Our friend Jeffrey Ostrowski has written a nice piece on various strategies for organ accompaniment for chant. Most chant experts say that it is far better not to accompany chant. A minimum amount can help in particular cases, such as when the room is so dead that the sound will not carry. This is sadly common in parish life today, due mostly to the presence of carpet (if there is carpet in your parish, pull it up right now and the sound will dramatically improve).
Another reason for organ backup is to stop the pitch from falling. I’m a bit dubious about this solution because it doesn’t teach anyone how to sing. It gives them a crutch and arguably makes people more dependent on externals. It doesn’t fix the problem except in a temporary sense, and this approach can cause the quality of singing to decline due to laziness and dependency.
The worst reason to favor chant is actually the most common one: it makes the music less liturgical and more accessible to modern ears. I’m sure we’ve all been in a situation in which Gloria VIII was sung gussied up with chords that it hardly sounds like chant at all anymore.
So the demand for accompaniment is real, despite all the failings, and Ostrowski has done the world a favor by posting vast amounts of it in many styles. His piece below explains the various strategies used by the composers.
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Two famous quotes by Jean-Philippe Rameau (an important theorist/composer) and Willi Apel (who wrote an important book on Gregorian chant) make it clear that some parties absolutely condemn organ accompaniment of Gregorian chant. However, right or wrong, this practice is undeniably a part of our Catholic musical heritage. For one thing, many thousands of pages of organ accompaniments and treatises have been published by Catholics over the last two centuries (incidentally, the majority of these are now available online at the St. Jean Lalande Library). Furthermore, organ accompaniment was considered so crucial that Catholic composers consistently (and inexplicably) published voluminous accompaniments for numerous “forbidden” parts of the Mass (such as the Sundays in Lent, the Requiem Mass, and the priest’s parts like the Pater Noster, which were not supposed to be accompanied by the organ). The only time organ accompaniment was never used (before the Council) seems to have been Good Friday.
The Missa Pro Defunctis, in particular, was always set to organ accompaniments. Not atypical is this 1876 Requiem Mass accompaniment (click to view) by Dr. Franz Witt. In his 1910 edition, Max Springer carefully marked all the Sundays of Lent, through Palm Sunday (click to view) with “Non pulsantur organa” . . . yet still harmonized each and every chant. For the Sundays of Advent (click to view), Springer put “Silent organa.” For those interested, this longer article has extremely rare excerpts of 19th century organ accompaniments, explains the different “schools” of Gregorian accompaniment, and contains many more instances of “forbidden” accompaniments (like the Pater Noster, Preface, etc.).
I would like to share a few “tricks of the trade” of Gregorian accompaniment, but I’m a bit nervous. After all, Bishop Fulton Sheen has reminded us that “ordinarily, the less your audience understands, the more impressed they are with you.” Still, I feel that giving away these “secrets” might help people who are interested in music but “don’t know much about it” get a glimpse of compositional techniques.
It’s important to approach each piece differently, because each piece in the Gregorian repertoire presents unique challenges and deserves careful consideration. In general, all harmonizations will require four things: (A) chordal direction (that is, “go somewhere”); (B) as much (modal) chordal variety as possible; (C) counterpoint and smooth voice leading; and (D) variation in texture. I cannot (in this short article) explain each of these terms, but I will give a quick definition of “counterpoint.” Wolfgang Mozart said, “Counterpoint is simple. When one voice goes up, the other goes down. When one voice moves, the other voice stays put.” What makes counterpoint difficult is that the vertical harmonies also have to line up (at all times!), which makes writing counterpoint similar to solving a Rubik’s cube.
Below, I will use a piece called Concórdi Laetítia, which (unless I’m mistaken) is a very ancient text set to a “neo-Gregorian” (i.e. 19th century) melody. (Concórdi Laetítia from Pothier’s 1903 Cantus Mariales) However, for our purposes, this piece will do just fine, because it’s strophic (that is, the same melody repeats over and over). According to the Belgian school (which I follow), it is not at all artistic to use the same exact harmonization and registration over and over again for a strophic piece (like a Gregorian hymn). So, immediately, the challenge becomes: how many different ways can each verse be harmonized?
