Chapter 1

The Early Liturgical Drama

The modern entertainment called opera is a child of the Roman Catholic Church. What might be described as operatic tendencies in the music of worship date further back than the foundation of Christianity. The Egyptians were accustomed to sing "jubilations" to their gods, and these consisted of florid cadences on prolonged vowel sounds. The Greeks caroled on vowels in honor of their deities. From these practices descended into the musical part of the earliest Christian worship a certain rhapsodic and exalted style of delivery, which is believed to have been St. Paul's "gift of tongues."

That this element should have disappeared for a considerable time from the church music is not at all remarkable, for in the first steps toward regulating the liturgy simplification was a prime requisite. Thus in the centuries before Gregory the plain chant gained complete ascendancy in the church and under him it acquired a systematization which had in it the elements of permanency.

Yet it was through the adaptation of this very chant to the delineation of episodes in religious history that the path to the opera was opened. The church slowly built up a ritual which offered no small amount of graphic interest for the eyes of the congregation. As ceremonials became more and more elaborate, they approached more and more closely the ground on which the ancient dramatic dance rested, and it was not long before they themselves acquired a distinctly dramatic character. It is at this point that the liturgical ancestry of the opera becomes quite manifest. The dance itself, at first an attempt to delineate dramatically by means of measured movement, and thus the origin of the art of dramatic action, was not without its place in the early church. The ancient pagan festivals made use of the dance, and the early Christians borrowed it from them. At one time Christian priests executed solemn dances before their altars just as their Greek predecessors had done. But in the course of time the dance became generally practised by the congregation and this gave rise to abuses. The authorities of the church abandoned it. But the feeling for it lingered, and in after years issued in the employment of the procession. When the procession left the sanctuary and displayed itself in the open air, something of the nature of the dance returned to it and its development into a dramatic spectacle was not difficult.

According to Magnin[1] the lyric drama of the Middle Ages had three sources,--the aristocracy, religion and the people. Coussemaker finds that this lyric drama had in its inception two chief varieties, namely, the secular drama, and the religious or liturgical drama. "Each of these dramas," he says, "had its own particular subject matter, character, charms and style. The music, which formed an integral part of it, was equally different in the one from the other."[2]

[Footnote 1: "Les Origines du Théâtre Moderne ou Histoire du Génie Dramatique depuis le Premier Siècle jusqu'au XVIe." Paris, 1838.]

[Footnote 2: "Histoire de l'Harmonie au Moyen Age." Paris, 1852.]

The liturgical drama, which was chronologically the first of the two forms, originated, as we have noted, in the ceremonies of the Christian church, in the strong dramatic element which inheres in the mass, the Christmas fêtes, and those of the Epiphany, the Palms and the Passion. These are all scenes in the drama of the sacrifice of the Redeemer, and it required but small progress to develop them into real dramatic performances, designed for the instruction of a people which as yet had no literature.

The wearing of appropriate costumes by priest, deacon, sub-deacon and boys of the choir is in certain ceremonies associated with the use of melody and accent equally suited to the several rôles. Each festival is an anniversary, and in the early church was celebrated with rites, chants and ornaments corresponding to its origin. The Noël, for example, was supposed to be the song which the angels sang at the nativity, and for the sake of realistic effect some of the Latin churches used the Greek words which they thought approached most closely to the original text. The Passion was the subject of a series of little dramas enacted as ceremonials of holy week in all the Catholic churches.

Out of these ceremonies, then, grew the liturgical drama. The most ancient specimens of it which have come down to us are those collected under the title "Vierges sages et Vierges folles," preserved in MS. 1139 of the national library at Paris. The manuscript contains two of these dramas and a fragment of a third. The first is the "Three Maries." This is an office of the sepulcher, and has five personages: an angel, the guardian of the tomb and the three Maries.

The drama of the wise and foolish virgins, which was thoroughly examined by M. Magnin and by Coussemaker after him, is simple in construction. It begins with a chorus in Latin, the theme of which is indicated by the first words:

"Adest sponsus qui est Christus: vigilate, virgines."

This chorus is set to a melody grave and plaintive. Then the archangel Gabriel, using the Provençal tongue, announces the coming of Christ and tells what the Savior has suffered on earth for the sins of man. Each strophe is terminated by a refrain, of which the conclusion has the same melody as the first stanza of each of the strophes. The foolish virgins confess their sins and beg their sisters for help. They sing in Latin, and their three strophes have a melody different from that of the preceding strophes. They terminate, like the others, with a sad and plaintive refrain, of which the words are Provençal:

"Dolentas! Chaitivas! trop i avem dormit."

