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LITURGICAL
AND SACRED MUSIC
First of all, it is essential to
distinguish between liturgical music and Sacred music.
Liturgical
Music, whether of cults or religious is intended to accompany
ceremonies. It is not especially vocational as art, but has simply
to support prayer, as a litany suggesting angelic choirs.
Sacred
Music, on the contrary, makes reference not only to the
spirituality, but also to musical art and to beauty : well beyond
the doctrine, it attempts to mystically symbolise the divine*
and the sublimity.
CHRISTIAN SACRED MUSIC
THE
GREGORIAN CHANT
The first Christians favoured a
simple incantation, without seeking to achieve any aesthetic value
: they created plain-chant, stemming
from Greek modes, Jewish psalms and Roman songs.
The
gregorien chant, taken from the name of the pope Gregory
1st, was first truly refined musical expression and appeared five
centuries later. Austere and magnificent, it is a monody without
any instrumental accompaniment, chanted in unison by the monks.
The Gregorian chant has to marry faithfully the to text of Scriptures.
It is sung in Latin, which was then the compulsory language for
the entire Christian church.
When the first
musical notation appeared, notes were represented by the first
few letters of the alphabet, but the measure still did not exist:
the interpretation of the Gregorian followed the rhythm of the
words…
The Gregorian chant reigned during 5 centuries. However composers
followed their natural tendency to further develop religious music.
CDs
of Sacred Music - Gregorian chant - Choir of the monks of Solesmes:
Plain song and Gregorian chant of the monks from the abbey of
Solesmes. CD - The song of silence, Gregorian chant.
In
the 12 century, at the time of the Gothic cathedrals, new influences,
partially inspired by the troubadours began to disturb the established
order of the Gregorian. They allowed the Sacred music - by freeing
it from the narrow codification of dogma - to reveal a more elaborated
and richer aesthetic, and eventually, to better to serve religion.
A
wave of novelties developed during the following centuries: the
introduction of the polyphony, the counterpoint, harmony, rhythm,
notation and musical publishing, and for the first time for twelve
centuries, the use of musical instruments in Sacred Music.
The
polyphony is at the foundation of the music of the following centuries.
It intertwines and combines several different melodic lines -
or voices - played or sung simultaneously.
The
counterpoint, and the imitative counterpoint, based on the "canon"
would later lead to the fugue,
superimposed melodic lines, and thus represent the first type
of "horizontal" harmonization.
Harmony
or the science of chords, organized sounds "vertically":
a chord consists of a minimum of three notes of different pitch
played simultaneously
As
musical notation l evolved : full and empty notes as well as red
or black notes, aided their reading.
Rhythm
became modernized : the symbolism of the figure 3 ( in the mystery
of the Trinity, God is three in one, the Father, the Son and Holy
Ghost ) had been the sole admitted to be a "perfect mode
", but the opening of binary values "imperfect
modes" which divides the long into two breves.
But
the march of progress never advances without resistance and it
aroused violent objections : Pope John XXII condemned this "shameful"
music. Dominican and Cistercian monks banished the new music from
their ceremonies… But subjugated by the force of innovation,
the Church eventually accepted it.
The
reform of the Lutheran churche, which abandoned Latin, permitted
the development of the "chorale" henceforth written
in everyday language.
The
bass monody accompaniment - or only the melody and the bass were
written, leaving to the interpreter the choice of accompaniment
- and developed later between the Renaissance and the baroque
movement.
CDs
of polyphonic music : PALESTRINA revisited by the Bulgaria Jar
Ensemble - Missal Prime Toni.
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