Volume 19 / Part 4 — Church Music.155

Church Music.155

I.

From the earliest times music has had a place in the public worship of all peoples—among the pagans, among the Jews, among Christians. Its use in this connection has been dictated by God himself in the act of constituting the human mind; it has, moreover, received his express sanction, as we learn from the ordinances of the Jewish people. In the new law it has even been consecrated by his own divine example, since we read that our Lord and his apostles sang hymns together. His birth was heralded to the world by the song of his angels, and heaven is represented to the Christian as a place where we shall sing for ever the praises of God.

Church music, therefore, dates from the origin of Christianity, and has constituted ever since an integral, though not an essential, part of public worship among Christians.

The church has her simple offices and her solemn offices, and she has made the use of music one of the chief marks by which they are distinguished.

Church music grew with the growth of the church. As Christians increased and prospered, music was more and more cultivated, and was more largely introduced into their solemn exercises of worship.

The extent to which sacred music was cultivated in the early church cannot be easily determined; we have no reason to think it was very great.

When Europe emerged from that sad state of confusion which came over it with the invasion of the northern barbarians, and music was revived as a science and an art, it was, like the other branches of learning, at first confined mostly to the clergy, and its productions were for a long time almost exclusively of a sacred character.

The church being an indestructible institution, her traditions are handed down by one generation of her children to another. It was thus that in a dark day of confusion and destruction she preserved for us the treasures of ancient learning and the arts; and the world to-day owes to her not only the modern developments of poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture, but also the beautiful and varied combinations of modern music.

At first, as we have just said, there was no music but that which was dedicated to holy purposes, except such rude melodies as nature in all ages teaches the most uncultivated.

The musical drama did not exist; and music does not seem to have made any essential part of the pageants or spectacles destined for the public entertainment.

It was from the church that music was introduced into the chamber, the hall, and the street, and [pg 655] in the beginning secular music imitated and borrowed the forms of that which was sacred.

The music used in the sacred offices at first and during many centuries was the plain chant. How much of this chant was taken from pagan or Jewish sources cannot be determined, for authorities differ widely; but in any case it was so modified and improved by the fathers of the Eastern Church, and afterwards in the West by SS. Ambrose and Gregory, when they adapted it to the purposes of Christian worship, that it is now frequently called the ecclesiastical chant, though it is oftener called Gregorian, from the pope just mentioned.

In the beginning it was what its name indicates—plain and simple. It was sung in unison, and its melodies did not exceed the compass of the most ordinary voices.

But unison was found monotonous, as also the uniformity of time or measure generally observed in plain chant. The first departure from the old and severe forms was made when, about the middle of the IXth century, they introduced a sort of rude harmony constructed on the chant.

But this did not satisfy the craving for change, and the love of novelty, once indulged, led the way to many excesses.

Baini gives us an example of the abuses that then became prevalent. “They would write, for example, a Mass,” he says, “taking as a subject the melody of the Gregorian Ave Maria. Three parts in the harmony would sing portions of the Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo at the same time, while a fourth would take up at intervals the entire Ave Maria.”

Not merely were the sacred words of the composition itself “shaken together in most admired confusion,” but, as we have just said, the words of other sacred pieces were foisted among them, so that they no longer expressed any one idea. Worse far, the gaps were even sometimes filled up “with snatches of old songs,” the ballads of the day, and those not always of the most unexceptionable character.

Attempts were also made to vary the stately measure of the chant.

Indeed, all sorts of devices were introduced in the search for novelty, and so great had become the abuse about the period of the Council of Trent that a celebrated cardinal declared that some of the church music of his day was so unfit to be offered to God that nothing but invincible ignorance could excuse from mortal sin those who offered it.

At this juncture arose the illustrious Palestrina.

Born in an age of the most vitiated taste, and himself not quite exempt from its unfavorable influences at the opening of his professional career, his exalted and discriminating genius was guided to disentangle the sweet spirit of song from the mazes in which it was well-nigh lost, and to rescue his art from the merited reproaches which it was receiving on every side. He was encouraged and assisted in his task by two saints, S. Charles Borromeo and S. Philip Neri. When his celebrated Missa Papæ Marcelli was first heard in 1565, it at once banished from the churches all the profane novelties that had preceded it, and became the model for church compositions during the next hundred years, when with Carissimi began the change to what is modern.

