Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/489

 CHAPTER XXVIII

CHURCH AND ORGAN MUSIC

184. Confused Tendencies in Catholic Music.—The drift toward demoralization in sacred music which was notable before 1800 became more conspicuous later. The general musical world was but slightly concerned with church music in any form, except as a necessity in liturgical routine, and there was no controlling standard of taste regarding it. In different localities it was treated in diverse and even capricious ways. At Rome and occasionally elsewhere in Italy there were some who sought to hold to the lofty purism of the old 16th-century style, though usually with concessions on the side of accompaniments. But generally in Italy and also in France came a marked increase of the theatric style, bringing over into the church whatever of sensuous charm and sumptuous splendor had proved popular in the opera. Apart from the Italians the most striking group of writers was that of Vienna, who tended to apply to sacred music the energetic form and brilliant instrumentation of the Viennese school of concert music. In this group, as in that of the Italians, the degree of independence and warm sincerity varied greatly, many composers having only a superficial sense of the sacred music problem, while a few entered into it with real sympathy. Here and there single composers made significant attempts to utilize all the resources of modern methods in a spirit fully analogous to that of the best early contrapuntists. Of these the most notable was the cosmopolitan and many-sided Cherubini, whose dignified nobility of expression went far toward offsetting the tawdry sensationalism of Rossini and his imitators.

Luigi Cherubini (d. 1842), already mentioned as an opera-writer (see sec. 154), had his early training at Milan under Sarti wholly in the strictest sort of church music. But from 1780 for 30 years he then gave himself up to opera-writing. Not till 1809 and still more after 1816, when he became royal choirmaster and head of the Conservatoire, did he resume the serious