THE HERALDRY OF SACRED MUSIC (Part IV)
Musical Armigers
by Duane L.C.M. Galles
We have outlined the origin and elements of heraldry in the earlier
parts of this series and described sacred music's contribution to the
armorial alphabet. Now we survey the history of sacred music for a
rapid selection of the armorial bearings of musical armigers. Our
armigers will include both individuals and juridical persons, both
patrons and other important figures in the history of sacred music as
well as composers and other makers of music.
In Part III we saw the figure of Christ used as a passive subject of
armory-as an armorial charge. But to the medieval mind Christ was
also an armiger or person possessed of a coat armour. Indeed, He
along with a host of other figures who historically never could have
borne arms had arms attributed to them by the medieval world.
The medieval herald approached the matter much is a manner of the
medieval theologian. The latter employed a line of theological
reasoning summarized by the Latin phrase, <potuit>, <decuit>, <fecit>
(it was possible, it was fitting, it was in fact). Similarly to the
medieval herald, given Christ's impressive genealogy back to "Adam,
son of God" in Saint Luke's gospel, it seemed possible that Christ
was a gentleman of coat armour. Moreover, as the scion of the royal
House of David, it was fitting that Our Lord be armigerous. They,
therefore, concluded that the Supreme Musician was in fact armigerous
and for His armorial ensigns assigned to Him the instruments of His
passion, the <scutum salvationis>.
Likewise, His mother could not have been without coat armour and so
to the Lily of Israel arms were also attributed consisting of a bunch
of white lilies, symbol of her Immaculate Conception, in a gold pot
against a blue field. There are a number of variations (including a
cross crosslet fitchy between a pair of silver wings to symbolize the
Word made flesh at the message of an angel) but the three silver
lilies in a pot on a blue field borne by the City of Dundee in
Scotland would seem to be arms of patronage inasmuch as Our Lady is
titular of its ancient parish church.
In the middle ages, King David ranked among the Nine Worthies of the
world and so to this outstanding sacred musician of the Old Testament
arms were attributed, namely a golden harp on a royal blue field. The
Christian muse, Saint Cecilia, virgin and martyr, could not be
treated otherwise and so to this Roman gentlewoman was attributed the
same charge but on a field colored red with her blood.
Saint Gregory the Great, the saintly pope who lent his name to the
chant proper to the Roman Church, also had arms attributed to him.
But the great doctor of the western Church got his arms in a fashion
different from King David. During the renaissance among the Italian
families in search of illustrious and ancient lineage were the
Frangipani. They claimed descent from the ancient Roman family, the
Anicii, one of whose members was Pope Gregory the Great. The
Frangipani arms depicted two golden rearing lions facing each other
and holding aloft a golden loaf of bread against a red field. Clearly
these Frangipani arms were canting arms, a pun on their name which
means "bread-breakers." In time the cracks in the loaf came to be
blazoned more piously as a cross and so this late medieval coat was
anachronistically attributed to the sixth-century pope from whose
family the Frangipani claimed descent. Counter colored per chevron
black and silver for difference, in this century this coat was
borrowed by Dom Wilfrid Bayne for the arms of the English Benedictine
Abbey of Saint Gregory the Great in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
The monasteries were, of course, the great centers for sacred music
in the early medieval period. Beginning with his monastery at Monte
Casino in 529, Saint Benedict became the father of western
monasticism and his motto of <Ora et Labora> pray and work, set the
musical stage for a marriage between western monasticism and
plainchant which has only been dissolved in our own day. It was
largely through Benedictine monasteries that the Roman liturgy was
transmitted to the barbarian peoples of western Europe through
monastic foundations at Fulda, Reichenau, Einsiedeln and other
places. As the hymn has it, <Per te> (the Benedictines) <barbari
discunt resonare Christum corde Romano>, through the Benedictines the
barbarians learned to resound Christ with a Roman heart. The arms of
Monte Casino show a trimount surmounted by a Latin cross beneath
which is the word <Pax>, peace. In time this became the arms of the
Benedictine Order, and Pope Pius VII (1800-1823), who was a member of
that order and who was the first pope to erect a minor basilica
outside Italy-the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre Dame de Paris-impaled
the Benedictine arms with those of his own Chiaramonte family, a
practice not unusual among religious who are raised to the prelacy.
