WMA Forum 2005

The Role of Rhetoric in Gregorian Chant

Rev. Columba Kelly OSB, (St. Meinrad Archabbey, USA)

The singing in the early Church described by St. Augustine was a type of oral proclamation that was closer to speech than to song (cf. Confessions, X, 33). Musicologists have invented a word for this form of oral proclamation. They call it cantillation:

[…] cantillation is the conscious stylization of the spoken word in the speech-melody of chant. […] the beginning, and the main points of punctuation, are marked by high notes or brief melodic flourishes. Cantillation is the cradle of Western tonality. Cantillation was created for the elevated delivery of religious texts of high moral quality. It directs behavior in that it encourages the faithful to acceptable collective action. […] it is the word of God […] it is other than we are but it is for us. […] there is a leveling tendency particular to the act of reading aloud that constitutes a general speech model. […] cantillation is a tonally conceived form of elevated speech. […] in cantillation, the individual note is of little importance; nor is the individual word of great importance either. Only the whole thought or sentence, with its caesura and cadence, makes a musical unit. (My emphases) (Norton: 69)

Catillation uses three musical elements:

As William T. Flynn has remarked:

Even the process of learning to read was bound up with the process of chanting […] most reading was vocalized reading. The notation […] conveyed all of the details of proper speech-song […] although the two structural components of music which we are accustomed to thinking most important, namely, pitch and rhythm, are often imprecisely notated, this does not mean that the performers were unconcerned with either pitch or rhythm, merely that its precise visual representation was not considered necessary, or perhaps (in the case of rhythm), even possible. (Flynn: 57-60).

As in good public speaking, the earliest formulas for chanting a reading included a rising pattern for the beginning of a sense unit, a special pattern for an intermediate pause and an ending pattern for the concluding of a sense unit. The chant developed by the Carolingians, better known as Gregorian chant, contains outstanding examples of the dialectic between the spoken word and sung speech. As Dom Daniel Saulnier has written:

When one compares the Romano Frankish repertory with its Roman ancestor, one cannot help but notice the care that the new repertory accords to the musical declamation of a sacred text in the Latin language. Moreover, the Romano Frankish chant shows an entirely new concern for the construction of phrases: the melodic curve in the form of an arch, for all practical purposes, does not exist in the Roman chant, while that concern becomes a canon of composition for the ‘gregorian’. The same holds true for the treatment of words. In the case of both the phrase and the word, the Latin accent is handled in the composition by a melodic elevation. (Saulnier, Review: 163-165).

The Melodic Arch for a Word

The very word 'accent' comes from the Latin ad cantum: to sing. The Roman orator Cicero remarked that “in speech there is a hidden song [cantus obscurior] […] because nature has inserted a raised pitch[1] [accentus acutus] into each word” (De oratore, XVII, XVIII). This melodic shaping in the form of an arch around the accent of a word was standard practice (cf. Cattin: 69 and 71). The melodic arch created for the word “benesonántibus” is evident in the Latin antiphon for Psalm 150 that is given above.

The Melodic Arch for a Phrase

(Gloria XV) Punctuation, or knowing where to pause and in what manner to pause, is an essential element of any good public speaking or singing. Indeed, the earliest formulas for chanting a reading included a rising pattern for the beginning of a sense unit, a special pattern for an intermediate pause and an ending pattern for the concluding of a sense unit (cf. Norton: 69-71). The phrase “Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis” is taken from the Gloria XV setting as found in the Graduale Triplex, p. 760-762. It uses a simple psalm tone pattern in the form of an arch that is used throughout the melodic setting of this ancient Gloria.

