The Story of Gregorian Chant
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Gregorian Chant is an organized collection music used in the
worship services of the Roman Catholic Church.
At first Chant was simple vocal melody that was improvised, or
made up as it was sung with Latin words from the bible. In fact, Gregorian Chant
has been called the "sung Bible." The goal of the Gregorian melodies
is to help bring out, not cover up the message of the words.
As local music styles started creeping into the worship services, Pope Gregory felt the church would be more united if the music and services
were the same wherever the church existed. Legends grew concerning the resulting codification. The image above illustrates the legend that Gregorian Chant was dictated to Gregory by the Holy Spirit, in the form of the dove on his shoulder. Although given credit for the collection, neither Pope Gregory
nor the dove dictated the music. Charlemagne,
the Holy Roman Emperor in what is now France, directed the
writing down of the music with help from Rome. Roman and Carolingian monks
collected and wrote the music using a notation system they developed known as
Neumes, which are line squiggles
indicating rise and fall in pitch and duration.
Guido d'Arezzo was an Italian musician and musical theorist.
He invented a system of squared notation
or neumes with lines and spaces that could be used to indicate the pitches of
the notes in the chants. Before this time music was learned by ear and sung
by heart. It took a long time to learn each chant, and it was imperative that
the chant was taught correctly. Using d'Arezzo's method a singer could be trained
in two years, instead of ten or more, and the newly trained singer could read
and perform a melody that he had never heard before.
Gregorian chant is enjoying a revival in appreciation. In February
1994 a CD of monks from the Benedictine monastery in central Spain, the monastery of Santo
Domingo de Silos, sold over 300,000 copies, making two platinum and one gold
disc in pop chart sales and, on classical charts, platinum twelve times over.
It even edged out the Cuban vocalist Gloria Estefan from the number one spot
in the Spanish charts for six consecutive weeks. (Ober, 1994: 1) The music sample
above is from their CD entitled "Chant."
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Neumes
as used by Hildegard of Bingen
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Guide
to Reading and Performing Square Neumes