Download 7 The Future of Chan..

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
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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
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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.
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