^x Hibvia t gJmicorum Quorum ^n iflemoriam l^oberti "Galantine J^ectoljer a. 18. l^arbarli. 1906 MUSIC IN THE HISTORY OF THE WESTERN CHURCH BY EDWARD DICKINSON THE SPIRIT OF MTJBIC IftTBIC IN THE HISTORY OF THE WESTERN CHTTRCa THE STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF MUSIC THE EDUCATION OF A MUSIC LOVER MUSIC AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS MUSIC IN THE HISTORY OF THE WESTERN CHURCH WITH AN INTRODUCTION ON RELIGIOUS MUSIC AMONG PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT PEOPLES BY EDWARD DICKINSON Professor of the History of Music, in the Conservatory of Music, Oberlin College NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1925 COPYKIGHT, 1902, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Printed in the United States of America Published April, 1902 To My Wife PREFACE The practical administration of music in public wor- ship is one of the most interesting of the secondary problems with which the Christian Church has been called upon to deal. Song has proved such a universal necessity in worship that it may almost be said, no music no Church. The endless diversity of musical forms and styles involves the perennial question, How shall music contribute most effectually to the ends which church worship has in view without renouncing those attributes upon which its freedom as fine art depends ? The present volume is an attempt to show how this problem has been treated by different confessions and in different nations and times ; how music, in issuing from the bosom of the Church, has been moulded under the influence of varying ideals of devotion, liturgic usages, national temperaments, and types and methods of ex- pression current in secular art. It is the autlior's chief purpose and hope to arouse in the minds of ministers and non-professional lovera of music, as well as of church musicians, an interest in this branch of art such as they cannot feel so long as its history is unknown to them. Yiii PREFACE A knowledge of history always tends to promote humility and reverence, and to cheek the spread of capricious perversions of judgment. Even a feeble sense of the grandeur and beauty of the forms which ecclesiastical music has taken, and the vital relation which it has always held in organized worship, will serve to con- vince a devoted servant of the Church that its proper administration is as much a matter of concern to-day as it ever has been in the past. A few of the chapters in this work have appeared in somewhat modified form in the American Catholic Quar- terly Review^ the Bihliotheca Sacra^ and Music. The author acknowledges the permission given by the editors of these magazines to use this material in its present form. CONTENTS Chapteb Pagb I. Primitive akd Ancient Religious Mdsic . . 1 II. Ritual and Song in the Early Christian Church 36 III. The Liturgy of the Catholic Church . . 70 IV. The Ritual Chant of the Catholic Church 92 V. The Development of Medieval Chorus Music 129 VI. The Modern Musical Mass 182 VII. The Rise of the Lutheran Hymnody . . . 223 VIII. Rise of the German Cantata and Passion . 268 IX. The Culmination of German Protestant Music : Johann Sebastian Bach .... 283 X. The Musical System of the Church of England 323 XI. Congregational Song in England and America 358 XII. Problems of Church Music in America . . 390 Bibliography 411 Index 417 MUSIC IN THE HISTORY OF THE WESTERN CHURCH CHAPTER I PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC Leon Gautier, in opening his history of the epic poetry of France, ascribes the primitive poetic utter- ance of mankind to a religious impulse. "Represent to yourselves," he says, "the first man at the moment when he issues from the hand of God, when his vision rests for the first time upon his new empire. Imagine, if it be possible, the exceeding vividness of his impres- sions when the magnificence of the world is reflected in the mirror of his soul. Intoxicated, almost mad with admiration, gratitude, and love, he raises his eyes to heaven, not satisfied with the spectacle of the earth; then discovering God in the heavens, and attributing to him all the honor of this magnificence and of the har- monies of creation, he opens his mouth, the first stam- merings of speech escape his lips he speaks ; ah, no, he sings, and the firet song of the lord of creation will be a hymn to God his creator." If the language of poetical extravagance may be admitted into serious historical composition, we may 1 1 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH accept this theatrical picture as an allegorized image of a truth. Although we speak no longer of a " first man," and although we have the best reasons to suppose that the earliest vocal efforts of our anthropoid progenitors were a softly modulated love call or a strident battle cry rather than a sursum corda ; yet taking for our point of departure that stage in human development when art properly begins, when the unpremeditated responses to simple sensation are supplemented by the more stable and organized expression of a soul life become self- conscious, then we certainly do find that the earliest attempts at song are occasioned by motives that must in strictness be called religious. The savage is a very religious being. In all the relations of his simple life he is hedged about by a stiff code of regulations whose sanction depends upon his recognition of the presence of invisible powers and his duties to them. He divines a mysterious presence as pervasive as the atmosphere he breathes, which takes in his childish fancy diverse shapes, as of ghosts, deified ancestors, anthropomorphic gods, embodied influences of sun and cloud. In whatever guise these conceptions may clothe themselves, he experiences a feeling of awe which some- times appears as abject fear, sometimes as reverence and love. The emotions which the primitive man feels under the pressure of these ideas are the most profound and persistent of which he is capable, and as they in- volve notions which are held in common by all the members of the tribe (for there are no sceptics or non- conformists in the savage community), they are formu- lated in elaborate schemes of ceremony. The religious 2 PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC sentiment inevitably seeks expression in the assembly "the means," as Professor Brinton says, "by which that most potent agent in religious life, collective sugges- tion, is brought to bear upon the mind " the liturgy, the festival, and the sacrifice.^ By virtue of certain laws of the human mind which are evident everywhere, in the highest civilized condition as in the savage, the religious emotion, intensified by collective suggestion in the assembly, will find expression not in the ordinary manner of thought communication, but in those rhyth- mic and inflected movements and cadences which are the natural outlet of strong mental excitement when thrown back upon itself. These gestures and vocal inflections become regulated and systematized in order that they may be permanently retained, and serve in their reaction to stimulate anew the mental states by which they were occasioned. Singing, dancing, and pantomime compose the means by which uncivilized man throughout the world gives expression to his controlling ideas. The needed uniformity in movement and accent is most easily effected by rhythmical beats; and as these beats are more distinctly heard, and also blend more agreeably with the tones of the voice if they are musical sounds, a rude form of instrumental music arises. Here we have elements of public religious ceremony as they exist in the most highly organized and spiritualized worships, the assemblage, where common motives produce com- mon action and react to produce a common mood, the ritual with its instrumental music, and the resulting sense on the part of the participant of detachment from ^ BrintOD, The Religions of Ancient Peoples. 3 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH material interests and of personal communion with the unseen powers. The symbolic dance and the choral chant are among the most primitive, probably the most primitive, forms of art. Out of their union came music, poetry, and dramatic action. Sculpture, painting, and architecture were stimulated if not actually created under the same auspices, "The festival," says Prof. Baldwin Brown, "creates the artist." ^ Festivals among primitive races, as among ancient cultured peoples, are all distinctly religious. Singing and dancing are inseparable. Vocal music is a sort of chant, adopted because of its nerve- exciting property, and also for the sake of enabling a mass of participants to utter the words in unison where intelligible words are used. A separation of caste be- tween priesthood and laity is effected in very early times. The ritual becomes a form of magical incanta- tion ; the utterance of the wizard, prophet, or priest con- sists of phrases of mysterious meaning or incoherent ejaculations. The prime feature in the earlier forms of worship is the dance. It held also a prominent place in the rites of the ancient cultured nations, and lingers in dim reminiscence in the processions and altar ceremonies of modern liturgical worship. Its function was as impor- tant as that of music in the modern Church, and its effect was in many ways closely analogous. When con- nected with worship, the dance is employed to produce that condition of mental exhihiration which accompanies the expenditure of surplus phj-sical energy, or as a mode ^ Brown, The Fine Arts. 4 PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC of symbolic, semi-dramatic expression of definite reli- gious ideas. "The audible and visible manifestations of joy," says Herbert Spencer, "which culminate in singing and dancing, have their roots in instinctive actions like those of lively children who, on seeing in the distance some indulgent relative, run up to him, joining one another in screams of delight and breaking their run with leaps ; and when, instead of an indulgent relative met by joyful children, we have a conquering chief or king met by groups of his people, there will almost certainly occur saltatory and vocal expressions of elated feeling, and these must become by implication signs of respect and loyalty, ascriptions of worth which, raised to a higher power, become worship."* Illustrations of such motives in the sacred dance are found in the festive procession of women, led by Miriam, after the overthrow of the Egyptians, the dance of David before the ark, and the dance of the boy Sophocles around the trophi6s of Salamis. But the sacred dance is by no means confined to the discharge of physical energy under the promptings of joy. The funeral dance is one of the most frequent of such obser- vances, and dread of divine wrath and the hope of pro- pitiation by means of rites pleasing to the offended power form a frequent occasion for rhythmic evolution and violent bodily demonstration. Far more commonly, however, does the sacred dance assume a representative character and become a rudi- mentary drama, either imitative or emblematic. It depicts the doings of the gods, often under the supposi- l Spencer, Professional Institutions : Dancer and Musician. 5 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH tion that the divinities are aided by the sympathetic efforts of their devotees. Certain mysteries, known only to the initiated, are symbolized in bodily movement. The fact that the dance was symbolic and instructive, like the sacrificial rite itself, enables us to understand why dancing should have held such prominence in the worship of nations so grave and intelligent as the Egyp- tians, Hebrews, and Greeks. Representations of reli- gious processions and dances are found upon the monuments of Egypt and Assyria. The Egyptian peasant, when gathering his harvest, sacrificed the first fruits, and danced to testify his thankfulness to the gods. The priests represented in their dances the course of the stars and scenes from the histories of Osiris and Isis. The dance of the Israelites in the desert around the golden calf was probably a reproduction of features of the Egyptian Apis worship. The myths of many ancient nations represent the gods as dancing, and supposed imitations of such august examples had a place in the ceremonies devoted to their honor. The dance was always an index of the higher or lower nature of the religious conceptions which fostered it. Among the purer and more elevated worships it was full of grace and dignity. In the sensuous cults of Phoenicia and Lydia, and among the later Greek votaries of Cybele and Dionysus, the dance reflected the fears and passions that issued in bloody, obscene, and frenzied rites, and degenerated into almost incredible spectacles of wanton- ness and riot. It was among the Greeks, however, that the religious dance developed its highest possibilities of expressive- 6 PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC ness and beauty, and became raised to the dignity of a fine art. The admiration of the Greeks for the human form, their unceasing effort to develop its symmetry, strength, and grace, led them early to perceive that it was in itself an efficient means for the expression of the soul, and that its movements and attitudes could work sympathetically upon the fancy. The dance was there- fore cultivated as a coequal with music and poetry; educators inculcated it as indispensable to the higher discipline of youth ; it was commended by philosophers and celebrated by poets. It held a prominent place in the public games, in processions and celebrations, in the mysteries, and in public religious ceremonies. Every form of worship, from the frantic orgies of the drunken devotees of Dionysus to the pure and tranquil adoration offered to Phoebus Apollo, consisted to a large extent of dancing. Andrew Lang's remark in regard to the connection between dancing and religious solemnity among savages would apply also to the Hellenic sacred dance, that " to dance this or that means to be acquainted with this or that myth, which is represented in a dance or ballet cf action.'''' '^ Among the favorite subjects for pantomimic representation, united with choral singing, were the combat between Apollo and the dragon and the sorrows of Dionysus, the commemoration of the latter forming the origin of the splendid Athenian drama. The ancient dance, it must be remembered, had as its motive the expression of a wide range of emotion, and could be employed to symbolize senti- ments of wonder, love, and gratitude. Regularly ^ Laug, Myth, Ritual, and Religion. 7 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH ordered movements, often accompanied by gesture, could well have a place in religious ceremony, as the gods and their relations to mankind were then conceived; and moreover, at a time when music was in a crude state, rhythmic evolutions and expressive gestures, refined and moderated by the exquisite sense of proportion native to the Greek mind, undoubtedly had a solemniz- ing effect upon the participants and beholders not unlike that of music in modern Christian worship. Cultivated as an art under the name of orchestiky the mimic dance reached a degree of elegance and emotional significance to which modern times afford no proper parallel. It was not unworthy of the place it held in the society of poetry and music, with which it combined to form that composite art which filled so high a station in Greek culture in the golden age. The Hellenic dance, both religious and theatric, was adopted by the Romans, but, like so much that was noble in Greek art, only to be degraded in the transfer. It passed over into the Christian Church, like many other ceremonial practices of heathenism, but modified and by no means of general observance. It appeared on occasions of thanksgiving and celebrations of im- portant events in the Church's history. The priest would often lead the dance around the altar on Sundays and festal days. The Christians sometimes gathered about the church doors at night and danced and sang songs. There is nothing in these facts derogatory to the piety of the early Christians. They simply ex- pressed their joy according to the universal fashion of the age; and especially on those occasions which, as 8 PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC for instance Christmas, were adaptations of old pagan festivals, they naturally imitated many of the time- honored observances. The Christian dance, however, finally degenerated; certain features, such as the noc- turnal festivities, gave rise to scandal; the church authorities began to condemn them, and the rising spirit of asceticism drove them into disfavor. The dance was a dangerous reminder of the heathen worship with all its abominations ; and since many pagan beliefs and cus- toms, with attendant immoralities, lingered for centuries as a seductive snare to the weaker brethren, the Church bestirred itself to eliminate all perilous associations from religious ceremony and to arouse a love for an absorbed and spiritual worship. During the Middle Age, and even in comparatively recent times in Spain and Spanish America, we find survivals of the ancient religious dance in the Christian Church, but in the more enlight- ened countries it has practically ceased to exist. The Christian religion is more truly joyful than the Greek; yet the Christian devotee, even in his most confident moments, no longer feels inclined to give vent to his happiness in physical movements, for there is mingled with his rapture a sentiment of awe and submission which bids him adore but be still. Religious proces- sions are frequent in Christian countries, but the par- ticipants do not, like the Egyptians and Greeks, dance as they go. We find even in ancient times isolated opinions that pul)lic dancing is indecorous. Only in a naive and childlike stage of society will dancing as a feature of worship seem appropriate and innocent. As reflection increases, the unrestrained and conspicuous 9 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH manifestation of feeling in shouts and violent bodily movements is deemed unworthy; a more spiritual con- ception of the nature of the heavenly power and man's relation to it requires that forms of worship should become more refined and moderate. Even the secular dance has lost much of its ancient dignity from some- what similar reasons, partly also because the differentia- tion and high development of music, taking the place of dancing as a social art, has relegated the latter to the realm of things outgrown, which no longer minister to man's intellectual necessities. As we turn to the subject of music in ancient religious rites, we find that where the dance had ali-eady reached a high degree of artistic development, music was still in dependent infancy. The only promise of its splendid future was in the reverence already accorded to it, and the universality of its use in prayer and praise. On its vocal side it was used to add solemnity to the words of the officiating priest, forming the intonation, or ecclesiastical accent, which has been an inseparable feature of liturgical worship in all periods. So far as the people had a share in religious functions, vocal music was employed by them in hymns to the gods, or in re- sponsive refrains. In its instrumental form it was used to assist the singers to preserve the correct pitch and rhythm, to regulate the steps of the dance, or, in an independent capacity, to act upon the nerves of the worshipers and increase their sense of awe in the presence of the deity. It is the nervous excitement produced by certain kinds of musical performance that accounts for the fact that incantations, exorcisms, and 10 PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC the ceremonies of demon worship among savages and barbarians are accompanied by harsh-sounding instru- ments ; that tortures, executions, and human sacrifices, such as those of the ancient Phcenicians and Mexicans, were attended by the clamor of drums, trumpets, and cymbals. Even in the Hebrew temple service the blasts of horns and trumpets could have had no other purpose than that of intensifying emotions of awe and dread. Still another office of music in ancient ceremony, perhaps still more valued, was that of suggesting defi- nite ideas by means of an associated symbolism. In certain occult observances, such as those of the Egyp- tians and Hindus, relationships were imagined between instruments or melodies and religious or moral concep- tions, so that the melody or random tone of the instru- ment indicated to the initiate the associated principle, and thus came to have an imputed sanctity of its own. This symbolism could be employed to recall to the mind ethical precepts or religious tenets at solemn moments, and tone could become a doubly powerful agent by uniting the effect of vivid ideas to its inherent property of nerve excitement. Our knowledge of the uses of music among the most ancient nations is chiefly confined to its function in religious ceremony. All ancient worship was ritualistic and administered by a priesthood, and the liturgies and ceremonial rites were intimately associated with music. The oldest literatures that have survived contain hymns to the gods, and upon the most ancient monuments are traced representations of instruments and players. Among the literary records discovered on the site of 11 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH Nineveh are collections of hymns, prayers, and peniten- tial psalms, addressed to the Assyrian deities, designed, as expressly stated, for public worship, and Avhich Pro- fessor Sayce compares to the English Book of Common Prayer. On the Assyrian monuments are carved reliefs of instrumental players, sometimes single, sometimes in groups of considerable numbers. Allusions in tlie Bible indicate that the Assyrians employed music on festal occasions, that hymns to the gods were sung at banquets and dirges at funerals. The kings main- tained bands at their courts, and provided a considerable variety of instruments for use in the idol worship.^ There is abundant evidence that music was an im- portant factor in the religious rites of Egypt. The tes- timony of carved and painted walls of tombs and temples, the papyrus records, the accounts of visitors, inform us that music was in Egypt preeminently a sacred art, as it must needs have been in a land in which, as llanke says, there was nothing secular. Music was in the care of the priests, who jealously guarded the sacred hymns and melodies from innovation and foreign intrusion. ^ In musical science, knowledge of the divisions of the monocluu-d, systems of keys, notation, etc., the Egyptians were probably in advance 1 A full account of ancient Assyrian music, so far as known, may bo found in Kngfl's Music of the Most Ancient Nations. ^ "Long ago they [tlie Egy])tians] a])])ear to have recognized tlie prin- ciple that their young citizens must he liahituated to forms and strains of virtue. These tliey fixed, and exliihited tiie 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 altera- tion is allowed either in these arts, or in music at all." Vla,to, Laws, Book II., Jowett's translation. 12 PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC of all other nations. The Greeks certainly derived much of their musical practice from the dwellers on the Nile. They possessed an extensive variety of instru- ments, from the little tinkling sistrum up to the pro- fusely ornamented harp of twelve or thirteen strings, which towered above the performer. From such an instrument as the latter it would seem as though some kind of harmony must have been produced, especially since the player is represented as using botli hands. But if such were the case, the harmony could not have been reduced to a scientific system, since otherwise a usage so remarkable would not have escaped the atten- tion of the Greek musicians who derived so much of their art from Egypt. Music never failed at public or private festivity, religious ceremony, or funeral rite. As in all ancient religions, processions to the temples, carrying images of the gods and offerings, were attended by dances and vocal and instrumental performances. Lyrical poems, containing the praises of gods and heroes, were sung at public ceremonies; hymns were addressed to the rising and setting sun, to Ammon and the other gods. According to Chappell, the custom of carolling or singing without words, like birds, to the gods existed among the Egyptians, a practice which was imitated by the Greeks, from whom tlie custom was transferred to the Western Church.^ The chief instru ment of the temple worship was the sistrum, and con- nected with all the temples in the time of the New Empire were companies of female sistrum players who stood in symbolic relations to the god as inmates of his 1 Chappell, History of Music. 13 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH harem, holding various degrees of rank. These women received high honors, often of a political nature.* In spite of the simplicity and frequent coarseness of ancient music, the older nations ascribed to it an influ- ence over the moral nature which the modern music lover would never think of attributing to his highly developed art. They referred its invention to the gods, and imputed to it thaumaturgical properties. The Hebrews were the only ancient cultivated nation that did not assign to music a superhuman source. The Greek myths of Orpheus, Amphion, and Arion are but samples of hundreds of marvellous tales of musical effect that have place in primitive legends. This belief in the magical power of music was connected with the equally universal opinion that music in itself could express and arouse definite notions and passions, and could exert a direct moral or immoral influence. The importance ascribed by the Greeks to music in the edu- cation of youth, as emphatically affirmed by philosophers and law-givers, is based upon this belief. Not only particular melodies, but the different modes or keys were held by the Greeks to exert a positive influence upon character. The Dorian mode was considered bold and manly, inspiring valor and fortitude; the Lydian, weak and enervating. Plato, in the second book of the Laws^ condemns as "intolerable and blas- phemous " the opinion that the purpose of music is to give pleasure. He finds a direct relation between morality and certain forms of music, and would have musicians constrained to compose only such melodies 1 Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, translated by Tirard. u PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC and rhythms as would turn the plastic mind toward virtue. Plutarch, in his discourse concerning music in his Morals^ says: "The ancient Greeks deemed it requisite by the assistance of music to form and com- pose the minds of youth to what was decent, sober, and virtuous; believing the use of music beneficially effica- cious to incite to all serious actions." He even goes so far as to say that " the right moulding of ingenuous manners and civil conduct lies in a well-grounded musi- cal education." Assumptions of direct moral, intellec- tual, and even pathological action on the part of music, as distinct from an aesthetic appeal, are so abundant in ancient writings that we cannot dismiss them as mere fanciful hyperbole, but must admit that music really possessed a power over the emotions and volitions which has been lost in its later evolution. The explanation of this apparent anomaly probably lies, first, in the fact that music in antiquity was not a free independent art, and that when the philosophers speak of music they think of it in its associations with poetry, religious and patriotic observances, moral and legal precepts, historic relations, etc. Music, on its vocal side, was mere em- phasized speech inflection ; it was a slave to poetry ; it had no rhythmical laws of its own. The melody did not convey aesthetic charm in itself alone, but simply height- ened the sensuous effect of measured speech and vivi- fied the thought. Mr. Spencer's well-known expression that "cadence is the comment of the emotion upon the propositions of the intellect" would apply very accu- rately to the musical theories of the ancients. Certain modes (that is, keys), on account of convenience of 15 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH pitch, were employed for certain kinds of poetical ex- pression ; and as a poem was always chanted in the mode that was first assigned to it, particular classes of ideas would come to be identified with particular modes. Associations of race character would lead to similar interpretation. The Dorian mode would seem to partake of the sternness and vigor of the warlike Dorian Spar- tans; the Lydian mode and its melodies would hint of Lydian effeminacy.^ Instrumental music also was equally restricted to definite meanings through associa- tion. It was an accompaniment to poetry, bound up with the symbolic dance, subordinated to formal social observances; it produced not the artistic effect of melody, harmony, and form, but the nervous stimulation of crude unorganized tone, acting upon recipients who had never learned to consider music as anything but a direct emotional excitant or an intensifier of previously conceived ideas. Another explanation of the ancient view of music as possessing a controlling power over emotion, thought, and conduct lies in the fact that music existed only in its rude primal elements; antiquity in its concep- tion and use of music never passed far beyond that point where tone was the outcome of simple emotional states, and to which notions of precise intellectual significance still clung. Whatever theory of the origin of music may finally prevail, there can be no question that music in its primitive condition is more directly the outcome of clearly realized feeling than it is when developed into a free, intellectualized, and heterogeneous ^ See Plato, Republic, book iii. 16 PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC art form. Music, the more it rises into an art, the more it exerts a purely testhetic effect through its action upon intelligences that delight in form, organization, and ideal motion, loses in equal proportion the emotional definiteness that exists in simple and spontaneous tone inflections. The earliest reasoning on the rationale of musical effects always takes for granted that music's purpose is to convey exact ideas, or at least express definite emotion. Music did not advance so far among the ancients that they were able to escape from this naturalistic conception. They could conceive of no higher purpose in music than to move the mind in defi- nite directions, and so they maintained that it always did so. Even in modern life numberless instances prove that the music which exerts the greatest effect over the impulses is not the mature and complex art of the mas- ters, but the simple strains which emanate from the people and bring up recollections which in themselves alone have power to stir the heart. Tlie song that melts a congregation to tears, the patiiotic air that fires the enthusiasm of an asscmbl}' on the eve of a political crisis, the strain that nerves an army to desperate endeavor, is not an elaborate work of art, but a simple and obvious tune, which finds its real force in associa- tion. All this is especially true of music employed for religious ends, and we find in such facts a reason why it could make no j)rogre.ss in ancient times, certainly none where it was under the control of an organized social caste. For the priestly order is always conserva- tive, and in antiquity this conservatism petrified melody, at the same time with the rites to which it adhered, into 2 17 MUSIC /iV THE WESTERN CHURCH stereotyped formulas. Where music is bound up with a ritual, innovation in the one is discountenanced as tending to loosen the traditional strictness of the other. I have laid stress upon this point because this attempt of the religious authorities in antiquity to repress music in worship to a subsidiary function was the sign of a conception of music which has always been more or less active in the Church, down even to our own day. As soon as musical art reaches a certain stage of develop- ment it strives to emancipate itself from the thraldom of word and visible action, and to exalt itself for its own undivided glory. Strict religionists have always looked upon this tendency with suspicion, and have often strenuously opposed it, seeing in the sensuous fascinations of the art an obstacle to complete absorp- tion in spiritual concerns. The conflict between the devotional and the aesthetic principles, which has been so active in the history of worship music in modern times, never appeared in antiquity except in the later period of Greek art. Since this outbreak of the spirit of rebellion occurred only when Hellenic religion was no longer a force in civilization, its results were felt only in the sphere of secular music; but no progress resulted, for musical culture was soon assumed every- where by the Christian Church, which for a thousand years succeeded in restraining music within the antique conception of bondage to liturgy and ceremony. Partly as a result of this subjection of music by its allied powers, partly, perhaps, as a cause, a science of harmony was never developed in ancient times. That music was always performed in unison and octaves, as 18 PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC has been generally believed, is, however, not probable. In view of the fact that the Egyptians possessed harps over six feet in height, having twelve or thirteen strings, and played with both hands, and that the monuments of Assyria and Egypt and the records of musical practice among the Hebrews, Greeks, and other nations show us a large variety of instruments grouped in bands of con- siderable size, we are justified in supposing that com- binations of different sounds were often produced. But the absence from the ancient treatises of any but the most vague and obscure allusions to the production of accordant tones, and the conclusive evidence in respect to the general lack of freedom and development in musi- cal art, is proof positive that, whatever concords of sounds may have been occasionally produced, nothing comparable to our present contrapuntal and harmonic system existed. The music so extravagantly praised in antiquity was, vocally, chant, or recitative, ordinarily in a single part; instrumental music was rude and unsys- tematized sound, partly a mechanical aid to the voice and the dance step, partly a means of nervous exhilara- tion. The modern conception of music as a free, self- assertive art, subject only to its own laws, lifting the soul into regions of pure contemplation, where all tem- poral relations are lost in a tide of self-forgetful rap- ture, this was a conception unknown to the mind of antiquity. The student of the music of the Christian Church naturally turns with curiosity to that one of the ancient nations whose religion was the antecedent of the Chris- 19 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH tian, and whose sacred literature has furnished the worship of the Church with the loftiest expression of its trust and aspiration. The music of the Hebrews, as Ambros says, "was divine service, not art."^ Many modern writers have assumed a high degree of perfection in ancient Hebrew music, but only on sentimental grounds, not because there is any evidence to support such an opinion. There is no reason to suppose that music was further developed among the Hebrews than among tlie most cultivated of their neighbors. Their music, like that of the ancient nations generally, was entirely subsidiary to poetic recitation and dancing; it was unharmonic, simple, and inclined to be coarse and noisy. Although in general use, music never attained so great honor among them as it did among the Greeks. We find in the Scriptures no praises of music as a nour- isher of morality, rarely a trace of an ascription of magical properties. Although it had a place in mili- tary operations and at feasts, private merry-makings, etc., its chief value lay in its availability for religious purposes. To the Hebrews the arts obtained signifi- cance only as they could be used to adorn the courts of Jehovah, or could be employed in the ascription of praise to him. Music was to them an efiicient agent to excite emotions of awe, or to carry more directly to the heart the rhapsodies and searching admonitions of psalm- ists and prophets. No authentic melodies have come down to us from tlie time of the Israelitish residence in Palestine. No trea- tise on Hebrew musical theory or practice, if any such ^ Ambros, Geschichte der Musik, 20 PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC ever existed, has been preserved. No definite light is thrown upon the Hebrew musical system by the Bible or any other ancient book. We may be certain that if the Hebrews had possessed anything distinctive, or far in advance of the practice of their contemporaries, some testimony to that effect would be found. All evidence and analogy indicate that the Hebrew song was a unison chant or cantillation, more or less melodious, and suffi- ciently definite to be perpetuated by tradition, but entirely subordinate to poetry, in rhythm following the accent and metre of the text. We are not so much in the dark in respect to the use and nature of Hebrew instruments, although we know as little of the style of music that was performed upon them. Our knowledge of the instruments themselves is derived from those represented upon the monuments of Assyria and Egypt, which were evidently similar to those used by the Hebrews. The Hebrews never in- vented a musical instrument. Not one in use among them but had its equivalent among nations older in civi- lization. And so we may infer that the entire musical practice of the Hebrews was derived first from their early neighbors the Chaldeans, and later from the Egyp- tians ; although we may suppose that some modifications may have arisen after they became an independent nation. The first mention of musical instruments in the Bible is in Gen. iv. 21, where Jubal is spoken of as " the father of all such as handle the kinnor and ugah " (translated in the revised version "harp and pipe"). The word kinnor appears frequently in the later books, and is applied to the instrument used by David. This 21 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH hinnor of David and the psalmists was a small portable instrument and might properly be called a lyre. Stringed instruments are usually the last to be developed by primitive peoples, and the use of the kinnor implies a considerable degree of musical advancement among the remote ancestors of the Hebrew race in their primeval Chaldean home. The word ugah may signify either a single tube like the flute or oboe, or a connected series of pipes like the Pan's pipes or syrinx of the Greeks. There is only one other mention of instruments before the Exodus, viz.^ in connection with the episode of Laban and Jacob, where the former asks his son-in-law reproachfully, " Wherefore didst thou flee secretly, and steal away from me ; and didst not tell me, that I might have sent thee away with mirth and with songs, with toph and kinnor?"^ the toph being a sort of small hand drum or tambourine. After the Exodus other instruments, perhaps derived from Egypt, make their appearance: the shophar, or curved tube of metal or ram's horn, heard amid the smoke and thunderings of Mt. Sinai, '^ and to whose sound the walls of Jericho were overthrown ; ^ the hazo' zerah^ or long silver tube, used in the desert for an- nouncing the time for breaking camp,* and employed later by the priests in religious service,^ popular gather- ings, and sometimes in war.^ The nehel was either a harp somewhat larger than the kinnor^ or possibly a sort of guitar. The chalil^ translated in the English version ^ Gen. xxxi. 27. * Num. x. 2-8. Ex. xix. 6 2 Chron. v. 12, 13 ; xxix. 26-28. ' Jos. vi. '2 Chron. xiii. 12, 14. 22 PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC "pipe," may have been a sort of oboe or flageolet. The band of prophets met by Saul advanced to the sound of nebel^ toph, chalil^ and kinnor.^ The word "psaltery," which frequently appears in the English version of the psalms, is sometimes the nehel^ sometimes the kinnor, sometimes the aor, which was a species of nebel. The " instrument of ten strings " was also the nebel or asor. Percussion instruments, such as the drum, cymbals, bell, and the Egyptian sistrum (which consisted of a small frame of bronze into which three or four metal bars were loosely inserted, producing a jingling noise when shaken), were also in common use. In the Old Testament there are about thirteen instruments men- tioned as known to the Hebrews, not including those mentioned in Dan. iii., whose names, according to Chappell, are not derived from Hebrew roots.* All of these were simple and rude, yet considerably varied in character, representing the three classes into which instruments, the world over, are divided, viz.^ stringed instruments, wind instruments, and instruments of percussion. 3 Although instruments of music had a prominent place in public festivities, social gatherings, and private recreation, far more important was their use in connec- tion with religious ceremony. As the Hebrew nation increased in power, and as their conquests became per- manently secured, so the arts of peace developed in 1 1 Sam. X. 5. ' Chappell, History of Music, Introdnction. ' For extended descriptions of ancient musical instrnments the reader is referred to Chappell, History of Music ; Engel, The Music of the Most Ancient Nations ; and Stainer, The Music of the Bible, 23 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH greater profusion and refinement, and with them the embellishments of the liturgical worship became more highly organized. With the capture of Jerusalem and the establishment of the royal residence within its ram- parts, the worship of Jehovah increased in splendor; the love of pomp and display, which was characteristic of David, and still more of his luxurious son Solomon, was manifest in the imposing rites and ceremonies that were organized to the honor of the people's God. The epoch of these two rulers was that in which the national force was in the flower of its youthful vigor, the national pride had been stimulated by continual triumphs, the long period of struggle and fear had been succeeded by glorious peace. The barbaric splendor of religious ser- vice and fesfail pageant was the natural expression of popular joy and self-confidence. In all these ebullitions of national feeling, choral and instrumental music on the most brilliant and massive scale held a conspicuous place. The description of the long series of public re- joicings, culminating in the dedication of Solomon's temple, begins with the transportation of the ark of the Lord from Gibeah, when " David and all the house of Israel played before the Lord with all manner of instruments made of fir-wood, and with harps (kinnor), and with psalteries (jieheV)^ and with timbrels (topK)^ with castanets (sistrum^^ and with cymbals (tzeltzelim)/'' ^ And again, when the ark was brought from the house of Obed-edom into the city of David, the king danced "with all his might," and the ark was brought up "with shouting and with the sound of a trumpet. "^ Singers i 2 Sam. vi. 5. ^2 Sam. vi. 14, 15. 24 PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC were marshalled under leaders and supported by bands of instruments. The ode ascribed to David was given to Asaph as chief of the choir of Levites ; Asaph beat the time with cymbals, and the royal psean was chanted by masses of chosen singers to the accompaniment of harps, lyres, and trumpets. ^ In the organization of the temple service no detail received more careful attention than the vocal and instrumental music. We read that four thousand Levites were appointed to praise the Lord with instruments. 2 There were also two hundred and eighty-eight skilled singers who sang to instrumental accompaniment beside the altar. ^ The function performed by instruments in the temple service is also indicated in the account of the reestab- lishment of the worship of Jehovah by Hezekiah accord- ing to the institutions of David and Solomon. With the burnt offering the song of praise was uplifted to the accompaniment of the "instruments of David," the singers intoned the psalm and the trumpets sounded, and this continued until the sacrifice was consumed. When the rite was ended a hymn of praise was sung by the Levites, while the king and the people bowed themselves.* With the erection of the second temple after the re- turn from the Babylonian exile, the liturgical service was restored, although not with its pristine magnifi- cence. Ezra narrates : " When the builders laid the 1 1 Cliron. xvi. 5, 6. 2 1 Chrou. xxiii. 5. 8 1 Chron. xxv. ; 2 Chron. v. 12. See also 2 Chron. v. 11-14. * 2 Chrou. xxix. 25-30. 25 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH foundation of the temple of the Lord, they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the order of David king of Israel. And they sang one to another in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord, saying, For he is good, for his mercy endureth forever toward Israel."^ And at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, as recorded by Nehemiah, instru- mentalists and singers assembled in large numbera, to lead the multitude in rendering praise and thanks to Jehovah. 2 Instruments were evidently employed in independent flourishes and signals, as well as in accom- panying the singers. The trumpets were used only in the interludes; the pipes and stringed instruments strengthened the voice parts; the cymbals were used by the leader of the chorus to mark the rhythm. Notwithstanding the prominence of instruments in all observances of public and private life, they were always looked upon as accessory to song. Dramatic poetry was known to the Hebrews, as indicated by such com- positions as the Book of Job and the Song of Songs. No complete epic has come down to us, but certain allu- sions in the Pentateuch, such as the mention in Num- bers xxi. 14 of the "book of the wars of Jehovah," would tend to show that this people possessed a collec- tion of ballads which, taken together, would properly constitute a national epic. But whether lyric, epic, or dramatic, the Hebrew poetry was delivered, according to the universal custom of ancient nations, not in the speaking voice, but in musical tone. The minstrel poet, 1 Ezra iii. 10, 11. a Neh. xii. 26 PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC it has been said, was the type of the race. Lyric poetry may be divi ;rg- < g S^ z^^ Anima me - a Domi - num. Example or a Florid Chant. s: ww^nn^ u^ ^ t ^-a-^L^ '9^ f^ ^ -jg EP=^ Ky lei -^2 g ffl ^ 4 S 1^=0=2: tit:^ Chri - ste e - lei -G>-^^<9-, m 'g-TS^'g^-^ 4r:r -^-^ Ky ri - e e - lei 102 THE CATHOLIC RITUAL CHANT The theory and practice of the liturgic chant is a science of large dimensions and much difficulty. In the course of centuries a vast store of chant melodies has been accumulated, and in the nature of the case many variants of the older melodies those composed before the development of a precise system of notation have arisen, so that the verification of texts, comparison of authorities, and the application of methods of rendering to the needs of the complex ceremonial make this sub- ject a very important branch of liturgical science. The Plain Song may be divided into the simple and the ornate chants. In the first class the melodies are to a large extent syllabic (one note to a syllable), rarely with more than two notes to a syllable. The simplest of all are the tones employed in the delivery of certain prayers, the Epistle, Prophecy, and Gospel, technically known as " accents," which vary but little from mono- tone. The most important of the more melodious simple chants are the " Gregorian tones " already mentioned. The inflections sung to the versicles and responses are also included among the simple chants. The ornate chants differ greatly in length, compass, and degree of elaboration. Some of these melodies are exceedingly florid and many are of great beauty. They constitute the original settings for all the portions of the Mass not enumerated among the simple chants, viz., the Kyrie, Gloria, Introit, Prefaces, Communion, etc., besides the Sequences and hymns. Certain of these chants are so elaborate that they may almost be said to belong to a separate class. Examination of many of these extended melodies will often disclose 103 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH a decided approach to regularity of form through the recurrence of certain definite melodic figures. " In the Middle Age," says P. Wagner, " nothing was known of an accompaniment ; there was not the slightest need of one. The substance of the musical content, which we to-day commit to interpretation through harmony, the old musicians laid upon melody. The latter accom- plished in itself the complete utterance of the artisti- cally aroused fantasy. In this particular the melismas, which carry the extensions of the tones of the melody, are a necessary means of presentation in mediaeval art ; they proceed logically out of the principle of the unison melody." " Text repetition is virtually unknown in the unison music of the Middle Age. While modern singers repeat an especially emphatic thought or word, the old melodists repeat a melody or phrase which ex- presses the ground mood of the text in a striking manner. And they not only repeat it, but they make it unfold, and draw out of it new tones of melody. This method is certainly not less artistic than the later text repetition; it comes nearer, also, to the natural expression of the devotionally inspired heart." ^ The ritual chant has its special laws of execution which involve long study on the part of one who wishes to master it. Large attention is given in the best seminaries to the purest manner of delivering the chant, and countless treatises have been written upon the sub- ject. The first desideratum is an accurate pronun- ciation of the Latin, and a facile and distinct articula- tion. The notes have no fixed and measurable value, 1 Wagner, Einfiihrung in die Gregorianischen Melodien. 104 THE CATHOLIC RITUAL CHANT and are not intended to give the duration of the tones, but only to guide the modulation of the voice. The length of each tone is determined only by the proper length of the syllable. In this principle lies the very essence of Gregorian chant, and it is the point at which it stands in exact contradiction to the theory of modern measured music. The divisions of the chant are given solely by the text. The rhythm, therefore, is that of speech, of the prose text to which the chant tones are set. The rhythm is a natural rhythm, a succession of syllables combined into expressive groups by means of accent, varied pitch, and prolongations of tone. The fundamental rule for chanting is : " Sing the words with notes as you would speak them without notes." This does not imply that the utterance is stiff and mechanical as in ordinary conversation; there is a heightening of the natural inflection and a grouping of notes, as in impassioned speech or the most refined declamation. Like the notes and divisions, the pauses also are unequal and immeasurable, and are determined only by the sense of the words and the necessity of taking breath. In the long florid passages often occurring on a single vowel analogous rules are involved. The text and the laws of natural recitation must predominate over melody. The jubilations are not to be conceived sim- ply as musical embellishments, but, on the contrary, their beauty depends upon tlie melodic accents to which they are joined in a subordinate position. These florid passages are never introduced thoughtlessly or without meaning, but they are strictly for emphasizing the 105 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH thought with which they are connected ; " they make the soul in singing fathom the deeper sense of the words, and to taste of the mysteries hidden within them."* The particular figures must be kept apart and distinguished from each other, and brought into union with each other, like the words, clauses, and sen- tences of an oration. Even these florid passages are dependent upon the influence of the words and tlieir character of prayer. The principles above cited concern the rhythm of the chant. Other elements of expression must also be taken into account, such as prolonging and shortening tones, crescendos and diminuendos, subtle changes of quality of voice or tone color to suit different senti- ments. The manner of singing is also affected by the conditions of time and place, such as the degree of the solemnity of the occasion, and the dimensions and acoustic properties of the edifice in which the ceremony is held. In the singing of the mediaeval hymn melodies, many beautiful examples of which abound in the Catholic office books, the above rules of rhythm and expression are modified as befits the more regular metrical char- acter which the melodies derive from the verse. They are not so rigid, however, as would be indicated by the bar lines of modern notation, and follow the same laws of rhythm that would obtain in spoken recitation. The liturgic chant of the Catholic Church has already been alluded to under its more popular title of " Gre- gorian." Throughout the Middle Age and down to ^ Saoter, Choral und Liturgie. 106 THE CATHOLIC RITUAL CHANT our own day nothing in history has been more generally received as beyond question than that the Catholic chant is entitled to this appellation from the work per- formed in its behalf by Pope Gregory I., called the Great. This eminent man, who reigned from 590 to 604, was the ablest of the succession of early pontifEs who formulated the line of policy which converted the barbarians of the North and West, brought about the spiritual and political autonomy of the Roman See, and confirmed its supremacy over all the churches of the West. In addition to these genuine services historians have generally concurred in ascribing to him a final shaping influence upon the liturgic chant, with which, however, he probably had very little to do. His supposed work in this department has been divided into the following four details : (1) He freed the church song from the fetters of Greek prosody. (2) He collected the chants previously existing, added others, provided them with a system of notation, and wrote them down in a book which was afterwards called the Antiphonary of St. Gregory, which he fastened to the altar of St. Peter's Church, in oixier that it might serve as an authoritative standard in all cases of doubt in regard to the true form of chant. (3) He established a singing school in which he gave instruction. (4) He added four new scales to the four previously existing, thus completing the tonal system of the Church. 107 MVStC tN fUn WESTERN CHURCH The prime authority for these statements is the biography of Gregory I., written by John the Deacon about 872. Detached allusions to this pope as the founder of the liturgic chant appear before John's day, the earliest being in a manuscript addressed by Pope Hadrian I. to Charlemagne in the latter part of the eighth century, nearly two hundred years after Gregory's death. The evidences which tend to show that Gregory I. could not have had anything to do with this impor- tant work of sifting, arranging, and noting the liturgic melodies become strong as soon as they are impartially examined. In Gregory's very voluminous correspond- ence, which covers every known phase of his restless activity, there is no allusion to any such work in respect to the music of the Church, as there almost certainly would have been if he had undertaken to bring about uniformity in the musical practice of all the churches under his administration. The asser- tions of John the Deacon are not confirmed by any anterior document. No epitaph of Gregory, no con- temporary records, no ancient panegyrics of the pope, touch upon the question. Isidor of Seville, a contem- porary of Gregory, and the Venerable Bede in the next centuiy, were especially interested in the liturgic chant and wrote upon it, yet they make no mention of Gregory in connection with it. The documents upon which John bases his assertion, the so-called Gregorian Antiphonary, do not agree with the ecclesiastical cal- endar of the actual time of Gregory I. In reply to these objections and others that might be given there is no answer but legend, which John 108 THE CATHOLIC RITUAL CHANT the Deacon incorporated in his work, and which was generally accepted toward the close of the eleventh century. That this legend should have arisen is not strange. It is no uncommon thing in an uncritical age for the achievement of many minds in a whole epoch to be attributed to the most commanding personality in that epoch, and such a personality in the sixth and seventh centuries was Gregory the Great. What, then, is the origin of the so-called Gregorian chant? There is hardly a more interesting question in the whole history of music, for this chant is the basis of the whole magnificent structure of mediseval church song, and in a certain sense of all modern music, and it can be traced back unbroken to the earliest years of the Christian Church, the most persistent and fruitful form of art that the modern world has known. The most exhaustive study that has been devoted to this obscure subject has been undertaken by Gevaert, director of the Brussels Conservatory of Music, who has brought forward strong representation to show that the musical system of the early Church of Rome was largely derived from the secular forms of music prac- tised in the private and social life of the Romans in the time of the empire, and which were brought to Rome from Greece after the conquest of that country B.C. 146. " No one to-day doubts," says Gevaert, "that the modes and melodies of the Catholic liturgy are a precious remains of antique art." "The Chris- tian chant took its modal scales to the number of four, and its melodic themes, from the musical practice of the Roman empire, and particularly from the song 109 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH given to the accompaniment of the kithara, the special style of music cultivated in private life. The most ancient monuments of the liturgic chant go back to the boundary of the fourth and fifth centuries, when the forms of worship began to be arrested in their present shape. Like the Latin language, the Greco- Koman music entered in like manner into the Catholic Church, Vocabulary and syntax are the same with the pagan Symmachus and his contemporary St. Ambrose ; modes and rules of musical composition are identical in the hymns which Mesomedes addresses to the divini- ties of paganism and in the cantilenas of the Christian singei's." " The compilation and composition of the liturgic songs, which was traditionally ascribed to St. Gregory I., is in truth a work of the Hellenic popes at the end of the seventh and the beginning of the eighth centuries. The Antiphonarium Missarum received its definitive form between 682 and 715; the Antiphona- rium Officii was already fixed under Pope Agathon (678-681)." In the fourth century, according to Gevaert, antiphons were already known in the East. St. Ambrose is said to have transplanted them into the West. Pope Celestine I. (422-472) has been called the founder of the antiphonal song in the Roman Church. Leo the Great (440-461) gave the song per- manence by the establishment of a singing school in the neighborhood of St. Peter's. Thus from the fifth cen- tury to the latter part of the seventh grew the treasure of melody, together with the unfolding of the liturgy. The four authentic modes were adaptations of four modes employed by the Greeks. The oldest chants 110 THE CATHOLIC RITUAL CHANT are the simplest, and of those now in existence the antiphons of the Divine Office can be traced farthest back to the tiansition point from the Greco-Roman practice to that of the Christian Church. The florid chants were of later introduction, and were probably the contribution of the Greek and Syrian Churches.