THE MUSICAL SYSTEM OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
The musical productions that have emanated from the Church of England
possess no such independent interest as works of art as those which so
richly adorn the Catholic and the German Evangelical systems. With the
exception of the naturalized Haendel (whose few occasional anthems, Te
Deums, and miscellaneous church pieces give him an incidental place in
the roll of English ecclesiastical musicians), there is no name to be
found in connection with the English cathedral service that compares in
lustre with those that give such renown to the religious song of Italy
and Germany. Yet in spite of this mediocrity of achievement, the music of
the Anglican Church has won an honorable historic position, not only by
reason of the creditable average of excellence which it has maintained
for three hundred years, but still more through its close identification
with those fierce conflicts over dogma, ritual, polity, and the relation
of the Church to the individual which have given such a singular interest
to English ecclesiastical history. Methods of musical expression have
been almost as hotly contested as vital matters of doctrine and
authority, and the result has been that the English people look upon
their national religious song with a respect such as, perhaps, no other
school of church music receives in its own home. The value and purpose of
music in worship, and the manner of performance most conducive to
edification, have been for centuries the subjects of such serious
discussion that the problems propounded by the history of English church
music are of perennial interest. The dignity, orderliness, tranquillity,
and graciousness in outward form and inward spirit which have come to
distinguish the Anglican Establishment are reflected in its anthems and
"services," its chants and hymns; while the simplicity and sturdy,
aggressive sincerity of the non-conformist sects may be felt in the
accents of their psalmody. The clash of liturgic and non-liturgic
opinions, conformity and independence, Anglicanism and Puritanism, may be
plainly heard in the church musical history of the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and even to-day the contest has
not everywhere been settled by conciliation and fraternal sympathy.
The study of English church music, therefore, is the study of musical
forms and practices more than of works of art as such. We are met at the
outset by a spectacle not paralleled in other Protestant countries,
_viz._, the cleavage of the reformed Church into two violently hostile
divisions; and we find the struggle for supremacy between Anglicans and
Puritans fought out in the sphere of art and ritual as well as on the
battlefield and the arena of theological polemic. Consequently we are
obliged to trace two distinct lines of development--the ritual music of
the Establishment and the psalmody of the dissenting bodies--trying to
discover how these contending principles acted upon each other, and what
instruction can be drawn from their collision and their final compromise.
The Reformation in England took in many respects a very different course
from that upon the continent. In Germany, France, Switzerland, and the
Netherlands the revolt against Rome was initiated by men who sprung from
the ranks of the people. Notwithstanding the complication of motives
which drew princes and commoners, ecclesiastics and laymen, into the
rebellion, the movement was primarily religious, first a protest against
abuses, next the demand for free privileges in the Gospel, followed by
restatements of belief and the establishment of new forms of worship.
Political changes followed in the train of the religious revolution,
because in most instances there was such close alliance between the
secular powers and the papacy that allegiance to the former was not
compatible with resistance to the latter.
In England this process was reversed; political separation preceded the
religious changes; it was the alliance between the government and the
papacy that was first to break. The emancipation from the supremacy of
Rome was accomplished at a single stroke by the crown itself, and that
not upon moral grounds or doctrinal disagreement, but solely for
political advantage. In spite of tokens of spiritual unrest, there was no
sign of a disposition on the part of any considerable number of the
English people to sever their fealty to the Church of Rome when, in 1534,
Henry VIII. issued a royal edict repudiating the papal authority, and a
submissive Parliament decreed that "the king, our sovereign lord, his
heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted, and
reputed the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England." The
English Church became in a day what it had often shown a desire to
become--a national Church, free from the arbitrary authority of an
Italian overlordship, the king instead of the pope at its head, with
supreme power in all matters of appointment and discipline, possessing
even the prerogative of deciding what should be the religious belief and
manner of worship in the realm. No doctrinal change was involved in this
proceeding; there was no implied admission of freedom of conscience or
religious toleration. The mediaeval conception of the necessity of
religious unanimity among all the subjects of the state--one single state
Church maintained in every precept and ordinance by the power of the
throne--was rigorously reasserted. The English Church had simply
exchanged one master for another, and had gained a spiritual tyranny to
which were attached no conceptions of right drawn from ancestral
association or historic tradition.
The immediate occasion for this action on the part of Henry VIII. was, as
all know, his exasperation against Clement VII. on account of that pope's
refusal to sanction the king's iniquitous scheme of a divorce from his
faithful wife Catherine and a marriage with Anne Boleyn. This grievance
was doubtless a mere pretext, for a temper so imperious as that of Henry
could not permanently brook a divided loyalty in his kingdom. But since
Henry took occasion to proclaim anew the fundamental dogmas of the
Catholic Church, with the old bloody penalties against heresy, it would
not be proper to speak of him as the originator of the Reformation in
England. That event properly dates from the reign of his successor,
Edward VI.
