The Second Vatican Council taught that sacred music “forms a necessary or integral part of the solemn liturgy” and “is to be considered the more holy in proportion as it is more closely connected with the liturgical action” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 112). While it approved “of all forms of true art that has the necessary qualities and admits them into divine worship,” it singled out “Gregorian chant as especially suited to the Roman liturgy. Therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.” (Sacrosanctum Conclium n. 116).
In this interview, Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka discusses Gregorian Chant and some of the best books for learning about it.
Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka is an Associate Professor and the Director of Sacred Music at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California, where she holds the William P. Mahrt Chair in Sacred Music and serves as the founding Director of the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music. She has co-edited Mystic Modern: The Music, Thought, and Legacy of Charles Tournemire, published by the Church Music Association of America (CMAA). Her publications also include articles in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, Sacred Music, Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal, the proceedings of the Gregorian Institute of Canada, the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly, the Adoremus Bulletin, Liturgy in the Twenty-First Century: Issues and Perspectives (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark), and Messiaen in Context (Cambridge University Press). Dr. Donelson-Nowicka hosts Square Notes: The Sacred Music Podcast, which just finished its sixth season.
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What is Gregorian Chant? We could start with a musical definition, though the music always leads to prayer and the two are intimately linked.
We could say that, properly speaking, Gregorian chant is the official musical language of the Roman Rite.
It is a style of music which is sung in unison in Latin. It is laid out in eight modes or scales. It has a theoretical harmonic system underlying it. Furthermore, the text of Gregorian chant is the text of the liturgy. Gregorian chant is the sung liturgy itself. In this way, it is the supreme sacred music.
The Maronite Rite has its own kind of chant, the Greeks their own, and the Russians their own. However, Gregorian chant is the native musical language of the Roman Rite.
As the sung Roman Rite, it has the same purpose as the sacred liturgy itself: firstly, the glorification of God; secondly, the sanctification of the faithful.
Since it is the Church’s officially appointed music for the Roman Rite, we can almost think of it as a sacramental. When we cooperate with it and are properly disposed, it opens us up to receive the graces present in the sacred mysteries celebrated in the liturgy, primarily in the Mass but also in the Divine Office.
"The myth that Gregory received these chants through locutions of the Holy Spirit took off."
Why is the Latin rite’s main tradition of plainsong called Gregorian Chant? That is a very interesting question. The reason, we might think, is that the Holy Spirit came down as a dove and whispered in St. Gregory's ear. Alas, that is not what happened. We are not even sure that Pope St. Gregory the Great had much to do with the formation of either the chant or the Roman Schola Cantorum. He may have had some role in forming an orphanage, which subsequently developed into the Roman Schola Cantorum, the body of papal singers that was largely responsible for the solidification of the tradition of Gregorian chant and fleshing it out in the seventh century. Still, it is not clear whether that was the case.
What we do know is that there was a body of melodies that had certain roots in the Middle East and Early Christianity. Again, we do not know very much about this living tradition and how it was practiced in Rome.
At some point in the seventh century, the Roman Schola Cantorum shaped it so that chant could be put to every part of the liturgy that needed a musical setting.
Then, that body of music made its way up to the court of Pepin and Charlemagne. It was spread throughout the entire Carolingian empire by court musicians who hybridized the Roman chant with the Franco-Gallican chant. They wanted it to be adopted and loved by all who celebrated the Roman Rite.
At some point, it gained the appellation Gregorian. That was a mark of its officialness and of authority, even though Gregory the Great did not have much to do with it.
There is a very important chant book from around 1000. Its frontispiece is a line sketch of Gregory the Great receiving a locution from a dove and dictating to a scribe. This represents a pious tradition about how the Gregorian chant developed. However, that image actually has its origin in St. Gregory the Great's writings on moral theology. It just happened to end up on the front of a very important chant book. Hence, the myth that Gregory received these chants through locutions of the Holy Spirit took off.