^ The Christian chants were, however, no mere repro- ductions of profane melodies. The groundwork of the chant is allied to the Greek melody ; the Christian song is of a much richer melodic movement, bearing in all its forms the evidence of the exuberant spiritual life of which it is the chosen expression. The pagan melody was sung to an instrument ; the Christian was unac- companied, and was therefore free to develop a special rhythmical and melodic character unconditioned by any laws except those involved in pure vocal expression. The fact also that the Christian melodies were set to unmetrical texts, while the Greek melody was wholly confined to verse, marked the emancipation of the litur- gic song from the bondage of strict prosody, and gave a wider field to melodic and rhythmic development. It would be too much to say that Gevaert has com- pletely made out his case. The impossibility of verify- ing the exact primitive form of the oldest chants, and the almost complete disappeamnce of the Greco-Roman * Gevaert first announced his conclusions in a discourse pronounced at a public session of the class in fine arts of the Academy of Belgium at Brussels, and which was published in 1890, under the title of Z-es Origincs da Chant Uturf/igne dt I'hglisc Uitiue. This essay wa.s amplified five years later into a volume of 446 pages, entitled Im. M^ope'e antique dant le Chant de I'Eglise latine. These works are published by Ad Iloste Ghent. Ill MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH melodies which are supposed to be the antecedent or the suggestion of the early Christian tone formulas, make a positive demonstration in such a case out of the question. Gevaert seems to rely mainly upon the iden- tity of modes or keys which exists between the most ancient church melodies and those most in use in the kithara song. Other explanations, more or less plaus- ible, have been advanced, and it is not impossible that the simpler melodies may have arisen in an idealization of the natural speech accent, with a view to procuring measured and agreeable cadences. Both methods actual adaptations of older tunes and the spontaneous enunciation of more obvious melodic formulas may have been allied in the production of the earher liturgic cliants. The laws that have been found valid in the development of all art would make the derivation of the ecclesiastical melodies from elements existing in the environment of the early Church a logical and reason- able supposition, even in the absence of documentary evidence. There is no proof of the existence of a definite system of notation before the seventh century. The chanters, priests, deacons, and monks, in applying melo- dies to the text of the office, composed by aid of their memories, and their melodies were transmitted by mem- ory, although probably with the help of arbitrary mne- monic signs. The possibility of this will readily be granted when we consider that special orders of monks made it their sole business to preserve, sing, and teach these melodies. In the confusion and misery following the downfall of the kingdom of the Goths in tlie middle 112 THE CATHOLIC RITUAL CHANT of the sixth century the Church became a sanctuary of refuge from the evils of the time. Witli the revival of reUgious zeal and the accession of strength the Church flourished, basilicas and convents were multi- plied, solemnities increased in number and splendor, and with other liturgic elements the chant expanded. A number of popes in the seventh century were enthusi- astic lovers of Church music, and gave it the full bene- fit of their authority. Among these were Gregory II. and Gregory III., one of whom may have inadvertently given his name to the chant. The system of tonality upon which the music of the Middle Age was based was the modal or diatonic. The modern system of transposing scales, each major or minor scale containing the same succession of steps and half steps as each of its fellows, dates no further back than the first half of the seventeenth century. Tlie mediaeval system comprises theoretically fourteen, in actual use twelve, distinct modes or keys, known as the ecclesiastical modes or Gregorian modes. These modes are divided into two classes the " authentic " and " plagal." The compass of each of the authentic modes lies between the keynote, called the " final," and the octave above, and includes the notes represented by the white keys of the pianoforte, excluding sharps and flats. The first authentic mode begins on D, the second on E, and so on. Every authentic mode is connected with a mode known as its plagal, which consists of the last four notes of the authentic mode transposed an octave below, and followed by tlie first five notes of the authentic, the " final " being the 8 . 113 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH same in the two modes. The modes are sometimes transposed a fifth lower or a fourth higher by means of flatting the B. During the epoch of the foundation of the liturgic chant only the first eight modes (four authentic and four plagal) were in use. The first four authentic modes were popularly attributed to St. Am- brose, bishop of Milan in the fourth century, and the first four plagal to St. Gregory, but there is no historic basis for this tradition. The last two modes are a later addition to the system. The Greek names are those by which the modes are popularly known, and indicate a hypothetical connection with the ancient Greek scale system. Authentic Modes. Pla.oal Modes. I. Dorian. II. Hypo-dorian. i i sr -<5>- -a^- III. Phrygian. IV. Hypo-phrygian. ^ -sr-^- -O^- V. Lydian. VI. Hypo-lydian. 1 =.^=^=^ "z?- ZML -6h ss^ % VII. Mixo-lydian. VIIL Hvpo-mixo-lydian. 114 THE CATHOLIC RITUAL CHANT Later Additions. IX. .^olian. X. Hypo-seolian. is: I 7 7-^^ . ^ ^^^ II. XI. Ionian. XII. Hypo-ionian. ^] __^ ^^ tJ e== ^-^^^- To suppose that the chant in this period was sung exactly as it appears in the office books of the present day would be to ignore a very characteristic and uni- versal usage in the Middle Age. No privilege was more freely accorded to the mediaeval chanter than that of adding to the melody whatever embellishment he might choose freely to invent on the impulse of the moment. The right claimed by Italian opera singers down to a very recent date to decorate the phrases with trills, cadenzas, etc., even to the extent of altering the written notes themselves, is only the perpetuation of a practice generally prevalent in the mediaeval Church, and which may have come down, for anything we know to the contrary, from remote antiquity. In fact, the require- ment of singing tlie notes exactly as they are written is a modern idea ; no such rule wjis recognized as in- variably binding until well into the nineteenth century. It was no uncommon thing in Handel's time and after to introduce free embellishments even into " I know that my Redeemer liveth " in the " Messiah." In the Middle Age the singers in church and convent took great merit to themselves for the inventive ability and 115 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH vocal adroitness by which they were able to sprinkle the plain notes of the chant with improvised embellish- ments. " Moreover, there existed in the liturgic text a certain number of words upon which the singers had the liberty of dilating according to their fancy. Ac- coi-ding to an ancient Christian tradition, certain chants were followed by a number of notes sung upon meaning- less vowels ; these notes, called neumes or jubili, rendered, in accordance with a poetic thought, the faith and ado- ration of the worshipers who appeared to be unable to find words that could express their sentiments. These vocalizations or embroideries were sometimes longer than the chants themselves, and many authors complained of the importance given to these vocal fantasies." ^ Among the mnemonic signs which, before the invention of the staff and notation system, indicated the changes of pitch to be observed by the singer, there wei-e many that unmistiikably point to the traditional flour- ishes which had become an integral element in the Plain Song system. Many of these survived and were carried over into secular music after the method of chanting became more simple and severe. Similar li- cense was also practised in the later period of part singing, and not only in the rude early counterpoint of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but even in the highly developed and specialized chorus music of the sixteenth century, the embellishments which were reduced to a system and handed down by tradition, gave to this art a style and effect the nature of which has now fallen from the knowledge of men. ^ Lemaire, Le Chant, ses principes et son histoire. 116 THE CATHOLIC RITUAL CHANT Such was the nature of the song which resounded about the altars of Roman basilicas and through convent cloisters in the seventh and eighth centuries, and which has remained the sanctioned official speech of the Catholic Church in her ritual functions to the present day. No- where did it suffer any material change or addition until it became the basis of a new harmonic art in Northern Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The chant according to the Roman use began to extend itself over Europe in connection with the missionary efforts which emanated from Rome from the time of Gregory the Great. Augustine, the emissary of Gregory, who went to England in 597 to convert the Saxons, carried with him the Roman chant. " The band of monks," says Green, " entered Canterbury bearing before them a silver cross with a picture of Christ, and singing in con- cert the strains of the litany of their church." ^ And although the broad-minded Gregory instructed Augustine not to insist upon supplanting with the Roman use the liturgy already employed in the older British churches if such an attempt would create hostility, yet the Roman chant was adopted both at Canterbury and York. The Roman chant was accepted eventually throughout the dominions of the Church as an essential element of the Roman liturgy. Both shared the same struggles and the same triumphs. Familiarity with the cliurch song became an indispensable part of the equipment of every clergyman, monastic and secular. No missionary might go forth from Rome who was not adept in it. Monks made dangerous journeys to Rome from the remotest ^ Green, Short History of the English People, 117 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH districts in order to learn it. Every monastery founded in the savage forests of Germany, Gaul, or Britain became at once a singing school, and day and night the holy strains went up in unison with the melodies of the far distant sacred city. The Anglo-Saxon monk Winfrid, afterward known as Boniface, the famous missionary to the Germans, planted the Roman liturgy in Thuringia and Hesse, and devoted untiring efforts to teaching the Gregorian song to his barbarous proselytes. In Spain, Ildefonso, about 600, is enrolled among the zealous promoters of sacred song according to the use of Rome. Most eminent and most successful of all who labored for the exclusive authority of the Roman chant as against the Milanese, Galilean, and other rival forms was Charle- magne, king of the Franks from 768 to 814, whose per- sistent efforts to implant the Gregorian song in every church and school in his wide dominions was an impor- tant detail of his labor in the interest of liturgic unifor- mity according to the Roman model. Among the convent schools which performed such priceless service for civilization in the gloomy period of the early Middle Age, the monastery of St. Gall m Switzerland holds an especially distinguished place. This convent was established in the seventh century by the Irish monk from whom it took its name, rapidly increased in repute as a centre of piety and learn- ing, and during the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries numbered some of the foremost scholars of the time among its brotherhood. About 790 two monks, versed in all the lore of the liturgic chant, were sent from Rome into the empire of Charlemagne at the monarch's request. 118 THE CATHOLIC RITUAL CHANT One of them, Romanus, was received and entertained by the monks of St. Gall, and was persuaded to remain with them as teacher of church song according to the Antiph- onaiy which he had brought with him from Rome. St. Gall soon became famous as a place where the pur- est traditions of the Roman chant were taught and practised. Schubiger, in his extremely interesting work, Die Sangerschule St. Gallens vom VIII.-XII. Jahr- hunderty has given an extended account of the methods of devotional song in use at St. Gall, which may serve as an illustration of the general practice among the pious monks of the Middle Age : " In the reign of Charlemagne (803) the Council of Aachen enjoined upon all monasteries the use of the Roman song, and a later capitulary required that the monks should perform this song completely and in proper order at the divine office, in the daytime as well as at night. According to other rescripts duringthe reign of Louis the Pious (about 820) the monks of St. Gall were required daily to celebrate Mass, and also to perform the service of all the canonical hours. The solemn melodies of the ancient psalmody re- sounded daily in manifold and precisely ordered responses ; at the midnight hour the sound of the Invitatorium, Venite exuiuamus Domino, opened the service of the nocturnal vigils ; the prolonged, almost mournful tones of the re- sponses alternated with the intoned recitation of the lessons ; in the spaces of the temple on Sundays and festal days, at the close of the nightly worship, there reechoed the exalted strains of the Ambrosian hymn of praise (Te Deum laudamus) ; at the first dawn of day began the morn- ing adoration, with psalms and antiphons, bymr ; and 119 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH prayers ; to these succeeded in due order the remaining offices of the diurnal hours. The people were daily in- vited by the Introit to participate in the holy mysteries ; they heard in solemn stillness the tones of the Kyrie im- ploring mercy ; on festal days they were inspired by the song once sung by the host of angels ; after the Gradual they heard the melodies of the Sequence which glorified the object of the festival in jubilant choral strains, and after- ward the simple recitative tones of the Creed ; at the Sanctus they were summoned to join in the praise of the Thrice Holy, and to implore the mercy of the Lamb who taketh away the sins of the world. These were the songs which, about the middle of the ninth century, arose on festal or ferial days in the cloister church of St. Gall. How much store the fathers of this convent set upon beauty and edification in song appears from the old regulations in which distinct pronunciation of words and uniformity of rendering are enjoined, and hastening or dragging the time sharply rebuked." Schubiger goes on to say that three styles of perform- ing the chant were employed ; viz., a very solemn one for the highest festivals, one less solemn for Sundays and saints' days, and an ordinary one for ferial days. An appropriate character was given to the different chants, e. g., a profound and mournful expression in the office for the dead ; an expression of tenderness and sweetness to the hymns, the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei; and a dignified character (cantus gravis) to the antiphons, responses, and alleluia. Anything that could disturb the strict and euphonious rendering of the song was strictly forbidden. Harsh, unmusical voices were 120 THE CATHOLIC RITUAL CHANT not permitted, to take part. Distinctness, precise con- formity of all the singers in respect to time, and purity of intonation were inflexibly demanded. Special services, with processions and appropriate hymns, were instituted on the occasion of the visit to the monastery of the emperor or other high dignitary. All public observances, the founding of a building, the reception of holy relics, the consecration of a bell or altar, even many of the prescribed routine duties of conventual Hfe, such as drawing water, lighting lamps, or kindling fires, each had its special form of song. It was not enthusiasm, but sober truth, that led Ekke- hard V. to say that the rulers of this convent, " through their songs and melodies, as also through their teachings, filled the Church of God, not only in Germany, but in all lands from one sea to the other, with splendor and joy." At the convent of St. Gall originated the class of litur- gical hymns called Sequences, which includes some of the finest examples of mediaeval hymnody. At a very early period it became the custom to sing the Alleluia of the Gradual to a florid chant, the final vowel being extended into an exceedingly elaborate flourish of notes. Notker Balbulus, a notable member of the St. Gall brotherhood in the ninth century, conceived the notion, under the suggestion of a visiting monk, of making a practical use of the long-winded final cadence of the Alleluia. He extended and modified these melodious passages and set words to them, thus constructing a brief form of prose hymn. His next step was to invent both notes and text, giving his chants a certain crude 121 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH form by the occasional repetition of a melodic strain. He preserved a loose connection with the Alleluia by retaining the mode and the first few tones. These ex- periments found great favor in the eyes of the brethren of St. Gall ; others followed Notker's example, and the Sequence melodies were given honored places in the rit- ual on festal days and various solemn occasions. The custom spread ; Pope Nicholas I. in 860 permitted the adoption of the new style of hymn into the liturgy. The early Sequences were in rhythmic prose, but in the hands of the ecclesiastical poets of the few centuries following they were written in rhymed verse. The Se- quence was therefore distinguished from other Latin hymns only by its adoption into the office of the Mass as a regular member of the liturgy on certain festal days. The number increased to such large proportions that a sifting process was deemed necessary, and upon the oc- casion of the reform of the Missal through Pius V. after the Council of Trent only five were retained, viz., Vic- timae paschali, sung on Easter Sunday; Veni Sancte Spiritus, appointed for Whit-Sunday ; Lauda Sion, for Corpus Christi ; Stabat Mater dolorosa, for Friday of Passion Week; and Dies Irae, which forms a portion of the Mass for the Dead. Many beautiful and touching stories have come down to us, illustrating the passionate love of the monks for their songs, and the devout, even superstitious, reverence with which they regarded them. Among these are the tales of the Armorican monk Hervd, in the sixth century, who, blind from his birth, be- came the inspirer and teacher of his brethren by 122 THE CATHOLIC RITUAL CHANT means of his improvised songs, and the patron of mendicant singers, who still chant his legend in Breton verse. His mother, so one story goes, went one day to visit him in the cloister, and, as she was ap- proaching, said : " I see a procession of monks advancing, and I hear the voice of my son. God be with you, my son ! When, with the help of God, I get to heaven, you shall be warned of it, you shall hear the angels sing." The same evening she died, and her son, while at prayer in his cell, heard the singing of the angels as they welcomed her soul in heaven.* According to another legend, told by Gregory of Tours, a mother had taken her only son to a monasteiy near Lake Geneva, where he became a monk, and especially skilful in chanting the liturgic service. " He fell sick and died ; his mother in despair came to bury him, and returned every night to weep and lament over his tomb. One night she saw St. Maurice in a dream attempting to console her, but she answered him, ' No, no ; as long as I live I sliall always weep for my son, my only child 1' 'But,' an- swered the saint, ' he must not be wept for as if he were dead ; he is with us, he rejoices in eternal life, and to- morrow, at Matins, in the monastery, thou shalt hear his voice among tlie choir of tlie monks ; and not to-morrow only, but every day as long as thou livest.' The mother immediately arose, and waited with impatience the first sound of the bell for Matins, to liasten to the church of the monks. The precentor having intoned the response, when the monks in full choir took up the antiphon, the mother immediately recognized the voice of her child. 1 Montalembert, The Monks of the West, vol. ii. 123 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH She gave thanks to God ; and every day for the rest of her life, the moment she approached the choir she heard the voice of her well-beloved son mingle in the sweet and holy melody of the liturgic chant." ^ As centuries went on, and these ancient melodies, gathering such stores of holy memory, were handed down in their integrity from generation to generation of praying monks, it is no wonder that the feeling grew that they too were inspired by the Holy Spirit. The legend long prevailed in the Middle Age that Gregory the Great one night had a vision in which the Church appeared to him in the form of an angel, magnificently attired, upon whose mantle was written the whole art of music, with all the forms of its melodies and notes. The pope prayed God to give him the power of recollect- ing all that he saw ; and after he awoke a dove appeared, who dictated to him the chants which are ascribed to him .2 Ambros quotes a mediaeval Latin chronicler, Aurelian Reomensis, who relates that a blind man named Victor, sitting one day before an altar in the Pan- theon at Rome, by direct divine inspiration composed the response Gaude Maria, and by a second miracle imme- diately received his sight. Another story from the same source tells how a monk of the convent of St. Victor, while upon a neighboring mountain, heard angels sing- ing the response Gives Apostolorum, and after his return to Rome he taught the song to his brethren as he had heard it.^ 1 Montalembert, The Monks of the West, vol. ii. 2 Ibid. ' Ambros, Geschichte der Musik, vol. ii. 124 THE CATHOLIC RITUAL CHANT In order to explain the feeling toward the liturgic chant which is indicated by these legends and the rap- turous eulogies of mediaeval and modern writers, we have only to remember that the melody was never separated in thought from the words, that these words were prayer and praise, made especially acceptable to God because wafted to him by means of his own gift of music. To the mediaeval monks prayer was the highest exercise in which man can engage, the most efficacious of all actions, the chief human agency in the salvation of the world. Prayer was the divinely appointed business to which they were set apart. Hence arose the multiplicity of religious services in the convents, the observance of the seven daily hours of prayer, in some monasteries in France, as earlier in Syria and Egypt, extending to the so-called laus perennis, in which companies of brethren, relieving each other at stated watches, maintained, Uke the sacred fire of Vesta, an unbroken office of song by night and day. Such was the liturgic chant in the ages of faith, before the invention of counterpoint and the first steps in modern musical science suggested new conceptions and methods in worship music. It constitutes to-day a unique and precious heritage from an era wliich, in its very ignorance, superstition, barbarism of manners, and ruthlessness of political ambition, furnislies strongest evidence of the divine origin of a faith wliich could triumph over such antagonisms. To the devout Catholic the chant has a sanctity which transcends even its aesthetic and liistoric value, but non-Catholic as well as Catholic may reverence it as a direct creation and a i25 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH token of a mode of thought which, as at no epoch since, conceived prayer and praise as a Christian's most urgent duty, and as an infallible means of gaining the favor of God. The Catholic liturgic chant, like all other monumental forms of art, has often suffered through the vicissitudes of taste which have beguiled even those whose official responsibilities would seem to constitute them the special custodians of this sacred treasure. Even to-day there are many clergymen and church musicians who have but a faint conception of the affluence of lovely melody and profound religious expression contained in this vast body of mediaeval music. Where purely aesthetic considera- tions have for a time prevailed, as they often will even in a Church in which tradition and symbolism exert so strong an influence as they do in the Catholic, this archaic form of melody has been neglected. Like all the older types (the sixteenth century a capella chorus and the German rhythmic choral, for example) its austere speech has not been able to prevail against the fasci- nations of the modern brilliant and emotional style of church music which has emanated from instrumental art and the Italian aria. Under this latter influence, and the survival of the seventeenth-century contempt for everything mediaeval and " Gothic," the chant was long looked upon with disdain as the offspring of a barbarous age, and only maintained at all out of unwilling defer- ence to ecclesiastical authority. In the last few decades, however, probably as a detail of the reawakening in all departments of a study of the great works of older art, there has appeared a reaction in favor of a renewed cul- 126 THE CATHOLIC RITUAL CHANT ture of the Gregorian chant. The tendency toward sensationalism in church music has now begun to sub- side. The true ideal is seen to be in the past. Together with the new appreciation of Palestrina, Bach, and the older Anglican Church composers, the Catholic chant is coming to its rights, and an enlightened modern taste is beginning to realize the melodious beauty, the liturgic appropriateness, and the edifying power that lie in the ancient unison song. This movement is even now only in its inception ; in the majority of church centres there is still apathy, and in consequence corruption of the old forms, crudity and coldness in execution. Much has, however, been already achieved, and in the patient and acute scholarship applied in the field of textual criticism by the monks of Solesmes and the church musicians of Paris, Brussels, and Regensburg, in the en- thusiastic zeal shown in many churches and seminaries of Europe and America for the attainment of a pure and expressive style of delivery, and in the restoration of the Plain Song to portions of the ritual from which it has long been banished, we see evidences of a movement which promises to be fruitful, not only in this special sphere, but also, as a direct consequence, in other domains of church music which have been too long neglected. The historic status of the Gregorian chant as the basis of the magnificent structure of Catholic church music down to 1600, of the Anglican chant, and to a large extent of the German people's hymn-tune or choral, has always been known to scliolars. The revived study of it has come from an awakened perception of its liturgic significance and its inherent beauty. The 127 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH influence drawn from its peculiarly solemn and elevated quality has begun to penetrate the chorus work of the best Catholic composers of the recent time. Protestant church musicians are also beginning to find advantage in the study of the melody, the rhythm, the expression, and even the tonality of the Gregorian song. And every lover of church music will find a new pleasure and uplift in listening to its noble strains. He must, however, listen sympathetically, expelling from his mind all comparison with the modern styles to which he is accustomed, holding in clear view its historic relations and liturgic function. To one who so attunes his mind to its peculiar spirit and purport, the Gregorian Plain Song will seem worthy of the exalted place it holds in the veneration of the most august ecclesiastical institu- tion in history. ia CHAPTER V THE DEVELOPMENT OP MEDIEVAL CHORUS MUSIC It has already been noted that the music of the Catholic Church has passed through three typical phases or styles, each complete in itself, bounded by clearly marked lines, corresponding quite closely in respect to time divisions with the three major epochs into which the histoiy of the Western Church may be divided. These phases or schools of ecclesiastical song are so far from being mutually exclusive that both the first and second persisted after the introduction of the third, so that at the present day at least two of the three forms are in use in almost every Catholic congregation, the Gregorian chant being employed in the song of the priest and in the antiphonal psalms and responses, and either the second or third form being adopted in the remaining offices.^ Since harmony was unknown during the first one thousand years or more of the Christian era, and instru- mental music had no independent existence, the whole vast system of chant melodies was purely unison and unaccompanied, its rhythm usually subordinated to that of the text. Melody, unsupported by harmony, soon 1 The offices, chiefly conventual, in which the chant is employed throughout are exceptions to the general rule. i 129 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH runs its course, and if no new principle had been added to this antique melodic method, European music would have become petrified or else have gone on copying itself indefinitely. But about the eleventh century a new conception made its appearance, in which lay the assur- ance of the whole magnificent art of modern music. This new principle was that of harmony, the combina- tion of two or more simultaneous and mutually depen- dent parts. The importance of this discovery needs no emphasis. It not only introduced an artistic agency that is practically unlimited in scope and variety, but it made music for the first time a free art, with its laws of rhythm and structure no longer identical with those of language, but drawn from the powers that lie inherent in its own nature. Out of the impulse to combine two or more parts together in complete freedom from the constraints of verbal accent and prosody sprang the second great school of church music, which, hkevrise independent of instrumental accompaniment, developed along purely vocal lines, and issued in the contrapuntal chorus music which attained its maturity in the last half of the sixteenth century. This mediaeval school of a capella polyphonic music is in many respects more attractive to the student of ecclesiastical art than even the far more elaborate and brilliant style which prevails to-day. Modern church music, by virtue of its variety, splendor, and dramatic pathos, seems to be tinged with the hues of earthliness which belie the strictest conception of ecclesiastical art. It partakes of the doubt and turmoil of a skeptical and rebellious age, it is the music of impassioned longing 180 MEDIEVAL CHORUS MUSIC in which are mingled echoes of worldly allurements, it is not the chastened tone of pious assurance and self- abnegation. The choral song developed in the ages of faith is pervaded by the accents of that calm ecstasy of trust and celestial anticipation which give to mediaeval art that exquisite charm of naivete^ and sincerity never again to be realized through the same medium, because it is the unconscious expression of an unquestioning simplicity of conviction which seems to have passed away forever from the higher manifestations of the human creative intellect. Such pathetic suggestion clings to the religious music of the Middle Age no less palpably than to the sculpture, painting, and hymnody of the same era, and combines with its singular artistic perfection and loftiness of tone to render it perhaps the most typical and lovely of all the forms of Catholic art. And yet to the generality of students of church and art history it is of all the products of the Middle Age the least familiar. Any intellectual man whom we might select would call himself but scantily educated if he had no acquaintance with me- diaeval architecture and plastic art ; yet he would prob- ably not feel at all ashamed to confess total ignorance of that vast store of liturgic music which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries filled the incense-laden air of those very cathedrals and chapels in which his reverent feet so love to wander. The miracles of mediaeval archi- tecture, the achievements of the Gothic sculptors and the religious painters of Florence, Cologne, and Flanders are familiar to him, but the musical craftsmen of the Low Countries, Paris, Rome, and Venice, who clothed 131 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH every prayer, hymn, and Scripture lesson with strains of unique beauty and tenderness, are only names, if indeed their names are known to him at all. Yet in sheer bulk their works would doubtless be found to equtil the whole amount of the music of ever}^ kind that has been written in the three centuries following their era ; while in technical mastery and adaptation to its special end this school is not unworthy of comparison with the more brilliant and versatile art of the present day. The period from the twelfth century to the close of the sixteenth was one of extraordinary musical activity. The thousands of cathedrals, chapels, parish churches, and convents were unceasing in their demands for new settings of the Mass and offices. Until the art of print- ing was applied to musical notes about the year 1500, followed by the foundation of musical publishing houses, there was but little duplication or exchange of musical compositions, and thus every important ecclesiastical establishment must be provided with its own corps of composers and copyists. The religious enthusiasm and the vigorous intellectual activity of the Middle Age found as free a channel of discharge in song as in any other means of embellishment of the church ceremonial. These conditions, together with the absence of an oper- atic stage, a concert system, or a musical public, turned the fertile musical impulses of the period to the benefit of the Cliurch. The ecclesiastical musicians also set to music vast numbers of madrigals, chansons, villanellas, and the like, for the entertainment of aristocratic pa- trons, but this was only an incidental deflection from their more serious duties as ritual composers. In qual- 132 MEDIEVAL CHORUS MUSIC ity as well as quantity the medigeval chorus music was not unworthy of comparison with the architectural, sculptural, pictorial, and textile products which were created in the same epoch and under the same auspices. The world has never witnessed a more absorbed devotion to a single artistic idea, neither has there existed since the golden age of Greek sculpture another art form so lofty in expression and so perfect in workmanship as the polyphonic church chorus in the years of its maturity. That style of musical art which was brought to fruition by such men as Josquin des Pr^s, Orlandus Lassus, Willaert, Palestrina, Vittoria, the Anerios, the Gabrielis, and Lotti is not unworthy to be compared with the Gothic cathedrals in whose epoch it arose and with the later tri- umphs of Renaissance painting with which it culminated. Of this remarkable achievement of genius the edu- cated man above mentioned knows little or nothing. How is it possible, he might ask, that a school of art so opulent in results, capable of arousing so much admira- tion among the initiated, could have dominated all Europe for five such brilliant centuries, and yet have left so little impress upon the consciousness of the mod- ern world, if it really possessed the high artistic merits that are claimed for it? The answer is not difficult. For the world at large music exists only as it is per- formed, and the difficulty and expense of musical per- formance insure, as a general rule, the neglect of compo- sitions that do not arouse a public demand. Church music is less susceptible than secular to the tyranny of fashion, but even in this department changing tastes and the politic compromising spirit tend to pay court to 133 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH novelty and to neglect the antiquated. The revolution in musical taste and practice which occurred early in the seventeenth century a revolution so complete that it metamorphosed the whole conception of the nature and purpose of music swept all musical production off into new directions, and the complex austere art of the mediaeval Church was forgotten under the fascination of the new Italian melody and the vivid rhythm and tone- color of the orchestra. Since then the tide of invention has never paused long enough to enable the world at large to turn its thought to the forsaken treasures of the past. Moreover, only a comparatively minute part of this multitude of old works has ever been printed, much of it has been lost, the greater portion lies buried in the dust of libraries ; whatever is accessible must be released from an abstruse and obsolete system of notation, and the methods of performance, which conditioned a large measure of its effect, must be restored under the uncer- tain guidance of tradition. The usages of chorus singing in the present era do not prepare singers to cope with the pecTiliar difficulties of the a capella style ; a special education and an unwonted mode of feeling are required for an appreciation of its appropriateness and beauty. Nevertheless, such is its inherent vitality, so magical is its attraction to one who has come into complete har- mony with its spirit, so true is it as an exponent of the mystical submissive type of piety which always tends to reassert itself in a rationalistic age like the present, that the minds of churchmen are gradually returning to it, and scholars and musical directors are tempting it forth from its seclusion. Societies are founded for its study, 184 MEDIEVAL CHORUS MUSIC choirs in some of the most influential church centres are adding mediaeval works to their repertories, journals and schools are laboring in its interest, and its influence is insinuating itself into the modern mass and anthem, lending to the modern forms a more elevated and spirit- ual quality. Little by little the world of culture is becoming enlightened in respect to the unique beauty and refinement of this form of art ; and the more intelli- gent study of the Middle Age, which has now taken the place of the former prejudiced misinterpretation, is form- ing an attitude of mind that is capable of a sympathetic response to this most exquisite and characteristic of all the products of mediaeval genius. In order to seize the full significance of this school of Catholic music in its mature stage in the sixteenth cen- tury, it will be necessary to trace its origin and growth. The constructive criticism of the present day rests on the principle that we cannot comprehend works and schools of art unless we know their causes and environment. We shall find as we examine the history of mediaeval choral song, that it arose in response to an instinctive demand for a more expansive form of music than the unison chant. Liturgic necessities can in no wise account for the invention of part singing, for even to- day the Gregorian Plain Song remains the one oSicially recognized form of ritual music in the Catholic Church. It was an unconscious impulse, prophesying a richer musical expression which could not at once be realized, a blind revolt of the European mind against bondage to an antique and restrictive form of expression. For the Gregorian chant by its very nature as unaccompanied 135 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH melody, rhythmically controlled by prose accent and measure, was incapable of further development, and it was impossible that music should remain at a standstill wliile all the other arts were undergoing the pains of growth. The movement which elicited the art of choral song from the latent powers of the liturgic chant was identical with the tendency which evolved Gothic and Renaissance architecture, sculpture, and painting out of Roman and Byzantine art. Melody unsupported soon runs its course ; harmony, music in parts, with contrast of consonance and dissonance, dynamics, and light and shade, must supplement melody, adding more opulent resources to the simple charm of tone and rhythm. The science of harmony, at least in the modern sense, was unknown in antiquity, and the Gregorian chant was but the projection of the antique usage into the modern world. The history of modern European music, there- fore, begins with the first authentic instances of sing- ing in two or more semi-independent parts, these parts being subjected to a definite proportional notation. A century or so before the science of part writing had taken root in musical practice, a strange barbaric form of music meets our eyes. A manuscript of the tenth century, formerly ascribed to Hucbald of St. Armand, who lived, however, a century earlier, gives the first dis- tinct account, with rules for performance, of a diver- gence from the custom of unison singing, by which the voices of the choir, instead of all singing the same notes, move along together separated by octaves and fourths or octaves and fifths ; or else a second voice accompanies the first by a movement sometimes direct, sometimes 136 MEDIEVAL CHORUS MUSIC oblique, and sometimes contrary. The author of this manuscript makes no claim to the invention of this manner of singing, but alludes to it as something already well known. Much speculation has been expended upon the question of the origin and purpose of the first form of this barbarous organum or diaphony, as it was called. Some conjecture that it was suggested by the sound of the ancient Keltic stringed instrument crowth or crotta, which was tuned in fifths and had a flat finger-board ; others find in it an imitation of the early organ with its several rows of pipes sounding fifths like a modern mixture stop ; while others suppose, with some reason, that it was a survival of a fashion practised among the Greeks and Romans. The impor- tance of the organum in music history has, however, been greatly overrated, for properly speaking it was not harmony or part singing at all, but only another kind of unison. Even the second form of organum was but little nearer the final goal, for the attendant note series was not free enough to be called an organic element in a harmonic structure. As soon, however, as the accom- panying part was allowed ever so little unconstrained life of its own, the first steps in genuine part writing were taken, and a new epoch in musical history had begun. Example of Organum or Diaphony, First Species. 137 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH $ ^ &> "g? 'gy r j "^ '^ '^ ^ ^ e j e j e ^ Ts 25 i;,^:^ z^^ '321 ^ is: nnm ex hoc nunc et us - que En se - cu - lum. . . I -:^; <5> (S" (S* <5>- - g ? g gj gg e^ .^ e > ^ The freer and more promising style which issued from the treadmill of the organum was called in its initial stages discant (Lat. discantus}, and was at first wholly confined to an irregular mixture of octaves, unisons, fifths and fourths, with an occasional third as a sort of concession to the criticism of the natural ear upon antique theory. At first two parts only were employed. Occasional successions of parallel fifths and fourths, the heritage of the organum, long survived, but they were gradually eliminated as hollow and unsatisfying, and the principle of contrary motion, which is the very soul of all modern harmony and counterpoint, was slowly estab- lished. It must be borne in mind, as the clue to all mediseval music, that the practice of tone combination involved no idea whatever of chords, as modern theory conceives them. The characteristic principle of the vastly 138 MEDIEVAL CHORUS MUSIC preponderating portion of the music of 'the last three centuries is harmony, technically so called, i. e., chords, solid or distributed, out of which melody is primarily evolved. Homophony, monody one part sustaining the tune while all others serve as the support and, so to speak, the coloring material also is now the ruling postulate. The chorus music of Europe down to the seventeenth century was, on the other hand, based on melody; the composer never thought of his combination as chords, but worked, we might say, horizontally, weav- ing together several semi-independent melodies into a flexible and accordant tissue.^ The transition from organum to discant was effected about the year 1100. There was for a time no thought of the invention of the component melodies. Not only the cantus firmus (the principal theme), but also the counterpoint (the melodic " running mate "), was bor- rowed, the second factor being frequently a folk-tune altered to fit the chant melody, according to the simple laws of euphony then admitted. In respect to the words the discant may be divided into two classes : the words might be the same in both parts ; or one voice would sing the text of the office of the Church, and the other the words of the secular song from which the accompanying tune was taken. In the twelfth century the monkish musicians, stirred to bolder flights by the satisfactory results of their two-part discant, essayed three parts, with 1 This distinction betweeu harmony and counterpoint is fundamental, but no space can be given here to its further elucidation. The point will easily be made clear by comparing an ordinary modern hymn tune with the first section of a fugue. 139 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH results at first childishly awkward, but with growing ease and smoothness. Free invention of the accompany- EXAMPLE OF DiSCANT IN ThREE PaRTS WITH DiFFEKENT Words (Twelfth Century). From Coussemaker, Histoire de Vharmonie au moyen age. Translated into modern notation. $ m: <^^ ^^ f i ejeS -gH ^ g J I ti ^ ig 1M:: i O bo - ne Je Alto. su! Mi m^ sr i gy ii ' (g (&- O bo - ne Je Tenor. ^^ r?^ Mi 3!; ^+5*1+- -a' G- ^-^-=^= ~^ #-#- ^ s^^^ 6^ O bo - ne Je Ba89. Ww^^ :M: O bo - ne Je su! Mi Mi '^32:. 160 MEDIEVAL CHORUS MUSIC 1^ ^ n g tt gy^ gy gL re - re no bis, Qui a ta ere - ^ --t^ 4 \ a, ' t tg H no - bis ^ Qui a tu ere :Mt re - re no - - bis Qui a tu ere Si rtg H- 1^ re re no bis Qui a tu ere yg Si -gy San gui - ne tu - o prae - ti The intricate style commonly prevails in larger works masses, motets, and the longer hymns. Only after careful analysis can we appreciate the wonderful art that has entered into its fabrication. Upon examining works of this class we find the score consisting of four or more parts, but not usually exceeding eight. The most obvious feature of the design is that each part appears quite independent of the others; the melody does not lie in one voice while the others act as accom- paniment, but each part is as much a melody as any other ; each voice pursues its easy, unfettered way, now one acting as leader, now another, the voices often cross- ing each other, each melody apparently quite regardless of its mates in respect to the time of beginning, culmi- nating, and ending, tlie voices apparently not subject to any common law of accent or rhythm, but each busy with its own individual progress. The onward move- 162 MEDIEVAL CHORUS MUSIC ment is like a series of waves ; no sooner is the mind fixed upon one than it is lost in the ordered confusion of those that follow. The music seems also to have no definite rhythm. Each single voice part is indeed rhythmical, as a sentence of prose may be rhythmical, but since the melodic constituents come in upon differ- ent parts of the measure, one culminating at one moment, another at another, the parts often crossing each other, so that while the mind may be fixed upon one melody which seems to lead, another, which has been coming up from below, strikes in across the field, the result of all this is that the attention is constantly being dislodged from one tonal centre and shifted to another, and the whole scheme of design seems without form, a fluctu- ating mass swayed hither and thither without coherent plan. The music does not lack dynamic change or alteration of speed, but these contrasts are often so subtly graded that it is not apparent where they begin or end. The whole effect is measured, subdued, solemn. We are never startled, there is nothing that sets the nerves throbbing. But as we hear this music again and again, analyzing its properties, shutting out all precon- ceptions, little by little there steal over us sensations of surprise, then of wonder, then of admiration. These delicately shaded harmonies develop unimagined beau- ties. Without sharp contrast of dissonance and conso- nance they are yet full of shifting lights and hues, like a meadow under breeze and sunshine, which to the care- less eye seems only a mass of unvarying green, but which reveals to the keener sense infinite modulation of the scale of color. No melody lies conspicuous upon X63 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH the surface, but the whole harmonic substance is full of undulating melody, each voice pursuing its confident, unfettered motion amid the ingenious complexity of which it is a constituent part. Fkagment of Ktrie, from the Mass of Pope Mabcellus. No- VELLo's Edition. Palestrina. Soprano I. V -Hfi?H i2 _j5)_ 32=i2rE=a: * s ^ Ky - rie e - lei Soprano II. son, Ky- il Ky - rie e - lei Alto I. 3! E 1: Ky =^ -- "^ -t5>- rie e - lei Alto II. & Tenor. 3i Ky Bass I. m Bass II. il -V \7Z> 'g sr Ky 164 rie e - lei MEDIEVAL CHORUS MUSIC In considering further the technical methods and the final aims of this marvellous style, we find in its cul- minating period that the crown of the mediaeval contra- puntal art upon its aesthetic side lies in the attainment of beauty of tone effect in and of itself the gratifica- tion of the sensuous ear, rich and subtly modulated sound quality, not in the individual boys' and men's iS'-r- -^2 r# ^ i ms lei m =:]^ :*=EZE 8on. Ky e - lei 4=1: s.--^ son, Ky - rie e - lei - son, ^=r^ Ky f Tf --o ^ lei 5 - - m^ j2: w Ky lei t^-- -^1 son, Ky - rie e - lei - son, 165 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH voices, but in the distribution and combination of voices of different timbre. That mastery toward which orches- tral composers have been striving during the past one hundred years the union and contrast of stringed and wind instruments for the production of impressions upon the ear analogous to those produced upon the eye by the color of a Rembrandt or a Titian this was also sought, and, so far as the slender means went, achieved in a wonderful degree by the tone-masters of the Roman s'- r^^- m 4mt :si Ky e - lei - son, :^:^ 3E ^ son, is: Ky - rie e lei - son, i^i *^&- =5 3E! lei - son, Ky - rie e i3?^i^ '^ H ". son, e - lei son, ^- -a- Ky -Gt- -27- 121 son, e lei Ky - rie ^-^ e - lei - gy w . Ky lei son, 166 MEDIAEVAL CHORUS MUSIC and Venetian schools. The chorus, we must remind ourselves, was not dependent upon an accompaniment, and sensuous beauty of tone must, therefore, result not merely from the individual quality of the voices, but still more from the manner in which the notes were grouped. The distribution of the components of a chord in oixier to produce the greatest sonority ; the alternation of the lower voices mth the higher ; the elimination of voices as a section approached its close, until the har- mony was reduced at the last syllable to two higher voices in pianissimo, as though the strain were vanishing into the upper air ; the resolution of tangled polyphony into a sun-burst of open golden chords ; the subtle in- trusion of veiled dissonances into the fluent gleaming concord ; the skilful blending of the vocal registers for the production of exquisite contrasts of light and shade, these and many other devices were employed for the attainment of delicate and lustrous sound tints, with results to which modern chorus writing affords no par- allel. The culmination of this tendency could not be reached until the art of interweaving voices according to regular but flexible patterns had been fully mastered, and composers had learned to lead their parts with the confidence with which the engraver traces his lines to shape them into designs of beauty. The singular perfection of the work of Palestrina has served to direct the slight attention which the world now gives to the music of the sixteenth century almost exclusively to him ; yet he was but one master among a goodly number whose productions are but slightly in- ferior to his, primus inter pares. Orlandus Lassus in 167 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH Munich, Willaert, and the two Grabrielis, Andrea and Giovanni, and Croce in Venice, the Naninis, Vittoria, and the Anerios in Rome, Tallis in England, are names wliich do not pale when placed beside that of the " prince of music." Venice, particularly, was a worthy rival of Rome in the sphere of church song. The cata- logue of her musicians who flourished in the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries contains the names of men who were truly sovereigns in their art, not inferior to Palestrina in science, compensating for a comparative lack of the super-refined delicacy and trem- ulous pathos which distinguished the Romans by a larger emphasis upon contrast, color variety, and char- acteristic expression. It was as though the splendors of Venetian painting had been emulated, although in reduced shades, by these masters of Venetian music. In admitting into their works contrivances for effect which anticipated a coming revolution in musical art, the Venetians, rather than the Romans, form the con- necting link between mediaeval and modern religious music. In the Venetian school we find triumphing over the ineffable calmness and remote impersonality of the Romans a more individual quality a strain almost of passion and stress, and a far greater sonority and pomp. Chromatic changes, at first irregular and un- systematized, come gradually into use as a means of at- taining greater intensity ; dissonances become more pronounced, foreshadowing the change of key system with all its consequences. The contrapuntal leading of parts, in whose cunning labyrinths the expression of feeling through melody strove to lose itself, tended 168 MEDIEVAL CHORUS MUSIC under the different ideal cherished by the Venetians to condense into more massive harmonies, with bolder out- lines and melody rising into more obvious relief. As far back as the early decades of the sixteenth century Venice had begun to loosen the bands of mediaeval choral law, and by a freer use of dissonances to prepare the ear for a new order of perceptions. The unprece- dented importance given to the organ by the Venetian church composers, and the appearance of the beginnings of an independent organ style, also contributed strongly to the furtherance of the new tendencies. In this broader outlook, more individual stamp, and more self- conscious aim toward brilliancy the music of Venice simply shared those impulses that manifested themselves in the gorgeous canvases of her great painters and in the regal splendors of her public spectacles. The national love of pomp and ceremonial display was shoNvn in the church festivals hardly less than in the secular pageants, and all that could embellish the externals of the church solemnities was eagerly adopted. All the most distinguished members of the line of Vene- tian church composers were connected with the church of St. Mark as choir directors and organists, and they imparted to their compositions a breadth of tone and warmth of color fully in keeping with the historic and artistic glory of this superb temple. The founder of the sixteenth-century Venetian school was Adrian Willaert, a Netherlander, who was chapel-master at St. Mark's from 1527 to 1563. It was he who first employed the metliod which became a notable feature of the music of St. Mark's, of dividing the choir and thus obtaining 169 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH novel effects of contrast and climax by means of antiph- onal chorus singing. The hint was given to Willaert by the construction of the church, which contains two music galleries opposite each other, each with its organ. The freer use of dissonances, so characteristic of the adventurous spirit of the Venetian composers, first be- came a significant trait in the writings of Willaert. The tendency to lay less stress upon interior intricacy and more upon harmonic strength, striking tone color, and cumulative grandeur is even more apparent in Wil- laert's successors at St. Mark's, Cyprian de Rore, Claudio Merulo, and the two Gabrielis. Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli carried the splendid tonal art of Venice to unprecedented heights, adding a third choir to the two of Willaert, and employing alternate choir singing, combinations of parts, and massing of voices in still more ingenious profusion. Winterfeld, the chief historian of this epoch, thus describes the performance of a twelve-part psalm by G, Gabrieli : " Three choruses, one of deep voices, one of higher, and the third consist- ing of the four usual parts, are separated from each other. Like a tender, fervent prayer begins the song in the deeper chorus, ' God be merciful unto us and bless us.' Then the middle choir continues with similar ex- pression, ' And cause his face to shine upon us.' The higher chorus strikes in with the words, ' That thy way may be known upon earth.' In full voice the strain now resounds from all three choirs, ' Thy saving health among all nations.' The words, ' Thy saving health,' are given with especial earnestness, and it is to be noticed that this utterance comes not from all the choirs together, 170 MEDIEVAL CHORUS MUSIC nor from a single one entire, but from selected voices from each choir in full-toned interwoven parts. We shall not attempt to describe how energetic and fiery the song, ' Let all the people praise thee, O God,' pours forth from the choirs in alternation ; how tastefully the master proclaims the words, ' Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,' through change of measure and limitation to selected voices from all the choirs ; how the words, ' And God shall bless us,' are uttered in solemn masses of choral song. Language could give but a feeble sugges- tion of the magnificence of this music." ^ Great as Giovanni Gabrieli was as master of all the secrets of mediaeval counterpoint and also of the special applications devised by the school of Venice, he holds an even more eminent station as the foremost of the founders of modern instrumental art, which properly took its starting point in St. Mark's church in the six- teenth century. These men conceived that the organ might claim a larger function than merely aiding the voices here and there, and they began to experiment with independent performances where the ritual per- mitted such innovation. So we see the first upspring- ing of a lusty growth of instrumental forms, if they may properly be called forms, canzonas (the modern fugue in embryo), toccatas, ricercare (at fii-st nothing more than vocal counterpoint transferred to the organ), fantasias, etc., rambling, amorphous, incoherent pieces but vastly significant as holding the promise and po- tency of a new art. Of these far-sighted experiment- ers Giovanni Gabrieli was easily chief. Consummate 1 Winterfeld, Johannet Gabrieli und tein Zeitalter. 171 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH master of the ancient forms, he laid the first pier of the arch which was to connect two epochs ; honoring the old traditions by his achievements in chorus music, and .leading his disciples to perceive possibilities of expres- sion which were to respond to the needs of a new age. Anotlier composer of the foremost rank demands at- tention before we take leave of the medisBval contra- puntal school. Orlandus Lassus (original Flemish Roland de Lattre, Italianized Orlando di Lasso) was a musician whose genius entitles him to a pkce in the same inner circle with Palestrina and Gabrieli. He lived from 1520 to 1594. His most important field of labor was Munich. In force, variety, and range of sub- ject and treatment he surpasses Palestrina, but is inferior to the great Roman in pathos, nobility, and spiritual fervor. His music is remarkable in view of its period for energy, sharp contrasts, and bold experiments in chromatic alteration. " Orlando," says Ambros, " is a Janus who looks back toward the great past of music in which he arose, but also forward toward the approach- ing epoch." An unsurpassed master of counterpoint, he yet depended much upon simpler and more condensed harmonic movements. The number of his works reaches 2337, of which 765 are secular. His motets hold a more important place than his masses, and in many of the former are to be found elements that are so direct and forceful in expression as almost to be called dra- matic. His madrigals and choral songs are especially notable for their lavish use of chromatics, and also for a lusty sometimes rough liumor, which shows his keen sympathy with the popular currents that were running 172 MEDIAEVAL CHORUS MUSIC strongly in the learned music of his time. Lassus has more significance in the development of music than Pales trina, for the latter's absorption in liturgic duties kept him within much narrower boundaries. Pales- trina's music is permeated with the spirit of the liturgic chant ; that of Lassus with the racier quality of the folk-song. Lassus, although his religious devotion can- not be questioned, had the temper of a citizen of the world ; Palestrina that of a man of the cloister. Pales- trina's music reaches a height of ecstasy which Lassus never approached; the latter is more instructive in respect to the tendencies of the time. Turning again to the analysis of the sixteenth-century chorus and striving to penetrate still further the secret of its charm, we are obliged to admit that it is not its purely musical qualities or the learning and cleverness dis[)layed in its fabrication that will account for its long supremacy or for the enthusiasm which it has often excited in an age so remote as our own. Its aesthetic effect can never be quite disentangled from the impres- sions drawn from its rehgious and historic associations. Only the devout Catholic can feel its full import, for to him it shares the sanctity of the liturgy, it is not simply ear-pleasing harmony, but prayer ; not merely a decoration of the holy ceremony, but an integral part of the sacrifice of praise and supplication. And among Protestants those who eulogize it most warmly are those whose opinions on church music are liturgical and austere. Given in a concert hall, in imi>lied competition with modern chorus music, its effect is feeble. It is as rehgious music ritualistic religious music identified 173 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH with what is most solemn and suggestive in the tradi- tions and ordinances of an ancient faith, that this anti- quated form of art makes its appeal to modern taste. No other phase of music is so dependent upon its setting. There can be no question that the Catholic Church has always endeavored, albeit with a great deal of wav- ering and inconsistency, to maintain a certain ideal or standard in respect to those forms of art which she employs in her work of education. The frequent in- junctions of popes, prelates, councils, and synods for century after century have always held the same tone upon this question. They have earnestly re- minded their followers that the Church recognizes a positive norm or canon in ecclesiastical art, that there is a practical distinction between ecclesiastic art and secular art, and that it is a pious duty on the part of churchmen to preserve this distinction inviolate. The Church, however, has never had the courage of this conviction. As J. A. Symonds says, she has always compromised ; and so has every church compromised. The inroads of secular styles and modes of expression have always been irresistible except here and there in very limited times and localities. The history of church art, particularly of church music, is the history of the conflict between the sacerdotal conception of art and the popular taste. What, then, is the theory of ecclesiastical art which the heads of the Catholic Church have maintained in precept and so often permitted to be ignored in prac- tice? What have been the causes and tlie results of the secularization of religious art, particularly music? 