Cambridge Introductions to Music

Gregorian Chant
What is Gregorian chant, and where does it come from? What purpose
does it serve, and how did it take on the form and features which make it
instantly recognizable? Designed to guide students through this key topic,
this introduction answers these questions and many more. David Hiley
describes the church services in which chant is performed, takes the reader
through the church year, explains what Latin texts were used, and, taking
Worcester Cathedral as an example, describes the buildings in which chant
was sung. The history of chant is traced from its beginnings in the early
centuries of Christianity, through the Middle Ages, the revisions in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the restoration in the nineteenth
and twentieth. Using numerous music examples, the book shows how
chants are made and how they were notated. An indispensable guide for
all those interested in the fascinating world of Gregorian chant.

David Hiley is Professor in the Institute of Musicology at the University

of Regensburg, Germany.
Cambridge Introductions to Music

Gregorian Chant
DAVID HILEY
cambridge university press
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521690355

◦ David Hiley 2009

C

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2009

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Hiley, David.
Gregorian chant / David Hiley.
p. cm. – (Cambridge introductions to music)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-521-87020-7 (hardback)
1. Gregorian chants–History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series.
ML3082.H53 2009
782.32 22–dc22 2009035294

ISBN 978-0-521-87020-7 hardback

ISBN 978-0-521-69035-5 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to
in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such
websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
For Meg and Cathy
Contents

List of illustrations page ix

List of musical examples xi
Note on the musical examples xiii
List of tables xiv
List of text boxes xv
Preface xvii
Note on front cover illustration xx

Chapter 1 Gregorian chant in the service of the church 1

1.i Singing music in church in the Middle Ages; the function
of Gregorian chant; levels of musical elaboration in the
declamation of sacred texts; sacred sound for sacred
space 1
1.ii Where chant was sung, and by whom 7
1.iii The structure of the church year and the daily services. Mass
and Office, processions 22
1.iv The sacred word 34
1.v The principal forms and styles of Gregorian chant 41

Chapter 2 The beginnings of Gregorian chant; other

rites and other sorts of chant 83
2.i The Christian church in the late Roman Empire; Rome and
the Franks 83
2.ii Learning chant in an oral culture, establishing models for
performance, centres of excellence; Old Roman and Gregorian
chant 100
2.iii Chant in the Latin West outside the Roman tradition 108
2.iv Chant in the East: the Byzantine and other traditions 116

vii
viii Contents

Chapter 3 Tradition and innovation in medieval chant:

from the ninth to the sixteenth century 121
3.i Adapting the model to suit present needs: local enhancement
of the repertory, new types of chant 121
3.ii Historiae, sequences, tropes, new Latin songs, ‘dramatic’
ceremonies 123
3.iii The later Middle Ages 153

Chapter 4 Thinking about Gregorian chant in the

Middle Ages, and notating it 162
4.i Situating Gregorian chant in the harmonious universe;
classical Greek music theory and Gregorian chant; the modal
system 162
4.ii Medieval theory and medieval chant: composition according
to theoretical principles? 178
4.iii Representing Gregorian chant in written signs; neumes, the
invention of the staff 180
4.iv Medieval chant books 204

Chapter 5 New chants for new times: from the

sixteenth century to the present; aspects of
performance 208
5.i Chant in the age of humanism; the ‘Editio Medicaea’;
neo-Gallican chant 208
5.ii A phoenix rising from the ashes? The attempt to recover
medieval chant 211
5.iii Performing monophonic chant 215

Map of places from which important medieval chant manuscripts

are preserved 219
Chronological table 220
Statistical table of chant categories by mode 223
Original manuscript sources for musical examples 225
Glossary 227
Bibliography 232
Index 241
 Illustrations

The author and publisher are grateful to be able to include the following illustrations.