When Pius IV., the reigning pontiff, heard it, he declared it satisfied all the requirements of sacred music; in fact, so charmed was he by [pg 656] its exquisite strains that he compared it to the melodies that the Apostle S. John had heard in the heavenly Jerusalem, saying that another John (Palestrina's Christian name was John) had given us in the earthly Jerusalem a foretaste of the music in heaven.

From that day to this the use of Palestrina's music has been retained in the Pope's own choir, to the exclusion of all other except the simple plain chant, with which it is made to alternate. Even when the Pope officiates or presides at any celebration outside his own chapel, his choir accompanies him and sings the same music.

It is this music, alla Palestrina, that travellers go to Rome to hear, especially during Holy Week. One generation has thus followed another to Rome for three hundred years; and the harmonies of Palestrina, though ever ancient, are, like the beauty of divine truth, found to be ever new.

Though Palestrina has retained his hold on the Papal choir at Rome, music far different in character from his has been introduced into the other choirs, even of Rome.

The perfection of the organ and of other instruments used to accompany the voices of singers, and the consequent discovery of other and more scientific complications in the art of harmony, especially since the introduction of the natural discord, the development of melody, joined with much greater skill in execution and the incessant thirst for novelty, have led to the introduction into nearly all the churches of compositions in which the voices and instruments are heard together in every variety of combination.

Add to this that about two centuries ago the opera took its rise, and the dramatic style, followed in it and developed by it, made its influence felt in the church.

For kings and princes then began the practice of selecting the same musician to preside over the performances of their theatres and of their chapels; nay, the whole staff of the theatre was brought into the chapel on Sundays, as is done to-day in Dresden. Nothing better and nothing different was required for the chapel, except the substitution of other words and a toning down of the measures of the drama, and thus the chapel became merely a sort of sacred concert-room.

But the maîtres de chapelle at these courts were the first musicians of their day, and their success in operatic music, sounded over all Europe, caused their sacred compositions to be looked on with undiscriminating favor by the public. And as the weakness of human nature is such that inferiors naturally imitate their superiors, and sometimes even copy their faults, it became the fashion to sing in churches the sacred music used in court-chapels, especially as this was more easily obtained, being printed at the expense of the courts.

Besides this, the modern composers of opera seem to have the ambition of composing also for the church. But they generally forget how very different the church and the theatre are, and they seldom care to follow a different method in the church from that which gains them applause in the theatre; and the public are frequently as forgetful in this matter as the composers.

It must be added that the directors of choirs seem to have a fatal habit of following, even in church, if they are allowed, the prevailing [pg 657]style set by the latest and most popular writers for the stage.

When the model so successfully set by Palestrina was first departed from, and instrumental music used in conjunction with vocal, there may have been a certain gain, as the chant became more melodious and less monotonous without losing its depth and solemnity. Gradually, however, the grave style of the older musicians disappeared, and the music of the church has become, at least in some places, almost as light and as airy as that of the theatre.

This music sometimes seems written in derision or contempt of the sacred words; as, 1, when a prayer of supplication, such as the Kyrie eleison and Dona nobis pacem, is set to numbers as lively as those of a jig (frequently the case with Haydn). 2. When the words are omitted, even though they be of importance; as the words of the Creed, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit (nearly always omitted, even in the longest Masses of Haydn). 3. When they are interminably repeated or senselessly inverted. In Mozart's Twelfth Mass we have: Crucifixus, et homo factus est.

What shall we say of the operatic solos, duos, trios, etc., instrumental interludes, sincopations, etc., which, to any one who reflects, are in direct contradiction to all our notions of what is reverent and appropriate to the church?

II.

From what has been said in the preceding pages, there are three general forms of church music: the plain chant, the music termed alla Palestrina, and modern figured music.

(a.) Plain chant is the old and original song of the church, of which the forms, like those of a dead language, are fixed and immutable. Long, long ago the secret of plain chant composition was lost, and it is probable that we have lost in great measure also the secret of its proper execution.

