THE GREGORIAN CHANT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 195, 22 December 1876, Page 7

THE GREGORIAN CHANT.

The Notre Dame ' Scholastic ' discusses the advisability of a feaeral adoption of the Gregorian Chant music, and adduces some reasons in its favour : " Pure Gregorian Chant is wanting in two of the elements which constitute modern music, harmony and rythra. It retains only ' melody, pure, simple, diatonic melody, such as the child learns in its first scale. It is, therefore, suitable to all capacities, and, for this reason, besi calculated for congregational singing, which the Church has never ceased to recommend ; the custom of putting a few good singers in a loft in the rear of the Church is an invention which must have been originated by pride, and has done more to foster that vice, and a variety of other evils, than any innovation we know of. " Uncultivated ears never find anything agreeable in music when they miss a strongly marked rythm. To them a dance is the moat enjoyable form of music ; they can nod their heads to the time, and go to sleep perhaps. Persons who have had more experience find this kind of! music monotonous, and receive much more enjoyment by following the artistic combinations of harmony and melody in more classical compositions. " From what has been said", it is plain that neither of theso classes will find in the Gregorian that purely musical enjoyment which they seek for outside of the Church ; hence the foolish prejudice against it from persons who forget that they go to Church to pray. Only simple melody, which the most ignorant can understand, and vet which can, in its untrammelled freedom, give scope to the nu.st, cultivated singers to express their feelings — always, however, in a pru.ierful manner. " Ab to these melodies that have come to us from the dart: ages, what, do great musicians say about them ? Let us hear Mozart : " I would give all my fame if I could boast of being the author of a single one of the Prefaces" (in Gregorian Chant, as sung by the priest during Mass.) Hector Berlioz, one of the ablest musical critics of our century music : " Nothing in modern, says is comparable to the effect produced by the Dies Ira" a Gregorian Requiem.