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Chicago Musical College the Benedictines and Gregorian CHICAGO MUSICAL COLLEGE THE BENEDICTINES AND GREGORIAN CHANT A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE CHICAGO MUSICAL COLLEGE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF MUSIC • BY SISTER URBAN GERTKEN OF THE ORDER OF SAINT BENEDICT St. Joseph, Minnesota CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JULY, 1938 , . I Thesis M 783.5 G384 c.1 • - - -·- ·- - SEP 4 1958 PREFACE Gregorian ohant, or in other words plain ohant, is church muslc sung in accord with the liturgy or regular prayers ot the Catholic church. It ls the special property of the Church inherited from ages past, and by her 1t ls to be reverently used and then transmitted to the tuture. Thls thesis is not a detailed history of church music but rather an exposition, showing the broad lines of the develop­ ment and adYanoement ot Gregorian ohant b7 members of the Order of St. Benediot. The aim ot the thesis ls not so much to lead the reader to admire Gregorian chant for its art1st1o value, but rather to create 1n the reader the desire to hear and to render plain song chant as the most titting musio for liturgical worship. This thesis was written under the direction of Doctor Gustav Dunkelberger whose assistance and encouragement were of great value. The writer wishes to acknowledge the courtes• of St. John's University for making source material available. Grateful acknowl­ edgment is a1so made of the hearty interest and encouragement of Mother Rosamond. 11 I A TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PREFACE • • • • • • • • • • • 11 CHAPTER I. SAINT GREGORY • • • • • • • • 1 H1s Work and Teaching Gregorian Chant II. THEORY OF THE CHANT • • • • • • • 13 Plain Chant Notation Artiat1o Value ot Plain Chant III. EARLY CHURCH MUSIC • • • • • • • 23 Period ot Perteotion Period ot Deoadenoe IV. REVIVAL OF THE ANCIENT CHANT • • • • • 28 ·; •, ! The Bened1ot1nes of Solesmes .I Summar1 of the Motu Proprio '' I v. CHANT AUTHORITIES • • • • • • • 38 Dom Jaus1one I1 Dom Pothier ~ i Dom Gueranger Dom llooquereau Dom Jeann1n • Dom rerrett1 VI. THE CHANT OF TODAY • • • • • • • 47 EYolution in Taste and Tradition 'l'he Place ot the Chant 1n Church Diff'ioulties VII. OUTSTANDING GREGORIAN CHANT CENTERS • • • • 54 Solesmes Pius X School of Liturg1oal Music llonteerrat St. John's Abbey Convent of St. Benedict Other Gregorian Chant Centers VIII. CONCLUSION • • • • • • • • • 73 APPENDIX • • • • • • • • • • • 84 BIBLIOGRAPHY • • • • • • • • • • 90 111 1 CHAPTER I SAINT GREGORY Gregor1 was born in or about the year 540. He was ot noble parentage and therefore reoeived an excellent education in science, philosophy and music. He t1rst gave himself to the study ot law but when he was about thirty-five or forty years of age he became dis­ sat1st1ed with the world and took up religion using the heritage lett him by his father to found several monasteries. The Church, at that time, stood in need of active service and a man ot Gregory's education and ability in the political, social, and religious lite oould not escape the notice of the head of the seven pontitloal deaoons of Rome. This position involved certain mualoal responsibilities for a pontifical deacon had charge of the music in all the ohurches of his particular region. Thus, during h1s diaconate Gregory had many opportunities of noticing the imper­ feotiona which existed in the music of the Church. On the death ot Pope Pelagius in 590 Gregory.as chosen as pope. Pope Saint Gregory was a great lover of music. He had been a monk of St. Benedict before he became pope and had learned to practice the liturgical chant of the Churoh. Every day, seven times a day, with the other monks, he sang the divine office, praising God 1n song and prayer, praying tor all the people who had to live and work outside the monastery. Tradition has it that one night Pope Saint Gregory fell asleep and dreamed that he saw the Church appear personified in the form of a muse, clothed in exquisite vesture. She was occupied in writing out chants, and, as she wrote, she drew to her a11 her children trom every country ot the world and gathered them under the folds of her mantle. It seems that on the mantle were written all the principles of the art ot musio,--the notes, the neums, the -1- -~ modes, and also a great variety of melodies. Following this dream Saint Gregory undertook to collect together all the beautiful melodies that had been in use by the Church since the days of the Apostles, arranging them in order and writing new ones where these were required. These melodies whioh have come down to us under the name of Gregorian Chant are the most precious heritage ot the treasures of the Church. His Work and Teaching Pope Gregory's biographer, John the