Music in the History of the Western Church

The commemoration of martyrs and confessors passed into invocations for their aid as intercessors with Christ. They became the patron saints of individuals and orders, and honors were paid to them at particular places and on particular days, involving a multitude of special ritual observances. Festivals were multiplied and took the place in popular regard of the old Roman Lupercalia and Saturnalia and the mystic rites of heathenism. As among the cultivated nations of antiquity, so in Christian Rome the festival, calling into requisition every available means of decoration, became the basis of a rapid development of art. Under all these conditions the music of the Church in Italy became a liturgic music, and, as in the East, the laity resigned the main offices of song to a choir consisting of subordinate clergy and appointed by clerical authority. The method of singing was undoubtedly not indigenous, but derived, as already suggested, directly or indirectly from Eastern practice. Milman asserts that the liturgy of the Roman Church for the first three centuries was Greek. However this may have been, we know that both Syriac and Greek influences were strong at that time in the Italian Church. A number of the popes in the seventh century were Greeks. Until the cleavage of the Church into its final Eastern and Western divisions the interaction was strong between the two sections, and much in the way of custom and art was common to both. The conquests of the Moslem power in the seventh century drove many Syrian monks into Italy, and their liturgic practice, half Greek, half Semitic, could not fail to make itself felt among their adopted brethren.

A notable instance of the transference of Oriental custom into the Italian Church is to be found in the establishment of antiphonal chanting in the Church of Milan, at the instance of St. Ambrose, bishop of that city. St. Augustine, the pupil and friend of St. Ambrose, has given an account of this event, of which he had personal knowledge. “It was about a year, or not much more,” he relates, “since Justina, the mother of the boy-emperor Justinian, persecuted thy servant Ambrose in the interest of her heresy, to which she had been seduced by the Arians.” [This persecution was to induce St. Ambrose to surrender some of the churches of the city to the Arians.] “The pious people kept guard in the church, prepared to die with their bishop, thy servant. At this time it was instituted that, after the manner of the Eastern Church, hymns and psalms should be sung, lest the people should pine away in the tediousness of sorrow, which custom, retained from then till now, is imitated by many – yea, by almost all of thy congregations throughout the rest of the world.”43

The conflict of St. Ambrose with the Arians occurred in 386. Before the introduction of the antiphonal chant the psalms were probably rendered in a semi-musical recitation, similar to the usage mentioned by St. Augustine as prevailing at Alexandria under St. Athanasius, “more speaking than singing.” That a more elaborate and emotional style was in use at Milan in St. Augustine’s time is proved by the very interesting passage in the tenth book of the Confessions, in which he analyzes the effect upon himself of the music of the Church, fearing lest its charm had beguiled him from pious absorption in the sacred words into a purely aesthetic gratification. He did not fail, however, to render the just meed of honor to the music that so touched him: “How I wept at thy hymns and canticles, pierced to the quick by the voices of thy melodious Church! Those voices flowed into my ears, and the truth distilled into my heart, and thence there streamed forth a devout emotion, and my tears ran down, and happy was I therein.”44

Antiphonal psalmody, after the pattern of that employed at Milan, was introduced into the divine office at Rome by Pope Celestine, who reigned 422-432. It is at about this time that we find indications of the more systematic development of the liturgic priestly chant. The history of the papal choir goes back as far as the fifth century. Leo I., who died in 461, gave a durable organization to the divine office by establishing a community of monks to be especially devoted to the service of the canonical hours. In the year 680 the monks of Monte Cassino, founded by St. Benedict, suddenly appeared in Rome and announced the destruction of their monastery by the Lombards. Pope Pelagius received them hospitably, and gave them a dwelling near the Lateran basilica. This cloister became a means of providing the papal chapel with singers. In connection with the college of men singers, who held the clerical title of sub-deacon, stood an establishment for boys, who were to be trained for service in the pope’s choir, and who were also given instruction in other branches. This school received pupils from the wealthiest and most distinguished families, and a number of the early popes, including Gregory II. and Paul I., received instruction within its walls.

