Chant Café

There was a famous book called Black Like Me. The author, John Howard Griffin, posed as a black man and documented the indignities to which he was subjected.

But who knows the rest of the story? A new documentary, discussed here, says that “Griffin was drawn to the Catholic faith while studying Gregorian chant at the Abbey of Saint Pierre in Solesmes, France. It was there that he began taking his first steps from agnosticism to conversion to Christianity. He entered the church in 1951.”

Griffin died in 1980 from complications of diabetes. He was just 60 years old. At the time, he had only $50 in his bank account. But as Atkinson’s documentary reveals, Griffin left an incredibly rich legacy of social activism, spiritual wisdom, and artistic achievement.

Phillburbs reports on a large group of high school singers who meet after school to sing unaccompanied medieval music and chant. It is particularly charming how the writer of this story takes it for granted that chant is part of Catholic liturgy.

Whether it’s a Gregorian chant sung during a Roman Catholic Mass, or a barbershop quartet harmonizing on a neighborhood street corner, the popularity of unaccompanied vocal music has persisted through the ages.

And the New York Times further reports:

After “American Idol,” “The Sing-Off,” “America’s Got Talent” and the coming “X-Factor,” can anyone come up with still another way for singers to compete on television?

I hope you will permit me a personal indulgence. “Sweetly Lord” is my father’s song, one I remember especially well because he sang it to me when I was little and it was sung again at his funeral. He was a great musician and a great man, and I miss him. No, he wasn’t Catholic and this song probably doesn’t belong at Mass, but it is very pretty and sincere.

Sweetly Lord

From a facebook update, we find one of thousands of such stories about Mary Berry, evangelist for chant and the great bridge between the Second Vatican Council and today’s revival of chant the world over (every schola in Eastern Europe today owes its existence to her efforts, for example):

In about 1993 I, and a friend from my choral group, Ecclesia Consort, picked Sister Mary up at Community of Jesus and drove her to Providence Rhode Island’s Blessed sacrament Church where she gave Ecclesia a brief 2-hour lecture on Gregorian Chant personally. it was one of life’s most amazing things. We then drove her to Boston’s Logan and I asked her her favorite chant, which she proceeded to sing gently in a very crowded terminal. She began the Alma Redemptoris Mater with head bowed. She began despite the cacophony around her. When she got about half through, the room was completely silent…no lie. It was a transforming moment for me and one I hold dear forever. She was first a loving nun and woman of faith, and second a dedicated and passionate intructor of the Chant. I felt as if she was placing a mantle upon us that afternoon. We have continued to sing the Chant in every service since. Not like Community of Jesus, but we still sing it with love and joy.

Here she is conducting Puer Natus

It’s thrilling to see the movement expand with Musica Sacra Saint Louis, and also to note their conference February 24-26, 2011.

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.

From the Times of India

As one involved in church choirs here and elsewhere for the last forty years, I must say I too believed we were spreading “the spirit of Vatican II” when we introduced catchy innovations during Mass.

I was told “the people’s participation” was all-important. We choir types were pleased when members of the congregation came up after Mass and said, “Oh, we really enjoyed it!” as though it were a show. We concentrated on four hymns, thinking that was our bit. No one ever told us in 1970 to sing the Mass, to aim at inner participation, helping people enter more fully into the meaning of each liturgical action.

In the last few years, especially at weddings and funerals, I have often heard choirs do devotional and profane music at various parts of the ceremony, even interrupting the liturgy with so-and-so’s favourite song.

Almost invariably, some schmaltzy number replaces the precious Psalm chosen from the hymnal Jesus himself used. Then again, there is a habit of singing prayerful words to plagiarised pop tunes. When a choir of seminarians erupted into an Alleluia to the tune of ‘Oo Oo Ah Ah Sexy Eyes’, I was surprised the congregation remained solemn. Alas, we have stuffed our ears with cotton wool. Now is the favourable time to change all that.

Starting this Advent season, we have a year to settle choral scores.