Gregorian chant is a central tradition of the Western plainchant. The Western plainchant is in the form of a monophonic sound. All these are of course unaccompanied sacred songs of the western Roman Catholic Church. During these years, everything was religious and that seemed to follow and lead people through life. The Gregorian chant was developed mainly in western and central Europe during the 9th and 10th centuries and in later years adjustments and articulations were made through the songs. Some of the popular legends credited for producing and making the chant possible were Pope St. Gregory the Great but scholars believe that it came about from a later Carolingian type of Roman chant and the Gallican chant.
Gregorian chants were organized originally into 4, 8, and/or 12 different modes. Some basic melodic features include the ambituses, mode final, incipits and cadences. Another important substance is the use of reciting the correct tones at a specific distance from the mode final, around which the other notes of the melody revolve. The vocabulary of musical motifs brought together through a process is called centonization which is used to create pieces of similar chants. The scale patterns are organized against a background pattern formed of conjunct and disjuncted tetrachords, producing a bigger and better pitch system called the gamut. The chants can be sung in a choir by using the six-note patterns called hexachords. Gregorian melodies were and in present day still are traditionally written using neumes. An earlier form of musical notation is from what has become the modern four-line and five-line staff was developed. Multi-voice or more than one voice elaborations of Gregorian chant, known as a organum, was an early stag...
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...e Priest which was always male and the choir which mostly contained male singers. The choir was considered an official liturgical now and all the duties were reserved to clergy. The women were not allowed to sing in the famous Schola Cantorum or other choirs except in convents. In these convents women were allowed to sing the Office and the parts of the Mass pertaining to the choir as to show a part of their life. The chants were normally sung in unison. Later they invented things such as innovations that included tropes. Tropes where a new type of text sung to the same melodic phrases in a melismatic chant and harmonic embellishment of chant melodies. These melodies focused mainly on octaves, fifths, fourths, and thirds. The odd thing is that either tropes or organum belonged to the chant repertory proper. The Council of Trent made sequences from the Gregorian corpu
The first composition, "Miserere Mei, Deus", was produced by Gregorio Allegri in 1638. I learned this, as I read along with the well-thought-out program that was given. As we, the audience, looked up to the vocalists, we were entranced by the consuming sound. The room filled with a vibrant melody, in which the harmonization and tone color was spectacular. The emotion conveyed throughout the room was one of absorption and delight. During this piece, the sopranos hit such high notes, that I was astounded. Being a person who participates in concert choir, I understand the level of commitment and talent it takes to reach those notes and stay in tune. This ...
1. Narrow-ranging, dynamically restrained modal melodies are played in a variety of tuning temperaments that generate an "illogical" modal harmonic succession. 2. An unrestricted range of multimeters, polymeters, and complex rhythms are used. 3. A texture of two or more independent and equally important melodies accompany one another (i.e., polyphony). 4. The formal construction is often vague and unclear. 5. The instrumentarium is unrestricted and nonstandardized.
“For over one thousand years the official music of the Roman Catholic church had been Gregorian Chant, which consists of melody set to sacred Latin texts and sung without accompaniment” (Kamien 67). The credit for developing Gregorian chant music, also known as plain...
In this style of composition, it was very common for composers to use a Gregorian chant as a base to compose original pieces. As a general rule, the tenor voice sang the Gregorian chant, and the upper voices have new original material. Machaut followed this line by putting the chant Ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes on the tenor voice in his piece; whereas, Philippe De Vitry composed original music for all voices. Although the piece by De Vitry is called a motet, it might be just labeled as a polyphonic composition since all the voices have original music.
this time, gospel music was a sacred folk music with origins in field hollers, work songs,
... begins to just sound like one constant ring. Imagery, anaphora, and personification are all used to appeal to the Clergymen’s emotions.
From the Early Renaissance to the High Renaissance, there was a movement from vocal music to a combination of vocal and instrumental music (Brown, 1976). There are seven categories of instrumental music: 1) vocal music played by instruments, 2) settings of pre-existing melodies, 3) variation sets, 4) ricercars, fantasias, and canzonas, 5) preludes, preambles, and toccatas for solo instruments, 6) dance music, and 7) songs composed specifically for lute and solo voice (Brown, 1976). Italy dominated the stage for instrumental music at this time, and it was not until the last decades of the sixteenth century that English instrumental music became popular (Brow...
