Welcome back to Between the Barlines! In today’s episode we will begin to take a look further down the timeline and talk about how the church provoked musical changes in the first millennium. The majority of the facts and information in the next few episodes focuses on music created from Judaism and Christianity. The focus on these two religions does not in any way intend to discount or discredit music created from other religions. Further down the historic timeline, techniques from religions like Hinduism, Islam, and others permeate the Western canon of music, of which our focus tends to lie on especially in these earlier eras. 

Judaism, being one of the oldest religions, is a foundation not only for music but also for Christianity. Chanting scriptures and verses as well as singing psalms are a major feature of both religions. When we think of the church and think of its music, hymns and chants are probably pretty high up on the list. Today, we are going to focus on plainchant, specifically Gregorian chant, as we open up our discussion on the ways the church has shaped early music.

Beginning in the Roman Catholic Church, gregorian chant is a form of monophonic song that is unaccompanied and typically sung in Latin. The creation of gregorian chant was a way that Roman leaders codified their repertory. The Frankish Kingdom was of great aid throughout this process, especially during the late 7th century into the early 8th century AD. Most of this music at the time was still by oral transmission. However, if we think back a few episodes to when we spoke about the first music ever written down, we are now centuries later and still seem to have no means of notation. Pope Gregory I, who served the church from 590-604, is typically credited with growing the repertory of chants, but it wasn’t until Pope Stephen II with the help of Frankish leaders that sources have confirmed chant by means of oral transmission was adopted into the church.

Until the 9th century, chants were learned by rote and were typically formulaic and simple. Singers just remembered these melodies because of how frequently they were sung. In order to have a more stable and reliable source of chant material, a means of notation was created. The earliest type of notation is by signs called neumes. Neumes in their early days were placed above text and indicated melodic gestures for each syllable. In the 10th and 11th centuries, neumes underwent a change and became what we called “heightened neumes.” Instead of being placed at the same level over text, the contour of the intended vocal line could be perceived more easily with the heightening of some neumes. This became more apparent as lines, clefs, and staffs came into play.

Guido of Arezzo, an 11th century monk, was one of the musicians to suggest using lines and spaces to denote the pitch of the neumes. At first, staffs began as 1 line, but Guido of Arezzo’s staff included 4 lines a third apart from one another. This is similar to the staff we use now, which is 5 lines a third apart from one another. Guido of Arezzo had another cool thing that he did, but we will talk about that in a future episode. 

Back to talking about chant - all of this line and space stuff and neumatic notation was cool and all, but it didn’t show what a composer at that point wanted rhythmically. Chant, especially gregorian chant, really gave the singer a chance to play around with the text and rhythmically portray their own recitation. In a way, this is still improved and could totally be learned by rote and performed in the same way. However, it also still gives singers an artistic freedom to play around with contour and emphasis different words depending on the day. It wasn’t until the 20th century that modern editions of chant were created; Pope Pius X in 1903 had Solesmes monks prepare modern notations for use in church. Still this notation did not completely prescribe a rhythmic nature to the written chant, but gave performers a more unified sense of what the chant at the year 1903 was supposed to sound like. I won’t get into the weeds about the different notations, but if you are interested in learning how to sing using Solesmes notation, I have attached a great guide by Noel Jones on a beginner’s guide to singing Gregorian chant notation in the episode notes and on my instagram @maeveberrypiano!

Next episode, we will return to speaking about scales and modes, but this time, we will focus on the church modes! We will also take a look at more Greek music theory philosophies from a little further down the timeline. Join me next time on Between the Barlines!

Information taken from personal notes, Burkholder’s History of Western Music, and various aurally cited websites.

https://www.ststephenvc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/beginner-guide-chant.pdf