Chapter 2

Now it has been argued that if these Antiphoners had either of them borne the name of Gregory the Great, Amalarius would not have had the audacity to alter them in this manner, nor would he if there had existed anywhere in Gaul any bearing his name. But this idea has arisen from the confusion attending the name "antiphoner." The book that Amalarius was dealing with was not the Antiphoner for Mass, but the Antiphoner for Divine Service. There were great variations in the latter in different localities down to the reform by Pius V., far more than in the former. When the "famous authentic model of Gregory" is spoken of, it is the Antiphonale Missarum which is meant.

VII.--Amalarius, Bishop of Trèves (809-814). _Liber Officiorum_, from a MS. at Trèves, quoted by Morin, _fol._ 6, _De Missa Innocentium_. "The Mass of the Innocents begins in the Diurnal with this Rubric: '_Gloria in Excelsis Deo_ is not sung, nor _Alleluia_, unless it be Sunday; this day is passed in a sort of sadness.' The Holy Pope Gregory, in whom dwelt in very truth the Holy Ghost, and to whom is due the composition of this office, means us to share the feelings of the pious women who bewailed and lamented the death of the Innocents. And if it is permitted to transgress the order of so great a Father, it would equally be lawful to chant Alleluia with the complete office of the day on Good Friday."

It is a question here of the Antiphoner of the Mass.

(_fol._ 7.) On the day of the Epiphany "we lose one of the chants which we have at Christmas, viz., the Invitatory. St. Gregory, the organizer of the offices, meant by this peculiarity to recall to our memory as strongly as he could what passed formerly at the time of the accomplishment of the mysteries which we honour. That is why we chant in the sixth place the psalm which we had avoided in the beginning. It is true that certain blunderers treat this with indifference and contempt, thinking it much better to follow the ordinary usage of each day. But, as we have already said, he wished by this to distinguish" &c., &c.

This passage refers to the Antiphoner of the Office.

(_fol._ 9-10.) "That is why Gregory, the author of our office, has placed Septuagesima.... However, Gregory the institutor of our office...."

It is a question of the Antiphoner and of the Sacramentary.

(_fol._ 39.) "The author of our office, who is none other than Gregory...."

He is referring to a portion of the Antiphoner of the Mass.

In the following passage Amalarius distinguishes the work of the two first Gregories as to the Thursdays in Lent.

(_fol._ 102.) "The Holy Pope Gregory in arranging the offices of the year had left vacant the Thursdays of Lent.... A long time after him another Pope, Gregory the younger, ordained that these days should also be celebrated by Masses and Prayers, but with less solemnity, and he borrowed wherever he could material to form the offices of these Thursdays."

VIII.--Pope Adrian I. (772-795). A MS. from Saint Martial de Limoges contains this passage (_Paris, Bibl. Nat., No._ 2400.) "Adrian II., after the example of his predecessor of the same name, completed the Gregorian Antiphoner in several places. He also arranged a second prologue in hexameter verse to be chanted at High Mass on the first day of Advent. This prologue begins in the same way as another very short one composed by the first Adrian to be sung at all the Masses of this first Sunday in Advent, but that of Adrian II. is composed of a greater number of verses."

We have seen the passage in which Walafrid Strabo speaks of the inscription at the beginning of the Antiphoner, ascribing its origin to Gregory I., and again that in which Agobard of Lyons tells us that the inscription contained the words "Gregorius Præsul." There are five forms extant of the prologue in hexameter verse. The shortest, and therefore the one probably composed by Adrian I., is as follows:--

"Gregorius Præsul meritis et nomine dignus Unde genus ducit, summum ascendit honorem. Renovavit monumenta patrum priorum: tunc Composuit hunc libellum musicæ artis Scholæ cantorum anni circuli: Ad te levavi."

All the five forms begin with the same two first lines. Eckhart got over the difficulty caused to his theory by these lines by supposing that "Gregorius Præsul" meant not Gregory the Great, but Gregory II. But he does not explain how "Unde genus ducit," &c., can refer to the latter. But it fits Gregory I. in this way: Pope Felix was his great-great-grandfather; so that, on succeeding to the papacy, he as it were entered on a family inheritance.

