Orthodox gregorian chant timeline
jmd
http://stmaterne.blogspot.com/2006/12/chronologie-sommaire-illustre-du.html
or in short :
with pictures of the echoing chambers inside the chancel, found in Metz (8th c.), with
the oldest extant basilica in the world (it's not in the East, no! no!), and so on
jm
vjp...@at.biostrategist.dot.dot.com
p10 The listeners of antiquity followed a nonpolyphonic musical melody
with an intensity unknown to us.. Greeks were capable of enjoying the slight
and delicate inflections of a melodic line; their ears were keen enough to
apprehend subtleties of intonation and color which we, with our harmonically
and polyphonically trained ears, cannot perceive
p19 Timotheus of Miletus (c446-357). His dithyrambs and nomes were
redundant and prolix; his light and pleasant melodies were designed to thaw
out the frozen majesty of the older art.. Plato and Aritotle saw in his music
a mischievous offense, an uncalled-for infringement.. Aristophanes carried
on a stinging crusade against the new tendency in music, because it adorned
with flourishes the grave majestic line of the old music
p20 Oxyehynchus papyrus.. transition period from the music of antique
Greece to that of Christian Greece. The piece still shows the characteristics
of classical music intact.. confirms the hypothesis that the original Hebrew
songs as sung by the early Christians were displaced by examples of the
highest type of antique musical practice soon after early Christendom came
into contact with Greek civilization
p22 Eastern Roman Empire, however, we see that the main provinces, and
especially the capital itself, suffered relatively little from the ravages of
continuous warfare, and that, on the contrary, the developed a spiritual and
artisitic art of the highest order
p23 The representatives of Byzantine musicology - Suidad (tenth century),
Michael Osellus (eleventh century), Bryennius (twelfth century), and
Pachymeres (thirteenth century) - do cast some furtive glances toward the
music of their own time, but their main activity is reserved for the
rediscovery of ancient musical doctrine
p25 Byzantine music never encouraged the growth of instrumental music..
The Greeks had - as we have seen - two main instruments, the aulos and the
lyre, while the Byzantines alloted the limited use they had for instruments
to only one, the organ, which figured not in their church music, but only in
what we have called court music. Cithara and aulos, which accompanies the
entire musical production of Hellenistic Greece, diappeared with the
annihilation by the Laodicean Concil of the theatre, pantomime, and virtuoso
music. Like the aulos, the organ is of Oriental extraction.. no longer any
metron, or measuring the length of syllables; their number had to be counted
p29 characteristic feature of Byzantine singing is the prolongation of the
last note of a phrase.. monodic character of ancient Greek music, whether
solo or choric. Byzantine music, in its unadulterated form, is mainly
monodic, exceot that the choir occasionally holds what may be termed an
accompanying tone, This method of singing prevails up to this day in those
domains of the Eastern Church untouched by Western music. Byzantine music
notation evolved independent of the notation of classical Greece and should
be considered one of the great and truly original achievements of Byzantine
civilization.. Byzantines used signs that attempted to give a graphic
indication of the design and progress of the melody, without, however, giving
the exact pitch
p40 dualism expressed in these lines quoted from St Augustine. On the one
hand, this powerful influence must be harnessed and utilized for worthy
purposes; on the other hand, its sensual, carnal influence must be combated
p44 St Basil used to go around and visit several churches on one night to
hear the faithful sing Psalms, anf Gregory Nazianzen departed from
Constantinople with regret at leaving behind the Psalm singing of the
congregation
p45 Justin, the widely traveled Christian philosopher (c150), described
the order of the early Mass: readings from the Old and New Testaments were
followed by a sermon by the "leader," offering of bread and wine, prayer of
the faithful, the "kiss of peace," eucharistic (thanksgiving) prayer, and
last of all, communion.. somewhat later type of th liturgy of the Mass is to
be found in the Apostolic Constitutions, VIII, 5-15
p49 hymns became popular in other countries, although several synods were
still opposed to them and preferred Biblical texts.. at the end of the third
century the Romans abandoned the Greek liturgical language in favor of their
own Latin
p50 several subspecies of liturgies such as the Western-Syriac, with its
important center in Jerusalem; the Egyptian, with its center in Alexandria;
the Byzantine with Constantinople as its main center. The East-Syriac
liturgy, popular in the extensive outlying territories, retained the Syriac
language. The first large territory was Roman, but Roman liturgy was also
employed in North Africa, with Carthage as its center. Large parts of lower
Otaly (Magna Graecia), which, being early colonized by the Greeks, belonged
to the Hellenistic circle of tradition and civilization, retained the Greek
liturgy in itsoriginal form as it was taken from Jerusalem. Out of regard for
the Italo-Greeks even Rome made some use of the Greek liturgy
p51 Christian writers repeatedly mention the prevalence of ecstasy;
Tertullian knows of songs which were the products of such a mental state and
holds up these improvisations as characteristic of Christian prayer and
music.. ofice of the cantor the Christian Church took over an old synagogal
institution, and also in many cases probably employed musicians who had
received their education in Jewish musical practice
p53 Rule of St Benedict, but the Rules of St Paul and St Stephen also
contain numerous paassages concerning the music of the Church. They require
that the psalmody be executed by the choir "as if it were one voice; none of
the singers should sing faster or louder than the others." Pope Gregory
assured the final establishment of the schola_cantorum by setting aside two
buildings near the Lateran.. Musical instruments were just as much feared as
the pleasing tunes which heretics used with such astonishing success in their
propaganda
p56 Neo-Pythagorean number-symbolism.. four elements, four general
directions, four seasons, four virtues, four kinds of beings (angels, demons,
animated creatures, plants). Number seven is the source of the various sorts
of tones, that is, the harmony of the seven planets, of which the seven
strings of the lyre are the earthly image. The number eight, which is the
double of four, represents all the harmonies
p62 Gregory deserves the epithet of "the Great" as far as his work in
practical organization.. Mysticism, superstition, and the love of the wonders
take the place of logical demonstrations. He was also responsible for the
neglect of Biblical research, which interested the christians of the fifth
and sixth centuries to such a great extent, substituting forced allegorical
explanations, and attaching to the Biblical stories sweeping moral
conclusions alternating with grotesque tales of wonder
p66 Irish Church assumed the nature of a missionary church and exerted
considerable influence, in music as in other fields, on the Frankish, and
even the northern Italian countries
p67 Charlemagne himself was an enthusiastic lover of church music..