You have mentioned how it passes from Rome to Gaul and the Franks. Scholars now believe that Gregorian chant is a synthesis between Old Roman Chant and Gallican chant. Which characteristics does Gregorian chant share with these older traditions and which new characteristics does it take on? You have hit upon one of the thorniest of all questions in Gregorian chant scholarship. If you ever want to start an argument at a chant conference, pose that question.
There is no clear answer. There are so many things from the earliest layers of Roman chant that we no longer have. Moreover, it was not notated until much later, even after Gregorian chant in its hybridized version.
So, there are three layers: the Roman core; a process of hybridization; the transcription of the Roman core hundreds of years after it was formed.
Whenever there are hundreds of years between the formation of a tradition and the phase of writing it down, we do not really know how it evolved or how solid those melodies are.
I surmise that the texts and the outlines of the melody are Roman. That is no small thing. Roman or Gregorian chant is fitted like a libretto. It is not as if you take one version of Scripture and plop it into some music. The chant is really fitted to the liturgical celebration.
To me, what seems particularly Franco-Gallican are larger leaps that outline the strong poles or structural nodes in the mode and chant, as at the opening of the mode 1 chants. The old Roman chant, on the other hand moves stepwise and rarely makes any leaps. In contrast, the Gregorian repertory is chiselled in its melodic profile. It is easier to trace the characteristics of each mode by its little, characteristic melodic riffs.
It is more like a recitative than an aria. Yes, that might be a good way of contrasting the two.
Does Gregorian chant have any similarities with the ancient musical traditions of the other rites of the Church or is it completely different from them? Again, that is a very good question. The answer is shrouded in an unknowable past, simply because the music was passed on as an oral tradition. Even the earliest manuscripts that we have are reference books. They give the text, maybe only the incipit. It is more like an index of the liturgical text. Later texts have some neumes notated above that text. Eventually, there are entire texts with stemless neumes. However, the evolution is not entirely clear.
I am hesitant to make comparisons between Gregorian chant and the other traditions, and become a little nervous when others do. There is a strong, inherently Catholic desire to ground all of our traditions in the Semitic tradition, the place of the Incarnation, and the origins of the Church. That is a completely Catholic way of looking at things. Hence, some compare Gregorian chant to Jewish music. The simple fact is, though, is that there is not much either about the earliest layers of synagogue music. Actually, the documentation we have of the Gregorian and Roman tradition goes back far earlier than that of the synagogue traditions. So, you end up comparing Gregorian chant to late medieval Jewish music. We simply do not know much about their origins.
"The Church teaches that polyphony is well suited for the liturgy, but Gregorian chant has an intimate connection to it that not even the polyphony does."
As you mentioned, Gregorian chant is particularly suited to the Roman liturgy. Indeed, the Second Vatican Council stated that is especially suited to Roman liturgy. What makes it more suitable than other styles of liturgical music that we might use, such as the Anglican choral tradition or the chants we take from Bach and the German chorale tradition? Maybe an even tighter comparison would be between two kinds of sacred music listed by the Second Vatican Council: Gregorian chant and polyphony.
The Church teaches that polyphony is well suited for the liturgy, but Gregorian chant has an intimate connection to it that not even the polyphony does.
One of the books that we shall talk about is The Musical Shape of the Liturgy by William Mahrt. One of his key insights is that Gregorian chant illuminates not only the grammar and rhetorical style of the liturgical text but also the mystery being celebrated at any given point of the Mass.
For example, an introit sounds different from a gradual, the chant that comes after the first reading. An introit accompanies a procession and so the music moves at a slightly faster pace, what we might call a neumatic style, where each syllable has one or two notes, sometimes even three, four, five, or six. Nevertheless, the music is still moving. Each of the melodies of every Gregorian introit is quite distinctive. It gives you a sense of the flavour of the day. We only get to sing it once a year, on this particular feast. Hence, it has a very chiselled profile and helps us enter into the mystery celebrated that day.
A gradual, on the other hand, is often a more formulaic melody. It is in a melismatic style. This means that some syllables might have one or two notes, but others between twelve and twenty notes. A gradual does not accompany anything else at that point. It is the rite in and of itself and is designed to be contemplative. That happens when a small bit of text is spread out over very many notes. The way in which the music itself sets the text helps us enter into the liturgy itself.