“The leading idea which is represented by plain chant,” says Canon Oakeley,156 “and in no degree by any other style of music, except that which consists in bare recitative, is that in certain cases music best discharges her office by retreating, as it were, in despair before certain divine words, and contenting herself with merely providing a vehicle for their utterance, so simple as not by any studied beauty of its own to detract from their intrinsic majesty and power. This, I think, will be admitted to be the leading idea of plain chant, though I am far from denying that accidentally this idea produces some of the most attractive charms of the divine art in its results.... In many of these accidental instances plain chant not only excels other music, but absolutely sets it at defiance in its own particular line.” Hence a celebrated musician is reported to have said that he preferred the plain chant of the Preface and the Pater Noster to all he himself had ever written.

In the beginning this chant was not even harmonized. It was plain and unadorned, as its name implies—cantus planus.

(b.) The music of Palestrina is the last and triumphant result of the efforts that were made in his time and before it to vary, to modify, and to adorn the plain chant, which all had found too simple and too monotonous.

Pope John XXII., elected in 1316, [pg 658] complains of the novelties introduced into the execution of plain chant in his day. These innovations he condemns as unbecoming and undevotional, especially the attempts to vary the measure; but he immediately adds: “We do not intend by this to prohibit that occasionally, especially on festival days, either at the solemn Masses or the other divine offices, some harmonious combinations (consonantiæ quæ melodiam sapiunt), viz., harmonies of the octave, the fifth, the fourth, and such like, on the simple ecclesiastical chant, be sung; in such manner, however, that the integrity of the chant remain untouched, and nothing of this grave and stately music (musica bene morata) be changed, especially since these harmonies delight the ear, excite devotion, and prevent the spirit of those who sing to God from drooping” (torpere non sinunt). (Extr. Comm., lib. iii., cap. 1, Docta Sanctorum.) This Constitution is the earliest utterance of the popes concerning church music—at least since innovations were attempted—that we possess. The abuses of which Pope John XXII. complained continued to exist, and even to increase, till the time of the Council of Trent, when Palestrina produced that style of music which is known by his name, and which, though built upon the plain chant, is as unlike it as Grecian is unlike Italian architecture. It is equally unlike modern music. It differs from plain chant, being an unbroken series of artistically-constructed harmonies, in which unison is unknown. It differs from modern music by the absolute disuse of instruments of any kind (even the organ), by the exclusion of all passages for soli, and by being written in plain chant tonality. “With the grave Gregorian melody, learnedly elaborated in rigorous counterpoint, and reduced to greater clearness and elegance without any instrumental aid,” says Picchianti, “Palestrina knew how to awaken among his hearers mysterious, grand, deep, vague sensations that seemed caused by the objects of an unknown world, or by superior powers in the human imagination.”157

(c.) Modern music differs essentially from all that went before it, and this difference is attributable to two principal causes: 1. The improvement in the manufacture and the use of instruments, and their introduction into the church; and, 2, The influence of theatrical music on that of the church, before alluded to. Modern music could not be in ancient times, for the want of modern instruments. As the perfection of the art of vaulting gave us that advance on the simple lines and heavy masses of Grecian architecture which we have in Gothic and Italian architecture, so the modern developments in orchestration have changed the whole character of music in the church and out of it.

The influence of operatic music on that of the church is seen in the attempt of modern composers of church music to make it dramatic. Church music, as Palestrina and the other great masters of the old Roman school had conceived it, had been treated as an emanation of pure sentiment, stripped of all human passion—as something ideal. The modern composers, on the contrary, pretend by their music to express dramatically the sense of the text. They say that, to be dramatic, it is not necessary to be theatrical, and they point to certain compositions [pg 659] of Cherubini, Beethoven, Hummel, and even Haydn, in which they say the contrary is practically demonstrated.158

It must, however, be confessed that modern composers, by trying to be dramatic, have more frequently fallen into the great fault of being theatrical than they have avoided it.

The use of instrumentation and of dramatic expression has given them immense scope, but their success bears no proportion to their talents, their opportunities, their numbers, and the immense quantity of their compositions.

Like the Athenians of old (Acts xvii.) spoken of by S. Paul, they incessantly crave something new, and, in their search for novelty, more often give us what is novel and strange than what is beautiful and appropriate, so that their compositions hardly ever continue to be used for a long time; they are soon thrown aside and forgotten; and, indeed, we think it no exaggeration to say that, if all their compositions, except a very few, were burned, or should otherwise perish, the church would suffer no loss.

