Gregory from the encroachments of later corruptions. Nay, and in other times, a great sovereign of Europe* thought the purification of the Church song a matter deserving of an embassy to Rome." + The Gregorian Chant was brought into our own country by S. Augustin (of Canterbury) and his companions at the close of the 6th century of the Christian æra. No doubt it was to the solemn tones of S. Gregory that those "litanies," were chanted, in which, on their approach to the city of Canterbury, the Missionaries of the Holy See implored the mercy of God in behalf of our heathen ancestors. S. Gregory is said to have taken under his especial patronage the quires of that church, which he ever regarded as the child of his tenderest affection. On the death, however, of the original chanters, the ecclesiastical music of this country was deteriorated by profane additions; and efforts were made to restore it, first by Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, who came with instructions to that effect from Pope Vitalian ; and afterwards by John, Arch-chanter of the church of S. Peter at Rome, and abbot of the monastery of S. Martin, who was invited over to this country by Benedict Biscop, for the purpose, especially, of training a quire, upon the Roman model, at his monastery of Wearmouth. The same John, according to Venerable Bede, not only instructed the brethren of the monastery, but was in the highest request, throughout the north of England, as a quiremaster.§ A like service to a portion of the English *This alludes to the Emperor Charlemagne, who, finding, about the year 774, that the Gregorian Chant had become corrupted in France, despatched two ecclesiastics to the court of Rome, to obtain it in its authentic shape. † British Critic. Oct. 1840. Art. Chanting. Ven. Bede, Hist. Eccl. Gent. Angl. lib. i. c. 25. Church had been rendered, many years before, by James, a Deacon of York whom Paulinus left in charge of that church upon his removal to Rochester. Of this James, Venerable Bede says, that he was "profoundly skilled in the ecclesiastical chant," according to the practice of Rome and Canterbury,* which is thus shown to have been uniform. At a somewhat later period the knowledge of chanting is said to have been confined to Kent ;† so that it would appear to have been the above-named John, Abbot of S. Martin, to whom our Church was chiefly indebted for the excellence of its psalmody. The purity of the ecclesiastical chant seems to have been ever a main object with the rulers of the ancient English Church. Thus we read that Acca, Bishop of Hexham, sent, about the year 709, "for an eminent chanter, by name Maban, who had been instructed in the musical tones by the successors of the disciples of Pope S. Gregory in Kent, to educate him and his people; and retained him twelve years, that they might learn of him chants of which they were before ignorant, and that the tones, which, although known, had, from length of time, and neglect, degenerated, might, by his instructions be restored to their original state." It was about half a century after this time that the Council of Cloveshoe § enjoined the use of “a simple and solemn melody in the recitation of the Divine Office, according to the usage of the Church," as a security against an irreverent and theatrical mode of delivery. And, in a later decree, the same Council insists upon an "uniform tone in accord *Bede, Hist, Eccl. Angl lib. ii. 20. † Ib. 1. iv. 2. Ib. 1. v. c. 20. Commonly supposed to be Cliff, near Rochester; but by some, Abingdon, formerly called Sheovesham. A Council met there yearly, on Aug. 1, to regulate the affairs of the National Church.-Bede, Hist. Eccl. 1. iv. c.5. ance with the Roman practice, that so all the faithful may praise God, as with one mind, so with one mouth." The first serious attempt which seems to have been made in England to corrupt the Gregorian Chant was in the time of the Norman Conquest, when Thurstin, who had been removed by William the Conqueror from the monastery of S. Stephen at Caen to that of Glastonbury, compelled his monks to adopt the vicious harmonies of one Wilhelm, in the place of the pure Gregorian Tones; a proceeding which threw the society into confusion, and was made a subject of grave charge against him.* In the centuries following, the Gregorian Chant seems, in this as in other Catholic countries, to have been involved in that general corruption of the ecclesiastical music which is so fertile a subject of lamentation and remonstrance with the great mediæval writers, and which eventually drew forth the strong condemnation of the Council of Trent.t John of Salisbury, in the reign of Henry II., is one of many who deplores the profanation of the Sanctuary, of a flippant and secular style of music, destructive alike of Christian edification and of the reverence due to the sacred words of Holy Scripture and the Church. This evil had reached its climax in the 16th century, when Palestrina arose, and with him a new and brighter æra in the annals of ecclesiastical music. We have thus brought the Gregorian Tones to a period of their history in which they began, among ourselves, to give way to the psalm-chants of other composers, by which they were, in the Anglican * Knyghton, Canon of Leicester, De Eventibus Angliæ, c. 2. † Sess. xxiv. c. 12, &c. See Gerbert, De Cantu et Musicâ Sacrâ, vol. ii. p. 96, et seq. Church, gradually, but at length completely, displaced. Till very recently, their name was hardly known in this country, and when our increased intercourse with the Continent first brought them into notice, it was supposed that ears familiarized with our own brilliant and diversified Cathedral chants, would be intolerant, almost to loathing, of their austere simplicity. The very reverse, however, has been the case, and the Gregorian Tones have been received among us with a heartiness which cannot but be cheering to all those who are on the watch for traces of sympathy with the ancient spirit of the Church. It needs but little skill in music to perceive that the Gregorian Tones are formed upon an idea of the nature and proper end of chanting, entirely different from that which has given rise to the tunes to which the Psalms are commonly sung in our own Cathedrals. Modern chants, to speak generally, seem to presuppose that music is intended to embellish and set off the sacred words of inspiration; whereas the very notion of a "Tone," by which name the Gregorian Chants are most fitly designated, is that of a simple form of recitation, a mere vehicle of the sacred words, not an elaborate and ornamental framework. Some modern chants, no doubt, there are, which are constructed upon the simpler principle; but by far the larger portion, though preserving a certain character of solemnity suited to their object, are too much, surely, of the nature of musical compositions, to be consistent with that high and self-forgetting reverence towards their subject which is characteristic of the older melodies. The Gregorian Chant seems to proceed upon the view, that the simplest medium of the Divine accents is the best suited to their intrinsic majesty and sacredness. It differs, therefore, alike from reading, which is too familiar, and singing, which is too artificial; being at once plain without meanness, and elevated without display. Display, indeed, is the idea of all others which it excludes, and which the average of modern chants rather involve. The Gregorian Tones have no character, or even existence, apart from the words which they are meant to convey; viewed by themselves, they are like the eyes of a statue, inexpressive for want of an animating soul, and beautiful only through the power of association which instinctively connects them with the words which are their true life and spirit. To say, then, that, as heard for the first time, they communicate even to a musical ear no just idea of their peculiar sweetness and power, is less near the truth than to say that they communicate absolutely no idea of melody at all. Many of our modern chants, on the contrary, lose very little indeed of their effect by being detached from the words. The Gregorian Tones, in short, bespeak a mind which approaches the Psalms of David or the Evangelical Canticles with so profound an awe as to relinquish, from the first, all thought of giving them effect by the help of human art. When it is said that our modern chants are conceived under a different idea, it is by no means intended to charge the composers of them with want of reverence; but, at the very worst, with a mere misconception of the true end of chanting. One view of sacred music there is, and surely a most legitimate and strictly Catholic one, according to which those very characteristics of the modern chant which are here mentioned in objection to it, may be explained even upon the principles of reverence. The use of the more ornamented style of Church music is thus justified by Hooker : "Be it that, at the first, the Church in this exercise |