remark. Now and again Rome made itself heard by a Papal bull, to which no one paid any attention, because the Pontiff was incapable of saying this is religious art, and the other is profane. Palestrina was entrusted with the task of reforming church music; the Pope showed himself disposed not to leave anything but plain song, and to suppress even that if necessary. The mass of Papa Marcelo and other melodies was the result of this, but things did not advance much. It was necessary in order that music should be purified inside the Church that the great secular musical movement should begin with the Italian Monteverde, with the Frenchman Rameau, and with the Germans Sebastian Bach and Handel; what splendid times, Gabriel! And just think what genius followed: Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Mehül, Boieldieu, and, above all, our good friend Beethoven."

[Footnote 1: The stave.]

The Chapel-master was silent for a little as though the name of his idol imposed on him a religious silence. Presently he continued.

"All this avalanche of art passed over the Church, and she, according to her habit, appropriated everything that was most to her taste; in any country the Catholic religion adopted the music most in accordance with its traditions—in Spain we have been saturated with the Italian style since the days of Palestrina, and German or French music never came to us. We were first of all fuguists and contrapuntists; but after the 'Stabat Mater' of Rossini we felt the attraction of theatrical melody so strongly that we have never wished to taste a fresh dish. Religious music in Spain has run parallel with Italian opera, a thing of which the canons are ignorant; they would be furious if at the mass you played them anything by Beethoven, which they would consider profane, but they listen with mystic unction to fragments which have gone the round of all the theatres in Italy. And about the plain song, you will ask? The plain song had its nest in this Primacy. It was preserved here for centuries and purified; all the best was collected in Toledo, and from the books in this Cathedral have gone forth the chorales of all the churches in Spain and America. Poor plain song! it has long been dead. You see for yourself, Gabriel, who comes to the Cathedral at the hour of the choir? No one, absolutely no one. The matins are recited, and all the offices are intoned in the midst of perfect solitude. The people who still believe know nothing of the liturgy; they do not prize it and have forgotten all about it; they are only attracted by the novenas, the triduos and retreats, all that is termed tolerated and extra-liturgic worship. The Jesuits, with their cunning, guessed that they must give their services a theatrical attraction, and for this reason their churches—gilt, carpeted, and decked with flowers like dressing-rooms—are always full, whereas the old cathedrals are as empty as tombs. They have not proclaimed the necessity for this reform aloud, but they have put it into practice by abolishing the singing in Latin, and substituting all sorts of romances and songs. In the churches, with the exception of the Tantum-ergo, nothing is sung in Latin, sermons and hymns are in the language of the country, just as in a Protestant church. For the mass of devout people, who believe without thinking, religions only differ in their exterior forms. It would be impossible to consign such a multitude to the bonfires, or that half Europe should again be in the clutches of the thirty years' war, or that the Popes should launch excommunication after excommunication, only to find in the end that the only difference between a Catholic or an evangelical church is a few images and a few wax tapers, but that the worship in both is the same. But we must go, Gabriel; they are going to lock up."

The bell-ringer was hurrying through the naves, shaking his bunch of keys and startling the bats which were becoming more and more numerous. The two devout women had disappeared; no one remained in the Cathedral save Gabriel and the Chapel-master. From the farther end of the nave were coming the night watchmen, to take up their charge till the following morning, preceded by the dog.

The two friends went out into the cloister, guided through the dusk by the rich glow from the stained glass windows; outside, the last rays of the sun were touching both the garden and the cloister of the Claverias with crimson.