This prologue proves that the Antiphoner was ascribed by tradition to St. Gregory in the latter half of the eighth century.

IX.--Egbert, Archbishop of York (732-766), is a still more important witness. Born about 678, he was ordained deacon at Rome, and received the archiepiscopal pallium from Gregory III. in 735. He was the disciple and friend of Bede, the confidant and benefactor of St. Boniface, and the teacher of Alcuin. Shortly after he became archbishop he composed a work addressed to his brother bishops, and called _De Institutione Catholica_. The following extracts from it refer to the Ember-day Fasts.

"As for us in the Church of England, we always observe the Fast of the First Month in the first week of Lent, relying on the authority of our teacher, St. Gregory, who has thus regulated it in the model which he has handed down to us in his Antiphoner and his Missal through the medium of our pedagogue the Blessed Augustine." (_Patr. Lat._ lxxxix., 441.)

"As for the Fast of the Fourth Month, the same St. Gregory, by the same envoy, has prescribed in his Antiphoner and his Missal the week which follows Pentecost as that in which the Church of England ought to celebrate it. And this is attested not only by our own Antiphoners, but also by those which we have inspected with their corresponding missals in the Churches of St. Peter and St. Paul." (_Ibid._)

Egbert brings us back to the seventh century, but during that century (the beginning of which saw the death of Gregory) we have no direct evidence. There are some considerations, however, which may account for this.

In the first place, we have very little light thrown on the history of St. Gregory by the sources of the seventh century. Apart from his Registrum there is little recorded that would by itself justify his surname of the Great. In the _Liber Pontificalis_ there are only a few lines about him, whilst the Hellenic Popes, who sat in the Papal chair from 685 to 741, have detailed biographies, generally very laudatory. The mission of Augustine for the conversion of England is undoubtedly one of the most striking facts in Gregory's life; but the only chronicler of the seventh century who mentions it is the Continuator of Prosper. Is it surprising, then, that there is a still more profound silence on a fact less calculated to attract outside attention, such as is the recasting of the liturgical books peculiar to the Church at Rome?

In the second place, care must be taken not to apply the ideas of to-day to another age. It must not be supposed that the Gregorian Reform was promulgated throughout the Western Churches in the same manner, for instance, as the Reform of Pius V. The modern system of centralization did not then exist. When Gregory took the liturgical books in hand, he had at first in view only the Papal chapel, and the churches at Rome under his immediate supervision. It was their importation into England in the lifetime of St. Augustine, and into the Frankish Empire two hundred years after, under the pressure exerted by the first Carlovingians, which gave the greatest impetus to their universal use. In Italy, on the contrary, and even at Rome, it came about gradually only through the insistence of such Popes as Leo IV. and Stephen X. that the Gregorian Chant in the end completely supplanted that in use in early times in the Peninsula. This explains why the first witnesses in favour of the Gregorian tradition come to us from England and Carlovingian Gaul.

Again, one ought not to expect to find the chroniclers laying stress on the Gregorian origin of the Roman books in the lifetime of those who were contemporaries and disciples of the great Pope, and who had themselves introduced the book from Rome. The fact would be taken as a matter of course. It would not be till these had passed away that a tradition would begin to form, and stress be laid on the fact; and this brings us to the date of Archbishop Egbert.

Besides, who would have suspected the full importance of this Gregorian form, and, in particular, have foreseen that it would put a limit to the period of elaboration of the Western liturgy? So many Popes had already taken the matter in hand. The great work of Gregory was to organize, set in order, and fix. But only time can show what is really fixed. The greatness of his work is only apparent after having remained unaltered for centuries.

These considerations tend to show that there is no cause for surprise that it should have taken so long for people to realize the greatness of Gregory's work in setting in order the music of the Church.

INTERNAL EVIDENCE.

The oldest Antiphoners that we possess are some two hundred years later than Gregory I. But they possess two peculiarities which raise a presumption in favour of an origin at least as old as St. Gregory.

