Curiosities of Christian History Part 46

No instrument, as an accompaniment to human voices in Church music, has been discovered equal to the organ for the power and grandeur of its effects; but being of a great mechanical complexity, it has taken many centuries to bring it to perfection. Rudimentary instruments of the same kind, worked by wind and some by water, are mentioned by the ancients. The hydraulic organ was used for some centuries in preference to the pneumatic organ, but it ceased altogether in the fourteenth century. It is not precisely known at what period the organ was first used for religious purposes, but it seems to have been in common use in Spain about 450. Pope Vitalia.n.u.s, in 666, saw its advantages in a.s.sisting the human voice. In the eighth century both the Anglo-Saxon and French artists began to exert their ingenuity in improving the instrument. Charlemagne first introduced it in Germany, and he sent one as a present to the Caliph. In the ninth century organs came into general use in England, and St. Dunstan showed his ingenuity in improvements. One was made in 951 for Winchester Cathedral. A monk named Theophilus in the eleventh century published a treatise on the art of making the organ. Organs, whether hydraulic or pneumatic, were nearly the only instruments used in churches in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, all others being rejected, in consequence of abuse and their theatrical effect. There were usually, however, opponents and defenders of the extent to which this accompaniment was resorted to. Peter the Venerable, of Cluny, defended them. St.

Augustine had lamented the blindness of the Manicheans in rejecting sacred music. The first organ which appeared in Europe was sent as a present by Constantine Cop.r.o.nymus to Pepin, King of France, in 757, and he placed it in the church of St. Corneille at Compiegne. The secret of these steam organs is now entirely lost. The first organ on the present principle seen in the West was that which Louis Debonnaire placed in the church of Aix-la-Chapelle. It is related of this organ that a woman expired through rapture and surprise at the sweetness of its sound. One of the same kind was mentioned in the annals of Fulda in 828. At the close of the ninth century many skilful organ-builders were drawn to Rome by Pope John VIII.

In the tenth century an organ of this kind was placed in Westminster Abbey. So delicious and astonishing was the music of organs and flutes at the consecration of the monastic church of Cava, near Salerno, and such was the harmony of sound and pleasant odours, that the Serene Duke Roger and all the people present thought themselves on the very borders of heaven. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was the custom to place the organ in the choir, but in the fifteenth century a custom arose to remove it to the western extremity of the nave. It was thought before the Council of Trent, in 1545, that the Church music had been carried to an excess, and the council once thought of prohibiting all music except the Gregorian.

AUGUSTINE CONVERTING THE BRITONS WITH MUSIC.

When Augustine came from Italy to England, about the year 596, for the purpose of converting the inhabitants of Britain to Christianity, he and his accompanying missionaries adopted in aid of their devotions a musical service. For some time the people were delighted with so agreeable a novelty, but after a while it gradually ceased to please, and at length met with such violent opposition that it was entirely laid aside. During the papacy of Vitalia.n.u.s, in 657, one of the princ.i.p.al vocalists in Rome was sent to instruct the Britons in the Italian method of chanting and singing, and the cathedral of Canterbury is ent.i.tled to the honour of having been the first church in England in which a regular choral service was performed.

THE EARLIEST HYMNS OF THE CHURCH.

There was always some trace of hymns, as distinguished from the Psalms, being used by Christians. There is some dispute as to the hymn sung by our Lord and His Apostles on the occasion of the Last Supper. Some think it must have been the Hallel or paschal hymn, consisting of Psalms cxiii.-cxviii., which was chanted. In the gaol at Philippi Paul and Silas sang their hymns so loudly that the fellow-prisoners heard them. The Greeks seem to have had only eight tunes of Church music, and the Syrians had two hundred and seventy-five. The earliest known Christian hymn is given by Clemens Alexandrinus, the historian. The learned have disputed whether the Christian Greek hymns were founded on the old Pagan hymns used in the heathen worship. Ambrose, about 360, is thought to have been the first to introduce hymns into the Latin Church, though it is more likely that he merely gave greater impetus to the use of these in the Church services.