By the middle or latter part of the sixth century, the mediaeval epoch of church music had become fairly inaugurated. A large body of liturgic chants had been classified and systematized, and the teaching of their form and the tradition of their rendering given into the hands of members of the clergy especially detailed for their culture. The liturgy, essentially completed during or shortly before the reign of Gregory the Great (590-604), was given a musical setting throughout, and this liturgic chant was made the law of the Church equally with the liturgy itself, and the first steps were taken to impose one uniform ritual and one uniform chant upon all the congregations of the West.

It was, therefore, in the first six centuries, when the Church was organizing and drilling her forces for her victorious conflicts, that the final direction of her music, as of all her art, was consciously taken. In rejecting the support of instruments and developing for the first time an exclusively vocal art, and in breaking loose from the restrictions of antique metre which in Greek and Greco-Roman music had forced melody to keep step with strict prosodic measure, Christian music parted company with pagan art, threw the burden of expression not, like Greek music, upon rhythm, but upon melody, and found in this absolute vocal melody a new art principle of which all the worship music of modern Christendom is the natural fruit. More vital still than these special forms and principles, comprehending and necessitating them, was the true ideal of music, proclaimed once for all by the fathers of the liturgy. This ideal is found in the distinction of the church style from the secular style, the expression of the universal mood of prayer, rather than the expression of individual, fluctuating, passionate emotion with which secular music deals – that rapt, pervasive, exalted tone which makes no attempt at detailed painting of events or superficial mental states, but seems rather to symbolize the fundamental sentiments of humility, awe, hope, and love which mingle all particular experiences in the common offering that surges upward from the heart of the Church to its Lord and Master. In this avoidance of an impassioned emphasis of details in favor of an expression drawn from the large spirit of worship, church music evades the peril of introducing an alien dramatic element into the holy ceremony, and asserts its nobler power of creating an atmosphere from which all worldly custom and association disappear. This grand conception was early injected into the mind of the Church, and has been the parent of all that has been most noble and edifying in the creations of ecclesiastical music.

CHAPTER III

THE LITURGY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

There is no derogation of the honor clue to the Catholic Church in the assertion that a large element in the extraordinary spell which she has always exercised upon the minds of men is to be found in the beauty of her liturgy, the solemn magnificence of her forms of worship, and the glorious products of artistic genius with which those forms have been embellished. Every one who has accustomed himself to frequent places of Catholic worship at High Mass, especially the cathedrals of the old world, whether he is in sympathy with the idea of that worship or not, must have been impressed with something peculiarly majestic, elevating, and moving in the spectacle; he must have felt as if drawn by some irresistible fascination out of his accustomed range of thought, borne by a spiritual tide that sets toward regions unexplored. The music which pervades the mystic ceremony is perhaps the chief agent of this mental reaction through the peculiar spell which the very nature of music enables it to exert upon the emotion. Music in the Catholic ritual seems to act almost in excess of its normal efficacy. It may, without impropriety, be compared to the music of the dramatic stage in the aid it derives from accessories and poetic association. The music is such a vital constituent of the whole act of devotion that the impressions drawn from the liturgy, ceremony, architecture, decoration, and the sublime memories of a venerable past are all insensibly invoked to lend to the tones of priest and choir and organ a grandeur not their own. This is the reason why Catholic music, even when it is tawdry and sensational, or indifferently performed, has a certain air of nobility. The ceremony is always imposing, and the music which enfolds the act of worship like an atmosphere must inevitably absorb somewhat of the dignity of the rite to which it ministers. And when the music in itself is the product of the highest genius and is rendered with reverence and skill, the effect upon a sensitive mind is more solemnizing than that obtained from any other variety of musical experience.

