Responsory

Last updated September 03, 2023

A responsory or respond is a type of chant in western Christian liturgies.

Definition

The most general definition of a responsory is any psalm, canticle, or other sacred musical work sung responsorially, that is, with a cantor or small group singing verses while the whole choir or congregation respond with a refrain. However, this article focuses on those chants of the western Christian tradition that have traditionally been designated by the term responsory. In the Roman Rite and rites strongly influenced by it, such as the pre-reformation English rite and the monastic rite of the Rule of St. Benedict, these chants ordinarily follow readings^[1]^: 61^[2] at services of the Divine Office (also called the Liturgy of the Hours); however, they have also been used as processional chants.^[1]^: 91

Structure and performance

The responsory Domine ne in ira in square notation for the first Sunday after Epiphany, from the Liber Responsorialis juxta Ritum Monasticum, Solesmes, 1895, page 398. The third double bar indicates where the partial respond, Miserere mei Domine, quoniam infirmus sum, will be repeated after the singing of the verse. This responsory includes a half-doxology and a final repetition of the partial respond after it. Domine ne in ira 3.jpg — The responsory *Domine ne in ira* in square notation for the first Sunday after Epiphany, from the *Liber Responsorialis juxta Ritum Monasticum*, Solesmes, 1895, page 398. The third double bar indicates where the partial respond, *Miserere mei Domine, quoniam infirmus sum*, will be repeated after the singing of the verse. This responsory includes a half-doxology and a final repetition of the partial respond after it.

A responsory has two parts: a respond (or refrain), and a verse.^[3]^{: 181–182, 331} Methods of performance vary, but typically the respond will be begun by the cantor then taken up by the entire choir. The verse is then sung by a cantor or a small group; or the verse can be begun by the cantor and continued by the entire choir.^[3]^{: 196–198} The chant concludes with a repetition of all or part of the respond. Sometimes the second repetition of the respond is followed by a half-doxology, Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, sung by the cantor, followed in turn by a third repetition of all or part of the respond.

As an example, here is the responsory Aspiciebam,^[4] which in the Sarum Rite (the medieval rite of Salisbury Cathedral in England) followed the second reading, which was from the first chapter of the Book of Isaiah, at the night office (Matins) on the first Sunday of Advent:

Respond: (started by the cantor and continued by the whole choir) Aspiciebam in visu noctis, et ecce in nubibus caeli Filius hominis veniebat: et datum est ei regnum, et honor: * Et omnis populus, tribus, et linguae servient ei. (I saw in a night-vision, and behold, the Son of Man was coming on the clouds of heaven: and sovereignty and honor were given him: and every people and tribe, and all languages shall serve him.)

Verse: (sung by the cantor) Potestas eius, potestas aeterna, quae non auferetur: et regnum eius, quod non corrumpetur. (His might is an everlasting might which will not be taken away; and his reign is an everlasting reign, which shall not be broken.)

Partial respond: (sung by the choir) Et omnis populus, tribus, et linguae servient ei. (And every people and tribe, and all languages shall serve him.)

Most responsories have a single verse, but a few have multiple verses.^[3]^{: 184–185} One of the most famous of the latter is the responsory Aspiciens a longe, sung on the first Sunday of Advent after the first reading in the night office of the Latin secular (non-monastic) rite. The version that was sung in the medieval rite of Salisbury cathedral was worded as follows:^[5]

Respond:Aspiciens a longe et ecce video Dei potentiam venientem et nebulam totam terram tegentem. Ite obviam ei et dicite, Nuntia nobis si tu es ipse qui regnaturus es in populo Israel. (I look from afar, and behold I see the power of God coming, and a cloud covering the whole earth. Go out to meet him and say, tell us if you are the one who is to reign over the people of Israel.)

1st verse (sung by a boy) Quique terrigenae et filii hominum simul in unum dives et pauper (Whoever are earth-born, the sons of men, together in one rich and poor)

Partial respond (sung by the choir) Ite obviam ei et dicite, Nuntia nobis si tu es ipse qui regnaturus es in populo Israel. (Go out to meet him and say, tell us if you are the one who is to reign over the people of Israel.)

