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Lecture 4: Early Christian music, Gregorian Chant
History of Western Music
MUSIC IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES: GREGORIAN CHANT
Background: After the fall of the Roman Empire (476), different ethnic groups and tribes
were ruling Europe. Among them the most important for us to remember is Charles the
Great (Charlemagne) who lived around 800AD. The influence of the Christian church
gradually became dominant throughout Europe and the bishops in Rome grew steadily in
influence simply because they were religious authorities. For example, bishops crowned
kings, and being ousted by the church would have serious consequences for a secular ruler.
Music: Our knowledge of music in the Middle Ages is mostly limited to sacred music, as
secular music, even though it surely existed, was generally not written down. This is
because only the clergy (people working for and in the church) was literate and because
the material to write on was expensive.
As Christian chants reached the different regions of Europe, they were modified and added upon according to local tastes. And so, different types of chant developed and existed in different regions, (similar to how one language often sounds a little different or
uses slightly different words in different regions). After Charlemagne (Charles the
Great), King of the Franks, was crowned emperor by the pope in 800 AD, he tried to
unify his polyglot (multilingual) kingdom by introducing only one type of chant for
the church services. For this purpose, he claimed that pope Gregory had received the
“Gregorian chant” by divine inspiration (depicted in paintings as a dove singing into his
ears) and he forced the different regions to use it for their services. With this introduction
he was more or less successful (f.ex. from Gallican chant there is known today little more
than its name.) This “Gregorian” chant was in fact Roman chant written down and
adapted by Frankish practice (in fact a cooperative project between the Roman pope and
the Frankish king to consolidate their power). While the popes living before Charles1
might have started to collect and organize chant, the story was fictional, useful for power
considerations. Nevertheless, the name Gregorian chant has remained.
Gregory receiving chants (dove on shoulder)
1
Pope greeting Charlemagne outside Rome
F.ex. Gregory I (590-604), and Gregory II (around 715)
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Lecture 4: Early Christian music, Gregorian Chant
History of Western Music
Description: Chant, like all music of the middle Ages, was originally and mainly monophonic with free rhythm that more or less followed the rhythm of the words, (although
there is some disagreement on this issue among modern scholars). Melodies were mostly
moving stepwise with some small leaps and ranged generally only over an octave.
The setting of the words (text setting) could be syllabic, (sounding a different note for
each syllable), or neumatic, (with a few notes -up to about five- for one syllable) and
melismatic, (when many notes were used for one syllable).
It was mostly unaccompanied vocal music; instrumental music was banned from church
service by the early church to avoid non-devotional feelings among the congregations and
to avoid any resemblance to the old, pagan rituals.
There existed different ways of performance: direct means recitation by a chorus or
soloist only; responsorial means that a soloist is alternating (being answered by) with a
chorus, the chorus often repeating a similar word or melody such as for example “alleluia” (= “praise the Lord”); and antiphonal which means alternating choruses.
A monk working on a manuscript
Purpose: Sacred music was used in church services to enhance devotion. Such services
included the Divine Office, which is a set of regular prayers celebrated throughout the
day mainly by monks and nuns in monasteries and cathedrals2.
The Holy Mass was the central ceremony of church service for ordinary people, the
ritual celebration of the last supper between Jesus and his disciples. The mass was performed in Latin, a language ordinary people did not understand. Music helped to impress
them, it was intended to arouse feelings of awe and admiration, to aid in recognizing the
different parts of the mass, thus keeping up people’s interest, and it helped to create a devotional atmosphere for everybody, including the priests.
For the monks, singing facilitated (made easier) memorization of long sections of the liturgy, (which is the order of the different spoken and sung sections, such as prayers,
songs and lectures from the Holy Scriptures, that were performed throughout a church
service). The liturgy generally included two kinds of chants: the Proper contains sections that changed according to the time of the year and the occasion in the church
calendar; its chants were sung by soloist because they are the most elaborate. The Ordinary contains the sections that remained the same throughout the year.
2
Matins were celebrated before daybreak, lauds at sunrise, followed by three sets of prayer at 9, 12 and 15
o’clock, vespers at sunset and another service later in the evening.
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Lecture 4: Early Christian music, Gregorian Chant
History of Western Music
Chant can be categorized under different aspects, for example by occasion: there were
chants for the celebration of the Divine Office, (collected in a book called the Antiphonale), and chants for the Mass, (collected in the Graduale). The Ordinary, for the Holy
Mass consists of five chants called Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei. These were originally simple chants sung mostly by the congregation; but after the ninth century they were gradually replaced by more elaborate, often polyphonic settings that had to
be sung by monks who were trained singers.
Chants were further categorized according to (church) modes, which is the medieval
interpretation of the Greek tonoi, into Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian and Mixolydian (and
more) modes.

