Sarum Use Vespers and Liturgical Art – Heaven on Earth

Some NLM readers will already be aware of the Sarum Use Vespers and Benediction that took place on March 1 at the Princeton University Chapel. Here, I present an account of a talk I gave before the event about the art used in the ceremony, which was commissioned especially for the occasion, explaining the choice of content and style, and how it harmonises with the activity of worship.  

I don’t think I have ever seen a more complete harmony of words, music, art, architecture, and action in the liturgy. The music by 16th-century English composers Thomas Tallis and Robert White was sung magnificently by Gabriel Crouch and the Gallicantus early music group. The spectacular Magnificat by White can be heard at the 39-minute mark in the video below, which I give you now in case you missed it the first time. 

The second video is of the three short talks given before the service. The first, by James Griffin of the Durandus Institute, explained the history of the Sarum Use. I gave the second one about sacred art as a part of worship. In my capacity as Artist-in-Residence of the Scala Foundation - a co-sponsor of the event - I was invited to choose the art which was commissioned especially for this occasion. The third was by Gabriel Crouch, the Director of Choral Activities at Princeton University and the Musical Director of the choir Gallicantus, who spoke about the history of music and its composers. 

Peter Carter, who founded The Catholic Sacred Music Project and is the music director for The Aquinas Institute at Princeton University, was a strong driving force behind the evening. In large part, thanks to his vision and hard work, an estimated 1,000 people attended this incredible event at the Princeton University Chapel, built in the 1930s. I wonder whether so many people have ever knelt in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in this magnificent space. Here is the video of Vespers and Benediction.

...and here is the video of the talks...

The following is what I prepared prior to the occasion, and is a combination of what I said and what appeared in the program:

Choosing Contemporary Art for Sarum Use Vespers Today

St Chad and the Holy Face of Christ were painted by a young artist named Ander Scharbach (https://www.ander-scharbach.com/), from Baltimore, Maryland. The Crucifixion and the Mother of God are painted by an established artist, Ioana Belcea (IoanaBelcea.com), based in Princeton, New Jersey. Their work is for sale, and they take commissions.

St Chad by Ander Scharbach

The Crucifixion and St Chad were painted especially for this occasion. Each artist was asked to draw personal inspiration from the English Gothic style of the 13th century School of St Albans, a period when the Sarum Use Liturgy was at its height. This tradition of sacred art is characterized by the description of form with the elegant flow of line, a limited palette with muted colour, and by having ornate, patterned borders.

The results are contemporary yet traditional. No artist would have painted like this in 13th-century England. Still, everyone in 13th-century England would have been able to relate to the images every bit as much as the worshipers in 21st-century America, who excitedly mobbed the artists after the Vespers were over, to ask about the beautiful icons they had seen. This is because the art conforms to traditional principles of liturgical art, which are universal.

Crucifixion by Ioana Belcea, based on the 12th century Winchester Psalter

Sacred art shows us what we do not see with our eyes in the here and now. It portrays the saints and angels praying with us in heaven eternally. It illuminates the truths behind the actions of the liturgy and focuses our attention on what is important at any given time in the course of our worship.

There is a reason that we follow tradition. The art we chose conforms to a style developed gradually over generations and centuries, going back to the early Church, to fulfil its purpose well, which is to aid us in a deep participation in the worship of God. How would one measure such a thing? It is not primarily by whether people like it, or how we respond emotionally. Instead, the Church, in her wisdom, observes the fruits of that worship. Does the art incline people to go out and serve the Lord and love our neighbors as ourselves? Does it lead to lives of greater virtue? While we always hope that all will like the art and wonder at its beauty, there are other goals than this. The purpose of this art is to influence the lives of Christian worshipers so that they become better Christians. Getting this right takes patience and careful observation of many iterations of style and so once we get it right we mess with traditional forms at our peril. If we arbitrarily change things for no good reason, we are playing with people’s souls.

The sanctuary and altar, with the images forming a temporary rood screen,
in the traditional pre-Reformation Catholic manner

The choice of images

Following tradition, we have placed three images at the core of our schema today. Together, they symbolize the broad themes of salvation history and the mysteries of the Faith made present every time we worship God. In addition, we have added St Chad of Mercia (died A.D. 672), the great evangelist of western England and the Midlands, whom we remember today. May we imitate his Christian faith and good works in our lives.

The three core images are:On the left: the Mother of God with her Son. This image symbolizes the life of the historical Jesus and his human nature, which he received from Mary, and we share with Him.
Center: the suffering Christ on the cross. This image portrays the sacrifice he made for us, his suffering, and his death. It reminds us of our spiritual deaths in baptism. This image gives meaning to our suffering in this life, particularly when placed next to the image of the Risen Christ because it reinforces the message that there is always hope in the Resurrection. Christian hope transcends suffering just as the Light overcomes the darkness.

Right: the Holy Face of the Risen Christ in Glory. The halo of supernatural, uncreated light around his head is prominent, constituting the whole background, which is commonly considered ‘negative’ space but here becomes heavenly ‘positive’ space. This tells us visually that we are looking at a heavenly vision of the Saviour. This image speaks of his Resurrection and victory over death, by death. Through the Church, we ‘put on Christ’ (to use St Paul’s words) and rise with him supernaturally, partaking of the divine nature through participation in the sacraments of confirmation and communion.

We are all people loved by God. Each human life is a unique story that simultaneously and paradoxically mirrors the pattern of the life of Christ and the pattern of the whole of salvation history, the story of the people of God. We share in the life, the suffering, the death of Christ and, as Christians, in His resurrection, partaking in the divine nature. This is a supernatural transformation, a great gift, and is our joy as Christians in this life and the next.