174 MEDIEVAL CHORUS MUSIC These questions are of the greatest practical interest to the student of church music, and the answers to them will form the centre around which all tLat I have to say from this point about Catholic music will mainly turn. The strict idea of religious art, as it has always stood more or less distinctly in the thought of the Catholic Church, is that it exists not for the decoration of the ofl&ces of worship (although the gratification of the senses is not considered unworthy as an incidental end), but rather for edification, instruction, and inspiration. As stated by an authoritative Catholic writer: "No branch of art exists for its own sake alone. Art is a servant, and it serves either God or the world, the eternal or the temporal, the spirit or the flesh. Eccle- siastical art must derive its rule and form solely from the Church." " These rules and determinations [in respect to church art] are by no means arbitmiy, no external accretion ; they have grown up organically from within outwaixl, from the spirit which guides the Church, out of her views and out of the needs of her worship. And herein lies the justification of her symbolism and emblematic expression in ecclesiastical art so long as this holds itself within the limits of tradition. The church of stone must be a speaking manifestation of the living Church and her mysteries. The pictures on tlie walls and on the altars are not mere adornment for the pleasure of the eye, but for the heart a book full of instruction, a sermon full of truth. And hereby art is raised to be an instrument of edification to the believer, it becomes a profound 175 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH expositor for thousands, a transmitter and preserver of great ideas for all the centuries." ^ The Catholic Church in her art would subject the litej-al to the ideal, the particular to the general, the definitive to the symbolic. " The phrase ' emancipation of the individ- ual,' " says Jakob again, " is not heard in the Church. Art history teaches that the Church does not oppose the individual conception, but simply restrains that false freedom which would make art the servant of personal caprice or of fashion." The truth of this piinciple as a fundamental canon of ecclesiastical art is not essentially affected by the fact that it is only in certain periods and under fa- vorable conditions that it has been strictly enforced. Whenever art reaches a certain point in development, individual determination invariably succeeds in breaks ing away from tradition. The attainment of technic, attended by the inevitable pride in technic, liberates its possessors. The spirit of the Italian religious paint>- ers of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, con- tent to submit their skill to further the educational purposes of the Church, could no longer persist in connection with the growing delight in new technical problems and the vision of the new fields open to art when face to face with reality. The conventional treat- ment of the Alemmis and Fra Angelicos was followed by the naturalistic representation of the Raphaels, the Da Vincis, and the Titians. The same result has fol- lowed where pure art has decayed, or where no real appreciation of art ever existed. The stage of church 1 Jakob, Die Kunst im Dienste der Kirche. 176 MEDIAEVAL CHORUS MUSIC art in its purest and most edifying form is, therefore, only temporary. It exists in the adolescent period of an art, before the achievement of technical skill arouses desire for its unhampered exercise, and when religious ideas are at the same time dominant and pervasive. Neither is doubt to be cast upon the sincerity of the religious motive in this phase of art growth when we discover that its technical methods are identical with those of secular art at the same period. In fact, this general and conventional style which the Church finds suited to her ends is most truly characteristic when the artists have virtually no choice in their methods. The motive of the Gothic cathedral builders was no less religious because their modes of construction and decoration were also common to the civic and domestic architecture of the time. A distinctive ecclesiastical style has never developed in rivalry with contemporary tendencies in secular art, but only in unison with them. Tlie historic church styles are also secular styles, car- ried to the highest practicable degree of refinement and splendor. These styles persist in the Church after they have disappeared in the mutations of secular art; they become sanctified by time and by tlie awe which the claim of supernatural commission inspires, and the world at last comes to think of them as inherently rather than conventionally religious. All these principles must be applied to the sixteenth- century a capella music. In fact, there is no better illus- tration ; its meaning and effect cannot be otherwise understood. Growing up under what seem perfectly nat- ural conditions, patronized by the laity as well as by the 12 177 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH clergy, this highly organized, severe, and impersonal style was seen, even before the period of its maturity, to con- form to the ideal of liturgic art cherished by the Church ; and now that it has become completely isolated in the march of musical progress, this conformity appears even more obvious under contrast. No other form of chorus music has existed so objective and impersonal, so free from the stress and stir of passion, so plainly reflecting an exalted spiritualized state of feeling. This music is singularly adapted to reinforce the impression of the Catholic mysteries by reason of its technical form and its pecuhar emotional appeal. The devotional mood that is especially nurtured by the Cathohc religious exercises is absorbed and mystical; the devotee strives to with- draw into a retreat within the inner shrine of religious contemplation, where no echoes of the world reverberate, and where the soul may be thrilled by the tremulous ecstasy of half-unveiled heavenly glory. It is the con- sciousness of the nearness and reality of the unseen world that lends such a delicate and reserved beauty to those creations of Catholic genius in which this ideal has been most directly symbolized. Of this cloistral mood the church music of the Palestrina age is the most subtle and suggestive embodiment ever realized in art. It is as far as possible removed from profane suggestion ; in its ineffable calmness, and an indescribable tone of chastened exultation, pure from every trace of struggle, with which it vibrates, it is the most adequate emblem of that eternal repose toward which the believer yearns. It is not true, however, as often alleged, that this form of music altogether lacks characterization, and that the 178 MEDIEVAL CHORUS MUSIC style of Kyrie, Gloria, Crucifixus, Resurrexit, and of the motets and hymns whatever their subject, is always the same. The old masters were artists as well as church- men, and knew how to adapt their somewhat unrespon- sive material to the more obvious contrasts of the text; and in actual performance a much wider latitude in respect to nuance and change of speed was permitted than could be indicated in the score. We know, also, that the choristers were allowed great license in the use of embel- lishments, more or less florid, upon the written notes, sometimes improvised, sometimes carefully invented, taught and handed down as a prescribed code, the tradi- tion of which, in all but a few instances, has been lost. But the very laws of the Gregorian modes and the strict contrapuntal system kept such excursions after expression within narrow bounds, and the traditional view of eccle- siastical art forbade anything like a drastic descriptive literalism. This mediaeval polyphonic music, although the most complete example in art of the perfect adaptation of means to a particular end, could not long maintain its exclusive prestige. It must be supplanted by a new style as soon as the transformed secular music was strong enough to react upon the Church. It was found that a devotional experience that was not far removed from spiritual trance, which was all that the old music could express, was not the only mental attitude admis- sible in worship. I'ht; new-born art strove to give more apt and detailed expression to the words, and why should not this permission be granted to churcli music ? The musical revolution of the seventeenth century involved 179 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH the development of an art of solo singing and its suprem- acy over the chorus, the substitution of the modern major and minor transposing scales for the Gregorian modal system, a homophonic method of harmony for the medicBval polyphony, accompanied music for the a ca- pella, secular and dramatic for religious music, the rise of instrumental music as an independent art, the transfer of patronage from the Church to the aristocracy and ulti- mately to the common people. All the modern forms, both vocal and instrumental, which have come to matur- ity in recent times suddenly appeared in embryo at the close of the sixteenth or early in the seventeenth century. The ancient style of ecclesiastical music did not indeed come to a standstill. The grand old forms continued to be cultivated by men who were proud to wear the mantle of Palestrina; and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the traditions of the Roman and Venetian schools of church music have had sufficient vitality to inspire works not unworthy of comparison vnth their venerable models. The strains of these later disciples, however, are but scanty reverberations of the multitudinous voices of the past. The instrumental mass and motet, embellished with all the newly discovered appliances of melody, harmony, rhythm, and tone color, led the art of the Church with flying banners into wider regions of conquest, and the a capella contrapuntal chorus was left behind, a stately monument upon the receding shores of the Middle Age. [^NoTE. A very important agent in stimulating a revival of interest in the mediaeval polyphonic school is the St. Cecilia Society, which was founded at Regensburg in 1 868 by Dr. Franz Xaver Witt, a devoted prieat 180 MEDIEVAL CHORUS MUSIC and learned musician, for the purpose of restoring a more perfect relation between music and the liturgy and erecting a barrier against the intrusion of dranaatic and virtuoso tendencies. Flourishing branches of this society exist in many of the chief church centres of Europe aud America. It is the patron of schools of music, it has issued periodicals, books, and musical compositions, and has shown mucii vigor in making propaganda for its views. Not less intelligent and earnest is the Schola Cantorum of Paris, which is exerting a strong influence upon church music in the PVench capital and thence throughout the world by means of musical performances, editions of musical works, lectures, and publications of books and e88ays.3 181 CHAPTER VI THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS To one who is accustomed to study the history of art in the light of the law of evolution, the contnist between the reigning modern style of Catholic church music and that of the Middle Age seems at first sight very difficult of explanation. The growth of the a capella chorus, which reached its perfection in the sixteenth century, may be traced through a steady process of development, every step of which was a logical conse- quence of some prior invention. But as we pass on- ward into the succeeding age and look for a form of Catholic music which may be taken as the natural offspring and successor of the venerable mediaeval style, we find what appears to be a break in the line of con- tinuity. The ancient form maintains its existence throughout the seventeenth century and a portion of the eighteenth, but it is slowly crowded to one side and at last driven from the field altogether by a style which, if we search in the field of church art alone, appears to have no antecedent. The new style is opposed to the old in every particular. Instead of forms that are poly- phonic in structure, vague and indefinite in plan, based on an antique key system, the new compositions are homophonic, definite, and sectional in plan, revealing an 182 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS entirely novel principle of tonality, containing vocal solos as well as choruses, and supported by a free instru- mental accompaniment. These two contrasted phases of religious music seem to have nothing in common so i'ar as technical organization is concerned, and it is per- fectly evident that the younger style could not have been evolved out of the elder. Hardly less divergent are they in respect to ideal of expression, the ancient style never departing from a moderate, unimpassioned uniformity, the modern abounding in variety and con- trast, and continually striving after a sort of dramatic portrayal of moods. To a representative of the old school, this florid accompanied style would seem like an intruder from quite an alien sphere of experience, and the wonder grows when we discover that it sprung from the same national soil as that in which its predecessor ripened, and was likewise cherished by an institution that has made immutability in all essentials a cardinal principle. Whence came the impulse that effected so sweeping a change in a great historic form of art, where we might expect that liturgic necessities and ecclesiastical tradition would decree a tenacious con- servatism ? What new conception had seized upon the human mind so powerful that it could even revolution- ize a large share of the musical system of the Catholic Church? Had there been a long preparation for a change that seems so sudden ? Were there causes working under the surface, antecedent stages, such that the violation of the law of continuity is apparent only, and not real ? These questions are easily answered if we abandon the useless attempt to find the parentage 183 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH of the modern church style in the ritual music of the previous period ; and by surveying all the musical condi- tions of the age we shall quickly discover that it was an intrusion into the Church of musical methods that were fostered under purely secular auspices. The Gregorian chant and the mediseval a capella chorus were born and nurtured within the fold of the Church, growing di- rectly out of the necessity of adapting musical cadences to the rhythmical phrases of the liturgy. The modern sectional and florid style, on the contrary, was an addi- tion from without, and was not introduced in response to any liturgic demands whatever. In origin and affiliations it was a secular style, adopted by the Church under a necessity which she eventually strove to turn into a virtue. This violent reversal of the traditions of Catholic music was simply a detail of that universal revolution in musical practice and ideal which marked the passage from the sixteenth century to the seventeenth. The learned music of Europe had been for centuries almost exclusively in the care of ecclesiastical and princely chapels, and its practitioners held offices that were primarily clerical. The professional musicians, ab- sorbed in churchly functions, had gone on adding masses to masses, motets to motets, and hymns to hymns, until the Church had accumulated a store of sacred song so vast that it remains the admiration and despair of modern scholars. These works, although exhibiting every stage of construction from the simplest to the most intricate, were all framed in accordance with principles derived from the mediaeval conception 184 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS of melodic combination. The secular songs which these same composers produced in great numbers, not- withstanding their greater flexibility and lightness of touch, were also written for chorus, usually unaccom- panied, and were theoretically constructed according to the same system as the church pieces. Nothing like operas or symphonies existed ; there were no orchestras worthy of the name ; pianoforte, violin, and organ play- ing, in the modern sense, had not been dreamed of ; solo singing was in its helpless infancy. When we consider, in the light of our present experience, how large a range of emotion that naturally utters itself in tone was left unrepresented through this lack of a proper secular art of music, we can understand the urgency of the demand which, at the close of the sixteenth century, broke down the barriers that hemmed in the currents of musical production and swept music out into the vast area of universal human interests. The spirit of the Renaissance had led forth all other art forms to share in the multifarious activities and joys of modern life at a time when music was still the satisfied inmate of the cloister. But it was impossible that music also should not sooner or later feel the transfiguring touch of the new human impulse. The placid, austere expression of the clerical style, the indefinite forms, the Gregorian modes precluding free dissonance and regulated chro- matic change, were incapable of rendering more than one order of ideas. A completely novel system must be forthcoming, or music must confess its impotence to enter into the fuller emotional life which had lately been revealed to mankind. 185 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH The genius of Italy was equal to the demand. Usually when any form of art becomes complete a period of degeneracy follows ; artists become mere imitators, in- spiration and creative power die out, the art becomes a handicraft; new growth appears only in another period or another nation, and under altogether different auspices. Such would perhaps have been the case with church music in Italy if a method diametrically opposed to that which had so long prevailed in the Church had not inaugurated a new school and finally extended its con- quest into the venerable precincts of the Church itself. The opera and instrumental music the two currents into which secular music divided sprang up, as from hidden fountains, right beside the old forms which were even then just attaining their full glory, as if to show that the Italian musical genius so abounded in energy that it could never undergo decay, but when it had gone to its utmost limits in one direction could instantly strike out in another still more brilliant and productive. The invention of the opera about the year 1600 is usually looked upon as the event of paramount im- portance in the transition period of modern music history, yet it was only the most striking symptom of a radical, sweeping tendency. Tliroughout the greater part of the sixteenth century a search had been in progress after a style of music suited to the solo voice, which could lend itself to the portrayal of the change and development of emotion involved in dramatic representation. The folk- song, which is only suited to the expression of a single simple frame of mind, was of course inadequate. The old church music was admirably adapted to the expres* 186 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS sion of the consciousness of man in his relations to the divine what was wanted was a means of expressing the emotions of man in his relations to his fellow-men. Lyric and dramatic poetry flourished, but no proper lyric or dramatic music. The Renaissance liad done its mighty work in all other fields of art, but so far as music was concerned in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a Renaissance did not exist. Many reasons might be given why the spirit of the Renaissance had no appre- ciable effect in the musical world until late in the six- teenth century. Musical forms are purely subjective in their conception ; they find no models or even sugges- tions in the natural world, and the difficulty of choosing the most satisfactory arrangements of tones out of an al- most endless number of possible combinations, together with the necessity of constantly new adjustments of the mind in order to appreciate the value of the very forms which itself creates, makes musical development a mat- ter of peculiar slowness and difficulty. The enthusiasm for the antique, which gave a definite direction to the revival of learning and the new ambitions in painting and sculpture, could have little practical value in musi- cal invention, since the ancient music, which would otherwise have been chosen as a guide, had been com- pletely lost. The craving for a style of solo singing suited to dramatic purposes tried to find satisfaction by means that were cliildishly insufficient. Imitations of folk-songs, the device of singing one part in a madrigal, while the other parts were played by instruments, were some of the futile efforts to solve the problem. The sense of disappointment broke forth in bitter wrath 187 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH against the church counterpoint, and a violent conflict raged between the bewildered experimenters and the adlierents of the scholastic methods. The discovery that was to satisfy the longings of a century and create a new art was made in Florence. About the year 1580 a circle of scholars, musicians, and amateurs began to hold meetings at the house of a certain Count Bardi, where they discussed, among other learned questions, the nature of the music of the Greeks, and the possibility of its restoration. Theorizing was supplemented by experiment, and at last Vincenzo Galilei, followed by Giulio Caccini, hit upon a mode of musical declamation, half speecli and half song, which was enthusiastically hailed as the long-lost style employed in the Athenian drama. A somewhat freer and more melodious manner was also admitted in alternation with the dry, formless recitation, and these two related methods were employed in the performance of short lyric, half-dramatic monologues. Such were the Mono- dies of Galilei and the Nuove Musiche of Caccini. More ambitious schemes followed. Mythological mas- querades and pastoral comedies, which had held a promi- nent place in the gorgeous spectacles and pageants of the Italian court festivals ever since the thirteenth century, were provided with settings of the new declam- atory music, or stile recitativo, and behold, the opera was born. The Florentine inventors of dramatic music builded better than they knew. They had no thought of setting music free upon a new and higher flight ; they never dreamed of the consequences of releasing melody from 188 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS the fetters of counterpoint. Their sole intention was to make poetry more expressive and emphatic by the employment of tones that would heighten the natural inflections of speech, and in which there should be no repetition or extension of words (as in the contrapuntal style) involving a subordination of text to musical form. The ideal of recitative was the expression of feeling by a method that permits the text to follow the natural accent of declamatory speech, unrestrained by a particular musical form or tonality, and dependent only upon the support of the simplest kind of instrumental accompaniment. In this style of music, said Caccini, speech is of the first importance, rhythm second, and tone last of all. These pioneers of dramatic music, as they declared over and over again, simply desired a form of music that should allow the words to be distinctly understood. They condemned counterpoint, not on musical grounds, but because it allowed the text to be obscured and the natural rhythm broken. There was no promise of a new musical era in such an anti-musical pronunciamento as this. But a relation between music and poetry in which melody renounces all its inherent rights could not long be maintained. The genius of Italy in the seventeenth century was musical, not poetic. Just so soon as the infinite possibilities of charm that lie in free melody were once perceived, no theories of Platonizing pedants could check its progress. The demands of the new age, reinforced by the special Italian gift of melody, created an art form in which absolute music triumphed over the feebler claims of poetry and rhetoric. The cold, calculated Florentine 189 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH music-drama gave way to the vivacious, impassioned opera of Venice and Naples. Although the prmiitive dry recitative survived, the far more expressive accom- panied recitative was evolved from it, and the grand aria burst into radiant life out of the brief lyrical sections which the Florentines had allowed to creep into their tedious declamatory scenes. Vocal colorature, which had already appeared in the dramatic pieces of Caccini, became the most beloved means of effect. The little group of simple instruments employed in the first Florentine music-dramas was gradually merged in the modern full orchestra. The original notion of making the poetic and scenic intention paramount was forgotten, and the opera became cultivated solely as a means for the display of all the fascinations of vocalism. Thus a new motive took complete possession of the art of music. By virtue of the new powers revealed to them, composers would now strive to enter all the secret precincts of the soul and give a voice to every emotion, simple or complex, called forth by solitary meditation or by situations of dramatic stress and con- flict. Music, like painting and poetry, should now occupy the whole world of human experience. The stupendous achievements of the tonal art of the past two centuries are the outcome of this revolutionary impulse. But not at once could music administer the whole of her new possession. She must pass through a course of training in technic, to a certain extent as she had done in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but under far more favorable conditions and quite differ- ent circumstances. The shallowness of the greater part 190 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS of the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is partly due to the difficulty that composers found in mastering the new forms. A facility in handling the material must be acquired before there could be any clear consciousness of the possibilities of expression which the new forms contained. The fii-st problem in vocal music was the development of a method of technic ; and musical taste, fascinated by the new sensation, ran into an extravagant worship of the human voice. There appeared in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the most brilliant group of singers, of both sexes, that the world has ever seen. The full extent of the morbid, we might almost say the insane, passion for sensuous, nerve-exciting tone is sufficiently indicated by the en- couragement in theatre and church of those outrages upon nature, the male soprano and alto. A school of composers of brilliant melodic genius appeared in Italy, France, and Germany, who supplied these singers with showy and pathetic music precisely suited to their pecu- liar powers. Italian melody and Italian vocalism be- came the reigning sensation in European society, and the opera easily took the primacy among fashionable amusements. The Italian grand opera, with its solemn travesty of antique characters and scenes, its mock heroics, its stilted conventionalities, its di-amatic feeble- ness and vocal glitter, was a lively reflection of the taste of tliis age of " gallant " poetry, rococo decoration, and social artificiality. The musical element consisted of a succession of arias and duets stitched together bv a loose thread of secco recitative. Tlie costumes werb those of contemporary fashion, although the characters 191 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH were named after worthies of ancient Greece and Rome. The plots were in no sense historic, but consisted of love tales and conspiracies concocted by the playwright. Truth to human nature and to locality was left to the despised comic opera. Yet we must not suppose that the devotees of this music were conscious of its real superficiality. They adored it not wholly because it was sensational, but because they believed it true in expres- sion ; and indeed it was true to those light and transient sentiments which the voluptuaries of the theatre mis- took for the throbs of nature. Tender and pathetic these airs often were, but it was the affected tenderness and pathos of fashionable eighteenth-century literature which they represented. To the profounder insight of the present they seem to express nothing deeper than the make-believe emotions of children at their play. Under such sanctions the Italian grand aria became the dominant form of melody. Not the appeal to the intellect and the genuine experiences of the heart was required of the musical performer, but rather brilliancy of technic and seductiveness of tone. Ephemeral nerve excitement, incessant novelty within certain conventional bounds, were the demands laid by the public upon com- poser and singer. The office of the poet became hardly less mechanical than that of the costumer or the deco- rator. Composers, with a few exceptions, yielded to the prevailing fashion, and musical dramatic art lent itself chiefly to the portrayal of stereotyped sentiments and the gratification of the sense. I would not be anderstood as denying the germ of truth that lay in this art element contributed by Italy to the modern 192 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS world. Its later results were sublime and beneficent, for Italian melody has given direction to well-nigh all the magnificent achievements of secular music in the past two centuries. I am speaking here of the first outcome of the infatuation it produced, in the breaking down of the taste for the severe and elevated, and the pro- duction of a transient, often demoralizing intoxication. It was not long before the charming Italian melody- undertook the conquest of the Church. The popular demand for melody and solo singing overcame the aus- tere traditions of ecclesiastical song. The dramatic and concert style invaded the choir gallery. The personnel of the choirs was altered, and women, sometimes male sopranos and altos, took the place of boys. The prima donna, with her trills and runs, made the choir gallery the parade ground for her arts of fascination. The chorus declined in favor of the solo, and the church aria vied with the opera aria in bravura and languishing pathos. Where the chorus was retained in mass, motet, or hymn, it abandoned the close-knit contrapuntal text- ure in favor of a simple homophonic structure, with strongly marked rhythmical movement. The orchestral accompaniment also lent to the composition a vivid dramatic coloring, and brilliant solos for violins and flutes seemed often to convert the sanctuary into a concert hall. All this was inevitiible, for the Catholic musicians of the seventeenth and eigliteenth centuries were artists as well as churchmen ; they shared the aesthetic convictions of their time, and could not be expected to forego the opportunities for effect which the new methods put into their hands. They were 13 193 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH no longer dependent upon the Church for commissions ; the opera house and the salon gave them sure means of subsistence and fame. The functions of church and theatre composers were often united in a single man. The convents and cathedral chapels were made training- schools for the choir and the opera stage on equal terms. It was in a monk's cell that Bernacchi and other world-famous opera singers of the eighteenth cen- tury were educated. Ecclesiastics united with aristo- cratic laymen in the patronage of the opera ; caixlinals and archbishops owned theatre boxes, and it was not considered in the least out of character for monks and priests to write operas and superintend their perform- ance. Under such conditions it is not strange that church and theatre reacted upon each other, and that the sentimental style, beloved in opera house and salon, should at last be accepted as the proper vehicle of devotional feeling. In this adornment of the liturgy in theatrical costume we find a singular parallel between the history of church music in the transition period and that of religious painting in the period of the Renaissance. Pictorial art had first to give concrete expression to the concep- tions evolved under the influence of Christianity, and since the whole intent of the pious discipline was to turn the thought away from actual mundane experience, art avoided the representation of ideal physical loveliness on the one hand and a scientific historical correctness on the other. Hence arose the naive, emblematic pict- ures of the fourteenth century, whose main endeavor was to attract and indoctrinate with delineations that were 194 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS symbolic and intended mainly for edification. Painting was one of the chief means employed by the Church to impart instruction to a constituency to whom writing was almost inaccessible. Art, therefore, even when emancipated from Byzantine formalism, was still essen- tially hieratic, and the painter willingly assumed a semi- sacerdotal office as the efficient coadjutor of the preacher and the confessor. With the fifteenth century came the inrush of the antique culture, uniting with native Italian tendencies to sweep art away into a passionate quest of beauty wherever it might be found. The con- ventional religious subjects and the traditional modes of treatment could no longer satisfy those whose eyes had been opened to the magnificent materials for artistic treatment that lay in the human form, draped and undraped, in landscape, atmosphere, color, and light and shade, and who had been taught by the individualistic trend of the age that the painter is true to his genius only as he frees himself from formulas and follows the leadings of his own instincts. But art could not wholly renounce its original pious mission. The age was at least nominally Christian, sincerely so in many of its elements, and the patronage of the arts was still to a very large extent in the hands of the clergy. And here the Church prudently consented to a modification of the established ideals of treatment of sacred themes. The native Italian love of elegance of outline, harmony of form, and splendor of color, directed by the study of the antique, overcame the earlier austerity and effected a combination of Christian tradition and pagan sensuous- ness which, in such work as that of Correggio and the 19$ MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH great Venetians, and even at times in the pure Raphael and the stern Michael Angelo, quite belied the purpose of ecclesiastical art, aiming not to fortify dogma and elevate the spirit, but to gratify the desire of the eye and the delight in the display of technical skill. Paint- ing no longer conformed to a traditional religious type ; it followed its genius, and that genius was really in- spired by the splendors of earth, however much it might persuade itself that it ministered to holiness. A noted example of this self-deception, although an extreme one, is the picture entitled *' The Marriage at Cana," by Paolo Veronese. Christ is the central figure, but his presence has no vital significance. He is simply an imposing Venetian grandee, and the enormous canvas, with its crowd of figures elegantly attired in fashionable sixteenth-century costume, its profusion of sumptuous dishes and gorgeous tapestries, is nothing more or less than a representation of a Venetian state banquet. Signorelli and Michael Angelo introduced naked young men into pictures of the Madonna and infant Christ. Others, such as Titian, lavished all the resources of their art with apparently equal enthusiasm upon Ma- donnas and nude Venuses. The other direction which was followed by painting, aiming at historical verity and rigid accuracy in anatomy and expression, may be illustrated by comparing Rubens's " Crucifixion " in the Antwerp Museum with a crucifixion, for example, by Fra Angelico. Each motive was sincere, but the harsh realism of the Fleming shows how far art, even in reverent treatment of religious themes, had departed from the unhistoric symbolism formerly imposed by the ' 196 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS Church. In all this there was no disloyal intention; art had simply issued its declaration of independence; its sole aim was henceforth beauty and reality ; the body as well as the soul seemed worthy of study and adora- tion; and the Church adopted the new skill into its service, not seeing that the world was destined to be the gainer, and not religion. The same impulse produced analogous results in the music of the Catholic Church. The liturgic txts that were appropriated to choral setting remained as they had been, the place and theoretic function of the musi- cal offices in the ceremonial were not altered, but the music, in imitating the characteristics of the opera and exerting a somewhat similar effect upon the mind, became animated by an ideal of devotion quite apart from that of the liturgy, and belied that unimpassioned, absorbed and universalized mood of worship of which the older forms of liturgic art are the most complete and consistent embodiment. Herein is to be found the effect of the spirit of the Renaissance upon church music. It is not simply that it created new musical forms, new styles of performance, and a more definite expression ; the significance of the change lies rather in the fact that it transformed the whole spirit of devotional music by endowing religious themes with sensuous charm, and with a treatment inspired by the arbitrary will of the composer and not by the traditions of the Church. At this point we reach the real underlying motive, however unconscious of it individual composers may have been, which compelled the revolution in liturgic 197 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH music. A new ideal of devotional expression made in- evitable the abandonment of the formal, academic style of the Palestrina school. The spirit of the age which required a more subjective expression in music, involved a demand for a more definite characterization in the setting of the sacred texts. The composer could no longer be satisfied with a humble imitation of the forms which the Church had sealed as the proper expression of her attitude toward the divine mysteries, but claimed the privilege of coloring the text according to the dictates of his own feeling as a man and his peculiar method as an artist. The mediaeval music was that of the cloister and the chapel. It was elevated, vague, abstract; it was as though it took up into itself all the particular and temporary emotions that might be called forth by the sacred history and articles of belief, and sifted and refined them into a generalized type, special individual experi- ence being dissolved in the more diffused sense of awe and rapture which fills the hearts of an assembly in the attitude of worship. It was the mood of prayer which this music uttered, and that not the prayer of an individ- ual agitated by his own personal hopes and fears, but the prayer of the Church, which embraces all the needs which the believers share in common, and offers them at the Mercy Seat with the calmness that comes of reverent confidence. Thus in the old masses the Kyrie eleison and the Miserere nobis are never agonizing; the Cruci- fixus does not attempt to portray the grief of an imagi- nary spectator of the scene on Calvary ; the Gloria in excelsis and the Sanctus never force the jubilant tone into a frenzied excitement ; the setting of the Dies 198 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS Irge in the Requiem mass makes no attempt to paint a realistic picture of the terrors of the day of judgment. Now compare a typical mass of the modem dramatic school and see how different is the conception. The music of Gloria and Credo revels in all the opportunities for change and contrast which the varied text supplies ; the Dona nobis pacem dies away in strains of tender longing. Consider the mournful undertone that throbs through the Crucifixus of Schubert's Mass in A flat, the terrifying crash that breaks into the Miserere nobis in the Gloria of Beethoven's Mass in D, the tide of ecstasy that surges through the Sanctus of Gounod's St. Cecilia Mass and the almost cloying sweetness of the Agnus Dei, the uproar of brass instruments in the Tuba mirum of Berlioz's Requiem. Observe the strong similarity of style at many points between Verdi's Requiem and his opera "Aida." In such works as these, which are fairly typical of the modern school, the composer writes under an independent impulse, with no thought of sub- ordinating himself to ecclesiastical canons or liturgic usage. He attempts not only to depict his own state of mind as affected by the ideas of the text, but he also often aims to make his music picturesque according to dramatic methods. lie does not seem to be aware that there is a distinction between religious concert music and church music. The classic example of this confusion is in the Dona nobis pacem of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, where the composer introduces a strain of miliiary music in order to suggest the contrasted horrors of war. This device, as Beethoven employs it, is exceedingly striking and beautiful, but it is precisely antagonistic to the 199 MUSIC 11^ THE WESTERN CHURCH meaning of the text and the whole spirit of the Uturgy. The conception of a large amount of modern mass music seems to be, not that the ritual to which it belongs is prayer, but rather a splendid spectacle intended to excite the imagination and fascinate the sense. It is this altered conception, lying at the very basis of the larger part of modern church music, that leads such writers as Jakob to refuse even to notice the modern school in his sketch of the history of Catholic church music, just as Rio condemns Titian as the painter who mainly con- tributed to the decay of religious painting. In the Middle Age artists were grouped in schools or in guilds, each renouncing his right of initiative and shaping his productions in accordance with the legalized formulas of his craft. The modern ai'tist is a separatist, his glory lies in the degree to which he rises above hereditary technic, and throws into his work a personal quality which becomes his own creative gift to the world. The church music of the sixteenth century was that of a school ; the composers, although not actually members of a guild, worked on exactly the same technical founda- tions, and produced masses and motets of a uniformity that often becomes academic and monotonous. The modern composer carries into church pieces his distinct personal style. The grandeur and violent contrasts of Beethoven's symphonies, the elegiac tone of Schubert's songs, the enchantments of melody and the luxuries of color in the operas of Verdi and Gounod, are also char- acteristic marks of the masses of these composers. The older music could follow the text submissively, for there was no prescribed musical form to be worked out, and 200 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS cadences could occur whenever a sentence came to an end. The modern forms, on the other hand, consisting of consecutive and proportional sections, imply the necessity of contrast, development, and climax an arrangement that is not necessitated by any correspond- ing system in the text. This alone would often result in a lack of congruence between text and music, and the composer would easily fall into the way of paying more heed to the sheer musical working out than to the mean- ing of the words. Moreover, in the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries there was no radical conflict between the church musical style and the secular ; so far as secular music was cultivated by the professional composers it was no more than a slight variation from the ecclesiastical model. Profane music may be said to have been a branch of religious music. In the modern period this relationship is reversed ; secular music in opera and in- strumental forms has remoulded church music, and the latter is in a sense a branch of the former. Besides the development of the sectional form, another technical change acted to break down the old obstacles to characteristic expression. An essential feature of the mediffival music, consequent upon the very nature of the Gregorian modes, was the very slight employment of chromatic alteration of notes, and the absence of free dissonances. Modulation in the modern sense cannot exist in a purely diatonic scheme. Tlie breaking up of the modal system was foreshsulowed when composers became impatient with the placidity and colorlessness of the modal harmonies and began to intrfxluce un- expected dissonances for tlie sake of variety. The 201 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH chromatic changes that occasionally appear in the old music are scattered about in a hap-hazard fashion ; they give an impression of helplessness to the modern ear when the composer seems about to make a modulation and at once falls back again into the former tonality. It was a necessity, therefore, as well as a virtue, that the church music of the old regime should maintain the calm, equable flow that seems to us so pertinent to its liturgic intention. For these reasons it may perhaps be replied to what has been said concerning the devotional ideal embodied in the calm, severe strains of the old masters, that they had no choice in the matter. Does it follow, it may be asked, that these men would not have written in the modern style if they had had the means ? Some of them probably would have done so, others almost certainly would not. Many writers who carried the old form into the seventeenth century did have the choice and resisted it; they stanchly defended the traditional principles and condemned the new methods as destructive of pure church music. The laws that work in the de- velopment of ecclesiastical art also seem to require that music should pass through the same stages as those that sculpture and painting traversed, first, the stage of symbolism, restraint within certain conventions in accord- ance with ecclesiastical prescription ; afterwards, the deliverance from the trammels of school formulas, eman- cipation from all laws but those of the free determination of individual genius. At this point authority ceases, dictation gives way to persuasion, and art still ministers to the higher ends of the Church, not through fear, but through reverence for the teachings and appeals which 202 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS the Church sends forth as her contribution to the nobler influences of the age. The writer who would trace the history of the modern musical mass has a task very different from that which meets the historian of the mediaeval period. In the lat- ter case, as has already been shown, generalization is comparatively easy, for we deal with music in which differences of nationality and individual style hardly appear. The modern Catholic music, on the other hand, follows the currents that shape the course of secular music. Where secular music becomes formalized, as in the early Italian opera, religious music tends to sink into a similar routine. When, on the other hand, men of commanding genius, such as Beethoven, Berlioz, Liszt, Verdi, contribute works of a purely individual stamp to the general development of musical art, their church compositions form no exception, but are likewise sharply differentiated from others of the same class. The influ- ence of nationality makes itself felt there is a style characteristic of Italy, another of South Germany and Austria, another of Paris, although these distinctions tend to disappear under the solvent of modern cosmo- politanism. The Church does not positively dictate any particular norm or method, and hence local tendencies have run their course almost unchecked. Catholic music has shared all the fluctuations of European taste. The levity of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries was as apparent in the mass as in the opera. The ui)lift in musical culture during the last one hundred years has carried church composition along with it, so that almost all the works 203 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH produced since Palestrina, of which the Church has most reason to be proud, belong to the nineteenth century. One of the ultimate results of the modern license in style and the tendency toward individual ex- pression is the custom of writing masses as free compo- sitions rather than for liturgic uses, and of performing them in public halls or theatres in the same manner aii oratorios. Mozart wrote his Requiem to the order of a private patron. Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, not being ready when wanted for a consecration ceremony, outgrew the dimensions of a service mass altogether, and was finished without any liturgic purpose in view. Cheru- bini's mass in D minor and Liszt's Gran Mass were each composed for a single occasion, and both of them, like the Requiems of Berlioz and Dvorak, although often heard in concerts, liave but very rarely been performed in church worship. Masses have even been written by Protestants, such as Bach, Schumann, Hauptmann, Richter, and Becker. Masses that are written under the same impulse as ordinary concert and dramatic works easily violate the ecclesiastical spirit, and pass into the category of religious works that are non-churchly, and it may often seem necessary to class them with cantatas on account of their semi-dramatic tone. In such pro- ductions as Bach's B minor Mass, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, and Berlioz's Requiem we have works that constitute a separate phase of art, not masses in the proper sense, for they do not properly blend with the Church ceremonial nor contribute to the special devo- tional mood which the Church aims to promote, while yet in their general conception they are held by a loose 204 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS band to the altar. So apart do these mighty creations stand that they may almost be said to glorify religion in the abstract rather than the confession of the Catholic Church. The changed conditions in respect to patronage have had the same effect upon the mass as upon other depart- ments of musical composition. In former periods down to the close of the eighteenth century, the professional composer was almost invariably a salaried officer, attached as a personal retainer to a court, lay or clerical, and bound to conform his style of composition in a greater or less degree to the tastes of his employer. A Sixtus V. could reprove Palestrina for failing to please with a certain mass and admonish him to do better work in the future. Haydn could hardly venture to intro- duce any innovation into the style of religious music sanctioned by his august masters, the Esterhazys. Mozart wrote all his masses, with the exception of the Requiem, for the chapel of the prince archbishop of Salzburg. In this establishment the length of the mass was prescribed, the mode of writing and performance, which had become traditional, hindered freedom of de- velopment, and therefore Mozart's works of this class everywhere give evidence of constraint. On the other hand, the leading composers of the present centurj' that have occupied themselves with the mass have been free from such arbitrary compulsions. They have written masses, not as a part of routine duty, but as they were inspired by the holy words and by the desire to offer the free gift of their genius at the altar of the Church. They have been, as a rule, devoted churchmen, but they 205 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH have felt that they had the sympathy of the Church in asserting the rights of the artist as against prelatical conservatism and local usage. The outcome is seen in a group of works which, whatever the strict censors may deem their defects in edifying quality, at least indicate that in the field of musical art there is no necessary con- flict between Catholicism and the free spirit of the age. Under these conditions the mass in the modern musi- cal era has taken a variety of directions and assumed distinct national and individual complexions. The Nea- politan school, which gave the law to Italian opera in the eighteenth century, endowed the mass with the same soft sensuousness of melody and sentimental pathos of expression, together with a dry, calculated kind of har- mony in the chorus portions, the work never touching deep chords of feeling, and yet preserving a tone of sobriety and dignity. As cultivated in Italy and France the mass afterward degenerated into rivalry on equal terms with the shallow, captivating, cloying melody of the later Neapolitans and their successors, Rossini and Bellini. In this school of so-called religious music all sense of appropriateness was often lost, and a florid, pro- fane treatment was not only permitted but encouraged. Perversions which can hardly be called less than blas- phemous had free rein in the ritual music. Franz Liszt, in a letter to a Paris journal, written in 1835, bitterly attacks the music that flaunted itself in the Catholic churches of the city. He complains of the sacrilegious virtuoso displays of the prima donna, the wretched choruses, the vulgar antics of the organist playing galops and variations from comic operas in the most solemn 206 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS moments of the holy ceremony. Similar testimony has from time to time come from Italy, and it would appear that the most lamentable lapses from the pure church tradition have occurred in some of the very places where one would expect that the strictest principles would be loyally maintained. The most celebrated surviving ex- ample of the consequences to which the virtuoso ten- dencies in church music must inevitably lead when unchecked by a truly pious criticism is Rossini's Stabat Mater. This frivolous work is frequently performed with great eclat in Catholic places of worship, as though the clergy were indifferent to the almost incredible levity which could clothe the heart-breaking pathos of Jaco- pone's immortal hymn a hymn properly honored by the Church with a place among the five great Sequences with strains better suited to the sprightly abandon of opera buffa. Another branch of the mass was sent by the Neapoli- tan school into Austria, and here the results, although unsatisfactory to the better taste of the present time, were far nobler and more fruitful than in Italy and France. The group of Austrian church composers, represented by the two Ilaydns, Mozart, Eybler, Neu- komm, Sechter and others of the period, created a form of church music which partook of much of the dry, formal, pedantic spirit of the day, in whicli regularity of form, scientific correctness, and a conscious propriety of manner were often more considered than emotional fer- vor. Certain conventions, such as a florid contrapuntal treatment of the Kyrie witii its slow introduction followed by an Allegro, the fugues at the Cum Sanctu Spiritu 207 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH and the Et Vitam, the regular alternation of solo and chorus numbers, give the typical Austrian mass a some- what rigid, perfunctory air, and in practice produce the eifect which always results when expression becomes stereotyped and form is exalted over substance. Mozart's masses, with the exception of the beautiful Requiem (wliich was his last work and belongs in a different cate- gory), were the production of his boyhood, written before his genius became self-assertive and under condi- tions distinctly unfavorable to the free exercise of the imagination. The masses of Joseph Haydn stand somewhat apart from the strict Austrian school, for although as a rule they conform externally to the local conventions, they are far more individual and possess a freedom and buoyancy that are decidedly personal. It has be- come the fashion among the sterner critics of church music to condemn Haydn's masses without qualification, as conspicuous examples of the degradation of taste in religious art which is one of the depressing legacies of the eighteenth century. Much of this censure is de- served, for Haydn too often loses sight of the law which demands that music should reinforce, and not contradict, the meaning and purpose of the text. Haydn's mass style is often indistinguishable from his oratorio style. His colorature arias are flippant, often inti'oduced at such solemn moments as to be offensive. Even where the voice part is subdued to an appropriate solemnity, the desired impression is frequently destroyed by some tawdry flourish in the orchestra. The brilliancy of the choruses is often pompous and hollow. Haydn's genius 208 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS was primarily instrumental; he was the virtual creator of the modern symphony and string quartet ; his musical forms and modes of expression were drawn from two diverse sources which it was his great mission to con- ciliate and idealize, viz., the Italian aristocratic opera, and the dance and song of the common people. An ex- traordinary sense of form and an instinctive sympathy with whatever is spontaneous, genial, and racy made him what he was. The joviality of his nature was irrepres- sible. To write music of a sombre cast was out of his power. There is not a melancholy stmin in all his works ; pensiveness was as deep a note as he could strike. He tried to defend the gay tone of his church music by saying that he had such a sense of the good- ness of (jod that he could not be otherwise than joyful in thinking of him. This explanation was perfectly sin- cere, but Haydn was not enough of a philosopher to see the weak spot in this sort of aesthetics. Yet in spite of the obvious faults of Haydn's mass style, looking at it from a historic point of view, it was a promise of advance, and not a sign of degeneracy. For it marked the introduction of genuine, even if misdirected feeling into worship music, in the place of dull conformity to routhie. Haydn was far indeed from solving the problem of church music, but he lielped to give new life to a form that showed danger of becoming atrophied. Two masses of world hnportance rise above the mediocrity of the Austrian school, like the towers of some Gothic cathednil above the monotonous tiled roofs of a mediteval city, the Requiem of Mozart and the Missa Solemnis of Beethoven. The unfinished master- 14 209 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH piece of Mozart outsoars all comparison with the re- ligious works of his youth, and as his farewell to the world he could impart to it a tone of pathos and exal- tation which had hardly been known in the cold, objec- tive treatment of the usual eighteenth-century mass. The hand of death was upon Mozart as he penned the immortal pages of the Requiem, and in this crisis he could feel that he was free from the dictation of fashion and precedent. This work is perhaps not all that we might look for in these solemn circumstances. Mozart's exquisite genius was suited rather to the task, in which lies his true glory, of raising the old Italian opera to its highest possibilities of grace and truth to nature. He had not that depth of feeling and sweep of imagi- nation which make the works of Bach, Handel, and Beethoven the sublimest expression of awe in view of the mysteries of life and death. Yet it is wholly free from the fripperies which disfigure the masses of Haydn, as well as from the dry scholasticism of much of Mozart's own early religious work. Such move- ments as the Confutatis, the Recordare, and the Lac- rimosa movements inexpressibly earnest, consoling, and pathetic gave evidence that a new and loftier spirit had entered the music of the Church. The Missa Solemnis of Beethoven, composed 1818- 1822, can hardly be considered from the liturgic point of view. In the vastness of its dimensions it is quite disproportioned to the ceremony to which it theoreti- cally belongs, and its almost unparalleled difficulty of execution and the gnindeur of its choral climaxes re- move it beyond the reach of all but the most exceptional , 210 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS choirs. It is, therefore, performed only as a concert work by choral societies with a full orchestral equip- ment. For these reasons it is not to be classed with the service masses of the Catholic Church, but may be placed beside the B minor Mass of Sebastian Bach, both holding a position outside all ordinary comparisons. Each of these colossal creations stands on its own soli- tary eminence, the projection in tones of the religious conceptions of two gigantic, all-comprehending intel- lects. For neither of these two works is the Catholic Church strictly responsible. They do not proceed from within the Church. Bach was a strict Protestant ; Bee- thoven, although nominally a disciple of the Catholic Church, had almost no share in her communion, and his religious belief, so far as the testimony goes, was a sort of pantheistic mysticism. Both these supreme artists in the later periods of their careers gave free rein to their imaginations and not only well-nigh ex- ceeded all available means of performance, but also seemed to strive to force musical forms and the powers of instruments and voices beyond their limits in the efforts to realize that which is unrealizable through any human medium. In this endeavor they went to the very verge of the sublime, and produced achievements which excite wonder and awe. These two masses defy all imitation, and represent no school. The spirit of individualism in religious music can go no further. Tlie last masses of international importance produced on Austrian soil are those of Franz Schubert. Of his six Latin masses four are youthful works, pure and graceful, but not especially significant. In his E flat 211 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH and A flat masses, however, he takes a place in the upper rank of mass composers of this century. The