This is muted, for example, in the Gradualia of William Byrd. In Gregorian Chant here are two distinct styles for a introit and a gradual. However, Byrd’s introits are very similar in style to his graduals. Of course, his graduals are differentiated in their texts and structure, but they are not as finely chiselled to suit the text and the liturgical moment, like a tailormade glove.
If we go even further afield. There is beautiful music that was not a setting of a liturgical text. Sure, many things are beautiful but not all of them have a place in the sacred liturgy or are an integral part of it. This is why the Second Vatican Council says that sacred music is holier in proportion to the degree of its fit with the sacred liturgy. What we want, therefore, is a musical setting of the liturgical text that fulfils the purpose of sacred music—the glorification of God and the sanctification of the faithful—but also exhibits the three necessary qualities outlined by Pius X and Vatican II: it needs to be beautiful, holy, and universal. It should wrap all these into one package. The Church admits sacred music that is lacking in one or other of these areas. However, such music it is not as integral to the liturgy.
Though Pius X’s motu proprio could have been rescinded by a future pope, its teaching has entered into the ordinary magisterium of the Church through its reaffirmation by every pope up to and including Pope Francis.
Should Gregorian chant be sung in Latin or can it be sung to a vernacular translation? Good question. Properly speaking, Gregorian chant is in Latin.
Vatican II envisioned that composers would take up the challenge of setting in an appropriate musical style liturgical texts in the vernacular languages. However, these settings were never meant to totally replace Latin Gregorian chant.
Nevertheless, the Church does foresee that composers steeped in the Gregorian tradition can create new settings that are well suited to the sacred liturgy. My colleague at St. Patrick's Seminary, Father Samuel Weber, has done that admirably. His English compositions in chant style are wonderful, beautiful, and lovely to sing. He does a great job of bringing elements of the Gregorian compositions into the vernacular, whether it is the little melodic licks or the integration of those melodic licks with the accentuation patterns of English.
I have been part of a project to adapt the Gregorian Introitus, offertory, and communion antiphons to Spanish. Another of my colleagues, Janet Gorbitz has undertaken a similar project. Hers is complete, mine is not. This is an important way of helping those celebrating the liturgy in the vernacular to have contact with the innately Catholic style of sacred music, pray the liturgy, and not miss out on the richness of the Church's appointment of texts for the different parts of the Mass. This is an admirable undertaking. Moreover, as many of the chants are simpler in style, it is also a way of helping people on the way toward Gregorian chant. They are easier and so people can sing them beautifully. That is important. Anything that we sing for the Mass must be done beautifully and we all have different levels of skill.
Do you have any advice for priests or laypeople who would like to introduce Gregorian chant into their parish? Those vernacular chants of the Proper of the Mass are one good step, but not the first one that I would advise a parish to take.
I was a music director at a parish in West Little Havana in Miami. The choir was up front and there was an exit to the parking lot next to the choir.
This lovely choir was made up of ten or twelve ladies, including eight or nine sisters. We would sing in Gregorian all of the chants in the Ordinary of the Mass—the Kyrie, the Gloria, and so on. Then we would sing the Proper of the Mass and some hymns. However, during the final hymn people began to head out to the parking lot. They would stop by while we were still singing the final hymn to say thank you. That was beautiful but of course it drove me crazy. The final hymns are meant to be sung by the congregation. That's why they exist.
So, one day I told the parish priest that I thought we should not sing a final hymn anymore, but that he should exit the sanctuary at the end of Mass, face the statue of Our Lady, and have the assembly sing the seasonal Marian antiphon (the Alma Redemptoris Mater from Advent to 2 February, the Ave Regina Caelorum from 2 February until the Easter Vigil, the Regina Caeli during Eastertide, and the Salve Regina from the Monday after Pentecost to the end of ordinary time), and then have the organ play as the priest processed out. We did this and it worked like a charm. The people stayed and to my surprise they already knew all but one of the seasonal Marian antiphons. This helped maintain an atmosphere of prayer and encouraged congregational singing at the end of Mass.