Front cover London, British Library, Cotton MS Caligula A.xiv, fol. 26

c The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved 2009.
recto. 
1.1 Ground plan of Worcester Cathedral Church, adapted by
permission from Ute Engel, Worcester Cathedral: An
Architectural History (Chichester, 2007), p. 295. Copyright c
Catherine Anne Hiley. page 14
1.2 Ground plan of Worcester Cathedral Priory, adapted by
permission from John Atherton Bowen, ‘Plan of St Mary’s
Priory, Worcester’, Worcester Cathedral. Report of the First
Annual Symposium on the Precinct (1991), fig. 1, following
p. 8, and also reproduced in Engel, Worcester Cathedral, p. 278.
Copyright  c Catherine Anne Hiley. 17
1.3 Plan of the city of Worcester, adapted from Nigel Baker and
Richard Holt, Urban Growth and the Medieval Church:
Gloucester and Worcester (Aldershot, 2004). Copyright  c
Catherine Anne Hiley. 21
4.1 The medieval gamut 172
4.2 The ‘Guidonian’ hand. Copyright  c Catherine Anne Hiley. 173
4.3 The principal notes in the modal scales according to
Hermannus Contractus 176
4.4 Laon, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 239, p. 9 (fol. 4r),
reproduced by permission from Paléographie musicale, vol. I/9
(Solesmes, 1909) 185
4.5 St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 359, p. 7–27, reproduced by
permission from Paléographie musicale, vol. II/2 (Solesmes,
1924) 186
4.6 London, British Library, MS Harley 4951, fol. 124v.  c The
British Library Board. All Rights Reserved 2009. 187

ix
x List of illustrations

4.7 Benevento, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS 34, fol. 2v, reproduced

by permission from Paléographie musicale, vol. I/15 (Solesmes,
1937–57) 188
4.8 Worcester Cathedral, Chapter Library, MS F 160, fol. 294r.
Photograph by Mr Christopher Guy, Worcester Cathedral
Archaeologist. Reproduced by permission of the Chapter of
Worcester Cathedral (UK). 189
4.9 London, British Library, Cotton MS Caligula A.xiv, fol. 38r.
c The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved 2009.
 190
4.10 Clefs in London, British Library, Cotton MS Caligula A.xiv 195
4.11 Hodie in Iordane, reproduced by permission from Liber
responsorialis (Solesmes, 1895), p. 71 202
4.12 Hodie in Iordane, reproduced by permission from Liber
antiphonarius (Solesmes, 2005), p. 112 203
Map of places from which important chant manuscripts are
preserved. Copyright c Catherine Anne Hiley. 219
Musical examples

1.1 Antiphons Deprecamur te Domine and Crux fidelis inter

omnes page 20
1.2 Antiphon Hodie celesti sponso 40
1.3 The eight modes 44
1.4 Psalm 138 Domine probasti me, seventh psalm tone, with
antiphon Confortatus est 46
1.5 The eight psalm tones 48
1.6 Eighth-mode responsory verses Dum lucem habetis and Nonne
ecce omnes isti 49
1.7 Antiphons Omnis spiritus, Cito euntes, Descendit angelus, Non
enim misit filium and Apparuit caro suo 52
1.8 Antiphons Veni Domine et noli tardare and Ecce veniet
propheta magna 54
1.9 Responsories Ecce ego mitto vos and Facta autem hac voce 55
1.10 Gradual Benedicite Dominum 59
1.11 Introits Gaudete in Domino semper and Ego autem in Domino
speravi 62
1.12 Communions Servite Domino, Quis dabit ex Sion and
Adversum me exercebantur 64
1.13 Offertory Iusticie Domini recte 68
1.14 Alleluia Oportebat pati Christum 70
1.15 Hymns Christe, qui lux es, A solis ortus cardine and Sanctorum
meritis 72
1.16 Kyrie Clemens rector 75
1.17 Gloria in excelsis Deo 78
1.18 Sanctus 80
1.19 Trope Quem Iohannes in deserto. Agnus Dei 81
2.1 Short responsory Veni ad liberandum nos 89
2.2 Responsories Magi veniunt and Omnes de Saba venient in
Gregorian and Old Roman versions 105
2.3 Transitorium Corpus Christi accepimus 113

