Plainsong

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Plainsong or plainchant (calque from the French plain-chant; Latin : cantus planus) 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. [1] Plainsong was the exclusive form of Christian church music until the ninth century, and the introduction of polyphony. [2]

Contents

The monophonic chants of plainsong have a non-metric rhythm. [3] Their rhythms are generally freer than the metered rhythm of later Western music, and they are sung without musical accompaniment. [3]

There are three types of chant melodies that plainsongs fall into: syllabic, neumatic, and melismatic. [3] The free flowing melismatic melody form of plainsong is still heard in Middle Eastern music being performed today. [3]

Although the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches did not split until long after the origin of plainsong, Byzantine chants are generally not classified as plainsong.

History

A sample of the Kyrie Eleison (Orbis Factor) from the Liber Usualis, in neume notation. Listen to it interpreted. Gregorian chant.gif
A sample of the Kýrie Eléison (Orbis Factor) from the Liber Usualis, in neume notation. Listen to it interpreted.

Plainsong developed during the earliest centuries of Christianity, influenced possibly by the music of the Jewish synagogue and certainly by the Greek modal system. It has its own system of notation. [4]

As the number of chants in the church's repertoire increased, officials needed a better way to standardize the music. [3] A unique form of musical notation was developed to help standardize the music and provide a reference for the performers and audience alike. [1] The musical notations that were used were called neumes, and they are employed on a four-line staff, unlike the five-line staff we are accustomed to today. [3] The neumes are placed above the chant's words to help the performer identify the piece's melody but did not specify the pitches or intervals that needed to be sung. [1] Even though there were written musical manuscripts, the performers still needed to memorize the chants through oral traditions before interpreting the notation. [1] It was not until the eleventh century that musical pitches were being integrated into written music. [1]

Most of the early plainsong scripts have been destroyed due to war, purposeful destruction and natural causes such as water, fire, and poor environmental conditions. [1] The Toledo Cathedral in Spain has one of the world's largest collections of indigenous plainsong manuscripts devoted to Western Christianity. [5] Their collection consists of 170 volumes of plainsong chants for the procession, Mass, and Office. [5]

There are three methods of singing psalms or other chants, responsorial, antiphonal, and solo. [1] In responsorial singing, the soloist (or choir) sings a series of verses, each one followed by a response from the choir (or congregation). In antiphonal singing, the verses are sung alternately by soloist and choir, or by choir and congregation. [4] It is probable that even in the early period the two methods caused the differentiation in the style of musical composition which is observed throughout the later history of plain chant, the choral compositions being of a simple kind, the solo compositions more elaborate, using a more extended compass of melodies and longer groups of notes on single syllables. The last type of plainsong performance is the solo performed by the choir or the individual performer. [1] A marked feature in plainchant is the use of the same melody for various texts. This is quite typical for the ordinary psalmody in which the same formula, the "psalm tone", is used for all the verses of a psalm, just as in a hymn or a folk song the same melody is used for the various stanzas. [2]

Gregorian chant is a variety of plainsong named after Pope Gregory I (6th century A.D.), but Gregory did not invent the chant. The tradition linking Gregory I to the development of the chant seems to rest on a possibly mistaken identification of a certain "Gregorius", probably Pope Gregory II, with his more famous predecessor. The term Gregorian Chant is often incorrectly used as a synonym of plainsong. [1]

For several centuries, different plainchant styles existed concurrently. Standardization on Gregorian chant was not completed, even in Italy, until the 12th century. Plainchant represents the first revival of musical notation after knowledge of the ancient Greek system was lost.

In the late 9th century, plainsong began to evolve into organum, which led to the development of polyphony. When polyphony reached its climax in the sixteenth century, the use of plainsong chant was less appealing and almost completely abandoned. [2]

There was a significant plainsong revival in the 19th century, when much work was done to restore the correct notation and performance-style of the old plainsong collections, notably by the monks of Solesmes Abbey, in northern France. After the Second Vatican Council and the introduction of the vernacular Mass, use of plainsong in the Catholic Church declined and was mostly confined to the monastic orders [2] and to ecclesiastical societies celebrating the traditional Latin Mass (also called Tridentine Mass). Since Pope Benedict XVI's motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum , use of the Tridentine rite has increased; this, along with other papal comments on the use of appropriate liturgical music, is promoting a new plainsong revival. [6] [7]

The Plainsong and Medieval Music Society was founded in 1888 to promote the performance and study of liturgical chant and medieval polyphony. [2]

Interest in plainsong picked up in 1950s Britain, particularly in the left-wing religious and musical groups associated with Gustav Holst and the writer George B. Chambers. In the late 1980s, plainchant achieved a certain vogue as music for relaxation, and several recordings of plainchant became "classical-chart hits".