It was not possible, however, that in breaking the ties of hierarchical
authority which had endured for a thousand years the English Church
should not undergo further change. England had always been a more or less
refractory child of the Roman Church, and more than once the conception
of royal prerogative and national right had come into conflict with the
pretensions of the papacy, and the latter had not always emerged
victorious from the struggle. The old Germanic spirit of liberty and
individual determination, always especially strong in England, was
certain to assert itself when the great European intellectual awakening
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had taken hold of the mass of
the people; and it might have been foreseen after Luther's revolt that
England would soon throw herself into the arms of the Reformation. The
teachings of Wiclif and the Lollards were still cherished at many English
fire-sides. Humanistic studies had begun to flourish under the auspices
of such men as Erasmus, Colet, and More, and humanism, as the natural foe
of superstition and obscurantism, was instinctively set against
ecclesiastical assumption. Lastly, the trumpet blast of Luther had found
an echo in many stout British hearts. The initiative of the crown,
however, forestalled events and changed their course, and instead of a
general rising of the people, the overthrow of every vestige of Romanism,
and the creation of a universal Calvinistic system, the conservatism and
moderation of Edward VI. and Elizabeth and their advisers retained so
much of external form and ceremony in the interest of dignity, and fixed
so firmly the pillars of episcopacy in the interest of stability and
order, that the kingdom found itself divided into two parties, and the
brief conflict between nationalism and Romanism was succeeded by the long
struggle between the Establishment, protected by the throne, and rampant,
all-levelling Puritanism.
With the passage of the Act of Supremacy the Catholic and Protestant
parties began to align themselves for conflict. Henry VIII. at first
showed himself favorable to the Protestants, inclining to the acceptance
of the Bible as final authority instead of the decrees and traditions of
the Church. After the Catholic rebellion of 1536, however, the king
changed his policy, and with the passage of the Six Articles, which
decreed the doctrine of transubstantiation, the celibacy of the clergy,
the value of private masses, and the necessity of auricular confession,
he began a bloody persecution which ended only with his death.
The boy king, Edward VI., who reigned from 1547 to 1553, had been won
over to Protestantism by Archbishop Cranmer, and with his accession
reforms in doctrine and ritual went on rapidly. Parliament was again
subservient, and a modified Lutheranism took possession of the English
Church. The people were taught from the English Bible, the Book of Common
Prayer took the place of Missal and Breviary; the Mass, compulsory
celibacy of the clergy, and worship of images were abolished, and
invocation of saints forbidden. We must observe that these changes, like
those effected by Henry VIII., were not brought about by popular pressure
under the leadership of great tribunes, but were decreed by the rulers of
the state, ratified by Parliament under due process of law, and enforced
by the crown under sanction of the Act of Supremacy. The revolution was
regular, peaceful, and legal, and none of the savage conflicts between
Catholics and Protestants which tore Germany, France, and the Netherlands
in pieces and drenched their soil with blood, ever occurred in England.
Amid such conditions reaction was easy. Under Mary (1553-1558) the old
religion and forms were reenacted, and a persecution, memorable for the
martyrdoms of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, and other leaders of the
Protestant party, was carried on with ruthless severity, but without
weakening the cause of the reformed faith. Elizabeth (1558-1603) had no
pronounced religious convictions, but under the stress of European
political conditions she became of necessity a protector of the
Protestant cause. The reformed service was restored, and from Elizabeth's
day the Church of England has rested securely upon the constitutions of
Edward VI.
With the purification and restatement of doctrine according to Protestant
principles was involved the question of the liturgy. There was no thought
on the part of the English reformers of complete separation from the
ancient communion and the establishment of a national Church upon an
entirely new theory. They held firmly to the conception of historic
Christianity; the episcopal succession extending back to the early ages
of the Church was not broken, the administration of the sacraments never
ceased. The Anglican Church was conceived as the successor of the
universal institution which, through her apostasy from the pure doctrine
of the apostles, had abrogated her claims upon the allegiance of the
faithful. Anglicanism contained in itself a continuation of the tradition
delivered to the fathers, with an open Bible, and the emancipation of the
reason; it was legitimate heir to what was noblest and purest in
Catholicism. This conception is strikingly manifest in the liturgy of the
Church of England, which is partly composed of materials furnished by the
office-books of the ancient Church, and in the beginning associated with
music in no way to be distinguished in style from the Catholic. The
prominence given to vestments, and to ceremonies calculated to impress
the senses, also points unmistakably to the conservative spirit which
forbade that the reform should in any way take on the guise of
revolution.
The ritual of the Church of England is contained in a single volume,
_viz._, the Book of Common Prayer. It is divided into matins and
evensong, the office of Holy Communion, offices of confirmation and
ordination, and occasional offices. But little of this liturgy is
entirely original; the matins and evensong are compiled from the Catholic
Breviary, the Holy Communion with collects, epistles, and gospels from
the Missal, occasional offices from the Ritual, and the confirmation and
ordination offices from the Pontifical. All these offices, as compared
with the Catholic sources, are greatly modified and simplified. A vast
amount of legendary and unhistoric matter found in the Breviary has
disappeared, litanies to and invocations of the saints and the Virgin
Mary have been omitted. The offices proper to saints' days have
disappeared, the seven canonical hours are compressed to two, the space
given to selections from Holy Scripture greatly extended, and the English
language takes the place of Latin.
In this dependence upon the offices of the mother Church for the ritual
of the new worship the English reformers, like Martin Luther, testified
to their conviction that they were purifiers and renovators of the
ancient faith and ceremony, not violent destroyers, seeking to win the
sympathies of their countrymen by deferring to old associations and
inherited prejudices, so far as consistent with reason and conscience.
Their sense of historic continuity is further shown in the fact that the
Breviaries which they consulted were those specially employed from early
times in England, particularly the use known as the "Sarum use," drawn up
and promulgated about 1085 by Osmund, bishop of Salisbury, and generally
adopted in the south of England, and which deviated in certain details
from the use of Rome.
Propositions looking to the amendment of the service-books were brought
forward before the end of the reign of Henry VIII., and a beginning was
made by introducing the reading of small portions of the Scripture in
English. The Litany was the first of the prayers to be altered and set in
English, which was done by Cranmer, who had before him the old litanies
of the English Church, besides the "Consultation" of Hermann, archbishop
of Cologne (1543).