MONK MUSICIANS (A.D. 945).

It is related that the use of musical notes was found first in the abbey of Corby, in Saxony, about 945. Alfa.n.u.s, a monk of Mount Ca.s.sino, was also considered eminent in the art. In the abbey of St. Gall three great musicians were found at the same time. One of them, Tutilo, seemed to excel in every work of art. He had a clear voice, was an admirable painter, an architect and a preacher, and also could play on flutes and pipes, and taught the children of the n.o.bles how to play on the flute. He was most effective in the choir, and expert at composing verses and melodies. During the ninth and tenth centuries, the monks of St. Gall were famed for their musical compositions. Once a composition sung by a monk of St. Gall on Easter Day before King Conrad I. was rendered with such power that all the audience were roused to ecstasy. The King, the Queen, and the King's sister called the performer before them, took off their rings, and put them on his fingers, to signify their intense admiration. It used to be said that the beginning of this excellence at St. Gall was owing to a Roman musician who had fallen sick there while on a journey to Germany, and he was so hospitably treated that, out of grat.i.tude, he instructed the monks in his art. The St. Gall scores were copied in many other monasteries, and musical science was carried to a high pitch of excellence by the modern composer Zingarelli, who used to prepare himself for his finest work by reading some treatise of the Fathers.

NICHOLAS PEREGRINUS, WHO SANG "LORD, HAVE PITY" (A.D. 1094).

About 1094 Nicholas became famous in Apulia, when he was eight years old tending his mother's sheep, for he had an irrepressible tendency to sing aloud incessantly, "Kyrie eleson" ("Lord, have mercy"), and he never left off this all his life long. His mother sent him to a monastery to have him imprisoned and chastised till he gave up singing his song. But he took his punishment patiently, and went on singing as zealously as before. He made himself a hut, living by himself, but praising G.o.d aloud continually. He went to Lepanto, where another monk joined him. He fasted every day till evening; his food was a little bread and water, and yet he did not grow lean. He wore a short vest, his head, legs, and feet being naked. He carried a light wooden cross, a scrip at his side to receive alms, and the alms he converted into fruit to distribute among the boys who willingly joined him in his excursions and in singing his favourite hymn. His oddities provoked some contumely, in which bishops did not scruple to join. But he performed various miracles and had a large following, exhorting the people to repentance. At his death great mult.i.tudes joined in his funeral, and many miracles were said to be wrought at his tomb in the cathedral.

HERESY PROPAGATED BY MUSIC (A.D. 1150).

Harmonius, son of the famous heretic Bardesanes, a Syrian who lived in the twelfth century, contributed greatly to the propagation of heresy by the fascinating sweetness of the melodies which he composed and applied to odes and canticles written against the religion of Christ. So struck was St. Ephraim with their mellifluousness, and so persuaded that they were qualified by their beauty to recommend and spread any doctrine in support of which they might be employed, that he set the same tunes to different words, and ordered them to be publicly sung, so as to bring back the people to orthodoxy, which at that time was identified with the doctrine of the Trinity.

THE POPE REFORMING CHURCH MUSIC (A.D. 1545).

