Considerations on the Necessity of Restoring the Chant of the Church of Rome in All Churches of the Empire

( 4 )

To establish the truth of this proposition, I shall bring everything I have to say on this matter under four main points; namely: 1° the origin and antiquity of the Chants of the Church of Rome; 2° their excellence and their real superiority; 3° their universality; 4° finally, the utility they provide to the science of Music.

1°. Origin and antiquity of the Chant of the Church of Rome.

The origin of the Chant of the Church of Rome is a true title of recommendation in the eyes of friends of the Arts and of Religion; it is a remnant of the ancient Music of the Greeks, it is a remnant of the primitive Church, a gift of Christian antiquity, which has preserved it for us.

According to Bellarmine and Cardinal Bona, the Chant was introduced into the Christian Church by the Apostles themselves; and contemporary authors inform us that, in this circumstance, the first Christians did nothing more than borrow the melodies of the Hebrews and those that the pagans placed on their odes and on the hymns of their gods, to transfer them to the verses of the psalms, to the prayers and to the hymns of the Church. In truth, this Music lost in this transposition a part of its qualities, and notably those that relate to the rhythme rhythm; "but, as a famous author says, while passing through the hands of the barbarians, it could not yet lose all its original beauties; enough remains for it to be far preferable, even in the state in which it is currently, to those effeminate, theatrical, or sullen and flat Musics that are substituted for it in some Churches, without gravity, without taste,