In consequence of the failure of modern composers to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion, though their music has been introduced into our churches and given every chance of trial, complaints against it are heard on every side. We grumble about it in our conversations; we write against its excesses in the public journals; bishops complain of it in pastoral letters; provincial councils are forced to issue decrees about it; the Sovereign Pontiffs themselves not unfrequently raise their voices, sometimes in warning, sometimes in threats—in a word, the evil seems to have attracted general attention, as a similar evil did in the time of John XXII. and at the period of the Council of Trent, and a remedy is called for.

I. On account of the unsatisfactory character of most modern compositions, some have proposed that we should go back plainly and simply to the original or plain song. This was proposed in two able articles in The Catholic World, Dec., 1869, and Feb., 1870, and the Paulists of New York have actually made the experiment.

The reasons in favor of the resumption of plain chant and the exclusion of all other music may be stated thus:

1. It is the original song of the church; it is of venerable antiquity; it was originated under ecclesiastical influences, and has been sanctified by having been always associated with what is best and holiest in the history of the church.

2. It is so dissimilar from the music of the world that it is recognized at once and by everybody as ecclesiastical, and can never be confounded with secular music.

3. It possesses, when well sung, an air of stateliness and solemnity which is never reached by all the refinements and artifices of modern music. If it is less dramatic than figured music, it is also more expressive, because in it the words of the ritual speak for themselves naturally and without affectation, and therefore most eloquently; whereas in figured music the words are made so subservient to the musical numbers, are so senselessly repeated and so jumbled together, that their meaning is disguised rather than conveyed, and they cannot speak intelligibly to the mind, especially of the uneducated. Now, [pg 660] S. Paul says that psalmody should speak to the understanding; and Benedict XIV., speaking of S. Augustine, who used to be moved to tears by the Ambrosian chants he heard at Milan, says: “The music moved him indeed, but still more so the words he heard. But he would weep now also for grief; for although he heard the singing, he could not distinguish the words.”

No one will dare to say that to the ninety-nine one-hundredths of every congregation the Requiem of Mozart, with all its beauty of melody and its wealth of harmony, would be as expressive and as provocative of the feelings proper to the funeral service as the old and ever-charming plain chant Requiem.

4. Plain chant is the best safeguard against vainglorious display and its host of attendant evils, because it allows no scope for personal exhibition, and does not give undue prominence to individuals.

5. It is the only chant used in many places, and is found sufficient for the purposes of worship.

6. It alone has had the express authorization of the church.

This is a fair exposition of the arguments in favor of plain chant.

We admit the full force of the arguments derived from the venerable antiquity of plain chant, its Christian origin, its long and exclusive connection with the rites of religion, its dissimilarity with the music of the world, its simplicity, its impressiveness, and its incompatibility with individual display; but it must be remembered against it that it requires for its execution, especially here, where the knowledge of it and the taste for it are to be acquired, conditions not easily fulfilled; that its range is very limited; and that, however grand the impression it sometimes creates, its resources are soon exhausted; whence to those who for a long time hear it and nothing else it becomes extremely monotonous, and burdens the ear with a dull weight of sound not always tolerable. This will be admitted by all who in seminaries and monasteries have been most accustomed to hear it.

In those countries where plain chant is exclusively used every sort of device is resorted to on festival days to escape its monotony, e.g., by harmonies on the chant which are out of all keeping with it, as also by interludes on the grand orgue, by which one-half of the words of the text are absolutely omitted, and the recollections of the world are frequently as vividly brought to mind as by any modern vocal compositions.

No one will deny the appropriateness and impressiveness of plain chant on certain solemn occasions, especially those of sorrow, but it is confessedly unequal to the task of evoking and expressing the feelings of Christian joy and triumph. If the plain chant Requiem is superior to Mozart's, the Masses of Haydn are far more suitable to the joys of Easter-day than anything we can find in plain chant.

The writer in The Catholic World before alluded to tells us that plain chant prays. Give me, he says, the chant that prays. But prayer is fourfold, like the Sacrifice of the Mass; viz., it is latreutic—that is, the homage of adoration; it is propitiatory, inasmuch as it tries to appease God's anger; it is impetratory—that is, it asks and supplicates for what we need; but it is also eucharistic—that is, it gives God praise and thanksgiving. Now, if plain chant expresses better our feelings of adoration and [pg 661] supplication, it certainly must borrow from figured music the triumphant strains of praise and thanksgiving.

