As an illustration of the nobility of thought and beauty of diction that are found in the Catholic offices, the prayer immediately following the consecration of the chalice may be quoted:
“Wherefore, O Lord, we thy servants, as also thy holy people, calling to mind the blessed passion of the same Christ thy Son our Lord, his resurrection from the dead, and admirable ascension into heaven, offer unto thy most excellent Majesty of the gifts bestowed upon us a pure Host, a holy Host, an unspotted Host, the holy bread of eternal life, and chalice of everlasting salvation.
“Upon which vouchsafe to look, with a propitious and serene countenance, and to accept them, as thou wert graciously pleased to accept the gifts of thy just servant Abel, and the sacrifice of our patriarch Abraham, and that which thy high priest Melchisedech offered to thee, a holy sacrifice and unspotted victim.
“We most humbly beseech thee, Almighty God, command these things to be carried by the hands of thy holy angels to thy altar on high, in the sight of thy divine Majesty, that as many as shall partake of the most sacred body and blood of thy Son at this altar, may be filled with every heavenly grace and blessing.”
In the midst of the series of prayers following the consecration the choir sings the Agnus Dei, a short hymn which was introduced into the Roman liturgy at a very early date. The priest then communicates, and those of the congregation who have been prepared for the exalted privilege by confession and absolution kneel at the sanctuary rail and receive from the celebrant’s hands the consecrated wafer. The Post-Communion, which is a brief prayer for protection and grace, the dismissal53 and benediction, and the reading of the first fourteen verses of the Gospel according to St. John close the ceremony.
Interspersed with the prayers, lessons, responses, hymns, etc., which constitute the liturgy are a great number of crossings, obeisances, incensings, changing of vestments, and other liturgic actions, all an enigma to the uninitiated, yet not arbitrary or meaningless, for each has a symbolic significance, designed not merely to impress the congregation, but still more to enforce upon the ministers themselves a sense of the magnitude of the work in which they are engaged. The complexity of the ceremonial, the rapidity of utterance and the frequent inaudibility of the words of the priest, together with the fact that the text is in a dead language, are not inconsistent with the purpose for which the Mass is conceived. For it is not considered as proceeding from the people, but it is an ordinance performed for them and in their name by a priesthood, whose function is that of representing the Church in its mediatorial capacity. The Mass is not simply a prayer, but also a semi-dramatic action, – an action which possesses in itself an efficacy ex opere operato. This idea renders it unnecessary that the worshipers should follow the office in detail; it is enough that they coöperate with the celebrant in faith and pious sympathy. High authorities declare that the most profitable reception of the rite consists in simply watching the action of the officiating priest at the altar, and yielding the spirit unreservedly to the holy emotions which are excited by a complete self-abandonment to the contemplation of the adorable mystery. The sacramental theory of the Mass as a vehicle by which grace is communicated from above to the believing recipient, also leaves him free to carry on private devotion during the progress of the ceremony. When the worshipers are seen kneeling in the pews or before an altar at the side wall, fingering rosaries or with eyes intent upon prayer-books, it is not the words of the Mass that they are repeating. The Mass is the prayer of the Church at large, but it does not emanate from the congregation. The theory of the Mass does not even require the presence of the laity, and as a matter of practice private and solitary Masses, although rare, are in no way contrary to the discipline of the Catholic Church.
CHAPTER IV
THE RITUAL CHANT OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
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.