Una Voce to Celebrate 100th Anniversary of Tra le sollecitudini on the Restoration of Sacred Music
To all members of the International Una Voce Federation
THE RESTORATION OF SACRED MUSIC
Saturday November 22nd 2003, the Feast of Saint Cecilia, marks the one hundredth anniversary of the promulgation of the Motu Proprio Tra le sollecitudini of St. Pius X on the restoration of Sacred Music, above all of Gregorian Chant. It is my hope that every association of the International Federation will arrange for a Gregorian Mass to be celebrated on this day, and to prepare for it by teaching congregations not used to participating in the chant to do so in preparation for this great day. The ideal would be an antiphonal celebration with choir and people alternating. There would, as will be made clear below, no objection to including some sacred polyphony sung by the choir in the celebration.
I append an extract from Tra le sollecitudini together with a beautiful evocation of the ethos of the chant, and a tribute to the Abbey of Solesmes which, under the inspiration of Dom Guéranger, restored it to its pristine purity. The complete text of Tra le sollecitudini, and the encyclical Musicae sacrae disciplina, 25 December 1955, of Pope Pius XII, can be found on the excellent Adoremus Website: www.adoremus.org (go to documents). A vast amount of material on the chant, including audio material, can be found by making a word search for “Gregorian Chant” and going to the Gregorian Chant Home Page.
I pray that every Una Voce Association will make the effort to arrange a Gregorian Mass for the feast of St. Cecilia for, as St. Pius X explained it, “the glory of God and the sanctification and edification of the faithful.”
Michael Davies,
President
An Extract from Tra le sollecitudini
1. Sacred music, being a complementary part of the solemn liturgy, participates in the general scope of the liturgy, which is the glory of God and the sanctification and edification of the faithful. It contributes to the decorum and the splendour of the ecclesiastical ceremonies, 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 text, in order that through it the faithful may be the more easily moved to devotion and better disposed for the reception of the fruits of grace belonging to the celebration of the most holy mysteries.
2. Sacred music should consequently possess, in the highest degree, the qualities proper to the liturgy, and in particular sanctity and goodness of form, which will spontaneously produce the final quality of universality. It must be holy, and must, therefore, exclude all profanity not only in itself, but in the manner in which it is presented by those who execute it. It must be true art, for otherwise it will be impossible for it to exercise on the minds of those who listen to it that efficacy which the Church aims at obtaining in admitting into her liturgy the art of musical sounds. But it must, at the same time, be universal in the sense that while every nation is permitted to admit into its ecclesiastical compositions those special forms which may be said to constitute its native music, still these forms must be subordinated in such a manner to the general characteristics of sacred music that nobody of any nation may receive an impression other than good on hearing them.
II. The different kinds of sacred music
3. These qualities are to be found, in the highest degree, in Gregorian Chant, which is, consequently the Chant proper to the Roman Church, the only chant she has inherited from the ancient fathers, which she has jealously guarded for centuries in her liturgical codices, which she directly proposes to the faithful as her own, which she prescribes exclusively for some parts of the liturgy, and which the most recent studies have so happily restored to their integrity and purity. On these grounds Gregorian Chant has always been regarded as the supreme model for sacred music, so that it is fully legitimate to lay down the following rule: the more closely a composition for church approaches in its movement, inspiration and savour the Gregorian form, the more sacred and liturgical it becomes; and the more out of harmony it is with that supreme model, the less worthy it is of the temple. The ancient traditional Gregorian Chant must, therefore, in a large measure be restored to the functions of public worship, and the fact must be accepted by all that an ecclesiastical function loses none of its solemnity when accompanied by this music alone. Special efforts are to be made to restore the use of the Gregorian Chant by the people, so that the faithful may again take a more active part in the ecclesiastical offices, as was the case in ancient times.
4. The above-mentioned qualities are also possessed in an excellent degree by Classic Polyphony, especially of the Roman School, which reached its greatest perfection in the fifteenth century, owing to the works of Pierluigi da Palestrina, and continued subsequently to produce compositions of excellent quality from a liturgical and musical standpoint. Classic Polyphony agrees admirably with Gregorian Chant, the supreme model of all sacred music, and hence it has been found worthy of a place side by side with Gregorian Chant, in the more solemn functions of the Church, such as those of the Pontifical Chapel. This, too, must therefore be restored largely in ecclesiastical functions, especially in the more important basilicas, in cathedrals, and in the churches and chapels of seminaries and other ecclesiastical institutions in which the necessary means are usually not lacking.
GREGORIAN CHANT- WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT ?