Minor keys have a sadder sound than a plain major scale. Minor mode offers nine notes while the major modes are seven. Minor scales and major scales to Gregorian chant are nonexistent. However Gregorian chant is written on a four line staff instead of five lines. The language of the Gregorian chant was Latin. Latin was founded pretty early around fifth century B.C.E and originated in Italy. Latin was survived long after the fall of the Roman Empire. After the Roman Empire the Catholic Church inherited Latin. That then masses kept the language alive. Latin is still heard today and it reminds us that Gregorian chants will always be a great example of Latin. At this time there was no state government but yet the Catholic Church became the most influenced and high leader. Ordinary people across Europe would give ten percent of their earnings to the Church and the church was often exempt from taxation. With a great deal of money and power the church was unstoppable. Gregorian chant is mainly sung in three parts. First, the word for a primary source of interception. Secondly, the melody is conditioned by text and by mutual laws, and lastly the neume designed as the symbolic representation of the musical form is received by the text. These chants in the eleventh century chants were getting notice. Catholicchant.com. says “The Kyrie, Hallelujahs were just a few to
The music was so well loved during the renaissance that you can read, play, and sing music your and essential person. Even King Henry VIII was a very musical person since he loved to play and sing music. I found this to be interesting since music effects all of our lives today, I have always wonder if music affected people’s livelihoods during the renaissance? I found this to be true since many composers during this time use different structures, modes, rhythms, and melodies. The most known structure from this era is the paratactic form. The paratactic form is the assembly that contains a series of more or less separate units. The mode was used in the renaissance was the eight-mode system that was also used during the medieval times. The melody that was used during the renaissance was the conjunct motion. The conjunct motion is a melodic concept, which based on completely or mainly by half or whole steps. The rhythm that used during this time period was tactics. Tactus is a progressive measurement of the different beats. All of the composers would use these musical styles to create music. All of these musical styles affected the way older composers would make their music since they were used to make the traditional music instead they had to keep up with the current ways or else
The Florentine Camerata held many beliefs about the revival of Greek Drama. Many of these beliefs concerned the current style of music, which was polyphonic. They believed that this was not the correct way to efficiently emphasize the text found in these manuscripts. From this, they created a new style of music: the monody, or solo voice.
In the beginning of the first Gregorian plainchant, I feel my heart slowly ascends into the air with the music and harmonies, but towards the latter portion of the chant, the ascending feeling changes to a much stronger and forceful push that seems like it will never settle, as if I am not allowed to go back to where I came from or who I was before. The second Gregorian plainchant seems like it is sang by someone who has been through certain hardships, recovered from it, and is now helping others to get back on their feet. It gives me the vibe that I am not alone in whatever I am having a hard time with right now and can find support through this music. Both of these "sounds" remind me of religious ceremonies and, coming from a non-religious background, I don’t really feel a powerful connection to, perhaps, the first plainchant, which has a more holy tone than the second one. The background harmony that joins the main singer makes the second plainchant more down-to-earth than the first plainchant because, now, instead of having only one person to seek support from, I have a group of people to turn to.
Music has been relevant in Christianity since its beginnings. Some of the first music was written in Latin and they were called Hymns. “Hymn is a song of praise” (Van Camp) and were sung only by catholic churches. When Martin Luther led the Protestant Reformation and helped create Protestant Christianity, he began translating hymns into German. All around Europe people were translating hymns into different languages. These translations were brought over by European settlers coming to America and were used frequently in both Catholic and Protestant churches.
Music throughout the ages has changed dramatically. Starting in the Medieval period, from 400-1475, music was in the form of what is called the Gregorian chant. Instruments were very rarely used at this time. Since songs during this period were either troubadour or trouvere these chants had no real harmony. One example of this type of medieval composition is “Viderunt Omnes” by Leoninus. Like most Gregorian chants the texture of this piece is monophonic and polyphonic. “Viderunt Omnes” is a typical Gregorian chant in that it uses diatonic, not chromatic notes of the scale. Musical compositions during the Medieval period was made mostly by members of the church for the church. It was and is a very slow and steady movement that was meant to create a feeling of peace for worship purposes.
Many of the songs we have today of the Middle Ages were in Latin, and are by anonymous composers. Many were written by wandering people, many of them men and churchmen without permanent residences of their own. Men who could not obtain a position in the Church and had to drop out were called goliards. These goliards wandered around the land, composing and performing for people. Their music was mostly comprised of the "’eat, drink, and be merry’ type, appropriate to the wanton kind of life the goliards lived" (Stolba, 99). Carl Orff, the composer of the Carmina Burana, used the poems found in the largest surviving records of Latin secular music that we have today. The Codex latinus 4660 was held in the Benedictine monastery at Benediktbeurn. Many of the songs speak of love, many of them lascivious. Others speak of drinking, satires of the religious life and even liturgical plays. A few of them are even written in the vernacular of the region in that time (Stolba, 99).