The first peculiarity lies in the version of Scripture from which are taken the portions to which the music is set. This version is the old Latin one known as "Itala." Now even if at the time of St. Gregory it had not entirely given place to the Vulgate, yet from his time onwards the latter prevailed universally (except for the Psalter, which was retained at Rome till the time of Pius V., and is still used at St. Peter's), not only in Rome, but in all the West; so much so, that St. Isidore of Seville could assert in the first half of the seventh century, that St. Jerome's version had already been taken into use by all the Churches as preferable to the ancient one. It is natural to seek the explanation of preserving an obsolete text of the words in the respect felt for the melodies to which they were set. It is, therefore, reasonable to conclude that these melodies existed for the most part before the definite abandonment of the Itala at Rome, that is to say before the middle of the seventh century.

The second peculiarity which supports this conclusion is to be found in the comparison of the Offices, known to have been added since the time of St. Gregory, with the older portion of the Antiphoner. With very few, and those very doubtful, exceptions, the materials for these are all taken from older Offices. Sometimes both words and tunes are transferred bodily; sometimes new words are set to the old melodies.

There are certain Masses of Saints, the chants for which were taken from those which later were collected together to form the Common. For the Feasts of the Annunciation, the Assumption, and the Nativity of the Virgin, all the chants were taken from older Masses, _e.g._, from the masses of Advent and of certain Virgins and Martyrs. The Procession of the Purification, both words and melody, was borrowed from the Greeks by Pope Sergius. For the Mass of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross all the chants were taken from elsewhere, with the possible exception of the Communion. The _Introit_ and the _Gradual_ were taken from Maundy Thursday, the _Alleluia_ from Friday in Easter week, and the _Offertory_ from Maundy Thursday, or the Second Mass for Christmas-day. The _Introit_ for the Purification is borrowed from the Eighth Sunday after Trinity.

The compositions either in the Sanctorale or the Temporale of the Mass that can be definitely dated as introduced after the death of St. Gregory are very few, and may perhaps have been borrowed, with the Festivals themselves, from outside by the Roman Church.

It is a reasonable conclusion to draw, then, that the addition of these portions in the seventh century shows at least a great diminution of musical productive power, and that the bulk of the Antiphoner of the Mass must have been composed before this date. This inference is supported by the conclusion which M. Gevaert draws from his examination of the Antiphons of Divine Service (_La Melopée Antique_, _p._ 175), viz., that the Golden Age for compositions of this class was the period 540-600. The natural deduction from this is that the main settlement of the Antiphoner of the Mass fell within the same period.

Still it may not have been wholly due to a cessation of musical activity that new music for the Mass gradually ceased to be written in the course of the seventh century, for a certain amount of music still continued to be written for the Hour Services. It may have been due to a feeling that the book was a closed and settled one after a final and authoritative revision such as St. Gregory's is traditionally held to have been, and that it was presumptuous to add to it. But whichever view is taken of this, the Gregorian tradition is equally supported.

A further support to the claims of Gregory I. as against Gregory II. is to be found in an examination of the Communions of the Masses of Lent. These form a series taken from the Psalms in numerical order, I. to XXVI., with the exception of five for which have been substituted texts taken from the Gospel. The Thursdays in Lent, however, form an exception to this scheme; they are interpolations breaking the order of it. Now we know that they were added by Gregory II.; therefore the original scheme of the Masses of Lent, at least, was drawn up before the time of Gregory II. Of the twenty-four pieces contained in the masses for the first six Thursdays in Lent, twenty-one appear in the Sundays after Trinity. It seems certain that the Thursdays in Lent must have borrowed from the Sundays after Trinity, and not _vice versa_; this is supported by the fact that the Graduals and Offertories of the Thursdays in Lent are all borrowed, and of the Sundays after Trinity hardly any. So this addition, which we know to be of the date of Gregory II., was made to a scheme already in existence, and both words and music were borrowed from other parts of the Antiphonale Missarum.