Besides the Benedictines, monks and nuns alike, other religious
orders might also be ranked among the great practitioners of
plainchant. The canons regular represented an eleventh-century reform
of the secular canons into whom they sought to infuse the monastic
discipline whilst retaining the active pastoral ministry of the
canons. Among the new canons regular were those of Premontre founded
by Saint Norbert of Xanten and today often called the Norbertines.
They bear a pair of crossed golden croziers upon a blue field strewn
with golden lilies and a canon regular of Premontre will ensign his
arms with a black ecclesiastical hat of three tassels.
The Dominicans regarded themselves as both monks and canons and so
saw themselves as devoted to the pastoral office of preaching as well
as to the choral office. Thus they wore a woolen habit like monks in
the white color traditional among canons and in choir for warmth
added a <cappa nigra> or large black cloak. Because of that cloak in
England they were called Blackfriars. Dominicans interestingly live
an armorial "double life." By the fifteenth century they used arms
divided per chevron black and white to resemble a <cappa nigra>
thrown over a white Dominican habit. South of the Pyrenees the
Dominicans used a different coat more closely emblematic of Saint
Dominic. It consists of a black and white cross fleurdelysee,
emblematic of Saint Dominic's chastity, counter-colored on a field of
eight triangles called gyrons, alternately black and white. The
Dominicans were privileged to use a distinctive rite, which like the
reformed Vatican II missal, omitted psalm 42, <Judica me, Deus>, in
the opening rite of the Mass, and their prelates place the black and
silver cross fleurdelysee behind their armorial shield.
In late antiquity and in the early middle ages the <scholae cantorum>
or chant schools attached to the cathedrals in Rome and in the great
provincial cities were also the important centers of learning and
music. During this period the Roman chant school proved the great
training ground for future popes and Saint Gregory the Great was
among its most illustrious alumni. Besides music, it provided
instruction in literature and philosophy and like the Ecclesiastical
Academy (papal school of diplomacy) in our own time, served as the
great training center of popes and Roman curialists.
A change in the Roman <schola cantorum> came about as a result of the
Avignonese papacy or Babylonian Captivity as Luther called it. Whilst
living in France the popes engaged French musicians who employed the
<ars nova> or new polyphonic style. Pope Gregory XI (1370-1378),
born Pierre Roger de Beaufort, bore a blue bend within a border of
six red roses on a silver field. When he ended the Babylonian
Captivity by returning the papacy to Rome in 1377, he merged his
group of French musicians with the <schola cantorum> which had
remained in Rome. As a result thereafter the papal singers, called
the <collegio dei cappellani cantori della cappella pontificia>, now
expanded their repertoire to include polyphony as well as plainchant.
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries proved a remarkable period in
the choir's history: Its golden age lasted until the mid seventh
century. Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484), a Della Rovere who bore their
uprooted golden oak on a blue field, founded the Sistine chapel as
the fixed abode for ordinary papal ceremonies and ended the
traditional peregrinations of the popes and their retinues to the
various stational churches of Rome. As a result his musicians came to
be known popularly after the chapel in which they sang and so became
the Sistine choir. The choir was the patronage of music.
Among the choir's founders may be noted two of its great lawgivers,
Paul III (1534- 1549) and Sixtus V (1585-1590). In his bull, <Roma
capta> of 1545, the former reformed the choir after the devastating
sack of Rome in 1527 providing firm footings for its glory to come.
This Farnese pope bore six blue fleurs de lys on a gold field.