2nd verse (sung by a boy) Qui regis Israel intende, qui deducis velut ovem Joseph (Hear, O shepherd of Israel, who leadest Joseph like a sheep)

Partial respond (sung by the choir) Nuntia nobis si tu es ipse qui regnaturus es in populo Israel. (Tell us if you are the one who is to reign over the people of Israel.)

3rd verse (sung by a boy) Excita Domine potentiam tuam et veni ut salvos facias nos (Stir up your power O Lord and come that you may save us)

Partial respond (sung by the choir) Qui regnaturus es in populo Israel. (O you who are to reign over the people of Israel.)

Half-doxology (sung by all three boys) Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto (Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost)

Partial respond (sung by the choir) In populo Israel. (In the people of Israel.)

The three boys then sang Aspiciens a longe whereupon the choir took up the full respond: et ecce video Dei potentian venientem et nebulam totam terram tegentem. Ite obviam ei et dicite, Nuntia nobis si tu es ipse qui regnaturus es in populo Israel. (I look from afar, and behold I see the power of God coming, and a cloud covering the whole earth. Go out to meet him and say, tell us if you are the one who is to reign over the people of Israel.)

This responsory, Aspiciens a longe, has become familiar in the English-speaking world in an arrangement published in the second volume of Carols for Choirs edited by David Willcocks and John Rutter,^[6] where it is given the title "Matin Responsory", and is set to music adapted from a setting by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina of the Nunc dimittis (free score of the Nunc dimittis here on CPDL) - and not of the Magnificat as stated by the editors. The structure of the Willcocks/Rutter arrangement, however, differs somewhat from what is shown above since it does not repeat the refrain after each verse in the traditional English way. For example, in the traditional English form (shown above) after the first verse, the choir sings all the words of the refrain from ite obviam ei to the end. In the Willcocks/Rutter arrangement, on the other hand, after the first verse the choir sings (in English translation) only the portion of the refrain corresponding to the Latin words ite obviam ei et dicite.

Music

Traditionally responsories are sung in Gregorian chant. The refrains are free compositions.^[3]^{: 234, 331–332} The verses are ordinarily sung to standard tones,^[3]^: 234 though there are exceptions to this.^[3]^{: 235, 240}^[7] Polyphonic settings of parts of responsories survive from the Middle Ages.^[8] Marc-Antoine Charpentier composed 19 Repons (H 111 - 119, H 126 - 134 and H 144). Max Reger composed twenty Responsories for choir a cappella in 1911. The example of the Willcocks/Rutter setting of Aspiciens a longe shows that multi-voice settings of responsories have continued to be made in modern times also.

Notes

1 2 Harrison, Frank Lloyd (1958). Music in Medieval Britain. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
↑ Rule of Benedict, chapters 9, 11, 12, 13, 17, in Fry, Timothy, ed., The Rule of St. Benedict in English, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1982, pp. 39-45
1 2 3 4 5 6 Apel, Willi (1958). Gregorian Chant . Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
↑ Antiphonale ad usum ecclesiae Sarum, politissimis imaginibus decoratum, London, 1519, temporale folios 10v-11r. The temporale is the first component of the 1519 Antiphonale. It is followed by the kalendar and the psalterium, in which the foliation starts over. The foliation starts over again for the common, and yet again for the sanctorale .
↑ Antiphonale ad usum ecclesiae Sarum,temporale folios 9v-10v.
↑ Rutter, John, and Willcocks, David, eds., Carols for Choirs 2, Oxford, 1970, carol #15.
↑ An example of a responsory with a non-standard verse tone is the first responsory for the feast of Corpus Christi in the monastic rite, Immolabit haedum. Apel, Gregorian Chant, p. 240; Liber Responsorialis pro Festis I Classis et Communi Sanctorum juxta Ritum Monasticum, Solesmes, 1895, pp. 122-123.
↑ Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain pp. 366-371.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agnus Dei</span> Christian prayer

Agnus Dei is the Latin name under which the "Lamb of God" is honoured within Christian liturgies descending from the historic Latin liturgical tradition, including those of Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism and Anglicanism. It is the name given to a specific prayer that occurs in these liturgies, and is the name given to the music pieces that accompany the text of this prayer.

