The Story of the Hymns and Tunes | Page 3

in the song of Moses and
Miriam, the song of Deborah and Barak, and the song of Hannah
(sometimes called "the Old Testament Magnificat"), in the hymns of
David and Solomon and all the Temple Psalms, and later where the
New Testament gives us the "Gloria" of the Christmas angels, the
thanksgiving of Elizabeth (benedictus minor), Mary's Magnificat, the
song of Zacharias (benedictus major), the "nunc dimittis" of Simeon,
and the celestial ascriptions and hallelujahs heard by St. John in his
Patmos dream. For what we know of the first formulated human prayer
and praise we are mostly indebted to the Hebrew race. They seem to
have been at least the only ancient nation that had a complete
psalter--and their collection is the mother hymn-book of the world.
Probably the first form of hymn-worship was the plain-song--a
declamatory unison of assembled singers, every voice on the same
pitch, and within the compass of five notes--and so continued, from

whatever may have stood for plain-song in Tabernacle and Temple
days down to the earliest centuries of the Christian church. It was mere
melodic progression and volume of tone, and there were no
instruments--after the captivity. Possibly it was the memory of the
harps hung silent by the rivers of Babylon that banished the timbrel
from the sacred march and the ancient lyre from the post-exilic
synagogues. Only the Feast trumpet was left. But the Jews sang. Jesus
and his disciples sang. Paul and Silas sang; and so did the
post-apostolic Christians; but until towards the close of the 16th
century there were no instruments allowed in religious worship.
St. Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers has been called "the father of Christian
hymnology." About the middle of the 4th century he regulated the
ecclesiastical song-service, wrote chant music (to Scripture words or
his own) and prescribed its place and use in his choirs. He died A.D.
368. In the Church calendars, Jan. 13th (following "Twelfth Night"), is
still kept as "St. Hilary's Day" in the Church of England, and Jan. 14th
in the Church of Rome.
St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, a few years later, improved the work of
his predecessor, adding words and music of his own. The "Ambrosian
Chant" was the antiphonal plain-song arranged and systematized to
statelier effect in choral symphony. Ambrose died A.D. 397.
Toward the end of the 6th century Christian music showed a decline in
consequence of impatient meddling with the slow canonical psalmody,
and "reformers" had impaired its solemnity by introducing fanciful
embellishments. Gregory the Great (Pope of Rome, 590-604) banished
these from the song service, founded a school of sacred melody,
composed new chants and established the distinctive character of
ecclesiastical hymn worship. The Gregorian chant--on the diatonic
eight sounds and seven syllables of equal length--continued, with its
majestic choral step, to be the basis of cathedral music for a thousand
years. In the meantime (930) Hucbald, the Flanders monk, invented
sight music, or written notes--happily called the art of "hearing with the
eyes and seeing with the ears"; and Guido Arentino (1024) contrived
the present scale, or the "hexachord" on which the present scale was

perfected.
In this long interval, however, the "established" system of hymn service
did not escape the intrusion of inevitable novelties that crept in with the
change of popular taste. Unrhythmical singing could not always hold
its own; and when polyphonic music came into public favor, secular
airs gradually found their way into the choirs. Legatos, with their
pleasing turn and glide, caught the ear of the multitude. Tripping
allegrettos sounded sweeter to the vulgar sense than the old largos of
Pope Gregory the Great.
The guardians of the ancient order took alarm. One can imagine the
pained amazement of conservative souls today on hearing "Ring the
Bells of Heaven" substituted in church for "Mear" or the long-metre
Doxology, and can understand the extreme distaste of the ecclesiastical
reactionaries for the worldly frivolities of an A.D. 1550 choir.
Presumably that modern abomination, the vibrato, with its shake of
artificial fright, had not been invented then, and sanctuary form was
saved one indignity. But the innovations became an abuse so general
that the Council of Trent commissioned a select board of cardinals and
musicians to arrest the degeneration of church song-worship.
One of the experts consulted in this movement was an eminent Italian
composer born twenty miles from Rome. His full name was Giovanni
Pietro Aloysio da Palestrina, and at that time he was in the prime of his
powers. He was master of polyphonic music as well as plain-song, and
he proposed applying it to grace the older mode, preserving the solemn
beauty of the chant but adding the charming chords of counterpoint. He
wrote three "masses," one of them being his famous "Requiem." These
were sung under his direction before the