In modern French this line reads, "Malheureuses! Chétives! Nous avons trop dormi!" The wise virgins refuse the oil and bid their foolish sisters to go and buy it. All the strophes change the melody at each change of personages. The little drama comes to its end with the intervention of Christ, who condemns the foolish virgins. The words of the Savior have no music. Coussemaker wonders whether the musician was unable to find a melody worthy to be sung by the Savior or intentionally made Him speak instead of chant. The same author, in his "Histoire de l'Harmonie au Moyen Age," gives facsimiles of all the pages of the original manuscript of this play. The notation, that of the eleventh century, is beautifully clear, and its deciphering is made easier by the presence of a line ruled across the page to indicate the relative positions of the notes. The music of these dramas is what we should naturally expect it to be, if we take into account the character of the text. The subjects of the dramas were always incidents from the Bible and the plays were represented in churches by priests or those close to them.

It is certain that the educational drama of the church continued in the state of its infancy for several centuries. Even after the birth of the "Sacra Rappresentazione" in the fourteenth century the old-fashioned liturgical drama survived in Italy and was preserved in activity in other parts of Europe. Several interesting manuscripts in great libraries attest the consideration accorded to it at a period much later than that of which we have been speaking. Nevertheless the era of the origin of the plays as a rule will be found to antedate that of the manuscripts. For example, in the royal library of Berlin there is a fifteenth century manuscript of a liturgical drama entitled, "Die Marienklage." Dr. Frommann, of Nuremberg, after careful study, has decided that the play was of middle German (perhaps Thuringian) origin in the fourteenth century. This play is in part sung and in part spoken.[3] It begins with this bit of Latin chant by Mary:

[Musical Notation]

[Footnote 3: See Robert Eitner's introduction to the First Part of "Die Oper von ihren ersten Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts." Leipsic, 1881.]

The rest of the text is in old German. Here is a specimen of the recitative or chant with the German text:

[Musical Notation]

These recitatives are in a style exactly like that of the early French church plays.

As Coussemaker notes, one does not find in these plays the passions, the intrigues nor the scenic movement found in the secular drama. What we do find is calm simplicity of statement, elevation and nobility of thought, purity of moral principles. The music designed to present these ideas in a high light necessarily has an appropriate character. We do not find here music of strongly marked rhythm and clearly defined measure, suitable to the utterance of worldly emotions, but a melody resembling the chant, written in the tonalities used in the church, but containing a certain kind of prose rhythm and accentuation, such as exists in the Gregorian music.

This was the inevitable march of development. The liturgical drama originated, as has been shown, in the celebration of certain offices and fêtes, for which the music assumed a style of delivery clothed in unwonted pomp. Characters and costumes and specially composed music soon found their way into these ceremonies. The new music followed the old lines and preserved the character of the liturgical chant. Gradually these accessories rose to the importance of separate incidents and finally to that of dramas. But they did not lose their original literary and musical character.

In studying the development of a secular lyric drama, it is essential that we keep in mind the nature of the music employed in the dramatic ceremonials, and later in the frankly theatrical representations of the church. The opera is a child of Italy and its direct ancestors must be sought there. The first secular musical plays of France far antedated the birth of the primitive lyric drama of Italy, and it requires something more than scientific devotion to establish a close connection between the two. But the early French ecclesiastical play is directly related to that of Italy. Both were products of the Catholic Church. Both employed the same texts and the same kind of music. They were developed by similar conditions; they were performed in similar circumstances and under the same rules.

For these reasons it is proper to discuss the early French religious drama and that of Italy as practically one and the same thing, and to pass without discrimination from the first performances of such plays outside the church to the establishment of that well-defined variety known in Italy as the "Sacre Rappresentazioni." This form, as we shall see, was the immediate outgrowth of the "laud," but one of its ancestors was the open-air performances. The emergence of the churchly play into the open was effected through the agency of ecclesiastic ceremonial. Pagan traditions and festivities died a hard death in the early years of Christianity, and some of them, instead of passing entirely out of the world of worship, maintained their existence in a transformed shape. Funerals, as Chouquet[4] pointedly notes, "provided the occasion for scenic performances and certain religious fêtes the pretext for profane ceremonies."

[Footnote 4: "Histoire de la Musique Dramatique en France," par Gustave Chouquet. Paris, 1873.]

