Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century

EX. 2-13    A   prosula within  a   neuma   within  a   laus    within  a   Gloria

KYRIES

The remaining “ordinary” chant, the Kyrie eleison, has a more complex—indeed, a somewhat puzzling—
history. Its special status is evident first of all from its language: the one Greek survival in the Latin Mass.
Kyrie eleison means the same thing as Domine, miserere nobis: namely, “Lord, have mercy on us”
(compare the middle part of the Gloria in Excelsis and the Agnus Dei refrain). It used to be a common
liturgical response, especially appropriate for use in the long series of petitions known as litanies, which
often accompanied processions. Pope Gregory the Great, in one of the few musically or liturgically