xi
xii List of musical examples

3.1 Responsory Celestium minister donorum (St Cuthbert) 126

3.2 Responsory Mundi florem (St Thomas of Canterbury) 127
3.3 Antiphons Granum cadit and Opem nobis (St Thomas of
Canterbury) 128
3.4 Sequence Celica resonent (Christmas) 130
3.5 Sequence Ecce dies triumphalis (St Victor) 133
3.6 Trope Dicite nunc pueri, introit Ex ore infantium (Holy
Innocents) 138
3.7 Conductus Lux optata claruit 141
3.8 Mary Magdalene and Christ in the garden 148
3.9 From the Ludus Danielis 150
3.10 Hildegard of Bingen, responsory Spiritui sancto 160
4.1 Tetrachords and dasia signs from Musica enchiriadis 168
4.2 Ut queant laxis, Guido’s hexachord hymn melody 172
4.3 Tetrachords in mainstream chant theory 176
4.4 Hermannus Contractus, antiphon Invicta Christi testis Afra
(St Afra) 178
4.5 Examples of liquescence 183
4.6 Gradual Ex Sion species in three notations 191
5.1 Notational signs in Guidetti’s Directorium chori (1588) 209
5.2 Offertory Laetentur caeli from the Graduale Romanum 1908
and the Editio Medicaea 1614 210
 Note on the musical examples

Notes are named according to a modification of the Guidonian system, with capital
letters for the lower octave, small ones for the upper octave:
Guidonian:

In this book:

Notes are given in the main text in italic.

Liquescent notes are printed small and joined to the main note with a slur:

The note-groupings of the original manuscripts are reflected in the transcriptions,

without the use of slurs.
Sign for oriscus: n
Sign for quilisma: w

xiii
 Tables

1.1 The order of Mass page 24

1.2 The daily cycle 25
1.3 The hours of the Divine Office 27
1.4 The Easter cycle 32
1.5 The Advent–Christmas–Epiphany cycle 32
1.6 Texts for Mass of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary 37
1.7 Responsory texts for Epiphany 39
4.1 Modes in the early Middle Ages 169
4.2 Eight medieval types of signs for notating chant 182
4.3 St Amand or paleofrankish neumes 197
4.4 The interval notation of Hermannus Contractus 201

xiv
Text boxes

1.1 Gregory the Great on the Eucharist page 3

1.2 The Benedictine Rule 10
2.1 Ordo Romanus I 87
2.2 Singing from memory and singing from books 107
3.1 Amalar of Metz on the Mass 143
3.2 The Visitatio sepulchri in late tenth-century Winchester 146
4.1 The harmony of the universe 165
4.2 Guido of Arezzo 174
4.3 Neume 181
4.4 Chanting in rhythm 194
5.1 The Motu proprio of Pius X 214
5.2 Singing chant in the early twentieth century 217

xv
 Preface

This book tries to answer some of the questions which are often raised about
Gregorian chant: what is it about and why is it the way it is? where does it come
from, who composed it, and for whom? These are questions about its history, and
the book is orientated towards historical matters. Thinking about the nature of
Gregorian chant may nevertheless help explain why so many are interested in it and
like to listen to it. For it may very well be that more people listen to Gregorian chant
today, or have heard it at some time or other, in some form or other, than at any
time in history. In sheer numbers, that is, not as a percentage of the population
in lands with a Christian heritage. Every so often a recording of Gregorian chant
climbs towards the top of the sales charts (as I write these words, the singing of the
monks of the Cistercian Abbey of Heiligenkreuz in Austria is making the running).
No beat, no harmony, such simple note patterns! Sung quietly, free from tension,
it is far removed indeed from modern music of almost every kind, and a welcome
respite from the haste and clamour of everyday life. Its ‘other-worldly’ character
appeals to esoteric movements, and it has been thoroughly exploited in branches of
the entertainment industry.
By contrast with this popularity of Gregorian chant outside the church, things are
less happy in the original home of chant, the worship of the Christian church. Church
attendance and the numbers of those entering holy orders fall. The changes brought
about after the Second Vatican Council (1962–5) led to a drastic decline in the use
of Latin, the language of Gregorian chant, in the services of the Roman Catholic
Church. Those in the church who regard chant as a relic of the past, inappropriate for
the modern church and best forgotten, are by no means few in number. Nevertheless,
there are strong movements in many countries today to cultivate chant in church
worship, and singing courses are popular. There seems little danger that chant will
sink into oblivion.
As well as occupying these spaces in modern life, plainchant is of great interest to
anyone with a feel for history. It is, after all, the earliest substantial (very substantial!)
body of music preserved in written form. So it has a regular place in the syllabus of
institutions of higher education, not least in inter-disciplinary courses in medieval
studies.

