Gregorian music — or Gregorian chant — is the official sacred chant of the Latin Church: a single-voiced melody, sung in Latin, with no instrumental accompaniment whatever, and wholly ordered to carrying the holy word of the liturgy. For more than a thousand years, it is through this chant that the Western Church has prayed the Mass and the Divine Office. The Second Vatican Council still recognises it today as the chant proper to the Roman liturgy, called to hold pride of place in it.[1][2]
Its name recalls Pope Saint Gregory the Great (pontiff from 590 to 604), whom tradition depicts writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, a dove at his ear. But historical research establishes it clearly: Gregory did not personally compose this repertory. "Gregorian chant" in the sense we mean it was born about two centuries after him, from the meeting of the chant of Rome and the chant of Gaul, in the Empire of Pepin the Short and Charlemagne.[3][4]
Its traits make it immediately recognisable: no measured rhythm like a song, no harmony, no orchestra — only a pure melodic line, supple, wedding the text like a sung prayer. This sobriety is not poverty: it is the fruit of a theological conviction. Chant is not there to shine, but to make the Word heard and to lift up the soul.[5][6]
This article presents Gregorian monody itself: its nature, its history, its notation, its modes, its repertory, its spirituality and its status in the Church. It does not deal with the multi-voiced sacred music that developed out of it, nor with the great composers it inspired: those subjects belong to separate dossiers, to which the reader is referred.[7]
What is Gregorian chant?
A simple definition
Before any technique, a picture. Imagine an assembly of monks, standing in an abbey, singing together a single melody, with no piano, no guitar, no drum, with no voice singing a second part: all utter the same line, like a single voice at prayer. What they sing is not a personal poem but the text of the liturgy — a psalm, an antiphon, a prayer of the Mass. There, in its purest form, is Gregorian chant.[8]
More precisely, Gregorian chant is the name given to the repertory of Latin liturgical chant, monodic and unmeasured, fixed between the 8th and the 10th century, which constitutes the official musical foundation of the Roman rite. It is, in the phrase of Pius X, the "Gregorian cantilena" — the chant that serves as the norm for all church music.[9]
Characteristic features
Five traits define this chant and set it apart from all other music.[10]
- Monody. Gregorian chant is monophonic: a single melodic line, with no harmony and no counterpoint. The whole assembly sings the same note at the same moment (give or take the octave). It is the opposite of the multi-voiced music that would be born later.
- Latin. The text is almost always Latin, the liturgical language of the West (a few Greek pieces survive, such as the Kyrie eleison).
- No accompaniment. The chant is a cappella, without instruments. The human voice alone carries the prayer.
- Modality. The melody does not fit into our modern major and minor keys, but into a system of eight modes inherited from antiquity and from Byzantium.
- Free rhythm. There is no regular metre and no fixed beat: the rhythm follows the Latin word, its accents and its meaning. The melody breathes to the rhythm of speech, not of a metronome.
This last point is decisive: in Gregorian chant, music is the handmaid of the text, never its rival. The melody is born of the word, underlines it, meditates on it, lifts it up to God. That is why the Church has always seen in it the model of true sacred music.[11][12]
Gregorian chant, plainchant, Roman cantilena
The vocabulary deserves clarification. Plainchant (in Latin cantus planus, "plain chant") denotes this unified chant, without measured rhythm, as opposed to cantus mensuratus, the measured chant of medieval polyphony. Gregorian chant is the most accomplished and most universal form of Latin plainchant.[13]
Gregorian chant is further distinguished from Old Roman chant, the repertory proper to the city of Rome preserved in a few late manuscripts, and from Gallican chant, in use in Gaul before the Carolingian reform. Gregorian chant is precisely born of the fusion of these traditions — as the next section explains.[14][15]
Where does Gregorian chant come from?
The chant of the early Church
Christianity was born singing. From the earliest communities, the Apostle urges the faithful to feed on "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs":
"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God." — Saint Paul, Epistle to the Colossians 3:16[16]
The Church first inherits the chant of the synagogue: psalmody, that is, the chanting of the psalms of David, which remains to this day the backbone of the Divine Office. In the 4th century, Saint Ambrose of Milan organises the chanting of hymns, and Saint Augustine bears witness to the overwhelming emotion he felt at them at his conversion:[17]
"How I wept at Thy hymns and Thy canticles, keenly moved by the sweet singing of Thy Church!" — Saint Augustine, Confessions, IX, 6, 14[18]
From these biblical and patristic roots would be born, over the centuries, the great families of Latin chant: Ambrosian at Milan, Mozarabic in Spain, Gallican in Gaul, Old Roman at Rome. Gregorian chant would be the synthesis of two of them.[19]
Did Saint Gregory the Great compose Gregorian chant?
