Music in the History of the Western Church

The chant appears to be the natural and fundamental form of music employed in all liturgical systems the world over, ancient and modern. The sacrificial song of the Egyptians, the Hebrews, and the Greeks was a chant, and this is the form of music adopted by the Eastern Church, the Anglican, and every system in which worship is offered in common and prescribed forms. The chant form is chosen because it does not make an independent artistic impression, but can be held in strict subordination to the sacred words; its sole function is to carry the text over with greater force upon the attention and the emotions. It is in this relationship of text and tone that the chant differs from true melody. The latter obeys musical laws of structure and rhythm; the music is paramount and the text accessory, and in order that the musical flow may not be hampered, the words are often extended or repeated, and may be compared to a flexible framework on which the tonal decoration is displayed. In the chant, on the other hand, this relation of text and tone is reversed; there is no repetition of words, the laws of structure and rhythm are rhetorical laws, and the music never asserts itself to the concealment or subjugation of the meaning of the text. The “jubilations” or “melismas,” which are frequent in the choral portions of the Plain Song system, particularly in the richer melodies of thee Mass, would seem at first thought to contradict this principle; in these florid melodic phrases the singer would appear to abandon himself to a sort of inspired rapture, giving vent to the emotions aroused in him by the sacred words. Here musical utterance seems for the moment to be set free from dependence upon word and symbol and to assert its own special prerogatives of expression, adopting the conception that underlies modern figurate music. These occasional ebullitions of feeling permitted in the chant are, however, only momentary; they relieve what would otherwise be an unvaried austerity not contemplated in the spirit of Catholic art; they do not violate the general principle of universality and objectiveness as opposed to individual subjective expression, – subordination to word and rite rather than purely musical self-assertion, – which is the theoretic basis of the liturgic chant system.

Chant is speech-song, probably the earliest form of vocal music; it proceeds from the modulations of impassioned speech; it results from the need of regulating and perpetuating these modulations when certain exigencies require a common and impressive form of utterance, as in religious rites, public rejoicing or mourning, etc. The necessity of filling large spaces almost inevitably involves the use of balanced cadences. Poetic recitation among ancient and primitive peoples is never recited in the ordinary level pitch of voice in speech, but always in musical inflections, controlled by some principle of order. Under the authority of a permanent corporate institution these inflections are reduced to a system, and are imposed upon all whose office it is to administer the public ceremonies of worship. This is the origin of the liturgic chant of ancient peoples, and also, by historic continuation, of the Gregorian melody. The Catholic chant is a projection into modern art of the altar song of Greece, Judaea, and Egypt, and through these nations reaches back to that epoch of unknown remoteness when mankind first began to conceive of invisible powers to be invoked or appeased. A large measure of the impressiveness of the liturgic chant, therefore, is due to its historic religious associations. It forms a connecting link between ancient religion and the Christian, and perpetuates to our own day an ideal of sacred music which is as old as religious music itself. It is a striking fact that only within the last six hundred or seven hundred years, and only within the bounds of Christendom, has an artificial form of worship music arisen in which musical forms have become emancipated from subjection to the rhetorical laws of speech, and been built up under the shaping force of inherent musical laws, gaining a more or less free play for the creative impulses of an independent art. The conception which is realized in the Gregorian chant, and which exclusively prevailed until the rise of the modern polyphonic system, is that of music in subjection to rite and liturgy, its own charms merged and, so far as conscious intention goes, lost in the paramount significance of text and action. It is for this reason, together with the historic relation of chant and liturgy, that the rulers of the Catholic Church have always labored so strenuously for uniformity in the liturgic chant as well as for its perpetuity. There are even churchmen at the present time who urge the abandonment of all the modern forms of harmonized music and the restoration of the unison chant to every detail of the service. A notion so ascetic and monastic can never prevail, but one who has fully entered into the spirit of the Plain Song melodies can at least sympathize with the reverence which such a reactionary attitude implies. There is a solemn unearthly sweetness in these tones which appeals irresistibly to those who have become habituated to them. They have maintained for centuries the inevitable comparison with every other form of melody, religious and secular, and there is reason to believe that they will continue to sustain all possible rivalry, until they at last outlive every other form of music now existing.

