Gregorian Chant

 The Cathedral
 Urban centers which served as the religious capital for
the surrounding region
 The seat of an Archbishop or Cardinal
 The Chapel
 Religious institution supported by a nobleman
 Not an actual building, but a group of religious servants
 The Monastery
 Self-ruled and self-supporting
 A virtual town within the monastery walls
• The Schola Cantorum (School of Singers)
– The choir that sang for observances officiated by the
pope
– Founded in the late seventh century
– Helped to standardize chant melodies in the early eighth
century
• Chant in the Frankish Kingdom
– Between 752 and 754, Pope Stephen II traveled through
the Frankish kingdom with the Schola Cantorum.
2. Pepin the Short (r. 751–68), king of the Franks
 Ordered the Roman liturgy and chant to be performed in his
domain, replacing the native Gallican rite
 Codification of chant helped Pepin consolidate the kingdom.
3. Charlemagne (Charles the Great, r. 768–814)
 Pepin’s son
 Expanded the kingdom to include present-day western
Germany, Switzerland, and northern Italy
 Founded Holy Roman Empire
 Oral transmission
 ancient Greek notation forgotten
 chant was transmitted from memory
 Simple melodies may have been memorized.
 Complex melodies may have been improvised within strict
conventions.
 When melodies were written down, formulaic structures
remained intact.
B. The earliest chant notation
– Reliable transmission = standardization of chant.
– The earliest surviving books of chant with music
notation date from the ninth century.
– Signs called neumes were placed above words
Not specific notes.
Melodies were still learned by ear
In the tenth and eleventh centuries, scribes placed neumes at
varying heights to indicate relative sizes of intervals
(diastematic notation)
Non-diastemic diastemic
4. Lines added to indicate
specific pitches
 One line to indicate C or
F
5. Guido of Arezzo, a
monk in the eleventh
century, elaborated the
system.
 4 line staff
 Between each line is one
note
 Specific notes, but no
sense of absolute pitch
C. Solesmes chant notation
 In 1903, Pope Pius X
proclaimed modern
editions created by the
monks of Solesmes as
the official Vatican
editions.
 This is often called
“square notation”
• Modes can be described as different arrangements of
whole and half steps in relationship to a final, the
main note of the mode and usually the last note in the
melody.
• Each of the four finals have two associated modes

• The only chromatic pitch was B-flat, which frequently

appears in melodies in modes 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6.
• The reciting tone is the most frequent or prominent
note in a chant.
E. Modes were used to classify chants and arrange them in
books for liturgical use.
1. The theory doesn’t fit chants composed before the eleventh
century.
F. Greek names were given to the church modes in the tenth
century, based on a misreading of the music theorist
Boethius.
– Authentic modes received the ethnic names.
• Dorian (with a final of D)
• Phrygian (with a final of E)
• Lydian (with a final of F)
• Mixolydian (with a final of G)
2. Plagal modes were prefixed with hypo
 Hypodorian (with a final of D)
 Hypophrygian (with a final of E)
 Hypolydian (with a final of F)
 Hypomixolydian (with a final of G)
3. The attempt to explain their own music theory in Greek
terms shows how important it was for medieval scholars
to ground their work in Greek tradition.
Liturgical Modern Pitches in ascending order

I - Authentic modes (tones in medieval parlance)

Dorian Dorian |D| E F G (A) B C D
Phrygian Phrygian |E| F G A B (C) D E
Lydian Lydian |F| G A B (C) D E F
Mixolydian Mixolydian |G| A B C (D) E F G

II - Plagal modes (derived tones)

Hypodorian Aeolian A B C |D| E (F) G A
Hypophrygian Locrian B C D |E| F G (A) B
Hypolydian Ionian C D E |F| G (A) B C
Hypomixolydian Dorian D E F |G| A B (C) D
The enclosed pitch |X| is the 'finalis' of the mode, what we might today call
the tonic note; the pitch enclosed (X) is the 'cofinalis' or what we would call
a dominant. In chants sung in a given mode, the cofinalis was often used as
a secondary tonal center.
 Guido of Arezzo devised a set of syllables for students
to use in sight-singing.
 The syllables correspond to the first syllables of each
phrase of the hymn Ut queant laxis (see HWM
Example 2.5).
 The syllables ut–re–mi–fa–sol–la correspond to C–D–
E–F–G–A.
 Guido’s system did not include a syllable for B, which is
now designated as ti.
 Hexachords
 There are three pairs of semitones in chant: E–F, A–B-
Flat, B–C
2. Guido’s six-note pattern (a hexachord) contained only
one semitone, between E and F.
3. By transposing the syllables to F or G, a singer could
learn chants with other semitone combinations.
B.Followers of Guido created a pedagogical aid called the
“Guidonian Hand” (see CHWM Figure 2.14).
– Each joint of the hand stood for one of the twenty notes
of the system.
– Other notes were considered “outside the hand.”
– Teachers pointed to the different joints of the finger to
teach their students intervals.
C. Thanks to Guido’s innovations, a teacher could
“produce a perfect singer” in one to two years, instead
of the ten years required when teaching by rote.