Volume 20 — Church Chant Versus Church Music.

Concluded.

“Ah! but it is sad to think,” objects a friend at our elbow, “that your rigid principles deprive the church of the use of the best music. I think she ought to have the very best of all that this world can offer.”

We have already given our friend his answer, from one point of view, in a former article. We will endeavor to give a fair interpretation of the answer which the church herself would make:

“It is not the best music, as such, that I want for my divine offices, any more than I wish my priests to decorate the walls of my churches with the chefs-d'œuvre of painting and sculpture simply because they are masterpieces of art. I certainly want, and rejoice to possess, the best that is suitable in art, whether of melody, painting, or sculpture, and even of scientific discovery or invention; but my canons of suitability would be a besom of destruction to gas-lighted altar-candles and sanctuary lamps, fixed or portable opera-glasses for the use of distantly-placed worshippers, the manufactured mimic rain, hail, and thunder storms at the beck of organ pedals, the statues of the Apollo Belvidere or the Greek Slave, valuable paintings of first-class yachts, fast horses, or prize cattle, even if they came from the pencil of a Landseer or a Rosa Bonheur; and if I cared for melody of any style for its own sake, my child, I would strongly advise my American clergy to engage the services of Theodore Thomas or Patrick J. Gilmore, whose orchestral performances are truly delicious, and the best for their purpose that can be procured in my beloved dominions of the western hemisphere. But the purpose of these delightful concerts is not a part of my programme. The disciples of the Grand Lama, I am told, turn off their rosaries and other prayers by means of a crank, as music is often made by mechanical organs; but my prayers and melodies are not made in this fashion. Have your best music, as you define it, sung and performed where it suits the best; go and hear it, and God bless you; but please do not let me hear of your inventing and using a small patent steam-whistle to replace the acolyte's altar-bell, nor a large one either in lieu of the church-bell, for that would smack a little too much of the cotton-mill or the iron-foundry; and I do not think I would tolerate that.”

We must confess to having our patience severely tried when the question of “suitability” comes under discussion, and we burn to cry out, Where is the honest musician who is not so engrossed with, and mastered by, his art as to become, like it, deprived of ideas, or at least of the power of expressing them in one single logical affirmation, and who has a principle which he will fairly state and reason from instead of taking us into the pathless dreamland of sentiment, or enticing us for ever off the track on to side switches of individual tastes [pg 318] and special pleas that lead nowhere? Discussing the relative suitability of music and plain chant for the use of the Liturgy of the church is, in our experience, only equalled by the purgatory of suffering one's reason endures when talking “controversy” with a Protestant. Has art no first principles? Is there no relation between art and the nature and purpose of the object to be expressed or illustrated by it? Do you dare define “suitability” to be the harmony of the subject with your present mood, with the fashion of the hour, or with the demands of ignorance and prejudice, or presume to close all discussion with your “Sic volo, sic jubeo; stet pro ratione voluntas”?

But this is a digression. Let us return to our argument.

Thirdly. If we were to say that, contrasted one with the other, the expression of plain chant is unimpassioned, and that of modern music is impassioned—in other words, that the former has not much, if any, capacity for expressing human passions, and that the latter has not only a great capacity for expressing them, but also for exciting them, we think we are affirming what every one who knows anything of the philosophy of music, as well as every one who has been subjected to the influence of both, will readily acknowledge to be true. There is martial music for soldiers, to excite them to combat, or cheer them in victory, or stir their enthusiasm on the triumphant return from battle. There is music for the dancers, and distinct kinds of dance music which invite and sustain those who may wish to waltz or polka, thread the figures of the quadrille, or indulge in the lascivious mazes of other such-like enjoyments not worthy of our mention or consideration outside of our duty as confessor or preacher. There is funny music to make us laugh, and there are funereal dirges to keep us in fit mood as we march after a coffin. There is music which we know will rouse the wrath of our enemy, and there is amorous music which awakes the passion of love, pure and impure.

