Sacred music

“ If the object of sacred music be the elevation of the soul to the highest pitch of religious fervor and devotional enthusiasm, the accomplishment of that object may be doubted where a multiplicity of violins and other instruments drown rather than accompany the choir and the organ. ”

“ We must not be understood to decry the composition of so-called sacred music, or the singing of it. On the contrary, we would do all in our power to encourage it; but we object to its usurping the place of music better fitted for the divine offices of the Church, and vastly surpassing it for such use in every particular. There is plenty of time, outside of the hour or two in which we are present at Mass or Vespers, to hear all the sacred music we desire or can bear. ”

“ And while thus reflecting on sacred music, we think with wonder on the Christian Church—on its power and on its compass. Less than nineteen centuries ago, its first hymn was sung in an upper chamber of Jerusalem; and those who sung it were quickly scattered. And now the Christian hymn is one that never ceases—one that is heard in every tongue; and the whisper of that upper chamber is now a chorus that fills the world.
Music is an essential element in social life and social culture, and our times have few better movements than the increasing introduction of vocal music into popular education. ”

“ All kinds of music are suitable for sacred use that do not raise secular associations. A Largo, an Adagio, a Grave, an Andante, an Allegro, a fugal or a non-fugal composition can all be performed in the Church but should one and all be of a staid and dignified character throughout, elevated and sober, and of such a nature that any preacher of note could say: "This splendid music is a fitting introduction to my discourse"; or "After such singing my lips had better be closed, and the spirit left to its own silent worship." ”

“ Music is not worship but it may become a valuable accessory. Christianity has taken hold of music and consecrated and elevated it to the highest uses of worship. It has produced the greatest musicians and the grandest music. All true music is the outward and melodious expression of our dearest and most sacred thoughts and feelings. ”

“ Sacred song, it has been said, is to be regarded as the musical associate and auxiliary of the work of Christian instruction and sanctification in the church. It cannot be anything or everything that is luscious or pleasing in music; moreover, it is an idea that goes beyond the notion of mere tune or melody, or even of the richest combination of sound that art ever produced. Sacred song, in the divine idea, must be more than mere music. ”

“ Let us hear something more of the opinions of the same holy pope about figured "sacred music." "The Gregorian chant is that song which excites the minds of the faithful to piety and devotion; it is that music, therefore, which, if sung in our churches with care and decorum, is most willingly heard by devout persons, and is justly preferred to that which is called figured or harmonized music. ”

“ For every charity that can sanctify and bless humanity, music has its sacred measures; and well does goodness merit the richest harmony of sound, that is itself the richest harmony of heaven. Sorrow, also, has its consecrated melody. The wounded spirit and the broken heart are attempered and assuaged by the murmurings of divine song. ”

“ Therefore music is a sacred, a divine, a Godlike thing, and was given to man by Christ to lift our hearts up to God, and make us feel something of the glory and beauty of God and of all which God has made. ”

“ Psalmody, or the singing of sacred music, conducted by such a gracious and animated sense of the revealed word of God, must naturally be performed, as it must be ardently felt, in a different spirit—and this truth we perceive daily verified; but while a considerable portion of our clergy not only are strict in confining the singing to the last version, or to parts of Sternhold, and even prescribe the very dull old tunes to be made use of, improvement in church music is not to be expected. ”

“ External to the Ritual chant, that is to say, the Gregorian, or Plain Chant, little else is now known except the works of modern music, that is to say, a music essentially favoring what people have agreed to call sensualism. It is this, almost exclusively this, which, under the austere title of sacred music, is sought to be introduced into our sacred offices. Now, without desiring to enter deeply into the matter, we need but few words to point out how grievously it is misplaced.
“Worldly music agitates and seeks to agitate, because the world seeks its pleasure in stir and change. ”

“ Sacred music contributes to the fitness and splendour of the ecclesiastical rites, and since its principal office is to clothe with suitable melody the liturgical text proposed for the understanding of the faithful, its proper aim is to add greater efficacy to the words, in order that through it the people may be the more easily moved to devotion and better disposed for the fruits of grace belonging to the celebration of the most holy mysteries. It must be holy, it must be true art, it must be universal; and since these qualities are to be found in the highest degree in the Gregorian chant . ”

“ I suppose it may be that as we make the music that issues from the 291 orchestra, or from the organ where all musics mingle, so he makes the love that religion burns to utter, but that music, for the musical, alone makes manifest. All worship is sacred, but that is unutterably holy. How holy should the heart of the musician be! ”

“ Art, especially musical art, is a vital part of religion, and cannot be put asunder from it. Like thought, music, since the bonds of church and state have been [Pg 41] broken, has spread wide its pinions and soared to hitherto unsuspected heights. All noble music is sacred. ”

“ 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. ”

“ More than that, if religious music were chosen not only from so-called sacred works but from the works of classical masters generally, one might be certain of hearing good music, varied in style and movement, and capable of pleasing all those in whom the æsthetic sense is developed. ”

“ With a vast numerical rather than a real variety in point of the one constitutive element of sacred song—viz., music—they are poverty itself as regards the other—viz., inspired truth—the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei, from the Ordinary of the Mass, and a small number of hymns, antiphons, and scattered verses from the Holy Scriptures, in the form of motets, being literally the sum-total of their possession in this element. ”

