Gregorian Chant

This type of music form ruled the early Middle Ages, and retained its presence well into the 20th century s Church. It is still used in monasteries, but less often during the ordinary people -services. The big changes imminent to the Gregorian Chant during the centuries were a.o. abolishment of Latin language and simplification of the melodies, making them easier to sing for the not-so-good-musically-congregation. Sometimes, the melodies have been so degraded to the low value kind of music, it s horrifying for the lovers of Gregorian Chant.

 Since the Chant paved way for the later forms of music, its form and style are good objects of study for almost any student of music. Of course, many ideas might be fused with our own style of playing, if we feel attracted by any idea at all. People who hear Gregorian Chant for the first time are often unimpressed by its feeling and strict functional (worship) use. The reasons are obvious: a single melody line without any chords, no defined rhythmic feeling and abrupt endings are the unfamiliar aspects of music for the newcomers . These are common associations with the early sacral music, but they can also be found in the secular music. We should not forget that during the Middle Ages, both sacral and secular music interchanged musical ideas with each other, and so we can find sacral elements of music in the secular songs, and vice-versa.

 If the reader wants to delve deep into the Gregorian Chant analysis, a study of the Roman Liturgy is of great importance, since the songs were used in conjunction with the religious services. Knowledge of Gregorian notation is also of value for the interested musician. In this brief essay however we skip these parts and focus on the music itself, which would be the source for new ideas we could incorporate into our own music.

Melodic Outline of Gregorian Chant

· Accents are placed on the syllables that are normally emphasized in Latin language. An accent would often take form of a higher note, or more than one note per emphasized syllable. Exceptions to this rule were prominent though.
· Melismas were often placed on last vowels of strong words like Dominus  (=the Lord), even if the syllable that includes the vowel is not normally emphasized (in our example the first syllable is normally the strongest one).
· If the above melismas (ornamentation) were used, the normally emphasized syllable would often stick out by some other means, e.g. like the ones mentioned in the first case.
· There is almost no repetition of the text, which means: no choruses  be shocked, songwriters!
· Melodies are divided into phrases, following the form of the text. A phrase often begins with a lower tone, goes up to a high note and then decreases to a lower tone again, thus building a very common melodic contour of an arch. One phrase could even contain more than one such arch, or this melodic contour could extend into the next phrase.
· Later development of the Gregorian chant saw introduction of melodic skips (particularly by thirds) and organization into major and minor tonalities.

The above ideas might be fused together with our own music and create some original effects.

 This brief article would not be complete without mentioning the Church modes, which developed completely in the 11th century. The modes, which should be recognized by a theory-oriented guitarist, are eight in total. A single mode was recognized by its finalis note, i.e. the note that usually would end a melody. The finalis note was the first note of an authentic mode (e.g. D in Dorian), which also was the finalis note of the corresponding plagal mode (more about authentic/plagal below). A mode also contained a confinalis note, which could be used as a secondary tonal center. That note was the fifth above finalis note in an authentic mode. For a plagal mode it was placed a third below the dominant of the corresponding authenthic mode. If the confinalis fell on a B, it would instead be placed on the C.

The modes were denoted as authentic and plagal, where the former ones were raising from notes D, E, F and G respectively, and the plagal corresponding modes were starting from a fourth below the authentic counterpart, i.e. A, B, C, D. The scale used for a mode was diatonic. Note that the modes were not referenced to the absolute pitch, as in the Ancient Greece, but were chosen for the above starting notes because of the absence of accidentals. However, one accidental, the Bb, often occured in Dorian and Hypodorian modes. And of course, a transposed mode naturally contained accidentals.

The eight modes were named as follows:

  AUTHENTIC               PLAGAL

Dorian (d,e,f,g,a,b,c,d)     Hypodorian (a,b,c,d,e,f,g,a)
Phrygian (e,f,g,a,b,c,d,e)   Hypophrygian (b,c,d,e,f,g,a,b) and so on &
Lydian                              Hypolydian
Mixolydian                        Hypomixolydian

How were these modes used? A chant could elaborate the five notes above the finalis plus one note below, other chants could use the whole octave range of a mode. Some chants even used combined authentic and plagal modes.

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