Sixtus V made the office of <maestro di cappella> elective and thus
released it from the toils of nepotism and venality which engulfed so
many ecclesiastical offices during the early modern period. Sixtus
also fixed the number of the singers at 21 and assigned to them for
their support the revenues of three abbeys. This important act
regularized the finances of the choir. Candidates for the choir had
to be clerks in minor orders and, after an audition, were selected by
the maestro with the advice of the <maior et sanior pars> of the
choir. At the admission ceremony the new member was clothed with a
<cotta> (shortened form of surplice) and took an oath of fidelity to
the pope. Thereafter the singer would sing exclusively for the pope
and "moonlighting" was strictly forbidden. Sixtus, born Felice di
Peretto Ricci in Montalto in the Marches of Ancona, bore canting
arms. Against a blue field a golden lion, carrying a pear tree branch
for Peretto, was covered with a red bend charged with in chief a gold
star and in base a silver trimount. The trimount probably referred to
his birthplace, Montalto.<1>
Besides Rome other sees, like that of Metz, which bore a black lion
on a silver field, also maintained an illustrious <schola cantorum>.
Metz's heyday was especially in the days of Saint Amalarius
(815-825). Lyons had a famous <schola cantorum> and its own rite.
The primatial chapter of Lyons bore a golden griffin facing a silver
lion, crowned gold, on a red field. These beasts the canons were
privileged to use as armorial supporters for their personal arms and
above their shield they placed the coronet of a count, a rank that
came with their canonry. The cathedral schools long remained the
great centers of music education, and the cathedrals and collegiate
churches the great centers of sacred music performance. Staffed by
colleges of secular canons, these great churches had the material and
human resources needed for great music.
In charge of the music at collegiate churches was the precentor or
first chanter. To this benefice or church office (which canonically
was a considered a juridical person) arms were sometimes granted.
Thus in the English cathedral of Exeter the precentor's arms of
office consisted of a blue saltire charged with a gold fleur de lys
on a silver field. This coat of office the incumbent would have
impaled with his own family arms.
But even where he lacked a coat of office, the precentor usually
placed his cantorial staff upright behind his shield as a badge of
office. Thus we find Alain de Biron, an eighteenth-century precentor
of Notre Dame de Paris, placing his cantorial staff behind his
quartered gold and red family coat to denote his cantorial office.
Besides the secular canons their counterparts, the secular
canonesses, were important practitioners of church music and
preservers of plainchant. Among the most famous institutes of secular
canonesses was the foundation at Buchau which bore on a green field a
gold cross between in dexter chief a sun and in sinister chief a
crescent. Its abbess ranked as a princess of the Holy Roman Empire
and ensigned her arms with a red and ermine-lined princely cap and
had, as supporters for her arms, a pair of golden lions. A crozier
and a naked sword (of justice) were crossed in saltire behind her
shield to indicate both her ecclesiastical rank and the broad acres
which she ruled with justice and judgment.
By the late middle ages canonries came to be seen as sources of
income more than opportunities for service, and the canon occupying
the precentor's stall was not always learned in sacred music. But at
least one such precentor was learned in armory. The precentor of
Salisbury Cathedral from 1446-1457 was Nicholas Upton, a priest with
degrees in both Roman and canon law. A clerk in the service of the
royal Duke of Gloucester who had traveled with his master in France
during the Hundred Years War, his <magnum opus> is a treatise on the
international law of war and the rules of heraldry entitled <De
Studio Militari>completed while he was precentor. He is said to have
been one of the Uptons of Newton Feries, Devonshire, who bore a
silver cross flory on a black field.
From the cathedral schools sprang the universities and the
universities often were notable centers of music. One of the great
medieval patrons of church music was Archbishop Henry Chiceley of
Canterbury, the founder in 1443 of All Souls College, Oxford. In the
statutes for his college, His Grace specified that no scholar be
elected a fellow of All Souls who was not competently instructed in
plainchant. All Souls College bears a red chevron between three red
cinquefoils or five-petaled flowers on a gold field.