As against the claims made for the Hellenic Popes of the seventh and eighth centuries, it is worth while to examine the music which it is probable was introduced by Hellenic influence during that time, and compare it with the bulk of the "Gregorian." The tropes and the melodies from which the sequences developed probably come under this head, and some specimens of these may be seen in the _Winchester Troper_ (_Ed._ Rev. W. H. Frere, _H. Bradshaw Society_, 1894). An examination of these melodies will show that their structure is entirely unlike the structure of the Gregorian melodies, especially in the close with a rise from the note below the final to the final, which continually occurs at the end of the phrases. This will be very clear from the accompanying melody, _Cithara_, from which the sequence _Rex Omnipotens_ was formed. This form of close appears at the end of each of the first five sections, and again at the end of the seventh and eighth. In the rest of the sequence, the melody rises to a higher range, and the close appears a fifth higher in the ninth and tenth sections, a fourth higher in the eleventh and thirteenth, and a whole octave higher in the twelfth. This transposition of the range of the melody is more developed here than in most sequence melodies, but some such transposition is a prominent characteristic of many of them. There is nothing at all like it in the genuine Roman chant.

CITHARA

IN WHAT DID THE WORK OF ST. GREGORY CONSIST?

John the Deacon describes his Antiphoner as a "cento" (_Antiphonarium Centonem compilavit_), and speaks of him, as we have seen, as "Antiphonarium centonizans." "Cento" is a Low Latin word meaning patchwork, combination, or compilation. "Antiphonarius cento" would therefore mean an Antiphoner compiled from various sources. And this is the character of the Gregorian Antiphoner of the Mass, even of the nucleus which remains after omitting the parts known to have been added since Gregory's time. Indeed the whole phrase quoted above has a ring of truth about it, and makes the tradition which he reports of a more genuine historical character, for if it had been a mere vague tradition in glorification of St. Gregory, he would have been more likely to have spoken of him as the composer of the Antiphoner, and not as a mere compiler. The oldest part of the book is formed of the Feasts celebrated in honour of events and saints spoken of in Scripture, and of the oldest Roman Saints. The Masses for these are taken from Scripture, especially from the Psalms. For Feasts of non-Roman origin, the text is taken from the Church from which they are introduced; _e.g._, the Feast of St. Agatha from the Sicilian Church, or the Feasts coming from the Greek Church which were translated from the Greek. The want of uniformity in the arrangement of the text is seen by comparing the different classes of chants in _Codex St. Gall_, 329. As a rule, the words of one and the same Mass are all of different origin. The most ancient part of the Masses is the Graduals and Tracts, and all these (which are the most ancient solos of the Mass) in the Gregorian nucleus are taken from Biblical sources. This part of the "cento Antiphonarius" is put together in one system after an established tradition. In the oldest Feasts there are Psalm-graduals, but Introits taken from other books of the Bible. The parts other than the Gradual and Tract were chosen on a different system, a considerable number in fact have words not taken from the Bible at all. The Communions, again, form a class by themselves, and were sometimes chosen with special reference to the Gospel for the day, which is the case with no other class of the texts of the chants.

Now this editing of the texts must have implied the editing of the music also. In the middle ages the choir played a more important part than they do to-day in the Roman Church. For now the Service is complete without their part, as the priest says the whole Service whether the choir is there or not. But formerly it was different; all listened or took part, including the celebrant, while the choir sang. The latter had a very definite share in the liturgical order, which was incomplete without them; in particular, the soloists had full scope for their talents in the chants between the Epistle and Gospel. In view of this intimate relation between the choir and the altar, a revision of the text must almost necessarily have implied a revision of the music. And this is probably the chief part of his musical reform; in the saying about him, ascribed to Pope Adrian II., "Ipse Patrum monumenta _sequens renovavit_ et auxit."

