The Beautiful Mystery

Penny begins with a brief account of the Roman Catholic Church’s music policy in the 19th century. The Divine Office, the ancient devotional practice of chanting psalms eight times per day, was losing popularity, even with religious orders. The monk Dom Prosper, devoted to reviving the practice, faced a logistical challenge: the chants “were so old, more than a millennium, that they predated written music” (1). Dom Prosper believed that manuscripts must have existed to teach medieval monks the Divine Office. Early musical notation didn’t name notes and instead only signaled to the vocalist whether to go up or down from a starting pitch, an unknown note known as “the beautiful mystery” (2).

No manuscript was ever found that indicated the precise starting pitch. Though Dom Prosper took some joy in the revival of the chant, he died knowing his work was incomplete: “At the very end of his life, Dom Prosper knew there was a beginning. But it would be up to someone else to find it. To solve the beautiful mystery” (4).

The chapter opens at the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les Loups—or “Saint Gilbert among the Wolves”—in remote Québec, Canada. The abbot surveys the monks under his care and sees the conflict among them: “facing each other across the stone floor of the chapel, like ancient battle lines” (5).