More enduring has been the musical labor of King Henry VI who in 1441
founded King's College, Cambridge. In the statutes of his royal
foundation Henry made provision for sixteen choir boys who could
competently read and sing as well as for six clerks similarly
skilled. One of the latter, moreover, was to be a capable organist.
King's College still bears three silver roses on a black field. The
chief is divided into blue and red halves. On the blue part is a
golden fleur de lys and on the red part is a golden lion passant,
both taken from the arms of the college's royal founder.
One of England's great patrons of church music was Cardinal Wolsey.
In 1525, he founded Cardinal (now Christ Church) College at Oxford
and endowed it (as Sixtus V would endow the Sistine choir) with the
revenues of several small monastic houses which, as papal legate, he
suppressed for the purpose (a manoeuvre which in fact served as
precedent for Henry's later more thorough-going dissolution of
English monasteries). The statutes of Cardinal College endowed twelve
scholarships for clerics at least one of whom was to be <scitum et
peritum organorum pulsatorum>, an expert organist. Reorganized by his
royal master in 1532 after Wolsey's fall. Christ Church College was
to have in charge of the singing men and choristers a precentor who
was to know plainchant and be a competent instrumentalist withal.
Wolsey's private chapel or ecclesiastical establishment purveyed the
finest church music in England and amongst the choice spoils after
his fall were his musicians. Many of these were quickly snapped up by
the chapel royal. The arms of this great patron of church music were
a silver engrailed cross charged with a red lion between four blue
lion's faces on a black field with a red Lancastrian rose in chief
between two Cornish choughs or blackbirds. The shield was ensigned
with the Cardinal's red hat, his legatine and metropolitan's crosses,
and was supported by a pair of gold and silver griffins. The college
he founded still bears his arms-including his red hat.
Besides those who rank as patrons of music through their largess
there are others whose <sagesse>, demonstrated in wise legislation,
entitles them to rank as patrons of church music. We might note Pope
Clement V who at the Council of Vienne in 1313 ordered all institutes
of religious and all cathedral and collegiate churches to chant the
divine office daily and without fail. He bore three red bars on a
gold field. The famous bull, <Docta sanctorum patrum>, of Pope John
XXII (1316-1334) ranks as one of the first papal documents calling
for the reform of church music. It forbade the use in the liturgy of
profane music, preserved plainchant, and reserved polyphony for
solemn feasts. John XXII (born Jacques Dueze at Cahors) bore
quartered arms. In the first and fourth quarters a blue lion within a
border of red roundels ranged about a silver field. In the second
and third quarters two gold bars rested on a red field.
The Tridentine reforms of church music owe a great deal to Saint
Charles Borromeo, cardinal-archbishop of Milan, whose provincial
decrees set forth in practical norms the desires of Trent on church
music. Saint Charles' noble Borromeo family bore a complex coat of
several quarters. From his mother, Margherita dei Medici who was a
sister of Pope Pius IV, he inherited their famous orle of five red
balls on a gold field with a larger blue roundel in chief charged
with the French royal lily. This last represented an augmentation of
honor bestowed in 1465 by King Louis XI on Duke Piero di Medici. In
the second and third quarters were his quartered paternal Vitaliani-
Borromeo arms. The Vitaliani bore a shield "bendy of six, vert and
vair counterchanged," i.e., divided diagonally into six sections
alternately green and silver with blue patches of squirrel fur
mounted back to back on the silver pieces. The Borromei themselves
bore a shield composed of six alternate red and green horizontal
strips surmounted by a silver diagonal strip. In the centre of the
quartered coat is an inescutcheon displaying a golden bridle-bit on a
red field. This appears to represent a Sicilian branch of the
Borromeo family. Above this shield went his red cardinal's hat, which
was often decorated with twelve red tassels until 1832, when the
Sacred Congregation of Ceremonies decided that cardinals should have
the distinction of thirty tassels.[2]
In the eighteenth century Pope Benedict XIII (1724-1730) laid down
the norm that during Advent and Lent, except on <Gaudete> and
<Laetare> Sundays, only <a cappella> church music might be sung. He
bore the Orsini-Gravina impaled arms. The Orsini arms were three red
bends on a silver field with a red rose in the silver chief. For
Gravina a silver tower rested on a blue field. Above all was a chief
of the Dominican Mantelarmen.