xvii
xviii Preface

The reasons why so many are interested in, or listen to chant, outside its original
context are certainly important, but they should be the subject of a different book.
This one concentrates on the time when chant was created. For it is a fact that
nowadays we do not compose chant, just as we do not build medieval cathedrals. In
the Middle Ages singing chant dominated the lives of very many men and women,
including many of the leaders of medieval society. To understand chant we need not
only to look at it note by note but also to think about the circumstances in which it
was made and performed. We need to get a sense of the purpose and shape of the
religious services, of the places of worship, and of how medieval men and women
might have thought about chant.
There are plenty of musical examples in this book, and it is my earnest hope that
readers will take the time to sing them through, at least in their minds, or even pick
them out on a musical instrument. Then they can test their reactions against my
descriptions. Some, however, may well wish to keep to the more general information
and pass over the discussion of particular pieces of chant, which are accordingly set
off in appearance.
I have written about the music fully aware of the well-known problem that music
is something which happens in time. Looking at a string of marks on a page in
musical examples is very far removed from experiencing chant in a medieval church
service. But that is what I would wish readers to try and imagine, in their mind’s
ear and eye. Hence the decision to relate some of what is explained to a specific
church, Worcester Cathedral, and to transcribe most of the musical examples from
Worcester manuscripts.
My view of chant is naturally shaped by my own experience of it, the way I have
come to know it, what I have read and learned, what I should like to believe about it.
The experience of others is inevitably different. But that is the chance any writer on
things of the past has to take. Faced with the miraculous beauty of the music and the
sheer size of the achievement – nothing less than creating Latin chant to be sung most
of the day (and part of the night) throughout one’s whole life – it seems well worth
taking that chance. For the ultimate point is not to describe the patterns made by
those marks on the page but to understand and appreciate the creative achievement
of which men and women are capable. I am also convinced that music is such a
complex phenomenon, and our powers of appreciating it so infinitely various, that
the distance in time between then and now is relatively insignificant, and no more
of a hindrance for chant than it is for any great music of the past.
As its place in the series of Cambridge Introductions suggests, this book is not
intended to be as comprehensive as some previous reference books on chant. In
keeping with this, the ‘Further Reading’ paragraphs and Bibliography are mostly
restricted to publications basic to the study of chant, although some citations will
take readers into more specialized research.
 Preface xix

The book is also different in character from another one with a similar title,
Richard Crocker’s An Introduction to Gregorian Chant of 2000. This is the right place
to acknowledge a debt to Richard Crocker. Helping his volume in the New Oxford
History of Music towards publication in 1989 was one of the most valuable formative
experiences of my early career. That we write quite differently about chant would
have become clear when my own Western Plainchant: A Handbook appeared in 1993.
Now history has repeated itself, once again in the shape of two very different books.

