Western Christian Chant and Liturgy

The chants of the Christian Church rank among the great treasures of Western civilization. Like Romanesque architecture, they stand as a memorial to religious faith in the Middle Ages, embodying the sense of community and the aesthetic values of the time (see Figure 2.2). Not only does this body of plainchant include some of the noblest melodies to survive to modern times, it also served as the source and inspiration for later music in the Western art tradition, much of which bears its imprint. If we are to understand the various genres and forms of chant and how they were used in medieval ceremonial context, we need to know the basic elements of the Western Christian liturgy, especially the daily Mass.

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Because plainchant is a melody that projects the sacred and devotional words of ritual, its shape cannot be separated from its verbal message or from its place in the worship service. Musically, it can be as simple as a recitation on a single pitch or as elaborate as a long, winding melody that requires a highly trained soloist to perform. The degree of musical elaboration depends on the function of the words in the ritual and on who is singing — a soloist, a trained choir, or the people. All of this is determined by the position of the chant in the liturgy.

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The sacred worship service known as the liturgy is made up of a body of texts and rites whose purpose is to glorify God and the saints, teach the Gospels — the life and works of Jesus — and exhort the worshippers along the path of salvation. At its core is a yearly cycle of readings from the Bible and a weekly cycle of readings from the Book of Psalms. The texts are prescribed according to the church calendar, a yearly cycle that determines which saints, events, and feast days are remembered in a given service, or which seasons of the church year (for example, the Advent season leading up to Christmas or the penitential Lenten season preparing for Easter) are being celebrated. Although much of each worship service is the same at every observance, other aspects change with the day or season.

The readings that make up the liturgy are at the core of the two principal types of service: the Office and the Mass. The Divine Office centers on the communal reading of the psalms. The Mass also includes readings and prayers, but is unique in its ritualistic commemoration of the last supper of Jesus and his disciples as recounted in the Gospels.

The Office, or Canonical Hours, first codified in the Rule of Saint Benedict (ca. 530; see Figure 2.3), consists of a series of eight prayer services observed at specified times around the clock by the members of a religious community. By calling a group of monks or nuns to pray collectively every few hours (see Figures 2.6 and 2.10), the Office provides the ritual around which life in a monastery or convent is structured. It consists of prayers, recitation of scriptural passages, and songs.

A Closer Look The Experience of the Mass

The Mass was the focal point of medieval religious life. For the illiterate populace, it was the main source of instruction about the central tenets of their faith. It was also — and most essentially — the ritual reenactment of the last supper in the Eucharist, a sacrament or sign that at once symbolized and encouraged the communal life of Christians (see Figure 2.4). Ideally, these fundamental elements were meant to engage and inspire, gripping not only the mind but also the heart.

The building where Mass was celebrated was designed to evoke awe. Whether a simple rural church or a grand cathedral, it was likely to be the tallest structure most people would ever enter. Its dome, whether painted with simple stars or studded with gold mosaics, was a replica of heaven. Pillars and walls were adorned with sculptures, tapestries, or paintings depicting pious saints, the sufferings of Jesus, or the torments of hell, each image a visual sermon. In these resonant spaces, the spoken word was easily lost, but singing carried words clearly to all corners.

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Medieval Christians, especially in central and northern Europe, were not long removed from old pagan customs of propitiating the gods to ensure good crops or prevent misfortune, and they looked to Christian observances to serve the same role. Life for most was hard, and with the constant threat of disease, famine, and war, average life expectancy was under thirty years. Worship in a well-appointed church afforded not only an interlude of beauty, but also a way to approach God and secure blessings in this life and the next.

In such a space, the Mass begins with the procession of the priest and his assistants to the altar, an action that invites those who gather to form an assembly of believers. The choir sings the Introit (entrance psalm) and continues with the Kyrie, whose threefold invocations symbolize the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Greek words and text repetitions reflect the Kyrie’s origins in Byzantine processional rituals. There follows the Gloria, a song of praise, and a collective prayer (the Collect), intoned by the priest on behalf of all those present.

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The Liturgy of the Word focuses on Bible recitations (the Epistle and Gospel), florid chants (Gradual, Alleluia, and Sequence), church teachings as summarized in the profession of faith called the Credo (“I believe”), and meditation on their message (the sermon). In the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the priest turns from words to actions as he prepares, consecrates, consumes, and distributes the bread and wine. The main sung portions of this part of the Mass include the Offertory, a florid chant on a psalm verse performed during the offering of bread and wine, the Sanctus (Holy, holy, holy), and the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God), which respectively exalt and petition the Lord. After communion is distributed the choir sings the Communion chant, based on a psalm. The priest concludes the service by singing Ite, missa est (Go, you are dismissed). From this phrase came the Latin name for the entire service, Missa, which became the English word Mass.

