Liturgical Music and Plainchant Overview

Liturgical Books

• Missal: Text for the mass
• Gradual: Chants for the mass
• Breviary: Text for the Office
• Antiphoner: Music for the Office
• These were handwritten during the Middle Ages and later printed under Church authority

Plainchant

• Monophonic melodies to which the words of Christian rituals were sung
• Derived from Jewish practice of chanting psalms and scriptural readings
• Codified during medieval times in monasteries of Western Europe
• Remained in use in the Roman Catholic church until the second Vatican Council (1962)
• Still used for the Tridentine rite in European monasteries and some local churches

Plainchant Melody

• Monophonic
• Relatively narrow melodic range
• Mainly stepwise movement
• Non-metrical: follows the rhythm of the words
• In one of the 8 church modes

Styles of Delivery

• Responsorial: Soloist alternating with choral response
• Antiphonal: Alternating groups of singers
• Direct: No alternation

Psalm Tone

• Melodic formulas for singing psalms in prayer services
• Designed so that they can be adapted to fit any psalm
• There is one psalm tone for each of the eight modes

Solfa System

• Developed by Guido d’Arezzo (ca. 991 – after 1033) who was a Benedictine monk and Italian music theorist
• System enabled singers to learn quantities of music quickly
• Guidonian hand

Square Notation

• In use from the end of the twelfth century to the middle of the thirteenth century
• Note types used singly or in groups called ligatures
• Modern plainchant notation retains the features of square notation

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)

• German Benedictine nun, philosopher, poet, mystic, artist, composer, and theologian
• 10th child in family - tithed to the Church
• Received education from Jutta, Abbess of Spanheim
• Abbess of convent at St Rupertsburg, near Bingen
• Wrote Scivias - a written record of her visions

Hildegard - Biography

• 1140s - Hildegard’s fame spread - more women joined the order
• 1147–1150 Founded a nunnery at Rupertsburg - initially forbidden but Hildegard became ill
• 1160–1170 Undertook extended missions throughout Germany
• 1165 Founded a second convent at Eibingen
• 1179 Died and canonisation process begun

Hildegard’s Compositions

• Some liturgical music - some commissions for parts of the Mass
• Several Office pieces (her community was permitted to participate in the singing of Office)
• Composed many sequences
• Set many texts addressed to the Virgin Mary, St Ursula, etc
• Liturgical drama Ordo virtutum (c. 1151) - the first ‘morality play’

Hildegard - Ordo Virtutum

• Meaning ‘The Play of the Virtues’
• Dates from 1150s
• Morality play in dramatic verse
• Unique in history of medieval drama
• Earliest morality play by more than a century
• Presents battle for the soul (Anima) between sixteen virtues and the Devil
• Contains 82 melodies and parts for 17 female soloists and one male soloist

Hildegard’s Musical Style

• Wide vocal ranges (up to two octaves)
• Use of extremes of register
• Large leaps (intervals of 4th and 5th rather than 2nd or 3rd)
• Melodies more angular than other contemporary plainchant melodies
• Text and music intimately related
• Use of melismatic or decorative passages, often for dramatic effect

Elaborations of Plainchant

• Horizontal elaboration of chant

  • Related to literary ‘glossing’ of manuscripts
  • Tropes: New text and new melody interpolated in existing chant
  • Sequences: Words put to melisma of Alleluia - became a separate composition
  • Liturgical dramas: Elaborate tropes with dialogue, performed at Christmas and Easter

• Vertical elaboration of chant

  • Parallel organum
  • Oblique organum
  • Free organum
  • Florid (melismatic) organum over tenor
  • Sections (clausulae) in ‘discant’ (note-against-note) style (Notre Dame)
  • Rhythm applied to discant sections
  • Motet: Entire pieces in measured style with new words

Parallel Organum

• The doubling of a line of chant at the 4th or 5th below
• First described in treatise Musica Enchiriadis (c. 900)

Oblique Organum

• Result of avoidance of augmented fourths (or tritones)
• Added voice remains on one note until they can proceed in parallel fourths without sounding a tritone

Melismatic Organum

• Early in twelfth century - new more ornate type of polyphony
• Codex Calixtenus
• Prepared in central France - brought to Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela
• Exhibit love of decoration - greater variety and shape

Notre Dame Polyphony

• Even more ornate style of polyphony
• Developed in late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries
• Associated with Cathedral de Notre Dame in Paris
• Repertoire spread across Europe