The ethos of plainchant
by Dom Aldhelm Dean
A wise novice-master once said to his zealous young charges, ' whose quest for perfection was tending to make them critical of their elders, " Do not be surprised if things do not always go right in choir. The devil knows that the Choir-Office is so acceptable to Almighty God that he will spare no pains to upset it in one way or another."
It would be advisable for all who seek to praise God by means of the Church's Chant to keep that recommendation ever in mind. The fact that humble and disinterested men and women who have given their lives to God's service have found in the Chant an enormous aid to their life of prayer—-prayer of adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, reparation and intercession too—surely tends to show that this Chant is something " so acceptable to Almighty God that the devil will spare no pains to upset it ". In studying the Chant, therefore, let us face that fact from the outset. It will encourage us to realize that the Chant is indeed something really worth while in our quest for eternal salvation.
What then of Solesmes ? How is it that that name has become a byword whenever Gregorian Chant is discussed ? Solesmes is a Benedictine Abbey, not far from Le Mans, in France, which was restored by Dom Guéranger, after the troubles of the French Revolution, in the early part of last century. >From their foundation, the monks of Solesmes have sought to be simply that and no more: monks of Saint Benedict, living a life of prayer, coupled with serious work of a sort that does not require any prolonged absence from the monastery. The Choir-Office has always been the centre of their lives, and all their work for Gregorian Chant has grown out of it. What made them undertake their special work in the sphere of Chant was the fact that the choirbooks they had, back in the middle of the 19th century, were far from being perfect or even good editions. Dom Guéranger, therefore, set some of his monks to work on the restoration of the Chant to its pristine purity. This was done by seeking out manuscripts of all dates, from every corner of Europe, and, by the slow work of transcription and comparison, to discover what the various melodies were like in their original form. Every single Gregorian melody of which manuscripts were to be found was treated separately. For every one, a chart was made, on which all the various manuscript versions were transcribed. Thus, at Solesmes today, a chart may be found of every melody in the Gradual, the Antiphonary and any choir-books in common use.
But it is important to remember that while this immense work was slowly going on, those employed on it were spending many hours a day in singing and praying this Chant. It was a means of their converse with God, the Author of all truth and goodness. Individually and as a community, their one thought and desire was increase in holiness for themselves and for all those who by any means came into contact with them. And so, from the choir they carried their prayer-laden minds to continue their worship by humble, hidden work for the greater glory of God. And from their labours they brought to choir in return the fruit of their work, which enabled them to sing ever more perfectly that age old inspired Chant of the Church.
Slowly their labours took shape, but meanwhile, without any attempt to propagate their findings or to advertise themselves, the results of those labours heard in the choir at Solesmes by the visitors who began to throng the Abbey became noised abroad. In omnem terram exivit sonus eorum, et in fines orbis terrae verba eorum. A famous publishing firm which had a business interest in maintaining the mutilated editions of the Chant then in general use, succeeded in getting the Roman authorities to forbid the publishing of any other edition for a matter of years. But methods of that sort could meet with no permanent success. The manuscripts were now known and could speak for themselves. Thus the monks of Solesmes, having printed the first-fruits of their labours, the Graduale Romanum, simply for the private use of the French Benedictine Congregation, were soon to enjoy seeing their work blessed, fully approved by Rome, and made the official edition of the Gradual for the whole Church.
But their work was not yet done. In delving into the ancient manuscripts of the Chant, the object had been to discover the melodies in their original form. But further unexpected treasures were brought to light also. It was found that a considerable number of manuscripts of all the various " schools " of Chant— St. Gall, Metz, Chartres, etc.—contained indications of rhythm, in the form of certain signs added to the melodic line. The actual manner of writing these signs varied with the different " schools ", just as the manuscript form of the melodies varied also. But the striking fact was that, in the majority of cases, they clearly indicated the same melody and the same rhythmic signs. To put this discovery at its lowest, it suggests that there was, throughout the western Church, not only a united tradition of melody, but a universal rhythmic tradition also. With this evidence before them, the monks of Solesmes, under the leadership of Dom Mocquereau, began a deep and scientific study of the Latin of the Gregorian age, to discover its relationship with the Chant of the manuscripts. This profound and detailed work can be read in Dom Mocquereau's Nombre Musical, and has been summed up in smaller works by Dom Gajard. The result of it was the production of a theory of rhythm which not only seems to accord with the indications of ancient rhythmic practice as shown in the manuscripts, but also makes the Chant vastly easier to sing. Prose is easier to read when it is punctuated, even though it is possible that some ancient manuscript writings may have been, wrongly punctuated here and there by a later hand. Similarly, the free flow of the Gregorian melodies is easier to read and understand when accompanied by clear indications of rhythm. The rhythmic signs in the modern choir-books edited by Solesmes are no more than this; and they have the additional value of being, in a great many cases, a modern transcription of signs actually found in the manuscripts. Where such is not the case, they are a logical interpretation of the Chant according to the signs given elsewhere. Thus there came into being this simple (when once learned) method of singing the Chant rhythmically. A means was offered to the faithful whereby they might sing in prayerful unity together, though they be of every people and nation and tribe and tongue.