What was the musical material on which he had to work, which he had to put into shape, and to which he added new pieces? It is probably substantially represented by the Ambrosian chant as we find it in the oldest MSS. It seems most likely that it is the musical counterpart of the primitive liturgy organized, as is supposed, about the epoch of Pope Damasus, of which the Ambrosian, Gallican, Mozarabic, and Celtic are so many variations, due to national characteristics. Documentary proof of this is but scanty, but a study of the Lessons used at Mass supports the theory as far as the text is concerned. It is further recorded that at Monte Cassino the Ambrosian chant was fused with the Gregorian by order of Pope Stephen IX. (1057-8). Here the Pre-Gregorian chant is simply called Ambrosian.

ANTIPHON

Gregorian O Sa-pi-en-ti-a, quae ex o-re Al-tis-sim-i pro-di-is-ti at-tin-gens a fi-ne us-que ad fi-nem, for-ti-ter su-a-vi-ter-que dis-po-nens om-ni-a: ve-ni ad do-cen-dum nos vi-am pru-den-ti-ae.

Ambrosian O Sa-pi-en-ti-a, quae ex o-re Al-tis-sim-i pro-ces-si-sti at-tin-gis a fi-ne us-que ad fi-nem, for-ti-ter su-a-vi-ter dis-po-nens que om-ni-a: ve-ni ad do-cen-dum nos vi-am sci-en-ti-ae.

INTROIT

Gregorian Gau-de-a-mus om-nes in Do-mi-no, di-em fes-tum ce-le-bran-tes in ho-no-re A-ga-thae mar-ty-ris: de cu-jus pas-si-o-ne gau-dent an-ge-li, et col-lau-dant Fi-li-um De-i.

Ambrosian Lae-te-mur om-nes in Do-mi-no, di-em fes-tum ce-le-bran-tes ob ho-no-rem A-ga-thae mar-ty-ris: de cu-jus tro-phae-o gau-dent an-ge-li, et col-lau-dant Fi-li-um De-i.

GRADUAL

Gregorian Ex Si-on spe-ci-es de-co-ris e-jus: De-us ma-ni-fe-ste ve-ni-et. V. Con-gre-ga-te il-li sanc-tos e-jus, qui or-di-na-ve-runt te-sta-men-tum e-jus su-per sa-cri-fi-ci-a.

Ambrosian Ex Si-on spe-ci-es de-co-ris e-jus: De-us ma-ni-fe-ste ve-ni-et. V. Con-gre-ga-te il-lic sanc-tos e-jus, qui or-di-na-ve-runt te-sta-men-tum e-jus su-per sa-cri-fi-ci-a.

The theory is further supported by a comparison of the most ancient MSS. of the Milanese chant with the Gregorian Antiphoner. A considerable number of melodies are practically identical with those in the Roman books. The framework, so to speak, is the same, but the details and embellishments often differ. The Ambrosian melodies are sometimes rather bald, and often excessively florid; the extremely long neums which they often contain appear to have been due to Greek influence. The Gregorian, on the other hand, appear to have been in some places pruned, in others expanded, with the result that they give the impression of being better balanced; the different parts of the musical phrases are more justly proportioned. In the Ambrosian melodies the B natural occurs very constantly, and gives them a masculine flavour, sometimes amounting to harshness.

The examples here given will enable some idea to be formed of the advance made by the Gregorian version upon the Ambrosian, both in music and text.

But Pope Adrian II. says of St. Gregory not merely "renovavit," but "auxit." He not only edited and adapted the old melodies, but provided new ones for the new texts which he added to the cycle of liturgical worship. What were these musical additions?

He extended the use of Alleluia to all Sundays and Festivals throughout the year except in Septuagesima, and it is probable that he added new melodies for the new Alleluias. It is significant that the Alleluias are the least stable part of the Antiphoner. At all events, the Ambrosian alleluiatic verses differ entirely from the Gregorian. The same consideration applies to the tracts, the use of which he extended in Septuagesima.

Another tendency of Gregory's reform was his marked desire to harmonize the text of the Communions with that of the Gospel of the day. There are a considerable number of these, hardly any traces of which are to be found in the Ambrosian books. It is, then, reasonable to ascribe to St. Gregory an important part in the composition of these chants.

The further important question arises, did Gregory carry out this musical work himself, or was it done by others under his direction?