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

the Roman Cantors the aforementioned Cantors of the Franks in the art of organizing; and the Lord King Charles again brought with him from Rome to France masters of the arts of grammar and computation, and ordered the study of letters to be expanded everywhere.

France masters of grammar and calculation, [and] ordered that the study of letters be established everywhere; for before the said Lord-King, one had no knowledge of the Liberal Arts in France.

For before the said Lord King Charles, there had been no study of the Liberal Arts in Gaul. See Annals and History of the Franks from the year 708 to the year 990. Contemporary writers, printed at Frankfurt 1594, under the life of Charlemagne.

The Roman Chant, thus re-established in France by Charlemagne, generally subsisted there until the beginning of the 18th century. At that epoch, the majority of French Prelates having reformed their liturgy, it was necessary, for new texts, to compose new Chants. Without examining here the manner in which this operation was consummated, which I propose to discuss in a few moments, I will limit myself to remarking that the Plains-Chants in question are only modern productions, while the Plain-Chant is the work of the ancients: and in this circumstance, antiquity is a true title of preference. Indeed, it results from what we have just said, that the Chant of the Church of Rome is, relatively to Music, what frescoes and half-erased prints, mutilated statues and bas-reliefs, and half-destroyed monuments that come to us from the ancients are in relation to painting, sculpture, architecture, and the arts of drawing in general. Now, although in these arts,