Deacon, and other his­ torians tell us how he set to work to accomplish the task of reshaping the whole bulk of Church music. The melodies which Saint Gregory collected were of a beauty so divine and possessed such charm that the people thought they must have been dictated by the Holy Ghost. It would be a mistake to consider Gregory as a professional musician occup7ing himself with questions of music simply from the artistic point ot view. Undoubtedly he was a musician but it seems that his work in the sphere of liturgical music was ~t of a great and divinely inspired plan for the administration and unification of the Church. Gregor7's work was a three-fold one. It was a revision of the liturgical text, which inevitably led up to a reform of the mus1o. It was a means of furthering the establishment of the chant, and lastly it was the maintenance of a right method of rendering it. Under Gregory's touch the song of the Churoh was raised from the state of merely melodic recitative, based on the vague and un­ precise rhythm of speech, into the sphere of music which exists, not ae an end in itselt--but rather as a vehicle for the text o~ the Latin liturgy. He also wished to reform the choral offices of the Church and therefore he rounded a singing school for the education of boys. He built and endowed two houses to be used in connection with this work. , -3- The noble Pope Gregory took a special interest in our Anglo­ saxon toretathers for his ambition was to make "not Angles but Angels" of them. Therefore, it was to the accompaniment of plain song that our English ancestors first heard the glad tidings of Christianity. In the year 596 Augustine, who was sent by Pope Gregory, came with his forty monks to the kingdom of Kent. As they drew near to Canterbury they formed themselves into a procession and with the crucifix raised aloft, they entered the city singing in the strong, manly tones of the Dorian Mode the following processional antiphon: Depreoamur te, Domine, in omni m1ser1oord1a tua, ut auteratur turor tuus et ira tua ao1v1tate ista et de domo sanota tua; quoniam peocavimus: Alleluia. Who oan doubt that the melodious strains, perfectly rendered by skilled Roman singers, tavorably disposed Ethelbert and his court to listen to the Joytul message these strangers had come to announce. One ot St. Augustine's first cares was to provide a dignified setting for Mass and office, for he realized the importance of making an impression upon those rough heathen minds by beautiful ceremonies and sweet music.l At about the same time that Augustine and Melittus were sent to convert the Anglo Saxons in Britain he also sent singers to the various churches of the west to spread the antiphonal.• One of the first things that Gregory did was to simplify the musical scale. He reduced the fifteen sounds and names of the ancient Greek eoale to seven, substituting the first seven letters ot the Roman alphabet for the mutilated, inverted and doubled Greek letters formerly used. These he brought within the limits of the diatonic scale. He then proceeded to reshape each piece, keeping the primitive framework, but reducing long, diffuse passages, amplifying others, rounding off, retaining, in the o1der responso­ r1al mus1o, all the beauty of the long drawn-out neums but readjust- 1V1lma G. Little, "How Plainsong oame to England," Mus1o and L1turg1, P• 76. No. 3, April, 1930. 1 -4- lng them so as to give to the whole proportion and balance. With regard to the connection between the Gregorian chant and 1ts predecessors, great masses of data tavor the theory that the Gregorian chant was a modification, carried out 1n accordance with uniform principles of the chant which was till then customary 1n Rome and throughout Italy. The organization of church music under Gregory marks an important stage 1n the complete lat1n1zat1on which church mus1o, eastern 1n origin, later transplanted to the West, underwent in the Middle Ages, and wh1oh was necessary if church music was to take a leading role 1n the musical development ot the West. Upon the Bobola Cantorum developed the task of spreading the Gregorian chant. The numerous schools of music which arose every­ where in 111l1tat1on or the Roman Sohola soon brought the Roman chant 1nto great vogue. Gregorian Chant According to Sunol we find that Gregorian chant ls the free­ r1l7thmed diatonic music which has been adopted by the Church for the solemn celebration of her liturgy. Dom Johner says,hat Gregorian chant is the solo and unison choral chant of the Catholic Church, whose melodies move, as a rule, in one of the eight church modes, without time, but with definite tlme-Yalues, and with distinct d1v1- e1ons. The Catholic Church has an official form of musical expres­ sion and 1t is called plain song.
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