Textbook of Gregorian Chant (1930) - MusicaSacra

Introduction. ix.
simply says at last that it is " virginal", and surely no finer epithet
could fall from the lips of a monk.
The Early Christian Centuries. Melody. Simplicity.
Although, as has been said, the form of Gregorian diatonic music
is based on the Greek scales and modes, there is no evidence that
the chant was originally pagaa songs taken over by the Church in
the same sense that the first Christian temples were pagan buildings
baptised to Christian uses. The Church evolved a chant in
evolving a liturgy; everything goes to prove that the oldest melodies
were the creation of early Christianity. With their undying
freshness, their spontaneous simplicity, they may well have been
born of the gaiety and abnegation of the first monks and sung by
the children of the martyrs. They seem to fit naturally into the
age of the great Popes and the stational liturgy of Rome, the time
of the finest Prefaces, the tersest Collects "and all those parts of
the Liber Sacramentorum which stand most completely beyond
the reach of staleness or a change of fashion. It must have been
this quality of freshness which caused Saint Augustine to weep at
the chants which he heard in the churches of Milan : that master
mind divined perhaps that the West had wakened from the evil
dreams of a debased paganism and stood in such a dawn as
Europe would not see again. But the characteristic quality of
freshness and simplicity has never since been lost to liturgical
praise. The latest convert of today might well receive the same
impression as did Augustine, could he but lay aside the prejudices
of education and habit and come unspoilt to recapture the charm
which is latent in that thin line of melody. It needs but a few
notes and makes so little noise; an intonation, an inflexion is
enough; it has been said that this most of all makes one believe in
the inspiration of the chant, since " no man, even a saint, could
have thought of anything so prodigiously simple ". x Its simplicity
issues in strength; here is no enervating chromatism to weaken
the effect; 2 by rigorous forms and very restricted means the
desired object is attained, and this equally in the elaborate
cantilene wherein the melody has to thread its way through constellations
of neums, as well as in pieces of "pure unemotional
recitative ". 3
The Middle Ages. Unison. Symbolism.
It has often been remarked that the Christians of the early centuries
had * much more vivid consciousness of their union in the
1 DOM GAJARD, O. S. B. Revue grigorienne, 1924, p. 68.
9 CAMILLE BELLAIGUE, op. at. p. 99-100 et seq.
3 DOM ALPHEGE SHEBBEARE, O. S. B. "Blackfriars", Nov. 1920.