Gabriel Crouch and Gallicantus are on the left

How to pray with the sacred art

The worship of God, which we are participating in at Vespers, is the worship of the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. Scripture tells us that the Son is the image of the Father, and no one comes to the Father except through the Son. Accordingly, it is a traditional practice to pray to the Father through the Son, who is the image of the Father. This establishes the legitimate principle of praying to a person through their image.

So, each time a prayer is addressed to the Father, let the Holy Spirit draw you in and pray to the Father through the image of Christ. Look at the face in the image and imagine you are speaking to him as he stands before you.

We can use the image of the Son to pray directly to both the Son a much as the Father. So, each time a prayer is addressed to the Son, again, turn to the image and pray to Him through the image. Similarly, each time a prayer is addressed to Mary or St. Chad or is invoking their memory, turn and face their holy icons as the words are sung or recited.

The Magnificat, which the Church sings at every Vespers, is the great hymn of Mary taken from the Gospel of Luke. At this moment, we pray with her, using her words as recounted in Scripture, and it is appropriate to look at Mary’s image when we do so. All the images are incensed during the singing of the Magnificat to draw our attention to them at this heightened moment of prayer.

The censing of the images during the Magnificat

We do not pray to or worship the image itself, as that would be idolatry. Rather, when we pray to anyone other than God, such as Mary or St. Chad, we ask them to join in our prayers and to intercede to God for us, just as we might ask any friend or family member to pray for us.

St Augustine said famously that those who sing their prayers pray twice. In this Vespers, our prayer is not simply two-fold, but multi-faceted: music, art, and incense engage the senses, helping to direct the posture, intellect and will. The heart is the human center of gravity, so to speak, the place where we are, as a person at any moment – the vector sum of our thoughts, feelings and actions. The hope is always that through this multi-faceted engagement, we raise up our hearts to the Lord.

The beauty of the art, the architecture and the music participates in the beauty of the cosmos, which bears the thumbprint of the Creator. This transforming beauty harmonises with the poetic language of the psalms, and of the hymns and the prayers of the liturgy so that the worship stimulates our spiritual imaginations and impresses the pattern of Christ upon our souls. Then we go out and contribute, gracefully and beautifully, in all that we do to the pattern of human life in society. By this, we establish once more a beautiful culture that, like the cosmos, bears the mark of Christ, who did not create it directly but inspired its creation by people.

The Scala Foundation has a mission of transforming American and, hence, Western culture through beauty in education and worship so that we are formed by grace to change society, one personal relationship at a time. To the degree that each of us contributes to this ideal, we will help to create culture of beauty that speaks of the Christian Faith and Western values.

Some may wonder how much an ancient English liturgy such as this might be relevant to Americans in Princeton today. The answer is: a great deal! The American nation emerged out of English culture and the values it incarnated and which were formed by its pre-Reformation liturgy and faith, primarily the Sarum Use of the Roman Rite. It is a truth that worship is the wellspring of culture. These values of English culture were preserved in America subsequently through the liturgical cousins and liturgical descendants of the Sarum Use, and their associated churches formed by them. These are as well as the Catholic Church, the Anglican, Episcopalian and all Christian churches which routinely sang the psalms especially those that used the psalter from the Book of Common Prayer. The Book of Common Prayer developed directly from the Sarum liturgy.

The practice of praying the psalms can, it occurs to me, be a principle of unity for the American nation today. I speak with such hope, and as one who was born and grew up in England and recently became an American citizen. The hope is that the beauty and the dignity of the worship we participate in tonight, may be simultaneously grounding and elevating for us.

On the one hand, it will establish in us in the desire for humble prayer in the home that mirrors, in spirit at least, tonight’s Vespers. We can pray the psalms in the domestic Church. We may not be able to match the great skill and sublime beauty of this occasion, but in our own humble way, we can daily participate in the ideal it presents. This grounding, humble prayer can be elevating in that it inclines us to cooperated with grace and inspire us in our daily activities, contributing to a noble and accesible culture of beauty. Humble prayer and high culture! That is the motto we bring to you.

Tonight we can raise our hearts to heaven in yet another way. It is a participation in something yet more beautiful, the heavenly liturgy in which the saints and angels worship God, who is Beauty itself. This is our destiny as Christians. Every time there is a pause in the singing, you will hear a faint echo enriched by harmonics and resonance created by the acoustics of the majestic gothic architecture of Princeton University Chapel. At these moments, imagine that the angels and saints singing with us in heaven and worshiping God in the perpetual heavenly liturgy are whispering in your ear, urging you to join in with their worship, in which they accept the love of God and return it to Him in the perpetual song of praise.

I pray that we may all be inspired to pray humbly and to love God and our neighbor.

The celebrants and 1,000 people were on their knees before the Blessed Sacrament during Benediction. I wonder if Princeton University Chapel – built for Presbyterians – has ever seen this before.

In Honor of St. Cecilia: Memorable Quotes from an Interview with Conductor Marcel Pérès

When I recently read a detailed interview from twenty-five years ago with the world-famous musicologist and conductor of early music Marcel Pérès, I found some passages quite interesting in light of current events in the Church and decided to share them here. In his remarkable discography with the Ensemble Organum, Pérès has opened up many chant repertoires that had never been explored, such as Mozarabic chant, Corsican chant, and Gallican chant, and has produced benchmark recordings of medieval and Renaissance polyphony by such figures as Ockeghem and Machaut. The interview was conducted by Tom Moore and published in Fanfare, 19:5 (May-June 1996), 20–30. The full interview may be found here. Links to other interviews with Marcel Pérès may be found here and here.