The introduction of instrumental music into the Church services once greatly perplexed the Pope and the councils of the clergy. Music had become so artificial and so wasted in frivolous and intricate airs, that the Council of Trent expressed its protest against using such profane aids. Pius IV. thereon appointed a commission to inquire whether music should be tolerated at all in churches. Fortunately at that time a great composer named Palestrina appeared at Rome. He was a priest, but had been expelled from the Church for marrying, and he still clung to his favourite art. He composed sacred airs for the services in the Sistine Chapel, and he seemed to comprehend with an original genius the kind of music appropriate to the Ma.s.s. He devoted his whole soul to this work. His first two efforts were thought to be failures, but at last in a happy moment he completed a masterly work known by the name of "The Ma.s.s of Pope Marcellus." It had pa.s.sages of blended grandeur and self-prostration, with rich and varied melodies interspersed, which delighted the Pope, who said the airs were such as the Apostle John may have heard in his ecstatic vision. The success of Palestrina set at rest the vexed question of Church music. It showed that music was capable of being made to subserve and enhance the most fervid devotion and religious enthusiasm. The soul was elevated by the exulting bursts of jubilee and the adoring strains of lowly reverence. The art then came to be firmly wedded to the service of the Church, and every grade of elevated feeling found its appropriate expression, and piety was quickened into rapture and a diviner ecstasy by the masterpieces of a succession of great composers.

SINGING OF THE MISERERE IN THE POPE'S CHAPEL.

One of the most impressive performances of sacred music is the singing of the _Miserere_ or fifty-first Psalm in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, and the musical score is kept secret and no copy allowed to be given to strangers under pain of excommunication. There are thirty-two voices employed in the singing, without any organ or other instrument to accompany it. The performance was supposed to be at its greatest height of excellence about 1780, before the growing practice of opera withdrew the choicest voices from the service of the Church. This celebrated piece is sung twice during Pa.s.sion Week, and was composed about 1627. When it begins, the Pope and cardinals prostrate themselves on their knees. The grand picture by Michael Angelo of the Last Judgment which is over the altar is then discovered to be brilliantly illuminated by tapers. These are gradually extinguished till the pale light scarcely reveals the forms of the miserable creatures as they listen to the slow and dirgelike wail of the voices. It sounds as if the sinner, confounded before the majesty of G.o.d and prostrate with fear, awaited in silence some awful doom. The sublimity of the music is heightened by the peculiar manner of repeating the same melody in every verse of the psalm, and yet by r.e.t.a.r.ding the tune and swelling or diminishing the sound according to the sense, never allowing the ear to feel the least tediousness. The music score is said to be no correct record of the peculiarity of the melody, and the mode of managing the voices is said to be a secret kept by the chapel-master alone, who hands down the tradition to his successor. It is performed only in the Sistine Chapel, and those who have heard it never forget the grand and solemn impression it produces.

LUTHER'S VIEW OF CHURCH MUSIC.

Luther, who was an excellent musician, received into his church a collection of anthems and hymns which so pleased him that he exultingly exclaimed, "We all know that such music is hateful and unbearable to the devil." Dr. Wetenhall said the music of his church was such that no devil could stand against it.

ORIGINATOR OF ORATORIOS.

What is called the _cantata spirituale_ or oratorio is generally believed to have been indebted for its origin to San Filippo Neri, a Florentine priest, who, about the middle of the sixteenth century, was accustomed after the sermons to a.s.semble such of his congregation as had musical voices in the oratory of his chapel for the purpose of singing various pieces of devotional and other sacred music. Regularly composed oratorios were not, however, in use till nearly a century afterwards. These, at their commencement, consisted of a mixture of dramatic and narrative parts, in which neither change of place nor unity of time was observed.

They consisted of monologues, dialogues, duets, trios, and recitatives of four voices. The subject of one of them was the conversation of Christ with the Samaritan woman; of another, the prodigal son received into his father's house; of a third, Tobias with the angel, his father and wife; and of a fourth, the angel Gabriel with the Virgin Mary.

THE HEAVEN-BORN COMPOSER OF ANTHEMS.

Purcell, a famous English composer of anthems, was a born musician, and as a boy produced some of his best. At eighteen he was appointed organist at Westminster Abbey, in 1676. He excelled in every species of composition.

