Did you know that there are only two Offertory chants in the entire Graduale Romanum that are in the 7th mode? I didn’t until just now. And they aren’t exactly prominently featured chants either: Eripe me for Wednesday of the 5th week of Lent, and Confitebuntur caeli for the Common of an Apostle or Martyr. There’s not a single mode 7 Offertory found anywhere else in the entire Gradual.
I really have nothing else intelligent to say about this right now, but thought it would at least be an interesting curiosity to our readers. Do any of the scholars among us know why this is? If nothing else this tidbit can come in handy the next time you play a round of Graduale Romanum trivia!
Interesting…
Could I propose a possible explanation? This is the Mixolydian mode – final is sol. Could it be that it was a little too high for the dear little monks to sing? Yes, I know – moveable do – but writing the chant on the four line staff – would there have been too many neumes above the staff? Just the musings of neither a chant scholar nor a trivia expert…
This issue touches on a project I am working on at the moment, so perhaps I can offer a quick but hopefully informed answer.
If one examines the modal distribution of Offertories in the GR, one notices a fairly even distribution of the modes except for modes 7 and 8. There is the low presence of mode 7 Offertories, 3 if one includes the contrafactum "Non duplices" in some GRs, but one also notices a big imbalance of mode 8 Offertories the other way around, 40 when the average is around 20. This would imply a question of criteria for modal categorisation.
The assignment of modality according to the octoechos to all chant is generally thought to have started during the late Carolingian renaissance, in other words, very likely after most of the Offertories had already been composed. This was sometimes problematic as if trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
The Gregorian Offertories are unusual in at least two respects: they are characterised by a wide range in tessitura as well as frequent change of tonality within the piece itself; and what we have in modern books since about the 13th century is only what has become known as the "Respond", the up to four long "Verses" that would follow having been omitted from the original. Because of the unusual features including the length of the Offertories it is sometimes not clear whether an Offertory belongs to the authentic or plagal of its Latin mode. Moreover, as the Verses sometimes change in tessitura and tonality from the Respond, which one does one chose for the modern books if the Verses are omitted? Even some old tonaries did not give an authentic/plagal assignment to the Offertories but just assigned them to one of the four Latin modes.
Mode 8 Offertories are especially interesting because some could be assigned to mode 7 depending on what criteria one uses.
(continued) For example, the Offertory "Angelus Domini" is currently assigned to mode 8. The melody begins on the Fa which is not even the normal starting note for mode 8 (a mode 8 composition usually begins and ends on Sol), but its tessitura for the first few words falls comfortably into the range of both mode 7 and 8. But then on the word "descendit" (came down) the melody follows the meaning of the word, and goes way down to the low Ut, which is one note too low for a general mode 7 classification. But was the melody purposely brought down so low to complete the symbolism on this word and so an exception? Then on "caelo" (heaven) the melody again follows the meaning of the word and goes way up to the high Mi but still within the range of both modes 7 and 8. The melody throughout the Respond has such a wide range making it difficult to assign it as either Tetrardus authentic or plagal. It does end on Sol so it can certainly be classified as a Tetrardus composition having some of its musical "characteristics". The tessiture of the Verses are also very wide in some places, but perhaps the deciding factor was that the high Ut is dominant in the Verses to reflect the psalmodic tenor of mode 8, so the redactors likely chose this as the guide.
On the other hand, the Offertory "Scapulis suis" classified as mode 8 goes way above the normal range of that mode, way up to the Sol in the Verses making it more akin to a mode 7 composition. Indeed, the Respond does have the Ut dominant as a psalmodic tenor for mode 8, but the Verses have the Re as dominant, which together with their tessiture would put it right into mode 7. Since the Verses were eventually dropped, only the modality of the Respond may have been considered for the classification here. What was important for the Carolingians in determining modality according to the octoechos were the limits of tessitura and the final of the composition, while the idea of a tenor became important only later.
So my simple answer to a complex issue of why there are so few mode 7 Offertories in the current books is the criterion for classification: some mode 8 Offertory Responds could be classified as mode 7 depending on the criterion used for modal classification, which is another whole issue in itself, as there were adapations to the chant so as to fit the theory.
@RedCat – what did you think of Ted's response? 😉
@Ted – Wow, what a reflection! Many thanks! Very interesting thoughts on the effects of the tessitura on modal classification. Looking again at the offertories that are listed as mode 8 in the 1974 Graduale there are 30 of these! I count 36 in modes 1 & 2, this makes the balance between the "protus" (modes 1 & 2) and "tetrardus" (modes 7 & 8) much more even! And surely a good number of these offertories that are listed as mode 8 contain many features of what we now call the 7th mode, being that the tessitura is conventionally much larger, especially in the verses, which, as you say, are not conventionally used in current practice. This is very interesting–thank you for sharing your insight!
Your comments also make me think of how Fr. Kelly uses the 'Comedite pingua' antiphon to teach the four modal families because it actually contains all four of them, even though it is labeled mode 8; the square peg in a round hole, as you say.
Very nice, Ted. It is good to remember that modes were constructed in order to categorize chants. Most of the Gregorian repertoire, especially Offertories, were already there as Ted says. If the chant, btw, lays high on a C4 staff, then one can move the clef to C2 or C3 to avoid ledger lines.
To Adam and Ted,
I am just a simpleton musician…but Ted's response seemed to me to be an erudite expansion of my comment about the range being "a little to high for the dear little monks"…tessitura et al.
RedCat
Adam and Michael:
Thanks for your compliments. Although the general view today is that most pre-existing chants were fit into the modal categories in the manner I stated above, there are other views. Dom Hourlier many years ago had his doubts on this view. I myself am not fully convinced of this either, but it is an issue that cannot be settled without more documents written at that time, and these are wanting. Perhaps it was a mixture, some of the earlier chants yes, the later ones no. It would seem strange that the Noenae formulas that had existed since the 7th century in Rome would not have had an influence on the composing of chant until the 9th.