It is the question every reader asks. The honest answer is: no, not in the sense we imagine.
Medieval tradition made Pope Saint Gregory the Great the author of the repertory. The most famous image — that of a dove perched at his ear dictating the melodies to him — comes from the biography that John the Deacon writes c. 873–876 at the request of Pope John VIII: it extols Gregory inspired by the Holy Spirit and reorganising the Roman schola cantorum.[20] The precise anecdote of the dove dictating into his ear is reported by another biographer, Peter the Deacon.[21] The superb miniature of the Registrum Gregorii (c. 983) fixes this iconography for centuries.[22]
This tradition expresses a spiritual truth — the Church received her chant as a gift of the Spirit — but not a historical truth in the literal sense. Gregory the Great truly reformed the Roman liturgy and supported the schola cantorum; he did not compose the melodies we call Gregorian. Some scholars even note that the name may first have honoured Pope Gregory II (715–731), the attribution to the more famous Gregory coming later.[23]
The true birth: the Carolingian Romano-Frankish fusion
Gregorian chant is in reality born in the 8th century, in the Frankish Empire, out of a political and spiritual decision. To bind their kingdom to Rome, the Carolingian rulers want to adopt the Roman liturgy and its chant.[24]
- 752-753The chant of Rome in Gaul
Pope Stephen II, visiting Pepin the Short, celebrates Mass according to Roman usage. The Franks discover the chant of the Eternal City.
- c. 754-760Pepin the Short imposes Roman usage
To tighten the alliance with the papacy, Pepin the Short gradually abolishes the old Gallican rite in favour of the Roman liturgy, chant included.
- 785-786Charlemagne receives the Roman books
At the request of Charlemagne, Pope Hadrian I sends a Roman sacramentary to the Frankish court. Roman chant is learned, copied and spread throughout the Empire.
- 8th-9th centuryBirth of 'Gregorian' chant
Roman chant, reworked by Frankish cantors and marked by Gallican sensibility, gives birth to a new repertory: Romano-Frankish chant, soon placed under the patronage of Saint Gregory.
The result is a new chant, neither purely Roman nor purely Gallican, organised according to the system of the eight modes. The Franks received it as "Roman" and attributed it to Gregory to give it the authority of the great pope; it is in reality their own brilliant synthesis. This repertory would establish itself throughout the West and become, for a thousand years, the chant of the Latin Church.[25][26]
Notation: how to fix the chant in writing?
For generations, Gregorian chant was handed down by word of mouth, by heart. A cantor learned hundreds of melodies by memory alone. The need to write them down appears in the Carolingian age, precisely when the Roman repertory has to be spread throughout the Empire without being deformed.[27]
Neumes: a gesture of the hand become a sign
The first musical signs are called neumes (from the Greek neuma, "sign, gesture"). They are not yet notes on a staff: they are small strokes, dots and hooks placed above the text, recalling the direction of the melody and the manner of singing it — rising, falling, lengthening, lightening. They are said to be adiastematic: they do not indicate the exact pitch of the sounds, only their movement and their expression.[28][29]
The oldest fully notated manuscripts date from the 9th–10th centuries. Two summits survive:
- the Cantatorium of Saint-Gall (Cod. Sang. 359), copied c. 922–926, the oldest complete manuscript with neumatic notation;[30]
- the Laon manuscript 239 (c. 930), witness of the Metz tradition, with Lorraine neumes of exceptional finesse.[31]
These manuscripts are so precise in expression (nuances, lengthenings, articulations) that they remain today the reference source for authentically interpreting the chant.[32]
Guido d'Arezzo and the invention of the staff
Adiastematic neumes say how to sing, but not which precise note to reach. For that, a pitch reference had to be invented. That is the work of the Benedictine monk Guido d'Arezzo (c. 991–after 1033).[33]
In his treatise the Micrologus (c. 1025), Guido perfects the staff: horizontal lines on which the position of the neume indicates exactly the pitch of the sound. At a stroke, any cantor can now read an unknown melody without having heard it — a revolution.[34]
To him we also owe solmisation (the ancestor of solfège). To memorise the degrees of the scale, Guido borrows the first syllables of the six half-lines of a hymn to Saint John the Baptist, Ut queant laxis, each half-verse starting one degree higher: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la.[35]
