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| A capital in the cloister of Iona Abbey |
Very Brief Historical Background of
“prayerful music”
Music
in First century Christian worship -
rooted
in Jewish musical traditions
Scripture
indicates “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs”
From
the 300s -
St.
Basil the Great celebrated the role of music in teaching and spiritual
formation noting that while we chant, we become “trained in the soul.”
St.
John Chrysostom warned of the use of instruments because of their association
with the “shameful words and songs, and drunkenness, and revellings, and all
the Devil’s great heap of garbage” associated with wild wedding parties.
Pro
and con, we consider similar issues today.
And
around 400 -
A nun name Egeria visited Jerusalem and witnessed Christian worship that included
the use of incense, the singing of psalms – possible sung antiphonally – a
procession with the reading of the gospel, prayers, hymns, preaching,
celebration of the Eucharist, an elaborate time of dismissal in which
congregants interacted individually with the bishop. She also observed wailing after the scripture reading at the Easter Vigil, and a great deal of preaching
This
sounds quite Episcopal/Catholic. Perhaps also evangelical and Pentecostal!
(These
excerpts and many other relevant things can be found in Weiss and Taruskin’s
anthology, Music in the Western World)
Around
600 -
Pope
Gregory the Great
traditionally credited with the reformation of
liturgy and collection of chant leading to there being a body of worship music
known as “Gregorian Chant.”
In
the 800s, a legend developed attributing the corpus of chant to Gregory to whom
it was dictated by the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove.
Charlemagne
(742-814) probably had a lot to do with the actual collection of chant and
codification of worship as that was a part of his program for a more cohesive
empire.
Chanting
Quotations
from writings of Dom Joseph Gajard in the 1930s
Gajard
was Choir-Master of the Solesmes School which had reinvigorated chanting in the
1800s.
“[Chant] is above all a prayer, better still, the prayer of
the Catholic Church, which here attains its full expression. It is, therefore,
something pertaining to the soul and stands on a higher plane, like the entire
liturgy, of which it forms a part and from which it cannot be separated. It is
a form of spirituality, a way of reaching up to God and of leading souls to
God. . .”
“Gregorian
chant . . . is primarily a matter of prayer, and by it we are raised at once to
the consideration of things on the supernatural plane . . . The chat cannot be
sung well without prayer, neither can we pray without singing well too.”
“Rhythm
is a question . . . of movement . . . It is a grouping of sounds into a
synthesis . . . its work is to withdraw each sound from its pure individuality
and blend it into one large movement.
How to Chant?
Consider this idea of movement.
To some extent, this movement is derived from the text as there
typically is no musical meter to chant in the way we think of meter today.
How would you read the text?
Once those key words and syllables are determined, how do we move
between them?
I suggest that we consider the movement of a bird moving from
branch to branch and order our chanting accordingly.
This interpreting of musical gestures (and the resultant performance) is an matter of reification. To reify is to give something abstract a more concrete expression. The creation of objects, including musical "objects" such as compositions or performances are reifications of ideas and spiritual "movements." Processes of reification play an important role in our spirituality and formation.
In this activity we reify the movement of birds symbolizing the Holy Spirit.
"The Spirit is
like a bird, fragile alloy of heaven and earth, where wind and feather and
flight meets breath and blood and bones. The rabbis imagined . . . a
pigeon, the Celts a wild goose. Like a dove, the Spirit glided over the primordial
waters, hovered above Mary’s womb, and descended onto Jesus’ dripping wet head . . . The
Spirit is as common as a cooing pigeon and transcendent as a high-flying eagle.
So look up and sing back, catch the light of God in a diaphanous scrim of wing.
Pay attention."
- beautiful words of Rachel
Held Evans in Seeking Sunday
- Sing opening verse of Veni Spiritus Creator together.
Click here for a rendering of the chant in Latin with numerous images of art depicting Pentecost.
Anglican Chant
By the 1500s,
what has come to us as the tradition of Anglican Chant was developing.
Anglican
chanting is usually accompanied by a series of ten chords repeated for each
verse.
- Practice the Nunc Dimittis or Song of Simeon in Anglican Chant form. It is incorporated into Compline and Evensong as, in the twilight of his life, Simeon saw the baby Jesus, and then could rest. It is often followed by the Gloria Patri.
Click here for a lovely recording of one Anglican chant version of the Song of Simeon.
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