I would say, therefore, that the seasonal Marian antiphons are a great place to start. There are only four of them and people will memorize them quickly. Memorizing means that people sing them by heart, which helps them love them more. It is very important for Catholics to sing something they know.
Beyond that, I would recommend introducing the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin. In his 1974 booklet Jubilate Deo, Paul VI proposed a repertoire of chants that every Catholic should know. Those for the ordinary are the Kyrie from Mass XVI, the Gloria from Mass VIII (Missa de Angelis), Credo III, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei from Mass XVIII, and the Pater noster. Those are a great place to start, but I would not stay there too long. They are echoed in the Roman Missal’s vernacular settings of those chants and can become a bit boring or less exciting for people. So I would move quickly into teaching them a second setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, such as Mass VIII (Missa de Angelis) or Mass XI (Orbis factor). Mass XI was the first Mass that I learnt as a new singer of Gregorian chant and I love it more today than I did all those decades ago.
"I had a lot to learn about Gregorian chant, its spiritual effects, and why it has principal place in the liturgy. In reflecting on those questions, I discovered so many spiritual fruits."
Was your own interest in Gregorian chant prompted by your work as a church music director or did it arise independently? I do not know the precise answer to that question. I grew up playing the piano and guitar at Mass. The first instrument I ever played at Mass was a synthesizer in the folk group. Through those experiences, I developed a strong anchor in my faith.
However, during my first semester of graduate school, I took a course called Music and the Church taught by a wonderful scholar who passed away recently: Quentin Faulkner. In that class, I read the documents of the Second Vatican Council for the first time. I realised that the council did not say what I thought it would about sacred music and that I had a lot to learn.
Dr. Faulkner helped me raise a lot of questions that I needed to ask about the Church's praxis. One day, he took me into the library and, took me over the periodical stacks, and showed me an issue of Sacred Music, the Journal of the Church Music Association of America, which I have helped edit for the last twelve years. That was a vocational moment. I did not know much of anything at that point, but when I saw that journal I knew that this was what I was supposed to do with my life.
I had a lot to learn about Gregorian chant, its spiritual effects, and why it has principal place in the liturgy. In reflecting on those questions, I discovered so many spiritual fruits that I knew I had share this with other people.
For me, there is a sense of the givenness of the sacred liturgy. The Church is like a mother who teaches us how to pray. How does she do that? She gives us the sacred liturgy. I no longer have to swim by myself and search for my own way, lost in my own druthers and preferences. Instead, I can enter into an experience which shapes me and gives me a sense of rootedness in history, a cosmic rootedness with all the saints and angels. I am formed in something so strong that gives in in turn a strong identity as a Catholic. That identification and the identity that comes from a liturgical spirituality is intensely freeing. For my prayer, I am no longer subject to how I feel. Instead, I allow the Church to put upon my lips words and melodies which I did not choose, and follow what Scripture says: “we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). In the liturgy, the Spirit prompts us to think and pray with the Church in the sacred liturgy. Sacred music is key in all that.
Which recordings of Gregorian chant would you recommend for those who want to listen to it and learn it that way? There are so many. From the first half of the twentieth-century, there are the recordings by Dom Joseph Gajard and the monks of Solesmes. In many aspects of vocal technique, they are not ideal, but they are so incredibly beautiful in the flight of the Gregorian melody that the singing of the monks gives them. I love those recordings.
Why have you not recommended any general studies, such as that of David Hiley, on the history of Gregorian chant? Hiley’s book is wonderful, but I have often used it as a reference book. It is a bit of a slog to read it from the beginning to the end: a bit like reading an encyclopedia.
Hiley’s narrative style is wonderful in certain sections and he offers a great synthesis of the scholarship. His section on sequences is really pithy and helpful. He also gives very helpful examples of the subsets of the Gregorian repertory, such as Carthusian chant and Dominican chant. However, this is a quintessential reference book that every scholar or singer of chant should spend some time with.
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