In our own century the great legislation on sacred music has been
Pope Pius X's <motu proprio, Tra le sollecitudini>, and Pope Pius
XII's encyclical, <Musicae sacrae disciplina.> The former pope bore a
silver anchor of hope on a raging sea beneath a blue sky displaying a
six-pointed gold star of Our Lady. Above in chief was the lion of
Saint Mark in homage to his former patriarchal see of Venice. The
latter pope, sprung from a long line of Roman canonists of the Rota,
bore on a blue field a silver dove atop a trimount holding in its
beak a sprig of olive, obviously a pacific pun on his family name of
Pacelli.
Besides the patrons of music there also exist many makers of music
among the company of musical armigers. John Dunstable (1390-1453),
the noted fifteenth century English church musician described by
Joannis Tinctoris as <primus inter pares>, bore an ermine chevron
between three silver staples against a black field. Robert Fayrfax
(1464-1521), graduated in 1511 by Oxford as doctor of music, was
among the celebrated English renaissance composers and a member of
Henry VIII's chapel royal. Sprung from the Fayrfaxes of Lincolnshire
who bore four bars and a canton red on a silver field, this composer
of six extant Masses was made a military knight of Windsor in his
last years. William Byrd (1543-1623), who bore on a green field three
stags heads and an ermine canton, was another early graduate in music
and composer of both Roman Catholic and Anglican church music for
Elizabeth. Three Masses are extent of this composer dubbed by a
contempory <Brittanicae musicae parens>.
Beginning with the renaissance there arose the practice of ennobling
celebrated musicians. Among the first church musicians so honored was
Orlando di Lasso (c. 1530-1594) who in 1570 received a grant of arms
including a sharp, a flat, and a natural sign on a silver fess
between two crosslets in gold resting on a field divided per saltire
silver and blue.
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber von Biber (1644-1704) in 1670 entered the
chapel of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg and fourteen years later
rose to become its <Kapellmeister>. In 1690 he was ennobled by
Emperor Leopold I. A versatile composer, he wrote Masses in both the
<stile antico> and in the new concertant style. He bore quartered
arms. In the first quarter above a green meadow was a blue sky and
clouds. In the second and third quarters was a beaver proper rising
from a green hill on a red field. In the fourth quarter above a
stream was a blue sky and clouds. The beaver (<auf deutsch, Biber>)
was clearly a canting device.
In the next century Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), sometime
organist of Clermont cathedral, wrote some Magnificats and motets but
more operas. He was posthumously ennobled and his family granted arms
which included a silver dove holding a golden branch (in French
<rameau>) of olive against a blue field.
Some musicians continued to come from armigerous families. Jean
Baptiste Lully (1632- 1687) in 1661 became superintendent of music
for Louis XIV and used for arms a silver sword with point down and
hilt gold on a blue field with a silver bend charged with two red
five- petaled flowers over all. This musical armiger ought to be
remembered by church musicians as the man who martyred himself for
his art. While directing a <Te Deum> of his own composition sung in
thanksgiving for the recovery of Louis XIV from surgery, Lully
transfixed his great toe with his great cantorial staff. The toe
became gangrenous and in that age before antibiotics Lully died soon
thereafter.
Archangelo Correlli (1653-1713), often styled the <princeps
musicorum>, was buried in the Pantheon next to Raphael. He was born
of a noble family and bore a red heart enflamed on a golden field
over which extended a blue bend or diagonal strip charged with three
silver cinquefoils or five-petaled flowers. In the blue chief were
the three golden French lilies.
Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) is today remembered more for his
operas than his church music. Nevertheless, from 1703 to 1708 he
served as <maestro di cappella> of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. The
composer of some ten Masses, he is also remembered for his Saint John
Passion. His son Domenico (1685-1747) served briefly as <maestro di
cappella> of the Cappella Guilia in Saint Peter's before leaving for
Portugal where he acquired the like post in the sumptuous patriarchal
chapel there. In 1738, he was admitted to the celebrated military
religious Order of Santiago by royal command. The Scarlattis bore a
red chevron between three red stars of eight points on a silver field
and on a blue chief three golden fleurs de lys between the four
points of red label.
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) was said to descend from Johan
Baptist Weber, ennobled in 1623 by Emperor Ferdinand II. In fact it
appears that the noble <particule> was merely assumed by his father,
Franz Anton Weber, about the time that he was dismissed as
<Kapellmeister> by the Prince-Bishop of Luebeck in 1784. The Weber
arms were divided vertically into gold and blue halves. On the gold
half was a silver crescent and on the blue half was a gold star.
Among the works of this gifted romantic composer are three Masses.
Franz Liszt (1811-1886) is said to have come from a Hungarian noble
family which bore a quartered coat of arms, viz., a silver unicorn on
a red field quartered with three silver pallets (or vertical bars) on
a blue field with a red fess charged with a gold sixpointed star over
all. This romantic composer who dreamed of a religious music that
would unite "the theatre and the Church on a colossal scale" became a
cleric in 1865. His <Missa solemnis> in the style of Beethoven and
his <Coronation Mass>, written for the coronation in 1867 of Franz
Joseph as King of Hungary using plainchant and Hungarian melodies,
are still remembered today.
Another musical armiger, Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989), had the
distinction in 1985 of leading the Vienna Philharmonic in the first
performance during a liturgy in Saint Peter's Basilica of Mozart's
<Coronation Mass>. The von Karajan family, ennobled by the Holy Roman
Emperor in 1792, descended from a Macedonian cotton merchant and bear
a somewhat complex coat. It is divided in four quarters, silver,
green, green, and gold with a red heart overall. In base is a crane
proper on a green hill, the head of the crane touching the point of
the heart.
Surely worthy of mention among sacred musicians is Dom Prosper
Gueranger (1805- 1875), Abbot of Solesmes and founder of the
liturgical revival which of course included the revival of Gregorian
chant. He bore arms chock full of Marian allusions: A red rose with
green stem and leaves surrounded by a border of twelve gold star on a
field of blue.
Among the armigerous juridical persons which are makers of music one
must make note of the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes. Founded in 1010
by the <seigneur de Sable> and restored in 1833 after its dissolution
by the French revolutionaries, its soon became the leading center in
the nineteenth century of the liturgical revival and of sacred music
in France. The abbey bears quartered arms. The first and fourth
quarters include the blue eagle on a gold field of Sable and the
second and third quarter include the three gold lilies of France and
the lions of England for the abbey of Coutures (of which Sable was a
dependency). Over all is a thorn on a silver escutcheon to recall the
abbey's relic from the Crown of Thorns. As a mark of favor in 1889
Pope Leo XIII gave the abbot of Solesmes the privilege of wearing the
violet zucchetto or skullcap. At the same time Solesmes' abbots were
privileged to ensign their arms, not with the black ecclesiastical
hat used by other abbots, but with the green hat with six green
tassels pendent on either side of the shield. This ecclesiastical hat
is used by bishops and by territorial abbots-which Solesmes' abbot is
not. In fact, the Solesmes abbot's green hat represents an armorial
augmentation of honor. That is to say, it is an honorable addition to
the abbot's armorial achievement granted in special recognition for
Solesmes' service to sacred music.