With the accession of Edward VI. in 1547 the revolution in worship was
thoroughly confirmed, and in 1549 the complete Book of Common Prayer,
essentially in its modern form, was issued. A second and modified edition
was published in 1552 and ordered to be adopted in all the churches of
the kingdom. The old Catholic office-books were called in and destroyed,
the images were taken from the houses of worship, the altars removed and
replaced by communion tables, the vestments of the clergy were
simplified, and the whole conception of the service, as well as its
ceremonies, completely transformed. Owing to the accession of Mary in
1553 there was no time for the Prayer Book of 1552 to come into general
use. A third edition, somewhat modified, published in 1559, was one of
the earliest results of the accession of Elizabeth. Another revision
followed in 1604 under James I.; additions and alterations were made
under Charles II. in 1661-2. Since that date only very slight changes
have been made.
The liturgy of the Church of England is composed, like the Catholic
liturgy, of both constant and variable offices, the latter, however,
being in a small minority. It is notable for the large space given to
reading from Holy Scripture, the entire Psalter being read through every
month, the New Testament three times a year, and the Old Testament once a
year. It includes a large variety of prayers, special psalms to be sung,
certain psalm-like hymns called canticles, the hymns comprising the chief
constant choral members of the Latin Mass, _viz._, Kyrie, Gloria, Credo,
and Sanctus--the Te Deum, the ten commandments, a litany, besides short
sentences and responses known as versicles. In addition to the regular
morning and evening worship there are special series of offices for Holy
Communion and for particular occasions, such as ordinations,
confirmations, the burial service, etc.
Although there is but one ritual common to all the congregations of the
established Church, one form of prayer and praise which ascends from
cathedral, chapel, and parish church alike, this service differs in
respect to the manner of rendering. The Anglican Church retained the
conception of the Catholic that the service is a musical service, that
the prayers, as well as the psalms, canticles, and hymns, are properly to
be given not in the manner of ordinary speech, but in musical tone. It
was soon found, however, that a full musical service, designed for the
more conservative and wealthy establishments, was not practicable in
small country parishes, and so in process of time three modes of
performing the service were authorized, _viz._, the choral or cathedral
mode, the parochial, and the mixed.
The choral service is that used in the cathedrals, royal and college
chapels, and certain parish churches whose resources permit the adoption
of the same practice. In this mode everything except the lessons is
rendered in musical tone, from the monotoned prayers of the priest to the
figured chorus music of "service" and anthem. The essential parts of the
choral service, as classified by Dr. Jebb,[77] are as follows:
1. The chanting by the minister of the sentences, exhortations, prayers,
and collects throughout the liturgy in a monotone, slightly varied by
occasional modulations.
2. The alternate chant of the versicles and responses by minister and
choir.
3. The alternate chant, by the two divisions of the choir, of the daily
psalms and of such as occur in the various offices of the Church.
4. The singing of all the canticles and hymns, in the morning and evening
service, either to an alternated chant or to songs of a more intricate
style, resembling anthems in their construction, and which are
technically styled "services."
5. The singing of the anthem after the third collect in both morning and
evening prayer.
6. The alternate chanting of the litany by the minister and choir.
7. The singing of the responses after the commandments in the Communion
service.
8. The singing of the creed, Gloria in excelsis, and Sanctus in the
Communion service anthem-wise. [The Sanctus has in recent years been
superseded by a short anthem or hymn.]
9. The chanting or singing of those parts in the occasional offices which
are rubrically permitted to be sung.
In this manner of worship the Church of England conforms to the general
usage of liturgic churches throughout the world in ancient and modern
times, by implication honoring that conception of the intimate union of
word and tone in formal authorized worship which has been expounded in
the chapters on the Catholic music and ritual. Since services are held on
week days as well as on Sundays in the cathedrals, and since there are
two full choral services, each involving an almost unbroken current of
song from clergy and choir, this usage involves a large and thoroughly
trained establishment, which is made possible by the endowments of the
English cathedrals.
The parochial service is that used in the smaller churches where it is
not possible to maintain an endowed choir. "According to this mode the
accessories of divine service necessary towards its due performance are
but few and simple." "As to the ministers, the stated requirements of
each parochial church usually contemplate but one, the assistant clergy
and members of choirs being rarely objects of permanent endowment." "As
to the mode of performing divine service, the strict parochial mode
consists in reciting all parts of the liturgy in the speaking tone of the
voice unaccompanied by music. According to this mode no chant, or
canticle, or anthem, properly so called, is employed; but metrical
versions of the psalms are sung at certain intervals between the various
offices." (Jebb.)
This mode is not older than 1549, for until the Reformation the Plain
Chant was used in parish churches. The singing of metrical psalms dates
from the reign of Elizabeth.
The mixed mode is less simple than the parochial; parts of the service
are sung by a choir, but the prayers, creeds, litany, and responses are
recited in speaking voice. It may be said, however, that the parochial
and the mixed modes are optional and permitted as matters of convenience.
There is no law that forbids any congregation to adopt any portion or
even the whole of the choral mode. In these variations, to which we find
nothing similar in the Catholic Church, may be seen the readiness of the
fathers of the Anglican Church to compromise with Puritan tendencies and
guard against those reactions which, as later history shows, are
constantly urging sections of the English Church back to extreme
ritualistic practices.
The music of the Anglican Church follows the three divisions into which
church music in general may be separated, _viz._, the chant, the figured
music of the choir, and the congregational hymn.
