What’s Gregorian chant?
Gregorian chant is a type of sacred music in Latin (and sometimes Greek), employed throughout the Roman Catholic Church for hundreds of years. From the beginning, Gregorian chant has had two key distinguishing options:
- It’s unaccompanied, which means that there are not any musical devices accompanying the singing
- It’s monophonic, which implies that there’s only one melodic line adopted by all of the singers. This contrasts with later non secular and secular music, through which the completely different voices (soprano, alto, etcetera) could sing completely different, though harmonising, vocal traces.
When did Gregorian chant develop?
The height interval for the event of Gregorian chant was ninth and Tenth-century Europe.
Confusingly, the shape takes its identify from Pope Gregory I, who has typically been credited with the invention of Gregorian chant throughout his lifetime. This was a lot earlier, within the later sixth century: nonetheless, at the moment’s students consider that Gregorian chant developed later, and drew on music traditions from each Rome and Gaul (now France).
How is Gregorian chant carried out? And what varieties of voices is it for?
Gregorian chant was initially sung in one in all two settings: by women and men in non secular orders, within the chapels of monasteries and different such buildings; and by choirs (both males or boys) in church buildings.
Primarily, Gregorian chant was carried out both through the Roman Catholic Mass, or through the monastic Workplace – the sequence of spiritual providers, or instances of prayer, amongst non secular communities.
Gregorian chant is not compulsory in both setting. Nonetheless, it’s nonetheless thought of the music most fitted for worship by the Catholic Church.
How did Gregorian chant affect later classical music?
This stunning and religious musical type had a profound influence on the patterns taken by each medieval and Renaissance music. For instance, the best way that the fashionable musical stave is notated was developed immediately from Gregorian musical notation. The bass clef and the flat, pure, and sharp accidentals all come from Gregorian notation.
The melodies from Gregorian chant additionally discovered their means into hymns and tunes, and helped to form medieval and Renaissance polyphony. Chants would typically be used as a cantus firmus, or a hard and fast tune round which a polyphonic choral melody can develop. The Marian antiphons, particularly Alma Redemptoris Mater, have been often organized by Renaissance composers.
Later, the Catholic Church launched polyphonic preparations (with completely different teams singing completely different melodies) to switch the monophonic Gregorian chant through the Extraordinary of the Mass – these elements of the Mass that stay unchanged all year long.
Elsewhere, composers together with William Byrd and Tomás Luis de Victoria wrote polyphonic settings of the Propers – these elements of the Mass liturgy that change each day all through the Church yr. These polyphonic preparations typically embody traces of the unique Gregorian chant, earlier than it was changed by polyphonic preparations.
When and why did Gregorian chant take pleasure in a renaissance?
Throughout the late twentieth century, Gregorian chant gained massively in reputation, reaching audiences far past those that would ordinarily solely hear this stunning music in church buildings, chapels and monasteries. A part of the brand new surge of curiosity was due to the German band Enigma, who included samples of Gregorian chant on their smash-hit 1990 single Sadeness (Half I).
Just a few years later got here an album entitled Chant, that includes Gregorian chant carried out by the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo de Silos in Spain. The music had in truth been recorded again within the Nineteen Seventies, however solely now grew to become successful. And what successful: Chant grew to become the best-selling album of Gregorian chant of all time.
Three stunning items of Gregorian chant
Alma Redemptoris Mater
This stunning melody is without doubt one of the 4 ‘Marian antiphons’ – hymns in reward of the Virgin Mary, sung in non secular communities after Compline the ultimate prater service of the day.
Ave Regina Caelorum
Together with ‘Alma Redemptoris Mater’ above, that is one in all 4 Marian antiphons sung on the shut of the day. Once more, it’s brief, eloquent and exquisite.
Kyrie Eleison
That means ‘Lord, have Mercy’, the ‘Kyrie Eleison’ (or just ‘Kyrie’) is a prayer supplied through the Roman Catholic Mass. Historically, it was typically set to Gregorian chant.
Pic: Giles Clarke / Getty Pictures
