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Durtal could fancy himself transported beyond the city, to the depths of some village cloister; he felt himself softened, his soul rocked by the monotonous amplitude of these chants, only recognizing the end of the psalms by the return of the doxology, the "Gloria Patri et Filio," which separated them from each other.
A rime he makes, sorrow-song for his son there hanging as rapture of ravens; no rescue now can come from the old, disabled man! Forlorn he looks on the lodge of his son, wine-hall waste and wind-swept chambers reft of revel. "THEN he goes to his chamber, a grief-song chants alone for his lost. Too large all seems, homestead and house.
Look around thee," he added, throwing up his arms, "and behold the evidence: yon blue vault filled with bright worlds, bright because they are happy; this vast ocean teeming with strange life; the green earth whence, as from an altar, the perfume of grateful flowers and chants of praising birds do ceaselessly arise. Young man, be thankful and adore."
Rowbotham ascribes the invention of scales to those primitive musicians who, striving for greater variety in their one-toned chants, added first one newly-discovered tone, then another, and another. The pentatonic scale might have resulted from such chanting. Most of the primitive peoples of the present day do not seem to feel or "hear mentally" the half step.
And old Brand lay back in his great arm-chair, his legs all muffled up in furs, for he could get no heat; and by him stood Herluin the prior, and wondered when he would die, and Thorold take his place, and they should drive out the old Gregorian chants from the choir, and have the new Norman chants of Robert of Fecamp, and bring in French-Roman customs in all things, and rule the English boors with a rod of iron.
They raised triumphal arches, they scattered flowers at his feet, they sang chants and hymns in his honour. From first to last it was one long triumph. When he reached New York bells rang and cannon boomed, the streets were gay with flags, and crowded with people, and as he passed along cheer upon cheer thundered and echoed over the city.
But the spirit of curiosity and the meaning of modern life began to weigh little by little with the Schola's principles. After singing Palestrinian and Gregorian chants at the Church of Saint-Gervais during Holy Week, they played Carissimi, Schütz, and the Italian and German masters of the seventeenth century.
But for long these stage-representations consisted chiefly of dances and jugglers' feats; the improvised chants, which were produced on these occasions, had neither dialogue nor plot. It was only now that the Romans looked around them for a real drama.
Here came the young soldiers, fresh enrolled in the conscription, glowing with ardor, and bounding with life and buoyancy, and mingling their village songs with warlike chants. There, footsore and weary, with tattered uniform and weather-beaten look, toiled along the tired veteran, turning as he went a glance of compassionate contempt on those whose wild vivas burst forth in greeting.
Then, as in voices of a hymn, chants a more formal liturgy of plaint where the phrase is almost lost in the lowest voice. And now in the same vein, of the same fibre, a fugue begins of lament, first in muted strings. It is the line of sad expressive recitative that heralded the plaint and the love-scene.
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