"Ut queant laxis / Resonare fibris / Mira gestorum / Famuli tuorum / Solve polluti / Labii reatum, Sancte Iohannes." — Hymn of Vespers of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, source of the note names[36]
Gregorian semiology
In the 20th century, a monk of Solesmes, Dom Eugène Cardine (1905–1988), founds a new discipline: Gregorian semiology, the scientific study of the neumes of the oldest manuscripts to recover the authentic interpretation of the chant — nuances, verbal rhythm, articulations. His work Gregorian Semiology (1968 in Italian, 1970 in French) profoundly renews the way Gregorian chant is sung in monasteries.[37]
The eight modes: the grammar of Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant knows nothing of our modern major and minor scales. It belongs to a system of eight modes (the octoechos), inherited from ancient Greek theory and Byzantine tradition, and fixed in the Carolingian age.[38]
To put it simply: each mode is a "scale" of notes with a resting note (the final) and a character of its own. According to the mode, one and the same melody can sound solemn, luminous, grave, peaceful or inward. The ancients lent each mode a particular spiritual character.[39]
The eight modes fall into four pairs, each comprising an authentic mode and a plagal (lower) mode:
| Pair | Authentic mode | Plagal mode | Final | Traditional character |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Protus | I — Dorian | II — Hypodorian | D | grave, serious |
| Deuterus | III — Phrygian | IV — Hypophrygian | E | mystical, penetrating |
| Tritus | V — Lydian | VI — Hypolydian | F | joyful, luminous |
| Tetrardus | VII — Mixolydian | VIII — Hypomixolydian | G | angelic, jubilant |
This modality explains the timeless savour of Gregorian chant: neither gay nor sad in the modern sense, it opens a sound space that seems to come from elsewhere, foreign to superficial emotions, made for contemplation.[40][41]
The Gregorian repertory
The Gregorian repertory is immense: several thousand pieces, divided between the two great places of the Church's prayer, the Mass and the Divine Office.
The chants of the Mass
The chants of the Mass fall into two groups. The Proper gathers the pieces that change with the liturgical day; the Ordinary gathers those whose text stays fixed at every Mass.[42]
| Group | Chants | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Proper (variable texts) | Introit, Gradual, Alleluia or Tract, Offertory, Communion | accompany the high points of the Mass according to the feast |
| Ordinary (fixed texts) | Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei | return at every Mass |
The degree of ornamentation varies with function: some pieces are syllabic (one note per syllable, as often the Credo), others neumatic (a few notes per syllable), others still melismatic — long vocalises on a single syllable, like the jubilus prolonging the Alleluia, a wordless expression of paschal joy.[43]
The chants of the Divine Office
The Divine Office (the Liturgy of the Hours), prayed through day and night in monasteries, is carried almost entirely by chant: psalmody (the chanting of the psalms to formulas called psalm tones), antiphons framing the psalms, great responsories, and strophic hymns.[44] Psalmody remains the beating heart of Gregorian chant: through it the Church daily sings the 150 psalms, as the synagogue already did.
A few summit pieces of the repertory
Certain pieces have crossed the centuries to become the common heritage of the faithful:
- the Salve Regina, Marian antiphon sung at Compline, whose solemn melody is among the most beloved;
- the Veni Creator Spiritus, hymn to the Holy Spirit attributed to Rabanus Maurus (9th c.), sung at great ordinations and conclaves;[45]
- the Te Deum, great hymn of thanksgiving of ancient origin;
- the Pange lingua gloriosi corporis of Saint Thomas Aquinas (c. 1264), for Corpus Christi, whose last stanza — the Tantum ergo — accompanies Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.[46]
Other masterpieces, such as the Dies irae sequence of the Mass for the dead or the Stabat Mater of the Compassion of Mary, have their own history and are the subject of dedicated articles.[47]
A theology in sounds: the spiritual meaning of chant
Gregorian chant is not only a musical or historical fact: it is a prayer and a theology in act. The Fathers of the Church, Saint Augustine first, penetrated its spiritual meaning.
