Letter CCCXCVIII. To Guy, Abbot of Montier-Ramey, and the Religious of that Abbey

(Formerly No. 312).

Bernard having been requested by the Abbot and monks to compose an Office for the festival of their patron S. Victor, pleads the difficulty of the task and his own scanty qualifications for it: he expounds the qualities needed in forms intended for public worship, and traces the rules of the Ecclesiastical Chant.

To the venerable Guy of Montier-Ramey,¹ and to his holy community, Bernard, the servant of their Holiness, health and the power to serve God in holiness.

1. You ask me, my dear Abbot Guy, in company with all your good brethren, to write for you an Office to be solemnly said or sung on the Festival of S. Victor, whose sacred body rests among you. You urge me to do this, in spite of my reluctance and feeling of insufficiency, which you overrule, though it is so well founded. And as if there could be any more powerful motive to me to comply with your wish, than the wish itself, you employ also the intercessions of others with me. But it seems to me that you ought to have consulted your own judgment, to have reflected, not merely on your affection for me, but on my (obscure) position in the Church. For a task of that importance needs not merely a friend, but a learned and able man: whose greater authority, sanctity, and more polished style would both adorn the work and befit its holiness.

2. Who am I, the humblest among Christian people, that my compositions should be read in Churches? And how little eloquence or faculty of invention have I, that I should be called upon to produce a chant suitable to be used and listened to on a Festival? What! can I begin anew to sing on earth the praises of that Saint, who is now being praised, and that worthily, in heaven?

-To wish to add anything to the celestial praises is to detract from them. Not that men may not praise here below, those whom the Angels glorify above; but because on a solemn Festival, the praises of the Church ought to have nothing of novelty or of lightness; but to be authentic and serious, redolent of hoary antiquity, of grave and Church-like character.

But if there was a desire, and an occasion, for the composition of an Office: I should have thought (as 1 have already said) that it should have been entrusted to some one whose reputation, and whose eloquence, would have enabled him to treat it both more agreeably to the ears of the worshippers and more profitably to their hearts.

The author’s aim should certainly be to glorify the truth, to inculcate righteousness, to recommend humility, to teach justice: it should enlighten the mind, elevate the heart, mortify the passions, discipline the senses, crucify evil desires and inspire devotion. The Chant, if one is used, should be full of solemnity²; and equally distant from rusticity and luscious sweetness.

Yet let it be sweet, so that it be not trifling; and let it so please the ear, that it may touch the heart.

Let it be such as to lighten sadness, to lower the fire of anger; and let it not obscure but heighten, the sense of the words. It is of no small detriment to the spiritual sense, to have the attention withdrawn from the intention of the words by the levity of the chants, and to be more attracted by the flexibility of the voices, than by the sense of the words they dwell upon.

Such are the qualities which, it seems to me, are needed in the Offices of the Church: and such the ability which those require who undertake to compose them. Am I such as this, or are these qualities to be found in what I have written for you? And yet out of my poverty, as you continued to knock and to call upon me, I felt constrained to rise up, and according to the word of the Saviour, not because you were my friends, but because of your importunity, to give you that which you asked. I send you then, at your earnest request, if not what you wished, at least such as my hand was able to compose. 1 have made use of facts from ancient writers, which you have sent to me, and have written two discourses on the life of the Saint³ as well as I was able, avoiding in the one hand such brevity as to make them obscure, and on the other a tiresome prolixity. Then as regards the musical part of the Office, I have composed a hymn, taking more heed of the meaning of the words than of the rules of the metre. I have arranged in their proper places twelve Responsories⁴ with twenty-seven Antiphons: adding one Antiphon for the first Vespers, and two others to be sung according to your Rule, upon the Festival itself, the one at Laud, the other at Vespers. Now for all these things I expect a return, I ask payment. What then do I expect? Whether you are pleased with them, or no, it matters not; because I have given you what I could. And the price I ask for it, is your prayers for me.

The sentiment which Bernard expresses here with his usual elegance, merits serious attention. It would be easy to supplement it with those of other Fathers, and to show what they have thought respecting Church Music, did the length of a note permit. Nevertheless as the rule here laid down may seem somewhat severe and rigorous, to the opinions and tastes of the present age, I may be permitted to quote the opinion on this subject of a man confessedly pious and religious, who has treated, in a style full of elegance and charm, of subjects important equally to piety and virtue. To musicians he writes thus: “ Here permit me to observe to you, that a new kind of singing rules in our Churches; unusual in character, rapid and dancing in time, and in no way suitable for religious purposes, but rather fitting for the theatre or the concert-room.

In the search for artifice, we lose the ancient manner of praying and singing: we follow a secular taste, and neglect the interests of piety. What else is this novel and dancing kind of chant, in which the singers are made like actors, to take now solos, now duets, and anon choruses: or that in which they reply to each other as in a dialogue, then leaving all of a sudden the field to one who expatiates alone, the others speedily joining in?”

A little farther, the same author continues: “In the last age there were musicians of surpassing genius, as you yourselves allow, who have composed a kind of music very different from yours, and (if I may say so) much more religious. But your disdain has long since buried their books of music. Restore to us, I entreat, somewhat of the ancient religiousness in our sacred music; take to heart, and spend your care upon, the addition of beauty to Divine worship, by composing chants more in harmony with the meaning of the words which they are to interpret. What is the use to me in Church of varied airs and harmonies in many parts, if there be no unity in the Chant, and if I am unable even to distinguish the words, which the music ought to make an' entrance for into the heart?” (Jerome Drexelius Rhetor. Celest. B. i. C. 5).

2. A Responsory was. a versicle sung by the choir in answer to the priest or other officiant; or as a refrain between the verses of a Psalm or Lection, also before or after a Lection.

An Antiphon was of a similar character, but before or after a Psalm. Generally only a few words were said before, and the whole after, the Psalm in question:. but on great Festivals this was altered. (E.)

Footnotes

1. A Benedictine Abbey in the diocese of Troyes. It had for patron the Confessor S. Victor, whose Acts are among the works of S. Bernard. The monk Nicholas, Secretary of S. Bernard, was of this Abbey. Respecting him see Ep. 298. ↩

2. See note I at end of the letter. ↩

3. These will be given later, with the Office of S. Victor. ↩

4. See note 2 at end of the letter. ↩