of the _Schola Cantorum_
dealt with the reform of sacred music by carrying it back to great
ancient models; and its first decision was as follows: "Gregorian chant
shall rest for all time the fountain-head and the base of the Church's
music, and shall constitute the only model by which it may be truly
judged."[228]

[Footnote 225: See the Essay on _Vincent d'Indy_.]

[Footnote 226: _Revue d'histoire et de critique musicale_,
August-September, 1901.]

[Footnote 227: "The _Schola Cantorum_ aims at creating a modern music
truly worthy of the Church" (First number of the _Tribune de
Saint-Gervais_, the monthly bulletin of the _Schola Cantorum_, January,
1895).]

[Footnote 228: The Schola had in mind here the vigorous work of the
French Benedictines, which had been done in silence for the past fifty
years; it was thinking, too, of the restoration of the Gregorian chant
during 1850 and 1860 by Dom Gueranger, the first abbot of Solesmes, a
work continued by Dom Jausions and Dom Pothier, the abbot of
Saint-Wandrille, who published in 1883 the _Melodies Gregoriennes_, the
_Liber Gradualis_, and the _Liber Antiphonarius_. This work was finally
brought to a happy conclusion by Dom Schmitt, and Dom Mocqucreau, the
prior of Solesmes, who in 1889 began his monumental work, the
_Paleo-graphie Musicals_, of which nine volumes had appeared in 1906.
This great Benedictine school is an honour to France by the scientific
work it has lately done in music. The school is at present exiled from
France.]

They added to this, however, music _a la Palestrina_, and any music
that conformed to its principles or was inspired by its example. Such
archaic ideas would certainly never create a new kind of religious
music, but at least they have helped to restore the old art; and they
received their official consecration in the famous letter written by
Pope Pius X on the Re-form of Sacred Music.

The achievement of an artistic ideal so restricted as this would not
have sufficed, however, to assure the success of the _Schola Cantorum_,
nor establish its authority with a public that was, whatever people may
say, only lukewarm in its religion, and that would only interest itself
in the religious art of other days as it would in a passing fashion. 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