You have been focusing almost exclusively on music for the Catholic Church. Did you grow up in a Catholic family?

Yes. When I was a boy I used to sing in the choir of the Cathedral of Nice, in the south of France. It was here that I discovered chant. The Cathedral of Nice was a very traditional place, and even after the last council continued with the Latin Mass on Sunday, and Latin Vespers also. I was lucky to grow up there. Every time that I work on a new repertoire, I always try to think about the liturgy, its place in the liturgy—I think it’s very important for performing this early music.

What did the choir focus on? Did you sing the Gregorian ordinary and propers?

Yes. We sang polyphony also, Palestrina and so on. Even though the Gregorian chant was done in the Solesmes way, it was important, because as you know, most of the Catholic places had broken with the tradition. As I was born in 1956, it was just after the council, so for me it was an opportunity to make a link with tradition. Later I studied the history of chant in more detail, chiefly with Michel Huglo in Paris, where I did my scholarly training, manuscript work, and so on.

Can you tell us about your perceptions of the effect of Vatican II in France?

It was a disaster. It was a disaster because the result was a reform that was not the sort of reform wanted by the texts of the council, because the texts said that Latin remained the language of the church, and national languages were simply authorized, but not the rule. Vatican II also said that Gregorian chant remained the repertoire of the Latin church. But in spite of that, the bishops wanted to really break with any reference to the past, and now you have this situation where you have Roman Catholic priests who are not able to say a Mass in Latin, and even people who grew up in a very religious environment are unable to understand a word of the Latin liturgy.

It’s really a disaster, not only in the field of religion, but also in the area of scholarship. When you study the Middle Ages, whether history or music or something else, you must have references to the medieval liturgy, medieval Latin; but now when you start your graduate studies at twenty-one or twenty-two, you must learn everything, the texts of the liturgy, and there is a drop in the level of studies because of that. Now there is maybe a tiny change in the mentalities for some young priests who realize that there is something missing in their education; maybe something is changing, and in the next ten or twenty years we will have a more reasonable attitude. Presently in France most of the clergy is allergic to Latin—it’s not a reasonable attitude. So everything has to be rebuilt.

In some sense Vatican II was as revolutionary for French culture as the events of 1968. Can the two be linked?

It’s very complex. It’s a constant in the history of France that the people who have the power do not realize that things must change, and so they always wait till the last moment. The French revolution was typical of that—they wanted to hold onto things until they burst. The decolonization of the French empire was the same thing—they wanted to negate the problem. English people have a more fair way to manage these things.

In the early 60s in France, on one side, you have this political power, with DeGaulle, who didn’t want to change anything of what existed, and with the church, it’s true that the Catholics had not seen what was going on in the 50s. ...

Everything started with the first Vatican council in 1870. At this time the Catholic Church wanted to make the rites, the chant uniform. It’s from this time that you have the idea of one edition of chant, the Vatican Edition. The aim was to have the same liturgy and the same chant in all the Catholic churches throughout the world. It was artificial, since every country had its own tradition, even if more or less every one was singing a sort of Gregorian or Latin vocal tradition. This only really came into practice in the ’20s, after the First World War. That created a new aesthetic of Catholic liturgy, Catholic music also, and the way of singing chant that is common now is an aesthetic that comes from this time.

Is this the sort of aesthetic that the chant-based pieces of Duruflé or Poulenc represent?

Yes. The model for Catholic music was Gregorian chant and Palestrina; composers tried to compose according to plainsong. At the same time the chant was accompanied. It was a mixture of a will to return to antiquity, but also a desire to arrange this antiquity with what was necessary for modern good taste. This aesthetic was triumphant from the ’20s through the second World War. At this point in France there was a breakdown in the Catholic world, because the Catholics had believed in the values of Petain during the war, and they had to think it over. That’s why in the ’60s the reform of Vatican II was an occasion for the collective unconscious to break with this Catholic style linked with the war. They wanted to do something new. This is how you can explain why some priests are so pathologically against Latin, against what was real Catholic tradition—in their minds, it was a real way to break with the past. There you have in a few words a psychoanalysis of French attitudes.

Can you tell us a little about how you perceive the interactions between Eastern and Western chant?

It’s a matter of history, since all this repertoire has a common root, which is the liturgy of Jerusalem. Very quickly the Christian liturgy became Greek. Christianity came to the Latin world in the form of Greek culture. The liturgy in Rome itself was in Greek until the fourth century—it’s only in the fifth century that they started to translate from Greek to Latin. When we are thinking of Roman chant, we must always have in mind that in the early centuries there was not a distinction between Roman and Greek culture; since two centuries before Christ these cultures were completely linked. It’s very significant that when Roman music theoreticians write of music it’s always with Greek terms—the very last great theoretician of music from antiquity, Boethius, is talking of Greek music, and in his mind there is no distinction between Roman music and Greek music. The theory is Greek.

I emphasize that because from time to time I read some article that discusses Greek influence in the Roman liturgy. That’s wrong—it’s not Greek influence. It’s a community. After the fifth or sixth century, Rome and Constantinople start to diverge, but still with many things in common. In fact in Rome until the thirteenth century they used to sing some pieces in Greek. In the seventh and eight centuries in Rome they had fourteen popes of Greek origin, but let us note that most of them were Greeks from Sicily—southern Italy and Sicily in antiquity were Magna Graecia—it was a Greek world, not a Latin world. So when I started to study Old Roman chant, I wanted to put in the perspective of these common roots. There were still in the twelfth century in Roman chant seven alleluia verses in Greek. I thought it would be good to ask Greek singers what they made of that. With my Western education, I wasn’t able to see how this music was working—it was very repetitive, it was very obvious from the notation that there was a lot of ornamentation, for instance, but how to do it. ...?