The Use of the Jubilus

The musical punctuation of the sense units of a text can become very elaborate when a jubilus is added to the end of a sense unit (cf. Treitler: 59). These are often called “punctuating melismas” by chant scholars (Saulnier, Gregorian Chant: 34-35). An example of this is the formula used for the eighth mode Canticles and Tracts of the Easter Vigil. The following example shows an English language adaptation of this formula for use with a refrain at Sunday Vespers. Like the periodic table of chemical elements, the overtone series is a part of creation’s order: given, enduring, and constant. The fifth is an interval by which the Shofar summons the religious to Jewish festivals. It was the first harmonic interval (outside the ever present interval of the octave sounded between men and boys’ voices) to be made frequent use of in medieval Christian music. These primal uses of the fifth are not accidental. The third partial, and therefore the interval of the fifth, is intrinsic in the overtone series generated by almost every periodic tone that sounds. The resonance of medieval stone chapels and churches must surely have played a role in the introduction of the fifth into Christian liturgical music. The fifth is always in the air around singers, requiring only a resonant building to render it audible. In some buildings one can hear an echo that returns the complex of pitches that comprise spoken language as a distinct intonation on a single musical tone. One is led to wonder whether this acoustical phenomenon might have influenced the origins of single-tone chanting or 'cantillation' in certain religious traditions and subsequently the development of the rich variety of psalm tone formulas in both the Eastern and the Western Christian chant traditions (cf. Blackwell: 56-61). This factor is brought home on a daily basis to those who recite and sing the psalms together in very resonate churches. Such 'cantillation', which involves very focused and clear pitches, is needed in order for a text to be adequately understood by those who are listening to it in a liturgical service.

Thus our basic set of eight Gregorian psalm tones are based on some fundamental laws of the physics of sound. The interval relationships between their reciting tones and their final pitches reflect these fundamental laws.[2] Their ascending intonation patterns to the recitation pitch and descending cadence patterns to the Final of the mode reflect a basic law of rhetoric and good public speaking. John (the anonymous theorist of 1100) suggests that each of the syntactical units of an antiphon is marked by a cadence that is appropriate to the mode, which not only articulates the structure but also distinguishes between syntactic units that can stand alone, and those that are members of larger clauses. To illustrate this, he gives the following structural analysis for each cadence to be found in the Introit for the feast of St. Stephen (cf. Graduale Triplex: 632-633):

Etenim sederunt principes, (fifth note above final) Et adversum me loquebantur: (final) Et iniqui persecuti sunt me: (final) Adjuva me, (fourth note above final) Domine Deus meus, (fifth note above final) Quia servus tuus exercebatur (fourth note above final) In tuis justificationibus. (final)

Flynn remarks that:

[…] in this example, the pauses are made at the three pitches that John indicated were common for this [first] mode [piece]. Furthermore, the pauses seem to follow a more complex hierarchical pattern that articulates some subtleties of the syntax. For example, the two pauses at the fourth above the final mark two places where the pause would not need to be very lengthy: the first occurs on the cry “Help me, O Lord my God”, which could be effectively proclaimed both with or without the comma, and the second occurs after the verb in the clause “because your servant was employed in your justifications” could be marked by a short hold on the last syllable of the verb “was employed” (although one would not use a punctuation mark to indicate this), and it appears that just such a reading is implied by the music of this antiphon. Indeed, slight pauses after the verb seem to be a typical feature of chant style. (Flynn: 76-77)

Needless to say, this feature is particularly useful for a listener trying to understand the words of this antiphon being sung in a resonate building!

The Normal Melodic Approach

In 547 cases of intonations or re-intonations as found in the core repertory[3] of Gregorian chants and published in the Graduale Triplex, the normal melodic approach to the initial word accent in all eight modes is from below, or at the unison. It is very rarely found to be an approach from above. These intervals of approach can be:

The Three Exceptions

Out of some 547 cases of chant intonations to be found in the core Gregorian repertory there are only three cases in which there is a melodic descent to the initial tonic accent (cf. Kelly: 26-27). The following examples show these exceptions: Example 1:

Example 2:

GT 47/3

GT 638/1 The same melodic formula is used for both of these cases. The use of the three-note Quilisma Scandicus with its elevated melodic position for the syllable “Ex” in both cases, gives added emphasis to this syllable. In the first case, it does this by heightening the tension toward the accent of “Exsulta” ('Exult!'), in the second case, by drawing attention to the preposition “Ex” ('out of [the mouth]'). Example 3: GT 154/4 The Mode V psalm tone pattern is used here for the intonation. The accent of the first word “Advérsum” ('against') has been given a kind of 'upside down' (or, 'contrary!') accentuation. The main accent of the intonation is on the word me ('against me have they fought').