We have already signalized the cause which gave to music its sensuous character. Lest it may be supposed that we are endeavoring to create a theory without sufficient warrant, we quote from one who holds an undisputed post of honor in the musical world:

“Very well! that which musical doctrine had condemned, that which ages had proscribed, a man one day dared to do. Guided by his instinct, he had more confidence in what it counselled him than in what the rules commanded, and in spite of the cries of horror which arose from a whole nation of musicians, he had the courage to bring into relation the fourth note of the gamut, the fifth, and the seventh (the tritone). By this one act he created the natural dissonances of harmony, a new tonality, the kind of music called chromatic, and, as a consequence, modulation. What a world of things produced by one single harmonic aggregation! The author of this wonderful discovery is Monteverde.84 He gives himself the credit, in the preface of one of his works, for the invention of the modulated, animated, and expressive style of melody. In fact, the impassioned accent (l'accent passionné) does not exist, and cannot exist, except in the leading note (la note sensible), and this cannot itself be produced, except by its [pg 319] relation with the fourth and fifth degrees of the gamut—in other words that any note placed in the harmonic relation of augmented fourth with another note produces the sensation of a new tone, without the necessity of hearing the tonic or making a cadence, and that by this faculty of the augmented fourth to create immediately a leading note, modulation—that is to say, the necessary succession of different tones—is rendered easy. Admirable coincidence of two fruitful ideas! The musical drama is born; but the drama lives on emotions, and the tonality of plain chant, grave, severe, and calm, could not furnish it with impassioned accents; for the harmony of its tonality does not contain the elements of transition. Hence genius found inspiration in the demand, and all that could give life to the music of the drama was brought into existence at one blow.”85

We cannot refrain from adding the reflections of another eminent musician—M. Jos. d'Ortigue:

“Is it not evident that a new order of ideas, a new social element, and a novel spirit, were introduced in music by the fact alone of the creation of a tonality, and that dissonance, modulation, transition, the leading or sensible note, the impassioned accent (mark the words), were but the material clothing, the means, the outward expression, thanks to which this new principle—namely, the moi humain—which had already, so to speak, broken through the upper strata of thought, made for itself a vent by means of the art of music? For just as the ancient tonality, by the fact of its constitution, inspired the sentiment of repose—that is to say, gave birth to the ideas of permanence, of immutability, of the infinite, which comport with the expression of divine things—so also disturbance, agitation, the febrile and tumultuous expression of the passions, which are the essential characteristics of all earthly things, are inherent in the modern tonality precisely in virtue of its constitution, which depends upon dissonance and transition.”86

Those wise old Spartans who made it a capital crime to add a new cord to the lyre, lest the people should be rendered effeminate, would certainly despair of finding a man living in our XIXth century who was fit to be called a man, if they were told that the chord of the minor seventh was in such common use that hardly one melody can be found where its effeminate dissonance is not made to appear and to be felt.87 We pray to be understood when we call the tonality of “impassioned accent” effeminate. A few words from M. Victor de Laprade will convey our meaning: “I dare to class music, and even women themselves, in the order of femininity—that is to say, in that class in which sentiment rules ideas, in which the heart is more manifestly active than reason. It is bold, I acknowledge. We are no longer living in the age of the Book of Wisdom, of the sacred lawgivers, of the prophets, of the philosophers, nor simply of Molière; we are of the age of Saint-Simon, of Fourier, of Auguste Comte, and we have changed all that. We have put the heart on the right side. I am obstinate enough to feel it beating on the left.”

[pg 320]

In his famous Instructions (we beg our readers to recall our proposed amendment of their title) the cardinal vicar feels the necessity of protesting against this emotional tendency of music. “We forbid,” he says, “too lively or exciting movements,” and dreads lest some composers may be led to express “the unbridled liveliness of the dance.” He would not “deprive the music of that grace and coloring which art and good taste suggest,” but thinks it necessary to add that “an effeminate softness is to be avoided.”