This secret of association and artistic setting must always be taken into account if we would measure the peculiar power of the music of the Catholic Church. We must observe that music is only one of many means of impression, and is made to act not alone, but in union with reinforcing agencies. These agencies – which include all the elements of the ceremony that affect the eye and the imagination – are intended to supplement and enhance each other; and in analyzing the attractive force which the Catholic Church has always exercised upon minds vastly diverse in culture, we cannot fail to admire the consummate skill with which she has made her appeal to the universal susceptibility to ideas of beauty and grandeur and mystery as embodied in sound and form. The union of the arts for the sake of an immediate and undivided effect, of which we have heard so much in recent years, was achieved by the Catholic Church centuries ago. She rears the most sumptuous edifices, decorates their walls with masterpieces of painting, fills every sightly nook with sculptures in wood and stone, devises a ritual of ingenious variety and lavish splendor, pours over this ritual music that alternately subdues and excites, adjusts all these means so that each shall heighten the effect of the others and seize upon the perceptions at the same moment. In employing these artistic agencies the Church has taken cognizance of every degree of enlightenment and variety of temper. For the vulgar she has garish display, for the superstitious wonder and concealment; for the refined and reflective she clothes her doctrines in the fairest guise and makes worship an aesthetic delight. Her worship centres in a mystery – the Real Presence – and this mystery she embellishes with every allurement that can startle, delight, and enthrall.

Symbolism and artistic decoration – in the use of which the Catholic Church has exceeded all other religious institutions except her sister Church of the East – are not mere extraneous additions, as though they might be cut off without essential loss; they are the natural outgrowth of her very spirit and genius, the proper outward manifestation of the idea which pervades her culture and her worship. Minds that need no external quickening, but love to rise above ceremonial observances and seek immediate contact with the divine source of life, are comparatively rare. Mysticism is not for the multitude; the majority of mankind require that spiritual influences shall come to them in the guise of that which is tangible; a certain nervous thrill is needed to shock them out of their accustomed material habitudes. Recognizing this fact, and having taken up into her system a vast number of ideas which inevitably require objective representation in order that they may be realized and operative, the Catholic Church has even incurred the charge of idolatry on account of the extreme use she has made of images and symbols. But it may be that in this she has shown greater wisdom than those who censure her. She knows that the externals of religious observance must be endowed with a large measure of sensuous charm if they would seize hold upon the affections of the bulk of mankind. She knows that spiritual aspiration and the excitement of the senses can never be entirely separated in actual public worship, and she would run the risk of subordinating the first to the second rather than offer a service of bare intellectuality empty of those persuasions which artistic genius offers, and which are so potent to bend the heart in reverence and submission.