In all three cases there seems to be a kind of 'word painting' being used by the composer in order to bring out the meaning of each text. The normal approach to the initial word accent from below, or even at the unison, would not have accomplished this effect. Other basic laws of rhetoric and good public speaking are reflected by the nuanced variations of duration, intensity and tempo indicated by the early chant notations. In fact, Agustoni and Göschl spend almost 700 pages demonstrating these laws in their work entitled EinfÜhrung in die Interpretation des Gregorianischen Chorals. The following is an excerpt translated from their work that summarizes these laws:

Since the text represents the primary source of a Gregorian chant, it is the starting point for the musical analysis of each piece of chant. If a person takes the trouble to read and explain to others the meaning of the text of a chant piece in the light of its musical setting, that person will become aware of how carefully the rules of rhetoric have been observed. They will point out where the rhythmic flow slackens in certain places. They will point out the textual high points and the kind of emphasis needed for good diction for certain words, in contrast to other parts of the text, such as post-tonic syllables, where the sound needs to come to rest and go on into silence. Finally, they will sometimes delay the rhythm of the speech at certain places in order to draw attention to an important part of the text that follows. Above all, it is always important to mediate clearly the content and sense of a text through good communication of the language. These rules of rhetoric experience a veritable transformation in the musical domain, especially thanks to the play of the unison neume groups. Among these vocal repercussions there are those that create a broadening of the rhythmic flow and others that require a great deal more forward movement. There are those that oscillate between stronger and weaker intensities or allow a fading away of the musical sound and others that bring about a halt to the forward momentum at the point of intensity. Ultimately, all this has to do with the phenomenon of language as a mediator of sense and is brought about by a perfect agreement with the requirements of the text.[4]

The Influence of Rhetoric on the Rhythmic/Melodic Settings for the Same Word Sometimes both the rhythmic as well as the melodic setting for a particular word seems to be determined by the meaning it has in a particular context. The following settings are given as examples of this interplay between the rules of good rhetoric and the actual musical settings for specific words. Two different settings for the word “Audi” (Ps. 44/45: 11):

GT 417/3 (TR.)

GT 411/3 (GR. Verse) Mode V In the first example, the musical setting places the emphasis on the word “Audi” (‘Hear, O daughter’). In the second example, the emphasis is on the word “filia” (‘Hear, O daughter’).

Hearing (“Audi”) gives way to seeing (“vide”):

GT 406/3 (GR.) In this example, there is a very rapid movement from the Final (G) of Mode VII to its Dominant (D) over the words “Audi, filia, et […]” (‘Hear, O daughter, and […]’). The only important word is “vide” (‘see!’). Four ways of proclaiming “Diffusa est gratia” (Ps. 44/45:3):

The text “Diffusa est gratia” (from Psalm 44/45:3) is found as the intonation of: • a Gradual (GT 408.7) • an Offertory (GT 421.2) • an Alleluia Verse (GT 413.5) • a Communion Antiphon (GT 423.4) As a Gradual Text:

Dif-fu- sa est gra- ti- a in la- bi- is tu- (is) GT 408.7 (Mode V Gradual) The strong structural points of the melodic line ascend from F (“Diffusa est”) through G (“gratia”) to C (“in labiis tuis”). The effect is to give the greatest rhetorical emphasis to the word “tuis”, thanks to the ornamental flourish above the C on the accent of that word. Here, the meaning of the text is: ‘Grace has been poured out – on your lips.’

As an Offertory Text:

GT 421.2 (OF.) Here, the emphasis is on the verb “Diffusa est” (‘Grace has been poured out […]’). May one dare to say that there is even a hint of ‘word painting’ in this example?!

1. Taken in the context of Cicero’s remark concerning the cantus obscurior to be found in speech, the phrase accentus acutus is most likely referring to the raised pitch used by many speakers for a word accent. Native speakers of Italian are good examples of this phenomenon. Return to article

2. The interval between the psalmodic tenor (or the Dominant) and the Final of all four of the basic (i.e., the authentic modes: 1, 3, 5, and 7) modes of the Carolingian Octoechos in their ancient forms is that of the perfect fifth. It is the first pitch (after the octave) that occurs in the overtone series. Even the Third Mode, in its original form, used the E – B interval instead of the later E – C interval (cf. Blackwell: 63-65). Return to article

3. The term “core repertory” refers to those chants whose texts are without neumes and can be found in one or more of the six oldest Antiphonaries of the Mass. These data are taken from the Antiphonale Missarum Sextuplex edited by Dom René-Jean Hesbert. Return to article

4. Translation made by the author from the French edition: 261-262. Return to article

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