The history of the Anglican chant may also be taken to symbolize the
submerging of the ancient priestly idea in the representative conception
of the clerical office, for the chant has proved itself a very flexible
form of expression, both in structure and usage, endeavoring to connect
itself sometimes with the anthem-like choir song and again with the
congregational hymn. In the beginning, however, the method of chanting
exactly followed the Catholic form. Two kinds of chant were
employed,--the simple unaccompanied Plain Song of the minister, which is
almost monotone; and the accompanied chant, more melodious and florid,
employed in the singing of the psalms, canticles, litany, etc., by the
choir or by the minister and choir.
The substitution of English for Latin and the sweeping modification of
the liturgy did not in the least alter the system and principle of
musical rendering which had existed in the Catholic Church. The litany,
the oldest portion of the Book of Common Prayer, compiled by Cranmer and
published in 1544, was set for singing note for note from the ancient
Plain Song. In 1550 a musical setting was given to all parts of the
Prayer Book by John Marbecke, a well-known musician of that period. He,
like Cranmer, adapted portions of the old Gregorian chant, using only the
plainer forms. In Marbecke's book we find the simplest style, consisting
of monotone, employed for the prayers and the Apostles' Creed, a larger
use of modulation in the recitation of the psalms, and a still more
song-like manner in the canticles and those portions, such as the Kyrie
and Gloria, taken from the mass. To how great an extent this music of
Marbecke was employed in the Anglican Church in the sixteenth century is
not certainly known. Certain parts of it gave way to the growing fondness
for harmonized and figured music in all parts of the service, but so far
as Plain Chant has been retained in the cathedral service the setting of
Marbecke has established the essential form down to the present day.[78]
The most marked distinction between the choral mode of performing the
service, and those divergent usages which have often been conceived as a
protest against it, consists in the practice of singing or monotoning the
prayers by the minister. The notion of impersonality which underlies the
liturgic conception of worship everywhere, the merging of the individual
in an abstract, idealized, comprehensive entity--the Church--is
symbolized in this custom. Notwithstanding the fact that the large
majority of congregational hymns are really prayers, and that in this
case the offering of prayer in metrical form and in musical strains has
always been admitted by all ranks of Christians as perfectly appropriate,
yet there has always seemed to a large number of English Protestants
something artificial and even irreverent in the delivery of prayer in an
unchanging musical note, in which expression is lost in the abandonment
of the natural inflections of speech. Here is probably the cause of the
repugnant impression,--not because the utterance is musical in tone, but
because it is monotonous and unexpressive.
It is of interest to note the reasons for this practice as given by
representative English churchmen, since the motive for the usage touches
the very spirit and significance of a ritualistic form of worship.
Dr. Bisse, in his _Rationale on Cathedral Worship_, justifies the
practice on the ground (1) of necessity, since the great size of the
cathedral churches obliges the minister to use a kind of tone that can be
heard throughout the building; (2) of uniformity, in order that the
voices of the congregation may not jostle and confuse each other; and (3)
of the advantage in preventing imperfections and inequalities of
pronunciation on the part of both minister and people. Other reasons
which are more mystical, and probably on that account still more cogent
to the mind of the ritualist, are also given by this writer. "It is
emblematic," he says, "of the delight which Christians have in the law of
God. It bespeaks the cheerfulness of our Christian profession, as
contrasted with that of the Gentiles. It gives to divine worship a
greater dignity by separating it more from all actions and interlocutions
that are common and familiar. It is more efficacious to awaken the
attention, to stir up the affections, and to edify the understanding than
plain reading." And Dr. Jebb puts the case still more definitely when he
says: "In the Church of England the lessons are not chanted, but read.
The instinctive good taste of the revisers of the liturgy taught them
that the lessons, being narratives, orations, records of appeals to men,
or writings of an epistolary character, require that method of reading
which should be, within due bounds, imitative. But with the prayers the
case is far different. These are uttered by the minister of God, not as
an individual, but as the instrument and channel of petitions which are
of perpetual obligation, supplications for all those gifts of God's grace
which are needful for all mankind while this frame of things shall last.
The prayers are not, like the psalms and canticles, the expression, the
imitation, or the record of the hopes and fears, of the varying
sentiments, of the impassioned thanksgivings, of the meditative musings
of inspired individuals, or of holy companies of men or angels; they are
the unchangeable voice of the Church of God, seeking through one eternal
Redeemer gifts that shall be for everlasting. And hence the uniformity of
tone in which she seeks them is significant of the unity of spirit which
teaches the Church universal so to pray, of the unity of means by which
her prayers are made available, of the perfect unity with God her Father
which shall be her destiny in the world to come."
The word "chant" as used in the English Church (to be in strictness
distinguished from the priestly monotoning), signifies the short melodies
which are sung to the psalms and canticles. The origin of the Anglican
chant system is to be found in the ancient Gregorian chant, of which it
is only a slight modification. It is a sort of musically delivered
speech, the punctuation and rate of movement being theoretically the same
as in spoken discourse. Of all the forms of religious music the chant is
least susceptible to change and progress, and the modern Anglican chant
bears the plainest marks of its mediaeval origin. The modifications which
distinguish the new from the old may easily be seen upon comparing a
modern English chant-book with an office-book of the Catholic Church. In
place of the rhythmic freedom of the Gregorian, with its frequent florid
passages upon a single syllable, we find in the Anglican a much greater
simplicity and strictness, and also, it must be admitted, a much greater
melodic monotony and dryness. The English chant is almost entirely
syllabic, even two notes to a syllable are rare, while there is nothing
remotely corresponding to the melismas of the Catholic liturgic song. The
bar lines, unknown in the Roman chant, give the English form much greater
steadiness of movement. The intonation of the Gregorian chant has been
dropped, the remaining four divisions--recitation, mediation, second
recitation, and ending--retained. The Anglican chant is of two kinds,
single and double. A single chant comprises one verse of a psalm; it
consists of two melodic strains, the first including three measures, the
second four. A double chant is twice the length of a single chant, and
includes two verses of a psalm, the first ending being an incomplete
cadence. The double chant is an English invention; it is unknown in the
Gregorian system. The objections to it are obvious, since the two verses
of a psalm which may be comprised in the chant often differ in sentiment.
