Other
Rites
Three periods of church
history will serve to outline early Western chant. From apostolic times
to the Edict of Toleration (AD 313), Christians suffered persecution,
though not continuously. Elaborate public worship was certainly impossible,
and liturgy must have been simple and informal. We have only fragmentary
references to liturgy from this period and almost none to chant. The
common language of the Roman Empire at that time was Greek, the language
of the New Testament writings. We know that Greek was the language of
Christian worship in Rome until 250 or later, and the change to Latin
occurred only gradually after that time. The theological writings that
survive from this period are precious, and many have been published
in translation in the Ante-Nicene Fathers collection.
The Latin language
was first used liturgically (and the inspired writings were also translated)
in the Roman province of Africa, an area broader than modern Tunisia,
inhabited by the indigenous Berber people. The Church there was plagued
with various heresies. In the fifth century the Arian Vandals (one
of the Teutonic tribes that invaded the Roman Empire in that century)
overran the land. Later the conquest and destruction of the Vandal
people led to a period of Byzantine rule, but the Muslim conquest
toward the end of the seventh century destroyed the Church in North
Africa, leaving no trace.
In this early period
of Latin worship, some texts were written, notably the Gloria in
excelsis Deo and the Te Deum. These new texts, Gallican
rather than Roman and constructed in the style of psalms, were called
psalmi idiotici. The Gloria was used in morning prayer before
it was added to the Mass. Such hymns (other than these two) were replaced
in the fourth century by the singing of psalms and canticles from
the Bible, a way of safeguarding the orthodoxy, or doctrinal correctness,
of worship.
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From the Edict of Toleration
to the fall of Rome in 476, Christianity flourished. In Rome basilicas
were built or adapted within decades. Public worship flourished, with
the celebration of divine worship copied in some respects from the style
of the imperial court. The Council of Nicaea (325), held near Constantinople,
was the first ecumenical council, defining the doctrine of the Holy
Trinity against the Arians. This was the golden age of the Fathers of
the Church, their writings published as the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
(notably St. Ambrose, St. Augustine and St. Jerome). We can recover
many details of liturgical celebration from the writings of this time,
but still very little about the chant.
While the early history
of chant remains a matter of speculation in the absence of hard evidence,
it is possible to recognize the antique musical style of certain chants
and suggest they may have survived from the early centuries (certainly
the fourth century) of the Western Church. These include the psalm
tones used in the office, the lesson tones of the Mass, the Gloria
in excelsis Deo (Gloria XV in modern editions), the Sanctus
and Agnus Dei (Sanctus XVIII and Agnus Dei XVIII) and the Te
Deum. The celebrant's tones for the collect, Preface and Pater
noster should be added to the list.
Already in this early
period, the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass began
to take notice of the mysteries of faith that were commemorated, such
as the birth of Christ, His resurrection and the descent of the Holy
Spirit on Pentecost. This was prominent in Jerusalem during the fourth
century, when pilgrimage to the Holy Land became common. The "birth"
(that is, birth into eternal life) of the martyrs was also remembered
on their anniversaries. Because the date of Easter occurred on the
Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox (a dating
that was not universally adopted till the eighth century), the principal
doctrinal mysteries were celebrated on a temporal cycle of movable
feasts. The sanctoral cycle included all feasts that had determinate
dates of the month, including Christmas. The way these two cycles
of dates coincide constitutes one of the most interesting aspects
of the celebration of Christian liturgy.
Particularly in the
West, it was necessary to compose prayers and to choose chant texts
from the Bible appropriate to each feast day (the day celebrating
the mystery or saint). A manuscript still preserved in Verona called
the Leonine Sacramentary is a collection of such prayers (not chant
texts) of the Mass. While it takes its name from Pope Leo the Great
(440-61), it was compiled more than 150 years later, an example of
the practice of collecting the best liturgical prayer texts for permanent
future use. The next oldest such manuscript is the Gelasian Sacramentary,
named for Pope Gelasius (492-96). Though compiled near Paris about
740 and now preserved in the Vatican Library, this copied a Roman
model that was as much as a century older.
The provision of
texts and music to be sung on these feasts proceeded more slowly.
It is a commonplace to say that we must not think that a piece of
music is as old as its text or that the text is as old as its feast.
But rather, we must merely be careful not to assume that a piece of
music composed for a text has come down unchanged to the era of notation
that can be read. Proper chants for some of the oldest feasts, such
as Christmas and Easter, betray archaic qualities in both texts and
music. The construction of a set of proper chants for the entire year
will be described under Old Roman chant.
Many scholars of
recent years have discussed the transmission of chant from its origin
to the invention of notation. The first notation was meant to remind
a singer of a melody that he knew, indicating nuances of rhythm. These
neumes were invented in the ninth century (if not late in the eighth).
