Kelly Zuzic

Dr. Charles Frantz

MH-247-L1
Music Historiography I
December 4th, 2018

Chant As a Gateway to Music Today

Music has been at the forefront of human connection since the beginning of time.

More specifically, chant has been around for as long as we have had documented music.

Music of that time was almost all non-secular, and set to Latin biblical texts. We still hold

music in high regard in terms of worship today, but it has evolved to many different genres

as well. One could argue that there is chant in every piece of music, because without its

presence, we wouldn’t have any of the music we know and love today. Chant introduced a

wide variety of musical concepts to the world such as: music notation, the concept of

metered rhythm (or lack thereof), and solidified church modes. Gregorian Chant laid the

foundation for the evolution of western music.

Chant was revolutionary to music because it introduced music notation. Before

notation, all songs were passed down through oral tradition, also known as ‘rote teaching’.

This concept is a double-edged sword. Though it is beautiful that music was being

composed, remembered, and shared without being notated, this can lead to inaccuracies

and cultural variations throughout the years and as it spreads across a wider map of

peoples (Wright). In addition, being taught orally meant that the song had to be learned

with both the teacher and the student present. There was no way for people to

independently learn music. This proved to be difficult when chant started to take off and

spread far beyond Rome. Gregorian chant was used in religious context, and one must not

leave room for error in a time of worship. Liturgy was seen as an offering to God, and the
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members of the church strived to offer only their very best to their creator. This is when

neumes began to develop. There is not a specifically known time for the development of

neumes, but the earliest known documented piece of music is from the late 9th century

(Burkholder, 19). Creating a language that could be universally read so that people from all

backgrounds could sing the same song is fascinating. There are collections of Gregorian

chants composed over ten centuries ago. Sharing similarities with modern day notation,

neumes (both heightened and not) showed the infliction of pitches, the lyrics, and

introduced the concept of musical phrasing. With the foundation and ideas presented to us

in neume notation, humans were able to develop a more cohesive written language of

music that provides a very detailed depiction of how a piece of music should be portrayed.

There was a long process of experimentation throughout the Medieval, Renaissance, and

Baroque periods of music before we arrived at the notation we use today.

Although Gregorian chant does not have any notated rhythm, it is still suggested.

Neumes present a sense of the note’s articulation and duration; and the text presents the

idea of phrasing. In ​Rhythm, Meter, and Tempo in Gregorian Chant​, Biezen expresses that

“Neumes (actually) signify tonal motions rather than individual tones or notes”(Biezen,

19). Gregorian chant has a suggested sense of “mensuralism” that should be taken into

consideration (Biezen). Some chants have marked cadences that tell the singer when to

take pauses. This could be due to the size of the space they were singing in, or an artistic

interpretation of the text. Since Gregorian chants were Latin texts derived from the Bible,

they had very important messages to convey and the men performing the chant at that time

would not want anything to be incomprehensible (Mahrt). Without the instinctual

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“rhythm” of chant, latter composers wouldn’t have had the ideas to present their

information more clearly with notated rhythm. This means that they developed neumes to

enhance music in a way which chant was yet able to accomplish. For example, Guido of

Arezzo would not have developed a way to notate pitch if he didn’t realize that the notation

of his time didn’t already do that. Therefore, the idea of rhythm being loosely presented in

chant through text settings and marked cadences cleared the path for latter composers to

begin experimenting with note duration and meter in its’ fullest form.

Chant helped future musicians greatly by introducing the eight church modes. Each

mode spans eight notes, with each containing different intervals between each note: a final

and a reciting tone. This helped us to organize music in an entirely new way, as well as

establish pitch guidelines for composers. Each chant was assigned to a particular mode,

and this helped people learn and memorize them. In addition, this made chants classifiable

and easier to put into books. There were even books dedicated solely to chants of specific

modes, called tonaries (Burkholder, 42). We use two of these modes in almost all of our

music today; ionian which is commonly known as the major scale, and aeolian which is

commonly known as the natural minor scale, but all of the modes are still in practice to

some capacity. This laid down the foundation for modern day sight singing. If one knows a

piece is in major, they can appropriately infer what notes are going to be in the song unless

labeled with an accidental. This is exactly what they did back in the time of Gregorian chant

except with all 8 church modes. The 8 modes could be considered more helpful than the

two qualities of scales we have today, because there is more specificity in what to expect

per each mode.

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In his book ​Discovering Chant​, James Jordan describes chant as “(something that)

demands that we immediately become part of a larger community where “less” of the

individual becomes “more” for the ensemble” (Jordan, 25). A wondrous fact about chant is

that it said so much, with what today we would analyze as saying so little. Gregorian chant

is monophonic, meaning that there is only one voice singing one melody at all times

(Burkholder, 11). That’s all there is to it; no full orchestrations, dynamic markings, or even

harmony. These monophonic melodies did not provide anything harmonically, which led to

the creation of polyphony and singing accompanied by an instrument. For example, Kyrie

Eleison is a very famous text that got its’ start from a melismatic chant melody (Whitbourn,

44). This is quite different than the James Whitbourn arrangement of Kyrie Eleison heard at

Westminster Choir College during the holiday season. At the end of the Medieval Period,

composers began adding more than one part to music. Polyphony was a big deal, as no one

had ever sang music like this before. Once polyphonic chants started to take off, throughout

the centuries it became a game of “how much more can we add to music?”. This was the

gateway to music with accompaniment and choral singing.

Similarly to painting a picture, Gregorian chant can be seen as the primary color of

music. What starts as something so simple can evolve into a wonderful palette covering an

entire spectrum of color. With the primary colors given, composers of the future were able

to experiment with making all types of beautiful paintings that they would have never

dreamed of if it weren’t for Gregorian chant giving them their start.

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Works Cited

Biezen, J.van, and Kevin (Translator of Dutch) Rooney. ​Rhythm, Meter and Tempo in
Gregorian Chant​. Glendale, Colorado : Lancelot Andrewes Press, 2016.

Burkholder, J. Peter, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. ​A History of Western
Music​. 9th ed. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2014. Print.

Burkholder, J. Peter, and Claude V. Palisca. ​Northern Anthology of Western Music.​ 7th
ed., vol. 1. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2014. Print.

Mahrt, William. “The Grammar and Rhetoric of Gregorian Chant: Gregorian Melodies
Reflect Technical Characteristics of Their Texts.” ​Sacred Music,​ vol. 143, no. 4,
Winter 2016, pp. 29–38. ​EBSCOhost​,athena.rider.edu:6443/login?url=https://sea
rch.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=129148711&site=eds-live
&scope=site.

Jordan, James and James Whitbourn. ​Discovering Chant: Teaching Musicianship and
Human Sensibilities through Chant​. Chicago IL: GIA Publications, 2014.
Print.

Whitbourn, James, with Isabella Burns. ​Laudate: Essential Chants for All Musicians​.
Chicago IL: GIA Publications, 2014. Print.

Wright, Chris. “What is Gregorian Chant?”. ​Youtube, ​27 Feb. 2016,

https://youtu.be/Igoh5kEqj3Y.