I am grateful to Vicki Cooper of Cambridge University Press for commissioning this

book, and both to her and to Rebecca Jones, Rosina Di Marzo and Ann Lewis for
their expert help in guiding it into print. Special thanks go to Nicolas Bell of the
British Library, Christopher Guy of Worcester Cathedral, Ute Engel and Jill Atherton
for their help and generosity over the illustrations. My wife Ann saved me from many
egregious errors and persuaded me to smarten up many points of presentation.
As a music historian I have learned most of all from what has been written by the
glorious company of chant scholars, past and present, not least those of the Research
Group ‘Cantus Planus’ of the International Musicological Society, whose meetings
over more than two decades have been such pleasant and profitable occasions. If their
words and ideas appear to have fallen on stony ground here, I beg their forgiveness.
Teaching for ten years at Royal Holloway College, University of London, and for
over twenty at Regensburg University, has certainly benefitted me as much as my
students. I hope future students will find something in these pages to spur their
imagination. In a similar way, I am sure I have learned more from my daughters
than they have from me (though not about Gregorian chant) and so this book is
dedicated affectionately to them.
 Note on front cover illustration

London, British Library, Cotton MS Caligula A.xiv, from fol. 26r: The Annunciation
to Joachim

The first part of the manuscript Caligula A.xiv is an eleventh-century troper probably
made in Winchester for Worcester. In this illustration an angel announces to Joachim
that his wife Ann will bear a child. This will be a daughter, Mary, mother of Christ.
The illustration appears amid the trope verses to chants for Mass on the feast of
the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 8 September. Joachim is depicted as a
herdsman with a flock of animals. The story of Joachim and Ann is not biblical but
is related in the Greek Protevangelium of James, then in the Latin apocryphal gospel
of Pseudo-Matthew. Like all the pictures in MS Caligula A.xiv, this one is framed
by Latin verses in Leonine hexameters (that is, with internal rhyme, so named after
Leoninus, optimus organista of Notre-Dame in Paris c.1200):
Credidit angelico Ioiachim per nuntia verbo
credens foecundam conceptu germinis Annam
Christum glorificat inopi qui semper habundat
[Joachim believed the angelic word through the (divine) message, believing Ann
to be fertile by the conception of an child. He glorifies Christ, who is always
generous to one in need.]

(Translation based on that by Elizabeth C. Teviotdale, ‘The Cotton Troper (London,

British Library, Cotton MS Caligula A.xiv, ff. 1–36): A Study of an Illustrated English
Troper of the Eleventh Century,’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, 1991, p. 309.)

xx
Chapter 1

Gregorian chant in the service of the church

1.i Singing music in church in the Middle Ages; the function

of Gregorian chant; levels of musical elaboration in the
declamation of sacred texts; sacred sound for sacred space

Gregorian chant is the single-voice (‘monophonic’) music sung in the services of

the Roman church. It was first recorded in writing, that is, with musical notation, in
the ninth century. A great number of its Latin texts can be traced back for another
century before that, but the melodies first become tangible, so to speak, in the ninth
century. Gregorian chant is the earliest music preserved in such quantities – for we
are talking about thousands of items. Much of the medieval corpus has dropped out
of use, but it is still the music with the longest reconstructible history sung today.
It is an inspiring thought that we can not only stand in an early medieval church
like Charlemagne’s Palatine chapel at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), built 792–805, but
also perform the chant sung at the time the chapel was built or soon after. Inspiring
in more ways than one: most obviously because something embedded deep in our
history becomes audible. Admittedly, music does not survive in notation alone and
there is, alas, no unbroken line of performance practice between then and now.
When we sing Gregorian chant today we cannot ultimately be sure how close we are
getting to the way it was done in Charlemagne’s time. Nevertheless, the written link
between then and now is longer than a millennium.