“ Has eloquence sought to nerve men for the grand conflicts of life? the church of Christ has touched the lips of eloquence with living fire from her altar, until have sprung forth words that flamed with love to man and love to God. Has music sought to weave her entrancing spells around the ear and heart and soul? the church of Christ has breathed into music her own divine being, until the music of the church seems like beatific worship, and worship on earth like beatific music. ”

“ Over the kneeling worshippers, the illuminated altar, the pictures of the crucifixion and the ascension, the intonation of the priest, "the dim religious light" shining through the stained windows, Music breathes her voice. {552} As the great organ swells, and the deep-toned choir utters the despair of the Miserere, the heavenly beauty of the Agnus Dei, the exultation of the Gloria, the devotion of the Credo, etc., what soul is not bowed in sympathy with grief, raised with gratitude, or bathed in heavenly peace? I know no music that has a more profound effect. It is a part of worship. ”

“ Just as the artist ‘humanized the altar pieces and the cloister frescoes upon which he worked’ and so ‘silently substituted the love of beauty and the interest of actual life for the principles of the church,’ so the musician ‘humanized’ the service of the church, brought beauty, expression and emotion into his masses and motets, imbuing them with the dramatic spirit, the spirit of passion, which had never been absent from the secular music of the people, the music that is always indigenous to the soil. ”

“ And if the people saved be called the lyre, it will be understood to be in consequence of their giving glory musically, through the inspiration of the Word and the knowledge of God, being struck by the Word so as to produce faith. You may take music in another way, as the ecclesiastical symphony at once of the law and the prophets, and the apostles along with the Gospel, and the harmony which obtained in each prophet, in the transitions of the persons. ”

“ Fortunately for the good of the art, the trained musicians of the Church took it up, and, calling to their aid the resources of their art as used in the music of the Church, applied them all to secular melodies, the songs of the people. ”

“ Let me explain my views about church music, and you will see that I am, at all events, clear on the subject in my own mind. What I think is, that no art proceeds so thoroughly out of the spiritualization of mankind, and demands such pure and spiritual modes and means of expression, as music. The sense of the existence of what is highest and holiest, of that spiritual power which kindles the life of all nature, utters itself audibly in music, which-- (at all events vocal music) --is the expression of the highest fulness of existence, i.e., the praise of the Creator. ”

“ And the longer a dreamer listens to those giant harmonies, the better he realizes that nothing save this hundred-voiced choir on earth can fill all the space between kneeling men, and a God hidden by the blinding light of the Sanctuary. The music is the one interpreter strong enough to bear up the prayers of humanity to heaven, prayer in its omnipotent moods, prayer tinged by the melancholy of many different natures, coloured by meditative ecstasy, upspringing with the impulse of repentance—blended with the myriad fancies of every creed. Yes. ”

“ Inspired by the grandest of traditions, provided with credentials as, on equal terms with poetry, valid in the expression of man’s consciousness of his needs and his infinite privilege,—thus consecrated for its future mission, the soul of music passed from Hebrew priests to apostles and Christian fathers, and so on to the saints and hierarchs, who laid the foundation of the sublime structure of the worship music of a later day. ”

“ He did not know that elevated natures naturally respond to human music by prayer, that heavenly music. And undoubtedly, he had never heard those sublime melodies which a loving soul sings to itself, and of which the most beautiful concerts of this world are but a feeble echo. ”

“ All melody and all harmony upon earth, whether in the song of birds, the whisper of the wind, the concourse of voices, or the sounds of those cunning instruments which man has learnt to create, because he is made in the image of Christ, the Word of God, who creates all things; all music upon earth, I say, is beautiful in as far as it is a pattern and type of the everlasting music which is in heaven, which was before all worlds and shall be after them. ”

“ With those just spirits that wear victorious palms
Hymns devout and holy psalms
Singing everlastingly,"—
his voice sank again, though it was easy to see that a prayer trembled on his lips. As a strain of music fades into silence, his tones fell away, fainter and fainter; and with the same seraphic light on his countenance his breathing ceased. ”

“ Having made up our minds to tear down our Protestant singing-gallery, and to make use only of male voices in the singing of Mass and Vespers, we shall not fear for the decision of the question, What kind of music is to be selected? The Gregorian chant, that "grave, sweet, majestic, intellectual music of the Church," will defy all competition. ”

“ Everything that is joyful, beautiful, glorious, comforting, consoling, lovely, pleasing to the eye, good to the taste, pleasant to the smell, and happifying in every respect is for the Saints.
Tight-laced religious professors of the present generation have a horror at the sound of a fiddle. There is no music in hell, for all good music belongs to heaven. Sweet harmonious sounds give exquisite joy to human beings capable of appreciating music. ”

“ From this early association of music with religious worship we derive something of our heredity of reverence for the art, a sentiment which in all ages has associated music with religious ritual and worship, and out of which has come much of the tender regard we have for it as the expression of home and love in the higher aspects. ”

“ It is gospel whereof the people are in great need. As Christ gathered up the Ten Commandments and redistilled them into the clear liquid of the wondrous eleventh—love God utterly and thy neighbor as thyself—so I think the time will come when music rightly developed to its now little forseen grandeur will be found to be a late revelation of all gospels in one." Could the art of music, or the art of anything have a more profound reason for being than this? A conception unlimited by the narrow names of Christian, Pagan, Jew, or Angel! A vision higher and deeper than art itself! ”