E flat Mass is weakened by the diffuseness which was Schubert's besetting sin; the A flat is more terse and sustained in excellence, and thoroughly available for practical use. Both of them contain movements of purest ideal beauty and sincere worshipful spirit, and often rise to a grandeur that is unmarred by sensation- alism and wholly in keeping with the tone of awe which pervades even the most exultant moments of the liturgy. The lofty idealism exemplified in such works as Mozart's Requiem, Beethoven's Mass in D, Schubert's last two masses, and in a less degree in Weber's Mass in E flat has never since been lost from the German mass, in spite of local and temporary reactions. Such composers as Kiel, Havert, Grell, and Rheinberger have done noble service in holding German Catholic music fast to the tradition of seriousness and truth which has been taking form all through this century in German secular music. It must be said, however, that the German Catholic Church at large, especially in the country districts, has been too often dull to the right- eous claims of the profounder expression of devotional feeling, and has maintained the vogue of the Italian mass and the shallower products of the Austrian school. Against this indifference the St. Cecilia Society has directed its noble missionary labors, with as yet but partial success. If we turn our observation to Italy and France we find that the music of the Church is at every period 212 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS sympathetically responsive to the fluctuations in secular music. Elevated and dignified, if somewhat cold and constrained, in the \vritings of the nobler spirits of the Neapolitan school such as Durante and Jomelli, sweet and graceful even to effeminacy in Pergolesi, sensuous and saccharine in Rossini, imposing and massive, rising at times to epic grandeur, in Cherubini, by turns ecs- tatic and voluptuous in Gounod, ardent and impassioned in Verdi the ecclesiastical music of the Latin nations offers works of adorable beauty, sometimes true to the pure devotional ideal, sometimes perverse, and by their isolation serving to illustrate the dependence of the church composer's inspiration upon the general con- ditions of musical taste and progress. Not only were those musicians of France and Italy who were promi- nent as church composers also among the leaders in opera, but their ideals and methods in opera were closely paralleled by those displayed in their religious productions. It is impossible to separate the powerful masses of Cherubini, with their pomp and majesty of movement, their reserved and pathetic melody, their grandiose dimensions and their sumptuous orchestra- tion, from those contemporary tendencies in dramatic art which issued in the "historic school" of grand opera as exemplified in the pretentious works of Spon- tini and Meyerbeer. They may be said to be the re- flection in church art of the hollow splendor of French imperialism. Such an expression, however, may be accused of failing in justice to the undeniable merits of Cherubini's masses. As a man and as a musician Cherubini commands unbounded respect for his un 213 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH swerving sincerity in an age of sham, his uncompro- mising assertion of his dignity as an artist in an age of sycophancy, and the solid worth of his achievement in the midst of shallow aims and mediocre results. As a church composer he towers so high above his predecessors of the eighteenth century in respect to learning and imagination that his masses are not un- worthy to stand beside Beethoven's Missa Solemnis as auguries of the loftier aims that were soon to prevail in the realm of religious music. His Requiem in C minor, particularly, by reason of its exquisite tender- ness, breadth of thought, nobility of expression, and avoidance of all excess either of agitation or of gloom, must be ranked among the most admirable modem examples of pure Catholic art. The effort of Lesueur (1763-1837) to introduce into church music a picturesque and imitative style which, in spite of much that was striking and attractive in result, must be pronounced a false direction in church music was characteristically French and was con- tinued in such works as Berlioz's Requiem and to a certain extent in the masses and psalms of Liszt. The genius of Liszt, notwithstanding his Hungarian birth, was closely akin to the French in his tendency to con- nect every musical impulse with a picture or with some mental conception which could be grasped in distinct concrete outline. In his youth I^iszt, in his despair over the degeneracy of liturgic music in France and its complete separation from the real life of the people, proclaimed the necessity of a rapjjrochement between church music and popular music. In an article written 214 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS for a Paris journal in 1834, which remains a fragment, he imagined a new style of religious music which should " unite in colossal relations theatre and church, which should be at the same time dramatic and solemn, im- posing and simple, festive and earnest, fiery and un- constrained, stormy and reposeful, clear and fervent." These expressions are too vague to serve as a program for a new art movement. They imply, however, a protest against the one-sided operatic tendency of the day, at the same time indicating the conviction that the problem is not to be solved in a pedantic reaction toward the ancient austere ideal, and yet that the old and new endeavors, liturgic appropriateness and char- acteristic expression, reverence of mood and recognition of the claims of contemporary taste, should in some way be made to harmonize. The man who all his life conceived the theatre as a means of popular education, and who strove to realize that conception as court music director at Weimar, would also lament any aliena- tion between the church ceremony and the intellectual and emotional habitudes and inclinations of the people. A devoted churchman reverencing the ancient ecclesias- tical tradition, and at the same time a musical artist of the advanced modern type, Liszt's instincts yearned more or less blindly towards an alliance between the sacerdotal conception of religious art and the general prtistic spirit of the age. Some such vision evidently floated before his mind in the masses, psalms, and oratorios of his later years, as shown in their frequent striving after the picturesque, together with an inclina- tion toward the older ecclesiastical forms. These two 215 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH ideals are probably incompatible ; at any rate Liszt did not possess the genius to unite them in a convinc- ing manner. Among the later ecclesiastical composers of France, Gounod shines out conspicuously by virtue of those fascinating melodic gifts which have made the fame of the St. Cecilia mass almost conterminous with that of the opera " Faust." Indeed, there is hardly a better example of the modem propensity of the dramatic and religious styles to reflect each other's lineaments than is found in the close parallelism which appears in Gounod's secular and church productions. So pliable, or perhaps we might say, so neutral is his art, that a similar quality of melting cadence is made to portray the mutual avowals of love-lorn souls and the raptures of heavenly aspiration. Those who condemn Gounod's religious music on this account as sensuous have some reason on their side, yet no one has ever ventured to accuse Gounod of insincerity, and it may well be that his wide human sjonpathy saw enough correspondence between the worship of an earthly ideal and that of a heavenly each implying the abandonment of self -con- sciousness in the yearning for a happiness which is at the moment the highest conceivable as to make the musical expression of both essentially similar. This is to say that the composer forgets liturgic claims in behalf of the purely human. This principle no doubt involves the destruction of church music as a distinctive form of art, but it is certain that the world at large, as evinced by the immense popularity of Gounod's religious works, sees no incongruity and does not feel that such 216 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS usage is profane. Criticism on the part of all but the most austere is disarmed by the pure, seraphic beauty which this complacent art of Gounod often reveals. The intoxicating sweetness of his melody and harmony never sinks to a Rossinian flippancy. Of Gounod's reverence for the Church and for its art ideals, there can be no question. A man's views of the proper tone of church music will be controlled largely by his tempera- ment, and Gounod's temperament was as warm as an Oriental's. He offered to the Church his best, and as the Magi brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh to a babe born among cattle in a stable, so Gounod, with a consecration equally sincere, clothed his prayers in strains so ecstatic that compared with them the most impassioned accents of " Faust " and " Romeo and Juliet" are tame. He was a profound student of Palestrina, Mozart, and Cherubini, and strong traces of the styles of these masters are apparent in his works. Somewhat similar qualities, although far less sensa- tional, are found in the productions of that admirable band of organists and church composers that now lends such lustre to the art life of the French capital. The culture of such representatives of this school as Guil- mant, Widor, Saint-Saens, Dubois, Gigout is so solidly based, and their views of religious music so judicious, that the methods and traditions which they are con- scientiously engaged in establishing need only the rein- forcement of still higher genius to bring forth works which will confer even greater honor upon Catholicism than she has yet received from the devotion of her 217 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH musical sons in France. No purer or nobler type of religious music has appeared in these latter days than is to be found in the compositions of C^sar Franck (1822- 1890). For the greater part of his life overlooked or disdained by all save a devoted band of disciples, in spirit and in learning he was allied to the Palestrinas and the Bachs, and there are many who place him in respect to genius among the foremost of the French musicians of the nineteenth century. The religious works of Verdi might be characterized in much the same terms as those of Gounod. In Verdi also we have a truly filial devotion to the Catholic Church, united with a temperament easily excited to a white heat when submitted to his musical inspiration, and a genius for melody and seductive harmonic com- binations in which he is hardly equalled among modern composers. In his Manzoni Requiem, Stabat Mater, and Te Deum these qualities are no less in evidence than in " Aida " and " Otello," and it would be idle to deny their devotional sincerity on account of their lavish profusion of nerve-exciting effects. The controversy between the contemners and the defenders of the Man- zoni Requiem is now somewhat stale and need not be revived here. Any who may wish to resuscitate it, however, on account of the perennial importance of the question of what constitutes purity and appropriateness in church art, must in justice put themselves into imaginative sympathy with the racial religious feeling of an Italian, and make allowance also for the unde- niable suggestion of the dramatic in the Catholic ritual, and for the natural effect of the Catholic ceremonial 218 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS and its peculiar atmosphere upon the more ardent, en- thusiastic order of minds. The most imposing contributions that have been made to Catholic liturgic music since Verdi's Requiem are undoubtedly the Requiem Mass and the Stabat Mater of Dvofdk. All the wealth of tone color which is contained upon the palette of this master of harmony and instrumentation has been laid upon these two mag- nificent scores. Inferior to Vei'di in variety and gor- geousness of melody, the Bohemian composer surpasses the great Italian in massiveness, dignity, and in unfailing good taste. There can be no question that Dvorak's Stabat Mater is supreme over all other settings the only one, except Verdi's much shorter work, that is worthy of the pathos and tenderness of this immortal Sequence. The Requiem of Dvorak in spite of a ten- dency to monotony, is a work of exceeding beauty, rising often to grandeur, and is notable, apart from its sheer musical qualities, as the most precious gift to Catholic art that has come from the often rebellious land of Bohemia. It would be profitless to attempt to predict the future of Catholic church music. In the hasty survey which we have made of the Catholic mass in the past three centuries we have been able to discover no law of de- velopment except the almost unanimous agreement of the chief composers to reject law and employ the sacred text of Scripture and liturgy as the basis of works in which not the common consciousness of the Church shall be expressed, but the emotions aroused by the action of sacred ideas upon different temperaments and 219 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH divergent artistic methods. There is no sign that this principle of individual liberty will be renounced. Nevertheless, the increasing deference that is paid to authority, the growing study of the works and ideals of the past which is so apparent in the culture of the pres- ent day, will here and there issue in partial reactions. The mind of the present, having seen the successful working out of certain modern problems and the barren- ness of others, is turning eclectic. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of musical culture, both religious and secular. We see that in many influential circles the question becomes more and more insistent, what is truth and appropriateness ? whereas formerly the demand was for novelty and " effect." Under this better inspiration many beautiful works are produced which are marked by dignity, moderation, and an almost austere reserve, drawing a sharp distinction between the proper ecclesiastical tone and that suited to concert and dramatic music, restoring once more the idea of imper- sonality, expressing in song the conception of the fathers that the Church is a refuge, a retreat from the tempests of the world, a place of penitence and restoration to con- fidence in the near presence of heaven. Such masses as the Missa Solemnis of Beethoven, the D minor of Cherubini, the Messe Solennelle of Rossini, the St. Cecilia of Gounod, the Requiems of Berlioz and Verdi, sublime and unspeakably beautiful as they are from the broadly human standpoint, are yet in a certain sense sceptical. They reveal a mood of agitation which is not that intended by the ministrations of the Cliurch in her organized acts of worship. And yet such works will 220 THE MODERN MUSICAL MASS continue to be produced, and the Church will accept them, in grateful recognition of the sincere homage which their creation implies. It is of the nature of the highest artistic genius that it cannot restrain its own fierce impulses out of conformity to a type or external tradition. It will express its own individual emotion or it will become paralyzed and mute. The religious com- positions that will humbly jdeld to a strict liturgic standard in form and expression will be those of writers of the third or fourth grade, just as the church hymns have been, with few exceptions, the production, not of the great poets, but of men of lesser artistic endowment, and who were primarily churchmen, and poets only by second intention. This will doubtless be the law for all time. The Michael Angelos, the Dantes, the Beetho- vens will forever break over rules, even though they be the rules of a beloved mother Church. The time is past, however, when we may fear any de- generacy like to that which overtook church music one hundred or more years ago. The principles of such con- secrated church musicians as Witt, Tinel, and the leaders of the St. Cecilia Society and the Paris Schola Cantorum, the influence of the will of the Church implied in all her admonitions on the subject of liturgic song, the growing interest in the study of the masters of the past, and, more than all, the growth of sound views of art as a detail of the higlier and the popular education, must inevitably promote an increasing conviction among clergy, choir leaders, and people of the importance of purity and ap- propriateness in the music of the Church. The need of reform in many of the Catholic churches of this and other 221 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH countries is known to every one. Doubtless one cause of the frequent indifference of priests to the condition of the choir music in their churches is the knowledge that the chorus and organ are after all but accessories ; tliat the Church possesses in the Gregorian chant a form of song that is the legal, universal, and unchangeable foundation of the musical ceremony, and that any corruption in the gallery music can never by any possibility extend to the heart of the system. The Church is indeed fortunate in the possession of this altar song, the unifying chain which can never be loosened. All the more reason, therefore, why this consciousness of unity should per- vade all portions of the ceremony, and the spirit of the liturgic chant should blend even with the large freedom of modern musical experiment. 222 CHAPTER VII THE BISE OP THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY The music of the Protestant Church of Germany, while adopting many features from its great antagonist, presents certain points of contrast which are of the highest importance not only in the subsequent history of ecclesiastical song, but also as significant of certain national traits which were conspicuous among the causes of the schism of the sixteenth century. The musical system of the Catholic Church proceeded from the Gregorian chant, which is strictly a detail of the sacerdotal office. The Lutheran music, on the contrary, is primarily based on the congregational hymn. The one is clerical, the other laic ; the one official, pre- scribed, liturgic, unalterable, the other free, spontaneous, and democratic. In these two forms and ideals we find reflected the same conceptions which especially charac- terize the doctrine, worship, and government of these oppugnant confessions. The Catholic Church, as we have seen, was consist- ent in withdrawing the office of song from the laity and assigning it to a separate company who were at first taken from the minor clergy, and who even in later periods were conceived as exercising a semi-clerical function. Congregational singing, although not offi- 223 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH dally and without exception discountenanced by the Catholic Church, has never been encouraged, and song, like prayer, is looked upon as essentially a liturgic ofiBce. In the Protestant Church the barrier of an interme- diary priesthood between the believer and his God is broken down. The entire membership of the Christian body is recognized as a univei-sal priesthood, with access to the Father through one mediator, Jesus Christ. This conception restores the offices of worship to the body of believers, and they in turn delegate their admin- istration to certain officials, who, together with certain independent privileges attached to the office, share with the laity in the determination of matters of faith and polity. It was a perfectly natural result of this principle that congregational song should hold a place in the Prot- estant cultus which the Catholic Church has never sanctioned. The one has promoted and tenaciously maintained it ; the other as consistently repressed it, not on sesthetic grounds, nor primarily on grounds of devotional effect, but really through a more or less dis- tinct perception of its significance in respect to the theoretical relationship of the individual to the Church, The struggles over popular song in public worship which appear throughout the early history of Protes- tantism are thus to be explained. The emancipated lay- man found in the general hymn a symbol as well as an agent of the assertion of his new rights and privileges in the Gospel. The people's song of earl}' Protestant- ism has therefore a militant ring. It marks its epoch 224 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY no less significantly than Luther's ninety-five theses and the Augsburg Confession. It was a sort of spirit- ual Triumphlied, proclaiming to the universe that the day of spiritual emancipation had dawned. The second radical distinction between the music of the Protestant Church and that of the Catholic is that the vernacular language takes the place of the Latin. The natural desire of a people is that they may worship in their native idiom ; and since the secession from the ancient Church inevitably resulted in the formation of national or independent churches, the necessities which maintained in the Catholic Church a common liturgic language no longer obtained, and the people fell back upon their national speech. Among the historic groups of hymns that have ap- peared since Clement of Alexandria and Ephraem the Syrian set in motion the tide of Christian song, the Lutheran hymnody has the greatest interest to the stu- dent of church history. In sheer literary excellence it is undoubtedly surpassed by the Latin hymns of the mediaeval Church and the English-American group ; in musical merit it no more than equals these ; but in his- toric importance the Lutheran song takes the foremost place. The Latin and the English hymns belong only to the history of poetry and of inward spiritual experi- ence ; the Lutheran have a place in the annals of politics and doctrinal strifes as well. German Protes- tant hymnody dates from Martin Luther ; his lyrics were the models of the hymns of the reformed Church in Germany for a century or more. The principle that lay at the basis of his movement gave them their character* 16 225 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH istic tone ; they were among the most efficient agencies in carrying this principle to the mind of the common people, and they also contributed powerfully to the en- thusiasm which enabled the new faith to maintain itself in the conflicts by which it was tested. The melodies to which the hymns of Luther and his followers were set became the foundation of a musical style which is the one school worthy to be placed beside the Italian Cath- olic music of the sixteenth century. This hymnody and its music afforded the first adequate outlet for the poetic and musical genius of the German people, and established the pregnant democratic traditions of Ger- man art as against the aristocratic traditions of Italy and France. As we cannot overestimate the spiritual and intellectual force which entered the European arena with Luther and his disciples, so we must also recog- nize the analogous elements which asserted themselves at the same moment and under the same inspiration in the field of art expression, and gave to this movement a language which helps us in a peculiar way to under- stand its real import. The first questions which present themselves in tracing the historic connections of the early Lutheran hymnody are : What was its origin ? Had it models, and if so, what and where were they ? In giving a store of con- gregational songs to the German people was Luther original, or only an imitator? In this department of his work does he deserve the honor which Protestants have awarded him ? Protestant writers have, as a rule, bestowed unstinted praise upon Luther as the man who first gave the people 226 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY a voice with which to utter their religious emotions in song. Most of these writers are undoubtedly aware that a national poesy is never the creation of a single man, and that a brilliant epoch of national literature or art must always be preceded by a period of experiment and fermentation ; yet they are disposed to make little account of the existence of a popular religious song in Germany before the Reformation, and represent Luther almost as performing the miracle of making the dumb to speak. Even those who recognize the fact of a pre- existing school of hymnody usually seek to give the impression that pure evangelical religion was almost, if not quite, unknown in the popular religious poetry of the centuries before the Reformation, and that the Lutheran hymnody was composed of altogether novel elements. They also ascribe to Luther creative work in music as well as in poetry. Catholic writers, on the other hand, will allow Luther no originality whatever ; they find, or pretend to find, every essential feature of his work in the Catholic hymns and tunes of the pre- vious centuries, or in those of the Bohemian sectaries. They admit the great influence of Luther's hymns in disseminating the new doctrines, but give him credit only for cleverness in dressing up his borrowed ideas and forms in a taking popular guise. As is usually the case in controvers}^ the truth lies between the two extremes. Luther's originality has been overrated by Protestants, and the true nature of the germinal force which he imparted to German congregational song has been mis- conceived by Catholics. It was not new forms, but a new spirit, which Luther gave to his Church. He did 227 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH not break with the past, but found in the past a new standing-ground. He sought truth in the Scriptures, in the writings of the fathers and the mediaeval theolo- gians ; he rejected what he deemed false or barren in the mother Church, adopted and developed what was true and fruitful, and moulded it into forms whose style was already familiar to the people. In poetry, music, and the several details of church worship Luther recast the old models, and gave them to his followers with contents purified and adapted to those needs which he himself had made them to realize. He understood the character of his people ; he knew where to find the nourishment suited to their wants ; he knew how to turn their enthusiasms into practical and progressive direc- tions. This was Luther's achievement in the sphere of church art, and if, in recognizing the precise nature of his work, we seem to question his reputation for crea- tive genius, we do him better justice by honoring his practical wisdom. The singing of religious songs by the common people in their own language in connection with public wor- ship did not begin in Germany with the Reformation. The German popular song is of ancient date, and the religious lyric always had a prominent place in it. The Teutonic tribes before their conversion to Chris- tianity had a large store of hymns to their deities, and afterward their musical fervor turned itself no less ardently to the service of their new allegiance. Wack- ernagel, in the second volume of his monumental col- lection of Gennan hymns from the earliest time to the beginning of the seventeenth century, includes fourteen 228 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY hundred and forty-eight religious lyrics in the German tongue composed between the year 868 and 1518.^ This collection, he says, is as complete as possible, but we must suppose that a very large number written before the invention of printing have been lost. About half the hymns in this volume are of unknown authorship. Among the writers whose names are given we find such notable poets as Walther von der Vogelweide, Gottfried von Strassburg, Hartmann von Aue, Frauenlob, Rein- mar der Zweter, Kunrad der Marner, Heinrich von Loufenberg, Michel Behem, and Hans Sachs, besides famous churchmen like Eckart and Tauler, who are not otherwise known as poets. A great number of these poems are hymns only in a qualified sense, having been written, not for public use, but for private satisfac- tion ; but many others are true hymns, and have often resounded from the mouths of the people in social religious functions. Down to the tenth century the only practice among the Germans that could be called a popular church song was the ejaculation of the words Kyrie eleison^ Christe eleison. These phrases, which are among the most ancient in the Mass and the litanies, and which came originally from the Eastern Church, were sung or shouted by the German Christians on all possible oc- casions. In processions, on pilgrimages, at burials, greeting of distinguished visitors, consecration of a church or prelate, in many subordinate liturgic offices, invocations of supernatural aid in times of dis- ^ Wackernagel, Das deutsche Kirchenlied von der altesten Zeit bis ru Anfang des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 229 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH tress, on the march, going intd'ISalitter in alm^^^ every social action in which religious sanctions were involved the people were in duty bound to utter this phrase, often several hundred times in succession. The words were often abbreviated into Kyrieles^ Kyrie eleisy Kyrielle, Kerleis^ and Kles, and sometimes became mere inarticulate cries. When the phrase was formally sung, the Gregorian tones proper to it in the church service were employed. Some of these were florid successions of notes, many to a syllable, as in the Alleluia from which the Se- quences sprung, a free, impassioned form of emotional utterance which had extensive use in the service of the earlier Church, both East and West, and which is still employed, sometimes to extravagant lengths, in the Orient. The custom at last arose of setting words to these exuberant strains. This usage took two forms, giving rise in the ritual service to the " farced Kyries " or Tropes, and in the freer song of the people produc- ing a more regular kind of hymn, in which the Kyrie eleison became at last a mere refrain at the end of each stanza. These songs came to be called Kirleisen^ or Leisen^ and sometimes Leiche, and they exhibit the German congregational hymn in its first estate. Religious songs multiplied in the centuries following the tenth almost by geometrical progression. The tide reached a high mark in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries under that extraordinary intellectual awaken- ing which distinguished the epoch of the Crusades, the Stauffen emperors, the Minnesingers, and the court epic poets. Under the stimulus of the ideals of chivalric 230 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY honor and knightly devotion to woman, the adoration of the Virgin Mother, long cherished in the bosom of the Church, burst forth in a multitude of ecstatic lyrics in her praise. Poetic and musical inspiration was com- municated by the courtly poets to the clergj- and common people, and the love of singing at religious observances grew apace. Certain heretics, who made much stir in this period, also wrote hymns and put them into the mouths of the populace, thus following the early example of the Arians and the disciples of Bardasanes. To resist this perversion of the divine art, orthodox songs were composed, and, as in the Refor- mation days, schismatics and Romanists vied with each other in wielding this powerful proselyting agent. Mystics of the fourteenth century Eckart, Tauler, and others wrote hymns of a new tone, an inward spiritual quality, less objective, more individual, voic- ing a yearning for an immediate union of the soul with God, and the joy of personal love to the Redeemer. Poetry of this nature especially appealed to the reli- gious sisters, and from many a convent came echoes of these chastened raptures, in which are heard accents of longing for the comforting presence of the Heavenly Bridegroom. Those half-insane fanatics, the Flagellants, and other enthusiasts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, also contributed to the store of pre-Reformation hym- nody. Hoffmann von Fallersleben has given a vivid account of the barbaric doings of these bands of self-tormentors, and it is evident that their sing- 231 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH ing was not the least uncanny feature of their per- formances.^ In the fourteenth century appeared the device which played so large a part in the production of the Refor- mation hymns that of adapting secular tunes to reli- gious poems, and also making religious paraphrases of secular ditties. Praises of love, of out-door sport, even of wine, by a few simple alterations were made to express devotional sentiments. A good illustration of this practice is the recasting of the favorite folk-song, "Den liepsten Bulen den ich han," into "Den liepsten Herren den ich han." Much more common, however, was the transfer of melodies from profane poems to religious, a method which afterward became an impor- tant reliance for supplying the reformed congregations with hymn-tunes. Mixed songs, part Latin and part German, were at one time much in vogue. A celebrated example is the " In dulce jubilo Nu singet und seyt fro " of the fourteenth century, which has often been heard in the reformed churches down to a recent period. In the fifteenth century the popular religious song flourished with an affluence hardly surpassed even in the first two centuries of Protestantism. Still under the control of the Catholic doctrine and discipline, it nevertheless betokens a certain restlessness of mind ; the native individualism of the German spirit is pre- 1 Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes bis auf Luther's Zeit. 232 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY paring to assert itself. The fifteenth was a century of stir and inquiry, full of premonitions of the upheaval soon to follow. The Revival of Learning began to shake Germany, as well as Southern and Western Earope, out of its superstition and intellectual sub- jection. The religious and political movements in Bohemia and Moravia, set in motion by the preaching and martyrdom of Hus, produced strong eflFect in Germany. Hus struck at some of the same abuses that aroused the wrath of Luther, notably the traffic in indulgences. The demand for the use of the vernac- ular in church worship was even more fundamental than the similar desire in Germany, and preceded rather than followed the movement toward reform. Hus was also a prototype of Luther in that he was virtually the founder of the Bohemian hymnody. He wrote hymns both in Latin and in Czech, and earnestly encouraged the use of vernacular songs by the people. The Utraquists published a song-book in the Czech language in 1501, and the Unitas Fratrum one, contain- ing four hundred hymns, in 1505. These two ante- dated the first Lutheran hymn-book by about twenty years. The Bohemian reformers, like Luther after them, based their poetry upon the psalms, the ancient Latin hymns, and the olrl vernacular religious songs; they improved existing texts, and set new hymns in place of those that contained objectionable doctrinal features. Their tunes also were derived, like those of the German reformers, from older religious and secular melodies. These achievements of the Bohemians, answering 233 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH popular needs that exist at all times, could not remain without influence upon the Germans. Encouragement to religious expression in the vernacular was also exerted by certain religious communities known as Brethren of the Common Life, which originated in Holland in the latter part of the fourteenth century, and extended into North and Middle Germany in the fifteenth. Thomas a Kempis was a member of this order. The purpose of these Brethren was to inculcate a purer religious life among the people, especially the young; and they made it a ground principle that the national language should be used so far as possible in prayer and song. Particularly effective in the culture of sacred poetry and music among the artisan class were the schools of the Mastersingers, which flourished all over Germany in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Standing upon the threshold of the Reformation, and looking back over the period that elapsed since the pagan myths and heroic lays of the North began to yield to the metrical gospel narrative of the " Heliand " and the poems of Otfried, we can trace the same union of pious desire and poetic instinct which, in a more enlightened age, produced the one hundred thousand evangelical hymns of Germany. The pre-Reformation hymns are of the highest importance as casting light upon the condition of religious belief among the German laity. We find in them a great variety of elements, much that is pure, noble, and strictly evangelical, mixed with crudity, superstition, and crass realism. In the nature of the case they do not, on the 234 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY whole, rise to the poetic and spiritual level of the contemporary Latin hymns of the Church. There is nothing in them comparable with the Dies Irae, the Stabat Mater, the Hora Novissima, the Veni Sancte Spiritus, the Ad Perennis Vitse Fontem, the Passion Hymns of St. Bernard, or scores that might be named which make up the golden chaplet of Latin religious verse from Hilary to Xavier. The latter is the poetry of the cloister, the work of men separated from the world, upon whom asceticism and scholastic philosophizing had worked to refine and subtilize their conceptions. It is the poetry, not of laymen, but of priests and monks, the special and peculiar utterance of a sacerdotal class, wrapt in intercessory functions, straining ever for glimpses of the Beatific Vision, whose one absorbing effort was to emancipate the soul from time and discipline it for eternity. It is poetry of and for the temple, the sacramental mysteries, the hours of prayer, for seasons of solitary meditation; it blends with the dim light sifted through stained cathe- dral windows, with incense, with majestic music. The simple layman was not at home in such an atmosphere as this, and the Latin hymn was not a familiar expres- sion of his thought. His mental training was of a coarser, more commonplace order. He must particularize, his religious feeling must lay hold of something more tan- gible, something that could serve his childish views of things, and enter into some practical relation with the needs of his ordinary mechanical existence. The religious folk-song, therefore, shows many traits similar to those found in the secular folk-song, and we 235 Mt/SiC IN TH^ WESTERN CHURCH can easily perceive the influence of one upon the other. In both we can see how receptive the common people were to anything that savored of the marvellous, and how their minds dwelt more upon the external wonder than upon the lesson that it brings. The connection of these poems with the ecclesiastical dramas, which form such a remarkable chapter in the history of religious instruc- tion in the Middle Age, is also apparent, and scores of them are simply narratives of the Nativity, the Cruci- fixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension, told over and over in almost identical language. These German hj'mns show in what manner the dogmas and usages of the Church took root in the popular heart, and affected the spirit of the time. In all other mediceval literature we have the testimony of the higher class of minds, the men of education, who were saved by their reflective intelligence from falling into the grosser superstitions, or at least from dwelling in them. But in the folk poetry the great middle class throws back the ideas imposed by its religious teachers, tinged by its own crude mental operations. The result is that we have in these poems the doctrinal perversions and the my- thology of the Middle Age set forth in their baldest form. Beliefs that are the farthest removed from the teaching of the Scriptures, are carried to lengths which the Catholic Church has never authoritatively sanc- tioned, but which are natural consequences of the action of her dogmas upon untrained, superstitious minds. There are hymns which teach the preexist- ence of Mary with God before the creation; that in and through her all things were created. Others, not 236 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY content with the church doctrine of her intercessory office in heaven, represent her as commanding and controlling her Son, and even as forgiving sins in her own right. Hagiolatry, also, is carried to its most dubious extremity. Power is ascribed to the saints to save from the pains of hell. In one hymn they are implored to intercede with God for the sinner, because, the writer says, God will not deny their prayer. It is curious to see in some of these poems that the attributes of love and compassion, which have been removed from the Father to the Son, and from the Son to the Virgin Mother, are again transferred to St. Ann, who is im- plored to intercede with her daughter in behalf of the suppliant. All this, and much more of a similar sort, the prod- uct of vulgar error and distorted thinking, cannot be gainsaid. But let us, with equal candor, acknowledge that there is a bright side to this subject. Corruption and falsehood are not altogether typical of the German religious poetry of the Middle Age. Many Protestant writers represent the mediaeval German hymns as chiefly given over to mariolatry and much debasing superstition, and as therefore indicative of the religious state of the nation. This, however, is very far from being the case, as a candid examination of such a collection as Wackernagel's will show. Take out everything that a severe Protestant would reject, and there remains a large body of poetry which flows from the pure, undefiled springs of Christian faith, which from the evangelical standpoint is true and edifying, gems of expression not to be matched by the poetry of 237 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH Luther and his friends in simplicity and refinement of language. Ideas common to the hymnody of all ages are to be found there. One comes to mind in which there is carried out in the most touching way the thought of John Newton in his most famous hymn, where in vision the look of the crucified Christ seems to charge the arrested sinner with his death. Another lovely poem expresses the shrinking of the disciple in consciousness of mortal frailty when summoned by Christ to take up the cross, and the comfort that he receives from the Saviour's assurance of his own suffi- cient grace. A celebrated hymn by Tauler describes a ship sent from heaven by the Father, containing Jesus, who comes as our Redeemer, and who asks personal devotion to himself and a willingness to live and die with and for him. Others set forth the atoning work of Christ's death, without mention of any other condi- tion of salvation. Others implore the direct guidance and protection of Christ, as in the exquisite cradle hymn of Heinrich von Loufenberg, which is not sur- passed in tenderness and beauty by anything in Keble's Lyra Innocentium, or the child verses of Blake. This mass of hymns covers a wide range of topics: God in his various attributes, including mercy and a desire to pardon, a conception which many suppose to have been absent from the thought of the Middle Age; the Trinity; Christ in the various scenes of his life, and as head of the Church ; admonitions, confes- sions, translations of psalms, poems to be sung on pilgrimages, funeral songs, political songs, and many more which touch upon true relations between man and 238 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY the divine. There is a wonderful pathos in this great body of national poetry, for it makes us see the dim but honest striving of the heart of the noble German people after that which is sure and eternal, and which could offer assurance of compensation amid the doubt and turmoil of that age of strife and tyranny. The true and the false in this poetry were alike the outcome of the conditions of the time and the authoritative religious teaching. The fourteenth and fifteenth cen- turies, in spite of the abuses which made the Reforma- tion necessary, contained many saintly lives, beneficent institutions, much philanthropy, and inspired love of God. All these have their witness in many products of that era, and we need look no further than the raedijEval religious poetry to find elements which show that on the spiritual side the Reformation was not strictly a moral revolution, restoring a lost religious feeling, but rather an intellectual process, establishing a hereditary piety upon reasonable and Scriptural foundations. We see, therefore, how far Luther was from being the founder of German hymnody. In trying to dis- cover what his great service to religious song really was, we must go on to the next question that is involved, and ask. What was the status and employ- ment of the folk-hymn before the Reformation? Was it in a true sense a church song? Had it a recognized place in the public service? Was it at all liturgic, as the Lutheran hymn certainly was? This brings us to a definitive distinction between the two schools of hymnody. 239 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH The attitude of the Catholic Church to congregational singing has often been discussed, and is at pres- ent the object of a great deal of misconception. The fact of the matter is, that she ostensibly encourages the people to share in some of the subordinate Latin offices, but the very spirit of the liturgy and the development of musical practice have in course of time, with now and then an exception, reduced the congregation to silence. Before the invention of harmony all church music had more of the quality of popular music, and the priesthood encouraged the worshipers to join their voices in those parts of the service which were not confined by the rubrics to the ministers. But the Gregorian chant was never really adopted by the people, its practical diffi- culties, and especially the inflexible insistence upon the use of Latin in all the offices of worship, virtually con- fined it to the priests and a small body of trained singers. The very conception and spirit of the liturgy, also, has by a law of historic development gradually excluded the people from active participation. Whatever may have been the thought of the fathers of the liturgy, the eucharistic service has come to be simply the vehicle of a sacrifice offered by and through the priesthood for the people, not a tribute of praise and supplication emanating from the congregation itself. The attitude of the wor- shiper is one of obedient faith, both in the supernatural efficacy of the sacrifice and the mediating authority of the celebrant. The liturgy is inseparably bound up with tlie central act of consecration and oblation, and is con- ceived as itself possessing a divine sanction. The liturgy is not in any sense the creation of the people, but comes 240 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HVMNODV down to them from a higher source, the gradual produc- tion of men believed to have been inspired by the Holy Spirit, and is accepted by the laity as a divinely autho- rized means in the accomplishment of the supreme sacer- dotal function. The sacrifice of the Mass is performed for the people, but not through the people, nor even necessarily in their presence. And so it has come to pass that, although the Catholic Church has never offi- cially recognized the existence of the modern mixed choir, and does not in its rubrics authorize any manner of singing except the unison Gregorian chant, nevertheless, by reason of the expansion and specialization of musical art, and the increasing veneration of the liturgy as the very channel of descending sacramental grace, the people are reduced to a position of passive receptivity. As regards the singing of hymns in the national languages, the conditions are somewhat different. The laws of the Catholic Church forbid the vernacular in any part of the eucharistic service, but permit vernacular hymns in certain subordinate offices, as, for instance, Vespers. But even in these services the restrictions are more emphasized than the permissions. Here also the tacit recognition of a separation of function between the clergy and the laity still persists ; there can never be a really sympathetic cooperation between the church lan- guage and the vernacular; there is a constant attitude of suspicion on the part of the authorities, lest the people's hymn should afford a rift for the subtle in- trusion of heretical or unchurchly ideas. The whole spirit and implied theory of the Catholic Church is therefore unfavorable to popular hymnody. 16 241 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH This was especially the case in the latter Middle Age. The people could put no heart into the singing of Latin. The priests and monks, especially in such convent schools as St. Gall, Fulda, Metz, and Reichenau, made heroic efforts to drill their rough disciples in the Gre- gorian chant, but their attempts were ludicrously futile. Vernacular hymns were simply tolerated on certain prescribed occasions. In the century or more following the Reformation, the Catholic musicians and clergy, taught by the astonishing popular success of the Luth- eran songs, tried to inaugurate a similar movement in their own ranks, and the publication and use of Catholic German hymn-books attained large dimensions ; but this enthusiasm finally died out. Both in mediaeval and in modern times there has practically remained a chasm between the musical practice of the common people and that of the Church, and in spite of isolated attempts to encourage popular hymnody, the restrictions have always had a depressing effect, and the free, hearty union of clergy and congregation in choral praise and prayer is virtually unknown. The new conceptions of the relationship of man to God, which so altered the fundamental principle and the external forms of worship under the Lutheran movement, manifested themselves most strikingly in the mighty im- petus given to congregational song. Luther set the national impulse free, and taught the people that in sing- ing praise they were performing a service that was well pleasing to God and a necessary part of public com- munion with him. It was not simply that Luther charged the popular hymnody with the energy of his 242 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY world-transforming doctrine, he also gave it a dignity which it had never possessed before, certainly not since the apostolic age, as a part of the official liturgic song of the Church. Both these facts gave the folk-hymn its wonderful proselyting power in the sixteentli century, the latter gives it its importance in the history of church music. Luther's work for the people's song was in substance a detail of his liturgic reform. His knowledge of human nature taught him the value of set forms and ceremonies, and his appreciation of what was universally true and edifying in the liturgy of the mother Church led him to retain many of her prayers, hymns, responses, etc., along with new provisions of his own. But in his view the service is constituted through the activity of the believing subject ; the forms and expressions of wor- ship are not in themselves indispensable the one thing necessary is faith, and the forms of worship have their value simply in defining, inculcating, stimulating and directing this faith, and enforcing the proper attitude of the soul toward God in the public social act of devotion. The congregational song both symbolized and realized the principle of direct access of the believer to the Father, and thus exemplified in itself alone the whole spirit of the worship of the new Church. That this act of worship should be in the native language of the nation was a matter of course, and hence the popular hymn, set to familiar and appropriate melody, became at once the characteristic, official, and liturgic expression of the emotion of the people in direct communion with God. 243 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH The immense consequence of this principle was seen in the outburst of song that followed the founding of the new Church by Luther at Wittenberg, It was not that the nation was electrified by a poetic genius, or by any new form of musical excitement; it was simply that the old restraints upon self-expression were removed, and that the people could celebrate their new-found freedom in Christ Jesus by means of the most intense agency known to man, which they had been prepared by inherited musical temperament and ancient habit to use to the full. No wonder that they received this privilege with thanksgiving, and that the land re- sounded with the lyrics of faith and hope. Luther felt his mission to be that of a purifier, not a destroyer. He would repudiate, not the good and evil alike in the ancient Church, but only that which he con- sidered false and pernicious. This judicious conserva- tism was strikingly shown in his attitude toward the liturgy and form of worship, which he would alter only so far as was necessary in view of changes in doctrine and in the whole relation of the Church as a body toward the individual. The altered conception of the nature of the eucharist, the abolition of homage to the Virgin and saints, the prominence given to the sermon as the central feature of the service, the substitution of the vernacular for Latin, the intimate participation of the congregation in the service by means of hymn-singing, all these changes required a recasting of the order of worship ; but everything in the old ritual that was consistent with these changes was retained. Luther, like the founders of the reformed Church of England, was profoundly con- 244 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY scious of the truth and beauty of many of the prayers and hymns of the mother Church. Especially was he attached to her music, and would preserve the composi- tions of the learned masters alongside of the revived congregational hymn. As regards the form and manner of service, Luther's improvements were directed (1) to the revision of the liturgy, (2) the introduction of new hymns, and (3) the arrangement of suittible melodies for congregational use. Luther's program of liturgic reform is chiefly em- bodied in two orders of worship drawn up for the churches of Wittenberg, viz., the Formula Missae of 1523 and the Deutsche Messe of 1526. Luther rejected absolutely the Catholic conception of the act of worship as in itself possessed of objective efficacy. The terms of salvation are found only in the Gospel ; the worship acceptable to God exists only in the contrite attitude of the heart, and the acceptance through faith of the plan of redemption as provided in the vica- rious atonement of Christ. The external act of worship in prayer, praise, Scripture recitation, etc., is designed as a testimony of faith, an evidence of thankfulness to God for his infinite grace, and as a means of edification and of kindling the devotional spirit through the reactive influence of its audible expression. The correct per- formance of a ceremony was to Luther of little account ; the essential was the prayerful disposition of the heart and the devout acceptance of the word of Scripture. The substance of worship, said Luther, is " that our dear Lord speaks with us through his Holy Word, and we in return speak with him through prayer and song of 245 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH praise." The sermon is of the greatest importance as an ally of the reading of the Word. The oflBce of wor- ship must be viewed as a means of instruction as weU as a rite contrived as the promoter and expression of religious emotion ; the believer is in no wise to be con- sidered as having attained to complete ripeness and maturity, since if it were so religious worship would be unnecessary. Such a goal is not to be attained on earth. The Christian, said Luther, "needs baptism, the Word, and the sacrament, not as a perfected Christian, but as a sinner." The Formula Missae of 1523 was only a provisional office, and may be called an expurgated edition of the Catholic Mass. It is in Latin, and follows the order of the Roman liturgy Avith certain omissions, viz., all the preliminary action at the altar as far as the Introit, the Offertory, the Oblation and accompanying prayers as far as the Preface, the Consecration, the Commemora- tion of the Dead, and everything following the Agnus Dei except the prayer of thanksgiving and benediction. That is to say, everything is removed which character- izes the Mass as a priestly, sacrificial act, or which recog- nizes the intercessory office of the saints. The musical factors correspond to the usage in the Catholic Mass ; Luther's hymns with accompanying melodies were not yet prepared, and no trace of the Protestant choral appears in the Fonnula Missae. Although this order of 1523 was conceived only as a partial or temporary expedient, it was by no means set entirely aside by its author, even after the composition of a form more adapted to the needs of the people. In 246 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY the preface to the Deutsche Messe of 1526, Luther cites the Latin Formula Missse as possessing a special value. " This I will not abandon or have altered ; but as we have kept it with us heretofore, so must we still be free lo use the same where and when it pleases us or occasion requires. I will by no means permit the Latin speech to be dropped out of divine worship, since it is impor- tant for the youth. And if I were able, and the Greek and Hebrew languages were as common with us as the Latin, and had as much music and song as the Latin has, we should hold Masses, sing and read every Sunday in all four languages, German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew." It is important, he goes on to say, that the youth should be familiar with more languages than their own, in order that they may be able to give instruction in the true doctrine to those not of their own nation, Latin espe- cially approving itself for this purpose as the common dialect of cultivated men. The Deutsche Messe of 1526, Luther explains, was drawn up for the use of the mass of the people, who needed a medium of worship and instruction which was already familiar and native to them. This form is a still further simplification, as compared with the Formula MisScC, and consists almost entirely of offices in the German tongue. Congregational chorals also have a prominent place, since the publication of collections of vernacular religious songs had begun two years before. This liturgy consists of (1) a people's hymn or a Ger- man psalm, (2) Kyrie eleison, (3) Collect, (4) the Epistle, (5) congregational hymn, (6) the Gospel, (7) the German paraphrase of the Creed, " Wie glauben all' 247 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH an einen Gott," sung by the people ; next follows the sennon ; (8) the Lord's Prayer and exhortation prelimi- nary to the Sacrament, (9) the words of institution and elevation, (10) distribution of the bread, (11) singing of the German Sanctus or the hymn " Jesus Christus unser Heiland," (12) distribution of the wine, (13) Agnus Dei, a German hymn, or the German Sanctus, (14) Collect of thanksgiving, (15) Benediction. It was far from Luther's purpose to impose these or any particular forms of worship upon his followers through a personal assumption of authority. He reiter- ates, in his preface to the Deutsche Messe, that he has no thought of assuming any right of dictation in the matter, emphasizing his desire that the churches should enjoy entire freedom in their forms and manner of worship. At the same time he realizes the benefits of uniformity as creating a sense of unity and solidarity in faith, practice, and interests among the various dis- tricts, cities, and congregations, and offers these two forms 18 in his opinion conservative and efficient. He warns his people against the injury that may result from the multiplication of liturgies at the instigation of indiscreet or vain leaders, who have in view the per- petuation of certain notions of their own, rather than the honor of God and the spiritual welfare of their neighbors. In connection with this work of reconstructing the ancient liturgy for use in the Wittenberg churches, Luther turned his attention to the need of suitable hymns and tunes. He took up this work not only out of his love of song, but also from necessity. He wrote 248 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY to Nicholas Haussmann, pastor at Zwickau : " I would that we had many German songs which the people could sing during the Mass. But we lack German poets and musicians, or they are unknown to us, who are able to make Christian and spiritual songs, as Paul calls them, which are of such value that they can be used daily in the house of God. One can find but few that have the appropriate spirit." The reason for this complaint was short-lived ; a crowd of hymnists sprang up as if by magic, and among them Luther was, as in all things, chief. His work as a hymn writer began soon after the completion of his translation of the New Testament, wliile he was engaged in translating the psalms. Then, as Koch says, " the spirit of the psalm- ists and prophets came over him." Several allusions in his letters show that he took the psalms as his model ; that is to say, he did not think of a hymn as designed for the teaching of dogma, but as the sincere, spon- taneous outburst of love and reverence to God for his goodness. The first hymn-book of evangelical Germany was published in 1524 by Luther's friend and coadjutor, Johann Walther. It confciined four hymns by Luther, three by Paul Speratus, and one by an unknown author. Another book appeared in the same year containing fourteen more hymns by Luther, in addition to the eight of the first book. Six more from Luther's pen appeared in a song-book edited by Walther in 1525. The remain- ing hymns of Luther (twelve in number) were printed in five song-books of different dates, ending with King's in 1543. Four hymn-books contain prefaces by Luther, 249 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH the first written for Walther's book of 1525, and the last for one published by Papst in 1545. Luther's example was contagious. Other hymn writers at once sprang up, who were filled with Luther's spirit, and who took his songs as models. Printing presses were kept busy, song-books were multiplied, until at the time of Luther's death no less than sixty collections, count- ing the various editions, had been issued. There was reason for the sneering remark of a Catholic that the people were singing themselves into the Lutheran doctrine. The principles of worship promulgated by Luther and implied in his liturgic arrangements were adopted by all the Protestant communities ; whatever variations there might be in the external forms of wor- ship, in all of them the congregational hymn held a prominent place, and it is to be noticed that almost without exception the chief hymn writers of the Lu- theran time were theologians and preachers. Luther certainly wrote thirty-six hymns. A few others have been ascribed to him without conclusive evi- dence. By far the greater part of these thirty-six are not entirely original. Many of them are translations or adaptations of psalms, some of which are nearly literal transfers. Other selections from Scripture were used in a similar way, among which are the Ten Commandments, the Ter Sanctus, the song of Simeon, and the Lord's Prayer. Similar use, viz.