emperor's zeal in extablishing a true Gregorian practice caused the burning
of all books of Ambrosian ritual to safeguard the unity of song and liturgy
p71 original pre-Gregorian church song could not be entirely eradicated,
and the curious fact remains that a large liturgical domain, comprising Gaul,
western Germany, and parts of England, still showed elements of Byzantine
origin sung in Greek.. Romantic nations continued to cultivate melodic curves
which followed a consecutive, stepwise motion, while the Germanic plain-song
dialect favored larger intervals, especially the third
p76 The opposition of the musical instincts of faraway Franks and Gauls
engendered another direct cause for the disintegration of Gregorian music,
the tropes which speedily affected all the music of the Ordinary of the
Mass. In place of the simple original melodies grew songs of an elaborate
character, and even the new melodies were further elaborated by
tropes.. Gregorian chant became the rather monotonous plain chant with organ
accompaniment which reigned until the Benedictines of the Congregation of
France, led by Gueranger, Pothier, and Mocquereau, started a genuine revival
of Gregorian traditions
p77 The medieval man heard in the psalmody, in the numerous vocalizations
and jubilations of the alleluia, in the finely wrought melodic line and the
truly basilicalike solidity of the cantus_planus, things we cannot evoke
today for all this is a resurrected art.. beauty of Gregorian chant requires
study and familiarization
p80 The tradition of the antique citharoedia did not disappear with the
dissolution of the Western Roman Empire. The numerous decrees and canons
issued by various councils prohibiting profane cithara playing attest to its
popularity. The cithara survived in western Europe far into the Middle Ages,
partly because its construction was so similar to the traditional instrument
of the Celtic bards. The ancient Celtic lyre, very popular in the early
Middle Ages, became one of the chief musical instruments in the Carolignian
period under the name of rotta, which was the Middle High German euivalent
for the original Irish cot or cruit and the Welsh crwth
p85 notation originated in the Orient, as we have seen to be the case, is
evident from its name, neuma.. Isidore of Seville, the great polyhistor,
appears to be ignorant of any means by which music can be preserved for
posterity.. Guido's [d'arezzio] introduction of a system of four lines and
four spaces (spatia) netween the lines, marked by clefs, put an end to all
ambiguity.. first syllables of six lines of an ancient Sapphic hymn addresses
to St John the Baptist.. whole tone between ut-re [later do-re], re-mi,
fa-sol, sol-la, while that between mi and fa was a half tone
p90 attempt to bring home to the unlettered people the reality of the
chief events connected with the Christian religion was the point of departure
for the medieval stage.. Nativity and Resurrection. The drama was short,
reduced to its essentials, a simple paraphrase of the sacred text, carried
out in a solemn and grave performance. Personal initiative soon claimed a
larger place in the liturgic drama. The actors took liberties with sacred
texts, reserved the Latin for the versicles, the responds, and the lessons,
and carried on the dialogues in the vernacular.. plays had been enacted in
front of the altar by priests and clerks, but with the development of the
vernacular element the presentation was transfered from the altar to the
portal of the church, and the place of clergymen was taken by laymen who soon
formed confraternities of actors
p91 entirely musical character of the liturgic plays is demonstrated by
the fact that a great number of the manuscripts contain the music in notation
p93 facial expression, gestures, and accentuations.. depict the mental
state.. ancient libretti.. demanded explicitly that the lector off the
Epistles, who usually took the role of Jesus, must have a soft voice, whereas
the cleric who impersonated Judas must have a sharp and disagreeable
voice. The voices of the angels were expected to be sweet, the women's voices
were to have a "humble" quality.. "lamento aria" of Mary Magdalen, which goes
back to the fifthe century.. principal aspect is that of the penitent.. very
core of musical drama
p104 One may come to the conclusion that troubadour art came from two
principal sources: from music and thought of the Christian world, as
expressed in sequences, tropes, hymns, and litanies, and from the secular
songs pf roving poets such as goliards
p113 principal role in the development of Italian poetry was played by St
Francis and his disciples.. Giovani Bernardone.. religious poetry, the laude,
usualy in the vernacular.. greatest merit of laude poetry consisted in its
being the sole carrier of folk song and its spirit. Behind its feverish and
hysterical exaggerations there emerges a sincere, warm humanity that has
nothing of the stilted formality of courtly art
p119 Under the protective power of the Hohenstaufen dynasty people felt
free to express themselves about the Church, the pope, and the clergy, and
