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
Holy Week, they played Carissimi, Schuetz, and the Italian and German
masters of the seventeenth century. Then came Bach's cantatas; and their
performance, given by M. Bordes in the Salle d'Harcourt, attracted large
audiences and started the cult of this master in Paris. Then they sang
Rameau and Gluck; and, finally, all ancient music, sacred or secular,
was approved. And so this little school, which had been consecrated to
the cult of ancient religious music, and had made so modest a
beginning,[229] developed into a School of Art capable of satisfying
modern wants; and in 1900, when M.
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