The function of Gregorian chant

Gregorian chant is liturgical chant. ‘Liturgy’ is a word used very often in this book.
It is the usual word for the cycle of services as a whole in the worship of the Christian
churches. Liturgical chant is therefore chant sung during Christian services. The
term comes from the Greek word leitourgia, late Latin liturgia, meaning simply
‘service’ in the public good, without restriction to religious worship. The modern
English term ‘service’ is to be understood here as ‘the service of God’, things done
in his service. Compare the German term ‘Gottesdienst’; while French ‘office’ and
Italian ‘ufficio’ relate to the term ‘office’ in the sense of the performance of a

1
2 Gregorian Chant

duty. ‘Office’ is usually restricted in Latin Christian worship to refer to the Office
hours, that is, the services other than Mass. Liturgy usually refers to everything
performed, in both the Mass and the Divine Office. In the Eastern churches the
term ‘liturgy’ is restricted to the Eucharist, the part of Mass where bread and wine
are given to the believers. (The Greek word eucharistia means ‘thanksgiving’.) The
word ‘liturgy’ can be used in conjunction with other terms to refer to something
more specific. So the ‘Good Friday liturgy’ refers to the services performed on Good
Friday.
Chant functions principally as a vehicle for the ceremonious declamation of
sacred Latin texts, whether by a single soloist, a small group or a choir. Chant-
ing the texts in a measured, disciplined manner is a good way for the group of
worshippers to act together; the more harmonious the singing, the more inspiring
the communal act. When soloists exert their full powers in singing, say, a tract or
offertory at Mass, they add a dimension to the religious experience commensu-
rate with all those other things beyond the Latin text that enhance worship, such
as the ceremonial actions, the vestments of the participants, and the architectural
setting, including such features as stained-glass windows. Music is one of many non-
verbal elements in worship, none the less essential for being difficult to describe in
words.
In the liturgy mankind gives thanks and praise to God, who is present during the
liturgy. Moreover, through the liturgy God acts to bestow his grace on mankind. He
is praised because he is above all things, transcendent, distinct from the universe.
He is thanked for creating the world and saving mankind through the gift of his
son, Jesus Christ. Praising, thanking and asking for God’s mercy are done in prayers,
while lessons (readings) recall important events in the history of salvation. In chants,
selected sentences are given a special musical setting which enhances their spirituality.
This is especially appropriate because God is a spirit, not material.
Over the centuries since Christianity was declared the state religion by the Roman
Emperor Constantine the Great (324–37) a complicated cycle of services was devel-
oped in which the praises of God were sung and the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ were commemorated. Each day had its round of services, and each service
had its own particular form and content; and the services were performed each day
throughout the year. Some days were more important than others. Sundays were
more important than ordinary weekdays, and so too were special days in Christ’s
life, and days when holy men and women of particular significance for the history of
the church were commemorated. What was sung, and how much, depended on the
importance of the day. But even on an ordinary weekday with no special occasion
to be commemorated, the full cycle of services took up most of the day and part of
the night.
 Gregorian chant in the service of the church 3

Text box 1.1 Gregory the Great on the Eucharist

The role of Gregory the Great, pope from 590 to 604, in the creation of ‘Gregorian’ chant is not
as clear as one would like, but his status as a theologian, the last of the four Latin ‘Doctors of
the Church’, is unchallenged. His Dialogues tell of the lives of St Benedict and other early saints.

What right believing Christian can doubt that in the very hour of the sacrifice, at the
words of the Priest, the heavens be opened, and the quires of Angels are present in
that mystery of Jesus Christ; that high things are accomplished with low, and earthly
joined to heavenly, and that one thing is made of visible and invisible.
From The Dialogues of Gregory the Great, trans. P. W., ed. Edmund Gardner (London, 1911),
4.58. Original text in J.-P. Migne, Patrologia latina, vols. 75–78 (Paris, 1878–1903).

