# The evolution of plainsong



## Dedalus (Jun 27, 2014)

I just found myself curious about plainsong, or Gregorian Chant. I read the wikipedia, and I was already vaguely aware how the Gregorian Chant was basically the seed of all Western Classical music, and how it was the reason for notation being reinvented. It is also my understanding that it evolved continually, being at first just one male voice (I think?) and then a group of men all singing totally monophonically, and then at some point octaves were added, accompanying instruments were added, and even polyphony added somewhere down the line. When did these developments happen? In what order? The wiki talks about how different ones were being used concurrently, so perhaps that's not so easy to say. Are masses in particular the direct descendants of plainsong?

I was wondering if anybody could give me any information about the evolution of the Gregorian Chant. Any good youtube performances to illustrate certain iterations of it would also be really cool.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

There's a very good book which will start to answer your question. _Le chant grégorien: Des origines à nos jours_ by Jacques Viret (Eyrolles 2012)

This little note by Katarina Livljanid, from her CD _Chant Wars_ gives an inkling of the issues



> `Between a stream and its source, which has the purer water?' (John the Deacon, Life of Gregory) The emperor Charlemagne (d. 814) is said to have uttered these words when asked to resolve a dispute between his own Frankish cantors and those of the pope in Rome, each group of vocal-ists convinced of its own authenticity in singing. Charlemagne, who was acutely aware of the de-cline of liturgical singing and the many competing chant traditions in his wide-ranging empire, ex-pressed with this phrase his desire to return to the purity of the 'original source', the chant of Rome (but his motives were many-layered: the ideal of Roman authority, expressed in music and the li-turgy, would also aid the emperor in the consoli-dation of his dynasty's legitimacy). This ideal has been voiced by various personalities between the 9th century and our own time, throughout the long history of the liturgical song commonly known as 'Gregorian chant'; used in reference to opposing views of reality, Charlemagne's phrase continues to witness to the fact that disputes about that mysterious ideal-the authenticity of liturgical chant-have never ceased to flourish.
> 
> Having been in almost continuous usage in the liturgy, Gregorian plainchant has not always enjoyed the privilege (or should we say the bad luck?) to be considered as 'medieval' music, and thus didn't necessarily have to conform to the ever-changing aesthetic vogues of the re-cently created world of 'historically informed' performance. As a living music shared today by active religious communities, secular vocalists interested in medieval performance practice, mu-sicologists and liturgists, plainchant continues to arouse opposing approaches to its interpre-tation. Nowadays, unfortunately, this plurality of interpretive styles is not always accompanied by a tolerance of divergent musical ideas. The partici-pants in today's aesthetic 'chant wars' surround-ing Gregorian chant sometimes still harbor a latent belief in 'Romanness', in the supremacy of one singing style over all others, and a desire to be the bearer of the unique 'truth'. In our 'Chant Wars' we attempt to orient ourselves towards the other pole of the problem: by considering the plurality of European chant traditions, we may be able to better understand repertoires which, at the beginning of their existence and for hundreds of years thereafter, were transmitted from singer to singer in oral tradition.
> 
> ...


This essay by Jean-Yves Hameline starts to explain the role of instruments, which you mention in the OP



> What is today known in France as chant gregorien, a chant repertoire with monastic origins, came about in the late 19th century as the result of a long campaign by musicians and churchmen to reform church singing, the current practice of which they considered unworthy of their attempts to renew the historical foundations and " artistic " criteria of the liturgy. The Vatican Edition of Gregorian Chant commissioned by Pope St Pius X made the new reper-toire widely known, despite the fact that it was not always properly performed. This widespread adoption of Gregorian chant unfortunately masked, indeed ous-ted completely, the forms of chant previously in use in some of the older Catholic countries. This was unfortunate, because the older forms constituted a large reservoir of custom and inherited competence combining learned and popular elements passed down orally from one generation of chanters to the next over many centuries.
> 
> This recording contains excerpts from the plainsong Requiem Mass and Funeral Service. Plainsong was the result of a thousand years of continuous trans-formation and adaptation of ancient Roman-Gregorian chant. In 1840, when the Cambrai chantbooks used here were printed, plainsong was generally performed slowly and gravely, with variations of tempo depending on the degree of solem-nity of particular church feasts. This kind of chant was " ritual " rather than " artistic ". However, it could be extremely moving, more on account of its appropriateness to situation than owing to any expressive intention. Depending on local resources, it involved the participation of priest, chanter and congrega-tion. In larger churches, it was common to add a choir of clerics and (when requi-
> red by the ceremonial) an organ which alternated with the chanters and congre-gation and accompanied the passages sung by all. The chanters robed in cassock or surplice stood at the lectern, generally placed between altar and nave to underline their role as intermediaries between the congregation and the clergy. They performed the plainsong from the old square and diamond notation contai-ned in large songbooks or smaller manuals which could be carried in processions and at the cemetery. Gustave Courbet's famous painting " Enterrement Ornans " shows them standing on the brink of the grave, stiff yet familiar, confi-dent in their function and appearance, suggesting a robust and firm style of sin-ging. In town churches with sufficient financial resources, the chanters, never numerous, were sometimes joined by a few choirboys. Occasionally, the singing at the lectern was supported by an ophicleide, serpent or double-bass, though these instruments were superseded later in the century by a harmonium or small pipe organ. Depending on the degree of particular feasts, the nature of particular services and the resources available, different kinds of plainsong performance were found. Faux-bourdon is one of the most ancient and most prestigious of these.
> ...


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## Dedalus (Jun 27, 2014)

Ha, if only I spoke French! Although I'm sure there are English books about this, as well. I have so much to read already, unfortunately.

But yes, maybe this is too detailed and vast a subject for a forum. I might _have_ to read a book to really understand how it evolved and how it turned into classical music (if it's even fair to say that).


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

This is a very good website. If I were you I would ask your question there

http://gregorian-chant.ning.com/


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## Dedalus (Jun 27, 2014)

Wow, thank you Mandryka! Those two excerpts were great


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Dedalus, every serious student has a copy of David Hiley's landmark study:

https://epub.uni-regensburg.de/25558/1/ubr12760_ocr.pdf


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

If you enjoy murder mysteries, Louise Penny's "The Beautiful Mystery" revolves around a monastery in Quebec that in the book is famed for its plainsong.


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