they began to make a distinction between papacy and Christianity.. lyric
genius whose importance in German art is comparable only to that of
Goethe. Folk song, artistic minnesong, poetry, and polemic were all united in
the sensitive soul of Walther von der Vogelweide (c1170-1230), who gave the
words to everything that animated his time, wandering from court to court and
singing in Bavarian dialect his poems set to music of his own composition. He
stood removed from the learned soirit of the monasteries, the Latin poetry of
the goliards, and the philosophy of the universities; he lived undisturbed
and serene in the culture of his class
p127 The Church insisted on its own songs, the Gregorian melodies had to
be preserved intact; any other music, if there was to be more than one voice,
was permitted inly in addition to the existing consecrated melodies. The
original polyphonic incentive of the people slowly acquiesced and thus
adapted itself too the musical art which was forced upon them
p132 A typical Gothic trait is the repeated indenting of the linear
sequence by reopening a completed action and starting it again
in_medias_res.. old principle of the trope is revived here; while the tenor
part holds the liturgic word (the mot) and music as cantus firmus, the
contrapuntal parts declaim a paraphrase. Soon the troped accompanying parts
become so imposing that they forced changes in the Gregorian cantus
firmus.. motetus, designated in the begining the upper contrapuntal voice,
which was evolving above and against the lower part, which "held on" (tenor,
from the Latin teneo) to the mot; the third voice was called triplum, whence
is derived our modern treble
p171 new national humanism of Italy, breaking the hegemony of Franch
culture, which heretofore had led the way, established anew the old Roman
attitude toward "barbarians," the revised epithet being applied to the French
and Germanic nations, to whose invasion the temporary decline of Italian
culture, now restored, was credited
p183 Italian and English influences softened the stern and strictly
architectural qualities of the old motet, and the same melodiousness which
appeared in the polyphonic song permeated the new versions.. between church
music and courtly musical art. The motet belonged to neither.. Gothic desire
for judiciously planned architecture was retained to a certain degree,
resulting in a remarkably balanced form. The renewed interest in use of the
cantus firmus necessitated the development of a real fundamental bass part,
which was assumed by the so-called contratenor, lying underneath the tenor part
p194 sober northerner, already fascinated by the majestic art of Obrecht,
forgot the mystical polyphonic flow of his forebears to apply all his great
technical wealth to the sublime, clear, well-defined and articulated,
emotionally profound, and varied music which became the quintessence of
Renaissance musical art. Josquin was the creator of the new Mass, the new
motet, an the new chanson, and it was in these works that we see the approach
of the a_capella ideal.. polyphonic style of their elders was their natural
idiom, with which they were not willing to part; yet they could not ignore
the song poetry, the well-shaped, rhythmical melodies that came streaming
from Italy. They tried to stem the uncontrolled flow of music by rational
means, such as articulation, symmetry, and motivic logic, and these
innovations, together with a new relationship between text and music, were to
determine the style of the generation that came on the scene with the birth
of the new century
p208 His favorite composer was Josquin Despres, whom he characterized as
"master of the notes; others are mastered by them." This observation betrays
again a keen musical sense and a sure judgement of art; Luther recognized in
Josquin the sovereign genius to whom the subtleties of counterpoint were only
a means of expression.. avoided the straits of experimentation, but also the
puritanic primitiveness of Calvin, who banished even the simple accompaniment
of hymns
- = -
Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/vjp2/vasos.htm
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
[Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]
[Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Remorse begets zeal] [Windows is for Bimbos]
R.V. Gronoff
> Music W Civ P H Lang (Columbia) Norton 1997 1941 0-393-04074-7
> p10 The listeners of antiquity followed a nonpolyphonic musical melody
> with an intensity unknown to us.. Greeks were capable of enjoying the slight
> and delicate inflections of a melodic line; their ears were keen enough to
> apprehend subtleties of intonation and color which we, with our harmonically
> and polyphonically trained ears, cannot perceive
This makes me think of the prehistoric cave paintings too. In those
paintings, for example, you can see a flock of horses running at full
speed and the position of their limbs is totally accurate - something
that has only been (re)discovered with instant photography.
--
Virez Ahmadinejad pour me répondre.
Remove Ahmadinejad to reply.