Levels of musical elaboration in the declamation

of sacred texts
There are four basic categories of sacred text. Readings from the Bible and other
chosen literature (such as the sermons and homilies of the Church Fathers), and
prayers addressed to the Almighty, are two of these categories. Both are performed
by intoning the texts on a single note with slight inflections at the ends of clauses.
During the performance of the Office (the cycle of services other than Mass), a large
number of psalms are sung, each and every day; these are performed by a choir using
simple intonation formulae not very different in principle from the way prayers and
lessons are intoned. The fourth category is made up of verses for more elaborate
singing.
Even the very simple intonation of lessons and prayers lends to them a special
quality, compared with plain reading. It sets them apart from everyday speech and
‘depersonalizes’ them, since the same formula is used over and over again regardless
of the semantic content of the text, regardless of whether it is joyful or sorrowful,
narrative or hortatory. The priest praying or the deacon or other official intoning
the lesson is a vehicle, an instrument whereby the words become audible, rather
than an actor delivering a personal statement.
Much of this holds good for the more elaborate forms of Gregorian chant as well.
They have a much more varied melodic vocabulary than the formulae for intoning
prayers and lessons, and can therefore respond in infinitely subtle ways to the text
being sung. However, this subtlety is not a matter of more ‘expressive’ singing, of the
sort we know from romantic and modern music. That would bring the chant down
to the personal level when it should partake of the divine. But the elaborate musical
style reflects the syntactic structure of the text in a great variety of ways, giving it
musical shape at the level of the sentence, the clause, down to individual words.
4 Gregorian Chant

Sacred sound for sacred space

Gregorian chant creates a sacred sound to match the sacred space in which it is sung.
This is something which religious music of many kinds, outside Western Christian
society as well, has always done. Therefore, while Gregorian chant is undoubtedly a
means of making the sacred Latin text audible, it does so in ways whereby the text
sometimes seems almost secondary. The sacred sound is more important than the
sense. It is part of a ritual where most of what is done has symbolic significance, far
removed from the mundane actions of everyday life. Gregorian chant contributes in
its own special way to the quality of the ritual experience.
What do we mean by ‘ritual’? Ritual is here understood as a system of traditional
actions to be carried out in the presence of what is sacred, following established
rules. Such systems are active in all human societies where the ‘sacred’ has any
meaning. They typically comprise actions of symbolic significance, a special form of
language and a special body of texts to be recited or sung. The rituals attached to the
Christian religion are particularly rich in form and content, not least in their musical
components. When trying to understand the ritual of which Gregorian chant is a
part, it should be remembered that music is not its only non-verbal component.
There are others: church architecture and stained-glass windows, images and church
furniture, the dress of the performers and the objects they hold and use, the bells
and the incense. It is fair to say that these things have a stronger cumulative impact
than the Latin texts being recited.

Words and music

Much depends on the degree of musical elaboration. Simple antiphons, which frame
the Office psalms, enhance the text quite delicately, in a concise and restrained
manner, so that the words are perfectly audible. In other sorts of chant, such as the
gradual or offertory at Mass, the proportion of notes to syllables is much greater, and
the melody transcends its role as a vehicle for the text. As far as understanding the text
is concerned, this musical richness might be thought an obstacle to comprehension,
but that is actually a minor consideration. The great majority of the texts were
excerpted from the Book of Psalms, known by heart in its entirety and sung more or
less complete every week. The chants themselves were performed from memory. It is
important to understand that the Latin texts are not being presented to an audience,
as a story-teller might address a group of listeners. They are more like a reference
point for a religious musical experience, for a reaching out to the deity, who is no
more to be comprehended in words than is music itself.
It might be objected that ordinary people in the Middle Ages did not know the
Latin Psalter by heart, that in fact they did not understand Latin at all. But a religious
 Gregorian chant in the service of the church 5