Something I have found fascinating in your work is the exploration of later chant traditions. Later chant has not been a topic of research for musicology.

You still don’t have a history of chant, because of an ideology that comes from the first Vatican Council. They wanted to promote the idea of a uniform chant repertoire, a uniform way of singing, and so they wanted to negate everything that happened between the eleventh and the nineteenth century—most of the history of chant, they say, is ‘‘decadent.’’ And so all the scholars have focused on the first manuscripts of chant. Now studies of later centuries are beginning, but we have lost one century, because these studies should have begun a century ago.

The common idea that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century chant is decadent is ideological, because the reform of Solesmes wanted to break with the Gallican tradition, with the affirmation of the specificity of French culture, with the idea ‘‘that we can be Catholic without having the same liturgy of Rome.’’ They wanted to destroy that in the nineteenth century, and so they wanted to go back to St. Gregory.

Which goes together with the infallibility of the pope…

Yes, yes. One liturgy, one infallible pope, one chant, one history of liturgy which is Roman and negated all other liturgies.

When we look at the chant of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it’s very good music, as good as Baroque music. If you think about it, why shouldn’t this chant have been refined? And so you have a huge repertoire to be discovered. I’ve tried to show some defects in the ideology, and with the records to show to scholars that they should study this, and in fact you can understand some medieval practices through studying seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources. They had a continuous tradition—the medieval aesthetic was still living. You find some fauxbourdon in parallel fifths in the eighteenth century—a language completely separate from that of the time.

In eighteenth century, at the Cathedral of Sens, they were still using thirteenth-century manuscripts. Sens is now a little city, but until the seventeenth century the archbishop had the title of Primate of Gaul and Germany. The decadence of Sens began with the growth of Paris, but until 1620 or so the Bishop of Paris was under the authority of Sens. 

Marcel Pérès in 2016

“The Devil in Music” - A Myth Debunked

Here is a video which I found very interesting and enjoyable: musician Adam Neely thoroughly debunks one of the sillier legends about the medieval Church, namely, that it banned a particular musical interval called a “tritone”, because people thought it sounded so bad that it could summon the devil. For this reason, the interval is popularly known as “diabolus in musica – the devil in music”, although as Mr Neely explains, this nickname is not very old, and did not originally mean what people think it means. Along the way, he offers some useful thoughts about HOW people came to accept such silly and essentially baseless ideas about the Middle Ages, its culture and society, thoughts which are very much worth paying attention to, and applying more broadly to our history as a Church.

Singing Upon the Book: Further Methods of Chant Harmonization (Part 2)

This is the second part of the article by Mr Joseph Ahmad which was published yesterday, with our thanks.

Discantus and Cantare Super Librum

From the 12th or 13th centuries up to the 19th century, there persisted a tradition of improvising contrapuntal polyphonic settings of chant, variously called discantus, cantare super librum, faburden, chanter sur le livre, sortisatio, and contrapunto alla mente, depending on the period and region. Moreover, it admitted of many different genres, ranging from the aformentioned gymel—which is close to parallel organum—to canons, to fully independent four voice polyphony akin to a high quality written composition. Likewise, church records and witnesses, whether praising or decrying the practice, testify to its spread all across Europe.

Johannes Ockeghem (front right) and his choir in the chapel of King Charles VII of France.

Although we cannot visit Renaissance Rome to hear such improvisation for ourselves, history has left behind a number of witnesses’ reports, as well as written-down improvisations, such as written exercises in cantare super librum made by choristers as they were learning the art. Moreover, it is possible that certain published compositions reflect improvisational practices. For example, musicologist Philippe Canguilhem contends that Ghiselin Danckerts’s Missa de Beata Virgine reflects improvisational techniques used in the Sistine Chapel during the 16th century, given the circumstances of its composition and certain stylistic characteristics.

Regarding the quality of cantare super librum heard at the Sistine Chapel, Antimo Liberati observed in 1666, “listening to each of these erudite singers while they compose extemporaneously upon the plainchant, that is, when they make contrappunto alla mente with noble harmony as if it were written down and composed in advance, provokes at the same time wonder and sweetness.”

The Oxford Companion to Music records two later witnesses to such sophisticated improvisation. “Padre Martini, in his great work on counterpoint, says that in 1747 he heard very perfect extemporaneous singing in four parts in the church of St. John Lateran at Rome, and Dr. Burney…affirms (ca. 18050, ‘There are musicians in the church so well versed in this kind of singing that they lead off, and even carry on, fugues extempore when the subject will allow it, without confounding or encroaching on the other parts or committing a single fault in the harmony.’ ” Writing in 1938, the author of the Companion dryly comments, “despite the respectable authority of the writer, [this] is scarcely credible to us today.” If only he knew.

Chant book commissioned for the Sistine Chapel, ca. 1520 (Capp. Sist. 10, fol. 2v)

Still, given the difficulty of such a group improvisation, the results were sometimes cacophonous. In the early 19th century Adrien de La Fage lamented,  “France…has never abandoned its mania of improvising on a plainsong…and if today the combat has come to an end, it is only for lack of contestants. I say ‘combat,’ and with good reason; for it was indeed a perpetual battle, in which all the combatants appeared to butcher each other. The cathedral chancels were real battlefields, where one heard the cantors droning hoarsely in their lower register, then the counter-tenors shouting at the top of their lungs, and the tenors fitting in as best they could. For this, all these good men had no rule other than habit: they tried to start off on one of the notes of the harmony, and, for the rest, they abandoned themselves to Providence.”

Thus, one can only conclude that he should aspire to be more like the choristers of the Sistine Chapel and the Lateran, rather than the French.