(VIDEO PRESENTATION • 1st verse) In the first verse, I don’t do anything “fancy” (since it’s the first verse), but I do sneak in a few walking bass lines (marked in purple).
(VIDEO PRESENTATION • 2nd verse) In the second verse, things begin to get more interesting, as I employ a walking bass line that goes from very low to very high, without a single skip. This method really helps accomplish all the goals we set earlier (chordal direction, chordal variety, etc.).
(VIDEO PRESENTATION • 3rd verse) In the third verse, I do the opposite; that is, I start up high and gently walk the bass line all the way down in stepwise motion.
(VIDEO PRESENTATION • 4th verse) For the fourth verse, I still use walking bass lines, but my emphasis is more on variation in cadential chords. I also chose an interesting “fluty” organ registration (which one can get away with after multiple verses).
(VIDEO PRESENTATION • 5th verse) Finally, I pull out the “big guns” for the final repetition (colorful seventh chords, lots of motion in the voices, and even a “drive to the cadence”). As always, walking bass lines solve many of our problems (with regard to smooth voice leading, oblique motion, chordal direction, etc.). And now, here’s a video with all five verses in a row:
Those intrigued by this brief article are encouraged to “poke around” the St. Jean Lalande Library, or the other Corpus Christi Watershed Liturgical sites (which contain many hundreds of organ accompaniments). One especially good place to find “Belgian” accompaniments is our brand new, 180 page publication.
Mr. Ostrowski's chant accompaniments are first class and supportive of the chant rather than detracting from it. Another approach can be found in that wonderful publication by J. H. Arnold, Plainsong Accompaniment. This follows the English tradition and also uses a faux-bourdon or descant (counter melody) approach in some psalm or canticle verses. This approach supports and adds some additional interest to the chant while maintaining its modality. This style of accompaniment can be heard on BBC 3's recent broadcast of Choral Vestpers from Westminster Cathedral.
Mr Tucker's comments need some response. The use of organ accompaniment is to help keep the chant flowing. By this I mean that "non-professional" singers need to be guided as to the melody and tonality, in other words, to support them so that they keep together and do not hesitate when the time comes. This is an important use as the singers are not just aesthetic fixtures in the choir loft but they are meant to to be praying the chant through song. If they end up concentrating so much on trying to sing the melody properly, then they are not praying the chant, but just trying to sing its music.
One should recall that the organ made its appearance in the West in some churches pretty close to the time Gregorian chant as we know it was being composed, and it is likely to have been used to help the singers where these were installed.
As to "professional" singers, one wonders what that could be when it comes to chant. Many years ago when I visited Solesmes for the first time, I was astonished to hear that their chant singing was accompanied by the organ. I asked why this was so when all their recordings are unaccompanied; the terse answer I was given was that the recordings are made that way for the critics.
Accompanying chant on the organ is an art. For those who would like to pursue this further according to the "French style" I have posted an English translation of Henri Potiron's important work on the subject:
http://www.esnips.com/doc/e20a8896-384a-44b4-a80d-ba227cb1002b/Potiron-Treatise-on-accompaniment
Speaking of BBC Radio 3's broadcast of Choral Vespers from Westminster, it's here for the next 5 days.
Ted,
'non-professionals' who are willing to work at it together and under direction can be taught to sing in tune & ensemble, letting the chant flow at the right momentum, without the support of the organ. That's not to criticise organ accompaniment, merely to observe the flaw in a particular justification for it.
I'm also uncomfortable with the your contention that a singer's focus on performance detracts from prayer. All good liturgical singing from a cantor or schola, with or without accompaniment, requires such concentration, and it is, if applied in a right spirit, a form of prayer itself. The same can be said of organ accompaniment. To suggest otherwise is resonant of the iconoclasm that has so damaged our liturgy over the last 40 years.
Friends,
Thanks for all these comments!
By the way, some organ accompaniments for the Parish Book of Chant (like Concordi Laetitia) can be found here:
http://musicfortheliturgy.org/PBC/organ_accompaniments/
IanW:
Thanks for your reply. I realise I may me of a minority opinion, but it comes more from experience then from some theoretical construct. Trying to get the faithful to sing the Latin ordinaries without organ accompaniment is not something that works very well at first. Even later, with all the choices of Mass, the accompaniment must persist to lead them through the melodies.