In the study of the Catholic system of rites and ceremonies, together with their motive and development, the great problem of the relation of religion and art meets us squarely. The Catholic Church has not been satisfied to prescribe fixed forms and actions for every devotional impulse – she has aimed to make those forms and actions beautiful. There has been no phase of art which could be devoted to this object that has not offered to her the choicest of its achievements. And not for decoration merely, not simply to subjugate the spirit by fascinating the senses, but rather impelled by an inner necessity which has effected a logical alliance of the special powers of art with the aims and needs of the Church. Whatever may be the attitude toward the claims of this great institution, no one of sensibility can deny that the world has never seen, and is never likely to see, anything fairer or more majestic than that sublime structure, compounded of architecture, sculpture, and painting, and informed by poetry and music, which the Church created in the Middle Age, and fixed in enduring mould for the wondering admiration of all succeeding time. Every one who studies it with a view to searching its motive is compelled to admit that it was a work of sincere conviction. It came from no “vain or shallow thought;” it testifies to something in the heart of Catholicism that has never failed to stir the most passionate affection, and call forth the loftiest efforts of artistic skill. This marvellous product of Catholic art, immeasurable in its variety, has gathered around the rites and ordinances of the Church, and taken from them its spirit, its forms, and its tendencies; – architecture to erect a suitable enclosure for worship, and to symbolize the conception of the visible kingdom of Christ in time and of the eternal kingdom of Christ in heaven; sculpture to adorn this sanctuary, and standing like the sacred edifice itself in closest relation to the centre of churchly life and deriving from that its purpose and norm; painting performing a like function, and also more definitely acting for instruction, vividly illustrating the doctrines and traditions of the faith, directing the thought of the believer more intently to their moral purport and ideal beauty; poetry and music, the very breath of the liturgy itself, acting immediately upon the heart, kindling the latent sentiment of reverence into lively emotions of joy and love. In the employment of rites and ceremonies with their sumptuous artistic setting, in the large stress that is laid upon prescribed forms and external acts of worship, the Catholic Church has been actuated by a conviction from which she has never for an instant swerved. This conviction is twofold: first, that the believer is aided thereby in the offering of an absorbed, fervent, and sincere worship; and second, that it is not only fitting, but a duty, that all that is most precious, the product of the highest development of the powers that God has given to man, should be offered as a witness of man’s love and adoration, – that the expenditure of wealth in the erection and decoration of God’s sanctuaries, and the tribute of the highest artistic skill in the creation of forms of beauty, are worthy of his immeasurable glory and of ourselves as his dependent children. Says Cardinal Gibbons: “The ceremonies of the Church not only render the divine service more solemn, but they also rivet and captivate our attention and lift it up to God. Our mind is so active, so volatile, and full of distractions, our imagination is so fickle, that we have need of some external objects on which to fix our thoughts. True devotion must be interior and come from the heart; but we are not to infer that exterior worship is to be condemned because interior worship is prescribed as essential. On the contrary, the rites and ceremonies which are enjoined in the worship of God and in the administration of the sacraments are dictated by right reason, and are sanctioned by Almighty God in the old law, and by Christ and his apostles in the new.”45 “Not by the human understanding,” says a writer in the Caecilien Kalendar, “was the ritual devised, man knows not whence it came. Its origin lies outside the inventions of man, like the ideas which it presents. The liturgy arose with the faith, as speech with thought. What the body is for the soul, such is the liturgy for religion. Everything in the uses of the Church, from the mysterious ceremonies of the Mass and of Good Friday, to the summons of the evening bell to prayer, is nothing else than the eloquent expression of the content of the redemption of the Son of God.”46