^ close translation or free para- phrase, was made of certain Latin hymns by Ambrose, Gregory, Hus, and others, and also of certain religious folk-songs of the pre-Re formation period. Five hymns only are completely original, not drawn in any way from 250 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY older compositions. Besides these five many of the tran- scriptions of psalms and older hymns owe but little to their models. The chief of these, and the most celebrated of all Luther's hymns, " Ein' feste Burg," was suggested by the forty-sixth Psahn, but nothing could be more orig- inal in spirit and phraseology, more completely character- istic of the great reformer. The beautiful poems, " Aus tiefer Noth " (Ps. cxxx.), and " Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh' darein " (Ps. xii.), are less bold paraphrases, but still Luther's own in the sense that their expression is a natural outgrowth of the more tender and humble side of his nature. No other poems of their class by any single man have * ever exerted so great an influence, or have received so great admiration, as these few short lyrics of Martin Luther. And yet at the first reading it is not easy to understand the reason for their celebrity. As poetry they disappoint us; there is no artfully modulated diction, no subtle and far-reaching imagination. Neither do they seem to chime with our devotional needs ; there is a jar- ring note of fanaticism in them. We even find expres- sions that give positive offence, as when he speaks of the "Lamb roasted in hot love upon the cross." We say that they are not universal, that they seem the outcome of a temper that belongs to an exceptional condition. This is really the fact ; here is the clue to their proper study. They do belong to a time, and not to all time. We must consider that they are the utterance of a mind engaged in conflict, and often toniiented with doubt of the outcome. They reveal the motive of the great pivotal figure in modern religious history. More tlian that 251 MUSIC IN THE WESTEUN CHURCH they hivye behind tliem the great impelling force of the Reformation. Perhaps the world has shown a correct instinct in fixing upon " Ein' feste Burg " as the typical hymn of Luther and of the Reformation. Heine, who called it " the Marseillaise of the Reformation ; " Freder- ick the Great, who called its melody (not without rever- ence) " God Almighty's grenadier march ; " Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, who chose the same tune to symbolize aggressive Protestantism ; and Wagner, who wove its strains into the grand march which celebrates the military triumphs of united Germany, all these men had an accurate feeling for the patriotic and moral fire which bums in this mighty song. The same spirit is found in other of Luther's hymns, but often combined \vith a ten- derer music, in which emphasis is laid more upon the inward peace that comes from trust in God, than upon the fact of outward conflict. A still more exalted mood is disclosed in such hymns as " Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g'mein," and " Von Himmel lioch da komm ich her " the latter a Christmas song said to have been written for his little son Hans. The first of these is no- table for the directness with which it sets forth the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone. It is in this same directness and homely vigor and adaptation to the pressing needs of the time that we must find the cause of the popular success of Luther's hjTuns. He knew what the dumb, blindly yearning German people had been groping for during so many years, and the power of his sermons and poems lay in the fact that they offered a welcome spiritual gift in phrases that went straight to the [X)pular heart. His speech was that of the 252 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY people idiomatic, nervous, and penetrating. He had learned how to talk to them in his early peasant home, and in his study of the folk-songs. Coarse, almost brutal at times, we may call him, as in his controversies with Henry VIH., Erasmus, and others; but it was the coarseness of a rugged nature, of a son of the soil, a man tremendously in earnest, blending religious zeal with patriotism, never doubting that the enemies of his faith were confederates of the devil, who was as real to him as Duke George or Dr. Eck. No English translation can quite do justice to the homely vigor of his verse. Carlyle has succeeded as well as possible in his transla- tion of "Ein' feste Burg," but even this masterly achieve- ment does not quite reproduce the jolting abruptness of the metre, the swing and fire of the movement. The greater number of Luther's hymns are set to a less stri- dent pitch, but all alike speak a language which reveals in every line the ominous spiritual tension of this his- toric moment. In philological history these hymns have a signifi- cance equal to that of Luther's translation of the Bible, in which scholars agree in finding the virtual creation of the modern German language. And the elements that should give new life to the national speech were to be found among the commonalty. " No one before Luther," says Bayard Taylor, "saw that the German tongue must be sought for in the mouths of the people that the exhausted expression of the earlier ages could not be revived, but that the newer, fuller, and richer speech, then in its childhood, must at ouce be acknowledged and adopted. With all his 258 MUSIC IN THE WESTEHN CHURCH Bcholarship Luther dropped the theological style, and sought among the people for phrases as artless and simple as those of the Hebrew writers." " The influ- ence of Luther on German literature cannot be ex- plained until we have seen how sound and vigorous and many-sided was the new spirit which he infused into the language." ^ All this will apply to the hymns as well as to the Bible translation. Here was one great element in the popular effect which these hymns produced. Their simple, home-bred, domestic form of expression caught the public ear in an instant. Those who have at all studied the history of popular eloquence in prose and verse are aware of the electrical effect that may be produced when ideas of pith and moment are sent home to the masses in forms of speech that are their own. Luther's hymns may not be poetry in the high sense; but they are certainly eloquence, they are popular oratory in verse, put into the mouths of the people by one of their own number. In spite of the fact that these songs were the natural outcome of a period of spiritual and political conflict, and give evidence of this fact in almost every instance, yet they are less dogmatic and controversial than might be expected, for Luther, bitter and intolerant as he often was, understood the requirements of church song well enough to know that theological and political polemic should be kept out of it. Nevertheless these hymns are a powerful witness to the great truths which were the corner-stone of the doctrines of the reformed church. They constantly emphasize the principle that * Taj'lor, Studies in German Literature. 254 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY salvation comes not through works or sacraments or any human mediation, but only through the merits of Christ and faith in his atoning blood. The whole ma- chinery of mariolatry, hagiolatry, priestly absolution, and personal merit, which had so long stood between the individual soul and Christ, was broken down. Christ is no longer a stern, hardly appeasable Judge, but a loving Saviour, yearning over mankind, stretch- ing out hands of invitation, asking, not a slavish submission to formal observances, but a free, spontan- eous offering of the heart. This was the message that thrilled Germany. And it was through the hymns of Luther and those modelled upon them that the new evangel was most widely and quickly disseminated. The friends as well as the enemies of the Reformation asserted that the spread of the new doctrines was due more to Luther's hymns than to his sermons. The editor of a German hymn-book published in 1565 says: " I do not doubt that through that one song of Luther, ' Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g'mein,' many hundred Christians have been brought to the faith who other- wise would not have heard of Luther." An indignant Jesuit declared that " Luther's songs have damned more souls than all his books and speeches." We read marvellous stories of the effect of these hymns ; of Lutheran missionaries entering Catholic churches during service and drawing away the whole congre- gation by their singing ; of wandering evangelists standing at street corners and in the market places, singing to excited crowds, then distributing the hymns upon leaflets so that the populace might join in the 255 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH paean, and so winning entire cities to the new faith almost in a day. This is easily to be believed when we consider that the progress of events and the drift of ideas for a century and more had been preparing the German mind for Luther's message ; that as a people the Germans are extremely susceptible to the enthusiasms that utter themselves in song; and that these hjonns carried the truths for which their souls had been thirsting, in language of extraordinary force, clothed in melodies which they had long known and loved. We lay especial stress upon the hymns of Luther, not simply on account of their inherent power and historic importance, but also because they are repre- sentative Oi a school. Luther was one of a group of lyrists which included bards hardly less trenchant than he. Koch gives the names of fifty-one writers who endowed the new German hymnody between 1517 and 1560.^ He finds in them all one common feature, the ground character of objectivity. " They are genuine church hymns, in which tlie common faith is expressed in its universality, without the subjective feeling of personality." " It is always we, not I, which is the prevailing word in these songs. The poets of this period did not, like those of later times, paint their own individual emotions with all kinds of figura- tive expressions, but, powerfully moved by the truth, they sang the work of redemption and extolled the faith in the free, undeserved grace of God in Jesus 1 Koch, Geschichte des Kirchenliedes und Kirchegesanges der christlichen insbesondere der deutschen evangelischen Kirche. 256 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY Christ, or gave thanks for the newly given pure word of God in strains of joyful victory, and defied their foes in firm, godly trust in the divinity of the doctrine which was so new and yet so old. Therefore they speak the truths of salvation, not in dry doctrinal tone and sober reflection, but in the form of testimony or confession, and although in some of these songs are contained plain statements of belief, the reason therefor is simply in the hunger and thirst after the pure doc- trine. Hence the speech of these poets is the Bible speech, and the expression forcible and simple. It is not art, but faith, which gives these songs their imper- ishable value." The hymns of Luther and the other early Reforma- tion hymnists of Germany are not to be classed with sacred lyrics like those of Vaughan and Keble and New- man which, however beautiful, are not of that univer- sality which alone adapts a hymn for use in the public assembly. In writing their songs Luther and his com- peers identified themselves with the congregation of believers ; they produced them solely for common praise in the sanctuary, and they are therefore in the strict sense impersonal, surcharged not with special isolated experiences, but with the vital spirit of the Reformation. No other body of hymns was ever produced under similar conditions ; for the Reformation was born and cradled in conflict, and in these songs, amid their prot- estations of confidence and joy, there may often be heard cries of alarm 1x3 fore powerful adversaries, appeals for help in material as well as spiritual exigencies, and sometimes also tones of wrath and defiance. Strains 17 257 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH such as the latter are most frequent perhaps in the paraphrases of the psalms, which the authors apply to the situation of an infant church encompassed with enemies. Yet there is no sign of doubt of the justice of the cause, or of the safety of the flock in the divine hands. Along with the production of hymns must go the composition or arrangement of tunes, and this was a less direct and simple process. The conditions and methods of musical art forbade the ready invention of melodies. We have seen in our previous examination of the music of the mediaeval Church that the invention of themes for musical works was no part of the composer's business. Down to about the year 1600 the scientific musician always borrowed his themes from older sources the liturgic chant or popular songs and worked them up into choral movements according to the laws of counter- point. He was, therefore, a tune-setter, not a tune- maker. The same custom prevailed among the German musicians of Luther's day, and it would have been too much to expect that they should go outside their strict habits, and violate all the traditions of their craft, so far as to evolve from their own heads a great number of singable melodies for the people's use. The task of Luther and his musical assistants, therefore, was to take melodies from music of all sorts with which they were familiar, alter them to fit the metre of the new hymns, and iidd the harmonies. In course of time the enormous multiplication of hymns, each demanding a musical setting, and the requirements of simplicity in popular song, brought about a union of the functions of the tune- 258 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY maker and the tune-setter, and in the latter part of the sixteenth century the modern method of inventing melodies took the place of the mediaeval custom of borrowing and adapting, both in the people's song and in larger works. Down to a very recent period it has been universally believed that Luther was a musician of the latter order t. e.y a tune-maker, and that the melodies of many of his hymns were of his own production. Among writers on this period no statement is more frequently made than that Luther wrote tunes as well as hymns. This belief is as tenacious as the myth of the rescue of church music by Palestrina, Dr. L. W. Bacon, in the preface to his edition of the hymns of Luther with their original melodies, assumes, as an undisputed fact, that many of these tunes are Luther's own invention.^ Even Juhan's Dictionary of Hymnology^ which is supposed to be the embodiment of the most advanced scholarship in this department of learning, makes similar statements. But this is altogether an error. Luther composed no tunes. Under the patient investigation of a half-century, the melodies originally associated with Luther's hymns have all been traced to their sources. The tune of " Ein' feste Burg " was the last to yield ; Baumker finds the germ of it in a Gregorian melody. Such proof as this is, of course, decisive and final. The hymn-tunes, called chorals, which Luther, Walther, and others provided for the reformed churches, were drawn from three sources, viz.^ the Latin song of the Catholic Church, the tunes of ^ Bacon and Allen, editors : The Ili/mns of Martin Luther set to theif Original Melodies, with an English fersion. 259 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH German hymns before the Reformation, and the secular folk-song. 1. If Luther was willing to take many of the prayers of the Catholic liturgy for use in his German Mass, still more ready was he to adopt the melodies of the ancient Church. In his preface to the Funeral Hymns (lt542), after speaking of the forms of the Catholic Church which in themselves he did not disapprove, he says : " In the same way have they much noble music, especially in the abbeys and parish churches, used to adorn most vile, idolatrous words. Therefore have we undressed these lifeless, idolatrous, crazy words, stripping off the noble music, and putting it upon the living and holy word of God, wherewith to sing, praise, and honor the same, that so the beautiful ornament of music, brought back to its right use, may serve its blessed Maker, and his Christian people." A few of Luther's hymns were translations of old Latin hymns and Sequences, and these were set to the original melodies. Luther's labor in this field was not confined to the choral, but, like the founders of the musical service of the Anglican Church, he estab- lished a system of chanting, taking the Roman use as a model, and transferring many of the Gregorian tunes. Johann Walther, Luther's co-laborer, relates the extreme pains which Luther took in setting notes to the Epistle, Gospel, and other offices of the service. He intended to institute a threefold di^dsion of church song, the choir anthem, the unison chant, and the congregational hymn. Only the first and third forms have been retained. Tiie use of chants derived from the Catholic service was continued in some churches as late as the end of the 260 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY seventeenth century. But, as Helmore says, " the rage for turning creeds, commandments, psalms, and every- thing to be sung, into metre, gradually banished the chant from Protestant communities on the Continent." 2. In cases in which pre-Reformation vernacular hymns were adopted into the song-books of the new Church the original melodies were often retained, and thus some very ancient German tunes, although in modern guise, are still preserved in the hymn-books of modern Germany. Melodies of the Bohemian Brethren were in this manner transferred to the German song- books. 3. The secular folk-song of the sixteenth century and earlier was a very prolific source of the German choral. This was after Luther's day, however, for it does not appear that any of his tunes were of this class. Centuries before the age of artistic German music began, the common people possessed a large store of simple songs which they delighted to use on festal occasions, at the fireside, at their labor, in love-making, at weddings, christenings, and in every circumstance of social and domestic life. Here was a rich mine of simple and expressive melodies from which choral tunes might be fasliioned. In some cases this transfer in- volved considerable modification, in others but little, for at that time there was far less difference between the religious and the secular musical styles than there is now. The associations of these tunes were not always of the most edifying kind, and some of them were so identified with unsanctified ideas that the strictest theologians protested against them, and some 261 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH were weeded out. In course of time the old secular associations were forgotten, and few devout Germans are now reminded that some of the grand melodies in which faith and hope find such appropriate utterance are variations of old love songs and drinking songs. There is nothing exceptional in this borrowing of the Avorld's tunes for ecclesiastical uses. We find the same practice among the French, Dutch, English, and Scotch Calvinists, the English Wesleyans, and the hymn-book makers of America. This method is often necessary when a young and vigorously expanding Church must be quickly provided with a store of songs, but in its nature it is only a temporary recourse. The choral tunes sung by the congregation were at first not harmonized. Then, as they began to be set in the strict contrapuntal style of the day, it became the custom for the people to sing the melody while the choir sus- tained the other parts. The melody was at first in the tenor, according to time-honored usage in artistic music, but as composers found that they must consider the vocal limitations of a mass of untrained singers a simpler form of harmony was introduced, and the custom arose of putting the melody in the upper voice, and the har- mony below. This method prepared the development of a harmony that was more in the nature of modern chord progressions, and when the choir and congrega- tion severed their incompatible union, the complex counterpoint in which the age delighted was allowed free range in the motet, while the harmonized choral became more simple and compact. The partnership of choir and congregation was dissolved about 1600, 262 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY and the organ took the place of the trained singers in accompanying the unison song of the people. One who studies the German chorals as they appear in the hymn-books of the present day (many of which hold honored places in English and American hymnals) must not suppose that he is acquainted with the reli- gious tunes of the Reformation in their pristine form. As they are now sung in the German churches they have been greatly modified in harmony and rhythm, and even in many instances in melody also. The only scale and harmonic system then in vogue was the Gregorian. In respect to rhythm also, the alterations have been equally striking. The present choral is usually written in notes of equal length, one note to a syllable. The metre is in most cases double, rarely triple. This manner of writing gives the choral a singularly grave, solid and stately character, encouraging likewise a per- formance that is often dull and monotonous. There was far more variety and life in the primitive choral, the movement was more flexible, and the frequent groups of notes to a single syllable imparted a buoyancy and warmth that are unknown to the rigid modern form. The transformation of the choral into its present shape was completed in the eighteenth century, a result, some say, of the relaxation of spiritual energy in the period of rationalism. A party has been formed among German churchmen and musicians which labors for the restoration of the primitive rhythmic choral. Certiiin congregations have adopted the reform, but there is as yet no sign that it will ultimately prevail. In spite of the mischievous influence ascribed to 263 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH Luther's hymns by his opponents, they could appre- ciate their value as aids to devotion, and in return for Luther's compliment to their hymns they occasionally borrowed some of his. Strange as it may seem, even " Ein' feste Burg " was one of these. Neither were the Catholics slow to imitate the Protestants in providing songs for the people, and as in the old strifes of Arians and orthodox in the East, so Catholics and Lutherans strove to sing each other down. The Catholics also translated Latin hymns into German, and transformed secular folk-songs into edifying religious rhymes. The first German Catholic song-book was published in 1537 by Michael Vehe, a preaching monk of Halle. This book contained fifty-two hymns, four of which were alterations of hymns by Luther. It is a rather notable fact that throughout the sixteenth century eminent musicians of both confessions contributed to the musi- cal services of their opponents. Protestants composed masses and motets for the Catholic churches, and Catholics arranged choral melodies for the Protestants. This friendly interchange of good offices was heartily encouraged by Luther. Next to Johann Walther, his most cherished musical friend and helper was Ludwig Senfl, a devout Catholic. This era of relative peace and good-will, of which this musical sympathy was a beautiful token, did not long endure. The Catholic Counter-Reformation cut sharply whatever there might have been of mutual understanding and tolerance, and the frightful Thirty Years' War overwhelmed art and the spirit of humanity together. The multiplication of hymns and chorals went on 264 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY throughout the sixteenth century and into the seven- teenth with unabated vigor. A large number of writers of widely differing degrees of poetic ability contributed to the hymn-books, which multiplied to prodigious numbers in the generations next succeeding that of Luther. These songs harmonized in general with the tone struck by Luther and his friends, setting forth the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and the joy that springs from the consciousness of a freer approach to God, mingled, however, with more sombre accents called forth by the apprehension of the dark clouds in the political firmament which seemed to bode disaster to the Protestant cause. The tempest broke in 1618. Again and again during the thirty years' struggle the reformed cause seemed on the verge of annihilation. When the exhaustion of both parties brought the savage conflict to an end, the enthusiasm of the Reformation was gone. Religious poetry and music indeed survived, and here and there burned with a pure flame amid the darkness of an almost primitive barbarism. In times of deepest distress these two arts often afford the only outlet for grief, and the only testimony of hope amid national calamities. There were unconquerable spirits in Germany, notably among the hymnists, cantors, and organists, who maintained the sacred fire of religious art amid the moral devastations of the Thirty Years' War, whose miseries they felt only as a deepening of their faith in a power that overrules the wrath of man. Their trust fastened itself unfalteringly upon those assurances of divine sympathy which had been the inspiration of their cause from the beginning. This 265 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH pious confidence, this unabated poetic glow, found in Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676) the most fervent and refined expression that has been reached in German hymnody. The production of melodies kept pace with the hymns throughout the sixteenth century, and in the first half of the seventeenth a large number of the most beautiful songs of the German Church were contributed by such men as Andreas Hammerschmidt, Johann Criiger, J. R. Able, Johann Schop, Melchior Frank, Michael Altenburg, and scores of others not less notable. After the middle of the seventeenth century, however, the fountain began to show signs of exhaustion. The powerful movement in the direction of secular music which emanated from Italy began to turn the minds of composers toward experiments which promised greater artistic satisfaction than could be found in the plain congregational choral. The rationalism of the eigh- teenth century, accompanying a period of doctrinal strife and lifeless formalism in the Church, repressed those unquestioning enthusiasms which are the only source of a genuinely expressive popular hymnody. Pietism, while a more or less effective protest against cold ceremonialism and theological intolerance, and a potent influence in substituting a warmer heart service in place of dogmatic pedantry, failed to contribute any new stimulus to the church song ; for the Pietists either endeavored to discourage church music altogether, or else imparted to hymn and melodj^ a quality of effemi- nacy and sentimentality. False tastes crept into the Church. The homely vigor and forthrightness of the Lutheran hymn seemed to the shallow critical spirits of 266 THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY the day rough, prosaic, and repellant, and they began to smooth out and polish the old rhymes, and supplant the choral melodies and harmonies with the prettinesses and languishing graces of the Italian cantilena. As the sturdy inventive power of conservative church musicians was no longer available or desired, recourse was had, as in old times, to secular material, but not as formerly to the song of the people, honest, sincere, redolent of the soil, but rather to the light, artificial strains of the fashionable world, the modish Italian opera, and the affected pastoral poesy. It is the old story of the people's song declining as the art-song flourishes. As the stern temper of the Lutheran era grew soft in an age of security and indifference, so the grand old choral was neglected, and its performance grew perfunctory and cold. An effort has been made here and there in recent years to restore the old ideals and practice, but until a revival of spirituality strong enough to stir the popular heart breaks out in Germany, we may not look for any worthy successor to the sono- rous proselyting song of the Reformation age. 267 CHAPTER VIII RISE OF THE GERMAN CANTATA AND PASSION The history of German Protestant church music in the seventeenth century and onward is the record of a transformation not less striking and significant than that which the music of the Catholic Church experienced in the same period. In both instances forms of musical art which were sanctioned by tradition and associated with ancient and rigorous conceptions of devotional expres- sion were overcome by the superior powers of a style which was in its origin purely secular. The revolution in the Protestant church music was, however, less sud- den and far less complete. It is somewhat remarkable that the influences that prevailed in the music of the Protestant Church the Church of discontent and change were on the whole more cautious and conser- vative than those that were active in the music of the Catholic Church. The latter readily gave up the old music for the sake of the new, and so swiftly readjusted its boundaries that the ancient landmarks were almost everywhere obliterated. The Protestant music advanced by careful evolutionary methods, and in the final product nothing that was valuable in the successive stages through which it passed was lost. In both cases Lutheran and Catholic the motive was the same. Church music, 268 RISE OF THE GERMAN CANTATA AND PASSION like secular, demanded a more comprehensive and a more individual style of expression. The Catholic musicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were very clear in their minds as to what they wanted and how to get it. The brilliant Italian aria was right at hand in all its glory, and its languishing strains seemed admirably suited to the appeals which the aggressive Church was about to make to the heart and the senses. The powers that ruled in German Protes- tant worship conceived their aims, consciously or un- consciously, in a somewhat different spirit. The new musical movement in German church music was less self-contident, it was uncertain of its final direction, at times restrained by reverence for the ancient forms and ideals, again wantonly breaking with tradition and throw- ing itself into the arms of the alluring Italian culture. The German school entered the seventeenth century with three strong and pregnant forms to its credit, viz., the choral, the motet (essentially a counterpart of the Latin sixteenth-century motet), and organ music. Over against these stood the Italian recitative and aria, asso- ciated with new principles of tonality, harmony, and structure. The former were the stern embodiment of the abstract, objective, liturgic conception of worship music ; tlie latter, of the subjective, impassioned, and individualistic. Should these ideals he kept apart, or should they be in some way united ? One group of German musicians would make the Italian dramatic forms tlie sole basis of a new religious art, recognizing tlie claims of the pereonal, the varied, and the brilhant, in ecclesiastical music as in secular. Another group 269 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH clung tenaciously to the choral and motet, resisting every influence that might soften that austere rigor which to their minds was demanded by historic association and liturgic fitness. A third group was the party of compro- mise. Basing their culture upon the old German choir chorus, organ music, and people's hymn-tune, they grafted upon this sturdy stock the Italian melody. It was in the hands of this school that the future of Ger- man church music lay. They saw that the opportun- ities for a more varied and characteristic expression could not be kept out of the Church, for they were based on the reasonable cravings of human nature. Neither could they throw away those grand hereditary types of devo- tional utterance which had become sanctified to German memory in the period of the Reformation's storm and stress. They adopted what was soundest and most suitable for these ends in the art of both countries, and built up a form of music which strove to preserve the high traditions of national liturgic song, while at the same time it was competent to gratify the tastes wliich had been stimulated by the recent rapid advance in musical invention. Out of this movement grew the Passion music and the cantata of the eighteenth century, embellished with all the expressive resources of the Italian vocal solo and the orchestral accompaniment, soUdified by a contrapuntal treatment derived from organ music, and held unswervingly to the very heart of the liturgy by means of those choral tunes which had become identified with special days and occasions in the church year. The nature of the change of motive in modern church _ 270 RISE OF THE GERMAN CANTATA AND PASSION music, which broke the exclusive domination of the chorus by the introduction of solo singing, has been set forth in the chapter on the later mass. The most obvious fact in the history of this modification of church music in Germany is that the neglect in many quarters of the strong old music of choral and motet in favor of a showy concert style seemed to coincide with that melancholy lapse into formalism and dogmatic intoler- ance which, in the German Church of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, succeeded to the enthusiasms of the Reformation era. But it does not follow, as often assumed, that we have here a case of cause and effect. It is worth frequent reiteration that no style of music is in itself religious. There is no sacredness, says Ruskin, in round arches or in pointed, in pinnacles or buttresses ; and we may say with equal pertinence that there is nothing sacred per se in sixteenth-century counterpoint, Lutheran choral, or Calvinist psalm-tune. The adoption of the new style by so many German congregations was certainly not due to a spirit of levity, but to the belief that the novel sensation which their aesthetic instincts craved was also an element in moral edification. From the point of view of our more mature experience, however, there was doubtless a deprivation of something very precious when the German people began to lose their love for the solemn patriotic hymns of their faith, and when choirs neglected those celestial harmonies with which men like Eccard and Ilasler lent these melodies the added charm of artistic decoration. There would seem to be no real compensation in those buoyant songs, with their thin accompaniment, which 271 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH Italy offered as a substitute for a style grown cold and obsolete. But out of this decadence, if we call it such, came the cantatas and Passions of J. S. Bach, in which a reflective age like ours, trained to settle points of fitness in matters of art, finds the most heart-search- ing and heart-revealing strains that devotional feeling has ever inspired. These glorious works could never have existed if the Church had not sanctioned the new methods in music which Germany was so gladly receiv- ing from Italy. Constructed to a large extent out of secular material, these works grew to full stature under liturgic auspices, and at last, transcending the bound- aries of ritual, they became a connecting bond between the organized life of tlie Church and the larger religious intuitions which no ecclesiastical system has ever been able to monopolize. Such was the gift to the world of German Protestant- ism, stimulated by those later impulses of the Renais- sance movement which went forth in music after their mission had been accomplished in plastic art. In the Middle Age, we are told, religion and art lived to- gether in brotherly union ; Protestantism threw away art and kept religion. Renaissance rationalism threw away religion and retained art. In painting and sculp- ture this is very nearly the truth ; in music it is very far from being true. It is the glory of the art of music that she has almost always been able to resist the drift toward sensuousness and levity, and Avhere she has ap- parently yielded, her recovery lias been speedy and sure. So susceptible is her very nature to the finest touches of religious feeling, that every revival of the pure spirit 272 klSE of TtiFl GERMAN CANTATA AND PASSION of devotion has always found her prepared to adapt herself to new spiritual demands, and out of apparent decline to develop forms of religious expression more beautiful and sublime even than the old. Conspicuous among the forms with which the new movement endowed the German Church was the can- tata. This form of music may be traced back to Ittdy, where the monodic style first employed in the opera about 1600 was soon adopted into the music of the salon. The cantata was at first a musical recitation by a single person, without action, accompanied by a few plain chords struck upon a single instrument. This simple design was expanded in the first half of the seventeenth century into a work in several movements and in many parts or voices. Religious texts were soon employed and the church cantata was born. The can- tata was eagerly taken up by the musicians of the German Protestant Church and became a prominent feature in the regular order of worship. In the seven- teenth century the German Church cantata consisted usually of an instrumental introduction, a chorus sing- ing a Bible text, a " spiritual aria " (a strophe song, sometimes for one, sometimes for a number of voices), one or two vocal solos, and a choral. This immature form (known as " spiritual concerto," " spiritual dia- logue " or " spiritual act of devotion "), consisting of an alternation of Biblical passages and church or devotional hymns, flourished greatly in the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries. In its complete de- velopment in the eighteenth century it also incorporated the recitative and the Italian aria form, and carried to 18 273 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH their full power the chorus, especially the chorus based on the choral melody, and the organ accompaniment. By means of the prominent employment of themes taken from choral tunes appointed for particular days in the church calendar, especially those days consecrated to the contemplation of events in the life of our Lord, the cantata became the most effective medium for the ex- pression of those emotions called forth in the congre- gation by their imagined participation in the scenes which the ritual commemorated. The stanzas of the hymns which appear in the cantata illustrate the Bibli- cal texts, applying and commenting upon them in the light of Protestant conceptions. The words refer to some single phase of religious feeling made conspicuous in the order for the day. A cantata is, therefore, quite analogous to the anthem of the Church of England, although on a larger scale. Unlike an oratorio, it is neither epic nor dramatic, but renders some mood, more or less general, of prayer or praise. We have seen that the Lutheran Church borrowed many features from the musical practice of the Catholic Church, such as portions of the Mass, the habit of chant- ing, and ancient hymns and tunes. Another inheritance was the custom of singing the story of Christ's Passion, with musical additions, in Holy Week. This usage, which may be traced back to a remote period in the Middle Age, must be distinguished from the method, prevalent as early as the thirteenth century, of actually representing the events of Christ's last days in visible action upon the stage. The Passion play, which still survives in Oberammergau in Bavaria, and in other more 274 RISE OF THE GERMAN CANTATA AND PASSION obscure parts of Europe, was one of a great number of ecclesiastical dramas, classed as Miracle Plays, Mysteries, and Moralities, which were performed under the auspices of the Church for the purpose of impressing the people in the most vivid way with the reality of the Old and New Testament stories, and the binding force of doctrines and moral principles. The observance out of which the German Passion music of the eighteenth century grew was an altogether different affair. It consisted of the mere recitation, without histrionic accessories, of the story of the trial and death of Christ, as narrated by one of the four evan- gelists, beginning in the synoptic Gospels with the plot of the priests and scribes, and in St. John's Gospel with the betrayal. This narration formed a part of the liturgic office proper to Palm Sunday, Holy Tuesday, Wednesday of Holy Week, and Good Friday. According to the prim- itive use, which originated in the period of ihe suprem- acy of the Gregorian chant, sevenii officers took part in the delivery. One cleric intoned the evangelist's narra- tive, another the words of Christ, and a third those of Pilate, Peter, and other single personages. The ejacula- tions of the Jewish priests, disciples, and mob were chanted by a small group of ministers. The text was rendered in the simpler syllabic form of the Plain Song. Only in one passage did this monotonous recitation give way to a more varied, song-like utterance, viz., in the cry of Christ upon the cross, " Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani," this phrase being delivered in an extended, solemn, but unrhythmical melody, to which was imparted all the pathos that the singer could command. The chorus 275 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH parts were at first sung in unison, then, as the art of part-writing developed, they were set in simple four- part counterpoint. Under the influence of the perfected contrapuntal art of the sixteenth century there appeared a form now known as the motet Passion, and for a short time it flourished vigorously. In this style everything was sung in chorus without accompaniment evangelist's narra- tive, words of Christ, Pilate, and all. The large oppor- tunities for musical effect permitted by this manner of treatment gained for it great esteem among musicians, for since this purely musical method of repeating the story of Christ's death was never conceived as in any sense dramatic, there was nothing inconsistent in setting the words of a single personage in several parts. The life enjoyed by this phase of Passion music was brief, for it arose only a short time before the musical revo- lution, heralded by the Florentine monody and con- firmed by the opera, drove the mediaeval polyphony into seclusion. With the quickly won supremacy of the dramatic and concert solo, together with the radical changes of taste and practice which it signified, the chanted Passion and the motet Passion were faced by a rival which was des- tined to attain such dimensions in Germany that it occu- pied the whole field devoted to this form of art. In the oratorio Passion, as it may be called, the Italian reci- tative and aria and the sectional rhythmic chorus took the place of the unison chant and the ancient polyphony ; hymns and poetic monologues supplemented and some- times supplanted the Bible text; and the impassioned 276 RISE OF THE GERMAN CANTATA AND PASSION vocal style, introducing the new principle of definite expression of the words, was reinforced by the lately emancipated art of instrumental music. For a time, these three forms of Passion music existed side by side, the latest in an immature state; but the stars in the firmament of modern music were fighting in their courses for the mixed oratorio style, and in the early part of the eighteenth century this latter form attained completion and stood forth as the most imposing gift bestowed by Germany upon the world of ecclesiastical art. The path which German religious music was destined to follow in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, under the guidance of the new ideas of expression, was plainly indicated when Heinrich Schiitz, the greatest German composer of the seventeenth century, and the worthy forerunner of Bach and Handel, wrote his " his- tories " and " sacred symphonies." Born in 1585, he came under the inspiring instruction of G. Gabrieli in Venice in 1609, and on a second visit to Italy in 1628 he became still more imbued with the dominant ten- dencies of the age. He was appointed chapel-master at the court of the P^lector of Saxony at Dresden in 1615, and held this position, with a few brief interruptions, until his death in 1672. He was a musician of the most solid attainments, and although living in a transi- tion period in the history of music, he was cautious and respectful in his attitude toward both the methods which were at that time in conflict, accepting the new discover- ies in dniniatic expression as supplementiiry, not antag- onistic, to the old ideal of devotional music. In his psalms he employed contrasting and combining choral 277 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH masses, reinforced by a band of instruments. In the Symphoniae sacrae are songs for one or more solo voices, with instrumental obligate, in which the declamatory recitative style is employed with varied and appropriate effect. In his dramatic religious works, the " Resurrec- tion," the "Seven Words of the Redeemer upon the Cross," the " Conversion of Saul," and the Passions after the four evangelists, Schiitz uses the vocal solo, the instrumental accompaniment, and the dramatic chorus in a tentative manner, attaining at times striking effects of definite expression quite in accordance with modern ideas, while anon he falls back upon the strict impersonal method identified with the ancient Plain Song and six- tee nth-centurj' motet. Most advanced in style and rich in expression is the " Seven Words." A feature character- istic of the rising school of German Passion music is the imagined presence of Christian believers, giving utter- ance in chorus to the emotions aroused by the contem- plation of the atoning act. In the " Seven Words " the utterances of Jesus and the other separate personages are given in arioso recitative, rising at times to pro- nounced melody. The tone of the whole work is fer- vent, elevated, and churchly. The evangelist and all the persons except Christ sing to an organ bass, the words of the Saviour are accompanied by the ethereal tones of stringed instruments, perhaps intended as an emblematic equivalent to the aureole in religious paint- ings. In Schiitz's settings of the Passion, although they belong to the later years of his life, he returns to the primitive form, in which the parts of the evangelist and the single characters are rendered in the severe " collect 278 RISE OF THE GERMAN CANTATA AND PASSION tone " of the ancient Plain Song, making no attempt at exact expression of changing sentiments. Even in these restrained and lofty works, however, his genius as a com- poser and his progressive sympathies as a modem artist ujvjasionally break forth in vivid expression given to the ejaculations of priests, disciples, and Jewish mob, attain- ing a quite remarkable warmth and reality of portrayal Nevertheless, these isolated attempts at naturalism hardly bring the Passions of Schiitz into the category of modem works. There is no instrumental accompani- ment, and, most decisive of all, they are restrained within the limits of the mediasval conception by the ancient Gregorian tonality, which is maintained throughout almost to the entire exclusion of chromatic alteration. The works of Schiitz, therefore, in spite of their sweetness and dignity and an occasional glimpse of picturesque detail, are not to be considered as steps in the direct line of progress which led from the early Italian cantata and oratorio to the final achievements of Bach and Handel. These two giants of the culmi- nating period apparently owed nothing to Schiitz. It is not probable that they had any acquaintance with his works at all. The methods and the ideals of these three were altogether different. Considering how com- mon and apparently necessary in art is the reciprocal influence of great men, it is remarkable that in the instance of the greatest German musician of the seven- teenth century and the two greatest of the eighteenth, all working in the field of religious dramatic music, not one was affected in the slightest degree by the labors of 279 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH either of the others. Here we have the individualism of modern art exhibited in the most positive degree upon its very threshold. In the Passions of Schiitz we find only the characters of the Bible story, together with the evangelist's nar- rative taken literally from the Gospel, that is to say, the original frame-work of the Passion music with the chorus element elaborated. In the latter part of the seventeenth century the dramatic scheme of the Passion was enlarged by the addition of the Christian congre- gation, singing appropriate chorals, and the ideal com- pany of believers, expressing suitable sentiments in recitatives, arias, and choruses. The insertion of church hymns was of the highest importance in view of the relation of the Passion music to the liturgy, for the more stress was laid upon this feature, the more the Passion, in spite of its semi-dramatic character, became fitted as a constituent into the order of service. The choral played here the same part as in the cantata, assimilating to the prescribed order of worship what would otherwise be an extraneous if not a disturbing feature. This was especially the case when, as in the beginning of the adoption of the choral in the Passion, the hymn verses were sung by the congregation itself. In Bach's time this custom had fallen into abeyance, and the choral stanzas were sung by the choir; but this change involved no alteration in the form or the con- ception of the Passion performance as a liturgic act. The growth of the Passion music from Schiitz to its final beauty and pathos under Sebastian Bach was by no means constant. In certain quarters, particularly 280 RISE OF THE GERMAN CANTATA AND PASSION at Hamburg, the aria in the shallow Italian form took an utterly disproportionate importance. The opera, which was flourishing brilliantly at Hamburg about 1700, exercised a perverting influence upon the Passion to such an extent that the ancient liturgic traditions were completely abandoned. In many of the Hamburg Passions the Bible text was thrown away and poems substituted, all of which were of inferior literary merit, and some quite contemptible. Incredible as it may seem, the comic element was sometimes introduced, the " humorous " characters being the servant Malthus whose ear was cut off by Peter, and a clownish peddler of ointment. It must be said that these productions were not given in the churches; they are not to be included in the same category with the strictly litur- gic Passions of Sebastian Bach. The comparative neglect of the choral and also of the organ removes them altogether from the proper history of German church music. Thus we see how the new musical forms, almost creating the emotions which they were so well adapted to express, penetrated to the very inner shrine of German church music. In some sections, as at Ham- burg, the Italian culture supplanted the older school altogether. In others it encountered sterner resistance, and could do no more than form an alliance, in which old German rigor and reserve became somewhat amelio- rated and relaxed without becoming perverted. To produce an art work of the highest order out of this union of contrasting principles, a genius was needed who should possess so true an insight into the special 281 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH capabilities of each that he should be able by their amalgamation to create a form of religious music that should be conformed to the purest conception of the mission of church song, and at the same time endowed with those faculties for moving the affections which were demanded by the tastes of the new age. In fulness of time this genius appeared. His name was Johann Sebastian Bach, 282 CHAPTER IX THE CULMINATION OP GERMAN PROTESTANT MUSIC: JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH The name of Bach is the greatest in Protestant church music, there are many who do not hesitate to say that it is the greatest in all the history of music, religious and secular. The activity of this man was many-sided, and his invention seems truly inexhaust- ible. He touched every style of music known to his day except the opera, and most of the forms that he handled he raised to the highest power that they have ever attained. Many of his most admirable qualities appear in his secular works, but these we must pass over. In viewing him exclusively as a composer for the Church, however, we shall see by far the most considerable part of him, for his secular compositions, remarkable as they are, always appear rather as digres- sions from the main business of his life. His conscious life-long purpose was to enrich the musical treasury of the Church he loved, to strengthen and signalize every feature of her worship which his genius could reach : and to this lofty aim he devoted an intellectual force and an energy of loyal enthusiasm unsurpassed in the annals of art. 283 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the monumental figures in the religious history of Germany, undoubtedly the most considerable in the two centuries following the death of Luther. Like Luther, of whom in some respects he reminds us, he was a man rooted fast in German soil, sprung from sturdy peasant stock, en- dowed with the sterling piety and steadfastness of moral purpose which had long been traditional in the Teutonic character. His culture was at its basis purely German. He never went abroad to seek the elegancies which his nation lacked. He did not despise them, but he let them come to him to be absorbed into the massive substance of his national education, in order that this education might become in the deepest sense liberal and human. He interpreted what was perma- nent and hereditary in German culture, not what was ephemeral and exotic. He ignored the opera, although it was the reigning form in every country in Europe. He planted himself squarely on German church music, particularly the essentially German art of organ play- ing, and on that foundation, supplemented with what was best of Italian and French device, he built up a massive edifice which bears in plan, outline, and every decorative detail the stamp of a German craftsman. The most musical family known to history was that of the Bachs. In six generations (Sebastian belonging to the fifth) we find marked musical ability, which in a number of instances before Sebastian appeared amounted almost to genius. As many as thirty-seven of the name are known to have held important musical positions. A large number during the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 284 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH turies were members of the town bands and choruses, which sustained almost the entire musical culture among the common people of Germany during that period. These organizations, combining the public practice of religious and secular music, were effective in nourishing both the artistic and the religious spirit of the time. In Germany in the seventeenth century there was as yet no opera and concert system to con- centrate musical activity in the theatre and public hall. The Church was the nursery of musical culture, and this culture was in no sense artificial or borrowed, it was based on types long known and beloved by the common people as their peculiar national inheritance, and associated with much that was stirring and honor- able in their history. Thuringia was one of the most musical districts in Germany in the seventeenth century, and was also a stronghold of the reformed religion. From this and its neighboring districts the Bachs never wandered. Eminent as they were in music, hardly one of them ever visited Italy or received instruction from a foreign master. They kept aloof from the courts, the hot-beds of foreign musical growths, and submitted themselves to the service of the Protestant Church. They were peasants and small farmers, well to do and everywhere respected. Their stern self-mastery held them uncon- taminated by the wide-spread demoralization that fol- lowed the Thirty Years' War. They appear as admirable types of that undemonstrative, patient, downright, and tenacious quality which has always saved Germany from social decline or disintegration in critical periods. 285 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH Into such a legacy of intelligence, thrift, and pro- bity came Johann Sebastian Bach. All the most admirable traits of his ancestry shine out again in him, reinforced by a creative gift which seems the accumula- tion of all the several talents of his house. He was born at Eisenach, March 21, 1685. His training as a boy was mainly received in choir schools at Ohrdruf and Liineburg, attaining mastership as organist and contrapuntist at the age of eighteen. He held official positions at Arnstadt, Miihlhausen, Weimar, and Anhalt- CcJthen, and was finally called to Leipsic as cantor of the Thomas school and director of music at the Thomas and Nicolai churches, where he labored from 1723 until his death in 1750. His life story presents no incidents of romantic interest. But little is known of his tem- perament or habits. In every place in which he labored his circumstances were much the same. He was a church organist and choir director from the beginning to the end of his career. He became the greatest organist of his time and the most accomplished master of musical science. His declared aim in life was to reform and perfect German church music. The means to achieve this were always afforded him, so far as the scanty musical facilities of the churches of that period would permit. His church compositions were a part of his official routine duties. His recognized abilities always procured him positions remunerative enough to protect him from anxiety. He was never subject to interruptions or serious discouragements. From first to last the path in life which he was especially qualified to pursue was clearly marked out before him. His 286 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH genius, his immense physical and mental energy, and his high sense of duty to God and his employers did the rest. Nowhere is there the record of a life more simple, straightforward, symmetrical, and complete. In spite of the intellectual and spiritual apathy pre- vailing in many sections of Germany, conditions were not altogether unfavorable for the special task which Bach assigned to himself. His desire to build up church music did not involve an effort to restore to congregational singing its pristine zeal, or to revive an antiquarian taste for the historic choir anthem. Bach was a man of the new time ; he threw himself into the current of musical progress, seized upon the forms which were still in process of development, giving them technical completeness and bringing to light latent possibilities which lesser men had been unable to discern. The material for his purpose was already within his reach. The religious folk-song, freighted with a pre- cious store of memories, was still an essential factor in public and private worship. The art of organ playing had developed a vigorous and pregnant national style in the choral prelude, the fugue, and a host of freer forms. The Passion music and the cantata had recently shown signs of brilliant promise. The Italian solo song was rejoicing in its first flush of conquest on German soil. No one, however, could foresee what might be done with these materials until Bach arose. He gathered them all in his hand, remoulded, blended, en- larged them, touched them with the fire of his genius and his religious passion, and thus produced works of 287 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH art which, intended for German evangelicalism, are now being adopted by the world as the most compre- hensive symbols in music of the essential Christian faith.i Bach was one of those supreme artists who concen- trate in themselves the spirit and the experiments of an epoch. In order, therefore, to know how the persistent religious consciousness of Germany strove to attain self-recognition through those art agencies which finally became fully operative in the eighteenth century, we need only study the works of this great representative musician, passing by the productions of the organists and cantors who shared, although in feebler measure, his illumination. For Bach was no isolated phenome- non of his time. He created no new styles; he gave art no new direction. He was one out of many poorly paid and overworked church musicians, performing the duties that were tj-aditionally attached to his office, improvising fugues and preludes, and accompanying choir and congregation at certain moments in the ser- vice, composing motets, cantatas, and occasionally a larger work for the regular order of the day, providing special music for a church festival, a public funeral, the inauguration of a town council, or the installation of a pastor. What distinguished Bach was simply the superiority of his work on these time-honored lines, the amazing variety of sentiment which he extracted from these conventional forms, the scientific learning which 1 The performance of Bach's cantatas by the Catholic Schola Cantoruin of Paris is one of many testimonies to the universality of the art of this sou of Lutherauism. 