By the eleventh century, staff notation was developed to teach the
melodies that were no longer known, but this notation did not preserve
the nuances of rhythm. This subject will be explained under Gregorian
chant.
While we have little
information about the melodies that were sung in the early church,
we are told how they were often sung. Two methods of singing psalms
or other chants are responsorial and antiphonal. In responsorial singing,
the soloist (or choir) sings a series of verses, each one followed
by a response from the choir (or congregation). In antiphonal singing,
the verses are sung alternately by soloist and choir, or by choir
and congregation, or by two halves of a group of singers.
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From the fall of Rome
to the rise of Charlemagne (768), western Europe was in turmoil. The
collapse of Roman civil order and the incursions of the Teutonic tribes
resulted in chaos. In many places the bishop was the only recognized
authority remaining in place. The rise of monasticism — men or
women withdrawing from the world to live together in prayer, study and
work — should not be surprising in this context. Monasticism was
brought to the West from the Egyptian desert, St. Martin of Tours (died
397) being an early founder (the present monastery of Ligugé
is the site of his dwelling, founded about 360). St. Benedict (480-546)
founded Monte Cassino about 529; his rule became the predominant form
of monastic life in the West. Most important for us, it specified the
order of daily prayer that we call the Divine Office.
In cathedrals (every
city had one) and collegiate churches (basilicas and certain other
churches), a group of canons assumed the obligation of singing the
hours of daily prayer. (A collegiate church is simply a church that
has such a college, i.e., group, attached to it.) This was called
the cathedral or secular office, secular clergy being distinguished
from monks. The cathedral office was built around morning and evening
prayer, certain appropriate psalms assigned for each.
In monasteries, the
entire group of monks assumed a similar obligation, but the structure
of the daily hours was somewhat different. The monastic office was
inspired by the continuous prayer of the Egyptian hermits, marked
by recitation of the psalms from memory. Later St. Benedict structured
the Office to encompass the entire 150 psalms in the course of the
week, distributed through seven "hours" of prayer. In some places
(Rome and Britain especially), the cathedral office was sung by a
group of monks attached to it. Partly for this reason, the cathedral
office eventually became similar to the monastic office, though even
in modern times there are some slight differences. But up to 1970
the weekly singing of the 150 psalms had been basically the same for
1500 years.
The psalms were complemented
with antiphons, responsories and hymns. A number of hymns are attributed
to St. Ambrose and his imitators. In Gaul under Frankish rule, a number
of poets furnished texts for hymns. Notably, Venantius Fortunatus
(c.530-c.609), bishop of Poitiers, wrote Vexilla regis prodeunt
and Pange lingua gloriosi lauream certaminis, both prominently
used in Holy Week, as well as the Easter processional hymn Salve
festa dies.
In this period liturgical
forms developed locally within a broad pattern of similarity. Looking
from east to west, north of the Mediterranean, different liturgical
texts and chants were composed in Benevento (southern Italy), Rome,
Milan (northern Italy), Gaul and Spain. Vestiges of liturgical forms
and even some texts survive from this period, and the later development
of each of these types of chant is dealt with separately, concluding
with the treatment of Gregorian chant.
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Some other rites may
be discussed briefly here. The Celtic rite, probably not unlike the
Gallican rite, was used in Roman Britain. When St. Augustine of Canterbury
arrived from Rome in 597 to convert the Anglo-Saxons, he brought the
Roman rite. By 664 the remaining Christian Celts and the Christianized
invaders were ready to be reconciled. At the Synod of Whitby, the two
churches united, resolving differences about the liturgical rites and
the date of Easter (both in favor of Roman practice). There are almost
no sources of liturgy or chant of the Celtic rite. The Bangor antiphoner
is a manuscript of chant texts without notation dating from about 690
and brought to Italy. One hymn, Sancti, venite, has been matched to
a melody found in a later source. Celtic rites endured in Scotland until
the eleventh century and in Ireland until the twelfth century.
The term Anglo-Saxon
chant is a misnomer. As soon as the Angles and Saxons were converted,
they followed the Roman rite that St. Augustine brought. The term
Frankish chant is also a misnomer. As soon as the Franks were converted,
they began to use the Gallican rite.
The term Sarum chant
does not refer to a distinct rite. Until the Council of Trent in the
sixteenth century, it was normal for most countries and many dioceses
to have their own liturgical use. A use is not a separate rite; it
is distinguished mainly by its calendar, which includes numerous local
saints, and by the slight variations in text and chant that invariably
occurred in manuscript transmission. By the thirteenth century the
use of Sarum (the Salisbury diocese) had been adopted all over England.
In the nineteenth century, the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Church
of England singled out the chants of the Sarum use (published in 1528
and 1532) as their liturgical heritage.
Credits
Fr. Jerome F. Weber
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LITURGIE
&CETERA 