Nothing can transcend the grand effect of his _Te Deum_, which soars to the highest elevation of holy fervour. He died prematurely at the age of thirty-seven of consumption. On a tablet fixed to a pillar in Westminster Abbey, where he is buried, the following inscription is to be seen: "Here lies Henry Purcell, Esq., who left this life, and is gone to that blessed place where only his harmony can be exceeded. He died in 1695." There is also a Latin epitaph, of which four lines are thus translated:--

"Applaud so great a guest, celestial powers, Who now resides with you, but once was ours.

Not dead, he lives while yonder organ's sound And sacred echoes to the choir rebound."

Purcell's _Te Deum_ was constantly performed at the annual festivals of the sons of the clergy, till Handel's n.o.ble production of the _Te Deum_ was produced in 1743, and then the two versions were used alternately.

Dryden, not less than Pope, celebrates Purcell's merit thus:--

"Sometimes a hero in an age appears, But scarce a Purcell in a thousand years."

Again he said:--

"The heavenly choir who heard his notes from high Let down the scale of music from the sky: They handed him along, And all the way he taught, and all the way they sung."

It is true that, after Purcell, Handel soon appeared and claimed even superior praise.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF HANDEL.

When Handel, dissatisfied with the reception of his oratorio of the _Messiah_ in London, went to Dublin to test his work with a more impartial audience, he procured the best choristers from St. Patrick's and Christ's cathedrals. The chief singers were Mrs. Cibber and Mrs. Avolio. It is related that after Mrs. Cibber had sung "He was despised" with great pathos, a clergyman in one of the boxes was so excited and transported that he called out with a loud voice to her, "Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven." It was also a remarkable incident that, in compliance with a request that the ladies who honoured the performance would be pleased to come without their hoops, they actually made the great self-sacrifice requested, and left their hoops behind, thereby allowing of a great deal of additional s.p.a.ce for the rest of the audience. Such music had never before been heard in England. When Handel's oratorio was first performed in Ireland, it was heard with admiration. The expressive force and pathos of the recitatives and melodies, and the superlative grandeur of the choral parts, were equally appreciated, and the whole was hailed as a wonderful effort of the art of harmony. Taught by the better criticism of the sister kingdom, England at his return discovered the excellence to which she had been so unaccountably deaf, and lavished her praises on what she had before dismissed with disgrace or without approbation. In 1742 Handel gave a performance of the _Messiah_ in the Foundling Hospital Chapel with great success, and the proceeds were presented by him to that inst.i.tution, then recently established.

FIRST PERFORMANCE OF HANDEL'S "MESSIAH."

It is related by Dr. Beattie, the poet, that when Handel's _Messiah_ was first performed the audience were greatly struck and affected by the music. But when the chorus reached the part beginning "For the Lord G.o.d omnipotent reigneth," the audience, including the King (George II.), were so transported that they all instinctively started to their feet and remained standing till the conclusion of the pa.s.sage. Hence it became a fashion in England for the audience to stand during that part of that magnificent hymn.

HANDEL COMMEMORATIONS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

Except the dedication of the Temple, at which, according to Josephus, 200,000 musicians were engaged, the commemoration of Handel in Westminster Abbey in 1784 was considered at that time the greatest performance that ever was heard. The band contained 482 instrumentalists.

The vocal performers included 22 cantos, 51 altos, 66 tenors, 69 ba.s.ses.

The receipts for the five commemorations amounted to 12,736. At this performance on so unprecedented a scale, the audience was melted and enraptured by the exquisite sweetness of the solos, the powerful execution of the choruses affected some to tears, and many fainted with the excitement. When the whole chorus, from each side of the stupendous orchestra, joined in by all the instruments, burst out "He is the King of glory," the effect was so overpowering that the performers could scarcely proceed. Though Pope had no ear for music, he was aware of the triumphs of his contemporary, the great composer, and in "The Dunciad" thus describes him:--

"Strong in new arras, lo! giant Handel stands, Like bold Briareus, with a hundred hands; To stir, to rouse, to shake the soul he comes, And Jove's own thunders follow Mars's drums."