Part 43 (2/2)

And the choirmaster, not wis.h.i.+ng to show himself inferior to the organist in his instinctive hatred of plain chant, was delighted, when the Benediction began, to put aside Gregorian melodies and make his choristers gurgle rigadoons.

It was no longer a sanctuary, but a howling place. The ”Ave Maria,” the ”Ave Verum,” all the mystical indecencies of the late Gounod, the rhapsodies of old Thomas, the capers of indigent musicasters, defiled in a chain wound by choir leaders from Lamoureux, chanted unfortunately by children, the chast.i.ty of whose voices no one feared to pollute in these middle-cla.s.s pa.s.sages of music, these by-ways of art.

”Ah,” thought Durtal, ”if only this choirmaster, who is evidently an excellent musician; for indeed, when he must, he knows how to get executed better than anywhere else in Paris, the 'De Profundis' with organ accompaniment, and the 'Dies Irae'; if only this man would as at St. Gervais give us some Palestrina and Vittoria, some Aichinger and Allegri, some Orlando La.s.so and De Pres; but no, he must detest these masters also, consider them as archaic rubbish, good to send into the dust-heaps.”

And Durtal continued,

”What we hear now at Paris, in the churches, is wholly incredible! Under pretence of managing an income for the singers, they suppress half the stanzas of canticles and hymns, and subst.i.tute, to vary the pleasure, the tiresome divagations of an organ.

”There they howl the 'Tantum Ergo' to the Austrian National air; or what is still worse, m.u.f.fle it up with operatic choruses, or refrains from canteens. The very text is divided into couplets which are ornamented like a drinking song with a little burthen.

”The other Church sequences are treated in the same manner.

”And yet the Papacy has formally forbidden, in many bulls, that the sanctuary should be soiled by those liberties. To cite one only, John XXII., in his Extravagant 'Doctor Sanctorum,' expressly forbade profane voices and music in churches. He prohibited choirs at the same time to change plain chant into fiorituri. The decrees of the Council of Trent are not less clear from this point of view, and more recently still a regulation of the Sacred Congregation of Rites has intervened to proscribe musical rioting in holy places.

”Then what are the parish-priests doing who, in fact, have musical police charge in their churches? Nothing, they laugh at it.

”Nor is this a mere phrase, but with those priests who, hoping for receipts, permit on fete days the shameless voices of actresses to dance gambols to the heavy sounds of the organ, the poor Church has become far from clean.

”At St. Sulpice,” Durtal went on, ”the priest tolerates the villainy of jolly songs which are served up to him; but at least he does not, like the one at St. Severin, allow strolling women players to lighten up the Office by the shouts of such voices as remain to them. Nor has he accepted the solo on the English horn which I heard at St. Thomas one evening during the Perpetual Adoration. In short, if the grand Benedictions at St. Sulpice are a shame, the Complines remain in spite of their theatrical att.i.tude really charming.”

And Durtal thought of those Complines of which the paternity is often attributed to Saint Benedict; they were in fact the integral prayer of the evenings, the preventive adjuration, the safeguard against the attempts of the Demon, they were in some measure the advanced sentinels of the out-posts placed round the soul to protect it during the night.

And the regulation of this entrenched camp of prayer was perfect. After the benediction the best trained voice, the most threadlike of the choir, the voice of the smallest of the children, sang forth the short lesson taken from the first Epistle of Saint Peter, warning the faithful that they must be sober and watch, not allow themselves to be surprised unexpectedly. A priest then recited the usual evening prayers; the choir organ gave the intonation, and the psalms fell, chanted one by one, the twilight psalms, in which before the approaches of night peopled with goblins, and furrowed by ghosts, man calls G.o.d to aid, and prays Him to guard his sleep from the violence of the ways of h.e.l.l, the rape of the lamias that pa.s.s.

And the hymn of Saint Ambrose, the ”Te lucis ante terminum,” made still more precise the scattered meaning of these psalms, gathering it up in its short stanzas. Unfortunately, the most important, that which foresees and declares the luxurious dangers of darkness, was swallowed up by the full organ. This hymn was not rendered in plain chant at St.

Sulpice as at La Trappe, but was sung to a pompous and elaborate air, an air full of glory, with a certain proud attractiveness, originating no doubt in the eighteenth century.

Then there was a pause--and man, feeling himself more sheltered, behind a rampart of prayers, recollected himself, more a.s.sured, and borrowed innocent voices to address new supplications to G.o.d. After the chapter read by the officiant, the children of the choir chanted the short response ”In ma.n.u.s tuus Domine, commendo spiritum meum,” which rolled out, dividing in two parts, then doubled itself, and resolved at the last its two separate portions by a verse, and part of an antiphon.

And after that prayer there was still the canticle of Simeon, who, as soon as he had seen the Messiah, desired to die. This ”Nunc dimittis,”

which the Church has incorporated in Compline to stimulate us at eventide to self-examination--for none can tell whether he shall wake on the morrow--was raised by the whole choir, which alternated with the responses of the organ.

In fact, to end this Office of a besieged town, to take its last dispositions and try to repose in shelter from a violent attack, the Church built up again a few prayers, and placed her parishes under the tutelage of the Virgin, to whom it chanted one of the four antiphons which follow, according to the Proper.

”At La Trappe Compline was evidently less solemn, less interesting than at St. Sulpice,” concluded Durtal, ”for the monastic breviary is, for a wonder, less complete for that Office than the Roman breviary. As for Sunday Vespers, I am curious to hear them.”

And he heard them; but they hardly differed from the Vespers adopted by the Benedictine nuns of the Rue Monsieur; they were more ma.s.sive, more grave, more Roman, if it may be said, for necessarily the voice of women drew them out into sharp points, made them like acute arches, as it were, in Gothic style, but the Gregorian tunes were the same.

On the other hand they resembled in nothing those at St. Sulpice, where the modern sauces spoilt the very essences of the plain chants. Only the Magnificat of La Trappe, abrupt, and with dry tone, was not so good as the majestic, the admirable Royal Magnificat chanted at Paris.

”These monks are astonis.h.i.+ng with their superb voices,” said Durtal to himself, and he smiled as they finished the antiphon of Our Lady, for he remembered that in the primitive Church the chanter was called ”Fabarius cantor,” ”eater of beans,” because he was obliged to eat that vegetable to strengthen his voice. Now, at La Trappe, dishes of beans were common; perhaps that was the secret of the ever young monastic voices.

He thought over the liturgy and plain chant while smoking cigarettes, in the walks, after Vespers.

He brought to mind the symbolism of those canonical hours which recalled every day to the Christian the shortness of life in summing up for him its image from infancy to death.

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