Plainsong or plainchant is a body of chants used in the liturgies of the Western Church. When referring to the term plainsong, it is those sacred pieces that are composed in Latin text. Plainsong was the exclusive form of Christian church music until the ninth century, and the introduction of polyphony.

Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe during the 9th and 10th centuries, with later additions and redactions. Although popular legend credits Pope Gregory I with inventing Gregorian chant, scholars believe that it arose from a later Carolingian synthesis of the Old Roman chant and Gallican chant.

John Sheppard was an English composer of the Renaissance.

Alleluia is a phrase in Christianity used to give praise to God. In Christian worship, Alleluia is used as a liturgical chant in which that word is combined with verses of scripture, usually from the Psalms. This chant is commonly used before the proclamation of the Gospel. In Western Christianity, congregations commonly cease using the word Alleluia during the period of Lent but restore it into their services at Easter. The form of praise "Alleluia" is used by Christians to thank and glorify God; it finds itself present in many prayers and hymns, especially those related to Eastertide, such as "Christ the Lord is Risen Today".

The gradual is a chant or hymn in the Mass, the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, and among some other Christians. It gets its name from the Latin gradus because it was once chanted on the step of the ambo or altar. In the Tridentine Mass, it is sung after the reading or chanting of the epistle and before the Alleluia, or, during penitential seasons, before the tract. In the Mass of Paul VI, the gradual is usually replaced with the responsorial psalm. Although the Gradual remains an option in the Mass of Paul VI, its use is extremely rare outside monasteries. The gradual is part of the proper of the Mass.

The O Antiphons are Magnificat antiphons used at Vespers on the last seven days of Advent in Western Christian traditions. They likely date to sixth-century Italy, when Boethius refers to the text in The Consolation of Philosophy. They subsequently became one of the key musical features of the days leading up to Christmas.

In chant, a reciting tone can refer to either a repeated musical pitch or to the entire melodic formula for which that pitch is a structural note. In Gregorian chant, the first is also called tenor, dominant or tuba, while the second includes psalm tones as well as simpler formulae for other readings and for prayers.

In the liturgical practice of the Orthodox Church and Byzantine Rite, a prokeimenon is a psalm or canticle refrain sung responsorially at certain specified points of the Divine Liturgy or the Divine Office, usually to introduce a scripture reading. It corresponds to the Gradual of the Roman Mass.

An antiphonary or antiphonal is one of the liturgical books intended for use in choro, and originally characterized, as its name implies, by the assignment to it principally of the antiphons used in various parts of the Latin liturgical rites.

The Improperia are a series of antiphons and responses, expressing the remonstrance of Jesus Christ with his people. Also known as the Reproaches, they are sung In the Catholic liturgy as part of the observance of the Passion, usually on the afternoon of Good Friday. In the Byzantine Rite, they are found in various hymns of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. The Improperia appear in the Pontificale of Prudentius (846–61) and gradually came into use throughout Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, finally being incorporated into the Roman Ordo in the fourteenth century.

Ambrosian chant is the liturgical plainchant repertory of the Ambrosian rite of the Roman Catholic Church, related to but distinct from Gregorian chant. It is primarily associated with the Archdiocese of Milan, and named after St. Ambrose much as Gregorian chant is named after Gregory the Great. It is the only surviving plainchant tradition besides the Gregorian to maintain the official sanction of the Roman Catholic Church.

Mozarabic chant is the liturgical plainchant repertory of the Visigothic/Mozarabic rite of the Catholic Church, related to the Gregorian chant. It is primarily associated with Hispania under Visigothic rule and later with the Mozarabs and was replaced by the chant of the Roman rite following the Christian Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Although its original medieval form is largely lost, a few chants have survived with readable musical notation, and the chanted rite was later revived in altered form and continues to be used in a few isolated locations in Spain, primarily in Toledo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beneventan chant</span>

Beneventan chant is a liturgical plainchant repertory of the Roman Catholic Church, used primarily in the orbit of the southern Italian ecclesiastical centers of Benevento and Monte Cassino distinct from Gregorian chant and related to Ambrosian chant. It was officially supplanted by the Gregorian chant of the Roman rite in the 11th century, although a few Beneventan chants of local interest remained in use.