The basic principle is quite simple. One portion of the choir sings a given piece of plainchant it in a very slow and measured manner (e.g., 4 beats per written neume). Usually this is done by the bass, but any other part can do it as well. Around this cantus firmus the other voices improvise melodies, following certain prescribed formulae. These formulae determine the intervals from which other voices sing above and below the cantus firmus, and they determine certain rules for cadences at the ends of phrases. In addition to following these formulae, singers add ornamentation.

For example, in discantus simplex, one voice sings the cantus firmus while the second voice, moving contrariwise to the cantus firmus, proceeds from unison, to the third, the fifth, the octave, and then back to the fifth, the third, and unison, cycling through this pattern throughout the piece. The discanting voice can add diminutions to this basic pattern, and a third voice can sing in parallel fifths with the cantus firmus to enrich the sound. If I am not mistaken, Jerycho’s performance of Kyrie IX employs a similar technique.

Another example of a simple formula is the fauxbourdon.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Singing Upon the Book: Further Methods of Chant Harmonization (Part 1)

At the beginning of the year, we printed an article by Mr Joseph Ahmad, who works as a researcher at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem, on the use of the “ison” or drone in Gregorian chant. We are happy to share this follow-up, which will be presented in two parts, with our renewed thanks to the author.

In my previous post, I discussed the most basic form of what medieval music theorists called diaphonia, namely the ison also known as diaphonia basilica. In this post, I would like to discuss some other forms of chant harmonization that choristers could employ for a given piece of chant in times past. Though these are more difficult, the ison can function as a gateway to these other forms, since, over time, it trains one’s ability to detect and produce chords. That is, one will develop sense of how different intervals “feel,” especially the perfect fifth, perfect fourth, and octave. Once you have a “feel” for these intervals—as well as comfort with sight reading neumes—you can begin experimenting with the methods discussed below.

Book of Hours, Paris 1450 - c. 14 British Library MS Harley 2971 f. 109v

Before we get to the music, I would like to consider a possible pitfall in these forms of ornamentation or enhancement that has plagued singers over history. How much is too much? How do we avoid mere aestheticism? It depends on how one builds upon a given piece of chant. To use a metaphor, is the manner in which you “diaphonize” akin to to donning a horse with horseshoes or garlands? In the former case, the addition enhances what is already an essential characteristic. The horseshoe helps the horse do horsy things. The latter case is an aesthetic fancy or a piece of buffoonery—unless, of course, this horse is a Hindu god. In the “garland approach,” sacred music becomes less and less mystagogic and iconographic, favoring that which is theatrical, entertaining, and aesthetically immanent—or, in the words of the Oxford Companion to Music, “meretricious and unliturgical.” The “horseshoe approach” consists of musically explaining or enhancing the pre-existing text, preserving the musical iconography and mystagogic nature of the original chant. As an example, I’d contend that a piece like Victoria’s Missa pro defunctis enhances, whereas a piece like Mozart’s Requiem, though brilliant as a musical composition, obscures. So, as you look at the following techniques, use your judgment and strive for the horseshoe approach.

Parallel Organum

Parallel organum, singing parallel fourths and fifths from the melody, is the earliest mentioned form of harmonization. Some form of it is arguably implied in Ordo Romanus XXX (ca. 8th c.), wherein the author calls a certain class of singers paraphonistae. In Greek musical terminology, the symphoniai paraphoniai designated consonances at the fourth and the fifth, as opposed to the symphoniai antiphonai, which designated tones either at unison or the octave. Thus it would seem that the paraphonistae were responsible for singing harmony.

This was not necessarily revolutionary, and perhaps such diaphonia was older in Greco-Roman music, for harmonizing in fourths and fifths seems prevalent in folk music around the world. Consider examples from South Africa:

Iceland:

Portugal

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Droning at Mass: Guest Article by Mr Joseph Ahmad

Our thanks to Mr Joseph Ahmad, who works as a researcher at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem, for sharing with us this very interesting article on the use of the “ison” or drone in Gregorian chant.

The subject of this piece is neither homiletics nor ill-timed bee-keeping, but rather some practical notes on how to support a line of plainchant with a drone or ison. Adding a drone is simple—in Byzantine choirs, the task is given to novice choristers—yet it has a powerful effect. When done properly, it fills out the chant’s aural space, enhancing and magnifying its melodic line, modality, and mystagogic aspects.

While the ison is best known today in the Byzantine tradition, being used in both Greek chant and certain forms of Slavonic chant, a number of performers of early music have employed it when singing Latin plainchant since at least the 1980s.

The Graduel Si ambulem, sung by the Les Chantres de Thoronet. For other examples, see Columba Aspexit performed by Gothic Voices, Quasi modo geniti by Jerycho, and Kyrie IV by Ensemble Organum.)

Although some have doubted the authenticity of using an ison with Gregorian chant, there are some oblique references to the practice in Guido d’Arezzo’s 10th century Micrologus (capp. 18-19), and the ison is clearly described in the 13th century treatise Summa Musice (cap. 24). In the section on polyphony, the author states,

“Diaphonia est modus canendi duobus modis, et dividitur in basilicam et organicam. Basilica est canendi duobus modis melodia ita quod unus teneat continue notam unam que est quasi basis cantus alterius concinentis. ~ Diphony is the method for singing two lines in harmony, and it is divided into royal and organic (i.e., organum) . Royal diphony consists of singing in two lines in such a way that one singer holds a single note continuously which is, as it were, the foundation for the chant of the other singer.”

