Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/198

180 PALES T R I N A still possess countless examples of the Missa "..Eterna Christ! munera," the Missa "Vidi turbain magnam," "Repleatur os meum," "Duin complerentur," "Iste Confessor," and others of like character, all named after the cantifcrmi on which they are based, though, except in a few comparatively rare cases to be presently mentioned, the words proper to the cantifcrmi do not appear in the work, the selected melody being adapted to the actual words of the Mass. And thus far the custom was not only an unobjectionable but a thoroughly commendable one ; for the melodies employed were familiar to every educated member of the congregation, and to these the sound of the well-known tune must necessarily have suggested the sacred words belonging to it, and that so powerfully that the performance on Christmas Day of a Mass founded on the melody of " Hodie Christus natus est," or on Whitsunday of one based on that of " Veui, Creator Spiritus," could scarcely have failed to induce in the minds of the assembled worshippers the exact train of meditation most desirable on these great festivals. Had composers been contented with this, all would have been well. But unhappily they were tempted to add the extraneous words; and their intention, in doing so, has been grossly mis represented. They have been accused of wilfully sacrificing sense to sound, with the unworthy object of displaying their technical skill to greater advantage. At the first blush there may seem some truth in this ; but here again the strictures will not bear examina tion in presence of the actual records. Nearly a century before the birth of Palestrina, Joannes de Tinctoris the compiler of the earliest known Dictionary of Musical Terms wrote a Mass in which one voice interpolated the words here printed in italics, while the others sang the authorized text, exactly as it appears in the Missal : Cherubim ac seraphim cxteriqne spiritus angeUci Deo in allissimis incesxabili race proclamant, " Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Duminus Dcus Sabauth." " Pueri Hebrxorum sternentes reslimenta ramos palmarum Jtsu filio David clamabant Osanna in excelsis." " Benedictus semper sit fi/ius Altissimi, qui de cce/is hue venit in nomine Domini." Clearly this is nothing more than an amplification of the received version a reverent commentary upon the words actually recited by the priest. In what way can the addition of these extraneous sentences conduce to the display of the composer s musical learning ? He might just as easily have set the same notes to the unaltered text. Again, Palestrina himself begins his Liber primus Missarum, already mentioned, with a Mass for which he has chosen, as a canto fermo, the entire melody of the gradual, " Ecce Sacerdos magnus," sung on the festivals of certain great doctors of the church, such as Ambrose and Athanasius, one voice being constantly employed in the reiteration of this in long, slow notes, sung to its own proper words, while three others sing the authorized text in the usual way. What object could possibly have tempted the composer to arrange his music thus, other than that of using the familiar words and tune as a means of reminding his hearers of the great work wrought by the saints whose festival they are commemorating ? Palestrina was the last man in the world to have paraded his learning ; and, had he wished to call attention to it, he might have done so in a hundred easier ways. Indeed, if the Mass were to be sung to-morrow, nothing would be easier than to fit the words of the Mass to the notes of the canto fcrmo throughout. Still, not withstanding the innocence of the composer s intention, there can be no doubt that the custom was a highly reprehensible one ; and it led to something very much worse. The troubadours and minnesingers of the Middle Ages produced a host of beautiful secular melodies, many of which still live among us in the guise of "national airs," though the names of their authors have been forgotten for ages. The beauty of many of these melodies tempted composers to select them as cantifenni for their Masses ; and not a few such works were actually named after them, as the Missa " L Homme arme " (a very common example), the Missa " Mon cueur se recommande a vous," and many others. And in this the meditBval musician had no more thought of intentional irreverence than had the Flemish painter when he represented the Nativity as taking place in a little roadside hostelry like that to which he was accustomed to resort for his evening meal. But he committed a grave error of judgment. For, just as the sound of the sacred canto fermo -brought to remembrance the words with which it was connected, so, we may be sure, did that of the secular one ; and the greater its beauty the more surely would it do its evil work. It was by its beauty alone that it attracted the composer ; yet his treatment of it proves beyond all doubt that he meant no evil. This, however, is the last stage of our history at which we can acquit him of it ; and perhaps even here we may have strained the point a little too far. As might naturally have been expected, the introduction of the secular canto fcrmo was followed by exactly the same results as that of the sacred one. It took a longer time to bring about the evil, but it came at last. The familiar words were sung to the familiar notes, not by the will of the composer, who would never have dared to insert them, even had he wished to do so, but by that of profane singers, who surreptitiously trolled them forth for the gratification of a prurient taste, while the great body of the choir adhered to the sacred text. And, in the face of these undeniable facts, Hawkins calmly speaks of the reform as one of style only, while Ambros, intoxicated by the beauty of so much of the music pre served to us, and especially by the compositions of Claude doudimel, for whom he entertained a well-founded admiration, tells us, in so many words, that no reform of church music was ever needed or demanded, and that no such reform as that popularly attributed to the influence of Palestrina ever took place. Two of the commissioners, however, Cardinals Borromeo and Vitellozzi, while admitting the urgent need of reform, pleaded for a compromise, and happily the commission agreed to postpone its final decision until Palestrina already recognized as the greatest composer then living had been permitted to prove, if he could, the possibility of producing a Mass which should not only be free from the abuses complained of, but should also conduce to the excitation of true devotional feeling by bringing the plain sense of the words into the strongest possible relief, and that so manifestly that it might be presented to all future composers as the pattern of what true ecclesiastical music ought evermore to be. A careful comparison of Palestrina s works with those of the best of his contemporaries conclusively proves that in him alone were united all the qualifications necessary for the success of this difficult attempt, which demanded the earnestness of a deeply religious mind, the science of a profoundly learned musician, and the refined taste of an artist whose sense of beauty was strong enough to over come all desire for the display of technical power at the expense of that delicacy of expression without which the required solemnity of style would have been unattainable. Animuccia lived as holy a life as Palestrina. The elder Nanini, if not so learned a musician as he, was at any rate more learned than by far the greater number of his contemporaries. But the world had yet to learn how far refinement of taste could be carried in the composition of sacred music ; and upon Palestrina devolved the duty of teaching it its lesson. Ockenheim. had already astonished it by the ingenuity with which he evolved from the con trapuntal materials at his command a form so symmetric ally proportioned that it seemed as if no future artificer could add to its perfection 1 ; but the materials were dry bones, and the resulting form no more than a wonderfully articulated skeleton. To the erudition of Ockenheim Josquin Depres united the fire of true genius. To him we are indebted for many, if not most, of the finest works produced before the age of Palestrina. 2 Yet even he could do no more than clothe Ockenheini s bare skeleton with flesh. It remained for Palestrina to breathe into the perfect body the breath of that artistic life which alone could enable it to give thanks to the Creator of all things in tones which betokened the presence of the soul within it. He first taught the world that music was not a mere lifeless collection of notes, that, as the gift of speech enabled man to express his thoughts to his fellow-man, so the gift of harmony enabled him to express his feelings, whether of devotion, or praise, or prayer, and this so intelligibly that he might " sing praises with understand ing " in the truest sense of the words. And it was to the decree of the council of Trent that he was indebted for the opportunity of showing how great a work it was possible to accomplish in this direction, as well as for the means of accomplishing it with .such good effect that to this day the results are apparent in every church in which true ecclesi astical music is sung. Dreading to trust the issue of so severe a trial to a single work, Palestrina, with characteristic modesty, submitted 1 For examples, consult the 1 )odccachordon of Glareamis, and Petrucci s Odhe.caton and Canti C. No. cento cinquanta. - See two extremely rare volumes of his Masses in the library of the British Museum.