Chant types

The following is a classification of Gregorian chants into types. Other chant traditions, such as the Ambrosian or Visigothic, may lack some of the types listed, and may have other types not listed.

Syllabic

Neumatic

Neumatic with melismatic sections

Composers

Hildegard of Bingen, a nun who lived in the 12th century, composed a total of 71 Latin liturgical pieces. [8] The following is a list of her devotional pieces to the Virgin Mary. [8]

Responsory-

Antiphon-

Hymn-

Sequence-

Allelula-

Modes

Plainchant employs the modal system and this is used to work out the relative pitches of each line on the staff. Read more about the use of modes in plainsong here.

Example

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"O frondens virga"
From the Ordo Virtutum
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See also

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gregorian chant</span> Form of song

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monophony</span> Musical texture

In music, monophony is the simplest of musical textures, consisting of a melody, typically sung by a single singer or played by a single instrument player without accompanying harmony or chords. Many folk songs and traditional songs are monophonic. A melody is also considered to be monophonic if a group of singers sings the same melody together at the unison or with the same melody notes duplicated at the octave. If an entire melody is played by two or more instruments or sung by a choir with a fixed interval, such as a perfect fifth, it is also said to be monophony. The musical texture of a song or musical piece is determined by assessing whether varying components are used, such as an accompaniment part or polyphonic melody lines.

Organum is, in general, a plainchant melody with at least one added voice to enhance the harmony, developed in the Middle Ages. Depending on the mode and form of the chant, a supporting bass line may be sung on the same text, the melody may be followed in parallel motion, or a combination of both of these techniques may be employed. As no real independent second voice exists, this is a form of heterophony. In its earliest stages, organum involved two musical voices: a Gregorian chant melody, and the same melody transposed by a consonant interval, usually a perfect fifth or fourth. In these cases the composition often began and ended on a unison, the added voice keeping to the initial tone until the first part has reached a fifth or fourth, from where both voices proceeded in parallel harmony, with the reverse process at the end. Organum was originally improvised; while one singer performed a notated melody, another singer—singing "by ear"—provided the unnotated second melody. Over time, composers began to write added parts that were not just simple transpositions, thus creating true polyphony.

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A neume is the basic element of Western and Eastern systems of musical notation prior to the invention of five-line staff notation.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Old Roman chant is the liturgical plainchant repertory of the Roman rite of the early Christian Church. It was formerly performed in Rome, and, although it is closely related to Gregorian chant, the two are distinct. Gregorian Chant gradually supplanted Old Roman Chant between the 11th century and the 13th century AD. Unlike other chant traditions, Old Roman chant and Gregorian chant share essentially the same liturgy and the same texts. Many of their melodies are also closely related. Although primarily associated with the churches of Rome, the Old Roman chant was also performed in parts of central Italy, and it was possibly performed much more widely.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Levy, Kenneth; Emerson, John A.; Bellingham, Jane; Hiley, David; Zon, Bennett Mitchell (2001). Plainchant. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.40099. ISBN   978-1-56159-263-0.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Bewerunge, H (1911). "Plainchant". www.newadvent.org. Retrieved 2021-02-16.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Forney, Kristine (2015). The enjoyment of music. Joseph Machlis, Andrew Dell'Antonio (Twelfth edition, full version ed.). New York. ISBN   978-0-393-93637-7. OCLC   900609692.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. 1 2 Weber, Jerome F. "Early Western Chant", Western Catholic Liturgics Archived 2013-10-24 at the Wayback Machine
  5. 1 2 Noone, Michael J. (Michael John); Skinner, Graeme (2006). "Toledo Cathedral's Collection of Manuscript Plainsong Choirbooks: A Preliminary Report and Checklist". Notes. 63 (2): 289–328. doi:10.1353/not.2006.0157. ISSN   1534-150X. S2CID   191373486.
  6. ↑ Reid, A. (2016). "On the 10th anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, we can safely say the doomsayers are wrong". Catholic Herald.
  7. ↑ BENEDICT XVI (2007). "LETTER OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO THE BISHOPS ON THE OCCASION OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE APOSTOLIC LETTER "MOTU PROPRIO DATA" SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM ON THE USE OF THE ROMAN LITURGY PRIOR TO THE REFORM OF 1970". LA SANTA SEDE.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Stark, D (2001). "The Marian music of Hildegard von Bingen". login.ezproxy.lib.uwm.edu. Retrieved 2021-02-17.
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