As Marcel Pérès notes [1], the adjective basilica, “royal,” in liturgical matters often refers to the city of Rome. Indeed, in official Byzantine documents—such as the canons and minutes of ecumenical councils—the city of Rome is very often called “Royal and Ancient Rome.” If that is the case here, then the name diaphonia basilica may imply that the practice is originally Roman.

To this we can add some circumstantial evidence. Pairing a drone with a melodic line is by no means a novelty in the world of Mediterranean music. Double-pipes, for example, are as old as ancient Sumer and Egypt [2]; they were widely used in antiquity; they remained popular into the Middle Ages; and their use persists today in the Egyptian arghoul and the Sardinian launeddas. More apropos, the hurdy-gurdy’s larger predecessor, the organistrum, is said to have been used to accompany singing in churches and monasteries: this would make sense given its size and volume, but I’ve not yet found hard evidence for this claim apart from a purported note by Odo of Cluny on how to make the instrument.

A man playing the double pipe depicted by Simone Martini in the chapel of St Martin, in the lower of basilica of St Francis in Assisi, 1312.

Returning to the music, then, the basic drones are as follows:
Mode          Drone          Flectus
I                   Re                 Do
II                  Re                 Do
III                Do or Mi       Re
IV                Do or Mi       Re
V                 Fa
VI                Fa or Do
VII               Sol                Fa
VIII             Do

Apart from modes III and IV, the placement of the drone is usually straightforward. Depending on the mode, one either holds a single note throughout the chant, or one drones on two notes (the drone and the flectus), changing according to the tonal center of a given phrase—if the drone and the chant are separated by an octave, however, one could probably remove movement altogether. For example, in mode I, when a phrase is centered on La (and above) you will most likely drone on Re; when a phrase is centered on Sol (and below) you will most likely drone on Do, returning to unison on Re at the completion of the phrase. Likewise, you should switch to Do to anticipate a cadence ending on Do or Mi.

The best way to understand this, of course, is to try it out and adjust to what sounds right. Here are some examples to help you get started. The drone is marked by red neumes.

Mode I

Mode II

Continue Reading this Article. . .

NLM Exclusive: Interview with Early Music Composer Elam Rotem

A couple of years ago, my family discovered the work of Israeli-born and Basel-trained early music specialist Elam Rotem (b. 1984), a keyboardist and singer who founded and directs the splendid vocal ensemble Profeti della Quinta (Prophets of the Perfect Fifth — a very Augustinian and Boethian name). Moreover, Rotem runs a delightful website called Early Music Sources, which contains superb educational videos on such questions as 17th-century monody, historical pitch, cadences, high clefs and transposition, Italian basso continuo, tuning and temperaments, tactus and proportions around 1600, the romanesca, improvisation, and intabulations.

His accomplishments as a performer along with these educational resources would already be more than enough feathers in the cap of any 33-year old musician. But there is something much more fascinating about Elam Rotem. He is a first-class composer of music in the style of the early 17th-century, not as an academic exercise or as an ironic postmodern reconstruction, but simply because he so deeply understands and loves the music of the early Baroque that he thinks musically in this language and speaks it in the form of new compositions. What is more, he sets to music texts of the Old Testament in their original Hebrew. The result is stunning new music that communicates with the dramatic intensity, lush elegance, and sonorous beauty of Monteverdi — as in this setting by Rotem of the Song of Songs 4:8–11, “Come from Libanus, my spouse, come from Libanus, come…” (the composer is the one playing, and singing from, the harpichord):

Or in this Sinfonia à 3:

Rotem has written two large-scale multi-movement works in this style, both of which have been recorded in sumptuous performances that I have listened to many times with great enjoyment, and cannot recommend too highly:

• Rappresentatione di Giuseppe e i suoi Fratelli (Joseph and His Brethren). Musical drama in three acts, composed in the spirit of the early operas (2014).
• Quia Amore Langueo: Song of Songs and Dark Biblical Love Tales (2015) 

The links at Amazon include samples of all the tracks.

Naturally, such a countercultural but brilliantly successful endeavor is of immense interest to me, and I would think to many NLM readers, since those of us who celebrate or assist at the usus antiquior are promoting a liturgy (and its musical repertoire) that embraces the ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods, yet remains present among us down into our own times, and is still being enriched with new works of art — be they new churches, new vestments, new furnishings, or new musical compositions in Latin. For us, too, old forms of art are still alive, and that which may seem to some to be “dead” has never ceased to be the living language in which we worship.

I asked Mr. Rotem if he would be willing to do an interview for NLM about his work in the ongoing (and evidently burgeoning) early music revival. He graciously consented.

Interview with Composer and Early Music Specialist Elam Rotem

Peter Kwasniewski (PK): Mr Rotem, thank you for sharing your time and expertise with readers of New Liturgical Movement. We are interested in the question of the continuing relevance of the past to the present, particularly in the use of ancient religious rites, languages, and art forms. Music is frequently discussed in so-called “traditional” Catholic circles, above all the extensive use of Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony, which are treasures of our heritage. So we are well-disposed to the work you are doing.
          You have written some magnificent music in a late Renaissance or early Baroque style. How did you end up coming to this style as opposed to an earlier or later one? What is special about the early 17th century in your eyes and ears?

Elam Rotem (ER): The period around 1600 is unique in music history. New ways of composition, which are almost opposite to the ways in which music was composed until then, were invented and used. The concept of a single soloist that is half-singing and half-reciting (recitar cantando) and accompanied by simple harmonies, made it possible to tell stories in an immediate and dramatic manner. In addition, composers were exploring new harmonies that were not used before, and took the liberty to do so based on the texts that they were setting. If the character of the text was soft and sweet, so was the music. But if it was harsh, they didn’t mind composing harsh music that was intentionally unpleasant. The music’s main purpose was to amplify the text. Such stylistic environment is great for communicating emotions to the listeners, and especially for storytelling.

