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The Future of Chant We have seen through the course of this paper how chant evolved over many hundreds of years from its earliest Greek-mode beginnings into a kind of liturgical folk music in a sense throughout the Middle East and subsequently, with the spread of Christianity, it became the standard means of accompanying the mass and is used to this day. We have also seen how composers of both liturgical and secular music alike have over the millennium borrowed from chant as a compositional element. Through every period we have seen composers using chant melodies, borrowing concepts of the layered arranging techniques of the early polyphonic composers, employing modal harmonization and the like; all musical concepts that are chant –based approaches. The old axiom “what goes around comes around” certainly seems to apply when discussing music. Even in the jazz world modal melodies and subsequent modal harmony all but replaced standard diatonic approaches starting sometime in the late 1950’s with the collaborative efforts of pianist Bill Evans and trumpeter Miles Davis. The “old” being conceived as “new.” “His greatest contribution (Evans’s) to the development of jazz lies beneath the surface of his style, in his creative use of traditional techniques. ……by melding the appropriate device to the situation at hand, drawing from a wide range of musical background and history and putting old ideas to work in new ways.” (Israels. 1985. 109) Just as the works of Debussy, Ravel, Schöenberg, Stravinsky and other 20th century composers can be seen as a reaction to traditional diatonic means so did this kind of tonal revolution occur in jazz. This going back to modal harmony was a huge part of the evolution of jazz harmony and it forever changed the way jazzmen ply their craft. A new sense of harmonic freedom was established and once again we seem to forge ahead by going back, by borrowing from the old to create something new. Norwegian jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek has a strong interest in early forms of Western music and he has recorded numerous CD’s where he mixes jazz with other, older forms with interesting results. In 1993 he recorded albums with the Hilliard Ensemble (a vocal group that specializes in early Western music) producing works that 25 blended Renaissance music with jazz. (Garbarek. 1993) The first was called Officium and was a best seller, this work was followed by a sequel called Mnemosyne in 1999. "What is this music?" Fundamentally, it's an exploration of what happens when an improvisatory instrumental voice (saxophone) is placed into the world of early vocal music, which has elements of both improvisation and formal structure. In reality, it's an adventure in which the four male voices of the Hilliard Ensemble travel the 14th- and 15thcentury territory of Morales and Dufay, visit the 12th century of Perotin, and roam even earlier ages of plainchant, accompanied by the always sensitive and tasteful, often astonishing, saxophone improvisations of jazz master Jan Garbarek. Sometimes, these new melodies simply accompany; sometimes they transform the common--a routine minor chord, for instance--into a sublime, indescribable moment. The answer to the above question is easy, but it's different for each listener. -David Vernier (Vernier. Amazon.com review) Hopefully interest in ancient chant will not diminish and the success of Mr. Garbarek’s project gives cause for optimism. I myself am in the process of composing chant-based music. I have been studying and learning chants over the past year and am in the process of arranging them for 4 voices, 4 brasses, and jazz quintet. The more time I spend with these chants the more they seem to reveal, this is often an earmark of substance in music. For instance I can listen to let’s say a particular Beethoven Piano Sonata, and it seems on each new hearing I find something I missed previously. I find this to be true of much of the music I have heard in my life that may possibly be classified as “great”; Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Bach, Stravinsky, Bartók, et al. Music of great substance seems to possess this unique quality of revealing new treasures with each subsequent hearing. I also have given much thought to a pedagogical system for teaching trumpet (something I do regularly) that would be chant based. Why not, instead of using only exercises derived from the major and minor scales, use all the modes in teaching basic technical skills? For instance all scale patterns, arpeggios, and scale based studies could be extended to include dorian, locrian, lydian and phrygian .I think the benefit here would be in developing the ear of the student, having it getting used to hearing the harmonic 26 implications not found only in diatonic keys but in the various modes as well. It would be a more all-inclusive approach to ear training. There is nothing more important then a well developed ear in brass instrument mastery, in all musical performance actually. Along these same lines, in order to learn proper phrasing and tone production why not use the chants? The standard text used for most trumpet students is the Arban Complete Conservatory Method, a fine 19th century method book. There is a section in this book called “The Art of Phrasing” and in it are excerpts from various composers; Bellini, Verdi, Donizietti, etc. Why not a section of transcribed chants in a method book? I can think of no better medium in which to impart the skills of phrasing and tone production. This I think would be a project worthy of further consideration and would certainly be a good starting point for another paper. 27