288 JO H ANN SEBASTIAN BACH puts him among the greatest technicians in the whole range of art, the prodigality of ideas, depth of feeling, and a sort of introspective mystical quality which he was able to impart to the involved and severe diction of his age. Bach's devotion to the Lutheran Church was almost as absorbed as Palestrina's to the Catholic. His was a sort of cloistered seclusion. Like every one who has made his mark upon church music he reverenced the Church as a historic institution. Her government, ceremonial, and traditions impressed his imagination, and kindled a blind, instinctive loyalty. He felt that he attained to his true self only under her admonitions. Her service was to him perfect freedom. His oppor- tunity to contribute to the glory of the Church was one that dwarfed every other privilege, and his official duty, his personal pleasure, and his highest ambition ran like a single current, fed by many streams, in one and the same channel. To measure the full strength of the mighty tide of feeling which runs through Bach's church music we must recognize this element of conviction, of moral necessity. Given Bach's inherited character, his education and liis environment, add the personal factor imagination and reverence and you have Bach's music, spontaneous yet inevitable, like a product of nature. Only out of sucli single-minded devotion to the interests of the Church, both as a spiritual nursery and as a venerated institution, has great church art ever sprung or can it spring. Bach's productions for the Church are divided into two general classes, viz., organ music and vocal music- 19 289 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH The organ music is better known to the world at large, and on account of its greater availability may outlive the vocal works in actual practice. For many reasons more or less obvious Bach's organ works are constantly heard in connection with public worship, both Catholic and Protestant, in Europe and America, and their use is steadily increasing ; while the choral compositions have almost entirely fallen out of the stated religious cere- mony, even in Germany, and have been relegated to the concert hall. In course of time the organ solo had grown into a constituent feature of the public act of worship in the German Protestant Church. In the Catholic Church solo organ playing is less intrinsic ; in fact it has no real historic or liturgic authorization and gives the impression rather of an embellishment, like elaborately carved choir-screens and rose windows, very ornamental and impressive, but not indispensable. But in the German system organ playing had become estab- lished by a sort of logic, first as an accompaniment to the people's hymn a function it assumed about 1600 and afterwards in the practice of extemporization upon choral themes. Out of this latter custom a style of organ composition grew up in the seventeenth century which, through association and a more or less definite correspondence with the spirit and order of the pre- scribed service, came to be looked upon as distinctively a church style. This German organ music was strictly church music according to the only adequate definition of church music that has ever been given, for it had grown up within the Church itself, and through its very- Uturgic connections had come to make its appeal to the wor- 290 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH shipers, not as an artistic decoration, but as an agency directly adapted to aid in promoting those ends which the church ceremony had in view. Furthermore, the dignity and severe intellectuality of this German organ style, combined with its majesty of sound and strength of movement, seemed to add distinctly to the biblical flavor of the liturgy, the uncompromising dogmatism of the authoritative teaching, and the intense moral earnest- ness which prevailed in the Church of Luther in its best estate. It was a form of art which was native to the organ, implied in the very tone and mechanism of the instrument ; it was absolutely untouched by the lighter tendencies already active in secular music. The notion of making the organ play pretty tunes and tickle the ear with the imitative sound of fancy stops never entered the heads of the German church musicians. The gravity and disciplined intelligence proper to the exer- cise of an ecclesiastical office must pervade every contri- bution of the organist. This conception was equally a matter of course to the mass of the people, and so the taste of the congregation and the conviction of the clerical authorities supported the organists in their adherence to the traditions of their strict and complex art. This lordly style was no less worthy of reverence in the eyes of all concerned because it was to all intents a German art, virtually unknown in other countries, except partially in the sister land of Holland, and therefore hedged about with the sanctions of patriotism as well as the universally admitted canons of religious musical expression. This form of music was evolved originally under the suggestion of the mediajval vocal polyphony, counter- 291 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH point redistributed, and systematized in accordance with the modern development of rhythm, tonality, and sec- tional structure. Its birthplace was Italy ; the canzona of Frescobaldi and his compeers was the parent of the fugue. The task of developing this Italian germ was given to the Dutch and Germans. The instrumental instinct and constructive genius of such men as Swe- linck, Scheldt, Buxtehude, Froberger, and Pachelbel carried the movement so far as to reveal its full possi- bilities, and Bach brought these possibilities to complete realization. As an organ player and composer it would seem that Bach stands at the summit of human achievement. His whole art as a player is to be found in his fugues, preludes, fantasies, toccatas, sonatas, and choral varia- tions. In his fugues he shows perhaps most convinc- ingly that supreme mastery of design and splendor of invention and fancy which have given him the place he holds by universal consent among the greatest artists of all time. In these compositions there is a variety and individuality which, without such examples, one could hardly suppose that this arbitrary form of construction would admit. With Bach the fugue is no dry intellectual exercise. So far as the absolutism of its laws permits, Bach's imagination moved as freely in the fugue as Beethoven's in the sonata or Schubert's in the lied. Its peculiar idiom was as native to him as his rugged Teuton speech. A German student's musical education in that day began with counterpoint, as at the present time it begins with figured bass harmony ; the ability to write every species of polyphony with ease 292 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH was a matter of course with every musical apprentice. But with Bach, the master, the fugue was not merely the sign of technical facility ; it was a means of expres- sion, a supreme manifestation of style. By the telling force of his subjects, the amazing dexterity and rich fancy displayed in their treatment, the ability to cover the widest range of emotional suggestion, his fugues appeal to a far deeper sense than wonder at technical cleverness. Considering that it lies in the very essence of the contrapuntal style that it should be governed by certain very rigid laws of design and procedure, we may apply to Bach's organ works in general a term that has been given to architecture, and say that they are "construction beautified." By this is meant that every feature, however beautiful in itself, finds its final charm and justification only as a necessary component in the comprehensive plan. Each detail helps to push onward the systematic unfolding of the design, it falls into its place by virtue of the laws of fitness and pro- portion ; logical and organic, but at the same time deco- rative and satisfactory to the aesthetic sense. There is indeed something almost architectonic in these master- pieces of the great Sebastian. In their superb rolling harmonies, their dense involutions, their subtle and inevitable unfoldings, their long-drawn cadences, and their thrilling climaxes, they seem to possess a fit rela- tion to the vaulted, reverberating ceilings, the massive pillars, and the half-lighted recesses of the sombre old buildings in which they had their birth. In both the architecture and the music we seem to apprehend a religious earnestness which drew its nourishment from 393 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH the most hidden depths of the soul, and which, even in its moments of exultation, would not appear to dis- regard those stern convictions in which it beUeved that it found the essentials of its faith. A form of instrumental music existed in the German Protestant Church which was peculiar to that institution, and which was exceedingly significant as forming a con- necting link between organ solo playing and the congre- gational worship. We have seen that the choral, at the very establishment of the new order by Luther, became a characteristic feature of the office of devotion, entering into the very framework of the liturgy by virtue of the official appointment of particular hymns (Hauptlieder) on certain days. As soon as the art of organ playing set out upon its independent career early in the seventeenth century, the organists began to take up the choral melodies as subjects for extempore performance. These tunes were especially adapted to this purpose by reason of their stately movement and breadth of style, which gave opportunity for the display of that mastery of florid harmonization in which the essence of the organ- ist's art consisted. The organist never played the printed compositions of others, or even his own, for voluntaries. He would no more think of doing so than a clergyman would preach another man's sermon, or even read one of his own from manuscript. To this day German unwritten law is rigorous on both these matters. The organist's method was always to impro- vise in the strict style upon themes invented by himself or borrowed from other sources. Nothing was more natural than that he should use the choral tunes as his 294 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH quarry, not only on account of their technical suitable- ness, but still more from the interest that would be aroused in the congregation, and the unity that would be established between the office of the organist and that of the people. The chorals that were appointed for the day would commonly furnish the player with his raw material, and the song of the people would appear again soaring above their heads, adorned by ef- fective tonal combinations. This method could also be employed to a more moderate extent in accompany- ing the congregation as they sang the hymn in unison ; interludes between the stanzas and even flourishes at the ends of the lines would give scope to the organist to exhibit his knowledge and fancy. The long-winded interlude at last became an abuse, and was reduced or suppressed ; but the free organ prelude on the entire choral melody grew in favor, and before Bach's day ability in this line was the chief test of a player's competence. In Bach's early days choral preludes by famous masters had found their way into print in large numbers, and were the objects of his assiduous study. His own productions in this class surpassed all his models, and as a free improviser on choral themes he ex- celled all his contemporaries. " I had supposed," said the famous Reinken, who at the age of ninety-seven heard Bach extemporize on "An Wasserfliissen Baby- lon " at Hamburg, "I had supposed that this art was dead, but I see that it still lives in you." In this species of playing, the hymn melody is given out with one hand or upon the pedals, while around it is woven a network of freely moving parts. The prelude may be brief, 295 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH included within the space limits of the original melody, or it may be indefinitely extended by increasing the length of the choral notes and working out interludes between the lines. The one hundred and thirty choral preludes which have come down to us from Bach's pen are samples of the kind of thing that he was extempo- rizing Sunday after Sunday. In these pieces the ac- companiment is sometimes fashioned on the basis of a definite melodic figure which is carried, with modulations and subtle modifications, all through the stanza, some- times on figures whose pattern changes with every fine ; while beneath or within the sounding arabesques are heard the long sonorous notes of the choral, holding the hearer firmly to the ground idea which the player's art is striving to impress and beautify. This form of music is something very different from the " theme and variations," which has played so conspicuous a part in the modern instrumental school from Haydn down to the present. In the choral prelude there is no modi- fication of the theme itself ; the subject in single notes forms a cantus firmus, on the same principle that ap- pears in the mediaeval vocal polyphony, around which the freely invented parts, moving laterally, are entwined. Although these compositions vary greatly in length, a single presentation of the decorated choral tune suffices with Bach except in rare instances, such as the prelude on " O Lamm Gottes unschuldig," in which tlie melody is given out three times, with a different scheme of ornament at each repetition. That Bach always restricts his choral elaboration to the end of illustrating the sentiment of the words with 396 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH whicli the theme is illustrated would be saying too much. Certainly he often does so, as in such beautiful examples as " O Mensch, bewein' dein' Siinde gross," " Schmiicke dich, meine Hebe Seele," and that touching setting of " Wenn wir in hdchsten Ndthen sein " which Bach dictated upon his deathbed. But the purpose of the choral prelude in the church worship was not neces- sarily to reflect and emphasize the thought of the hymn. This usage having become conventional, and the organ- ist being allowed much latitude in his treatment, his pride in his science would lead him to dilate and elabo- rate according to a musical rather than a poetic impulse, thinking less of appropriateness to a precise mood (an idea which, indeed, had hardly became lodged in instru- mental music in Bach's time) than of producing an abstract work of art contrived in accordance with the formal prescriptions of German musical science. The majority of Bach's works in this form are, it must be said, conventional and scholastic, some even dry and pedantic. Efforts at popularizing them at the present day have but slight success ; but in not a few Bach's craving for expression crops out, and some of his most gracious inspirations are to be found in these inciden- tal and apparently fugitive productions. In order to win the clue to Bach's vocal as well as his instrumental style, we must constantly refer back to liis works for the organ. As Handel's genius in oratorio was shaped under the influence of the Italian aria, direct or derived, and as certain modern composers, such as Berlioz, seize their first conceptions already clothed in orchestral garb, so Bach seemed to think in 297 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH terms of the organ. Examine one of his contrapuntal choruses, or even one of his arias with its obligate accompaniment, and you are instantly reminded of the mode of facture of his organ pieces. His education rested upon organ music, and he only yielded to one of the most potent influences of his time when he made the organ the dominant factor in his musical expression. The instrumental genius of Germany had already come to self-consciousness at the end of the seventeenth cen- tury, and was as plainly revealing itself in organ music as it did a century later in the sonata and symphony. The virtuoso spirit the just pride in technical skill always keeps pace with the development of style ; in the nature of things these two are mutually dependent ele- ments in progress. In Bach the love of exercising his skill as an executant was a part of his very birthright as a musician. Tlie organ was to him very much what the pianoforte was to Liszt, and in each the virtuoso instinct was a fire which must burst forth, or it would consume the very soul of its possessor. And so we find among the fugues, fantasies, and toccatas of Bach compositions whose dazzling magnificence is not exceeded by the most sensational effusions of the modern pianoforte and orchestral schools. In all the realm of music there is nothing more superb than those Niagaras of impetuous sound which roll through such works as the F major and D minor toccatas and the G major fantasie, to select examples out of scores of equally apt illustrations. But sound and fury are by no means their aim ; Bach's invention and science are never more resourceful than when apparently driven by the demon of unrest. In 298 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH order to give the freest sweep to his fancy Bach, the supreme lord of form, often broke through form's con- ventionalisms, so that even his fugues sometimes be- came, as they have been called, fantasies in the form of fugues, just as Beethoven, under a similar impulse, wrote sonate quasi fantasie. Witness the E minor fugue with the " wedge theme." In Bach's day and country there was no concert stage ; the instrumental virtuoso was the organist. It is not necessary to suppose, there- fore, that pieces so exciting to the nerves as those to which I have alluded were all composed strictly for the ordinary church worship. There were many occasions, such as the " opening " of a new organ or a civic festi- val, when the organist could " let himself go " without incurring the charge of introducing a profane or alien element. And yet, even as church music, these pieces were not altogether incongruous. We must always keep in mind that the question of appropriate- ness in church music depends very much upon associa- tion and custom. A style that would be execrated as blasphemous in a Calvinist assembly would be received as perfectly becoming in a Catholic or Lutheran cere- mony. A style of music that has grown up in the very heart of a certain Church, identified for generations with the peculiar ritual and history of that Church, is proper ecclesiastical music so far as that particular institution is concerned. Those who condemn Bach's music organ works, cantatas, and Passions as unchurchly ignore this vital point. Moreover, the conception of the func- tion of music in the service of tlie German Evangelical Church waa never so austere that brilliancy and grandeur 299 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH were deemed incompatible with the theory of religious ceremony. It may be said that Bach's grandest organ pieces are conceived as the expression of what may be called the religious passion the rapture which may not unworthily come upon the believer when his soul opens to the reception of ideas the most penetrating and sublime. Certainly no other religious institution has come so near the solution of the problem of the proper use of the instrumental solo in public worship. Through the connection of the organ music with the people's hymn in the choral prelude, and the conformity of its style to that of the choir music in motet and cantata, it became vitally blended with the whole office of praise and prayer ; its effect was to gather up and merge all individual emo- tions into the projection of the mood of aspiration that was common to all. The work performed by Bach for the church cantata was somewhat similar in nature to his service to the choral prelude, and was carried out with a far more lavish expenditure of creative power. The cantata, now no longer a constituent of the German Evangelical worship, in the eighteenth century held a place in the ritual analo- gous to that occupied by the anthem in the morning and evening prayer of the Church of England. It is always of larger scale than the anthem, and its size was one cause of its exclusion in the arbitrary and irregular reductions which the Evangelical liturgies have under- gone in the last century and a half. There is nothing in its florid character to justify this procedure, for it may be, and in Bach usually is, more closely related to the 300 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH ritual framework than the English anthem, in conse- quence of the manner in which it has been made to absorb strictly liturgic forms into its substance. Bach, in his cantatas, kept the notion of liturgic unity clearlj' in mind. He effected this unity largely by his use of the choral as a conspicuous element in the cantata, often as its very foundation. He checked the Italianizing process by working the arioso recitative, the aria for one or more voices, and the chorus into one grand musical scheme, in which his intricate organ style served both as fabric and decoration. By the unexam- pled prominence which he gave the choral as a mine of thematic material, he gave the cantata not only a strik- ing originality, but also an air of unmistakable fitness to the character and special expression of tlie confession which it served. By these means, which are concerned with its form, and still more by the astonishing variety, truth, and beauty with which he was able to meet the needs of each occasion for which a work of this kind was appointed, he endowed his Church and nation with a treasure of religious song compared with which, for mag- nitude, diversit}'', and power, the creative work of any other church musician that may be named Palestrina, Gabrieli, or whoever he may be sinks into insignifi- cance. Bach wrote five series of cantatiis for the Sundays and festal days of the church year in all two hundred and ninety-five. Of these two hundred and sixty-six were written at Leipsic. They vary greatly in lengtli, the shortest occupying twenty minutes or so in performance, the longest an hour or more. Taken together, they 301 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH afford such an astonishing display of versatility that any proper characterization of them in a single chapter would be quite out of the question. A considerable number are available for study in Peters's cheap edition, and the majority are analyzed with respect to their salient fea- tures in Spitta's encyclopedic Bach biography. Among the great diversity of interesting qualities which they exhibit, the employment of the choral must be especially emphasized as affording the clue, already indicated, to Bach's whole conception of the cantata as a species of religious art. The choral, especially that appointed for a particular day (Hauptlied), is often used as the guid- ing thread which weaves the work into the texture of the whole daily office. In such cases the chosen choral will appear in the different numbers of the work in frag- ments or motives, sometimes as subject for voice parts, or woven into the accompaniment as theme or in obligato fashion. It is more common for entire lines of the choral to be treated as canti firmi, forming the subjects on which elaborate contrapuntal choruses are constructed, follow- ing precisely the same principle of design that I have described in the case of the organ choral preludes. In multitudes of cantata movements lines or verses from two or more chorals are introduced. There are cantatas, such as " Wer nur den lieben Gott," in which each num- ber, whether recitative, aria, or chorus, takes its thematic material, intact or modified, from a choral. The famous "Ein' feste Burg" is a notable example of a cantata in which Bach adheres to a hymn-tune in every number, treating it line by line, deriving from it the pervading tone of the work as well as its constructional plan. The 302 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH ways in which Bach applies the store of popular reli- gious melody to the higher uses of art are legion. A can- tata of Bach usually ends with a choral in its complete ordinary form, plainly but richly harmonized in note-for- note four-part setting as though for congregational sing- ing. It was not the custom, however, in Bach's day for the congregation to join in this closing choral. There are cantatas, such as the renowned " Ich hatte viel Be- kiimmerniss," in which the choral melody nowhere ap- pears. Such cantatas are rare, and the use of the choral became more prominent and systematic in Bach's work as time went on. The devotional ideal of the Protestant Church as compared with the Catholic gives far more liberal recognition to the private religious consciousness of the individual. The believer does not so completely surrender his personality; in his mental reactions to the ministrations of the clergy he still remains aware of that inner world of experience which is his world, not merged and lost in the universalized life of a reli- gious community. The Church is his inspirer and guide, not his absolute master. The foundation of the German choral was a religious declaration of indepen- dence. The German hymns were each the testimony of a thinker to his own private conception of religious truth. The tone and feeling of each hymn were sug- gested and colored by the general doctrine of the Church, but not dictated. The adoption of these utterances of independent feeling into the liturgy was a recognition on the part of authority of individual right. It was not a concession; it was the legal ac- 303 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH knowledgment of a fundamental principle. Parallel to this significant privilege was the admission of music of the largest variety and penetrated at will with subjective feeling. This conception was carried out consistently in the cantata as established by Bach, most liberally, of course, in the arias. The words of the cantata consisted of Bible texts, stanzas of church hymns, and religious poems, the whole illustrating some Scripture theme or referring to some especial commemoration. The hard and fast metrical schemes of the German hymns were unsuited to the structure and rhythm of the aria, and so a form of verse known as the madrigal, derived from Italy, was used when rhythmical flexibility was an object. For all these reasons we have in Bach's arias the widest license of expression admissible in the school of art which he represented. The Hamburg composers, in their shal- low aims, had boldly transferred the Italian concert aria as it stood into the Church, as a sign of their complete defiance of ecclesiastical prescription. Not so Bach; the ancient churchly ideal was to him a thing to be reverenced, even when he departed from it. He, therefore, took a middle course. The Italian notion of an aria buoyant, tuneful, the voice part sufficient unto itself had noplace in Bach's method. A melody to him was usually a detail in a contrapuntal scheme. And so he wove the voice part into the accompaniment, a single instrument a violin, perhaps, or oboe often raised into relief, vying with the voice on equal terms, often soaring above it and carrying the principal theme, while the voice part serves as an obligato. This 304 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH method, hardly consistent with a pure vocal system, often results with Bach, it must be confessed, in some- thing very mechanical and monotonous to modern ears. The artifice is apparent ; the author seems more bent on working out a sort of algebraic formula than interpret- ing the text to the sensibility. From the traditional point of view this method is not in itself mal du propos^ for such a treatment raises the sentiment into that calm region of abstraction which is the proper refuge of the devotional mood. But here, as in the organ pieces. Bach is no slave to his technic. There are many arias in his cantatas in which the musical expression is not only beautiful and touching in the highest degree, but also yields with wonderful truth to every mutation of feeling in the text. Still more impressively is this mastery of expression shown in the arioso recitatives. In their depth and beauty they are unique in religious music. Only in very rare moments can Handel pretend to rival them. Mendelssohn reflects them in his ora- torios and psalms, as the moon reflects the sun. The choruses of Bach's cantatas would furnish a field for endless study. Nowhere else is his genius more grandly displayed. The only work entitled to be compared with these choruses is found in Handel's oratorios. In drawing such a parallel, and observing the greater variety of style in Handel, we must remem- ber that Bach's cantatas are church music. Handel's oratorios are not. Bach's cantata texts are not only confined to a single sphere of thought, viz.^ the devo- tional, but they are also strictly lyric. The church cantata does not admit any suggestion of action or 20 305 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH external picture. The oratorio, on the other hand, is practically unlimited in scope, and in Handel's choruses the style and treatment are given almost unrestrained license in the way of dramatic and epic suggestion. Within the restrictions imposed upon him, however, Bach expends upon his choruses a wealth of invention in design and expression not less wonderful than that exhibited in his organ works. The motet form, the free fantasia and the choral fantasia forms are all em- ployed, and every device known to his art is applied for the illustration of the text. Grace and tenderness, when the cheering assurances of the Gospel are the theme, crushing burdens of gloom when the author's thought turns to the mysteries of death and judgment, mournfulness in view of sin, the pleading accents of contrition, every manifestation of emotion which a rigid creed, allied to a racial mysticism which evades positive conceptions, can call forth is projected in tones whose strength and fervor were never attained before in religious music. It is Bach's organ style which is here in evidence, imparting to the chorus its close-knit structure and majesty of sound, humanized by a melody drawn from the choral and from what was most refined in Italian art. "One peculiar trait in Bach's nature," says Kretz- schmar, "is revealed in the cantatas in grand, half- distinct outlines, and this is the longing for death and life with the Lord. This theme is struck in the can- tatas more frequently than almost any other. We know him as a giant nature in all situations; great and grandiose is also his joy and cheerfulness. But 306 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACR never, we believe, does his art work with fuller energy and abandonment than when his texts express earth- weariness and the longing for the last hour. The fervor which then displays itself in ever-varying regis- ters, in both calm and stormy regions, has in it some- thing almost demonic. " ^ The work that has most contributed to make the name of Bach familiar to the educated world at large is the Passion according to St. Matthew. Bach wrote five Passions, of which only two the St. John and the St. Matthew have come down to us. The former has a rugged force like one of Michael Angelo's unpol- ished statues, but it cannot fairly be compared to the St. Matthew in largeness of conception or beauty of detail. In Bach's treatment of the Passion story we have the culmination of the artistic development of the early liturgic practice whose progress has already been sketched. Bach completed the process of fusing the Italian aria and recitative with the German chorus, hymn-tune, and organ and orchestral music, interspers- ing the Gospel narrative with lyric sections in the form of airs, arioso recitatives, and choruses, in which the feelings proper to a believer meditating on the suffer- ings of Christ in behalf of mankind are portrayed with all the poignancy of pathos of which Bach was master. Ivviudicious critics have sometimes attempted to set bp a comijarison between the St. Matthew Passion and Handel's "Mes*iab/' questioning which is the greater. But such captious rivalry is derogatory to both, for they are not to be gauged by the same standard. To ^ Eretzschmar, Fiihrcr durch den Concertsaal ; Kirchliche Werke. 307 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH say nothing of the radical differences in style, origin, and artistic conception, the one a piece of Lutheran church music, the other an English concert oratorio of Italian ancestry, they are utterly unlike also in poetic intention. Bach's work deals only with the human in Christ; it is the narrative of his last interviews with his disciples, his arrest, trial, and death, together with comments by imagined personalities contemplating these events, both in their immediate action upon the sensibilities and in their doctrinal bearing. It is, therefore, a work so mixed in style that it is difficult to classify it, for it is both epic and implicitly dramatic, while in all its lyric features it is set firmly into the Evangelical liturgic scheme. The text and musical construction of the " Messiah " have no connection with any liturgy ; it is concert music of a universal religious character, almost devoid of narrative, and with no dramatic suggestion whatever. Each is a triumph of genius, but of genius working with quite different intentions. In the formal arrangement of the St. Matthew Pas- sion Bach had no option ; he must perforce comply with church tradition. The narrative of the evangelist, taken without change from St. Matthew's Gospel and sung in recitative by a tenor, is the thread upon which the successive divisions are strung. The words of Jesus, Peter, the high priest, and Pilate are given to a bass, and are also in recitative. The Jews and the disciples are represented by choruses. The "Protestant con- gregation " forms another group, singing appropriate chorals. A third element comprises the company of 308 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH believers and the " daughter of Zion, " singing choruses and arias in comment upon the situations as described by the evangelist. It must be remembered that these chorus factors are not indicated by any division of singers into groups. The work is performed through- out by the same company of singers, in Bach's day by the diminutive choir of the Leipsic Church, composed of boys and young men. Even in the chorals the con- gregation took no part. The idea of the whole is much the same as in a series of old Italian chapel frescoes. The disciple sits with Christ at the last supper, accom- panies him to the garden of Gethsemane and to the procurator's hall, witnesses his mockery and condem- nation, and takes his station at the foot of the cross, lamenting alternately the sufferings of his Lord and the sin which demanded such a sacrifice. Upon this prescribed formula Bach has poured all the wealth of his experience, his imagination, and his piety. His science is not brought forward so promi- nently as in many of his works, and where he finds it necessary to employ it he subordinates it to tlie expres- sion of feeling. Yet we cannot hear without amaze- ment the gigantic opening movement in which the awful burden of the great tragedy is foreshadowed ; where, as if organ, orchestra, and double chorus were not enough to sustain the composer's conception, a ninth part, bearing a choral melody, floats above the surging mass of sound, holding the thought of the hearer to the sig- nificance of the coming scenes. The long chorus which closes the first part, which is constructed in the form of a figured choral, is also built upon a scale which 309 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH Bach has seldom exceeded. But the structure of the work in general is comparatively open, and the expres- sion direct and clear. An atmosphere of profoundest gloom pervades the work from beginning to end, ever growing darker as the scenes of the terrible drama advance and culminate, yet here and there relieved by gleams of divine tenderness and human pity. That Bach was able to carry a single mood, and that a de- pressing one, through a composition of three hours' length without falling into monotony at any point is one of the miracles of musical creation. The meditative portions of the work in aria, recita- tive, and chorus are rendered with great beauty and pathos, in spite of occasional archaic stiffness. Dry and artificial some of the da capo arias undoubtedly are, for that quality of fluency which always accom- panies genius never yet failed to beguile its possessor into by-paths of dulness. But work purely formalistic is not common in the St. Matthew Passion. Never did religious music afford anything more touching and serene than such numbers as the tenor solo and chorus, "Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen," the bass solo, "Am Abend, da es kiihle war," and the recitative and chorus, matchless in tenderness, beginning " Nun ist der Herr zur Ruh' gebracht." Especially impressive are the tones given to the words of the Saviour. These tones are distinguished from those of the other person- ages not only by their greater melodic beauty, but also by their accompaniment, which consists of the stringed instruments, while the other recitatives are supported by the organ alone. In Christ's despairing cry upon 310 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH the cross, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, " this ethereal stringed accompaniment is extinguished. What Bach intended to signify by this change is not certainly known. This exclamation of Jesus, the only instance i:i his life when he seemed to lose his certainty of the divine cooperation, must be distinguished in some way, Bach probably thought, from all his other utterances. Additional musical means would be utterly futile, for neither music nor any other art has any expression for the mental anguish of that supreme moment. The only expedient possible was to reduce music at that point, substituting plain organ chords, and let the words of Christ stand out in bold relief in all their terrible significance. The chorals in the St. Matthew Passion are taken bodily, both words and tunes, from the church hymn- book. Prominent among them is the famous " O Haupt voU Blut und Wunden " by Gerhardt after St. Bernard, which is used five times. These choral melo- dies are harmonized in simple homophonic style, but with extreme beauty. As an instance of the poetic fitness with which these chorals are introduced we may cite the last in the work, where immediately after the words "Jesus cried with a loud voice and gave up the ghost," the chorus sings a stanza beginning "When my death hour approaches forsake not me, O Lord." "This climax," says Spitta, "has always been justly regarded as one of the most thrilling of the whole work. The infinite significance of the sacrifice could not be more simply, comprehensively, and convincingly expressed than in this marvellous prayer." 311 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH This wonderful creation closes with a chorus of fare- well sung beside the tomb of Jesus. It is a worthy close, for nothing more lovely and affecting was ever confided to human lips. The gloom and agony that have pervaded the scenes of temptation, trial, and death have quite vanished. The tone is indeed that of lamentation, for the Passion drama in its very aim and tradition did not admit any anticipation of the resur- rection; neither in the Catholic or Lutheran cere- monies of Good Friday is there a foreshadowing of the Easter rejoicing. But the sentiment of this closing chorus is not one of hopeless grief; it expresses rather a sense of relief that suffering is past, mingled with a strain of solemn rapture, as if dimly conscious that the tomb is not the end of all. The first performance of the St. Matthew Passion took place in the Thomas church at Leipsic, on Good Friday, April 15, 1729. It was afterwards revised and extended, and performed again in 1740. From that time it was nowhere heard until it was produced by Felix Mendelssohn in the Sing Academic at Berlin in 1829. The impression it produced was profound, and marked the beginning of the revival of the study of Bach which has been one of the most fruitful move- ments in nineteenth-century music. A work equally great in a different way, although it can never become the object of such popular regard as the St. Matthew Passion, is the Mass in B minor. It may seem strange that the man who more than any other interpreted in art the genius of Protestantism should have contributed to a form of music that is iden- 312 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH tified with the Catholic ritual. It must be remembered that Luther was by no means inclined to break with all the forms and usages of the mother Church. He had no quarrel with those features of her rites which did not embody the doctrines which he disavoweci, and most heartily did he recognize the beauty and edifying power of Catholic music. We have seen also that he was in favor of retaining the Latin in communities where it was understood. Hence it was that not only in Luther's day, but long after, the Evangelical Church retained many musical features that had become sacred in the practice of the ancient Church. The congre- gations of Leipsio were especially conservative in this respect. The entire mass in figured form, however, was not used in the Leipsic service ; on certain special days a part only would be sung. The Kyrie and Gloria, known among the Lutheran musicians as the "short mass," were frequently employed. The B minor Mass was not composed for the Leipsic ser- vice, but for the chapel of the king of Saxony in Bach's honorary capacity of composer to the royal and electoral court. It was begun in 1735 and finished in 1738, but was not performed entire in Bach's life- time. By the time it was completed it had outgrown the dimensions of a service mass, and it has probably never been sung in actual church worship. It is so difficult that its performance is an event worthy of special commemoration. Its first complete production in the United States was at Bethlehem, Pa., in the spring of 1900. It is enough to say of this work here that all Bach's powers as fabricator of intricate 313 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH design, and as master of all the shades of expression which the contrapuntal style admits, are forced to their furthest limit. So vast is it in scale, so majestic in its movement, so elemental in the grandeur of its climaxes, that it may well be taken as the loftiest expression in tones of the prophetic faith of Christendom, unless Beethoven's Missa Solemnis may dispute the title. It belongs not to the Catholic communion alone, nor to the Protestant, but to the Church universal, the Church visible and invisible, the Church militant and trium- phant. The greatest master of the sublime in choral music. Bach in this mass sounded all the depths of his unrivalled science and his imaginative energy. There is no loftier example in history of artistic genius devoted to the service of religion than we find in Johann Sebastian Bach. He always felt that his life was consecrated to God, to the honor of the Church and the well-being of men. Next to this fact we are impressed in studying him with his vigorous intellec- tuality, by which I mean his accurate estimate of the nature and extent of his own powers and his easy self- adjustment to his environment. He was never the sport of his genius but always its master, never carried away like so many others, even the greatest, into extravagan- cies or rash experiments. Mozart and Beethoven failed in oratorio, Schubert in opera ; the Italian operas of Gluck and Handel have perished. Even in the suc- cessful work of these men there is a strange inequal- ity. But upon all that Bach attempted and the amount of his work is no less a marvel than its quality he affixed the stamp of final and inimitable perfec- 314 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH tion. We know from testimony that this perfection was the result of thought and unflagging toil. The file was not the least serviceable tool in his work- shop. This intellectual restraint, operating upon a highly intellectualized form of art, often gives Bach's music an air of severity, a scholastic hardness, which repels sympathy and makes difficult the path to the treasures it contains. The musical culture of our age has been so long based on a different school that no little discipline is needed to adjust the mind to Bach's manner of presenting his profound ideas. The diffi- culty is analogous to that experienced in acquiring an appreciation of Gothic sculpture and the Floren- tine painting of the fourteenth century. We are compelled to learn a new musical language, for it is only in a qualified sense that the language of music is universal. We must put ourselves into another century, face another order of ideas than those of our own age. We must learn the temper of the Ger- man mind in the Reformation period and after, its proud self-assertion, coupled to an aggressive positive- ness of religious belief, which, after all, was but the hard shell which enclosed a rare sweetness of piety. All through Bach we feel the well-known German mysticism which seeks the truth in the instinctive convictions of the soul, the idealism which takes the mind as the measure of existence, the romanticism which colors the outer world with the hues of per- sonal temperament. Bach's historic position required that this spirit, in many ways so modern, should take shape in forms to which still clung the tech- 815 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH nical methods of an earlier time. His all-encompassing organ style was Gothic if we may use such a term for illustration's sake not Renaissance. His style is Teutonic in the widest as well as the most literal sense. It is based on forms identified with the practice of the people in church and home. He recognized not the priestly or the aristocratic element, but the popular. His significance in the history of German Evangelical Christianity is great. Protestantism, like Catholicism, has had its supreme poet. As Dante embodied in an immortal epic the philosophic conceptions, the hopes and fears of mediaeval Catholicism, so Bach, less obviously but no less truly, in his cantatas, Passions, and choral preludes, lent the illuminating power of his art to the ideas which brought forth the Reforma- tion. It is the central demand of Protestantism, the immediate personal access of man to God, which, constituting a new motive in German national music, gave shape and direction to Bach's creative genius. It has been reserved for recent years to discover that the title of chief representative in art of German Protestantism is, after all, not the sum of Bach's claims to honor. There is something in his art that touches the deepest chords of religious feeling in wliat- ever communion that feeling has been nurtured. His music is not the music of a confession, but of human- ity. What changes the spirit of religious progress is destined to undergo in the coming years it would be vain to predict ; but it is safe to assume that the warrant of faith will not consist in authority com- mitted to councils or synods, or altogether in a verbal 316 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH revelation supposed to have been vouchsafed at cer- tain epochs in the past, but in the intuition of the continued presence of the eternal creative spirit in the soul of man. This consciousness, of which creeds and liturgies are but partial and temporary symbols, can find no adequate artistic expression unless it be in the art of music. The more clearly this fact is recognized by the world, the more the fame of Sebas- tian Bach will increase, for no other musician has so amply embraced and so deeply penetrated the uni- versal religious sentiment. It may well be said of Bach what a French critic says of Albrecht Diirer: " He was an intermediary between the Middle Age and our modern times. Typical of the former in that he was primarily a craftsman, laboring with all the sincerity and unconscious modesty of the good workman who delights in his labor, he yet felt something of the tor- mented spiritual unrest of the latter ; and indeed so strik- ingly reflects what we call the ' modern spirit ' that his work has to-day more influence upon our own thought and art than it had upon that of his contemporaries." ^ The verdict of the admirers of Bach in respect to his greatness is not annulled when it is found that the power and real significance of his work were not com- preliended by the mass of his countrymen during his life, and that outside of Leipsic he exerted little in- fluence upon religious art for nearly a century after his death. He was not the less a typical German on this account. Only at certain critical moments do nations ^ Ars^ue Alexandre, Histoire populaire de la Peinture. 817 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH seem to be true to their better selves, and it often happens that their greatest men appear in periods of general moral relaxation, apparently rebuking the un- worthiness of their fellow citizens instead of exemplify- ing common traits of character. But later generations are able to see that, after all, these men are not detached ; their real bases, although out of sight for the time, are immovably set in nationality. Milton was no less representative of pemianent elements in English char- acter when " fallen upon evil days," when the direc- tion of affairs seemed given over to " sons of Belial,'* who mocked at all he held necessary to social welfare. Michael Angelo was still a genuine son of Italy when he mourned in bitterness of soul over her degradation. And so the spirit that pervaded the life and works of Bach is a German spirit, a spirit which Germany has often seemed to disown, but which in times of need has often reasserted itself with splendid confidence and called her back to soberness and sincerity. When Bach had passed away, it seemed as if the mighty force he exerted had been dissipated. He had not checked the decline of church music. The art of organ playing degenerated. The choirs, never really adequate, became more and more unable to do justice to the great works that had been bequeathed to them. The public taste relaxed, and the demand for a more florid and fetching kind of song naturalized in the Church the theatrical style already predominant in France and Italy. The people lost their perception of the real merit of their old chorals and permitted them to be altered to suit the requirements of contemporary 318 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH fashion, or else sliglited them altogether in favor of the new " art song." No composers appeared who were able or cared to perpetuate the old traditions. This tendency was inevitable; its causes are perfectly ap- parent to any one who knows the conditions prevailing in religion and art in Germany in the last half of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth cen- turies. Pietism, with all its merits, had thrown a sort of puritanic wet blanket over art in its protest against the external and formal in worship. In the orthodox church circles the enthusiasm necessary to nourish a wholesome spiritual life and a living church art at the same time had sadly abated. The inculcation of a dry utilitarian morality and the cultivation of a dogmatic pedantry had taken the place of the joyous freedom of the Gospel. Other more direct causes also entered to turn public interest away from the music of the Church. The Italian opera, with its equipment of sensuous fasci- nations, devoid of serious aims, was at the high tide of its popularity, patronized by the ruling classes, and giving the tone to all the musical culture of the time. A still more obvious impediment to the revival of popular interest in church music was the rapid forma- tion throughout Germany of choral societies devoted to the performance of oratorios. Following the example of England, these societies took up the works of Handel, and the enthusiasm excited by Haydn's " Creation " in 1798 gave a still more powerful stimulus to the move- ment. These choral unions had no connection with the church choirs of the eighteenth century, but grew out of private musical associations. The great German 319 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH music festivals date from about 1810, and they absorbed tiie interest of those composers whose talent turned towaixis works of religious content. The church choirs were already in decline when the choral societies began to raise their heads. Cantatas and Passions were no longer heard in church worship. Their place in public regard was taken by the concert oratorio. The current of instrumental music, one of the chief glories of Ger- man art in the nineteenth century, was absorbing more and more of the contributions of German genius. The whole trend of the age was toward secular music. It would appear that a truly great art of church music cannot maintain itself beside a rising enthusiasm for secular music. Either the two styles will be amalga- mated, and church music be transformed to the measure of the other, as happened in the case of Catholic music, or church song will stagnate, as was the case in Protes- tant Germany. After the War of Liberation, ending with the down- fall of Napoleon's tyranny, and when Germany began to enter upon a period of critical self-examination, demands began to be heard for the reinstatement of church music on a worthier basis. The assertion of nationality in other branches of musical art the sym- phonies of Beethoven, the songs of Schubert, the operas of Weber was echoed in the domain of church music, not at first in the production of great works, but in performance, criticism, and appeal. It is not to be de- nied that a steady uplift in the department of church music has been in progress in Germany all through the nineteenth century. The transition from rationalism 320 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH and infidelity to a new and higher phase of evangelical religion effected under the lead of Schleiermacher, the renewed interest in church history, the effort to bring the forms of worship into cooperation with a quickened spiritual life, the revival of the study of the great works of German art as related to national intellectual de- velopment, these influences and many more have strongly stirred the cause of church music both in composition and performance. Choirs have been en- larged and strengthened ; the soprano and alto parts are still exclusively sung by boys, but the tenor and bass parts are taken by mature and thoroughly trained men, instead of by raw youths, as in Bach's time and after. In such choirs as those of the Berlin cathedral and the Leipsic Thomas church, artistic sing- ing attains a richness of tone and finish of style hardly to be surpassed. The most wholesome result of these movements has been to bring about a clearer distinction in the minds of churchmen between a proper church style in music and the concert style. Church-music associations (evange- lische Kirchengesang-Vereine), analogous to the Catholic St. Cecilia Society, have taken in hand the question of the establishment of church music on a more strict and efficient basis. Such masters as Mendelssohn, Richter, Hauptmann, Kiel, and Grell liave produced works of great beauty, and at the same time admirably suited to the ideal requirements of public worsliip. In spite of tlie present more healthful condition of Oerman Evangelical music as compared with the feeble- ness and indefiniteness of the early part of the nineteenth 21 321 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH century, there is little assurance of the restoration of this branch of art to the position which it held in the national life two hundred years ago. In the strict sense writers of the school of Spitta are correct in asserting that a Protestant church music no longer exists, " It must be denied that an independent branch of the tonal art is to be found which has its home only in the Church, which contains life and the capacity for development in itself, and in whose sphere the creative artist seeks his ideals." ^ On the other hand, a hopeful sign has appeared in re- cent German musical history in the foundation of the New Bach Society, with headquarters at Leipsic, in 1900. The task assumed by this society, which includes a large number of the most eminent musicians of Germany, is that of making Bach's choral works better known, and especially of reintroducing them into their old place in the worship of the Evangelical churches. The success of such an effort would doubtless be fraught with im- portant consequences, and perhaps inaugurate a new era in the history of German church music. ^ Spitta, Zur Musik : Wiederbelebung protestantischer Kirchenmusik auf geschiclUhcher Grutidlage. S?2 CHAPTER X THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND The musical productions that have emanated from the Church of England possess no such independent interest as works of art as those which so richly adorn the Catholic and the German Evangelical systems. With the exception of the naturalized Handel (whose few occasional anthems, Te Deums, and miscellaneous church pieces give him an incidental place in the roll of English ecclesiastical musicians), there is no name to be found in connection with the English cathedral service that compares in lustre with those that give such renown to the religious song of Italy and Germany. Yet in spite of this mediocrity of achievement, the music of the Anglican Church has won an honorable historic position, not only by reason of the creditable average of excellence which it has maintained for three hundred years, but still more through its close identification with those fierce conflicts over dogma, ritual, polity, and the relation of the Church to the individual which have given such a singular interest to English ecclesiastical history. Methods of musical expression have been almost as hotly contested as vital matters of doctrine and author- ity, and the result has been that the li^nglish j^ople look upon their national religious song with a respect such as, 323 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH perhaps, no other school of church music receives in its own home. The value and purpose of music in worship, and the manner of performance most conducive to edifi- cation, have been for centuries the subjects of such serious discussion that the problems propounded by the history of English church music are of perennial inter- est. The dignity, orderliness, tranquillity, and gracious- ness in outward form and inward spirit which have come to distinguish the Anglican Establishment are reflected in its anthems and " services," its chants and hymns ; while the simplicity and sturdy, aggressive sin- cerity of the non-conformist sects may be felt in the accents of their psalmody. The clash of liturgic and non-liturgic opinions, conformity and independence, Anglicanism and Puritanism, may be plainly heard in the church musical history of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and even to-day the contest has not everywhere been settled by conciliation and fraternal sympathy. The study of English church music, therefore, is the study of musical forms and practices more than of works of art as such. We are met at the outset by a spectacle not paralleled in other Protestant countries, viz., the cleavage of the reformed Church into two violently hostile divisions ; and we find the struggle for supremacy between Anglicans and Puritans fought out in the sphere of art and ritual as well as on the battlefield and the arena of theological polemic. Consequently we are obliged to trace two distinct lines of development the ritual music of the Establishment and the psalmody of the dissenting bodies trying to discover how these con-- 824 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND tending principles acted upon each other, and what instruction can be drawn from their collision and their final compromise. The Reformation in England took in many respects a very different course from that upon the continent. In Germany, France, SAvitzerland, and the Netherlands the revolt against Rome was initiated by men who sprung from the ranks of the people. Notwithstanding the com- plication of motives which drew princes and commoners, ecclesiastics and laymen, into the rebellion, the movement was primarily religious, first a protest against abuses, next the demand for free privileges in the Gospel, followed by restatements of belief and the establishment of new forms of worship. Political changes followed in the train of the religious revolution, because in most instances there was such close alliance between the secular powers and the papacy that allegiance to the former was not compat- ible with resistance to the latter. In England this process was reversed; political sepa- ration preceded the religious changes ; it was the alliance between the government and the papacy that was first to break. The emancipation from the supremacy of Rome was accomplished at a single stroke by the crown itself, and that not upon moral grounds or doctrinal disagree- ment, but solely for political advantage. In spite of tokens of spiritual unrest, there was no sign of a dispo- sition on the part of any considerable number of the English people to sever their fealty to the Church of Rome when, in 1534, Henry VIII. issued a royal edict repudiating the papal authority, and a submissive Parlia- ment decreed that "the king, our sovereign lord, his 325 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England." The English Church became in a day what it had often