PK: Strikingly, your works are composed in Hebrew, which is not a language that has been much used for choral music intended for Western European and American audiences. What’s it like to set Hebrew in a musical style whose main languages were Latin and Italian? Do you have precursors or models you can look to? Do the Latin versions of texts from the Hebrew scriptures and their historic settings influence your work with the original language?

ER: I was inspired by the Hebrew psalms of Salomone Rossi (1622). Rossi, on the one hand, was a “normal” court musician, playing and composing instrumental and secular vocal music. He worked at the Gonzaga court in Mantua together with Claudio Monteverdi, and took part in Monteverdi’s productions. On the other hand, he also attempted to introduce Western/Christian musical traditions into the Synagogue. His Psalms and prayers in Hebrew were meant to be performed as part of the liturgy. Rossi was the first to bring such an idea to life and to print music in Hebrew. When trying to fill the big gaps in Rossi’s biography, I imagined how, in addition to his rather conservative liturgical works, he might have also composed some dramatic works in Hebrew for some special holidays, and how such works had little chance of survival, as the only surviving documents related to Rossi are his Venetian musical prints.
          When composing, I had much pleasure working with the original texts in all their untranslatable beauty. Composing biblical Hebrew in stille rappresentativo is quite different from the motet style of Rossi, so I had to find my own way of doing so. The accents of the words in Hebrew are typically on the last syllable, which proved to be quite a challenge when trying to make the text flow in a recitar cantando manner.

Renaissance polyphony in Hebrew by Salomone Rossi

PK: You have composed many works from biblical texts on love (Quia Amore Langueo) and have written a veritable oratorio on the story of Joseph (Rappresentatione di Giuseppe e i suoi Fratelli). What attracted you to these parts of the Scriptures, and in general, is there something you are looking for when you choose your texts or themes?

ER: I composed Joseph and His Brethren first. I love the story, and I love how the original text tells it; very condensed and to the point, in an almost dry manner. So when suddenly a touching or poetic moment occurs it is amplified by the contrast to the other drier parts and the result is very moving. It was an enjoyable challenge to use this biblical text as a kind of libretto and bring the story to life. Apart from Joseph and His Brethren, in Quia Amore Langueo there are also some dramatic scenes (“Amnon and Tamar” and “Samson and Delilah”), as well as poetic motet-like texts from the Song of Songs. What I loved about the Song of Songs is the colorful texts full of images and contrasts — very appropriate and similar to the texts used around 1600 in general.

PK: Do you think it would be legitimate to compare the nation of Israel’s revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, when it had more or less been extinct, with your revival of Baroque musical language?

ER: This was suggested by Barney Sherman in an article about my compositions. I will just comment that I didn’t make a “revival of the Baroque musical language,” I merely took one more step on the same path that the early music scene was taking: instead of only adding ornaments or parts to existing compositions, or improvising pieces, I did a bit more. And I’m certainly not the only one; for example, Guido Morini performed and published his Baroque opera Solve et Coagula.

PK: Naturally, there will be critics who wonder how it is possible to “express oneself freely as an artist” if one must adopt the strictures or constraints of a certain musical style. What would you say to those critics?

ER: Art was and is always based on constraints. I don’t believe it’s important which constraints you use. As a performer and researcher, I did (and do) all that I can in order to “feel at home” with the music of around 1600. I’m playing this music for a living and this is my primary musical language. If I want to create and not only execute music, I will naturally use the language I know best in order to do so.

PK: I guess I would also ask the “inverse” of the last question. Modern art has boasted about “originality” for a long time now, but to be realistic, we do not seem to be living in an age of many great composers and great masterpieces. Do you think the modern idea of creativity or originality — that we must always be seeking something “new” — has something to do with our lack of worthy output?

ER: I do believe in the concept of “something new,” but on a smaller scale. It was not different in past periods: for example, Monteverdi composed a madrigal based on texts that had already been used by other composers, but there was still a place for his version — a new version of the music — although the text, musical language, and medium were the same as in other existing compositions. I think that the difficulty starts when the musical language and the medium must also be reinvented by the composer; it’s as if every time we want to say something we would have to invent a new language. Even assuming that the invented language is coherent and contains inner logic, it could be compared to trying to communicate using a language unknown to one’s interlocutor; if the listeners don’t understand the language, their experience is limited because they lack a stylistic frame of reference.
          My focus on the style of the early 17th century frees me of this concern, seeing that composers of that time were bound to specific stylistic conventions.

Profeti della Quinta

PK: You and your colleagues in Basel are dedicated to the art of paradox: early music played in the contemporary world, on new instruments of period design. Can a historic musical style speak to moderns with the same “grammar, logic and rhetoric” with which it spoke to its original audience?

ER: I can’t know how the original audience experienced the music. I do know that around 1600 musicians were interested in expressing human emotions and moving the hearts of the listeners, and I believe that this can still be done today.

PK: Would you say that the qualities of early instruments are a major influence on and inspiration for your desire to compose in this style? Which comes first, the style or the instruments? Does something as subtle as the tuning system — which, as we know, went through so many variations in Western history — also influence your compositional voice?

ER: Instruments and temperaments are just certain details in the whole picture. They are important and inspirational, and it’s a good place to start (indeed this is how the early music movement started), but they are not the essence. The essence is the understating of the musical language, and in the case of dramatic music, the communication of the text and emotions.

PK: Our times have seen a remarkable increase in the use of male vocalists (altos, countertenors, falsettists) for parts that (outside of English choir schools) were conventionally given to female altos and sopranos. What do you think of this development? What motivated you to choose only male singers?