Throughout the Mass, the music serves both to convey the words and to engage the worshippers. As Saint Basil the Great (ca. 330–379), a father of the Eastern church, observed,

When the Holy Spirit saw that mankind was ill-inclined toward virtue and that we were heedless of the righteous life because of our inclination to pleasure, what did he do? He blended the delight of melody with doctrine in order that through the pleasantness and softness of the sound we might unawares receive what was useful in the words.

Every Office liturgy includes several psalms, each with an antiphon, a chant sung before and after the psalm; lessons (Bible readings) with musical responses called responsories, hymns, canticles (poetic biblical passages outside the Book of Psalms), and prayers. Over the course of a normal week, all 150 psalms are sung at least once. The principal Office services, liturgically and musically, are Matins and Vespers.

The Mass remains the most important service of the Catholic Church. In other Christian churches, the service is also known as the Eucharist, the Liturgy, Holy Communion, and the Lord’s Supper, but all of them culminate in a symbolic reenactment of the last supper (Luke 22:19–20; 1 Corinthians 11:23–26) in which the celebrant blesses bread and wine and offers them to the faithful in memory of Jesus’ sacrifice for the atonement of sin. An outline of the Catholic Mass, as it has been practiced since about 1200, appears in Figure 2.5, with letters next to the important musical items to indicate their position in NAWM 3, the complete Mass for Christmas Day.

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The liturgy of the Mass falls into three successive parts: introductory prayers; the Liturgy of the Word, during which the congregation listens to passages intoned from the Hebrew Scriptures and from the apostles and Gospel writers of the New Testament; and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, during which the bread and wine are consecrated and distributed. Within these three stages, some texts remain the same from one day to the next while others change according to the season or the particular occasion being celebrated. The variable texts, called the Proper of the Mass, include the Introit, Collect, Epistle, Gradual, Alleluia, Gospel, Offertory, Communion, and others. The unchanging texts (each of which, however, may be sung to several different melodies throughout the year), called the Ordinary of the Mass, include the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, and Ite, missa est. (See A Closer Look and Figure 2.5.)

Initially, chant melodies were learned by hearing others sing them, a process called oral transmission, leaving no written traces. How chant melodies were created and transmitted without writing from the fourth to the eighth century has been the subject of much study and controversy. Some scholars suggest that many chants were improvised within strict conventions based on formulas such as those used by epic singers and storytellers. We can find evidence for such oral composition in the chants themselves, many of which share the same melodic contour or feature characteristic internal and cadential patterns. However, as long as this process depended on memory and learning by ear, melodies were subject to change and variation.

Such variation was not suitable if the chants were to be performed in the same way each time in churches across a wide territory, as the pope and Frankish kings (Charlemagne and others) eventually came to require. In the late eighth and ninth centuries, therefore, rudimentary systems of musical notation were invented to standardize the performance of chant melodies. This coincided with a determined campaign by Frankish political leaders to promote a uniform liturgy and music in order to consolidate and increase their influence on worshippers throughout their lands. Trained missionaries traveled between Rome and the north to stabilize the repertory of tunes and suppress local variations. A persuasive tool of Frankish propaganda was the legend of Saint Gregory, who was reputed to have written down the chant melodies, guided by divine inspiration in the form of a dove singing in his ear (see In Context and Figure 2.9). Notation, then, was both a result of striving for uniformity and a means of perpetuating that uniformity.

Between the fifth and ninth centuries, the peoples of western and northern Europe converted to Christianity and adopted the doctrines and rites of the Roman church. The official “Gregorian” chant was established in the Frankish Empire before the middle of the ninth century, and from then until nearly the close of the Middle Ages, all important developments in European music took place not in Rome, but north of the Alps (see Figure 2.7). This shift in musical centers occurred partly because of political conditions. The Muslim conquests of Syria, North Africa, and especially Spain, completed by 719, left the southern Christian regions either in the hands of occupying forces or under constant threat of attack. Meanwhile, various cultural centers arose in western and central Europe. Between the sixth and eighth centuries, missionaries from Irish and Scottish monasteries established schools in their own lands and abroad, especially in what is now Germany and Switzerland. An English monk, Alcuin of York, helped Emperor Charlemagne in his project to revive education throughout the Frankish Empire. One result of this eighth- and ninth-century renaissance was the development of important musical centers, including the famous monastery of Saint Gall in what is now Switzerland. Here, the northern, Frankish influence on plainchant is evident in melodic lines with more leaps, especially thirds, and in the introduction of both new melodies and new forms of chant such as tropes, sequences, and liturgical drama, all to be discussed later.

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