Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century

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after Pentecost (on the other) to take up the slack.


The church calendar also came to include a cycle of Saints’ commemorations (the sanctorale), a cycle
of feasts of the Virgin Mary, and many other occasions as well, including special (so-called votive)
occasions where prayers and offerings are made, such as weddings, funerals, or the dedication of a
church. As official occasions were added to the calendar—and they continue, in a small way, to be added
and deleted to this day—they had to be provided with appropriate texts and tunes. The actual book of
psalms was fixed, of course, but the antiphons and responds drawn from it could vary; indeed they had to,
for this was the primary means of differentiating the feasts. Antiphons and responds, then, became the
primary site of new musical composition during the centuries in which the evolution of the chant was
hidden behind the curtain of “oral tradition.” Antiphons remain, by and large, settings of psalm verses; but
they are composites, made up of individual, freely selected verses that have some reference to the
occasion. Selecting individual verses for setting as antiphons and responds is called the “stichic”
principle (from the Greek for “verse”) as opposed to the “cursive” principle of complete cyclic readings.
The stichic chants are not merely sung to a monotonous recitation “tone,” as in cursive psalmody, but are
set as real melodies, the glory of the Gregorian repertory.


THE MASS AND ITS MUSIC


The greatest flowering of such liturgical “arias” came toward the end of the period of Gregorian oral
composition, with the selection and completion of formularies—full sets of antiphons and responds—for
the yearly round of Mass services.


The Mass is a public adaptation of the Christian counterpart, known as agape or “love feast,” of the
Jewish Passover seder, the occasion of Christ’s last supper. It has two parts. The first, called the synaxis
(“synagogue,” after the Greek for a meeting or assembly) or the Mass of the Catechumens, consists, like
the synagogue service, of prayers and readings. It is an exoteric service, open to those who have not yet
completed their religious instruction (known as catechism, whence catechumen, one undergoing
indoctrination). The second, an esoteric service known as the Eucharist or the Mass of the Faithful, is
closed to all who have not yet been baptized and consists of a reenactment of the last supper in which the
congregation mystically ingests the blood and body of Christ in the form of miraculously transubstantiated
wine and bread.


Mass was at first celebrated only on the Dominica and the Christian holidays, between the hours of
terce and sext (i.e., around 10 A.M.). Later on, it came to be celebrated also on weekdays (feriae in Latin,
whence “ferial” as opposed to “festal” Mass). Being a public service that incorporated a great deal of
action, the Mass did not contain full cursive psalmody or hymns with their many strophes or stanzas.
Instead, it featured short, stichic texts set to elaborate music; these short texts, assembled in large
repertories, articulated the “proper” identity of each occasion at which Mass was celebrated—feast,
Sunday, or saint’s day.


An antiphon plus a verse or two accompanies the entrance of the celebrants, called the Introit.
Between the two main synaxis readings or “lessons” (from Paul’s Epistles and from the Gospels,
respectively) come the Gradual, named for the stairs by which the celebrants ascend to the pulpit from
which the Gospel is read, and the Alleluia. These are the most ornate responds of all, with elaborately set
verses for virtuoso soloists. Probably the oldest psalmodic chants specifically designed for the Mass, the
lesson chants are said to have been introduced by Pope Celestine I, who reigned from 422 to 432.
Antiphons then accompany the collection (Offertory) and the consummation of the Eucharist
(Communion).

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