Week 45 - Roman Church Liturgy and Gregorian Chant

1. Stuff done this week

Found a good book on the history of music by W. Steffelaar (2007). I made notes on both this text and Burkholder et al. (2014).

2. Listening done this week

I listened to some examples of Anglo Saxon chant again. Now that I have read some chapters on Medieval Music, I would like to verify if I can identify the style elements I read about in these examples.

Chant in Honour of Anglo Saxon Saints by the Magnificat ensemble, responsorial and antiphonal chant, chant over a period ranging from 6th to 11th century.

These chants are from before the advent of Ars Antiqua (1150).The chants are all performed in monophony, all voices - male and female - sing the same melody. This is in accordance with how we believe the music would have been performed, though the mix of male and female voices would have been unusual in Medieval times.

The songs are in plagal mode, the melodies ascending and descending around the dominant in small intervallic steps.

Virtually all syllables are richly provided with melismas, so we can conclude we are dealing with melismatic chant. The range of the notes is in general not more than an octave. I cannot identify a rhythm, adding to a floating ethereal atmosphere within the music.

The Origin of Fire, composed by Hildegard von Bingen (ca. 1098-1179) performed by Anonymous 4.

We hear further development of the Gregorian chant in the expressive spritual music of Hildegard von Bingen. She was abbess in a Benedictine monastery, visionary, composer, scientist, healer and poet. She was famous for her religious visions.

Hildegards chants are in some respects innovative in comparison to the older gregorian repertory. Hildegard used a limited set of scales, but not the usual church modes but the modern major and minor scales. When you listen to her work we hear a wider range of tones, larger intervals. The melisma's she uses are highly expressive and very cheerful. This is such a moving, beautiful example of this:

Her melodies are dynamic and have interesting variations. Her texts do not feature rhyme and are irregular.

Is it organum I hear in Origin of Fire at for instance 28:40 (track 08 Vision 2: Wisdom and her sisters)?

3. What I learned

Here my notes on Roman Liturgy and chant, mostly from Steffelaar (2007), and supplemented with Burkholder et al. (2014).

The Roman Liturgy

Christian church music would have been composed, but because it was transferred orally and because of the dissemination of Christianity the songs were altered over time. The diversity of church music is very broad, for many different liturgies developed in the Christian churches in the various parts of Europe.

A history of Western music usually starts around the year 600 as we assume that the existing repertory of church music became standardized and codified under the rule of Pope Gregory I (590-604). The liturgy of the Christian church gained a fixed structure. Because of this, the music was named "Gregorian".

Gregorian song

The Gregorian repertory consists of some 3000 melodies. The music was not intended for enjoyment; its function was to bring the church gathering in a state of piety. The music was in service of the faith.
The tone range generally remained within an octave or less. The songs were performed without dynamic contrast and had Latin text.

The text could have been sung in different ways:

• Syllabic: when each syllable corresponds with one tone of the melody
• Melismatic: when more tones are used per syllable.
• Neumatic: when the song contains both syllabic and melismatic elements

In practice, alternation of syllabic parts with melismatic passages was often applied to achieve melodic variance.

Gregorian chant is monophonic and sung by male voices. Its ethereal, 'floating' quality can be attributed to its free rhythm, which bound to any metre. The melody ascends and descends in a characteristic manner in a wave pattern with an emphasis on the dominant, the reciting tone of the chant melody.

Gregorian chant is neither composed in major or minor (though it is affinity to both) but modal. A mode is a diatonic scale in a particular tone. In the Middle Ages 8 of these scales (modes) were used. They can be divided into 4 authentic and 4 plagal modes. A melody written in authentic mode, moves above the final, the main note in the mode and usually the last note of the melody (tonic). A plagal melody, however, moves above and below the tonic. Gregorian melodies vary in melodic contours in conjunction with their tonic. Each authentic mode corresponds with a plagal mode, as both modes have the same tonic.

Melodic movement in the authentic and plagal mode, copied from Steffelaar (2007).

Gregorian chant can be performed in three ways (Steffelaar, 2007; Burkholder et al., 2014):

• Responsorial: in which a soloist alternates with the choir or congregation
• Antiphonal: in which two groups or halves of the choir alternate
• Direct: without alternation or solo

Mass

The most important service in the Roman Church is the Mass, which evolved from commemorations  of the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples. Gregorian chant would have been sung during the celebration of Mass. Two forms of mass can be distinguished: the Ordinary of the Mass and the Proper of the Mass.