The Solesmes theory of Gregorian rhythm and its expression in chant books with rhythmic signs was soon accepted and blessed by the Church as a practical aid to the singing of her Chant. But it was by no means imposed on the Church as a whole. Editions of the Chant (as restored by Solesmes) without rhythmic signs may still be obtained, and there are still people who prefer them thus, so that they may be free to interpret them according to their own ideas. But the fact remains that once the "signs" were offered. to the Church (without any manner of imposition, be it remembered), their manifest practicability and their success in enabling people to sing the Church's Chant in prayerful unity of voices caused them to be welcomed gladly all over the world. " By their fruits you shall know them." It is their innate soundness and common sense that has assured such world-wide success to the Solesmes theory of rhythm and the rhythmic signs. And to convince any unbiased person that their work has not been purely arbitrary in the sphere of scholarship, the monks of Solesmes have only to point to the great chest of drawers containing the "charts" or to the massive volumes of the Paleographie musicale and the Nombre Musical. There has been no advertising campaign from below, and no imposition from above. Let it be added that no alternative rhythmic theory has been produced that has met with a fraction of the acceptance accorded to that of Solesmes.
It was the monk’s quietly singing God's praises in their choir at Solesmes which attracted the attention of the faithful at large, and brought about the Church's acceptance of their melodic reconstruction of the ancient Chant. Similarly, it is still the prayerful, cadenced singing of the monks of Solesmes and of those who have learned from them, that is the best explanation of the success with which God has blessed their labours in the sphere of rhythm also.
Gregorian Chant is a thing apart. It is music, in the fullest sense of the word, but it is essentially the music of prayer. A man may be a brilliant musician in every other sphere of the art, but if he is not a man of Catholic prayer he will never fully understand the Chant. It is useless to try to confine Gregorian melodies within the limits of later musical theory. The Chant has its own prescriptive rights. It had reached its mature development long before modern musical theory was invented. It cannot therefore be forced into the mould of what may well apply to all later music without doing it violence. Most modern non-catholic musicians and musicologists avoid treating of Gregorian Chant altogether, for they have the sense to realize that it lies outside their province. They know the danger they are in of making what the experienced plain-chantist would consider most elementary mistakes. Yet, that they are interested in it and attracted by it becomes more and more evident. Like many converts in their pre-Catholic days, they sense something mysterious about the Chant. They cannot help realizing that there is something essentially religious, essentially Catholic about it. But they are ignorant of the Catholic Faith itself, and so the mystery of the Chant evades them, for the Chant is essentially bound up with the Faith. It is for us who have this Faith, therefore, so to show it forth by our lives, our prayer, our song, that they will be drawn irresistibly to accept that Faith, and so learn to complete their musical accomplishments by at last grasping the meaning of this song of the angels.
" Non clamor sed Amor cantab. in iure Dei "—it is love, not mere noise that sings in the ear of God. We study Gregorian Chant, therefore, in order to sing our love for God. For centuries that Chant has been one of the most exquisite ways in which the Church has expressed her love. It is a characteristically Catholic means of expression. But it is useless to study a means of expression if the thing to be expressed is not known and experienced. We must begin our study of the Chant, therefore, by deepening our love for God, in reverence and awe, as well as childlike confidence. But, to love God, we must know Him; so we must ever be striving to perfect our knowledge through the Faith. It is when we become complete Catholics in our belief and in our lives that we shall begin truly to love God. Then will our reverence, our awe, our gratitude, our penitence, all become an outpouring of our love for God, and we shall find that this characteristic Catholic Chant will give us just what we want to express that love. Furthermore, we shall find that it embraces also the " second great Commandment ", for the Chant is fundamentally social. The place for soloists is remarkably limited. By singing our part in the Chant, we are brought into close unity with our fellow-Catholics all over the world; and if our neighbour's efforts at song leave much to be desired in the way of artistic accomplishment, we shall not be unduly jarred by this, for we shall know that he is trying his best to express his love for God, and that is the one thing necessary.