shown a desire to become a national Church, free from the arbitrary autliority of an Italian overloi-dship, the king instead of the pope at its head, with supreme power in all matters of appointment and discipline, possessing even the prerogative of deciding what should be the religious beUef and manner of wor- ship in the realm. No doctrinal change was involved in this proceeding ; there was no implied admission of free- dom of conscience or religious toleration. The mediaeval conception of the necessity of religious unanimity among all the subjects of the state one single state Church maintained in ever}' precept and ordinance by the power of the throne was rigorously reasserted. The English Church had simply exchanged one master for another, and had gained a spiritual tyranny to which were attached no conceptions of right drawn from ancestral association or historic tradition. The immediate occasion for this action on the part of Henry VIII, was, as all know, his exasperation against Clement VII. on account of that pope's refusal to sanction the king's iniquitous scheme of a divorce from his faith- ful wife Catherine and a marriage with Anne Boleyn. This grievance was doubtless a mere pretext, for a temper so imperious as that of Henry could not perma- nently brook a divided loyalty in his kingdom. But since Henry took occasion to proclaim anew the funda- mental dogmas of the Catholic Church, with the old bloody penalties against heresy, it would not be proper 326 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND to speak of him as the originator of the Reformation in England. That event properly dates from the reign of his successor, Edward VI. It was not possible, however, that in breaking the ties of hierarchical authority which had endured for a thousand years the English Church should not undergo further change. England had always been a more or less refractory child of the Roman Church, and more than once the conception of royal prerogative and national right had come into conflict with the pretensions of the papacy, and the latter had not always emerged victorious from the struggle. The old Germanic spirit of liberty and individual determination, always especially strong in England, was certain to assert itself when the great European intellectual awakening of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had taken hold of the mass of the people ; and it might have been foreseen after Luther's revolt that England would soon throw herself into the arms of the Reformation. The teachings of Wiclif and the Lollards were still cherished at many English fire- sides. Humanistic studies had begun to flourish under the auspices of such men as Erasmus, Colet, and More, and humanism, as the natural foe of superstition and obscurantism, was instinctively set against ecclesiastical assumption. Lastly, the trumpet blast of Luther had found an echo in many stout British hearts. The initia- tive of the crown, however, forestalled events and changed their course, and instead of a general rising of the people, the overthrow of every vestige of Romanism, and the creation of a universal Calvinistic system, the conservatism and moderation of Edward VI. and EHzabeth 327 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH and their advisers retained so much of external form and ceremony in the interest of dignity, and fixed so firmly the pillars of episcopacy in the interest of stability and order, that the kingdom found itself divided into two parties, and the brief conflict between nationalism and Romanism was succeeded by the long struggle between the Establishment, protected by the throne, and rampant, all-levelling Puritanism. With the passage of the Act of Supremacy the Catholic and Protestant parties began to align themselves for conflict. Henry VIII. at first showed himself favorable to the Protestants, inclining to the acceptance of the Bible as final authority instead of the decrees and tradi- tions of the Church. After the Catholic rebellion of 1536, however, the king changed his policy, and with the passage of the Six Articles, which decreed the doc- trine of transubstantiation, the celibacy of the clergy, the value of private masses, and the necessity of auricular confession, he began a bloody persecution which ended only with his death. The boy king, Edward VI., who reigned from 1547 to 1553, had been won over to Protestantism by Archbishop Cranmer, and with his accession reforms in doctrine and ritual went on rapidly. Parliament was again subser- vient, and a modified Lutheranism took possession of the English Church. The people were taught from the Eng- lish Bible, the Book of Common Prayer took the place of Missal and Breviary ; the Mass, compulsory celibacy of the clergy, and worship of images were abolished, and invocation of saints forbidden. We must observe that these changes, like those effected by Henry VIII., were 328 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND not brought about by popular pressure under the leader- ship of great tribunes, but were decreed by the rulers of the state, ratified by Parliament under due process of law, and enforced by the crown under sanction of the Act of Supremacy. The revolution was regular, peace- ful, and legal, and none of the savage conflicts between Catholics and Protestants which tore Germany, France, and the Netherlands in pieces and drenched their soil with blood, ever occurred in England, Amid such con- ditions reaction was easy. Under Mary (1553-1558) the old religion and forms were reenacted, and a perse- cution, memorable for the martyrdoms of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, and other leaders of the Prot- estant party, was carried on with ruthless severity, but without weakening the cause of the reformed faith. Elizabeth (1558-1603) had no pronounced religious convictions, but under the stress of European political conditions she became of necessity a protector of the Protestant cause. The reformed service was restored, and from Elizabeth's day the Church of England has rested securely upon the constitutions of Edward VI. With the purification and restatement of doctrine according to Protestant principles was involved the question of the liturgy. There was no thought on the part of the English reformers of complete separation from the ancient communion and the establishment of a national Church upon an entirely new theory. They held firmly to the conception of historic Christianity ; the episcopal succession extending back to the early ages of the Church was not broken, the administration of the sacraments never ceased. The Anglican Church 829 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH was conceived as the successor of the universal institu- tion which, through her apostasy from the pure doctrine of the apostles, had abrogated her claims upon the allegiance of the faithful. Anglicanism contained in itself a continuation of the tradition delivered to the fathers, with an open Bible, and the emancipation of the reason ; it was legitimate heir to what was noblest and purest in Catholicism. This conception is strikingly manifest in the liturgy of the Church of England, which is partly composed of materials furnished by the office- books of the ancient Church, and in the beginning asso- ciated with music in no way to be distinguished in style from the Catholic. The prominence given to vestments, and to ceremonies calculated to impress the senses, also points unmistakably to the conservative spirit which forbade that the reform should in any way take on the guise of revolution. The ritual of the Church of England is contained in a single volume, viz., the Book of Common Prayer. It is divided into matins and evensong, the office of Holy Communion, offices of confirmation and ordination, and occasional offices. But little of this liturgy is entirely original; the matins and evensong are compiled from the Catholic Breviary, the Holy Communion with col- lects, epistles, and gospels from the Missal, occasional offices from the Ritual, and the confirmation and ordi- nation offices from the Pontifical. All these offices, as compared with tlie Catholic sources, are greatly modified and simplified. A vast amount of legendary and un- historic matter found in the Breviary has disappeared, litanies to and invocations of the saints and the Virgin 330 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND Mary have been omitted. The offices proper to saints' days have disappeared, the seven canonical hours are compressed to two, the space given to selections from Holy Scripture greatly extended, and the English lan- guage takes the place of Latin. In this dependence upon the offices of the mother Church for the ritual of the new worship the English reformers, like Martin Luther, testified to their convic- tion that they were purifiers and renovators of the ancient faith and ceremony, not violent destroyers, seek- ing to win the sympathies of their countrymen by deferring to old associations and inherited prejudices, so far as consistent with reason and conscience. Their sense of historic continuity is further shown in the fact that the Breviaries which they consulted were those specially employed from early times in England, par- ticularly the use known as the " Sarum use," drawn up and promulgated about 1085 by Osmund, bishop of Salisbury, and generally adopted in the south of Eng- land, and which deviated in certain details from the use of Rome. Propositions looking to the amendment of the service- books were brought forward before the end of the reign of Henry VHL, and a beginning was made by introduc- ing the reading of small portions of the Scripture in English. The Litany was the first of the prayers to be altered and set in Enghsh, which was done by Cranmer, who had before him the old litanies of the English Church, besides the " Consultation " of Her- mann, archbishop of Cologne (1543). With the accession of Edward VI. in 1547 the revo- 331 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH lution in worship was thoroughly confirmed, and in 1549 the complete Book of Common Prayer, essentially in its modern form, was issued. A second and modified edition was published in 1552 and ordered to be adopted in all the churches of the kingdom. The old Catholic office-books were called in and destroyed, the images were taken from the houses of worship, the altars removed and replaced by communion tables, the vest> ments of the clergy were simplified, and the whole conception of the service, as well as its ceremonies, completely transformed. Owing to the accession of Mary in 1553 there was no time for the Prayer Book of 1552 to come into general use. A third edition, somewhat modified, published in 1559, was one of the earliest results of the accession of Elizabeth. Another revision followed in 1604 under James I. ; additions and alterations were made under Charles II. in 1661-2. Since that date only very slight changes have been made. The liturgy of the Church of England is composed, like the Catholic liturgy, of both constant and variable offices, the latter, however, being in a small minority. It is notable for the large space given to reading from Holy Scripture, the entire Psalter being read through every month, the New Testament three times a year, and the Old Testament once a year. It includes a large variety of prayers, special psalms to be sung, certain psalm-like hymns called canticles, the hymns comprising the chief constant choral members of the Latin Mass, viz.^ Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, and Sanctus the Te Deum, the ten commandments, a litany, besides 332 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND short sentences and responses known as versicles. In addition to the regular morning and evening worship there are special series of offices for Holy Communion and for particular occasions, such as ordinations, con- firmations, the burial service, etc. Although there is but one ritual common to all the congregations of the established Church, one form of prayer and praise which ascends from cathedral, chapel, and parish church alike, this service differs in respect to the manner of rendering. The Anglican Church retained the conception of the Catholic that the service is a musical service, that the prayers, as well as the psalms, canticles, and hymns, are properly to be given not in the manner of ordinary speech, but in musical tone. It was soon found, however, that a full musical service, designed for the more conservative and wealthy establishments, was not practicable in small country parishes, and so in process of time three modes of per- forming the service were authorized, viz., the choral or cathedral mode, the parochial, and the mixed. The choral service is that used in the cathedrals, royal and college chapels, and certain parish churches whose resources permit the adoption of the same prac- tice. In this mode everything except the lessons is rendered in musical tone, from the monotoned prayers of the priest to the figured chorus music of "service" and anthem. The essential parts of the choral service, as classified by Dr. Jebb,^ are as follows: 1. The chanting by the minister of the sentences, exhortations, prayers, and collects throughout the lit- * Jebb, Choral Service of the United Church 0/ England and Ireland. 333 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH urgy in a monotone, slightly varied by occasional modulations. 2. The alternate chant of the versicles and responses by minister and choir. 3. The alternate chant, by the two divisions of the choir, of the daily psalms and of such as occur in the various offices of the Church. 4. The singing of all the canticles and hymns, in the morning and evening service, either to an alter- nated chant or to songs of a more intricate style, re- sembling anthems in their construction, and which are technically styled "services." 5. The singing of the anthem after the third collect in both morning and evening prayer. 6. The alternate chanting of the litany by the min- ister and choir. 7. The singing of the responses after the command- ments in the Communion service. 8. The singing of the creed, Gloria in excelsis, and Sanctus in the Communion service anthem-wise. [The Sanctus has in recent years been superseded by a short anthem or hymn.] 9. The chanting or singing of those parts in the occasional offices which are rubrically permitted to be sung. In this manner of worship the Church of England conforms to the general usage of liturgic churches throughout the world in ancient and modern times, by implication honoring that conception of the intimate union of word and tone in formal authorized worship which has been expounded in the chapters on the 334 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND Catholic music and ritual. Since services are held on week days as well as on Sundays in the cathedrals, and since there are two full choral services, each involving an almost unbroken current of song from clergy and choir, this usage involves a large and thoroughly trained establishment, which is made possible by the endowments of the English cathedrals. The parochial service is that used in the smaller churches where it is not possible to maintain an endowed choir. "According to this mode the acces- sories of divine service necessary towards its due performance are but few and simple." "As to the ministers, the stated requirements of each parochial church usually contemplate but one, the assistant clergy and members of choirs being rarely objects of permanent endowment." "As to the mode of perform- ing divine service, the strict parochial mode consists in reciting all parts of the liturgy in the speaking tone of the voice unaccompanied by music. According to this mode no chant, or canticle, or anthem, properly so called, is employed ; but metrical versions of the psalms are sung at certain intervals between the vari- ous offices." (Jebb.) This mode is not older than 1549, for until the Reformation the Plain Chant was used in parish churches. The singing of metrical psalms dates from the reign of Elizabeth. The mixed mode is less simple than the parochial ; parts of the service are sung by a choir, but the prayers, creeds, litany, and responses are recited in speaking voice. It may be said, however, that the parochial and 335 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH the mixed modes are optional and permitted as matters of convenience. There is no law that forbids any congregation to adopt any portion or even the whole of the choral mode. In these variations, to which we find nothing similar in the Catholic Church, may be seen the readiness of the fathers of the Anglican Church to compromise with Puritan tendencies and guard against those reactions which, as later history shows, are con- stantly urging sections of the English Church back to extreme ritualistic practices. The music of the Anglican Church follows the three divisions into which church music in general may be separated, viz., the cliant, the figured music of the choir, and the congregational hymn. The history of the Anglican chant may also be taken to symbolize the submerging of the ancient priestly idea in the representative conception of the clerical office, for the chant has proved itself a very flexible form of expression, both in structure and usage, endeavoring to connect itself sometimes with the anthem-like choir song and again with the congrega- tional hymn. In the beginning, however, the method of chanting exactly followed the Catholic form. Two kinds of chant were employed, the simple unaccom- panied Plain Song of the minister, which is almost mono- tone ; and the accompanied chant, more melodious and florid, employed in the singing of the psalms, canticles, litany, etc., by the choir or by the minister and choir. The substitution of English for Latin and the sweeping modification of the liturgy did not in the least alter the system and principle of musical render- 336 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND ing which had existed in the Catholic Church. The litany, the oldest portion of the Book of Common Prayer, compiled by Cranmer and published in 1544, was set for singing note for note from the ancient Plain Song. In 1550 a musical setting was given to all parts of the Prayer Book by John Marbecke, a well-known musician of that period. He, like Cranmer, adapted portions of the old Gregorian chant, using only the plainer forms. In Marbecke's book we find the sim- plest style, consisting of monotone, employed for the prayers and the Apostles' Creed, a larger use of modu- lation in the recitation of the psalms, and a still more song-like manner in the canticles and those portions, such as the Kyrie and Gloria, taken from the mass. To how great an extent this music of Marbecke was employed in the Anglican Church in the sixteenth century is not certainly known. Certain parts of it gave way to the growing fondness for harmonized and figured music in all parts of the service, but so far as Plain Chant has been retained in the cathedral service the setting of Marbecke has established the essential form down to the present day.^ The most marked distinction between the choral mode of performing the service, and those divergent usages which have often been conceived as a protest against it, consists in the practice of singing or mono- toning the prayers by the minister. The notion of impersonality which underlies the liturgic conception of worship everywhere, the merging of the individual ^ An edition of Marbecke's Book of Common Prayer with Notes, edited by Kimbault, was published by Novello, London, iu 1845. 22 337 MUSIC IN THM WESTERN CHVRCtt in an abstract, idealized, comprehensive entity the Church is symbolized in this custom. Notwith- standing the fact that the large majority of congrega- tional hymns are really prayers, and that in this case the offering of prayer in metrical form and in musical strains has always been admitted by all ranks of Chris- tians as perfectly appropriate, yet there has always seemed to a large number of English Protestants some- thing artificial and even irreverent in the delivery of prayer in an unchanging musical note, in which ex- pression is lost in the abandonment of the natural inflections of speech. Here is probably the cause of the repugnant impression, not because the utterance is musical in tone, but because it is monotonous and unexpressive. It is of interest to note the reasons for this practice as given by representative English churchmen, since the motive for the usage touches the very spirit and significance of a ritualistic form of worship. Dr. Bisse, in his Rationale on Cathedral Worship^ justifies the practice on the ground (1) of necessity, since the great size of the cathedral churches obliges the minister to use a kind of tone that can be heard throughout the building; (2) of uniformity, in order that the voices of the congregation may not jostle and confuse each other; and (3) of the advantage in pre- venting imperfections and inequalities of pronunciation on the part of both minister and people. Other reasons which are more mystical, and probably on that account still more cogent to the mind of the ritualist, are also given by this writer. "It is emblematic," he says, "of 338 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND the delight which Christians have in the law of God. It bespeaks the cheerfulness of our Christian profes- sion, as contrasted with that of the Gentiles. It gives to divine worship a greater dignity by separating it more from all actions and interlocutions that are com- mon and familiar. It is more efficacious to awaken the attention, to stir up the affections, and to edify the understanding than plain reading." And Dr. Jebb puts the case still more definitely when he says: "In the Church of England the lessons are not chanted, but read. The instinctive good taste of the revisers of the liturgy taught them that the lessons, being nar- ratives, orations, records of appeals to men, or writings of an epistolary character, require that method of reading which should be, within due bounds, imitative. But with the prayers the case is far different. These are uttered by the minister of God, not as an indi- vidual, but as the instrument and channel of petitions which are of perpetual obligation, supplications for all those gifts of God's grace which are needful for all mankind while this frame of things shall last. The prayers are not, like the psalms and canticles, the ex- pression, the imitation, or the record of the hopes and fears, of the varying sentiments, of the impassioned thanksgivings, of the meditative musings of inspired individuals, or of holy companies of men or angels; they are tlie unchangeable voice of the Church of (iod, seeking through one eternal Redeemer gifts that shall be for everlasting. And hence the uniformity of tone in which she seeks them is significant of the unity of spirit which teaches the Church universal so to pray, 339 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH of the unity of means by which her prayers are made available, of the perfect unity with God her Father which shall be her destiny in the world to come." The word "chant" as used in the English Church (to be in strictness distinguished from the priestly mono- toning) signifies the short melodies which are sung to the psalms and canticles. The origin of the Anglican chant system is to be found in the ancient Gregorian chant, of which it is only a slight modification. It is a sort of musically delivered speech, the punctuation and rate of movement being theoretically the same as in spoken discourse. Of all the forms of religious music the chant is least susceptible to change and pro- gress, and the modern Anglican chant bears the plainest marks of its mediaeval origin. The modifications which distinguish the new from the old may easily be seen upon comparing a modern English chant-book with an office-book of the Catholic Church. In place of the rhythmic freedom of the Gregorian, with its frequent florid passages upon a single syllable, we find in the Anglican a much greater simplicity and strictness, and also, it must be admitted, a much greater melodic monotony and dryness. The English chant is almost entirely syllabic, even two notes to a syllable are rare, while there is nothing remotely corresponding to the melismas of the Catholic liturgic song. The bar lines, unknown in the Roman chant, give the English form much greater steadiness of movement. The intonation of the Gregorian chant has been dropped, the remain- ing four divisions recitation, mediation, second reci- tation, and ending retained. The Anglican chant is 340 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND of two kinds, single and double. A single chant com- prises one verse of a psalm; it consists of two melodic strains, the first including three measures, the second four. A double chant is twice the length of a single chant, and includes two verses of a psalm, the first ending being an incomplete cadence. The double chant is an English invention; it is unknown in the Gregorian system. The objections to it are obvious, since the two verses of a psalm which may be comprised in the chant often differ in sentiment. The manner of fitting the words to the notes of the chant is called "pointing." There is no authoritative method of pointing in the Church of England, and there is great disagreement and controversy on the sub- ject in the large number of chant-books that are used in England and America. In the cathedral service the chants are sung antiphonally, the two divisions of the chorus answering each other from opposite sides of the choir. There are large numbers of so-called chants which are more properly to be called hymns or anthems in chant style, such as the melodies sometimes sung to the Te Deum and the Gloria in excelsis. These composi- tions may consist of any number of divisions, each comprising the three-measure and four-measure mem- bers found in the single chant. The modern Anglican chant form is not so old as commonly supposed. The ancient Gregorian chants for the psalms and canticles were in universal use as late as the middle of the seventeenth century. The modern chant was of course a gradual development, 341 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH and was the inevitable result of the harmonization of the old chant melodies according to the new system with its corresponding balancing points of tonic and dominant. A few of the Anglican chants sung at the present day go back to the time of the Restoration, that is, soon after 1660 ; the larger number date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The modern chant, however, has never been able entirely to sup- plant the ancient Plain Song melody. The "Grego- rian " movement in the Church of England, one of the results of the ritualistic reaction inaugurated by the Oxford Tractarian agitation, although bitterly opposed both on musical grounds and perhaps still more through alarm over the tendencies which it symbolizes, has apparently become firmly established; and even in quarters where there is little sympathy with the ritual- istic movement, musical and ecclesiastical conservatism unites with a natural reverence for the historic past to preserve in constant use the venerated relics of early days. Sir John Stainer voiced the sentiment of many leading English musical churchmen when he said: "I feel very strongly that the beautiful Plain Song vei-sicles, responses, inflections, and prefaces to our prayers and liturgy should not be lightly thrown aside. These simple and grand specimens of Plain Song, so suited to their purpose, so reverent in their subdued emotion, appeal to us for their protection. The Plain Song of the prefaces of our liturgy as sung now in St. Paul's cathedral are note for note the same that rang at least eight hundred years ago through the vaulted roof of that ancient cathedral which crowned the summit of 342 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND the fortified hill of old Salisbury. Not a stone remains of wall or shrine, but the old Sarum office-books have survived, from which we can draw ancient hymns and Plain Song as from a pure fount. Those devout monks r corded all their beautiful offices and the music of these offices, because they were even then venerable and venerated. Shall we throw them into the fire to make room for neat and appropriate excogitations, fresh from the blotting-pad of Mr. A, or Dr. B, or the Reverend C, or Miss D ? " It must be acknowledged, however, that the Grego- rian chant melodies undergo decided modification in spirit and impression when set to English words. In their pure state their strains are thoroughly conformed to the structure and flow of the Latin texts from which they grew. There is something besides tradition and association that makes them appear somewhat forced and ill at ease when wedded to a modern language. As Curwen says: "In its true form the Gregorian chant has no bars or measures ; the time and the accent are verbal, not musical. Each note of the mediation or the ending is emphatic or non-emphatic, according to the word or syllable to which it happens to be sung. The endings which follow the recitation do not fall into musical measures, but are as unrhythmical as the reciting tone itself. Modern music, and the instinctive observance of rhythm which is an essential part of it, have modified the old chant and given it accent and time. The reason why the attempt to adapt the Grego- rian tones to the English language has resulted in their modification is not far to seek. The non-accented sys- 343 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH tem suits Latin and French, but not English. Aside from the instinct for time, and the desire to make a ' tune ' of the chant, which is a part of human nature, it is a feature of the English language that in speaking we pass from accent to accent and elide the intervening syllables. The first attempts to adapt the Gregorian tones to English use proceeded strictly upon the plan of one syllable to a note. Of however many notes the mediation or cadence of the chant consisted, that num- ber of syllables was marked off from the end of each half-verse, and the recitation ended when they were reached. " ^ The attempt to sing in this fashion, Curwen goes on to show, resulted in the greatest violence to English pronunciation. In order to avoid this, slurs, which are no part of the Gregorian system proper, were employed to bring the accented syllables upon the first of the measure. Doubtless the fundamental and certainly praise- worthy motive of those who strongly desire to reintro- duce the Gregorian melodies into the Anglican service is to establish once for all a body of liturgic tones which are pure, noble, and eminently fitting in character, endowed at the same time with venerable ecclesiastical associations which shall become fixed and authoritative, and thus an insurmountable barrier against the intru- sion of the ephemeral novelties of " the Reverend C and Miss D." Every intelligent student of religious art may well say Amen to such a desire. As the case now stands there is no law or custom that prevents any minister or cantor from introducing into the service * Curwen, Studies in Worship Music. 344 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND any chant-tune which he chooses to invent or adopt. Neither is there any authority that has the right to select any system or body of liturgic song and compel its introduction. The Gregorian movement is an attempt to remedy this palpable defect in the Anglican musical system. It is evident that this particular solu- tion of the difficulty can never generally prevail. Any effort, however, which tends to restrict the number of chants in use, and establish once for all a store of liturgic melodies which is preeminently worthy of the historic associations and the conservative aims of the Anglican Church, should receive the hearty support of English musicians and churchmen. If Marbecke's unison chants were intended as a com- plete scheme for the musical service, they were at any rate quickly swallowed up by the universal demand for harmonized music, and the choral service of the Church of England very soon settled into the twofold classifica- tion which now prevails, viz.^ the harmonized chant and the more elaborate figured setting of " service " and anthem. The former dates from 1560, when John Day's psalter was published, containing three and four-part set- tings of old Plain Song melodies, contributed by Tallis, Shepherd, and other prominent musicians of the time. From the very outset of the adoption of the vernacular in all parts of the service, that is to say from the reign of Edwa]"d VI., certiiin selected psalms and canticles, technically known as " services," were sung anthem- wise in the developed choral style of the highest musical science of the day. The components of the " sei-vice " are to be distinguished from the daily psalms which are 345 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH always sung in antiphonal chant form, and may be said to correspond to the choral unvarying portions of the Catholic Mass. The " service " in its fullest form in- cludes the Venite (Ps. xcv.), Te Deum, Benedicite (Song of the Three Children, from the Greek continuation of the book of Daniel), Benedictus (Song of Zacharias), Jubilate (Ps. c), Kyrie eleison, Nicene Creed, Sanctus, Gloria in excelsis, Magnificat (Song of Mary), Cantate Domino (Ps. xcviii.). Nunc dimittis (Song of Simeon), and the Deus Misereatur (Ps. Ixvii). Of these the Venite, Benedicite, and the Sanctus have in recent times fallen out. These psalms and canticles are divided between the morning and evening worship, and not all of them are obligatory. The " service," in respect to musical style, has moved step by step with the anthem, from the strict contrapun- tal style of the sixteenth century, to that of the present with all its splendor of harmony and orchestral color. It has engaged the constant attention of the multitude of English church composers, and it has more than rivalled the anthem in the zealous regard of the most eminent musicians, from the time of Tallis and Gibbons to the present day. The anthem, although an almost exact parallel to the " service " in musical construction, stands apart, liturgi- cally, from the rest of the service in the Church of England, in that while all the other portions are laid down in the Book of Common Prayer, the words of the anthem are not prescribed. The Prayer Book merely says after the third collect, " In quires and places where they sing here folio weth the anthem." What tho 34 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND anthem shall be at any particular service is left to the determination of the choir master, but it is commonly understood, and in some dioceses is so decreed, that the words of the anthem shall be taken from the Scripture or the Book of Common Prayer. This precept, how- ever, is frequently transgressed, and many anthems have been written to words of metrical hymns. The restric- tion of the anthem texts to selections from the Bible or the liturgy is designed to exclude words that are unfamiliar to the people or unauthorized by ecclesiastical authority. Even with these limitations the freedom of choice on the part of the musical director serves to with- draw the anthem from that vital organic connection with the liturgy held by the " service," and it is not infre- quently omitted from the daily office altogether. The object of the fathers of the Church of England in admit- ting so exceptional a musical composition into the ser- vice was undoubtedly to give the worship more variety, and to relieve the fatigue that would otherwise result from a long unbroken series of prayers. The anthem, although the legitimate successor of the Latin motet, has taken in Engknd a special and peculiar form. According to its derivation (from ant-hymn, responsive or alternate song) the word anthem was at first synonymous with antiphony. The modern form, succeeding the ancient choral motet, dates from about the time of Henry Purcell (1658-1695). Tlie style was confirmed by Handel, who in his celebrated Chandos anthems first brought the English anthem into European recognition. The anthem in its present shape is a sort of mixture of the ancient motet and the German cantata. 847 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH From the motet it derives its broad and artistically con- structed choruses, while the influence of the cantata is seen in its solos and instrumental accompaniment. As the modern anthem is free and ornate, giving practically unlimited scope for musical invention, it has been culti- vated with peculiar ardor by the English church com- posers, and the number of anthems of varying degrees of merit or demerit which have been produced in Eng- land would baffle the wildest estimate. This style of music has been largely adopted in the churches of America, and American composers have imitated it, often with brilliant success. The form of anthem in which the entire body of singers is employed from beginning to end is techni- cally known as the " full " anthem. In another form, called the " verse " anthem, portions are sung by se- lected voices. A " solo " anthem contains passages for a single voice. The anthem of the Church of England has been more or less affected by the currents of secular music, but to a much slighter extent than the Catholic mass. The opera has never taken the commanding position in Eng- land which it has held in the Catholic countries, and onl}' in rare cases have the English church composers, at any rate since the time of Handel, felt their alle- giance divided between the claims of religion and the attractions of the stage. In periods of religious depres- sion or social frivolity the church anthem has some- times become weak and shallow, but the ancient austere traditions have never been quite abrogated. The natu- ral conservatism of the English people, especially in 348 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND matters of cliurchly usage, and their tenacious grasp upon the proper distinction between religious and pro- fane art, while acting to the benefit of the anthem and " service " on the side of dignity and appropriateness in style, have had a correspondingly unfavorable influence so far as progress and sheer musical quality are con- cerned. One who reads through large numbers of Eng- lish church compositions cannot fail to be impressed by their marked similarity in style and the rarity of features that indicate any striking originality. This monotony and predominance of conventional common- place must be largely attributed, of course, to the ab- sence of real creative force in English music ; but it is also true that even if such creative genius existed, it would hardly feel free to take liberties with those strict canons of taste which have become embedded in the unwritten laws of Anglican musical procedure. In spite of these limitations English church music does not wholly deserve the obloquy that has been cast upon it by certain impatient critics. That it has not rivalled the Catholic mass, nor adopted the methods that have trans- formed secular music in the modern era is not alto- gether to its discredit. Leaving out the wonderful productions of Sebastian Bach (which, by the way, are no longer heard in church service in Germany), the music of the Church of England is amply worthy of compari- son with that of the German Evangelical Church ; and in abundance, musical value, and conformity to the ideals which have always governed public worship in its noblest estate, it is entitled to be ranked as one of the four great historic schools of Christian worship music. 349 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH England had not been lacking in eminent composers for the Church before the Reformation, but their work was in the style which then prevailed all over Europe. Some of these writers could hold their own with the Netherlanders in point of learning. England held an independent position during " the age of the Nether- landers " in that the official musical posts in the schools and chapels were held by native Englishmen', and not, as was so largely the case on the continent, by men of Northern France and Flanders or their pupils. This fact speaks much for the inherent force of English music, but the conditions of musical culture at that time did not encourage any originality of style or new efforts after expression. The continental development of the polyphonic school to its perfection in the sixteenth century was paralleled in England; and since the English Reformation was contemporary with this musical apogee, the newly founded national Church possessed in such men as Tallis, Byrd, Tye, Gibbons, and others only less conspicuous, a group of composers not unworthy to stand beside Palestrina and Lassus. It is indeed good fortune for the Church of England that its musical traditions have been founded by such men. Thomas Tallis, the most eminent of the circle, who died in 1585, devoted his talents almost entirely to the Church. In science he was not inferior to his continental compeers, and his music is pre- eminently stately and solid. Besides the large number of motets, " services," etc., which he contributed to the Church, he is now best remembered by the harmonies added by him to the Plain Song of the old r^gima 850 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND Tallis must therefore be regarded as the chief of the founders of the English harmonized chant. His tunes arranged for Day's psalter give him an honorable place also in the history of English psalmody. Notwithstanding the revolutions in the authorized ceremony of the Church of England during the stormy Reformation period, from the revised constitutions of Henry VHI. and Edward VI. to the restored Catholicism of Mary, and back to Protestantism again under Eliza- beth, the salaried musicians of the Church retained their places while their very seats seemed often to rock beneath them, writing alternately for the Catholic and Protestant services with equal facility, and with equal satisfaction to themselves and their patrons. It was a time when no one could tell at any moment to what doctrine or discipline he might be commanded to subscribe, and many held them- selves ready loyally to accept the faith of the sovereign as their own. Such were the ideas of the age that the claims of uniformity could honestly be held as paramount to those of individual judgment. Only those who combined advanced thinking with fearless independence of character were able to free themselves from the prevailing soph- istry on this matter of conformity vs. freedom. Even a large number of the clergy took the attitude of compli- ance to authority, and it is often a matter of wonder to readers of the history of this period to see how compara- tively few changes were made in the incumbencies of ecclesiastical livings in the shifting triumphs of the hostile confessions. If this were the case with the clergy it is not surprising that the church musicians should have been still more complaisant. The style of 351 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH music performed in the new worship, we must remember, hardly differed in any respect from that in use under the old system. The organists and choir masters were not called upon to mingle in theological controversies, and they had probably learned discretion from the ex- perience of John Marbecke, who came near to being burned at the stake for his sympathy with Calvinism. As in Germany, there was no necessary conflict between the musical practices of Catholics and Protestants. The real animosity on the point of liturgies and music was not between AngHcans and Catholics, but between An- glicans and Puritans. The old polyphonic school came to an end with Orlando Gibbons in 1625. No conspicuous name appears in the annals of English church music until we meet that of Henry Purcell, who was born in 1658 and died in 1695. We have made a long leap from the Eliza- bethan period, for the first half of the seventeenth century was a time of utter barrenness in the neglected fields of art. The distracted state of the kingdom during the reign of Charles I., the Great Rebellion, and the ascendency of the Puritans under Cromwell made progress in the arts impossible, and at one time their very existence seemed threatened. A more hopeful era began with the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660. Charles II. had spent some years in France after the ruin of his father's cause, and upon his triumphant return he encouraged those light French styles in art and literature which were so congenial to his char- acter. He was a devotee of music after his fashion ; he warmly encouraged it in the Royal Chapel, and a number 352 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND of skilful musicians came from the boy choirs of this establishment. The earliest anthems of the Anglican Church were, like the Catholic motet, unaccompanied. The use of the organ and orchestral instruments followed soon after the middle of the seventeenth century. No such school of organ playing arose in England as that which gave such glory to Germany in the same period. The organ remained simply a support to the voices, and attained no distinction as a solo instrument. Even in Handel's day and long after, few organs in England had a complete pedal board ; many had none at all. The English anthem has always thrown greater proportionate weight upon the vocal element as compared with the Catholic mass and the German cantata. In the Restoration period the orchestra came prominently forward in the church worship, and not only were elaborate accompani- ments employed for the anthem, but performances of orchestral instruments were given at certain places in the service. King Charles II., who, to use the woixis of Dr. Tudway, was " a brisk and airy prince," did not find the severe solemnity of the a capella style of Tallis and Gibbons at all to his liking. Under the patronage of "the merry monarch," the brilliant style, then in fashion on the continent, flourished apace. Henry Purcell, the most gifted of this school, probably the most highly endowed musical genius that has ever sprung from English soil, was a man of his time, preeminent likewise in opera, and much of his church music betrays the in- fluence of the gay atmosphere which he breathed. But his profound musiciansliip prevented him from degrading 23 353 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH his art to the level of the prevailing taste of the royal court, and much of his religious music is reckoned even at the present day among the choicest treasures of English art. As a chorus writer he is one of the first of the moderns, and one who would trace Handel's oratorio style to its sources must take large account of the church works of Henry Purcell. With the opening of the eighteenth century the char- acteristics of the English anthem of the present day were virtually fixed. The full, the verse, and the solo anthem were all in use, and the accompanied style had once for all taken the place of the a capella. During the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries Enghsh choir music offers nothing especially noteworthy, unless we except the Te Deums and so-called anthems of Handel, whose style is, however, that of the oratorio rather than church music in the proper sense. The works of Hayes, Attwood, Boyce, Greene, Battishill, Crotch, and others belonging to the period between the middle of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth centuries are solid and respectable, but as a rule dry and perfunctory. A new era began with the passing of the first third of the nineteenth century, when a higher inspiration seized English church music. The work of the English cathedral school of the second half of the nineteenth century is highly honorable to the English Church and people. A vast amount of it is certainly the barrenest and most unpromising of routine manufacture, for every incumbent of an organist's post throughout the kingdom, however obscure, feels that his dignity requires him to contribute his quota to the 354 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND enormously swollen accumulation of anthems and " ser- vices." But in this numerous company we find the names of such men as Goss, Bennett, Hopkins, Monk, Barnby, Sullivan, Smart, Tours, Stainer, Garrett, Martin, Bridge, Stanford, Mackenzie, and others not less worthy, who have endowed the choral service with richer color and more varied and appeahng expression. This brilliant advance may be connected with the revival of spirituaUty and zeal in the English Church which early in the nine- teenth century succeeded to the drowsy indifference of the eighteenth ; but we must not push such coincidences too far. The church musician must always draw some of his inspiration from within the institution which he serves, but we have seen that while the religious folk- song is stimulated only by deep and widespread enthu- siasm, the artistic music of the Church is dependent rather upon the condition of music at large. The later progress in English church music is identified with the forward movement in all European music which began with the symphonies of Beethoven, the operas of Weber and the French masters, and the songs of Schubert, and which was continued in Berlioz, Wagner, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and the still more recent na- tional schools. England has shared this uplift of taste and creative activity ; her composers are also men of the new time. English cathedral music enters the world- current which sets towards a more intense and personal expression. The austere traditions of the Anglican Church restrain efforts after the brilliant and emotional within distinctly marked boundaries. Its music can never, as the Catholic mass has often done, relapse into 355 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH the tawdry and sensational; but the English church composers have recognized that the Church and its art exist for the people, and that the changing standards of beauty as they arise in the popular mind must be con- sidered, while at the same time the serene and elevated tone which makes church music truly churchly must be reverently preserved. This, as I understand it, is the motive, more or less conscious, which actuates the Church of England composers, organists, and directors of the present day. They have not yet succeeded in bringing forth works of decided genius, but they have certainly laid a foundation so broad, and so compounded of durable elements, that if the English race is capable of producing a master of the first rank in religious music he will not be compelled to take any radical departure, nor to create the taste by which he will be appreciated. English church music has never been in a more satis- factory condition than it is to-day. There is no other country in which religious music is so highly honored, so much the basis of the musical life of the people. The organists and choir masters connected with the cathedrals and the university and royal chapels are men whose character and intellectual attainments would make them ornaments to any walk of life. The deep- rooted religious reverence which enters into the substance of English society, the admiration for intellect and honesty, the healthful conservatism, the courtliness of speech, tlie solidity of culture which comes from inherited wealth largely devoted to learning and the embellishment of public and private life, have all permeated eccle- 356 THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF CHURCH OF ENGLAND siastical art and ceremony, and have imparted to them an ideal dignity which is as free from superstition as it is from vulgarity. The music of the Church of England, like all church music, must be considered in connection with its history and its liturgic attachments. It is in- separably associated with a ritual of singular stateliness and beauty, and with an architecture in cathedral and chapel in which the recollections of a heroic and fading past unite with a grandeur of structure and beauty of detail to weave an overmastering spell upon the mind. Church music, I must constantly repeat, is never intended to produce its impression alone. Before we ever allow ourselves to call any phase of it dry and uninteresting let us hear it actually or in imagination amid its native surroundings. As we mentally connect the Gregorian chant and the Italian choral music of the sixteenth century with all the impressive framework of their ritual, hearing within them the echoes of the prayers of fifteen hundred years ; as the music of Bach and his contempo- raries stands forth in only moderate relief from the back- ground of a Protestantism in which scholasticism and mysticism are strangely blended, so the Anglican chant and anthem are venerable with the associations of three centuries of conflict and holy endeavor. Complex and solemnizing are the suggestions which strike across the mind of the student of church history as he hears in a venerable English cathedral the lofty strains which might elsewhere seem commonplace, but which in their ancestral home are felt to be the natural speech of an institution which has found in such structures its fitting habitation. 