Sacred Music

History

To understand the origins of chant, we must go back to the Church’s Hebrew roots. The tradition of chanting Scripture—a practice known as cantillation—began at least 1,000 years before the birth of Christ. In the Old Testament, the Book of Psalms and the Books of Chronicles speak of musical instruments and the central function of music in temple worship. There were two basic forms of worship for the Israelite: the bloody sacrifice, involving the death and destruction of an animal, which represents the total surrender of one’s being to God in adoration, obedience, and humble self-effacement; and the chanted psalter, expressing our praises and petitions, as “verbal incense” offered up to God by our intellects. Since the Psalter of David was composed for the very purpose of divine worship and was seen as the messianic book par excellence, the first Christians spontaneously chose the Psalter for their prayer book. We see Peter, Paul, and the Apostolic Fathers quoting it countless times in their preaching and letters. Moreover, Christians saw the Lord’s offering of Himself on the Cross as the fulfillment of all the bloody animal sacrifices; the Eucharist makes present the reality and fruits of this supreme sacrifice in an unbloody manner suitable for those who have been redeemed. Thus, all Christian liturgy can be said to spring from the combination of Psalter and Sacrifice. We should not be surprised, then, to find that the traditional Roman rite of Mass, which is primarily a sacrificial offering, is permeated throughout with verses from the Psalms; and that the other great public prayer of the Church, the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours, is primarily composed of Psalms, yet with incense burned at the altar during the Gospel canticles—an acknowledgement of the one supreme sacrifice that unites heaven and earth.
 
The early Christians continued to chant psalms and other prayers in the Hebrew manner familiar to them from the Temple worship in Jerusalem and from the synagogues spread throughout the Roman world. Some Gregorian melodies still in use are remarkably close to Hebrew synagogue melodies, most notably the ancient Gospel tone, the Preface tone, and the tone used for Psalm 113, the “Tonus Peregrinus.” But Christians also absorbed influences from surrounding Greek and Roman music, particularly in the development of the system of eight “modes.” This system—like so much else—developed separately in the Latin and Byzantine realms, which roughly correspond to the Western and Eastern halves of the ancient Roman Empire. To this day, most Latin chants and most Byzantine chants fall into eight modes, but the only thing these modes have in common is that there are eight of them. (I’ll talk more about modes later on.)
 
Chant developed prodigiously in the first Christian millennium. Over time, not just the psalms and their antiphons were cantillated, but also the Scripture readings, orations, intercessions, litanies, instructions (e.g., “Flectamus genua”), and, in general, anything meant to be proclaimed out loud. By the time we reach Pope St. Gregory the Great, who reigned from 590–604, a body of chant already existed for the Sacrifice of the Mass and the daily round of prayer (Divine Office). Even as he gave final form to the Roman Canon, which is the defining trait of the Latin rite, St. Gregory organized this musical repertoire, as a result of which the chant ever afterwards has been honored with his name: “Gregorian.” The core of the Gregorian chant repertoire dates to before the year 800; the bulk of it was completed by the year 1200.

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