However, if the argument from authority for plain chant held good, notwithstanding all we have said, we should instantly waive further discussion. But the force of this argument we absolutely deny.

Dr. Burney has created the impression that the Council of Trent was at one time on the point of banishing figured music from the church. This was not the case. Benedict XIV. (l. xi., c. 7, De Syn. Diœc.), following Cardinal Pallavicini, the historian of the council, says: “It was proposed by some bishops, zealous for ecclesiastical discipline, that musical chant should altogether be banished from the churches, and the plain chant alone retained; [but] as others observed that this novelty [sic] would give rise to innumerable complaints and immense trouble, it was finally resolved, not that musical chants should be prohibited, but that they should be reformed, according to certain rules, to the requirements of piety and gravity.” And, in fact, the Council of Trent merely decreed that Ordinaries should banish from their churches that music in which, either by the organ or by the chant, “anything lascivious or impure is introduced, in order that the house of God may seem to be and may be a house of prayer” (Sess. xxii., Decr. de obs. et ev. in cel. Missæ.) The other decree (Sess. xxiv., cap. 12, De Ref.) adds nothing to this.

The teaching of the theologians is much more lenient than that of many of our modern dogmatists.

The great theologian, Suarez (De Orat. Voc., lib. iii., c. 8), arguing against Navarre, a rigorist of his day, says: “It is a sufficient argument that this use (of organic or figured music) is retained throughout the church, and that in the very church of Rome itself, and in the chapel of the Sovereign Pontiff, the divine offices are sung after this manner.” He then proceeds to comment as strongly as any one on the danger of excesses and abuses; only he does not seem to feel, either with the objectors of his day or with some writers of the present time, that figured music is intrinsically mischievous, any more than that it is ecclesiastically irregular.

A later and better authority, Benedict XIV., speaking as a theologian in his work De Synodo Diœc., loco cit., and as Pope, in his Constitution Annuus; 19th Feb., 1749, addressed to the bishops of the Pontifical States, says that it would be an extreme measure to banish figured music from the church, and that he considers it sufficient to banish such music as is theatrical (modi theatrales).

Much has been made of the plea that plain chant is the only chant that has ever been expressly authorized.

Now, it must be remembered, 1, that when plain chant originated, music was not used outside of the church, and that in the dark ages churchmen were the only ones who knew music, and that the church was necessarily its guardian; and, 2, that for three hundred years the church has treated her authorized version with strange incuria; for of this chant there is now no version commanded (though the differences of versions are very remarkable indeed), and till within a year or two there was no version to which any special authorization or even recommendation was given by the popes. Even the version now [pg 662] being prepared under the supervision of the Roman Congregation of Rites is merely recommended.

We must be excused for this long argument about plain chant, but we have been forced into it by the exaggerations of the advocates of this chant, who are, like some of the advocates of Gothic architecture, extremists, and in their zeal fear not to censure the whole church, and even the Pope himself.

They indeed censure the church; for the use of figured music has penetrated everywhere with episcopal sanction and Papal toleration, and, say what we may, it must be admitted that all the theories advanced for the exclusive use of plain chant have invariably fallen to the ground under the hand of practice.

We deny, then, the obligation of confining ourselves to plain chant, if we except that which is in the Missal and the Pontifical, and which contains what is sung by the priest or bishop at the altar.

But while we deny the obligation of using the plain chant exclusively, we would retain a large portion of it, 1, because there are parts of it so appropriate to special services that we can invent nothing better; such as the Requiem, the Lamentations, the Veni Creator, and many hymns, and the incomparable psalm tones, as charming to-day as when heard by S. Augustine, who says of them: “As the voices flowed into my ears, truth was instilled into my heart, and the affections of piety overflowed in tears of joy.” 2. Because, like our vestments and other appendages of our ceremonial, it carries us back to the never-to-be-forgotten past. 3. Because by being used alternately (as in the Papal choir) with music of a different and more modern character, it contributes most powerfully, by the effect of contrast, to the dignity and grandeur of church celebrations.

To Be Concluded Next Month.