357 CHAPTER XI CONGREGATIONAL SONG IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA The revised liturgy and musical service of the Church of England had not been long in operation when they encountered adversaries far more bitter and formidable than the Catholics. The Puritans, who strove to effect a radical overturning in ecclesiastical affairs, to reduce worship to a prosaic simplicity, and also to set up a more democratic form of church government, violently assailed the estiiblished Church as half papist. The contest be- tween the antagonistic principles, Ritualism vs. Puritan- ism, Anglicanism vs. Presbyterianism, broke out under Elizabeth, but was repressed by her strong hand only to increase under the weaker James I., and to culminate with the overthrow of Charles I. and the temporary tri- umph of Puritanism. The antipathy of the Puritan party to everything formal, ceremonial, and artistic in worship was power- fully promoted, if not originally instigated by John Cal- vin, the chief fountain-head of the Puritan doctrine and polity. The extraordinary personal ascendency of Cal- vin was shown not only in the adoption of his theolog- ical system by so large a section of the Protestant world, but also in the fact that his opinions concerning th^ 358 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA ideal and method of public worship were treated with almost equal reverence, and in many localities have held sway down to the present time. Conscious, perhaps to excess, of certain harmful tendencies in ritualism, he proclaimed that everything formal and artistic in wor- ship was an offence to God ; he clung to this belief with characteristic tenacity and enforced it upon all the con- gregations under his rule. Instruments of music and trained choirs were to him abomination, and the only musical observance peimitted in the sanctuary was the singing by the congregation of metrical translations of the psalms. The Geneva psalter had a very singular origin. In 1538 Clement Marot, a notable poet at the court of Francis I. of France, began for his amusement to make translations of the psalms into French verse, and had them set to popular tunes. Marot was not exactly in the odor of sanctity. The popularization of the Hebrew lyrics was a somewhat remarkable whim on the part of a writer in whose poetry is reflected the levity of his time much more than its virtues. As Van Laun says, he was " at once a pedant and a vagabond, a scholar and a merry-andrew. He translated the penitential psalms and Ovid's Metamorphoses ; he wrote the praises of St. Christina and sang the triumphs of Cupid." His psalms attained extraordinary favor at the dissolute court. Each of the royal family and the courtiers chose a psalm. Prince Henry, who was fond of hunting, selected " Like as the hart desireth the water brooks." The king's mistress, Diana of Poitiers, chose the 130th psalm, " Out of the depths have I cried to thee, O Lord." This 359 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH fashion was, however, short-lived, for the theological doctors of the Sorbonne, those keen heresy hunters, became suspicious that there was some mysterious con- nection between Marot's psahns and the detestable Prot- estant doctrines, and in 1543 the unfortunate poet fled for safety to Calvin's religious commonwealth at Geneva. Calvin had already the year before adopted thirty-five of Marot's psalms for the use of his congregation. Marot, after his arrival at Geneva, translated twenty more, which were characteristically dedicated to the ladies of France. Marot died in 1544, and the task of translating the remaining psalms was committed by Calvin to Theo- dore de Beza (or Beze), a man of a different stamp from Marot, who liad become a convert to the reformed doc- trines and had been appointed professor of Greek in the new university at Lusanne. In the year 1552 Beza's work was finished, and the Geneva psalter, now com- plete, was set to old French tunes which were taken, like many of the German chorals, from popular secular songs. The attribution of certain of these melodies, adopted into modern hymn-books, to Guillaume Franc and Louis Bourgeois is entirely unauthorized. The most celebrated of these anonymous tunes is the doxology in long metre, known in England and America as the Old Hundredth, although it is set in the Marot-Beza psalter not to the 100th psalm but to the 134th. These psalms were at first sung in unison, unharmonized, but between 1562 and 1565 the melodies were set in four- part counterpoint, the melody in the tenor according to the custom of the day. This was the work of Claude Goudimel, a Netherlander, one of the foremost musi- 360 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA cians of his time, who, coming under suspicion of sym- pathy with the Huguenot party, perished in the massacre on St. Bartholomew's night in 1572. A visitor to Geneva in 1557 wrote as follows: "A most interesting sight is offered in the city on the week days, when the hour for the sermon approaches. As soon as the first sound of the bell is heard all siiops are closed, all conversation ceases, all business is broken off, and from all sides the people hasten into the nearest meeting-house. There each one draws from his pocket a small book which contains the psalms with notes, and out of full hearts, in the native speech, the congregation sings before and after the sermon. Everyone testifies to me how great consolation and edification is derived from this custom." Such was the origin of the Calvinistic psalmody, which holds so prominent a place in the history of relig- ious culture, not from any artistic value in its products, but as the chosen and exclusive form of praise employed for the greater part of two centuries by the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, France, and the Netherlands, and the Puritan congregations of England, Scotland, and America. On the poetic side it sufficed for Calvin, for he said that the psalms are the anatomy of the human heart, a mirror in which every pious mood of the soul is reflected. It is a somewhat singular anomaly that the large liberty given to the Lutheran Christians to express their religious convictions and impulses in hymns of their own spontaneous production or choosing was denied to the followers of Calvin. Our magnificent heritage 361 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH of English hymns was not founded amid the Reforma- tion struggles, and thus we have no lyrics freighted with the priceless historic associations which consecrate in the mind of a German the songs of a Luther and a Gerhardt. Efficacious as the Calvinistic psalmody has been in many respects, the repression of a free poetic impulse in the Protestant Churches of Great Britain and America for so long a period undoubtedly tended to narrow the religious sympathies, and must be given a certain share of responsibility for the hard- ness of temper fostered by the Calvinistic system. The reason given for the prohibition, viz., that only "in- spired " words should be used in the service of praise, betrayed a strange obtuseness to the most urgent de- mands of the Christian heart in forbidding the very mention of Christ and the Gospel message in the song of his Church. In spite of this almost unaccountable self-denial, if such it was, we may, in the light of sub- sequent history, ascribe an appropriateness to the metri- cal versions of the psalms of which even Calvin could hardly have been aware. It was given to Calvinism to furnish a militia which, actuated by a different prin- ciple than the Lutheran repugnance to physical resist- ance, could meet pohtical Catholicism in the open field and maintain its rights amid the shock of arms. In this fleshly warfare it doubtless drew much of its martial courage from those psalms which were ascribed to a bard who was himself a military chieftain and an avenger of blood upon his enemies. The unemotional unison tunes to which these rhymed psalms were set also satisfied the stern demands of those 362 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA rigid zealots, who looked upon every appeal to the aesthetic sensibility in worship as an enticement to com- promise with popery. Before condemning such a posi- tion as this we should take into account the natural effect upon a conscientious and high-spirited people of the fierce persecution to which they were subjected, and the hatred which they would inevitably feel toward everything associated with what was to them corruption and tyranny. We must, therefore, recognize certain conditions of the time working in alliance with the authority of Calvin to bring into vogue a conception and method of public worship absolutely in contradiction to the almost universal usage of mankind, and nullifying the general conviction, we might almost say the instinct, in favor of the employment in devotion of those artistic agencies by which the religious emotion is ordinarily so strongly moved. For the first time in the history of the Christian Church, at any rate for the first time upon a conspicuous or extensive scale, we find a party of religionists abjuring on conscientious grounds all emplojTuent of art in the sanctuary. Beginning in an inevitable and salutary reaction against the excessive development of the sensuous and formal, the hostility to everything that may excite the spirit to a spontaneous joy in beautiful shape and color and sound was exalted into a universally binding principle. With no reverence for the conception of historic development and Christian tradition, the supposed simplicity of the apostolic prac- tice was assumed to be a constraining law upon all later generations. The Scriptures were taken not only as a 863 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH rule of faith and conduct, but also as a law of universal obligation in the matter of church government and dis- cipline. The expulsion of organs and the prohibition of choirs was in no way due to a hostility to music in itself, but was simply a detail of that sweeping revolution which, in the attempt to level all artificial distinctions and restore the offices of worship to a simplicity such that they could be understood and administered by the common people, abolished the good of the ancient system together with the bad, and stripped religion of those fair adornments which have been found in the long run efficient to bring her into sympathy with the inherent human demand for beauty and order. With regard to the matter of art and established form in public worship Calvinism was at one with itself, whether in Geneva or Great Britain. A large number of active Protestants had fled from England at the beginning of the persecution of Mary, and had taken refuge at Geneva. Here they came under the direct influence of Calvin, and imbibed his principles in fullest measure. At the death of Mary these exiles returned, many of them to become leaders in that section of the Protestant party which clamored for a complete eradica- tion of ancient habits and observances. No inspiration was really needed from Calvin, for his democratic and anti-ritualistic views were in complete accord with the temper of English Puritanism. The attack was de- livered all along the line, and not the least violent was the outcry against the litnrgic music of the established Church. The notion held by the Puritans concerning a proper worship music was that of plain unison psalm- 364 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA ody. They vigorously denounced what was known as " curious music," by which was meant scientific, artistic music, and also the practice of antiphonal chanting and the use of organs. Just why organs were looked upon with especial detestation is not obvious. Themhad played but a very incidental part in the Catholic service, and it would seem that their efficiency as an aid to psalm singing should have commended them to Puritan favor. But such was not the case. Even early in Elizabeth's reign, among certain articles tending to the further alteration of the liturgy which were presented to the lower house of Convocation, was one requiring the removal of organs from the churches, which was lost by only a single vote. It was a considerable time, however, before the opposition again mustered such force. Elizabeth never wavered in her determination to maintain the solemn musical service of her Church. Even this was severe enough as compared with its later expansion, for the multiplication of harmonized chants and florid anthems belongs to a later date, and the ancient Plain Song still included a large part of the service. Neither was Puritanism in the early stages of the movement by any means an uncompromising enemy to the graces of art and culture. The Renais- sance delight in what is fair and joyous, its satisfaction in the good tilings of this world, lingered long even in Puritan households. The young John Milton, gallant, accomplished, keenly alive to the charms of poetry and music, was no less a representative Puritan than when in later years, " fallen on evil days," he fulminated against the levities of the time. It was the stress of party 365 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH strife, the hardening of the mental and moral fibre that often follows the denial of the reasonable demands of the conscience, that drove the Puritan into bigotry and intolerance. Gradually episcopacy and ritualism becaile to his mind the mark of the beast. Intent upon knowing the divine will, he exalted his conception of the dictates of that will above all human oidinances, until at last his own interpretations of Scripture, which he made his sole guide in every public and private relation of life, seemed to him guaranteed by the highest of all sanctions. He thus became capable of trampling with a serene conscience upon the rights of those who maintained opinions different from his own. Fair and just in matters in which questions of doctrine or polity were not involved, in affairs of religion the Puritan became the type and embodiment of all that is unyield- ing and fanatical. Opposition to the use of the sur- plice, the sign of the cross in baptism, the posture of kneeling at the Lord's Supper, and antiphonal chanting, expanded into uncompromising condemnation of the whole ritual. Puritanism and Presbyterianism became amalgamated, and it only wanted the time and oppor- tunity to pull down episcopacy and liturgy in a common overthrow. The antipathy of the Puritans to artistic music and official choirs was, therefore, less a matter of personal feeling than it was with Calvin. His thought was more that of the purely religious effect upon the individual heart; with the Puritan, hatred of cultured church music was simply a detail in the general animosity which he felt toward an offensive institution. The most conspicuous of the agitators during the 366 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA reign of Elizabeth was Thomas Cartwright, Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, who first gained notoriety by means of public lectures read in 1570 against the doctrine and discipline of the established Church. The coarseness and violence of this man drew upon him the royal censure, and he was deprived of his fellowship and expelled from tlie Uni- versity. His antipathy was especially aroused by the musical practice of the established Church, particularly the antiphonal chanting, " tossing the psalms from one side to the other," to use one of his favorite expressions. "The devil hath gone about to get it authority," said Cartwright. "As for organs and curious singing, though they be proper to popish dens, I mean to cathedral churches, yet some others also must have them. The queen's chapel and these churches (which should be spectacles of Christian reformation) are rather patterns to the people of all superstition." The attack of Cartwright upon the rites and dis- cipline of the Church of England, since it expressed the feeling of a strong section of the Puritan party, could not be left unanswered. The defence was under- taken by Whitgift and afterward by Richard Hooker, the latter bringing to the debate such learning, dignity, eloquence, and logic that we may be truly grateful to the unlovely Cartwright that his diatribe was the occa- sion of the enrichment of English literature with so masterly an exposition of the principles of the Anglican system as the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. As regards artistic and liturgic music Hooker's argument is so clear, persuasive, and complete that all 367 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH later contestants upon the ritualistic side have derived their weapons, more or less consciously, from his armory. After an eloquent eulogy of the power of music over the heart, Hooker passes on to prove the antiquity of antiphonal chanting by means of citations from the early Christian fathers, and then proceeds: "But who- soever were the author, whatsoever the time, whenceso- ever the example of beginning this custom in the Church of Christ; sith we are wont to suspect things only before trial, and afterward either to approve them as good, or if we find them evil, accordingly to judge of them ; their counsel must needs seem very unseason- able, who advise men now to suspect that wherewith the world hath had by their own account twelve hun- dred years' acquaintance and upwards, enough to take away suspicion and jealousy. Men know by this time, if ever they will know, whether it be good or evil which hath been so long retained." The argument of Cartwright, that all the people have the right to praise God in the singing of psalms. Hooker does not find a sufficient reason for the abolition of the choir; he denies the assertion that the people cannot understand what is being sung after the antiphonal manner, and then con- cludes : " Shall this enforce us to banish a thing which all Christian churches in the world have received; a thing which so many ages have held; a thing which always heretofore the best men and wisest governors of God's people did think they could never commend enough ; a thing which filleth the mind with comfort and heavenly delight, stirreth up flagrant desires and affections correspondent unto that which the words 368 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA contain, allayeth all kind of base and earthly cogita- tions, banisheth and driveth away those evil secret suggestions which our invisible enemy is always apt to minister, watereth the heart to the end it may fructify, maketh the virtuous in trouble full of magnanimity and courage, serve th as a most approved remedy against all doleful and heavy accidents which befall men in this present life; to conclude, so fitly accordeth with the apostle's own exhortation, ' Speak to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody, and singing to the Lord in your hearts,' that surely there is more cause to fear lest the want thereof be a maim, than the use a blemish to the service of God."^ The just arguments and fervent appeals of Hooker produced no effect upon the fanatical opponents of the established Church. Under the exasperating condi- tions which produced the Great Rebellion and the sub- stitution of the Commonwealth for the monarchy, the hatred against everything identified with ecclesiastical and political oppression became tenfold confirmed ; and upon the triumph of the most extreme democratic and non-conformist faction, as represented by the army of Cromwell and the " Rump " Parliament, nothing stood in the way of carrying the iconoclastic purpose into effect. In 1G44 the House of Lords, under the pres- sure of the already triumphant opposition, passed an ordinance that the Prayer Book should no longer be used in any place of public worship. In lieu of the liturgy a new form of worship was decreed, in which the congregational singing of metrical psalms was all the 1 Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, book v., sees. 38 and 39. 24 369 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH music allowed. "It is the duty of Christians," so the new rule declares, " to praise God publicly by sing- ing of psalms, together in the congregation and also privately in the family. In singing of psalms the voice is to be tunably and gravely ordered ; but the chief care is to sing with understanding and with grace in the heart, making melody unto the Lord. That the whole congregation may join herein, every one that can read is to have a psalm-book, and all others not disabled by age or otherwise are to be exhorted to learn to read. But for the present, where many in the congregation cannot read, it is convenient that the minister, or some fit person appointed by him and the other ruling offi- cers, do read the psalm line by line before the singing thereof."' The rules framed by the commission left the matter of instrumental music untouched. Perhaps it was considered a work of supererogation to proscribe it, for if there was anything which the Puritan conscience supremely abhorred it was an organ. Sir Edward Deering, in his bill for the abolition of episcopacy, expressed the opinion of the zealots of his party in the assertion that "one groan in the Spirit is worth the diapason of all the church music in the world." As far back as 1586 a pamphlet which had a wide circulation prays that "all cathedral churches may be put down, where the service of God is grievously abused by piping with organs, singing, ringing, and ^ It appears from this injunction that the grotesque custom of " lining out" or "deaconing" the psalm was not original in New England, but was borrowed, like most of the musical customs of our Puritan forfr fathers, from Englaod. 370 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA trowling of psalms from one side of the choir to the other, with the squeaking of chanting choristers, disguised in white surplices ; some in corner caps and silly copes, imitating the fashion and manner of Anti- christ the Pope, that man of sin and child of perdition, with his other rabble of miscreants and shavelings." Such diatribes as this were no mere idle vaporing. As soon as the Puritan army felt its victory secure, these threats were carried out with a ruthless violence which reminds one of the havoc of the image breakers of Antwerp in 1566, who, with striking coincidence of temper, preluded their ravages by the singing of psalms. All reverence for sacred association, all respect for works of skill and beauty, were lost in the indiscriminate rage of bigotry. The ancient sanctu- aries were invaded by a vulgar horde, the stained glass windows were broken, ornaments torn down, sepulchral monuments defaced, libraries were ransacked for ancient service-books which, when found, were mutilated or burned, organs were demolished and their fragments scattered. These barbarous excesses had in fact been directly enjoined by act of Parliament in 1644, and it is not surprising that the rude soldiery carried out the desires of their superiors with wantonness and indig- nity. A few organs, however, escaped the general destruction, one being rescued by Cromwell, who was a lover of religious music, and not at all in sympathy with the vandalism of his followers. Choirs were like- wise dispersed, organists, singers, and composers of the highest ability were deprived of their means of liveli- hood, and in many cases reduced to the extreme of 371 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH destitution. The beautiful service of the Anglican Church, thus swept away in a single day, found no successor but the dull droning psalmody of the Puritan congregations, and only in a private circle in Oxford, indirectly protected by Cromwell, was the feeble spark of artistic religious music kept alive. The reestablishment of the liturgy and the musical service of the Church of England upon the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 has already been described. The Puritan congregations clung with tenacity to their peculiar tenets and usages, prominent among which was their invincible repugnance to artistic music. Although such opinions could probably not prevail so extensively among a really musical people, yet this was not the first nor the last time in history that the art which seems peculiarly adapted to the promotion of pure devotional feeling has been disowned as a temp- tation and a distraction. We find similar instances among some of the more zealous German Protestants of Luther's time, and the German Pietists of the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries. At many periods of the Middle Age there were protests against the lengths to which artistic music had gone in the Church and a demand for the reduction of the musical service to the simplest elements. Still further back, among the early Christians, the horror at the abominations of paganism issued in denunciation of all artistic tendencies in the worship of the Church. St. Jerome may not inaccu- rately be called the first great Puritan. Even St. Augustine was at one time inclined to believe that his love for the moving songs of the Church was a snare, 372 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA until, by analysis, he persuaded himself that it was the sacred words, and not merely the musical tones, which softened his heart and filled his eyes with tears. As in all these cases, including that of the Puritans, the sacrifice of aesthetic pleasure in worship was not merely a reactionary protest against the excess of ceremonialism and artistic enjoyment. The Puritan was a precisian. The love of a highly developed and sensuously beauti- ful music in worship always implies a certain infusion of mysticism. The Puritan was no mystic. He de- manded hard distinct definition in his pious expression as he did in his argumentation. The vagueness of musical utterance, its appeal to indefinable emotion, its effect of submerging the mind and bearing it away upon a tide of ecstasy were all in exact contradiction to the Puritan's conviction as to the nature of genuine edification. These raptures could not harmonize with his gloomy views of sin, righteousness, and judgment to come. And so we find the most spiritual of the arts denied admittance to the sanctuary by those who actu- ally cherished music as a beloved social and domestic companion. More difficult to understand is the Puritan prohibition of all hymns except rhymed paraphrases of the psalms. Metrical vereions were substituted for chanted prose versions for the reason, no doubt, that a congregation, as a rule, cannot sing in perfect unity of cooperation except in metre and in musical forms in which one note is set to one syllal)le. But why the psalms alone? Why suppress the free utterance of the believei-s in hymns of faith and hope? In the view of that day the 373 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH psalms were directly inspired by the Holy Spirit and contemporary hymns could not be. We know that a characteristic of the Puritan mind was an intense, an impassioned reverence for the Holy Scripture, so that all other forms of human speech seemed trivial and unworthy in comparison. The fact that the psalms, as the product of the ante-Christian dispensation, could have no reference to the Christian scheme except by far-fetched interpretation as symbolic and prophetic, did not escape the Puritans, but they consoled them- selves for the loss in the thought that the earliest churches, in which they found, or thought they found their ideal and standard, were confined to a poetic expression similar to their own. And how far did they feel this to be a loss ? Was not the temper of the typical Puritan, after all, thoroughly impregnated with Hebraism ? The real nature of the spiritual deprivation which this restriction involved is apparent enough now, for it barred out a gracious influence which might have corrected some grave faults in the Puritan character, faults from which their religious descendants to this day continue to suffer. The rise of an English hymnody corresponding to that of Germany was, therefore, delayed for more than one hundred and fifty years. English religious song-books were exclusively psalm-books down to the eighteenth century. Poetic activity among the non-conformists consisted in translations of the psalms in metre, or ratlier versions of the existing translations in the English Bible, for these sectaries, as a rule, were not strong in Hebrew. The singular passion in that period 374 7^^ ENGLAND AND AMERICA for putting everything into rhyme and metre, which produced such grotesque results as turning an act of Parliament into couplets, and paraphrasing "Paradise Lost" in rhymed stanzas in order, as the writer said, ''to make Mr. Milton plain," gave aid and comfort to the peculiar Puritan views. The first complete metri- cal version of the psalms was the celebrated edition of Sternhold and Hopkins, the former a gentleman of the privy chamber to Edward VI., the latter a clergyman and schoolmaster in Suffolk. This version, published in 1562, was received with universal satisfaction and adopted into all the Puritan congregations, maintain- ing its credit for full two hundred and thirty years, until it came at last to be considered as almost equally inspired with the original Hebrew text. So far as poetic merit is concerned, the term is hardly applicable to the lucubrations of these honest and prosaic men. As Fuller said, " their piety was better than their poetry, and they had drunk more of Jordan than of Helicon." In fact the same comment would apply to all the subsequent versifiers of the psalms. It would seem that the very nature of such work precludes all real literary success. The sublime thought and irregu- lar, vivid diction of the Hebrew poets do not permit themselves to be parcelled out in the cut and dried patterns of conventional metres. Once only does Sternhold rise into grandeur in the two stanzas which James Russell Lowell so much admired : The Lord descended from above, And bowed the heavens most high, And underneath his feet he cast The darkness of the sky. 375 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH On cherub and on cherubim Full royally he rode ; And on the wings of all the winds Came flying all abroad. The graces of style, however, were not greatly prized by the Puritan mind. Sternhold and Hopkins held the suffrages of their co-religionists so long on account of their strict fidelity to the thought of the original, the ruggedness and genuine force of their expression, and their employment of the simple homely phraseology of the common people. The enlightened criticism of the present day sees worth in these qualities, and assigns to the work of Sternhold and Hopkins higher credit than to many smoother and more finished versions. Sternhold and Hopkins partially yielded to Tate and Brady in 1696, and were still more urgently pushed aside by the version of Watts in 1719. The numer- ous versions which have since appeared from time to time were written purely for literary purposes, or else in a few cases (as, for example, the psalms of Ainsworth, brought to America by the Pilgrim Fathers) were granted a temporary and local use in the churches. Glass, in his Story of the Psalter^ enumerates one hundred and twenty -three complete versions, the last being that of Wrangham in 1885. This long list in- cludes but one author John Keble who has attained fame as a poet outside the annals of hymnology. No other version ever approached in popularit}' that of Sternhold and Hopkins, whose work passed through six hundred and one editions. Social hymn singing, unlike liturgic choir music, is 376 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA entirely independent of contemporary art movements. It flourishes only in periods of popular religious awaken- ing, and declines when religious enthusiasm ebbs, no matter what may be going on in professional musical circles. Psalm singing in the English Reformation period, whatever its aesthetic shortcomings, was a power- ful promoter of zeal in moments of triumph, and an un- failing source of consolation in adversity. As in the case of the Lutheran choral, each psalm had its " proper " tune. Many of the melodies were already associated with tender experiences of home life, and they became doubly endeared through religious suggestion. " The metrical psalms," says Curwen, " were Protestant in their origin, and in their use they exemplified the Protestant principle of allowing every worshiper to understand and participate in the service. As years went on, the rude numbers of Sternhold and Hopkins passed into the language of spiritual experience in a degree only less than the authorized version of the Bible. They were a liturgy to those who rejected liturgies." ^ It was their one outlet of poetic religious feeling, and dry and prosaic as both words and music seem to us now, we must believe, since human nature is everywhere moved by much the same impulses, that these psalms and tunes were not to those who used them barren and formal things, and that in the singing of them there was an undercurrent of rapture which to our minds it seems ahnost impossible that they could produce. In every form of popular expression there is always this invisible aura, like the supposed imperceptible fluid around an ^ Curwen, Studies In Worship Music. 377 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH electrified body. There are what we may call emotion- alized reactions, stimulated by social, domestic, or ancestral associations, producing effects for which the un- sympathetic critic cannot otherwise account. Even this inspiration at last seemed to fade away. When the one hundred years' conflict, of alternate as^ cendency and persecution, came to an end with the Restoration in 1660, zeal abated with the fires of con- flict, and apathy, formalism, and dulness, the counter- parts of lukewarmness and Pharisaical routine in the established Church, settled down over the dissenting sects. In the eighteenth century the psalmody of the Presbyterians, Independents, and Separatists, which had also been adopted long before in the parochial services of the established Church, declined into the most con- tracted and unemotional routine that can be found in the history of religious song. The practice of " lining out " destroyed every vestige of musical charm that might otherwise have remained ; the number of tunes in common use grew less and less, in some congregations being reduced to a bare half-dozen. The conception of individualism, which was the source of congregational singing in the first place, was carried to such absurd extremes that the notion extensively prevailed that every person was privileged to sing the melody in any key or tempo and with any grotesque embellishment that might be pleasing to himself. These fantastic abuses especially prevailed in the New England congre- gations in the last half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries, but they were only the ultimate consequences of ideas and practices which pre- 373 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA vailed in the mother country. The early Baptists for* bade singing altogether. The Brownists tried for a short time to act upon the notion that singing in wor- ship, like prayer* should be extempore. The practical results may easily be imagined. About the year 1700 it seemed as though the fair genius of sacred song had abandoned the English and American non-liturgic sects in despair. Like a sun-burst, opening a brighter era, came the Wesleyan movement, and in the same period the hymns of Dr. Isaac Watts. Whatever the effect of the exuber- ant singing of the Methodist assemblies may have had upon a cultivated ear, it is certain that the enthusiastic welcome accorded by the Wesleys to popular music as a proselyting agent, and the latitude permitted to free invention and adoption of hymns and tunes, gave an impulse to a purer and nobler style of congregational song which has never been lost. The sweet and fervent lyrics of Charles and John Wesley struck a staggering blow at the prestige of the " inspired " psalmody. His- torians of this movement remind us that hymns, heartily sung by a whole congregation, were unknown as an element in public worehip at the time when the work of the Wesleys and Whitefield began. Watts's hymns were already written, but had as yet taken no hold upon either dissenters or churchmen. The example of the Methodists was a revelation of the power that lies in popular song when inspired by conviction, and as was said of the early Lutheran choral, so it might be said of tlie Methodist hymns, that they won more souls than even the preaching of the evangelists. John Wesley, in 379 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH his published directions concerning congregational sing- ing, enjoined accuracy in notes and time, heartiness, moderation, unanimity, and spirituality as with the aim of pleasing God ratlier than one's self. He strove to bring the new hymns and tunes within the means of the poor, and yet took pains that the music should be of high quality, and that nothing vulgar or sensational should obtain currency. The truly beneficent achievement of the Wesleys in summoning the aid of the unconfined spirit of poesy in the revival of spiritual life found a worthy reinforce- ment in the songs of Isaac Watts (1674-1748). Al- though his deficiencies in the matter of poetical technic and his frequent dry, scholastic, and dogmatic treatment have rendered much the greater part of his work obso- lete, yet a true spiritual and poetic fire burns in many of his lyrics, and with all necessary abatement his fame seems secure. Such poems as " High in the Heavens, eternal God," " Before Jehovah's awful throne," and " When I survey the wondrous cross" are pearls which can never lose their place in the chaplet of English evangeli- cal hymnody. The relaxing prejudice against " unin- spired " hymns in church worship yielded to the fervent zeal, the loving faith, the forceful natural utterance of the lyrics of Watts. In his psalms also, uniting as they did the characteristic modes of feeling of both the Hebrew and the Christian conceptions, he made the transition easy, and in both he showed the true path along which tlie reviving poetic inspiration of the time must proceed. What has come of the impulse imparted by Watts and the Wesleys every student of Christian literature 880 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA knows. To give any adequate account of the movement which has enriched the multitude of modern hymn- books and sacred anthologies would require a large volume.^ No more profitable task could be suggested to one who deems it his highest duty to expand and deepen his spiritual nature, than to possess his mind of the jewels of devotional insight and chastened expres- sion which are scattered through the writings of such poets as Charles Wesley, Cowper, Newton, Faber, New- man, Lyte, Heber, Bonar, Milman, Keble, EUerton, Montgomery, Ray Palmer, Coxe, Whittier, Holmes, the Gary sisters, and others equal or hardly inferior to these, who have performed immortal service to the divine cause which they revered by disclosing to the world the infinite beauty and consolation of the Chris- tian faith. No other nation, not even the German, can show any parallel to the treasure embedded in English and American popular religious poetry. This fact is certainly not known to the majority of church members. The average church-goer never looks into a hymn-book except when he stands up to sing in the congregation, and this performance, whatever else it may do for the worshiper, gives him very little information in regard to the artistic, or even the spiritual value of the book which he holds in liis liand. Let him read his hymn-book in private, as he reads his Tennyson ; and although he will not be inclined to compare it in point of literary quality with Palgrave's Golden Treasury or Stedman's ' Thi8 has been done by several writers, but by no other in such ad- mirable fashion as by Ilorder in his delightful book, The Hymn Lovti (London, Curwen, 1889). 88i, MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH Victorian Anthology, yet he will probably be surprised at the number of lyrics whose delicacy, fervor, and pathos will be to hira a revelation of the gracious elements that pervade the minor religious poetry of the English tongue. Parallel with the progress of hymnody, and un- doubtedly stimulated by it, has been the development of the hymn-tune and the gradual rise of public taste in this branch of religious art. The history of the English and American hymn-tune may easily be traced, for its line is unbroken. Its sources also are well known, except that the origins of the first settings of the psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins are in many cases obscure. Those who first fitted tunes to the metrical psalms borrowed some of their melodies (the " Old Hundredth " is a conspicuous instance) from the Huguenot psalter of Marot and Beza, and others probably from English folk-songs. There were eminent composers in England in the Reformation period, many of whom lent their services in harmonizing the tunes found in the early psalters, and also contributed original melodies. All these ancient tunes were syllabic and diatonic, dignified and stately in movement, often sombre in coloring, in all these particulars bearing a striking resemblance to the German choral. Some of the strongest tunes in the modern hymnals, for example, " Dundee," are derived from the Scotch and English psalters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and efforts are being made in some quarters to bring others of the same source and type into favor with present-day congregations. This severe diatonic school was succeeded in the eighteenth 382 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA century by a taste for the florid and ornate which, in spite of some contributions of a very beautiful and ex- pressive character, on the whole marked a decUne in favor of the tawdry and sensational. If this tendency was an indication of an experimenting spirit, its result was not altogether evil. Earnest and dignified as the old psalm-tunes were, the Church could not live by them alone. The lighter style was a transition, and the purer modern school is the outcome of a process which strives to unite the breadth and dignity of the ancient tunes with the warmth and color of those of the second period. Together with the cultivation of the florid style we note a wider range of selection. Many tunes were taken from secular sources (not in itself a fault, since, as we have seen, many of the best melodies in the Lutheran and Calvinistic song-books had a similar origin) ; and the introduction of Catholic tunes, such as the peerless " Adeste Fideles " and the " Sicil- ian hymn," together with some of the finest German chorals, greatly enriched the English tune-books. In comparatively recent times a new phase of progress has manifested itself in the presence in the later hymnals of a large number of musical compositions of novel form and coloring, entirely the product of our own period. These tunes are representative of the present school of Church of England composers, such as Dykes, Barnby, Smart, Sullivan, Monk, Hopkins, and many others equally well known, who have contributed a large quantity of melodies of exceeding beauty, supported by varied and often striking harmonies, quite unlike the congregational songs of any other natioD.. Composed 383 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH for the noble ceremony of the Anglican Church, these tunes have made their way into many of the non-liturgic sects, and the value of their influence in inspiring a love for that which is purest and most salutary in wor- ship music has been incalculable. Much has been writ- ten in praise of these new Anglican tunes, and a good deal also in depreciation. Many of them are, it must be confessed, over-sophisticated for the use of the average congregation, carrying refinements of harmony and rhythm to such a point that they are more suitable for the choir than for the congregation. Their real value, taken collectively, can best be estimated by those who, having once used them, should imagine themselves deprived of them. The tunes that served the needs of former generations will not satisfy ours. Dr. Hanslick remarks that there is music of which it may correctly be said that it once was beautiful. It is doubtless so with hymn-tunes. Church art can never be kept unaffected by the secular currents of the time, and those who, in opera house and concert hall, are thrilled by the impas- sioned strains of the modern romantic composers, will inevitably long for something at least remotely analogous in the songs of the sanctuary. That is to say, the congregational tune must be appealing, stirring, emo- tional, as the old music doubtless was to the people of the old time, but certainly is no longer. This logical demand the English musicians of the present day and their American followers assume to gratify that is, so far as the canons of pure art and ecclesiastical propriety will allow and, in spite of the cavils of purists and re- actionaries, their melodies seem to have taken a permanent 384 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA place in the affections of the Protestant English-speaking world. The success of these melodies is due not merely to their abstract musical beauty, but perhaps still more to the subtle sympathy which their style exhibits with the present-day tendencies in theology and devotional experience, which are reflected in the peculiarly joyous and confiding note of recent hymnody. So far as music has the power to suggest definite conceptions, there seems to be an apt correspondence between this fervent, soaring, touching music and the hymns of the faith by which these melodies were in most instances directly inspired. So far as there are movements in progress bringing into shape a body of congregational song which contains features that are likely to prove a permanent enrich- ment of the religious anthology, they are more or less plainly indicated in the hymnals which have been com- piled in this country during the past ten or twelve years. Not that we may look forward to any sudden outburst of hymn-singing enthusiasm parallel to that which attended the Lutheran and Wesleyan revivals, for such a musical impulse is always the accompaniment of some mighty religious awakening, of which there is now no sign. The significance of these recent hymnals lies rather in the evidence they give of the growth of higher standards of taste in religious verse and music, and also of certain changes in progress in our churches in the prevailing modes of religious thought. The evident tendency of hymnology, as indicated by the new books, is to throw less emphasis upon those more mechanical conceptions which gave such a hard precision to a large 25 385 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH portion of the older hymnody. A finer poetic afflatus has joined with a more penetrating and intimate vision of the relationship between the divine and the human ; and this mental attitude is reflected in the loving trust, the emotional fervor, and the more delicate and inward poetic expression which prevail in the new hymnody. It is inevitable that the theological readjustment, which is so palpable to every intelligent observer, should color and deflect those forms of poetic and musical expression which are instinctively chosen as the utterance of the worshiping people. Every one at all familiar with the history of rehgious experience is aware how sensitive popular song has been as an index of popular feehng. Nowhere is the power of psychologic suggestion upon the masses more evident than in the domain of song. Hardly does a revolutionary religious idea, struck from the brains of a few leading thinkers and reformers, effect a lodgment in the hearts of any considerable section of the common people, than it is immediately projected in hymns and melodies. So far as it is no mere scholastic formula, but possesses the power to kindle an active life in the soul, it will quickly clothe itself in figurative speech and musical cadence, and in many cases it will filter itself through this medium until all that is crude, formal, and speculative is drained away, and what is essential and fruitful is retained as a permanent spiritual possession. If we were able to view the present movement in popular religious verse from a sufficient distance, we should doubtless again find illustration of this general law. Far less obviously, of course, than in the cases of 386 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA the Hussite, Lutheran, and Wesleyan movements, for the changes of our day are more gradual and placid. I would not imply that the hymns that seem so much the natural voice of the new tendencies are altogether, or even in the majority of cases, recent productions. Many of them certainly come from Watts and Cowper and Newton, and other eighteenth-century men, whose theology contained many gloomy and obsolete tenets, but whose hearts often denied their creeds and spon- taneously uttered themselves in strains which every shade of rehgious conviction may claim as its own. It is not, therefore, that the new hymnals have been mainly supplied by new schools of poetry, but the compilers, being men quick to sense the new devotional demands and also in complete sympathy with them, have made their selections and expurgations from a somewhat modified motive, repressing certain phases of thought and em- phasizing others, so that their collections take a wider range, a loftier sweep, and a more joyful, truly evangeli- cal tone than those of a generation ago. It is more the inner life of faith which these books so beauti- fully present, less that of doctrinal assent and outer conformity. These recent contributions to the service of praise are not only interesting in themselves, but even more so, perhaps, as the latest terms in that long series of popu- lar religious song-books which began with the indepen- dence of the English Church. The Plymouth Hymnal and In Excelsis are the ripened issue of that move- ment whose first ofiicial outcome was the quaint psalter of Sternhold and Hopkins; and the contrast between 387 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH the old and the new is a striking evidence of the changes which three and a half centuries have effected in culture and spiritual emphasis as revealed in popular song. The early lyrics were prepared as a sort of testi- mony against formaUsm and the use of human inven- tions in the office of worship ; they were the outcome of a striving after apostolic simplicity, while in their emotional aspects they served for consolation in trial and persecution, and as a means of stiffening the reso- lution in times of conflict. The first true hymns, as distinct from versified psalms, were designed still more to quicken joy and hope, and yet at the same time a powerful motive on the part of their authors was to give instruction in the doctrines of the faith by a means more direct and persuasive than semions, and to rein- force the exhortations of evangelists by an instrument that should be effective in awaking the consciences of the unregenerate. It is very evident that the hymnah of our day are pervaded by an intention somewhat different from this, or at least supplementary to it The Church, having become stable, and having a some- what different mission to perform under the changed conditions of the time, employs its hymns and tunes not so much as revival machinery, or as a means for inculcating dogma, as for spiritual nurture. Hymns have become more subjective, melodies and harmonies more refined and alluring ; the tone has become less stern and militant ; the ideas are more universal and tender, less mechanical and precise ; appeal is made more to the sensibility than to the intellect, and the chief stress is laid upon the joy and peace that come 388 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA from believing. It is impossible to avoid vagueness in attempting so broad a generalization. But one who studies the new hymn-books, reads the prefaces of their editors, and notes the character of the hymns that are most used in our churches, will realize that now, as it has always been in the history of the Church, the guid- ing thought and feeling of the time may be traced in popular song, more faintly but not less inevitably than in the instructions of the pulpit. When viewed in historic sequence one observes the growing prominence of the mystical and subjective elements, the fading away of the early fondness for scholastic definition. Lyric poetry is in its nature mystical and intuitive, and the hymnody of the future, following the present ten- dency in theology to direct the thought to the personal, historic Christ, and to appropriate his example and message in accordance with the light which advancing knowledge obtains concerning man's nature, needs, and destiny, will aim more than ever before to purify and quicken the higher emotional faculties, and will find a still larger field in tliose fundamental convictions which transcend the bounds of creeds, and which affirm the brotherhood of all sincere seekers after God. 389 CHAPTER XII PROBLEMS OF CHURCH MUSIC IN AMERICA In the foregoing sketch of the rise and growth of music in the Western Church no account was taken of a history of church music in America. If by art history we mean a record of progressive changes, significant of a persistent impulse which issues in distinctive styles and schools, the chronicles of ecclesiastical song in this country hardly come within the scope of history. No new forms or methods have arisen on this side of the Atlantic. The styles of composition and the systems of pnictice which have existed among us have simply been transferred from the older countries across the sea. Every form of church music known in Europe flourishes in America, but there is no native school of religious music, just as there is no Ameri- can school of secular music. The Puritan colonists brought with them a few meagre volumes of metrical psalms, and a dozen or so of tunes wherewith to sing them in the uncouth fashion which already prevailed in England. They brought also the rigid Calvinistic liostility to everything that is studied and uniform in religious ceremony, and for a century or more they seemed to glory in the distinction of maintaining church song in the most barbarous condition that 390 PROBLEMS OF CHURCH MUSIC IN AMERICA dim art has ever suffered since the founding of Chris- tianity. It was not possible that this state of affairs could endure in a community that was constantly advancing in education and in the embellishments of life, and a bitter conflict arose between puritanic tradition and the growing perception of the claims of fitness and beauty. One who would amuse himself with the grotesque controversies which raged around this question among the pious New England colonists, the acrid disputes between the adherents of the " usual way " and the " rulable way " of singing psalmody, the stern resistance to choirs and to organs, and the quaint annals of the country singing-school, may find rich gratification in some of the books of Mrs. Earle, especially The Sabbath in Puritan New England. The work of such reformers as William Billings in the eighteenth century and Lowell Mason in the nine- teenth, the first concerts of the Handel and Haydn Society, the influx of the German culture shifting all American music upon new foundations, are all land- marks which show how rapid and thorough has been our advance in musical scholarship and taste, but which also remind us how little of our achievement has been really indigenous. In spite of the poverty of original invention which forbids us to claim that American church music has in any way contributed to the evolution of the art, there is no epoch in this art's history which possesses a more vital interest to the American churchman of the present day. We have found amid all the fluctu- ations of ecclesiastical music, mediaeval and modern, 891 MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH Catholic and Protestant, one ever-recurring problem, which is no sooner apparently settled than new con- ditions arise which force it once more upon the atten- tion of minister and layman. The choice of a style of music which shall most completely answer the needs of worship as the conceptions and methods of public worship vary among different communities and in different epochs, and which at the same time shall not be unworthy of the claims of music as a fine art, this is the historic dilemma which is still, as ever, a fruitful source of perplexity and discord. The Cath- olic and Episcopal Churches are less disturbed by this spectre than their non-liturgic brethren. An authori- tative ritual carries its laws over upon music also ; tra- dition, thus fortified, holds firm against innovation, and the liturgic and clerical conception of music gives a stability to musical usages which no aberrations of taste can quite unsettle. But in the non-liturgic churches of America one sees only a confusion of pur- poses, a lack of agreement, an absence of every shade of recognized authority. The only tradition is that of complete freedom of choice. There is no admitted standard of taste ; the whole musical service is experi- mental, subject to the preferences, more or less ca- pricious, of choir-master or music committee. There is no system in the separate societies that may not be overthrown by a change of administration. The choir music is eclectic, drawn indiscriminately from Catholic, German, and English sources ; or if it is of American composition it is merely an obvious imitation of one of these three. The congregational music ranges from 392 PROBLEMS OF CHURCH MUSIC IN AMERICA the German choral to the " Gospel song," or it may be an alternation of these two incongruous styles. The choir is sometimes a chorus, sometimes a solo quartet; the latter mainly forced to choose its material from "arrangements," or from works written for chorus. Anon the choir is dismissed and the congregation, led by a precentor with voice or cornet, assumes the whole burden of the office of song. These conditions are sufficient to explain why a distinct school of Amer- ican church music does not exist and never can exist. The great principle of self-determination in doctrine and ecclesiastical government, which has brought into existence such a multitude of sects, may well be a necessity in a composite and democratic nation, but it is no less certainly a hindrance to the develop- ment of a uniform type of religious music. There would be a much nearer approach to a re- concilement of all these differences, and the cause of church music would be in a far more promising con- dition, if there were a closer sympathy between the standard of music within the Church and that pre- vailing in educated society outside. There is cer- tainly a diversity of purpose between church music and secular music, and corresponding distinctions must be preserved in respect to form and expression. A secularized style of church music means decadence. But the vitality of ecclesiastical art has always seemed to depend upon retaining a conscious touch with the large art movements of the world, and church music has cert INDEX Rjmni, Sjrian, 57. Hymn-tunes, English, 382. fiymn-tones, German, see Choral. Iguatias, St., traditional introdnc- tion of chanting into the Church by, 48. Ildefonso, St., 118. Instruments, how first used in wor- ship, 3, 10; their use in Egyptian ceremonies, 12; among the Greeks, 14; among the Hebrews, 21, 32; not used in the early Church, 54. Jakob, quoted, 77, 175. James, St., liturgy of, 49. Jean de Muris, quoted, 146. Jebb, quoted, 333, 335, 339. Jews, see Hebrews. John Damascene, St., 60. John the Deacon, author of a life of Gregory I., 108. Jomelli. 213. Josqnin des Pre's, 133, 154. E Keble, 376, 381. Kiel, 212,321. Kinnor, 21. Kretzschmar, quoted, 306. Kunrad der Marner, 229. Kyrie eleison, 57, 87 ; popular nse in Germany, 229. Lauciani, quoted, 63. Lang, Andrew, quoted, 7. Laodicea, injunction in regard to singing by council of, 50, 51. Laasns, 93, 133, 154, 167, 173. Latimer, 329. Lemaire, quoted, 116. Leo I., pope, 110. Lesueur, 214. " Lining out," 370. Liszt, criticisms upon Paris church music, 206 ; imagines a new style of religious music, 214. Liturgy, Anglican, 329; modes of rendering, 333 tt teq.; intoning of prayers, 337. Liturgy, Catholic, origin of, 81, 83; language of, 82; outline and components of, 87 ; a musical liturgy, 92. Liturgy, Luther's, see Formula Mis- sae, aud Deutsche Messe. Liturgy of St. James, 49, 50 ; of St. Mark, 49. Longfellow, translation of " glad- some light," 58. Lotti, 133. Louis IX., king of France, 148. Luther, his service to German hymnody, 226, 243, 248; his re- form of the liturgy, 244 ; his theory of worship, 245 ; origin of his hymns, 250 ; their spirit and literary style, 251 ; nature of his work for congregational music, 258; Luther not a composer of tunes, 259 ; quoted, 260. Lyric poetry, two forms of, 27. Lyte, 381. M Mackenzie, 355. Marbecke, his musical setting of the English Prayer Book, 337. Marot, psalm translations of, 359. Martin, 355. Mary, queen of England, reaction under, 329, 332. 423 INDEX Mass, theory of, 83, 91, 240; differ- ent kinds of, 85; in England, 328, 332. See also Liturgy, Catholic. Milman, 381. Milton, 365. Mixed mode of performing the Anglican service, 335. Monk, 355, 383. Montgomery, 381. N Naninis, the, 168. Neale, quoted on the Greek hymns, 59. Nebel, 22. Netherlandera, age of the, 149. Neukomm, 207. Newman, 381. Newton, 381, 387. Nicholas I., pope, 1 22. Notker Balbulus, reputed founder of the Sequence, 121. o Oblation of the Host, 88. Offertory, 88. Opera, invention of, 186, 188 ; ideal and form of early Italian, 190; opera and church, 193. Oratorio, its rise in Germany and effect on church music, 319. Organ music, its beginnings in Venice, 169, 171 ; in the German Protestant Church, 269, 270, 290; Bach's organ works, see Bach. Organs, Puritan hatred of, 365, 370 ; destroyed by the Puritans, 371. Organum, 136. Osmund, bishop of Salisbury, 331. Pachelbel, 292. Palestrina, 93, 133, 151 ; the Mass of Pope Marcellus, 152, 154; myth of the rescue of church music by Palestrina, 152; com- pared with Lassns, 173, "Palestrina style," 158; tonality, 1 58 ; construction, 1 59 ; tone color, how produced, 166; aes- thetic and religious effect, 173, 177; limits of characterization, 178, Palmer, 381. Parallelism in Hebrew poetry, 28. Parochial mode of performing the Anglican service, 335. Passion music, German, 270, 272 ; origin and early development, 274 ; from Schiitz to Bach, Ham- burg Passions, 280, Passion play, 274, Pater, quoted, 400. Paul, St., his injunction in regard to song, 42 ; allusion to the glos* solalia, 44. Pergolesi, 213. Philo, 48. Pietism, its effect on church music, 266, 319. Plain Song, see Chant, Catholic ritual ; also Chant, Anglican. Plato, his opinion of the purpose of music, 14. Pliny, his report to Trajan concern- ing Christian singing, 47. Plutarch on the function of music, 1.5. " Pointing," 341. Post-Communion, 90. Prayer Book, see Common Prayer, Book of. Preface, 88. Psalmody, Puritan, 369, 373; methods of singing, 377, 405. Psalms, how sung in the ancient 424 INDEX Hebrew worship, 27 ; adopted by the Christians, 41 ; antiphonal psalmody in Milan in the fourth century, 66 ; in Rome in the fifth century, 67; in the Church of England, see Chant, Anglican ; metrical psalm versions, see Psalmody. Psalter, Genera, origin of, 359, Psaltery, 23. Purcell, 347, 352. Puritanism, 324, 327, 358, 364 et seq. Puritans, their hostility to artistic music, 365 et seq. ; their attacks upon episcopacy and ritualism, 366, 369 ; their ravages in the churches, 371 ; their tenets and nsages maintained after the Res- toration, 372 ; Puritan music in America, 390. R Recitative, 188. Reformation in England, its nature, causes, and progress, 325 et seq. Reinken, 295. Reinmar der Zweter, 229. Renaissance, its influence upon musical development, 185, 187, 272 ; parallel between Renais- sance religious painting and Catholic Church music, 194. Requiem Mass, 85. Rheinberger, 212. Richter, 321. Ridley, 329. Robert, king of France, 147. Romanus, 119. Rossini, religious music of, 207, 213. Sachs, 229. St. Cecilia Society, 180, 212. St. Gall, conrent of , u a moBical centre, 118. Saint- Saens, 217. Sanctus, 88. Savages, religious sentiment among, 2 ; methods of religion* expres- sion, 3. Schaff, quoted, 44. Scheldt, 292. Schleiermacher, 321. Schola Cantorum, 181, 288 n. Schop, 266. Schubert, masses of, 199, 200, 211. Schubiger, quoted, 119. Schiitz, greatest German composer before Bach and Handel, 277 ; his education and musical meth- ods, 277 ; Symphoniae sacra, 278 ; dramatic religious works, 278; Passion settings, 278; his isolated musical position, 279. Sechter, 207. Seminaries, theological, and church music, 406. Senfl, 264. Sequence, 88; origin and earlj character, 12i. " Service," Anglican, 345. Shairp, quoted, 398. Shophar, 22. Sistrum, 23. Six Articles, 328. Smart. 355, 383. Spencer, Herbert, quoted, 5, 15. SperatuSj 249. Spitta, quoted, 322. Stainer, 355 ; quoted, 342. Stanford, 355. Stern hold and Hopkins, psalm ver- sion of, 375, 377. Stile famigliare, 151, 158, 159. Sullivan, 355, 383. Swelinck, 292. Symbolism, in ancient music, 11, 14. Synagogue, worship in the ancient, 420 INDEX 33; modified by the Christians, 41. Sjnesitu, 57. Tallis, 168, 34.5, 350. Tate and Brady, psalm version of, 376. Tauler, 229, 231, 238. Taylor, Bayard, quoted, 254. Te Deum, 58. Therapeutae, 48. Thirty Years' War, 264, 265, 285. Thomas a Kempis, 224. Tones, Gregorian, 100. Tones, psalm, see Tones, Grego- rian. Toph, 22. Tours, 355. Tractus, 88. u Ugab, 22. Van Lann, quoted, 359. Vehe, 264. Venice, church music in, 168. Verdi, his Requiem, 199, 200, 213, 218. Vittoria, 133, 168. w Wackernagel's collection of Ger- man pre-Reformation hymns, 228. Wagner, P., quoted, 104. Walther, Johann, 249, 259, 260, 264. Walther von der Vogelweide, 229. Watts, psalm version of, 376 ; hymns, 379, 380, 387. Wesley, Charles, 379, 381. Wesley, John, 379. Wesleyan movement, revival of hymn singing in the, 379. Whittier, 381. Wiclif, 327. Willaert, 133, 168, 169. Wiuterfeld, quoted, 170. Wiseman, quoted, 76. Witt, founder of St. Cecilia Society 180. Wrangham, 376. lire By EDWARD DICKINSON, Litt.D. Professor of the History and Criticism of Music. Oberlin CoUec* Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK Music and the Higher Education A stimulating and suggestive book, of the greatest practical value in the rapidly growing movement for the study of musical history and appreciation in the universities and higher schools. A most convincing exposition of what is to be sought and gained in a field now first receiving its full educational recognition. Contents: Prelude In a College Music Room. I. The College and the Fine Arts. II. Music in the College. III. Teacher and Cntic: His Preparation and His Method. " He has the rare faculty of writing about music in a melodir manner; ... he it not pedantic; his art is inspiring and vitaliring, ... A tribute to music that is es- sentially noble, and a stop forward in the development of a public taste for the art of music." Kcview of KeTifws. Tlie Education of a Music Lover Contents: I. The New Musical Education. II. The Music Lover's Need of Education. III. Definite Hearing: The Problem of Form. IV. The Beauty of Melody and Rhythm. V. The Beauty of Harmony. VI. Performance: The Art of the Pianist. VII. The Art of Song: Music and Poetry. VIII. The Art of Song: The Technique of the Singer. IX. The Problem of Expression: Representative Music. X. Music History and Biography. XI. The Music Lover and the Higher Law. " Every page has a distinct and individual charm. . . . His chapters on the art of the pianist and of the singer are admirably written, and every reader, whether amateur or professional, will find something informing in the chapter deahng with 'representative ' music, the leading type of the present." New York Sun. "A book that ran be warmly commended to all musicians, concert-goers and all that are interested in every way. . . . Profesor Dickinson thinks clearly and sanely, is eminently fair-minded and catholic in taste, and writes with clarity of expression and uncommon charm of style." Boston Hirald. By EDWARD DICKINSON, Litt.D. The Study of the History of Music Contents: Primitive Music. Music of the Assyrians, Egyptians, He- brews, Greeks and Romans. Sung in the Early Christian Church. The Catholic Liturgy and Liturgic Chant. Beginnings of Polyphonic Music. Popular Music in the Middle Ages. The Age of the Netherlanders, 1400- 1550. Choral Music of the Sixteenth Century. Early German Protestant Music. Protestant Church Music in England. The Madrigal. The Opera, Modern Tonality. Early Growth of Instrumental Music. The Violin and Its Music. Keyed Chamber of Instrunaents. The Italian Opera in the Seventeenth Century. The Opera BuEa, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Rise of the Opera in France, Seventeenth Century Italian Optra Sena in the Seventeenth Century. Bach. Handel. Gluck. Haydn. Mozart. Beethoven. The German Romantic Opera. Weber. The Ger- man Lied. Schubert. Piano Playing to About 1830. Schumann. Mendels- sohn. Chopin. Programme Music. Berlioz. Liszt. French and Italian Opera in the Nineteenth Century. Wagner. Recent Music in Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Russia, Bohemia, Scandinavia, England, and America, etc. " His book is certainly almost unique in its clearness of statement and general nsefulness ; it is a marvel of condensed information. Not only are all the main epochs in the evolution of music briefly and happily characterized, but every section is followed by a paragraph in smaller type rcferrmg the reader to the best books and articles in the English l.inguage as that particular phase of the question. The counties^ women's clubs in the country will, of course, give it a place of honor in their libraries." The Nation. Music in the History of the Western Church " To his evidently wide knowledge of the causes of church music in Ui many stages, and acquaintance with its historical environment, Professor Dickinson brings a broad and intelligent human sympathy. He shows critical fairness alike in his treatment of the Roman Catholic Miiss and the rise of Lutheran hymnody, of Anglican Church music and Puritan psalmody in England and America. The treat- ment is free from unnecessary technicalities. This book furnishes just the sort of information every clergyman ought to have. A course of study, following some such line as is here marked out, ought to be given in every theological seminary." JAe OuUook. "A very dignified, painstaking, thoughtful treatise, broad in its scope, scholarly in its method, and exceedingly suggestive and powerful on many questions both of history and a;stlictics. ... It will certainly establish itself at once as one of the in- dispensable hand-books of the subject, especially as it is written with no slight liter- ary finish and warmth." Prof. Waldo S. Pratt, of Hartford Theological Seminary. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK 3 1158 01318 0459 a " '" "'" "" iiiii mil mil II AA 000 047196 1