FIG. 1-3 Early Christian monastic centers.
It was in such a communal context that the psalmodic practices arose that would eventually produce
the Gregorian chant. An important aspect of the monastic regimen was staying up at night, a discipline
known as the vigil. To help them keep awake and to assist their meditations, monks would read and recite
constantly, chiefly from the Bible, and particularly from the Psalter. The standard practice, eventually
turned into a rule, was to recite the Psalter in an endless cycle, somewhat in the manner of a mantra, to
distract the mind from physical appetites, to fill the back of the mind with spiritually edifying concepts so
as to free the higher levels of consciousness (the intellectus, as it was called) for mystical enlightenment.
In the words of St. Basil himself:
A psalm implies serenity of soul; it is the author of peace, which calms bewildering and seething thoughts. For it softens
the wrath of the soul, and what is unbridled it chastens. A psalm forms friendships, unites those separated, conciliates
those at enmity. Who, indeed, can still consider him an enemy with whom he has uttered the same prayer to God? So that
psalmody, bringing about choral singing, a bond, as it were, toward unity, and joining the people into a harmonious union of
one choir, produces also the greatest of blessings, charity.^2Half a century after St. Basil wrote these words, St. John Chrysostom, an eminent Greek church father,
confirmed the triumph of psalmody, the musical legacy of David, the biblical Orpheus, who like his Greek
mythological counterpart could miraculously affect the soul with his singing:
In church when vigils are observed David is first, middle and last. At the singing of the morning canticles David is first,
middle, and last. At funerals and burials of the dead again David is first, middle, and last. O wondrous thing! Many who
have no knowledge of letters at all nonetheless know all of David and can recite him from beginning to end.^3Christian psalmody emphasized not metaphors of wealth and exuberance (the orchestras, dancers, and
multiple choirs of the Temple) but metaphors of community and discipline, both symbolized at once by
unaccompanied singing in unison. That remained the Gregorian ideal, although the community of
worshipers was replaced in the more public repertory of the Mass by the specially trained and eventually
professional schola. Monophony was thus a choice, not a necessity. It reflects not the primitive origins of
music (as the chant’s status as oldest surviving repertory might all too easily suggest) but the actual
rejection of earlier practices, both Judaic and pagan, that were far more elaborate and presumably
polyphonic.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LITURGY
One of the first steps toward organizing the ceaseless cyclic psalm-chanting of early monastic vigils into
a liturgy—that is, a prescribed order—was taken by St. Benedict of Nursia in his famous Regula
monachorum, the book of rules that governed the lives of the monks in the monastery Benedict founded at
Monte Cassino in 529. With apologies for the laxity of his ordinance, he required that the Psalter be
recited not in a single marathon bout but in a weekly round or cursus of monastic Offices, eight each day.
The greatest single portion went to the Night Office (now called matins, literally “wee hours”), in which
twelve or more full psalms were performed, grouped by threes or fours (together with prayers and
readings from scripture) in large subdivisions known as “nocturns.”
The Night Office, traditionally the primary site of psalmodic chanting, thus accounted for roughly half
of the weekly round of psalms. It being the most spacious of the monastic services (since there was
nothing else to do at night but sing or sleep), many psalms were sung, and the lessons were framed by
lengthy responsoria (responsories)—chants sung in a more expansive style in which individual syllables