The manner of fitting the words to the notes of the chant is called
"pointing." There is no authoritative method of pointing in the Church of
England, and there is great disagreement and controversy on the subject
in the large number of chant-books that are used in England and America.
In the cathedral service the chants are sung antiphonally, the two
divisions of the chorus answering each other from opposite sides of the
choir.
There are large numbers of so-called chants which are more properly to be
called hymns or anthems in chant style, such as the melodies sometimes
sung to the Te Deum and the Gloria in excelsis. These compositions may
consist of any number of divisions, each comprising the three-measure and
four-measure members found in the single chant.
The modern Anglican chant form is not so old as commonly supposed. The
ancient Gregorian chants for the psalms and canticles were in universal
use as late as the middle of the seventeenth century. The modern chant
was of course a gradual development, and was the inevitable result of the
harmonization of the old chant melodies according to the new system with
its corresponding balancing points of tonic and dominant. A few of the
Anglican chants sung at the present day go back to the time of the
Restoration, that is, soon after 1660; the larger number date from the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The modern chant, however, has never
been able entirely to supplant the ancient Plain Song melody. The
"Gregorian" movement in the Church of England, one of the results of the
ritualistic reaction inaugurated by the Oxford Tractarian agitation,
although bitterly opposed both on musical grounds and perhaps still more
through alarm over the tendencies which it symbolizes, has apparently
become firmly established; and even in quarters where there is little
sympathy with the ritualistic movement, musical and ecclesiastical
conservatism unites with a natural reverence for the historic past to
preserve in constant use the venerated relics of early days. Sir John
Stainer voiced the sentiment of many leading English musical churchmen
when he said: "I feel very strongly that the beautiful Plain Song
versicles, responses, inflections, and prefaces to our prayers and
liturgy should not be lightly thrown aside. These simple and grand
specimens of Plain Song, so suited to their purpose, so reverent in their
subdued emotion, appeal to us for their protection. The Plain Song of the
prefaces of our liturgy as sung now in St. Paul's cathedral are note for
note the same that rang at least eight hundred years ago through the
vaulted roof of that ancient cathedral which crowned the summit of the
fortified hill of old Salisbury. Not a stone remains of wall or shrine,
but the old Sarum office-books have survived, from which we can draw
ancient hymns and Plain Song as from a pure fount. Those devout monks
recorded all their beautiful offices and the music of these offices,
because they were even then venerable and venerated. Shall we throw them
into the fire to make room for neat and appropriate excogitations, fresh
from the blotting-pad of Mr. A, or Dr. B, or the Reverend C, or Miss D?"
It must be acknowledged, however, that the Gregorian chant melodies
undergo decided modification in spirit and impression when set to English
words. In their pure state their strains are thoroughly conformed to the
structure and flow of the Latin texts from which they grew. There is
something besides tradition and association that makes them appear
somewhat forced and ill at ease when wedded to a modern language. As
Curwen says: "In its true form the Gregorian chant has no bars or
measures; the time and the accent are verbal, not musical. Each note of
the mediation or the ending is emphatic or non-emphatic, according to the
word or syllable to which it happens to be sung. The endings which follow
the recitation do not fall into musical measures, but are as unrhythmical
as the reciting tone itself. Modern music, and the instinctive observance
of rhythm which is an essential part of it, have modified the old chant
and given it accent and time. The reason why the attempt to adapt the
Gregorian tones to the English language has resulted in their
modification is not far to seek. The non-accented system suits Latin and
French, but not English. Aside from the instinct for time, and the desire
to make a 'tune' of the chant, which is a part of human nature, it is a
feature of the English language that in speaking we pass from accent to
accent and elide the intervening syllables. The first attempts to adapt
the Gregorian tones to English use proceeded strictly upon the plan of
one syllable to a note. Of however many notes the mediation or cadence of
the chant consisted, that number of syllables was marked off from the end
of each half-verse, and the recitation ended when they were reached."[79]
The attempt to sing in this fashion, Curwen goes on to show, resulted in
the greatest violence to English pronunciation. In order to avoid this,
slurs, which are no part of the Gregorian system proper, were employed to
bring the accented syllables upon the first of the measure.
Doubtless the fundamental and certainly praiseworthy motive of those who
strongly desire to reintroduce the Gregorian melodies into the Anglican
service is to establish once for all a body of liturgic tones which are
pure, noble, and eminently fitting in character, endowed at the same time
with venerable ecclesiastical associations which shall become fixed and
authoritative, and thus an insurmountable barrier against the intrusion
of the ephemeral novelties of "the Reverend C and Miss D." Every
intelligent student of religious art may well say Amen to such a desire.