One might cite other examples of such augmentations. Established in
1911 as the School of Church Music to oversee the musical reforms of
Pope Pius X, in 1928 it was granted the predicate "pontifical" and
became the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music. The institute does
not appear to make use of a coat of arms as such but, as a pontifical
institute, it enjoys the privilege of using armorially the papal
tiara and keys, which it does use.
Similarly, the Benedictine Conception Abbey church in Missouri was
raised to the rank of minor basilica in 1940 because the liturgy was
celebrated there with consistent beauty and reverence; the apostolic
letter added "as is customary among the religious family of Saint
Benedict." This concession included the grant of the use armorially
of the yellow and red striped silk <ombrellone>, which before the
post-conciliar reforms was the emblem of a minor basilica. The
device, which protected the popes from inclement weather during papal
cavalcades to the stational churches of Rome, was also an
augmentation of honor. Dom Gregory Huegle, O.S.B., recipient of the
<Catholic Choirmaster's> Liturgical Music Award in 1949 and editor of
this journal's predecessor, <Caecilia>, from 1934 to 1944, was a monk
of Conception Abbey and an important teacher of music. Conception
Abbey bears three fleurs de lys on a blue field and in chief a silver
star of eight points charged with the monogram of Our Lady.
The Sacrosancta Basilica Abacial de Santa Maria de Monserrat bears
simple canting arms, viz., a saw above a jagged mountain range, all
gold, on a red field. To this coat the venerable Benedictine shrine
also added the <ombrellone> when it became a minor basilica.[3]
Especially in the time of Virgil Michel, O.S.B. (1899-1951), Saint
John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, was a noted center for the
study and performance of Gregorian chant. The abbey bears a quartered
coat. In the first and fourth quarters is a golden fleur on a red
field, emblematic of the purity and bloody end of Our Lord's
precursor. In the second and third quarters is the bendy fusily
<weiss-blau> coat of the Wittelsbach kings of Bavaria, who were early
patrons of the foundation.
Finally, we may note that the Church Music Association of America has
recently adopted arms which reflect its dual organizational heritage.
The organization represents the product of a 1964 merger of the
American Caecilian Society established in 1874 and the Society of
Saint Gregory of America established in 1913. Thus it bears on a red
field between two harps of Saint Cecilia and two pairs of golden
(Frangipani) lions of Saint Gregory the Great a silver cross, voided
blue.
The crest is an open <Graduale Romanum>, inscribed <Cantate Domino>,
held aloft by a hand vested in (black) cassock and surplice and
issuing from a coronet composed alternately of organ pipes and
trumpets. The crest is a reminder of the injunctions of <Sacrosanctum
concilium> that "choirs be assiduously developed" (Art. 114) (through
the choirmaster's hand), that Gregorian chant be given "the lead spot
in liturgical services" (Art. 116) (through the <Graduale>), that
polyphonic music is "by no means excluded from liturgical
celebrations" (Art. 116) (through the trumpets of the coronet), and
that "the pipe organ is to be held in high esteem in the Latin church
(Art. 120) (through the organ pipes of the coronet). The armorial
achievement is supported by a chorister vested in a black cassock and
surplice and a doctor of music habited in his red doctoral cap and
gown, representing both the operative and speculative branches of
church music.
This, then, has been a rapid overview of the heraldry of sacred
music. Like music, heraldry is a system of special signs which echo a
special sense. Hopefully, both systems will echo the glory of the
Supreme Musician to whom be psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs now
and evermore.
DUANE L.C.M. GALLES
NOTES
1. R. Schuler, "Cappella Sistina," <Caecilia> 90 (1963) 143.
2. Pierre de Chaignon LaRose, "A Study of the Arms of Saint Charles
Borromeo," <American Ecclesiastical Review> 62 (1920).
3. I. Vicente, <Heraldica General y Fuentes de la Armas de Espana>
Barcelona, 1956, p. 42.
This article appeared in the Spring, 1994 issue of "Sacred Music."
Published by the Church Music Association of America, 548 Lafond
Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55103.
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