Singing belongs to the one who loves
For Saint Augustine, chant springs naturally from love: we sing what we love, and love overflows into music. His formula has remained famous:
"Singing belongs to the one who loves." — Saint Augustine, Sermon 336, 1[48]
Chant is therefore not an outward ornament of the liturgy, but the expression of a heart that loves God. Elsewhere Augustine makes clear that sung praise is joyful praise, turned towards the One we love:
"He who sings praise does not only praise: he praises joyfully; he who sings praise does not only sing, but loves Him whom he sings." — Saint Augustine, Commentaries on the Psalms, Ps 72, 1[49]
The word carried by melody
This conviction explains why, in Gregorian chant, melody remains the humble handmaid of the text. It does not cover the words, does not drown them in virtuosity: it carries them, underlines them, meditates on them. That is exactly the criterion Vatican II would retain: sacred music is worth "all the more" as it is "more closely connected with the liturgical action" and the sacred text.[50][51]
The danger of beauty: Augustine's confession
Augustine is not unaware of the risk: music too beautiful can turn the soul away from meaning towards the mere pleasure of sounds. With striking lucidity, he confesses his own struggle:
"When it happens that I am more moved by the singing than by what is sung, I confess that I sin and deserve punishment, and then I would rather not hear the singer." — Saint Augustine, Confessions, X, 33[52]
This balance — a beauty great enough to lift the soul, sober enough not to take prayer's place — is precisely what Gregorian chant achieves. Pope Benedict XVI would say it again: where liturgy becomes performance and entertainment, its essence is lost.[53]
"He who sings prays twice"
We often quote, about sacred chant, the saying "He who sings well prays twice" (in Latin qui bene cantat bis orat), attributed to Saint Augustine. Rigour demands a clarification: this exact formula appears in none of Augustine's authentic works; it is a late paraphrase, attested from the 16th century on.[54] The Catechism itself quotes it while referring to the authentic text of the Commentaries on the Psalms, where Augustine says that singing praise is loving the One we sing.[55] The popular saying is thus faithful to Augustine's spirit, if not to his letter: well sung, prayer engages the whole being — voice, breath, heart — and is redoubled.
Oblivion and rebirth: the work of Solesmes
At the end of the Middle Ages, then in the Baroque age, Gregorian chant declines: it is weighed down, disfigured, accompanied, rhythmically distorted. Late printed editions (like the so-called "Medicean" edition of the 17th century) give a mutilated version of it. By the 19th century, the authentic repertory seems almost lost.[56]
Dom Guéranger and the refounding of Solesmes
The rebirth comes from one man: Dom Prosper Guéranger, who refounds in 1833 the Benedictine abbey of Solesmes (Sarthe) and relaunches the integral Roman liturgy there. To restore the chant, the medieval manuscripts must be gone back to, rather than the corrupt editions. That is Solesmes' programme for nearly a century.[57][58]
Dom Pothier, Dom Mocquereau and the Paléographie musicale
Two monks carry out the scholarly work. Dom Joseph Pothier publishes Les Mélodies grégoriennes (1880), then the Liber Gradualis (1883), the first modern restitution of the repertory from ancient sources.[59] Dom André Mocquereau launches in 1889 the great Paléographie musicale collection, which reproduces the oldest manuscripts in facsimile and founds the rhythmic method of Solesmes.[60]
"To restore to Gregorian melodies their authentic form by drawing them from the very sources of the oldest manuscripts." — Guiding principle of the Solesmes school[61]
The Editio Vaticana (1908)
The work of Solesmes bears official fruit. At the request of Pius X, a pontifical commission prepares the reference edition of chant for the whole Church: the Roman Gradual appears in 1908 (Editio Vaticana), followed by the Antiphoner in 1912. For the first time in centuries, the Church has an official, restored musical text, founded on medieval sources.[62]
The Church and Gregorian chant: magisterial teaching
No other chant has received from the Church so constant and so solemn an approval. The 20th-century magisterium has repeatedly made it the model and the norm of sacred music.
Pius X: "the supreme model of sacred music" (1903)
On 22 November 1903 — feast of Saint Cecilia, patroness of musicians — Pope Pius X publishes the motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini, charter of sacred music. In it he lays down a rule that has remained famous:
"Gregorian chant has always been regarded as the supreme model of sacred music: a church composition is more sacred and liturgical the more it approaches Gregorian melody in movement, inspiration and savour, and the less worthy of the temple the more it departs from it." — Saint Pius X, motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini, 1903[63]
Vatican II: "pride of place" (1963)
Sixty years later, far from abandoning it, the Second Vatican Council solemnly reaffirms the primacy of Gregorian chant in the constitution on the liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium (4 December 1963):
"The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services." — Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 116[64]
The same chapter describes the Church's musical tradition as "a treasure of inestimable value, greater even than that of any other art,"[65] and asks for the completion of the typical edition of the Gregorian chant books, along with a simpler edition "for smaller churches."[66]
Musicam Sacram, Jubilate Deo, John Paul II
The following table sums up the great magisterial acts that have confirmed the place of Gregorian chant.
