Читать книгу Music in the History of the Western Church - Dickinson Edward - Страница 5

In reading the words of the Catholic liturgy from the Missal we must remember that they were written to be sung, and in a certain limited degree acted, and that we cannot receive their real force except when musically rendered and in connection with the ceremonies appropriated to them. For the Catholic liturgy is in conception and history a musical liturgy; word and tone are inseparably bound together. The immediate action of music upon the emotion supplements and reinforces the action of the text and the dogmatic teaching upon the understanding, and the ceremony at the altar makes the impression still more direct by means of visible representation. All the faculties are therefore held in the grasp of this composite agency of language, music, and bodily motion; neither is at any point independent of the others, for they are all alike constituent parts of the poetic whole, in which action becomes prayer and prayer becomes action.

The music of the Catholic Church as it exists to-day is the result of a long process of evolution. Although this process has been continuous, it has three times culminated in special forms, all of them coincident with three comprehensive ideas of musical expression which have succeeded each other chronologically, and which divide the whole history of modern music into clearly marked epochs. These epochs are those (1) of the unison chant, (2) of unaccompanied chorus music, and (3) of mixed solo and chorus with instrumental accompaniment.

(1) The period in which the unison chant was the only form of church music extends from the founding of the congregation of Rome to about the year 1100, and coincides with the centuries of missionary labor among the Northern and Western nations, when the Roman liturgy was triumphantly asserting its authority over the various local uses.

(2) The period of the unaccompanied contrapuntal chorus, based on the mediaeval key and melodic systems, covers the era of the European sovereignty of the Catholic Church, including also the period of the Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century. This phase of art, culminating in the works of Palestrina in Rome, Orlandus Lassus in Munich, and the Gabrielis in Venice, suffered no decline, and gave way at last to a style in sharp contrast with it only when it had gained an impregnable historic position.

(3) The style now dominant in the choir music of the Catholic Church, viz., mixed solo and chorus music with free instrumental accompaniment, based on the modern transposing scales, arose in the seventeenth century as an outcome of the Renaissance secularization of art. It was taken up by the Catholic, Lutheran, and Anglican Churches, and was moulded into its present types under the influence of new demands upon musical expression which had already brought forth the dramatic and concert styles.

The unison chant, although confined in the vast majority of congregations to the portions of the liturgy that are sung by the priest, is still the one officially recognized form of liturgic music. Although in the historic development of musical art representatives of the later phases of music have been admitted into the Church, they exist there only, we might say, by sufferance, – the chant still remains the legal basis of the whole scheme of worship music. The chant melodies are no mere musical accompaniment; they are the very life breath of the words. The text is so exalted in diction and import, partaking of the sanctity of the sacrificial function to which it ministers, that it must be uttered in tones especially consecrated to it. So intimate is this reciprocal relation of tone and language that in process of time these two elements have become amalgamated into a union so complete that no dissolution is possible even in thought. There is no question that the chant melodies as they exist to-day are only modifications, in most cases but slight modifications, of those that were originally associated with the several portions of the liturgy. At the moment when any form of words was given a place in the Missal or Breviary, its proper melody was then and there wedded to it. This fact makes the Catholic liturgic chant a distinctive church song in a special and peculiar sense. It is not, like most other church music, the artistic creation of individuals, enriching the service with contributions from without, and imparting to them a quality drawn from the composer’s personal feeling and artistic methods. It is rather a sort of religious folk-song, proceeding from the inner shrine of religion. It is abstract, impersonal; its style is strictly ecclesiastical, both in its inherent solemnity and its ancient association, and it bears, like the ritual itself, the sanction of unimpeachable authority. The reverence paid by the Church to the liturgic chant as a peculiarly sacred form of utterance is plainly indicated by the fact that while there is no restraint upon the license of choice on the part of the choir, no other form of song has ever been heard, or can ever be permitted to be heard, from the priest in the performance of his ministrations at the altar.

If we enter a Catholic church during High Mass or Vespers we notice that the words of the priest are delivered in musical tones. This song at once strikes us as different in many respects from any other form of music with which we are acquainted. At first it seems monotonous, strange, almost barbaric, but when we have become accustomed to it the effect is very solemn and impressive. Many who are not instructed in the matter imagine that the priest extemporizes these cadences, but nothing could be further from the truth. Certain portions of this chant are very plain, long series of words being recited on a single note, introduced and ended with very simple melodic inflections; other portions are florid, of wider compass than the simple chant, often with many notes to a syllable. Sometimes the priest sings alone, without response or accompaniment; sometimes his utterances are answered by a choir of boys in the chancel or a mixed choir in the gallery; in certain portions of the service the organ supports the chant with harmonies which seem to be based on a different principle of key and scale from that which ordinarily obtains in modern chord progression. In its freedom of rhythm it bears some resemblance to dramatic recitative, yet it is far less dramatic or characteristic in color and expression, and at the same time both more severe and more flexible. To one who understands the whole conception and spirit of the Catholic worship there is a singular appropriateness in the employment of this manner of utterance, and when properly rendered it blends most efficiently with the architectural splendors of altar and sanctuary, with incense, lights, vestments, ceremonial action, and all the embellishments that lend distinction and solemnity to the Catholic ritual. This is the celebrated liturgic chant, also called Gregorian chant, Plain Song, or Choral, and is the special and peculiar form of song in which the Catholic Church has clothed its liturgy for certainly fifteen hundred years.

This peculiar and solemn form of song is the musical speech in which the entire ritual of the Catholic Church was originally rendered, and to which a large portion of the ritual is confined at the present day. It is always sung in unison, with or without instrumental accompaniment. It is unmetrical though not unrhythmical; it follows the phrasing, the emphasis, and the natural inflections of the voice in reciting the text, at the same time that it idealizes them. It is a sort of heightened form of speech, a musical declamation, having for its object the intensifying of the emotional powers of ordinary spoken language. It stands to true song or tune in much the same relation as prose to verse, less impassioned, more reflective, yet capable of moving the heart like eloquence.

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

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