The Ordinary has some standard parts with unchanging texts: Kyrie eleison (Lord have mercy), Gloria in excelsis Deo (a formula of praise to God that encapsulates the doctrine of the Trinity and again asks for mercy), Credo (a statement of faith summarizing church doctorine and telling the story of Jesus' incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection), Sanctus (Holy, holy, holy) and Agnus Dei (lamb of God).

The content of the Proper varies depending on the church calendar. Because Lent - the fourty days  before Easter - is a period of penance, text and music are adjusted to fit this specific phase in the church year. But because Easter is a joyous occasion, the text and music of the proper are in keeping with the Easter celebrations. The parts of the Proper off Mass are (in Latin): Introïtus, Graduale, Alleluia (or Tractus in periods of penance), Sequentia, Offertorium and Communio. The stucture of Mass is represented in the figure below:

The structure of the Roman Catholic Church Mass

The Epistle and Gospel are readings from the Bible from respectively letters from the apostles and the Gospels.

In the arts of the Mass with little text (i.e. Kyrie and Alleluia) or the parts more suited for solo singing than polyphony, more melismatic performance is practiced. Conversely, the parts with more text (i.e. Credo) or the parts where the choir or church community would participate, are more syllabic. The chants of Mass are in a liturgical book, known as the Gradual.

Office

Gregorian chant would also be sung in the Office, a series of eight services that since the early Middle Ages have been celebrated daily at specific times by preachers and monks in churches and monasteries. The office consists of eight hours of prayer:

• Mattins (before sunrise)
• Lauds (at sunrise)
• Prime (at 6 am)
• Terce (at  9 am)
• Sext (at noon)
• Nones (at 3 pm)
• Vespers (at sunset)
• Compline (at 9pm; usually directly after Vespers)

The 150 Psalms form the core of the Office.They were sung every week, spread over the seven days and the hours of prayer, in their entirety. The music for the Office is collected in a liturgical book called Antiphoner.

Additions to the Authorized Chants

Even after the chant repertory was standardized in about the 9th century, church musicians continued to add to it. It became acceptable to add words to the standard texts  of the Gregorian chants. These additions, called tropes, were mostly placed near important texts. 

These additions could consist of a few words but they could also be an extensive poem. Trope composition was therefore the expansion of the Gregorian chant with the intention to complement or intensify the existing texts. This practice flourished especially in monasteries during the tenth and eleventh centuries.

The use of tropes declined during the twelfth century. Tropes testify to the desire among medieval church musicians to embellish the authorized chant by adding music and words, providing a basis for the later development of polyphony.

A sequence is a specific trope that would be added at the end of a Gregorian chant, in particular to an Alleluia (a melismatic composition).

The adding of words to melismatic passages can result in a syllabic passage. It is therefore plausible that tropes and sequences were not just added to clarify or expand on the text, but also to simplify the singing of long, melismatic passages. As trope composition would mostly be applied tot the Ordinary of Mass, it could also reflect the urge to add more variation to the standard parts. Over time the sequence became more independent from liturgical song, becoming a genre of composition in its own right.

Style Elements of Gregorian Chant

1. Voicing: Monophonic, solo, vocal
2. Tone range: Generally not more than one octave
3. Tone system: Church modes
4. Melody: Characteristically the melody progresses in a ascending and descending wave pattern, with intermittent concentration on the recital tone (the dominant). In authentic mode, the melody progresses continually above the Final; in plagal mode, it moves above and below the final. The melody closely follows the Latin text (more or higher tones emphasize the syllables). The melodies are purely diatonic and move in small intervals.
5. Rhythm: Free rhythm, no identifiable metre
6. Harmony: none, unison
7. Structure: Musical structure is mostly determined by the text. The musical phrasing corresponds with the structure of the sentences within the text.
8. Relation text-music: Syllabic (one tone per syllable), melismatic (more tones per syllable) or neumatic (mixed syllabic and melismatic). 
9. Genres an forms: Parts of the Mass and the Office (Psalms, antiphons and responsories), tropes sequences. Representation of the text is foremost, not the music. Embellishment is applied modestly.
10. Significance: Foundation of Western music.

4. Sources

BURKHOLDER, J, GROUT, D. and PALISCA, C. (2014) A history of western music, 9th edition, New York: W.W. Norton. Pages: 46-66.

STEFFELAAR, W. (2007) Muzikale Stijlgeschiedenis, 2nd edition, Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Nieuwezijds. Pages: 9-17.