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1

Brinton, The Religions of Ancient Peoples.

2

Brown, The Fine Arts.

3

Spencer, Professional Institutions: Dancer and Musician.

4

Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion.

5

A full account of ancient Assyrian music, so far as known, may be found in Engel’s Music of the Most Ancient Nations.

6

“Long ago they [the Egyptians] appear to have recognized the principle that their young citizens must be habituated to forms and strains of virtue. These they fixed, and exhibited the patterns of them in their temples; and no painter or artist is allowed to innovate upon them, or to leave the traditional forms and invent new ones. To this day no alteration is allowed either in these arts, or in music at all.” – Plato, Laws, Book II., Jowett’s translation.

7

Chappell, History of Music.

8

Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, translated by Tirard.

9

See Plato, Republic, book iii.

10

Ambros, Geschichte der Musik.

11

Gen. xxxi. 27.

12

Ex. xix.

13

Jos. vi.

14

Num. x. 2-8.

15

2 Chron. v. 12, 13; xxix. 26-28.

16

2 Chron. xiii. 12, 14.

17

1 Sam. x. 5.

18

Chappell, History of Music, Introduction.

19

For extended descriptions of ancient musical instruments the reader is referred to Chappell, History of Music; Engel, The Music of the Most Ancient Nations; and Stainer, The Music of the Bible.

20

2 Sam. vi. 5.

21

2 Sam. vi. 14, 15.

22

1 Chron. xvi. 5, 6.

23

1 Chron. xxiii. 5.

24

1 Chron. xxv.; 2 Chron. v. 12. See also 2 Chron. v. 11-14.

25

2 Chron. xxix. 25-30.

26

Ezra iii. 10, 11.

27

Neh. xii.

28

Synagogue Music, by F. L. Cohen, in Papers read at the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition, London, 1847.

29

Ps. cxiii-cxviii.

30

Eph. v. 19; Col. iii. 16.

31

1 Cor. xii. and xiv.

32

Schaff, History of the Christian Church, I. p. 234 f.; p. 435.

33

1 Cor. xiv. 27, 28.

34

Chappell, History of Music.

35

Among such supposed quotations are: Eph. v. 14; 1 Tim. iii. 16; 2 Tim. ii. 11; Rev. iv. 11; v. 9-13; xi. 15-18; xv. 3, 4.

36

Constitutions of the Apostles, book. ii. chap. 57.

37

Hefele, History of the Councils of the Church, translated by Oxenham.

38

St. Augustine, Confessions.

39

Klesewetter, Geschichte der europäich-abendländischen Musik.

40

For an exhaustive discussion of the history of the Te Deum see Julian’s Dictionary of Hymnology.

41

Hymns of the Eastern Church, translated, with notes and an introduction by J. M. Neale, D.D.

42

Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome.

43

St. Augustine, Confessions, book ix. chap. 7.

44

St. Augustine, Confessions, book ix. chap. 6.

45

Gibbons, The Faith of our Fathers, chap. 24.

46

Caecilien Kalendar (Regensburg), 1879.

47

Wiseman, Four Lectures on the Offices and Ceremonies of Holy Week as performed in the Papal Chapels, delivered in Rome, 1837.

48

Jakob, Die Kunst im Dienste der Kirche.

49

Sermon by Dr. Leonhard Kuhn, published in the Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch (Regensburg), 1892.

50

O’Brien, History of the Mass.

51

Gibbons, The Faith of our Fathers.

52

The musical composition commonly called a Mass – such, for instance as the Imperial Mass of Haydn, the Mass in C by Beethoven, the St. Cecilia Mass by Gounod – is a musical setting of those portions of the office of the Mass that are invariable and that are sang by a choir. These portions are the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. The musical composition called Requiem, or Mass for the Dead, consists of the Introit – Requiem aeternam and Te decet hymnus, Kyrie eleison, Dies Irae, Offertory (Domine Jesu Christe), Communion – Lux aeterna, and sometimes with the addition of Libera me Domine. These choral Masses must always be distinguished from the larger office of the Mass of which they form a part.

53

It is worthy of note, as a singular instance of the exaltation of a comparatively unimportant word, that the word Mass, Lat. Missa, is taken from the ancient formula of dismissal, Ite, missa est.