Love for God, then, must be the basis of our study of Gregorian Chant. If we truly love God, it will be our ardent desire as well as our bounden duty to express that love in worship. This worship must be both individual and social. Every baptized Christian is a member of the Mystical Body of Christ, and each has his part to fulfil in the worship offered by that Mystical Body to the everblessed Trinity. Remembering this, we are not surprised to find that the Mystical Body possesses among its treasures its own peculiar form of song, differing from all other forms of music, and adaptable to no other purpose. Gregorian Chant is the way in which the Mystical Body was inspired to express its love for God in what we still call " the ages of faith ". It is " Catholic taste " in the most exact sense of the term. We shall appreciate the Chant, therefore, in proportion to the development of this Catholic taste within us. People who claim to dislike the Chant are wanting in a peculiarly sacred matter of Catholic taste. It is not that we have got to like Gregorian Chant, it is simply that we shall be more complete Catholics if we do. Love for the Chant, moreover, need not and indeed should not be exclusive of all other modes of religious expression. " Benedicite omnia opera Domini Domino." We must never forget that the Chant is essentially religious, and those who, for some reason or other, oppose it should at least remind themselves of that fact. It is precisely in this connection also that the work of Solesmes should be judged. Solesmes work has grown out of prayer. The monks have always been reluctant to " advertise their wares ". Making gramophone records and broadcasting has always been distasteful to them, for it seems so much like making a show of one's intimate converse with God, of " saying one's prayers on the stage ". It was only pressure from outside that persuaded them to submit to mechanical methods in order to help others to sing God's praises.
In assessing Solesmes, one further point might well be remembered also. God alone can give the grace of religious vocations. God alone can enable a man or woman to live the monastic life. Since Solesmes started its work on the Chant, it has not only been blessed with sufficient vocations to keep its own community steadily growing, but also has founded other monasteries which have flourished sufficiently to make further foundations of their own. It would be hard to find more vivid evidence of God's favour and blessing on their work. For, what does one find when one visits Solesmes ? A group of men wholly preoccupied with the niceties of a particular theory of Gregorian rhythm, whose only other business is to go to church and try out what they have evolved ? By no means. One finds a large community of serious monks who obviously are seeking God. As for all true Catholics, their serious quest for God does not at all exclude plenty of Christian gaiety and real breadth of vision. A comparatively small proportion of them are experts in the theory and science of Gregorian Chant, but they are all experts in the practice of it. For they have become monks to pray and to worship God, to be complete Catholics. Their tastes, therefore, are fundamentally Catholic, and they naturally strive to express their love and worship of God in the most age-long traditional Catholic way. In other words, they fray the Chant. The Choir-Office and Mass at Solesmes are not a concert performance; there is no suggestion of it. They form a most perfect act of worship in which, as far as human frailty allows, all those who take part are absorbed. Their sole object is, as St. Benedict requires in his Rule, " that God may in all things be glorified ", and " that the hearers may be edified ".
A wise man once prayed to be " saved from his friends ", and it may well be that the monks of Solesmes have sometimes made that prayer their own ! For there is no doubt that many visitors to Solesmes—choir-masters, etc.—have been so anxious to absorb all the " technique " (as they would call it !) they hear there, that the questions they have asked the authorities have been largely the minutiae of interpretation. Then they have returned whence they came, and insisted by word and writing on all these minutiae. The result has sometimes been that people have been led to believe that Solesmes is wholly taken up with such things, to the exclusion of all else. Not infrequently has it happened that one who has opposed Solesmes because of the meticulous sayings of would-be disciples, has been amazed, on going there, to find that the singing is anything but the mechanical performance that his misunderstanding had led him to expect.
To sum up, therefore, the publications of Solesmes in the matter of choir-books come to us, not only as the result of profound study, but even more as the fruit of long years of seeking God in the choir. They are the outcome of long hours of prayer even more than of long hours of study. They are offered to the faithful in the spirit of humble prayer, to help them praise God better. The monks do not claim that the interpretation given in their rhythmed books is always the only one possible and binding on all. They offer an interpretation which seems to accord with that indicated in the manuscripts, but willingly admit that there are many places which allow of another interpretation. They often had to choose one among many possibles. Others might choose differently. Let them do so, provided their interpretation accords with the manuscripts and truly expresses the worship of God.
The teaching of Solesmes can be trusted, therefore, and safely followed by all those who seek to express their love for God and their worship of Him by means of the Chant. Anybody whose motive in studying the Chant is other than that is not working on the same plane as Solesmes at all, and can be quietly ignored by those who only wish to use the Chant for prayer.
Gratefully, then, we accept Solesmes's teaching, and as we strive to deepen our prayer life, may we find that that teaching gives us just the lead necessary to enable us to express, in the Church's song, that love of God for which we were created.