As the case now stands there is no law or custom that prevents any
minister or cantor from introducing into the service any chant-tune which
he chooses to invent or adopt. Neither is there any authority that has
the right to select any system or body of liturgic song and compel its
introduction. The Gregorian movement is an attempt to remedy this
palpable defect in the Anglican musical system. It is evident that this
particular solution of the difficulty can never generally prevail. Any
effort, however, which tends to restrict the number of chants in use, and
establish once for all a store of liturgic melodies which is preeminently
worthy of the historic associations and the conservative aims of the
Anglican Church, should receive the hearty support of English musicians
and churchmen.
If Marbecke's unison chants were intended as a complete scheme for the
musical service, they were at any rate quickly swallowed up by the
universal demand for harmonized music, and the choral service of the
Church of England very soon settled into the twofold classification which
now prevails, _viz._, the harmonized chant and the more elaborate figured
setting of "service" and anthem. The former dates from 1560, when John
Day's psalter was published, containing three and four-part settings of
old Plain Song melodies, contributed by Tallis, Shepherd, and other
prominent musicians of the time. From the very outset of the adoption of
the vernacular in all parts of the service, that is to say from the reign
of Edward VI., certain selected psalms and canticles, technically known
as "services," were sung anthem-wise in the developed choral style of the
highest musical science of the day. The components of the "service" are
to be distinguished from the daily psalms which are always sung in
antiphonal chant form, and may be said to correspond to the choral
unvarying portions of the Catholic Mass. The "service" in its fullest
form includes the Venite (Ps. xcv.), Te Deum, Benedicite (Song of the
Three Children, from the Greek continuation of the book of Daniel),
Benedictus (Song Of Zacharias), Jubilate (Ps. c.), Kyrie eleison, Nicene
Creed, Sanctus, Gloria in excelsis, Magnificat (Song of Mary), Cantate
Domino (Ps. xcviii.), Nunc dimittis (Song of Simeon), and the Deus
Misereatur (Ps. lxvii). Of these the Venite, Benedicite, and the Sanctus
have in recent times fallen out. These psalms and canticles are divided
between the morning and evening worship, and not all of them are
obligatory.
The "service," in respect to musical style, has moved step by step with
the anthem, from the strict contrapuntal style of the sixteenth century,
to that of the present with all its splendor of harmony and orchestral
color. It has engaged the constant attention of the multitude of English
church composers, and it has more than rivalled the anthem in the zealous
regard of the most eminent musicians, from the time of Tallis and Gibbons
to the present day.
The anthem, although an almost exact parallel to the "service" in musical
construction, stands apart, liturgically, from the rest of the service in
the Church of England, in that while all the other portions are laid down
in the Book of Common Prayer, the words of the anthem are not prescribed.
The Prayer Book merely says after the third collect, "In quires and
places where they sing here followeth the anthem." What the anthem shall
be at any particular service is left to the determination of the choir
master, but it is commonly understood, and in some dioceses is so
decreed, that the words of the anthem shall be taken from the Scripture
or the Book of Common Prayer. This precept, however, is frequently
transgressed, and many anthems have been written to words of metrical
hymns. The restriction of the anthem texts to selections from the Bible
or the liturgy is designed to exclude words that are unfamiliar to the
people or unauthorized by ecclesiastical authority. Even with these
limitations the freedom of choice on the part of the musical director
serves to withdraw the anthem from that vital organic connection with the
liturgy held by the "service," and it is not infrequently omitted from
the daily office altogether. The object of the fathers of the Church of
England in admitting so exceptional a musical composition into the
service was undoubtedly to give the worship more variety, and to relieve
the fatigue that would otherwise result from a long unbroken series of
prayers.
The anthem, although the legitimate successor of the Latin motet, has
taken in England a special and peculiar form. According to its derivation
(from ant-hymn, responsive or alternate song) the word anthem was at
first synonymous with antiphony. The modern form, succeeding the ancient
choral motet, dates from about the time of Henry Purcell (1658-1695). The
style was confirmed by Haendel, who in his celebrated Chandos anthems
first brought the English anthem into European recognition. The anthem in
its present shape is a sort of mixture of the ancient motet and the
German cantata. From the motet it derives its broad and artistically
constructed choruses, while the influence of the cantata is seen in its
solos and instrumental accompaniment. As the modern anthem is free and
ornate, giving practically unlimited scope for musical invention, it has
been cultivated with peculiar ardor by the English church composers, and
the number of anthems of varying degrees of merit or demerit which have
been produced in England would baffle the wildest estimate. This style of
music has been largely adopted in the churches of America, and American
composers have imitated it, often with brilliant success.
The form of anthem in which the entire body of singers is employed from
beginning to end is technically known as the "full" anthem. In another
form, called the "verse" anthem, portions are sung by selected voices. A
"solo" anthem contains passages for a single voice.
The anthem of the Church of England has been more or less affected by the
currents of secular music, but to a much slighter extent than the
Catholic mass. The opera has never taken the commanding position in
England which it has held in the Catholic countries, and only in rare
cases have the English church composers, at any rate since the time of
Haendel, felt their allegiance divided between the claims of religion and
the attractions of the stage. In periods of religious depression or
social frivolity the church anthem has sometimes become weak and shallow,
but the ancient austere traditions have never been quite abrogated. The
natural conservatism of the English people, especially in matters of
churchly usage, and their tenacious grasp upon the proper distinction
between religious and profane art, while acting to the benefit of the
anthem and "service" on the side of dignity and appropriateness in style,
have had a correspondingly unfavorable influence so far as progress and
sheer musical quality are concerned. One who reads through large numbers
of English church compositions cannot fail to be impressed by their
marked similarity in style and the rarity of features that indicate any
striking originality. This monotony and predominance of conventional
commonplace must be largely attributed, of course, to the absence of real
creative force in English music; but it is also true that even if such
creative genius existed, it would hardly feel free to take liberties with
those strict canons of taste which have become embedded in the unwritten
laws of Anglican musical procedure. In spite of these limitations English
church music does not wholly deserve the obloquy that has been cast upon
it by certain impatient critics. That it has not rivalled the Catholic
mass, nor adopted the methods that have transformed secular music in the
modern era is not altogether to its discredit. Leaving out the wonderful
productions of Sebastian Bach (which, by the way, are no longer heard in
church service in Germany), the music of the Church of England is amply
worthy of comparison with that of the German Evangelical Church; and in
abundance, musical value, and conformity to the ideals which have always
governed public worship in its noblest estate, it is entitled to be
ranked as one of the four great historic schools of Christian worship
music.
