Evelyn Innes | Page 2

Byrd's beautiful vocal Mass had led him to Palestrina and
Vittoria, and these wakened in him dreams of a sufficient choir at St.
Joseph's for a revival of their works.

So when Evelyn clambered on her father's knee, it was to learn the
chants that he hummed from old manuscripts and missals, and it was
the contrapuntal fancies of the Elizabethan composers that he gave her
to play on the virginal, or the preludes of Bach on the clavichord. Her
infantile graces at these instruments were the delight and amazement of
her parents. She warbled this old-time music as other children do the
vulgar songs of the hour; she seemed less anxious to learn the operatic
music which she heard in her mother's class-rooms, and there was a
shade of uneasiness in Mrs. Innes's admiration of the beauty of Evelyn's
taste; but Mr. Innes said that it was better that her first love should be
for the best, and he could not help hoping that it would not be with the
airs of Lucia and Traviata that she would become famous. As if in
answer, the child began to hum the celebrated waltz, a moment after a
beautiful Ave Maria, composed by a Fleming at the end of the fifteenth
century, a quick, sobbing rhythm, expressive of naïve petulance at
delay in the Virgin's intercession. Mr. Innes called it natural
music--music which the modern Church abhorred and shamefully
ostracised; and the conversation turned on the incurably bad taste and
the musical misdeeds of a certain priest, Father Gordon, whom Mr.
Innes judged to be responsible for all the bad music to be heard at St.
Joseph's.
For Mr. Innes's ambition was to restore the liturgical chants of the early
centuries, from John Ockeghem, the Flemish silver-smith of Louis XI.,
whose recreation it was to compose motets, to Thomas da Vittoria; and,
after having made known the works of Palestrina and of those who
gravitated around the great Roman composer, he hoped to disinter the
masses of Orlando di Lasso, of Goudimel and Josquin des Près, the
motets of Nannini, of Felice Anerio, of Clemens non Papa.... He would
go still further back. For before this music was the plain chant or
Gregorian, bequeathed to us by the early Church, coming down to her,
perhaps, from Egyptian civilisation, the mother of all art and all
religion, an incomparable treasure which unworthy inheritors have
mutilated for centuries. It was Mr. Innes's belief that the supple, free
melody of the Gregorian was lost in the shouting of operatic tenors and
organ accompaniments. The tradition of its true interpretation had been
lost, and the text itself, but by long study of ancient missals, Mr. Innes

had penetrated the secret of the ancient notation, vague as the eyeballs
of the blind, and in the absence of a choir that could read this strange
alphabet of sound, he cherished a plan for an edition of these old chants,
re-written by him into the ordinary notation of our day. But impassable
obstacles intervened: the apathy and indifference of the Jesuits, and
their fear lest such radical innovations should prove unpopular and
divert the congregation of St. Joseph's elsewhere. He had abandoned
hope of converting them from their error, but he was confident that
reaction was preparing against the jovialities of Rossini, whose Stabat
Mater, he said, still desecrated Good Friday, and against the erotics of
M. Gounod and his suite. And this inevitable reaction Mr. Innes strove
to advance by his pupils. Many became disciples and helped to preach
the new musical gospel. He induced them to learn the old instruments,
and among them found material for his concerts. Though a weak man
in practical conduct, he was steadfast in his ideas. His concerts had
begun to attract a little attention; he was receiving support from some
rich amateurs, and was able to continue his propaganda under the noses
of the worthy fathers in whose church he was now serving, but where
he knew that one day he would be master.
But, unfortunately, Mr. Innes could only give a small part of his time to
these concerts. Notwithstanding his persuasiveness, there remained on
his hands some intractable pupils who would not hear of viol or
harpsichord, who insisted upon being taught to play modern masses on
the organ, and these he could not afford to refuse. For of late years his
wife's failing health had forced her to relinquish teaching, and the
burden of earning their living had fallen entirely upon him. She hoped
that a long rest might improve her in health, and that in some
months--six, she imagined as a sufficient interval--she would be able to
undertake in full earnestness her daughter's education. To do this had
become her dearest wish; for there could now be little