Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
Copyright 2020 Melanie Spiller. All rights reserved.
Musical Misperceptions
Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
There are loads of things that we all take for granted about Gregorian chant that are
fundamentally false. I’ve been collecting these for a little while, and here’s a short
selection of them.
Pope Gregorius did not invent Gregorian chant. Chant was alive and well long
before he was born. While he was pope (590-604), he instigated the
documentation of chant. There wasn’t any music notation yet, so it was mostly the
lyrics and the suitable events that were written down.
Pope Gregorius also got credit for updating the calendar. But basically, he wanted
an accurate way of documenting the various feasts of the year, along with the
assortment of suitable songs, and had a calendar built. The real update to the
calendar was done by another Pope Gregory in the 16
th
century.
Gregorian chant was originally sung in Greek, until the language of the church
officially changed to Latin in the 3
rd
or 4
th
century. Even then, it was only Latin in
Western Europe—all of Byzantium stuck to Greek. It’s from this language
digression that the names for the current flavors of chant originate: Gregorian in
Rome, Ambrosian in Milan, Gallican in France, and Mozarabic (or Visigothic) in
Spain.
Liber Usualis, long thought to be the ultimate source for Gregorian chant, was only
compiled and published in 1896, and is an abridged collection from four other
works (the Gradual, Antiphonal, Missal, and Breviary).
The Mass used to be comprised of the songs of the Proper (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo,
Sanctus, Agnus Dei), exemplified by Bach’s B minor Mass in its highest form, and
of course, by many other favorite composers (Palestrina, Josquin, Brumel, et al). A
change of meaning came around 1300, when the songs of the Ordinary (Introit,
Gradual, Alleluia, Tract, Offertory, Communion) were added. Songs from the
Proper were included as early as the 6
th
century. It seems that the Ordinary songs
originated in Byzantium and spread westward. Their arrival in Rome wasn’t
documented until around the 11
th
century.
Not all Propers were created equal. Although current practice offers only a few
choices for the Propers (15, I think), there is documentation for more than 300
versions of Agnus Dei (in chant. There are WAY more options in polyphony and
more modern music).
There are lots of similarities between Jewish and Gregorian chant: absence of
regular meter, responsorial and antiphonal performance, prevailingly conjunct
motion, psalmodic recitation, syllabic style mixed with melismas, and use of
standard formulas. It’s probable that Christian chant was based on Jewish,
although it doesn’t seem to be documented.
Alleluia (hallelujah) does not mean “yippee.” It’s from Hebrew, translated from
Greek and then derived into Middle English, and means “praise ye Jehovah” (or
Yahweh). Its first known use in English was in the 14
th
century. In the New
Testament, it appears only in Revelation 19 (it’s there four times). It was translated
in the Septuagint (the Jewish Greek version of the Bible made in the pre-Christian
period) and became “alleluia” in the Vulgate, which was the 4th century Christian
Latin version of the Bible.
Gregorian chant is not sung only by men. In fact, the earliest documents imply
that antiphons had women and children singing in response an octave up from
where the men sang the first part. This is documented by a fellow called Philo, a
Jewish chronicler in circa 60 A.D. That’s right, 60--round the same time people
were starting to document the New Testament.
The idea some people have of Gregorian chant, where it’s sung on one note with a
vacuum-cleaner swoop to begin each new phrase is fairly new. Gregorian chant is
super melodic. The single-note thing was invented by Giovanni Guidetti (1530-
1592) and is called psalmody. I don’t know why it was invented, though, but my
guess was to make it easier for priests and other non-singers (like laymen) to sing
them.
Gregorian chant is not (correctly) sung all at one plodding speed. It was meant for
the words of Christ to be sung slowly and on a low pitch, the words of the Jews to
be sung fast and high, and a medium pace and pitch for the words of the
evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
I hope you enjoyed this little list. Let me know if you have others to add! (I do too, but
I’m still looking for documentation for some of them.)