England had not been lacking in eminent composers for the Church before
the Reformation, but their work was in the style which then prevailed all
over Europe. Some of these writers could hold their own with the
Netherlanders in point of learning. England held an independent position
during "the age of the Netherlanders" in that the official musical posts
in the schools and chapels were held by native Englishmen, and not, as
was so largely the case on the continent, by men of Northern France and
Flanders or their pupils. This fact speaks much for the inherent force of
English music, but the conditions of musical culture at that time did not
encourage any originality of style or new efforts after expression.
The continental development of the polyphonic school to its perfection in
the sixteenth century was paralleled in England; and since the English
Reformation was contemporary with this musical apogee, the newly founded
national Church possessed in such men as Tallis, Byrd, Tye, Gibbons, and
others only less conspicuous, a group of composers not unworthy to stand
beside Palestrina and Lassus. It is indeed good fortune for the Church of
England that its musical traditions have been founded by such men. Thomas
Tallis, the most eminent of the circle, who died in 1585, devoted his
talents almost entirely to the Church. In science he was not inferior to
his continental compeers, and his music is preeminently stately and
solid. Besides the large number of motets, "services," etc., which he
contributed to the Church, he is now best remembered by the harmonies
added by him to the Plain Song of the old regime. Tallis must therefore
be regarded as the chief of the founders of the English harmonized chant.
His tunes arranged for Day's psalter give him an honorable place also in
the history of English psalmody.
Notwithstanding the revolutions in the authorized ceremony of the Church
of England during the stormy Reformation period, from the revised
constitutions of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. to the restored Catholicism
of Mary, and back to Protestantism again under Elizabeth, the salaried
musicians of the Church retained their places while their very seats
seemed often to rock beneath them, writing alternately for the Catholic
and Protestant services with equal facility, and with equal satisfaction
to themselves and their patrons. It was a time when no one could tell at
any moment to what doctrine or discipline he might be commanded to
subscribe, and many held themselves ready loyally to accept the faith of
the sovereign as their own. Such were the ideas of the age that the
claims of uniformity could honestly be held as paramount to those of
individual judgment. Only those who combined advanced thinking with
fearless independence of character were able to free themselves from the
prevailing sophistry on this matter of conformity _vs._ freedom. Even a
large number of the clergy took the attitude of compliance to authority,
and it is often a matter of wonder to readers of the history of this
period to see how comparatively few changes were made in the incumbencies
of ecclesiastical livings in the shifting triumphs of the hostile
confessions. If this were the case with the clergy it is not surprising
that the church musicians should have been still more complaisant. The
style of music performed in the new worship, we must remember, hardly
differed in any respect from that in use under the old system. The
organists and choir masters were not called upon to mingle in theological
controversies, and they had probably learned discretion from the
experience of John Marbecke, who came near to being burned at the stake
for his sympathy with Calvinism. As in Germany, there was no necessary
conflict between the musical practices of Catholics and Protestants. The
real animosity on the point of liturgies and music was not between
Anglicans and Catholics, but between Anglicans and Puritans.
The old polyphonic school came to an end with Orlando Gibbons in 1625. No
conspicuous name appears in the annals of English church music until we
meet that of Henry Purcell, who was born in 1658 and died in 1695. We
have made a long leap from the Elizabethan period, for the first half of
the seventeenth century was a time of utter barrenness in the neglected
fields of art. The distracted state of the kingdom during the reign of
Charles I., the Great Rebellion, and the ascendency of the Puritans under
Cromwell made progress in the arts impossible, and at one time their very
existence seemed threatened. A more hopeful era began with the
restoration of the Stuarts in 1660. Charles II. had spent some years in
France after the ruin of his father's cause, and upon his triumphant
return he encouraged those light French styles in art and literature
which were so congenial to his character. He was a devotee of music after
his fashion; he warmly encouraged it in the Royal Chapel, and a number of
skilful musicians came from the boy choirs of this establishment.
The earliest anthems of the Anglican Church were, like the Catholic
motet, unaccompanied. The use of the organ and orchestral instruments
followed soon after the middle of the seventeenth century. No such school
of organ playing arose in England as that which gave such glory to
Germany in the same period. The organ remained simply a support to the
voices, and attained no distinction as a solo instrument. Even in
Haendel's day and long after, few organs in England had a complete pedal
board; many had none at all. The English anthem has always thrown greater
proportionate weight upon the vocal element as compared with the Catholic
mass and the German cantata. In the Restoration period the orchestra came
prominently forward in the church worship, and not only were elaborate
accompaniments employed for the anthem, but performances of orchestral
instruments were given at certain places in the service. King Charles
II., who, to use the words of Dr. Tudway, was "a brisk and airy prince,"
did not find the severe solemnity of the _a capella_ style of Tallis and
Gibbons at all to his liking. Under the patronage of "the merry monarch,"
the brilliant style, then in fashion on the continent, flourished apace.
Henry Purcell, the most gifted of this school, probably the most highly
endowed musical genius that has ever sprung from English soil, was a man
of his time, preeminent likewise in opera, and much of his church music
betrays the influence of the gay atmosphere which he breathed. But his
profound musicianship prevented him from degrading his art to the level
of the prevailing taste of the royal court, and much of his religious
music is reckoned even at the present day among the choicest treasures of
English art. As a chorus writer he is one of the first of the moderns,
and one who would trace Haendel's oratorio style to its sources must take
large account of the church works of Henry Purcell.
With the opening of the eighteenth century the characteristics of the
English anthem of the present day were virtually fixed. The full, the
verse, and the solo anthem were all in use, and the accompanied style had
once for all taken the place of the _a capella_. During the eighteenth
and early part of the nineteenth centuries English choir music offers
nothing especially noteworthy, unless we except the Te Deums and
so-called anthems of Haendel, whose style is, however, that of the
oratorio rather than church music in the proper sense.
The works of Hayes, Attwood, Boyce, Greene, Battishill, Crotch, and
others belonging to the period between the middle of the eighteenth and
the middle of the nineteenth centuries are solid and respectable, but as
a rule dry and perfunctory. A new era began with the passing of the first
third of the nineteenth century, when a higher inspiration seized English
church music. The work of the English cathedral school of the second half
of the nineteenth century is highly honorable to the English Church and
people. A vast amount of it is certainly the barrenest and most
unpromising of routine manufacture, for every incumbent of an organist's
post throughout the kingdom, however obscure, feels that his dignity
requires him to contribute his quota to the enormously swollen
accumulation of anthems and "services." But in this numerous company we
find the names of such men as Goss, Bennett, Hopkins, Monk, Barnby,
Sullivan, Smart, Tours, Stainer, Garrett, Martin, Bridge, Stanford,
Mackenzie, and others not less worthy, who have endowed the choral
service with richer color and more varied and appealing expression. This
brilliant advance may be connected with the revival of spirituality and
zeal in the English Church which early in the nineteenth century
succeeded to the drowsy indifference of the eighteenth; but we must not
push such coincidences too far. The church musician must always draw some
of his inspiration from within the institution which he serves, but we
have seen that while the religious folk-song is stimulated only by deep
and widespread enthusiasm, the artistic music of the Church is dependent
rather upon the condition of music at large. The later progress in
English church music is identified with the forward movement in all
European music which began with the symphonies of Beethoven, the operas
of Weber and the French masters, and the songs of Schubert, and which was
continued in Berlioz, Wagner, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and the
still more recent national schools. England has shared this uplift of
taste and creative activity; her composers are also men of the new time.
English cathedral music enters the world-current which sets towards a
more intense and personal expression. The austere traditions of the
Anglican Church restrain efforts after the brilliant and emotional within
distinctly marked boundaries. Its music can never, as the Catholic mass
has often done, relapse into the tawdry and sensational; but the English
church composers have recognized that the Church and its art exist for
the people, and that the changing standards of beauty as they arise in
the popular mind must be considered, while at the same time the serene
and elevated tone which makes church music truly churchly must be
reverently preserved. This, as I understand it, is the motive, more or
less conscious, which actuates the Church of England composers,
organists, and directors of the present day. They have not yet succeeded
in bringing forth works of decided genius, but they have certainly laid a
foundation so broad, and so compounded of durable elements, that if the
English race is capable of producing a master of the first rank in
religious music he will not be compelled to take any radical departure,
nor to create the taste by which he will be appreciated.
English church music has never been in a more satisfactory condition than
it is to-day. There is no other country in which religious music is so
highly honored, so much the basis of the musical life of the people. The
organists and choir masters connected with the cathedrals and the
university and royal chapels are men whose character and intellectual
attainments would make them ornaments to any walk of life. The
deep-rooted religious reverence which enters into the substance of
English society, the admiration for intellect and honesty, the healthful
conservatism, the courtliness of speech, the solidity of culture which
comes from inherited wealth largely devoted to learning and the
embellishment of public and private life,--have all permeated
ecclesiastical art and ceremony, and have imparted to them an ideal
dignity which is as free from superstition as it is from vulgarity. The
music of the Church of England, like all church music, must be considered
in connection with its history and its liturgic attachments. It is
inseparably associated with a ritual of singular stateliness and beauty,
and with an architecture in cathedral and chapel in which the
recollections of a heroic and fading past unite with a grandeur of
structure and beauty of detail to weave an overmastering spell upon the
mind. Church music, I must constantly repeat, is never intended to
produce its impression alone. Before we ever allow ourselves to call any
phase of it dry and uninteresting let us hear it actually or in
imagination amid its native surroundings. As we mentally connect the
Gregorian chant and the Italian choral music of the sixteenth century
with all the impressive framework of their ritual, hearing within them
the echoes of the prayers of fifteen hundred years; as the music of Bach
and his contemporaries stands forth in only moderate relief from the
background of a Protestantism in which scholasticism and mysticism are
strangely blended,--so the Anglican chant and anthem are venerable with
the associations of three centuries of conflict and holy endeavor.
Complex and solemnizing are the suggestions which strike across the mind
of the student of church history as he hears in a venerable English
cathedral the lofty strains which might elsewhere seem commonplace, but
which in their ancestral home are felt to be the natural speech of an
institution which has found in such structures its fitting habitation.