Without question, the best music, allied to words, as music, is in the compositions for the opera. Those eminent composers who have written for the opera and for the church have indisputably produced works of a higher order of musical merit for the former than they have for the latter.88 And is not operatic music the most intensely impassioned of all melody, and is it not, alas! becoming a vehicle for the expression of the most debased and lascivious passions of the human heart? Give to modern music language and a stage, free it from all the restraints of Catholic morality, and who does not see, after the experience of an operatic season in one of our great cities, that it would soon become the most powerful and dangerous of all the forces which are now threatening to enervate and demoralize our modern society? We must not be surprised, therefore, nor should we much regret, that “modern composers have failed in their works to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion.”

Let us see what spirit marks the ceremonies of the church when considered as opportunities for exhibiting, or as exciting causes of awakening, the passions. It is not possible to find one such occasion. All gesture which might suggest aught but the most perfect calm and repose of the soul in the actors is absolutely out of place. It is very difficult in sudden, unlooked-for instances of disturbance for the priest not to show in his countenance or by his manner symptoms of alarm, disgust, or annoyance; but he ought not to do so, and would not fail to scandalize the people, unless such disturbance happened to be extraordinary. To betray by look, gesture, or intonation of voice the slightest emotion of sensual passion, however innocent in itself, would disgust and horrify all observers. Neither do the rubrics permit him or his assistants to excite any passion in the hearts of others; for the ceremonial directs their most simple movements, the position of the body, the tenue of the eyes, the hands, and the feet. That “ecclesiastical modesty” which forms so constant a theme of instruction to candidates for the sacred ministry here finds its perfect realization, and is exacted in the highest degree.

The sacred offices are essentially unlike opera, and the church has the good sense to dread the introduction of anything in connection with her divine ceremonies that might be suggestive of it. We now understand why the cardinal vicar throughout the Instructions vehemently proscribes, and over and over again warns composers not to write, operatic or theatrical music, or anything like it, either in its melodies or its character, nor borrow [pg 321] from it, nor imitate it in the use of ariettas, duets, trios, recítative, finales, or cabaletta. Truly, “the best music” is pretty well ruled out by his eminence. By his cautious discrimination, and prudent lopping off, and general toning down he has pretty closely clipped the wings of the steed of Helicon, and, after all, it must be acknowledged, has made of him rather a sorry and unreliable nag, not worth half the old horse who all his lifetime has never given out, or baulked, or behaved in any unseemly manner.

We trust that a distinct disavowal of any intent on our part to treat with flippancy and disrespect the oft-quoted Instructions of his eminence is not needed, for nothing could be further from our thought; but that our readers will perceive that the point of our lance is directed against the endeavor to impose a restrictive and prohibitory circular-letter of the cardinal vicar as a brief in favor of modern music with apostolic sanction. We complain, also, that the words of Benedict XIV. have been quoted by the same writers in such a way as to leave the impression on the mind of the general reader that the learned pope treated modern music as un fait accompli, and rather preferred it if composed according to certain demands which he makes of musicians. Wherefore we quote again his words, by which we get at his real sentiments: “The Gregorian chant is that song which excites the minds of the faithful to piety and devotion; it is that music, therefore, which, if sung in our churches with care and decorum, is most willingly heard by devout persons, and is justly preferred to that which is called figured or harmonized music. The titillation of figured music is held very cheaply by men of religious mind in comparison with the sweetness of the church chant, and hence it is that the people flock to the churches of the monks, who, taking piety for their guide in singing the praises of God, after the counsel of the prince of psalmists, skilfully sing to their Lord as Lord, and serve God as God with the utmost reverence.”

The learned Suarez has also been cited in favor of modern church music—rather a strange fact, as the great theologian was dead and buried before the system of modern music was invented! S. Alphonsus—no mean theologian, nor a rigorist either—says: “The devil usually gets more by it than God does.”

This attempt to argue a positive approval from prohibitory enactments reminds us of “a little story.”

“I had the honor this morning,” boasted a vain soldier, “of holding a conversation with his majesty the king.”

“You converse with his majesty?” exclaimed his companion. “And what did you say to him?”

“Oh! I said nothing. His majesty alone conversed.”

“And pray, what did he say to you?”

“He said: ‘Fellow, stand out of the way!’ ”

Who has ever thought of denying that the old plain chant suits exactly the ceremonies of the church? There were never any “Instructions” promulgated, that we know of, to curb its worldly, operatic, sensual, or effeminate tendencies, simply because by its essential melodic form it does not lend itself to any such aberrations. By its short intervals, its grave and unmeasured movement, and its intellectual [pg 322] character,89 it is freed from all sensuousness. You can neither march to it, dance to it, nor make love with it. But you can appropriately accompany any of the ceremonies of the church with it, and pray with it; that is—to forestall the special plea of a theological “distinction”—you can adore with it, propitiate the divine justice with it, supplicate with it, praise and thank God with it; and doing all this, we respectfully ask, what more do you want, and, if you do want more, what right have you to ask it?

In the interests of art, do you say? Pshaw! You know well that the church can offer but a very confined field for the cultivation of music as an art, and, compared with music inspired by other wants and tastes, the music written for her use is not worth mentioning. It is only fit to be consigned to the flames, as our friend observes. Besides, the church is not an Academy of Arts and Sciences. Try again.

If being content with what the church prescribes, refusing to admit what she has not distinctly commanded, and contending stoutly for the fitness of that melody for the expression of her divine prayer, and as an accompaniment to her sublime offices, and which she has never declared to be unsuitable, be to “censure the whole church, and even the Pope himself,” as it is insinuated we do, then we offer ourselves at once for safe conduct to a lunatic asylum, for assuredly we have lost our senses.

Fourthly. We hear much of the coloring in the phraseology of modern music. That it is essentially rhetorical is plain enough. It is pretty much all made up of figures of speech, musically expressed. It is especially antithetical, full of striking contrasts, and highly metaphorical. We used to hear frequently in our own church, when we had a “mixed” choir and a gallery, a finale of the Gloria in Excelsis which the unlearned in musical gymnastics were accustomed to say sounded like the men scampering after the women, and the women scampering after the men, and neither coming out ahead of the other. This rhetorical character of music, this dealing in figures of musical speech, which we dare affirm is not free in many an instance from the faults of tautology, bombast, and mixed metaphor, lucidly explains the reason why the frequent repetition of morceaux de musique, whether anthems, motets, “grand Masses,” or “musical Vespers,” by any celebrated composer whomsoever, soon grows tiresome. The same rhetorical phrases and identical figures of speech in the discourses of a preacher Sunday after Sunday would set all the people yawning, and, if the sacredness of the place and of the speaker were not a hindrance to such emotional display, laughing and hissing as well.

The metaphorical character of music is the result of its theme, which may be, as we have already said, either pastoral, martial, amorous, saltatory, funereal, or even prayerful, etc.; but it is not really pastoral, for there are no green fields to pipe in or any hay-making going on. It is like pastoral music, and would be only tolerable, even in a concert-room, on the strength of the maxim, “Art for art's sake”—a principle we contend [pg 323] to be unphilosophical at best, and absolutely intolerable when applied to sacred ceremonies, and not sanctioned by a single instance in the rubrics. So, also, there are no military evolutions, no love-making or dancing, going on, for which reason the music is not really martial, amorous, or saltatory, but only like such music. But there may be a funeral, and there certainly is prayer going on; and what objection can there be to funereal and prayerful music? We have never heard any funereal music that was fit to accompany a Requiem Mass. We have heard musical howling, wailing, sobbing, groans and sighs of despair, and even the spiteful cursing and gnashing of teeth of the damned, as in the confutatis maledictis of Cherubini's Requiem; but let that pass for the present. Prayerful music there is of incomparable sweetness and ravishing harmony, but prayer music—i.e., music which is prayer—is quite another thing. Music does not lose its metaphorical character because its theme is prayerful. There is the greatest difference in the world between first-class paste and real diamond, or between vermeil and pure gold, although it is possible that neither you nor we could distinguish them without the application of a scientific test. The paste may have a perfect diamondful glitter, if you will; but that this glitter is the expression of the substance of real diamond needs no argument to disprove.

Let us again apply our test. The official acts of the celebrant and his assistants at the altar are not figurative, but real. The priest acts as a priest, and not like a priest. The chorus rise, kneel, bow, prostrate, as a chorus should, and not as a chorus might. All their acts are real, finding their ratio in themselves, and not in something else of which they are now a good and admirable, or now a poor and far-fetched, figure. Melody for such performances should be a faithful and true expression of these realities. That is to say, when you hear the melody, you should hear the prayer which is the form of the corpus rubricarum, as the soul is the form of the human body. Subjected to this test, the paste is easily distinguished.

Now, will the diamond, as we choose to typify the church chant, be as readily known by the like test? There is nothing corresponding or similar to figures of speech in the chant, neither is it based upon metaphorical themes. It has properly no theme, but only modes, with their special intonations, mediations, and cadences. Considered in its melodic form, it is a rhythmic combination of unities, the purest artistic expression of communion with the Infinite Unity—with God. Sung in or out of the celebration of the divine offices, if it be not simple rehearsal, it is prayer, and nothing else but prayer. It rejoices in the “perennial freshness” of the Holy Mass and Divine Office, because, like these, it is not metaphorical, but real; and hence we deduce at once the explanation of its lasting character. Its melodies do not wear out or become tiresome. It would never occur to a child of the church, although he were the most accomplished musician the world ever knew, if his age surpassed that of Mathusala, and he had heard High Mass every day of his life, that the Preface or the Pater Noster (and wherefore any other chant?) was a worn-out or tiresome melody. There is a truth [pg 324] for the lovers of church music to digest.

The essential reason—to go to the very bottom of the matter—of the lasting character of the chant, lies in the form of its phraseology, which is purely didactic, consisting of simple and therefore sublime affirmations; this simplicity of its phraseology being often reduced to the utterance of pure substantives, as if the soul were in rapture, meditating upon God and his attributes, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Being of beings, the Eternal, the Omnipotent, the Everlasting, the All in all, the All wise, the All fair, and the All good.

There is an instance of this sublime simplicity of language in Holy Scripture which is an apt example to illustrate our meaning. It is the twelfth verse of the viith chapter of the Apocalypse: “Amen. Benedictio, et claritas, et sapientia, et gratiarum actio, honor, et virtus, et fortitudo Deo nostro in sæcula sæculorum, amen”—Amen. Benediction, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, honor and power, and strength to our God, for ever and ever, amen.

The test being applied, we think we may affirm and certify the diamond.

Fifthly. From what we have already said, and to judge from the extraordinary pretensions of its capacity for expression put forth in these later days, modern music is essentially dramatic, mimetic, or imitative. That it is especially suitable as the melody to accompany and aid the expression of dramatic representation there is no question. There appears also to be hardly any limit of its capacity, as musicians affirm, for word-painting and scene-painting. If the musical critics are not deceived, we think that, with the full score of some genius who may be even now about to graduate in the school of “the music of the future,” a Thomas or a Gilmore might dispense with the actors on the stage altogether, and with the services of the scene-painter as well. What is thought of this power of word-painting, when employed to illustrate the sacred text of the church's offices, we quote from the Dublin Review, Oct., 1868:

“What is called word-painting in music is, of course, very effective, but, as a rule, it cannot be carried so far in sacred as in secular music without detriment to the dignity of the subject. Indeed, even where it is not otherwise objectionable, it sometimes becomes tiresome from its conventionality. The run down the notes of the scale at the descendit de cœlis, and such like effects, do not bear much repetition. Indeed, the attempt at minute expression has often led to odd blunders, such as in the passages resurrectionem mortuorum, where the music for the first word is usually made to have a joyful effect, the latter a lugubrious one (and that, too, sometimes drawn out into musical passages cut off from the previous word, as if it were a fresh sentence), the composer forgetting that the phrase only comprehends one idea—that of the resurrection. So with the passage remissionem peccatorum, exaltavit humiles, and others that might be named.”

We have already mentioned a notable instance of this word-painting—the confutatis maledictis from the Dies Iræ of Cherubini. The vividly descriptive and intensely dramatic power of that passage is well known; and if it were further heightened by a mechanically-darkened [pg 325] church, with a flash or two of stage-lightning and the rumbling of sheet-iron thunder, we are sure the effect would be quite as much as we could bear, whether as celebrant or as near relatives of the departed. Overpowered with the emotions of horror and fear which we are sure we would experience in thus having hell opened to us, we would be thinking a great deal more of the devil than of the God of mercy and compassion when the cry of fright broke from our lips, “Libera me, Domine, de morte æterna!” Certainly, deprived even of any stage effects, we have never listened to it without a shudder. And now comes the pertinent question, Is dramatic, theatrical effect what the church desires to obtain from her melody, or, at least, is she willing that there should be anything of this kind at all employed to illustrate her liturgy? We refer to the Instructions of his eminence the cardinal vicar. He is “polarized,” as we say in America, on that subject. We also quote from the late articles on church music in this magazine:

“ ‘Humana nefas miscere divinis’ finds its application here. To carry the minds of worshippers in the church back to the theatre by the music is a crime, for it is a desecration.”

Musicians themselves are not wholly devoid of the sense of propriety. Mme. de Sévigné relates that Baptiste—the celebrated Lulli—hearing at Mass one day an air which he had composed for the theatre, cried out: “Lord, Lord, I crave your pardon. I did not write it for you!”

We wonder if the correspondent of the Herald was aware of the satire contained in the following late announcement: “Signor Verdi protests indignantly against his Requiem being played in a circus at Ferrara.”

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!

[pg 326]

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!”

Those who love to indulge in the luxury of woe, and who fancy that plentiful tears and a thoroughly broken-hearted manner are the proper accompaniments to a mourning dress, highly approve of the anti-rubrical exhibition of painted or embroidered skulls and cross-bones, heightened in effect by a diapering of gigantic tears, which the artist in funereal trappings has intruded upon the altar or about the catafalque. The Requiem Masses of Mozart and Cherubini would certainly admit of these imitative skeletons and mechanical grief; but not so the Gregorian Requiem.

Hark! what are those strange words which break the silence as [pg 327] the coffin is borne into the church? “Subvenite sancti Dei, occurrite Angeli Domini, suscipientes animam ejus, offerentes eam in conspectu Altissimi. Suscipiat te Christus qui vocavit te, et in sinu Abrahæ angeli deducant te.”91

And now the Introit begins, which gives the keynote, so to speak, to the whole Mass:

“Requiem æternam dona eis Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis.”92

What a world of comfort in those words! How soothing and hopeful; and chanted to such a smooth, sweet melody, like oil poured out upon the troubled waters, calming the agitated and fretted spirits of the mourners, and gently turning all hearts away from the thoughts of the irreparable loss they have sustained, and shutting out the memory of the scenes of anguish and horror that marked the hours of the agony and death, solicits them to pray for the soul of the beloved departed, and to cast all their sorrow at the feet of God.

Doubtless you presume the chant is very sorrowful; and, like all Gregorian chant, this is, of course, “in the minor key.” Not at all, however inexplicable it may appear to you. Read over again what we have just written above, and now learn one more astonishing fact. The chant for this Introit is written in the sixth mode, the only one of all the Gregorian modes whose scale is identical with the scale of the modern major key!

There is not an invitation to weep in the whole Requiem, neither in the words nor in the melody. It is true the church takes care to improve the occasion by preaching her sermon on the Judgment in the chant of the Dies Iræ; but she soon returns to her keynote of comforting prayer, and at the Communio (which, of course, is not sung at all at our concert requiems) she essays even a bright and cheerful melody in the triumphant eighth mode, to the old refrain,

“Lux æterna luceat eis,”

and, addressing the sweet mercy of God, inspires hope and submission to the divine will by the reminder that he is ever kind and good—“quia pius es.”