In Eastern and Western Christian liturgical practice, the elevation is a ritual raising of the consecrated Sacred Body and Blood of Christ during the celebration of the Eucharist. The term is applied especially to that by which, in the Catholic Roman Rite of Mass, the Sacred Body of Christ (Host) and the chalice containing the Most Precious Blood of Christ are each lifted up and shown to the congregation immediately after each is consecrated. The term may also refer to a musical work played or sung at that time.

Paschale Mysterium is Latin for "The mystery of Easter". The words have been used as the title of albums of Gregorian chant for Easter.

Lumen Christi is a Versicle sung in Catholic, Lutheran and some Anglican churches as part of the Easter Vigil. In Lutheran and Anglican services, it is sung in the local language. It is chanted by the deacon on Holy Saturday as he lights the triple candle. In the English Sarum Rite, one candle is lit.

Gloria, Laus et Honor is a Christian hymn composed and written by Theodulf of Orléans between 810 and 817, and sung as a processional for Palm Sunday, based on the story of Jesus's arrival in Jerusalem before his passion and death. It was most likely composed by Theodulph of Orléans in the early ninth century. The modern English hymn "All Glory, Laud and Honour" is based on a translation of this text.

"Rorate caeli" or "Rorate coeli" are the opening words of Isaiah 45:8 in the Vulgate. The text appears at several points in the Christian liturgy during Advent.

Responsorial psalmody primarily refers to the placement and use of the Psalm within the readings at a Christian service of the Eucharist. The Psalm chosen in such a context is often called the responsorial psalm. They are found in the liturgies of several Christian denominations, including those of Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism and Anglicanism.

References

Antiphonale ad usum ecclesiae Sarum, politissimis imaginibus decoratum, London, 1519.
Apel, Willi, Gregorian Chant, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1958.
Harrison, Frank Lloyd, Music in Medieval Britain, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1958.
Liber Responsorialis pro Festis I Classis et Communi Sanctorum juxta Ritum Monasticum, Solesmes, 1895.
Music of the Sarum Office, web site at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. *Temporale: Dominica Prima Adventus (PDF file).
"Responsorial Psalmody", in J. A. Fuller-Maitland, ed., Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Macmillan, New York, 1908.
Rutter, John, and Willcocks, David, eds., Carols for Choirs 2, Oxford, 1970.

External links

Responsories : Scores at the International Music Score Library Project

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[harrison-1] 1 2 Harrison, Frank Lloyd (1958). Music in Medieval Britain. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

[2] Rule of Benedict, chapters 9, 11, 12, 13, 17, in Fry, Timothy, ed., The Rule of St. Benedict in English, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1982, pp. 39-45

[apel-3] 1 2 3 4 5 6 Apel, Willi (1958). Gregorian Chant . Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

[4] Antiphonale ad usum ecclesiae Sarum, politissimis imaginibus decoratum, London, 1519, temporale folios 10v-11r. The temporale is the first component of the 1519 Antiphonale. It is followed by the kalendar and the psalterium, in which the foliation starts over. The foliation starts over again for the common, and yet again for the sanctorale .

[5] Antiphonale ad usum ecclesiae Sarum,temporale folios 9v-10v.

[6] Rutter, John, and Willcocks, David, eds., Carols for Choirs 2, Oxford, 1970, carol #15.

[7] An example of a responsory with a non-standard verse tone is the first responsory for the feast of Corpus Christi in the monastic rite, Immolabit haedum. Apel, Gregorian Chant, p. 240; Liber Responsorialis pro Festis I Classis et Communi Sanctorum juxta Ritum Monasticum, Solesmes, 1895, pp. 122-123.

[8] Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain pp. 366-371.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]