The fête of the ass, celebrated on January 14 every year at Beauvais, was an excellent example of this sort of ceremony. This was a representation of the flight into Egypt. A beautiful young woman, carrying in her arms an infant gorgeously dressed, was mounted on an ass. Then she moved with a procession from the cathedral to the church of St. Etienne. The procession marched into the choir, while the girl, still riding the ass, took a position in front of the altar. Then the mass was celebrated, and at the end of each part the words "Hin han" were chanted in imitation of the braying of the beast. The officiating priest, instead of chanting the "Ite missa est," invited the congregation to join in imitating the bray.

This simple procession in time developed into a much more pretentious liturgical drama called "The Prophets of Christ." But this appearance in the open streets was doubtless the beginning of the custom of enacting sacred plays in the public squares of cities and small towns. The fête of the ass dates from the eleventh century, and we shall see that open-air performances of religious dramas took place in the twelfth, if no sooner.

Other significant elements of the fête of the ass and similar ceremonials were the singing of choruses by the populace and dancing. In the Beauvais "Flight into Egypt" at one point the choir sang an old song, half Latin and half French, before the ass, clothed in a cope.

"Hez, sire Asnes, car chantez! Belle bouche rechignez; Vous aurez du foin assez Et de l'avoine a plantez."

This refrain was changed after each stanza of the Latin. The people of Limoges, in their yearly festival, sang:

"San Marceau, pregas per nous, E nous epingarem per vous."

In the seventeenth century these good people of Limoges were still holding a festival in honor of the patron saint of their parish, and singing:

"Saint Martial, priez pour nous, Et nous, nous danserons pour vous!"

This choral dance formed in the church, and continued to the middle of the nave, and thence to the square before the edifice, or even into the cemetery. At a period later than that first mentioned these dances had instrumental accompaniment and became animated even to the verge of hysteria. Thus unwittingly the people of the medieval church were gathering into a loose, but by no means unformed, union the same materials as the ancients used in the creation of their drama.

The earnest Lewis Riccoboni[5] holds that the Fraternity of the Gonfalone, founded in 1264, was accustomed to enact the Passion in the Coliseum, and that these performances lasted till Paul III abolished them in 1549. Riccoboni argues that not the performance was interdicted, but the use of the Coliseum. This matters not greatly, since it is perfectly certain that out-door performances of the Passion took place long before 1549. Those which were given in France were extremely interesting and in regard to them we have important records. It is established beyond doubt that near the end of the fourteenth century a company of players called the Fraternity of the Passion assisted at the festivities attendant upon the marriage of Charles VI and Isabella of Bavaria. Thereafter they gave public performances of their version of the Passion.

[Footnote 5: "An Historical and Critical Account of the Theaters in Europe," by Lewis Riccoboni, translated from the Italian. London, 1741.]

It was too long to be performed without rest, and it was therefore divided into several days' work. It employed eighty-seven personages and made use of elaborate machinery. There seems to be little doubt that some of the scenes were sung, and there is no question that there were choruses. The stage directions are not the least remarkable part of this play. The baptism is set forth in this wise: "Here Jesus enters the waters of Jordan, all naked, and Saint John takes some of the water in his hand and throws it on the head of Jesus." Saint John says:

"Sir, you now baptized are, As it suits my simple skill, Not the lofty rank you fill; Unmeet for such great service I; Yet my God, so debonair, All that's wanting will supply."

"Here Jesus comes out of the river Jordan and throws himself upon his knees, all naked, before Paradise. Then God, the Father, speaks, and the Holy Ghost descends, in the form of a white dove, upon the head of Jesus, and then returns into Paradise: and note that the words of God the Father be very audibly pronounced and well sounded in three voices, that is to say, a treble, a counter-treble and a counter-bass, all in tune; and in this way must the following lines be repeated:

'Hic est filius meus dilectus, In quo mihi bene complacui. C'estui-ci est mon fils amé Jesus, Que bien me plaist, ma plaisance est en lui.'"

Students are offered another choice of dates for the beginning of the performance of sacred plays in the open air in Italy, to wit, 1304. Vasari says that in this year a play was enacted on the Arno, that a "machine representing hell was fixed upon the boats, and that the subject of the drama was the perennially popular tale of 'Dives and Lazarus'." But Vasari was not born till 1512, and he neglected to state where he got his information. The latter years of the fourteenth century, at any rate, saw the open-air sacred drama in full action, and that suffices for our purpose.