DICTIONARY OF MUSIC - El Atril

236 GREGORIAN TONES GREITER
and were speedily borrowed by the secular office
elsewhere than in Rome, they I'orm in reality a
separate category. (See Hymn.)
These two great collections sutfered much
mutilation at the hands of the musicians of
the Renaissance. The Gregorian tradition had
been carefully preserved in most places through
the Middle Ages, especially in England where
a very pure Gregorian tradition was early estab-
lished by the Roman missions to this country,
and retained through the liturgical and musical
zeal which distinguished the Anglo Saxon
Church. In the 16th century, however, to a
growing carelessness there was added a deliberate
policy of alteration. Some nmsicians of the
school of Palestrina took the shears to the collec-
tion, and, with amazing effrontery and ignorance,
mutilated, almost past recognition, the delicate
compositions which had survived the 'dark ages'
practically intact. The Medicean edition of the
Gregorian chant of the Mass, which resulted
from this disastrous handling, was held to be the
official edition of the music of the Roman Church
from the year 1614 onward ; and it is not surprising
that it swiftly succeeded in crushing all
interest and beauty out of the performance of
the music. In the 19th century dissatisfaction
with the existing state of things began to growand
ferment, till it culminated in the patient restoration,
chiefly through the labours of the Benedic-
tines of the Congregation of France, of the true
Gregorian tradition and its proj>er method of
execution. Thus the 20tli century has witnessed
the dethronement of the evil incubus of the 1 7th.
Henceforward the editions of Solesmes are those
offioiallyrecognised, and afinal revision under the
auspices of the Benedictines is paving the way for
an official Vatican edition, which will restore the
true Gregorian music to the use of the whole
Latin Church.
GREGORIAN TONES.
w. H. r.
This name is given
to the eight groups of chants, corresponding to
the eight modes (see Modes), to which the
psalms are sung under the Gregorian system of
antiphonal psalmody. (See Antiphon ; and
P.SALMODY. ) When the English Cluiroh gave
up the Latin service-books, it had to resign for
the time, with the Latin texts, the whole of their
ancient Gregorian melodies ; antiphons and responds
disap])earcd both fronr the Communion
service and from the reformed Hour Services
of Matins and Evensong. Some adaptations
were made from the new English Kyrie, Sanctus,
Agnus, Creed and Gloria in excelsis, and a
praiseworthy attempt to provide some simple
plain-song was made by Merbecke. (See Mer-
BEOKE. ) Similarly adaptations were made for
the Te Deum and for parts of the funeral
service ; but on the whole it may be said that
nothing survived but tlie psalm-tones, in their
naked simplicity, divorced from the antiphons,
apart from which they are a mere fragment.
These Gregorian Tones survived in more or
less mutilated forms down to the Rebellion,
and were among the traditions restored at the
Restoration ; but by this time their place had
been already taken by the Anglican chant,
which had grown up out of the decay of the
Tones. (See Chant.) The Gregorian tones
were brought back into use as part of the church
revival of the early part of the 19th century ;
they began badly through being borrowed from
the most decadent traditions of the continent,
and they were taken up for ecclesiastical rather
than for musical reasons. The influence of the
plain-song revival abroad has latterly made itself
felt, and Gregorian chanting has been both
better executed and better received. But the
tones apart from the rest of the Gregorian
music with which they are so inseparably connected,
have little chance of making their proper
appeal either to musicians or to worshippers.
Their future in English services is largely bound
up with such questions as the enrichment of
the services of the Prayer Book by the recovery
of antiplions or the restoration of other parts of
the Gregorian collections adapted to the English
translations of the texts. Such processes as
these are naturally slow, and meanwhile the
Tones have attained only a restricted and much
controverted position. w. H. F.
GREITER, Matthias, was originally a monk
and choir-singer in Strasburg Minster, but in
1524 embraced the cause of the Lutheran Reformation
and devoted his poetical and musical
talents to its furtherance. In 1549 he accepted
the Interim of Charles V., and founded a choirschool
to provide for the Church - service in
accordance therewith. He is said to have died
of the plague in 1552. To the Strassiurger
KircJioiavit 1525 and Gcsanghuch 1537 he
contributed seven Psalm-lieder (free metrical
versions of some Psalms), and probably either
invented or adapted the melodies which were
sung to them ('0 Herre Gott, begnade mich,'
'Da Israel aus Egypten zog, '
' Es sind doch
selig alle die,' etc.). Zahn in his exhaustive
work on Chorale-Melodies attributes six to
Greiter. Both hymns and tunes continued for
a long time in use in the Lutheran Church.
The tune to ' Es sind doch selig ' w'as afterwards
transferred to the Hymn '0 Mensch, bewein dein
SUnde, ' and we are familiar with the magnificent
treatment of both words and tune in the ' ' MattheAv Passion of
St.
Bach. But Greiter's chief
contribution tomusicoonsists in several four-voice
settings of German songs, and one five- voice, in
which, as Eitner says, good harmony, warmth
of feeling, and contrapuntal art are united in a
masterly way, and show him to have been one
of the best composeis of the time. Of these
Kade, in the Beilagen to Ambros, has reprinted
' Ich stund an einem Morgen,' which is remark-
able for its Ground-Bass and the imitations of
it in the Soprano and Alto (the melody proper
being in the Tenor). Two others have been