Oh! what is this? It is the sympathizing pressure of the hand of the old, old friend who has always been true in sunshine and storm, in our sins and our miseries; it is her sheltering arm that folds our drooping head upon her gentle breast, and her cheery voice that has so often gladdened us in days gone by, soothing our broken heart with the only words that have power with us now—“God is good,” “It is his holy will.”

When we were aforetime groping in the darkness of heretical error, and denied all privilege of stretching out our hands in prayer to help our beloved dead through the mysterious way that death had opened to them, and sternly forbidden to hope for a deeper look into the future than the yawning chasm of corruption opened to our gaze in the earth, we felt—alas! how keenly—the appropriateness of the only burial service we knew of then, whose doleful burden—“ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” and “We commit this body to the ground”—expressed well the faith that was of the earth, earthy. But [pg 328] now our voice is lifted up in praise, and our heart-strings tuned to strains of festive joy, when God has spared our innocent loved ones the dangers and sorrows of life, chanting their translation to the skies in robes of white, and in words of joy that erst were sung by angels proclaiming “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men”; and at the borders of the tomb which hides from our sight the forms of those who for many a year have grown with our growth, and knit our very existence unto theirs, the earth with its darkening clouds is made to disappear, and heaven itself is revealed as the herald who precedes the soul to the gates of everlasting light, chants in our hearing its melodious welcome to the home of rest and glory.

“In paradisum deducant te angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.”93

The Catholic Church calm in the face of death, and triumphant at the edge of the grave! Why does not the sight convert every Protestant and unbeliever before the setting of the sun? This is our answer: Because you have brought upon the true Israel the calamity which Mardochai the just prayed God to avert when “the mouths of them that sing unto God are shut,” and by your music have bedimmed one of the most sublime manifestations of the church, and by the banishment of her chant have silenced her voice in that supreme, faith-inspiring hour!

Music at a funeral! We would as soon think of getting an Episcopalian parson to read his gloomy burial service, or of hiring a Methodist preacher to declaim by the hour, for the purpose of exhibiting his own vanity and ministering to ours.

The reason why the much-lauded musical Masses, whether of requiem or for other occasions, have failed to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion, is because their composers have sought by word-painting to illustrate the words, as separately defined in a dictionary, instead of grasping the chief and leading ideas to which the church strives to give expression; pretty much as if a painter, intending to paint a man, should most carefully sketch apart every separate bone, muscle, nerve, artery, and organ in the body. The result obtained would be a series of most excellently delineated anatomical drawings, no doubt, but no bodily form of a man, and no expression of what makes the body a living body, which is the soul.

Hence we deduce a most important conclusion. The form of modern music is not prayer, but recreation, the delectation of the imaginative faculty. It aims at producing the impressions which material things excite by their contact with the senses. It seeks to imitate motion in direction or velocity, light and darkness, cold and heat, serenity or disturbance in nature. The piano alone is supposed to make us hear the booming of cannon, the galloping and neighing of horses (the tritone Si, Fa, which in the palmy days of Gregorian chant was called diabolus in musica, and which is the essential chord in the tonality of modern music, will be found to give the exact notes of [pg 329] an ass' braying), the dying moans of the wounded in battle, the rising and setting of the sun, and a host of other equally curious things. “I shouldn't wonder,” exclaims a witty writer, “if one day I might see upon a piece of sheet music, ‘Demonstration of the square of the hypothenuse,’ or ‘The theory of free trade!’ ” Will not some composer produce a “work” which will give the impressions produced on the souls of the people at Mass and Vespers? It might be found convenient for home use on rainy Sundays!

This suggestion quite tickles our fancy. It has the smack of originality about it, and we feel like playing with it, as a cat plays with a mouse. Who does not see at once that it opens a vast field for development of music as an art, and precisely in the order in which musicians are now striving to give it expression? Yes, the glory of the invention is ours.

“Patent Musical Impressions, adapted to every want in church and state.”