ER: Indeed the period around 1600 is the beginning of the inclusion of female singers in performances; before that period, one can say that generally music was performed predominantly by males. Most of the repertoire we are singing in Profeti della Quinta was probably performed by male singers, but we do include female singers sometimes (and definitely female instrumentalists). Otherwise, since this is the ensemble I’m working with, I composed the pieces especially for its singers, and tailored it to their abilities. This is, by the way, yet another aspect of historical composition, since baroque composers often composed a part with a specific performer in mind.

PK: How has your work — your compositions and the playing of your ensemble — been received in the early music world at large? Of course, early music specialists learn to improvise (and organists have never stopped doing it), but do you see any other musicians beginning to compose in the early Baroque style?

ER: My works were received warmly by the public, but with mixed feelings by some critics. It is always much appreciated, but some (especially musicologists but not only) still are not sure if such a thing is a “legitimate” work of art. I obviously think it is, and the public in the concerts seems to agree. By the end of 2018 Joseph and His Brethren will be performed for the fourteenth time and more performances are planned in the future. I think that this is not bad for a piece composed in the 21st century, in which many of the newly composed pieces are only performed once… As I mentioned above, there are other musicians in the early music scene that are doing similar things, but perhaps not on the same scale.

PK: Where have you found your work best received?

ER: Whether it was just one or two small pieces, or the complete Joseph and His Brethren, my compositions have been well received everywhere we perform them. Naturally, because of the language and cultural relevance, the performances in Israel were received with even more appreciation. As I mentioned above, when the human emotional experience is in the center of attention, it can and does speak to a wide public.

PK: Do you ever compose in other styles, whether earlier or later than the early 16th-century idiom? If so, will you share those works with your public, or are they just for private use? Are you working on any big projects at the moment, either of composition or of recording?

ER: Up to this time, I haven’t composed music in other styles. Unless I would also perform and research music in other styles, I don’t think I would compose in them. My intention is not to imitate music from other periods, but to express myself in the language I know best. At the moment I’m not working on any new compositions, but some new CDs of Profeti della Quinta are coming out soon: Psalms by Alexander Utendal (ca.1530-1581) and a collection of madrigals (Amor, fortuna, e morte - Madrigals by de Rore, Luzzaschi, Gesualdo & Monteverdi).

* * *

I would like to express my thanks to the composer for this interview and for sharing the gift of his music with us.

Here is a trailer for Joseph and His Brethren:

A final thought. The philosopher Charles Taylor is famous for claiming that modern man, who is a conscious and free self negotiating a world of optional beliefs and engagements, is forever cut off from the “enchanted cosmos” of pre-modern man, who naively saw himself as dwelling in a world of spiritual realities as real as, or more real than, material ones. We moderns are irreducibly different — there is “no way back.” I would think that a confirmed Taylorite would consider Rotem’s enterprise impossible, or merely academic or parodical. And yet, it only takes a pair of functional ears to discover that it is no such thing: it is eminently possible, convincing, passionate, and powerful. Crucially, it is experienced immediately and intuitively by those capable of understanding music; in other words, not as the result of a “lifestyle choice,” as Taylor imagines religion must now be, thanks to our awareness of alternatives. Might this give us a reason for thinking that the art of music is one way of refuting the thesis that naive access to an “enchanted cosmos” is no longer available to us, that we are cut off from our premodern ancestors?

Please visit my new personal website, www.peterkwasniewski.com, for news, information, article links, sacred music, and the home of Os Justi Press.

New Recording of a Medieval Votive Mass of the Sacrament

The Netherlands-based Early Music ensemble Cantores Sancti Gregorii, lead by Mr Ján Janovčík, have recently made available a new recording of the complete Votive Mass of the Blessed Sacrament; unlike many such recordings, the clergy’s part of the Mass (Collect, Epistle etc.) are included, giving a better sense of how this music would have been heard in the liturgical context for which it was written. The propers of the Mass are sung in plainchant, while the Ordinary is Josquin des Prez’s Missa Pange lingua; the recording also includes the O Salutaris Hostia and Tantum Ergo from an early sixteenth-century choirbook, the Occo Codex, which is described as follows on the website of the CMME Project (Computerized Mensural Music Editing.)

“Among the best-known music manuscripts produced at the Habsburg-Burgundian court of the Netherlands, the ‘Occo Codex’ was created under the supervision of the celebrated scribe Alamire for the Amsterdam banker Pompeius Occo. A deluxe, decorated item on a large scale, this choirbook brings together major works of composers such as Isaac, Mouton, and Josquin, in addition to anonymous and lesser-known compositions, notably a collection of polyphony in honor of the Blessed Sacrament (Corpus Christi). On the basis of paleographical and historical evidence, the book can be newly dated to c. 1515-17 and associated with use in the Amsterdam chapel of the Sacrament known as the Heilige Stede (Holy Place), where Occo served as churchwarden at the same time. The combination of liturgical focus, careful craftsmanship, and early transmission of a number of masterworks makes this one of the most valuable witnesses to the musical life of the Early Modern Netherlands.”

An engraving of the year 1664, showing the Heilige Stede, which was converted to Protestant worship in the later 16th-century, and destroyed by order of the city of Amsterdam in 1908.

The chapel of the “Holy Place” referred to here was the site of a Eucharistic miracle that took place in Amsterdam in March of 1345, which was celebrated for over two hundred years with a special procession until the city passed over to the reformed faith, and the public celebration of Catholic devotions was prohibited. An account of the Miracle can be read here. The Cantores Sancti Gregorii have a complete description of the project of their recording on their website.