Once the faithful have got that down pat, take the average church choir who knows no Latin, struggles with its pronunciation, and then is confronted with melismatic chant in modern or square notation totally alien to what they are used to. If one is to use the GR, half the work is in trying to make the choir remember the meaning of the words so they can at least pray the words. Being good at reading the notes is another issue when most of the choir members cannot even read any music. Without the organ's help, it has been nigh impossible to do the GR Propers every Sunday, even if only the Introit and Communion.
Jeff, I've read your excellent essay comparing various styles of chant accompaniment, although I can't recall all the details regarding voice-leading. In the examples given here, are there are just a few instances of hidden or overt parallel octaves. In this so-called "Belgian" style, under what circumstances are these tolerated? The counterpoint is otherwise quite rigorous, even as it sometimes relies on strings of 7th sonorities. I notice here that the 4-voiced texture tends to dissolve at cadences. Is this intentional? If so, will you comment on it? Is the point to avoid strong plagal bass motion at the cadence?
Regardless of the propriety or practicality of accompanying chant, thank you for all of the work you are doing on this portion of the liturgical organ playing tradition.
Dear Kevin,
Thank you for your thoughtful questions. In answer to your queries, I have prepared this blog entry:
http://ccwatershed.org/blog/2010/dec/15/concordi-laetitia-contd/
I would be very interested to hear what you (and others) think of it.
THE BEST PART is where I mention Dr. Watson's views on "hidden" parallels in outer voices . . . .
Ted,
Thanks for you reply, in which you make some good points: that organ accompaniment can be of help in leading the congragtion in the Ordinary chants; that a choir with a high proportion of non music readers will also benefit from its support; and that some of the GR propers are quite complicated!
The first is certainly arguable (and one that I am considering in a particular place), though the cynic in me wonders whether the addition of an organ does much more than cover up the average Catholic's disinclination to sing in church.
I'll pass on from the questions that qualification begs (cf J Tucker) to the Propers, which I had more in mind in my orginal comment. The GR melodies would certainly be very difficult for a choir of non-readers, so much so that I'm not sure an organ would make much difference (I might be wrong about this – I only ever sing them unnacompanied, so will stand correction from one with wider experience). When I have responsibility for such things and I'm in doubt about about the Schola's ability in the available rehearsal time, I use an alternative, principaly to either have a Cantor sing some or all, or employ a simpler chant setting, such as a psalm tone. Neither of these requires organ accompaniment (though neither precludes it).
Best wishes,
Ian.
I think it might be a mistake to read too much into harmonization of "forbidden" chants. In collections of harmonized chants, the harmonization would create unity of notation, which is always helpful to performers. The harmonizations could also be used in rehearsal. This is analogous to the "for rehearsal only" accompaniments to unaccompanied music. Just as these are played softly sometimes in an emergency, so too chant was probably sometimes accompanied in Lent. But in neither case did anyone consider it a good thing. Why would editors put "don't play this" above accompaniments they wanted to be played?
Dear JeffreyQuick,
I think your opinion is an interesting one, and worthy of consideration.
However, for myself, I find it implausible. For one thing, why go to the trouble of harmonizing the Preface and Pater Noster? Why not simply play the melody line for the priest? Then, too, books were very bulky and expensive to produce. It seems like a lot of work to go through just for practice scores. Finally, I am aware of "keyboard reduction" for rehearsal, but this is for use in much more complicated music. Also, would we have really needed 60-100 different harmonizations of the Requiem Mass for rehearsal purposes only?
At some point, the Church finally said that the organ could be used "to support the voices," which (I fear) many people considered a loophole. But I don't know that this permission was given until the 1950's.
Just coming to this thread…
To respect unaccompanied vocal music, it would help if more skilled singers were to be employed as choir directors, alongside organists playing the organ.
This means hiring more than one musician to look after two very different instruments at use in the liturgy- the voice and the organ.
One point, as a professional singer and choir director-
Amateur singers can be trained to sing well without accompaniment. This is
especially true when the director is a highly skilled singer with a firm pedagogical background that most organists lack.
A musician is more able to lead singers well
when they have training in that instrument and use it on a regular basis. All too often amateur singers are treated with disdain instead of given the tools tonsucceed at unaccompanied music.