OLDEST MUSIC.

New Zealand Tablet, 16 October 1919, Page 23

OLDEST MUSIC.

The oldest music of the world is .tbe chant of the church —the chant which she uplifts week after week, year after year, century after century, in every clime and nation, amid white men, black men, red men, bronze men, yellow men, under arctic darkness and under the equatorial blaze, in metropolis and in hamlet, in narrow shrine and in vast basilica. It is in the self-same strain that the eager young priest in French Canada, the bearded missionary in Tibet, and the silver-haired Pontiff in Rome must all alike chant “"Sursum Corda” and “Vere Dignum” and “Pater Noster.” . , . Yet, while the chant is the oldest of surviving music it is also the youngest. .< It is old not in the sense that Gothic armor and Roman coins and Egyptian urns are old. It is old, like the sea and the mountains and the stars and the sun and the moon. It is old without being old-fashioned. It is old in nothing but years, for its heart is a fountain of beautiful and eternal -youth. ; :