Since the ritual is prayer, the offering of the Church to God through commemoration and representation as well as through direct appeal, so the whole ceremonial, act as well as word, blends with this conception of prayer, not as embellishment merely but as constituent factor. Hence the large use of symbolism, and even of semi-dramatic representation. “When I speak of the dramatic form of our ceremonies,” says Cardinal Wiseman, “I make no reference whatever to outward display; and I choose that epithet for the reason that the poverty of language affords me no other for my meaning. The object and power of dramatic poetry consist in its being not merely descriptive but representative. Its character is to bear away the imagination and soul to the view of what others witnessed, and excite in us, through their words, such impressions as we might have felt on the occasion. The service of the Church is eminently poetical, the dramatic power runs through the service in a most marked manner, and must be kept in view for its right understanding. Thus, for example, the entire service for the dead, office, exequies, and Mass, refers to the moment of death, and bears the imagination to the awful crisis of separation of soul and body.” “In like manner the Church prepares us during Advent for the commemoration of our dear Redeemer’s birth, as though it were really yet to take place. As the festival approaches, the same ideal return to the very moment and circumstances of our divine Redeemer’s birth is expressed; all the glories of the day are represented to the soul as if actually occurring.” “This principle, which will be found to animate the church service of every other season, rules most remarkably that of Holy Week, and gives it life and soul. It is not intended to be merely commemorative or historical; it is, strictly speaking, representative.”47 “The traditions and rules of church art,” says Jakob, “are by no means arbitrary, they are not an external accretion, but they proceed from within outward, they have grown organically from the guiding spirit of the Church, out of the requirements of her worship. Therein lies the justification of symbolism and symbolic representation in ecclesiastical art. The church of stone must be a speaking image of the living Church and her mysteries; the pictures on the walls and on the altars are not mere ornament for the eye, but for the heart a book full of instruction, a sermon full of truth. And thereby is art raised to be a participant in the work of edifying the believers; it becomes a profound teacher of thousands, a bearer and preserver of great ideas for the centuries.”48 “Our Holy Church,” says a German priest, “which completely understands the nature and the needs of humanity, presents to us divine truth and grace in sensible form, in order that by this means they may be more easily grasped and more securely appropriated by us. The law of sense perception, which constitutes so important a factor in human education, forms also a fundamental law in the action of Holy Church, whereby she seeks to raise us out of this earthly material life into the supernatural life of grace. She therefore confers upon us redemptive grace in the holy sacraments in connection with external signs, through which the inner grace is shadowed forth and accomplished, as for instance the inward washing of the soul from sin in baptism through the outward washing of the body. In like manner the eye of the instructed Catholic sees in the symbolic ceremonies of the holy sacrifice of the Mass the thrilling representation of the fall of man, our redemption, and finally our glorification at the second coming of our Lord. Out of this ground law of presentation to the senses has arisen the whole liturgy of the Church, i. e., the sum of all religious actions and prayers to the honor of God and the communication of his grace to us, and this whole expressive liturgy forms at once the solemn ceremonial in the sanctuary of the Heavenly King, in which he receives our adoration and bestows upon us the most plentiful tokens of his favor.”49

These citations sufficiently indicate the mind of the Catholic Church in respect to the uses of ritual and symbolic ceremony. The prime intention is the instruction and edification of the believer, but it is evident that a necessary element in this edification is the thought that the rite is one composite act of worship, a prayer, an offering to Almighty God. This is the theory of Catholic art, the view which pious churchmen have always entertained of the function of artistic forms in worship. That all the products of religious art in Catholic communities have been actuated by this motive alone would be too much to say. The principle of “art for art’s sake,” precisely antagonistic to the traditional ecclesiastical principle, has often made itself felt in periods of relapsed zeal, and artists have employed traditional subjects out of habit or policy, finding them as good as any others as bases for experiments in the achievement of sensuous charm in form, texture, and color. But so far as changeless dogma, liturgic unity, and consistent tradition have controlled artistic effort, individual determination has been allowed enough play to save art from petrifying into a hieratic formalism, but not enough to endanger the faith, morals, or loyalty of the flock. He therefore who would know the spirit of Catholicism must give a large portion of his study to its art. From the central genius of this institution, displayed not merely in its doctrines and traditions, but also in its sublime faith in its own divine ordination and guidance, and in its ideals of holiness, have issued its liturgy, its ceremonial, and the infinitely varied manifestations of its symbolic, historic, and devotional art. The Catholic Church has aimed to rear on earth a visible type of the spiritual kingdom of God, and to build for her disciples a home, suggestive in its splendor of the glory prepared for those who keep the faith.

All Catholic art, in so far as it may in the strict use of language be called church art, separates itself from the larger and more indefinite category of religious art, and derives its character not from the personal determination of individual artists, but from conceptions and models that have become traditional and canonical. These traditional laws and forms have developed organically out of the needs of the Catholic worship; they derive their sanction and to a large extent their style from the doctrine and also from the ceremonial. The centre of the whole churchly life is the altar, with the great offices of worship there performed. Architecture, painting, decoration, music, – all are comprehended in a unity of impression through the liturgy which they serve. Ecclesiastical art has evolved from within the Church itself, and has drawn its vitality from those ideas which have found their permanent and most terse embodiment in the liturgy. Upon the liturgy and the ceremonial functions attending it must be based all study of the system of artistic expression officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church.