community performed the liturgy in the manner (including the language) estab-
lished as the right way for praise and commemoration. The religious community did
this both for itself and on behalf of the rest of mankind, for those who had mundane
occupations and no time for praise and commemoration but who needed to know
that the religious were acting for them, in the proper manner.
Many of us come to Gregorian chant from the standpoint of classical music. At
school and university, chant is often presented as Chapter One, as it were, in the long
story of the History of Western Music, probably in a programme of required reading
and listening. We might easily gain the impression that chant, monophonic music,
is hardly more than a primitive forerunner of more sophisticated and interesting
polyphonic music, in a progression moving steadily onward and upward. Or we may
simply have heard a lot of classical music in our formative years. It may take some
time to realize that chant does not ‘work’ in the same way as music from at least the
sixteenth century onwards. When William Byrd writes a motet on the text Defecit in
dolore (Cantiones sacrae, 1589), or Schubert a song such as Erstarrung (‘Ich such’ im
Schnee vergebens’, Die Winterreise, 1827), they match words and music (to varying
degrees, of course) in such a way that the music only makes expressive sense with
that particular text; there would be no reason to write this particular music if the
text were a different one. The relationship between melody and text in Gregorian
chant, on the other hand, is much more like that of a motet of the thirteenth century,
or a chanson of the fourteenth century by Guillaume de Machaut. In many of these
chansons the same music carries different verses of text because of the strophic form
or repetition scheme. Individual words will not be matched by a unique melodic
gesture, and individual turns of phrase in the music have none of the expressive
connotations they were later to carry.
This has two obvious implications for Gregorian chant. The first is that the same
text could be delivered in different ways according to the liturgical context, and the
same music could be used for different texts.

Here is an example:
‘Eripe me de inimicis meis, Deus meus’ is the start of Psalm 58 (Psalm 59 in the King
James Bible): ‘Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God’. The whole psalm will be
chanted to a simple tone, with the same melodic formula for every verse, on Tuesday
each week during the Night Office (if not displaced by the different selection of pieces
needed for a special feast day). The first verse of the psalm alone is sung as the central
section of some of the great responsories of the Night Office, such as Adiutor et
susceptor and Ne perdas cum impiis on Passion Sunday. In this context Eripe me is sung to
a more elaborate tone than a simple psalm. These tones, one for each of the eight
modes, are used hundreds of times in the course of a year. Elsewhere in the Office hours,
Eripe me turns up in some manuscripts as the beginning of a simple antiphon sung at
6 Gregorian Chant

Lauds on Friday each week. Turning to the Mass, we find it as a gradual, coupled with
other phrases of similar import from Psalm 17. Here it is sung on Passion Sunday to an
elaborate mode-3 melody, which shares melodic phrases with other mode-3 graduals. But
this is by no means all. An alleluia in mode 2 sung on one of the summer Sundays of the
year has Eripe me as its verse, and two offertories also begin with the same phrase, one in
mode 7 for the Wednesday of Passion Week, and one in mode 3 for the Monday of Holy
Week. All these very different ways of declaiming the text are appropriate for their
liturgical purpose. It goes without saying that none of the melodies, from simple psalm
tone to ornate offertory, express in a modern, personal way the feelings of a man
oppressed by his enemies.

The other side of the coin, so to speak, is a matter of compositional technique.

Many turns of phrase in Gregorian chant are associated with particular modes
(that is, tonalities) and particular types of chant (responsory, gradual, etc.). The
opening melodic phrase of the gradual Eripe me is used for at least four other
graduals in mode 3, the next phrase in three others, while two graduals besides Eripe
me use the same final phrase. The second part of the chant, the verse, has more
examples of this sharing of melodic phrases. Recognizing this technique is of crucial
importance for understanding how it was possible to learn, perform and pass on
thousands of melodies to many generations of singers, largely without written aids.
The traditional melodies, many composed of the same well-known phrases, were
fixed in a framework made up by the structure of the text and the norms of melodic
movement (established ways of starting and ending a chant, how to get to and from
important points in between, and how to halt the musical motion in order to deliver
lengthier passages of text). Knowing how graduals like Eripe me were sung as a type
was more than half way to knowing how to sing Eripe me as an individual piece.
Just as phrases from sacred texts recur again and again, setting up a network of
associations across all of sacred history, so also musical phrases recur. Just as the
Latin texts are drawn again and again from the inexhaustible riches of holy writ, so
the chant seems to be drawn out of a divine well of music, eternally renewed, ever
present, resonating in the sacred space from one end of the year to the other.

Further reading

The study of religious worship in its wider sense, and not restricted to Christianity,
involves the very large subject areas of anthropology and theology, waters too deep
to enter here. Christian worship is treated in a wider context in Eliade, Patterns
in Comparative Religion. See also the opening chapters in Senn, Christian Liturgy: