48 - 1924: The plainsong restoration movement

Summary

On October 22, 1924, I went to a session at the Dijon Academy to celebrate the promotion to Monsignor granted to Abbé René Moissenet, who has been directing the renowned choir school of Dijon Cathedral for many years. He is the man most suited to plainsong. At the Gregorian congress that took place for the restoration of plainsong before the war, the first meetings were fruitful and happy, but afterwards the influences of the publishers ruined everything so much that one day Abbé Moissenet was going to return to Paris, discouraged. But just as he was about to set foot on the step of his carriage, the Pope summoned him. “They’re stubborn, there's nothing to be done!” Moissenet exclaimed.

When I was complaining to a clergyman about the mutilations to which plainsong had been subjected, he said to me: “It's your fault. Why didn't you protest?” I did protest, but the damage had been done. The publishers immediately published their book profiting from the Imprimatur. You can't change every book in the universe in a few months. It's in old plainsong books that we must look for the true strains. They had been reviewed by Henri Dumont, who had more or less restored plainsong to its true tonalities.