Gregorian chant: Office of the second vespers, Nativity of our Lord. [Workbook
chapter 4] Notice the four-line system, the use of a clef, the square notes and the bemol, find
examples of syllabic and neumatic text settings, notice the responsorial with the Alleluia answering the verse (in our recording not performed by a soloist). Notice the florid/melismatic alleluia in the “Verse: notum fecit”. CD 1, ## 16
Cover of the book Monks and Monasteries in the Middle Ages
Treatises on music in the Middle Ages (important sources for us today): Early treatises
in the Middle Ages dealt more with the philosophical aspects of music. Boethius
(around 500 AD) gives in De Institutione Musica (The Fundamentals of Music) basically a summary of Greek thought on music. One main message is that numbers can
explain music, the different intervals and relationships among pitches as well as the tuning of instruments (even though some details were contradictory in the different chapters,
as he based it on philosophers who did not necessarily agree with each other). His own,
original contribution was the division of music into three categories: the first dealing
with the music of heavenly bodies (cosmic music)3; the second the harmonious vibra3
Plato called it "music of the spheres", Boethius followed up on it - today we study this subject in physics
and call part of this "music" gravity; it is actually a combination of gravity and centrifugal forces that keeps
the solar system rotating in the current order.
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Lecture 4: Early Christian music, Gregorian Chant
History of Western Music
tions and powers that keep body and soul united4; and only the third, lowest kind, the
audible music that is produced by instruments, among them the human voice.
Boethius teaching his students. Initial (decorative first letter
of a paragraph) in a 1385 Italian manuscript of the Consolation of Philosophy.
Later treatises, from about the ninth century on, dealt more with the practical aspects of
performance, of notating and reading music, classifying and singing plainchant, and
teachings on improvisation and composition (some include early polyphony).
The Development of Notation: Most chants known today were created between 600 and
1300. As they grew to be too many, people began to feel that they had to write them
down. Around the early ninth century (800s) notation was neumatic: neumes are sloping
signs that initially only indicated the general outline of the melody, the contour, but not
exact intervals; so in fact they were just a reminder for someone who already knew how
the melody goes. Later on, one red line was used, to indicate the note fa, then two lines,
three… as gradually more lines were added, intervals became clearly defined. By about
1000 AD, a staff of four lines was used, a clef indicated the notes c or f (but in relative
pitch!) and the melodies were written with square-type notes and slanting signs. Generally, the exact length of a note was not indicated, but a dot next to a note would increase/double its value. Rhythmically, the notes followed more or less the text (however,
as said before, scholars disagree on this issue).
Notice that in the first example (from the Winchester Troper) only the contour is indicated (neumatic notation). Notice how beautifully the second manuscript is decorated. These books were not
intended for daily use (with a copy for each monk, the way hymn books are used today).
It was Guido of Arezzo in his treatise called “Micrologos” who around 1000 AD described the use of a staff of four lines and of different clefs to indicate the notes fa and do,
4
Science, be it medicine or psychology, has not understood or given a name to that force as of today,
Christian religion calls it the breath of God.
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Lecture 4: Early Christian music, Gregorian Chant
History of Western Music
even sol. Guido of Arezzo also invented the solmization syllables. (Originally they were
called ut (do) re mi fa sol la, from the text of a well-known hymn where each phrase begins on the ascending notes of the scale). To help memorization of these syllables and of
the different modes, Guido devised a memorization aid in the shape of a hand.
This Guidonian hand was printed in every textbook of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. At the time, these syllables were used on what we call movable pitch. There is
always a half step between mi and fa (in fact it is a system based on a hexachord, six-note
pattern, with fixed intervals). Changing hexachords was possible and this process was
called “mutation”. For example, a note that was in the first hexachord a la could be considered a re in the second hexachord, and so on.
An example of the Guidonian hand, (from a
Bodleian Library Manuscript.)
Hildegard von Bingen (1098 – 1179), a nun and later on head of her own monastery, was a
visionary, famous for her knowledge of medicine and plants. She also wrote music, the
most famous being her liturgical play Ordo Virtutum (The Virtues, about 1150) that
tells of the struggle of the soul, who is helped by the virtues, against evil, which is depicted by the devil himself. Liturgical dramas were performed during mass to illustrate certain stories related to special feasts, such as Christmas and Easter. This play is unusual
since it is a morality play that stands on its own and is not related to a feast, rather it illustrates and teaches important ethical and moral values.
 Ordo Virtutum. [workbook chapter 6], notice the melisma at the end. CD 1 # 18
Illumination from the Liber Scivias showing
Hildegard receiving a vision and dictating it to her
scribe and secretary.
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