These he applied , in reflective choruses , in sacred narrative , in dramatic contrast , and in the adornment of congregational hymns .sx We perform his Cantatas to-day , sometimes in a church , some-times in a concert-hall .sx In both places they are , to us , sacred concerts .sx They were not concerts to Bach .sx They were to him what High Mass was to Palestrina .sx Instead of the priestly offices of the Mass , the Lutheran cantata had its preacher and his sermon .sx Instead of the catholic congregation passively receptive of a priestly blessing , there was an active body of worshippers , listening to suitable homilies and singing its own praises in its own tongue .sx The Mass is in perpetual danger , now as in the Middle Ages , of becoming by elaboration more and more remote from the universal expression of a general devotion .sx That could not so easily happen to Bach's services , because the congregation was an integral and controlling part of them .sx Organ , orchestra , choir , and soloists might display a specialized art , but at every pause in the narrative the whole congregation with corporate voice gave the occasion its living and present acceptance .sx Its hymns were the background against which the more highly organized music was projected .sx The thoughts thus expressed in its own language determined the character of the whole service , both as a profession of faith and as the practice of an art .sx Bach's music comes neither from the cloister nor from the study .sx It is a layman's worship , written with the fervour of an evangel , and with the skill of genius .sx 5 .sx Those branches of the Church which remained true .sx to the Roman allegiance did not escape the democratic .sx infection , but their response to it took a different and .sx less consistent form .sx The laity were not actively incorporated in the services , after the German fashion , but a very definite appeal was made to their artistic sense .sx Sacerdotal tradition was too strong to permit an integral co-operation of all the members of the Church in its use and government , but the Church began to import from outside the musical resources which were so rapidly accumulating in other spheres .sx Palestrina was the end of the old era .sx After his death all the more active spirits turned to the theatre , and the rising tide of Opera was by far the most potent musical influence in seventeenth-century Italy .sx When the Church wished to add to its own more traditional resources , the appeal of the new dramatic music was irresistible .sx This new music had its own problems , but for the moment we are concerned with their reactions in the Church .sx The temptation to use the new dramatic technique in all music , whether sacred or secular , could not be withstood , and when the Church set out to enlarge its musical horizon , it found itself borrowing wholesale from the theatre .sx Composers , players , and singers were brought over from their daily occupation with the stage , and encouraged to give the Church a taste of those new methods of musical expression which practice in the theatre had taught them .sx It is clear that many of the most sensitive composers were uncomfortable under this system .sx They frequently show a most curious diversity of styles .sx They seem to have felt that the operatic method was not really convincing in the old sacred surroundings .sx Writing , as they often did , for voices only , they retained much of the purity and serenity of atmosphere which belonged to the old order .sx When , however , they were commissioned to employ the whole musical apparatus ofthe theatre , soloists , chorus , and orchestra , they found it impossible to resist those technical devices which the stage had suggested .sx The same composer would write church music in one style for one occasion , and church music of a totally different type for another .sx And there was unfortunately no doubt which the congregation liked best .sx Prelates and people both demanded just those kinds of musical effect which they heard and applauded in the theatre .sx The result was that the older church music , so truly consonant with the deepest religious aspirations , began to appear outworn , while its place was taken by what in secular surroundings was a form of dramatic entertainment .sx And a dramatic entertainment it remained , whether within the Church or outside it .sx To St. Jerome , in ancient days , is attributed the saying that 'a Christian maiden ought not even to know what a flute is' .sx This sentiment must be interpreted in the light of those Pagan festivals of instrumental music which were often accompanied by less admirable features which the early Church so passionately opposed .sx Zealous saints were acutely conscious that a custom perfectly innocent in itself may by evil association bring very undesirable practices in its train .sx That was why St. Jerome , in common with many later saints , drew what appears to be so arbitrary a line between flutes and voices .sx Could he have watched the fashions of Italian church music in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries , he would have felt the wisdom of his attitude to be only too abundantly proved .sx Apart from the growing use of the organ , there was no such thing as sacred instrumental music .sx The Italian orchestra was formed and trained in the theatre , and it could not suddenly become something else when it walked over .sx to the Church .sx The famous solo singers equally belonged to the stage .sx There they had learnt the arts of public performance .sx They could not change their methods by stepping from a secular to a sacred platform .sx Composers might be given sacred words to set , but these words were Latin , often but dimly or crudely understood , and the natural attitude to words of every kind became that which was daily adopted in the theatre .sx To composers , as to their patrons , there was every temptation to use that type of music which was so warmly acclaimed by the public support of opera .sx Given the means of the theatre , they adopted the theatrical style , and the record of their work is a record of the progressive degeneration of elaborate sacred offices until they became little more than a fashionable entertainment .sx Appeal to a thoughtless public taste had met with its invariable fate .sx It reached the lowest common standard of value .sx The contrast between the church music of Italy and that of Germany , during the hundred and fifty years which separated Bach from Palestrina , is extraordinarily vivid .sx There is not , on the surface , such a very great difference of means .sx The Germans developed a strong feeling for dramatic representation of ideas in music , and they employed soloists , chorus , and orchestra .sx But these things grew up within the Church itself , and that Church had both the strength of its reforming piety and the impregnable rock of its translated Bible .sx It was also a democratic Church , not only in public appeal , but in actual foundation .sx The Church in Italy was popular enough .sx People flocked to hear its elaborate concerts .sx But the German congregation was very much more than an audience .sx It had passed through fire and sword to reach a conscious ideal of religious faith and freedom .sx That ideal touched the humblest as well as the greatest of its sons .sx The music of Bach was its artistic embodiment .sx Elsewhere the quality of church music was clearly in decline long before Bach was born .sx It is a still further tribute to him and to his countrymen that they pursued their own high aims with such continued integrity .sx The decline was not confined to Italy .sx Our English diarist Evelyn could write in 1663 :sx `One of His Majesty's chaplains preached ; after which , instead of the ancient , grave , and solemn wind music accompanying the organ , was introduced a concert of twenty-four violins between every pause , after the French fantastical light way , better suiting to a tavern , or playhouse , than a church .sx ' France , Austria , and Catholic Germany caught the contagion , and during the course of the eighteenth century the fashionable Masses written and used in the most august surroundings were often of a shallowness and incongruity beyond belief .sx The dance-tunes , the orchestral ritornelli , the vocal flourishes , the pseudo-dramatic choruses , all were frankly transported from the theatre to the church , and every serious contemporary witness has testified to a growing degradation of taste .sx So popular was the importation , so influentially supported , that Europe has hardly yet recovered from it , and of its baneful consequences there is at least one overwhelming proof .sx Since the operatic movement arose in Italy in the seventeenth century , no liturgical work of supreme quality has been written within that Church .sx Bach's Mass in B minor was not written for liturgical use , nor has it been so used .sx Beethoven's Mass in D is a sacred symphony , also written outside the Church .sx Mozart's Requiem Mass has the poignancy .sx of his last days , but what is the repute of all the conventional Masses which he and the two Haydns and Schubert wrote ?sx They are less convincing works of their respective composers .sx Genius itself could do nothing with the style of church music prevailing in their day .sx Reformers , and there have been many , have long been thoroughly alive to these facts .sx Facile melody , conventional choruses and glib orchestration do not make church music , even at the hands of great talent .sx Reform in every country finds itself returning to the sixteenth century , to the schools of Palestrina and the Tudors , when what is felt to be the truest idiom of the old Catholic worship last found expression .sx Nor are the Protestant churches in much better case .sx Since Bach died in 1750 , no great master has found work for his whole talent within the Protestant communion .sx A few truly devotional works , like the German Requiem of Brahms , were written outside it .sx So were all the great sacred epics of the concert-room .sx The Church borrows from these masterpieces .sx She no longer creates them .sx And there are only two possible explanations of this artistic dearth .sx Either no musician of supreme endowment has found himself in the service of the Church , a chance so improbable that it may be dismissed , or else the Church has consistently failed to offer a sensitive ear and an adequate scope for his genius .sx Bach's gifts died with him .sx Not for a century after his death did they win external tribute .sx Like Palestrina , he had no true successors , and the new fashions of musical display buried his work for generations .sx One clear example of this blindness to real artistic and devotional values may be seen in quite recent times , and very near home .sx When , towards the end of the nineteenth century , an influential section of the Anglican Church began to advocate and develop a more ornate liturgical ceremonial , it was not to Palestrina , or Byrd , or Bach , that they turned for appropriate music .sx They imported Masses of the later Italian order , sometimes further sentimentalized by passage through France , and they offered these showy productions as the principal musical ornaments of an English Choral Communion .sx We need not wonder at the naiveties of a village church cantata .sx Such crude and theatrical ideas were not invented in the remote countryside .sx Their models were sung and endorsed by fashionable metropolitan churches , by people who claimed to be in the van of ecclesiastical and artistic progress .sx They did not lack sincerity .sx What they lacked was knowledge .sx Religious music , like religious ritual , should come spontaneously from within , and it should express , not a temporary or superficial appeal to the ear , but a devotion of the whole mind , as deep and as disciplined as the ancient liturgy itself .sx 6 .sx Such , in broadest outline , has been the place of music as handmaid to the Church .sx Our English cathedral can teach us much about these varied ideals of the past , for her unbroken historical continuity has kept traces of them all .sx That continuity has also saved her from being the exclusive servant of any temporary fashion , however powerful .sx Her versicles and responses , her chanted canticles and psalms , are echoes of the Middle Ages .sx Her congregational hymns are products of the Reformation and of some subsequent revivals .sx There are hymns translated from early or medieval .sx Latin .sx There are hymns from the rediscovered Greek .sx A large number come from Germany and from the Scots Psalter .sx