“Save your fuel! Summer Impressions, warranted for the coldest climate.”

“Watering-places superseded! Refreshing Winter Impressions, deliciously cool, flavored with hops, serenades, moonlight excursions, sea-views, Adirondack trips, etc., according to taste.”

“Sermon Impressions, a great variety. Parties ordering will please state their religious views or the particular branch of the Episcopalian or other denomination to which they belong.” N.B.—Agents and composers wanted.

If our readers think this to be nonsensical trifling, let them read a few of those lucubrations styled “musical criticisms.”

Musical coloring has only been equalled in its fantastic conceptions by the so-called ocular harmony and visual melody imagined by the French Jesuit, Father Castel, who lived about the beginning of the last century. Starting with a fancied principle that colors are reducible to a harmonic scale corresponding to the scale of musical sounds, he had manufactured what he called his universal ribbon, on which were graduated all colors and their most minute shades. Of this ribbon he made a little book, which he ingeniously attached to a harpsichord in such a manner that certain leaves would open at the touch of the different keys, thus presenting to the sight a particular shade of color at the same time that the hearing perceived the musical note. It is said that he spent large sums of money on this hobby. He wished also to have silks and other stuffs woven after this principle and “dans ce goût” of which the sacerdotal vestments ought to be made, so that every feast and season would be not only distinguished by those parti-colored robes, but also, according to his principle of the harmonic proportions of color, that by a scientific arrangement of the colors derived from his graduated ribbon one might, and, as he contended, should, note upon the vestments melodies, and even harmony, so that a chasuble would sing the Gloria in Excelsis or a cope the Antiphons at Vespers! We do not find, however, in his works, any proposal to sing, in colors, either at Mass or Vespers, thunder and lightning, landscapes and sunrises, jigs and waltzes, serenades of love-sick swains, the shrieks and gnashing of teeth of devils and lost souls, as our modern musicians have done with their musical coloring.

[pg 330]

Sixthly. One of the chief complaints justly made against church music is its liability to the abuse of bringing certain singers of remarkable talent into an undue and often indecent prominence, and thus ministering rather to personal vanity, to petty jealousies and envies, and to the critical delectation of the audience (?), than to the praise and glory of God. That music can be written so as to preclude such an offensive result we are not prepared to deny; but that there is any reasonable hope that it ever will be we do not believe. The principle upon which choice is made of it in preference to chant, and which has extorted the restricted and evidently unwilling toleration of it, forbids us to entertain such a hope. We fancy that such a chastened style of music, composed so as to meet this requirement, would soon be voted as “confessedly unequal to the task of evoking and expressing the feelings of Christian joy and triumph,” and, with plain chant under the same ban, this world would become indeed a vale of tears and

“... plain of groans,

Whose arid wastes resound with moans

Of weepers over dead men's bones.”

The style inherent in music certainly calls for more or less of personal display, and consequently for some sign of appreciation from the listeners, if it be nothing more than that entranced silence which is often the most flattering applause, especially in church.

A little incident has just occurred in connection with our own church choir—we hardly need say that no women sing in it, or that chant is its accepted melody—which illustrates better than long argument the spirit that Gregorian chant inspires in the hearts of the singers. One of their number, a little chorister, lies sick in a hospital. The members of the chorus have made an offering of all the merit they gain in the sight of God, on account of their singing, for his recovery. We imagine the look of puzzled surprise if such an “act” were proposed to the singers of a musical chorus in one of our ordinary gallery-choirs.

We would furthermore ask whether music for the church could be, or is at all likely to be, composed so as not to betray the hand of the composer and elicit applause for him? Ought the people, or priest either, to suffer the distraction of remarking interiorly, “We have Mgr. Newsham's Mass to-day, but it is not so pleasing as Mr. Richardson's revised Mozart that we had last Sunday. I do hope the organist will soon give us one of those Mechlin prize Masses; but we cannot have that, I suppose, until we get a better tenor, for ours is rather a poor voice, etc., etc., etc.”?

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.