| Document | Date | Authority | Contribution on Gregorian chant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tra le sollecitudini | 22 Nov. 1903 | Pius X | "Supreme model of sacred music" |
| Sacrosanctum Concilium 112–116 | 4 Dec. 1963 | Vatican II | "Chant proper to the Roman liturgy", "pride of place" |
| Musicam Sacram 50 | 5 Mar. 1967 | Congregation of Rites | Pride of place in offices celebrated in Latin |
| Jubilate Deo | 14 Apr. 1974 | Paul VI | Minimum repertory of chant every faithful should know |
| Centenary chirograph | 22 Nov. 2003 | John Paul II | "An element of unity of the Roman liturgy" |
The instruction Musicam Sacram (1967) makes clear that, in offices sung in Latin, Gregorian chant keeps "pride of place."[67] In 1974, Paul VI sends the world's bishops the booklet Jubilate Deo, a collection of the simplest Gregorian chants every faithful should know, so as to preserve the "spiritual unity" of believers.[68] In 2003, for the centenary of Tra le sollecitudini, John Paul II recalls that Gregorian chant remains "an element of unity of the Roman liturgy."[69]
Gregorian chant today
Far from being a museum piece, Gregorian chant is enjoying a remarkable revival of interest, even among the general public. It remains the living chant of many monasteries, the foundation of cantors' training, and for many a gateway into liturgical prayer.[70]
Its very sobriety is its strength. In an age saturated with noise and entertainment music, Gregorian chant offers a space of inhabited silence, peace and depth. It recalls that liturgy is not a spectacle but a prayer: the voice of the Church singing her love of God, as Augustine had understood.[71][72]
Out of this monody was born, over the centuries, all the richness of Western sacred music: polyphony, then the great Masses and requiems of the classical masters. But Gregorian chant remains its source and its measure — the Church's own chant, her purest treasure.[73][74]
Further reading
- On the development of multi-voiced chant born from Gregorian chant: Sacred polyphony and Palestrina and the musical reform.
- On the great liturgical masterpieces from this repertory: The Dies irae, The Stabat Mater and The Requiem Mass in history.
- On sacred music in the classical age: Bach and the Christian tradition and Mozart and the Catholic Mass.
- On the theology of the sacred image, sister of sacred music: The theology of the icon.
Notes and References
Second Vatican Council, constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium on the sacred liturgy (4 December 1963), no. 116. Official Latin text on vatican.va: "Ecclesiam cantum gregorianum agnoscit ut liturgiae romanae proprium: qui ideo in actionibus liturgicis, ceteris paribus, principem locum obtineat."
1 64Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1156, quoting Sacrosanctum Concilium 112. The CCC also takes up there the saying "He who sings prays twice", referring to Saint Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 72, 1 (cf. note on the paraphrase).
2 55John the Deacon (Iohannes Diaconus / Johannes Hymonides), Vita Gregorii Magni, written c. 873–876 at the request of Pope John VIII. It is the great Carolingian source fixing the tradition of Saint Gregory the Great inspired by the Holy Spirit and reorganising the Roman schola cantorum.
3 20On the Romano-Frankish origin of Gregorian chant (fusion of Old Roman chant and Gallican chant in the Carolingian Empire in the 8th–9th centuries, not composition by Gregory the Great): reference syntheses Gregorian chant and Old Roman chant (musicological encyclopedias). Key stages: Stephen II with Pepin (752–753); abolition of the Gallican rite by Pepin the Short; Roman sacramentary sent by Hadrian I to Charlemagne (785–786). Some scholars first attach the name to Pope Gregory II (715–731).
4 14 19 23 24 25Saint Pius X, motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini on sacred music (22 November 1903), section II, no. 3. Italian text on vatican.va: "il canto gregoriano fu sempre considerato come il supremo modello della musica sacra, potendosi stabilire con ogni ragione la seguente legge generale: tanto una composizione per chiesa è più sacra e liturgica, quanto più nell'andamento, nella ispirazione e nel sapore si accosta alla melodia gregoriana… " (Latin version: Inter pastoralis officii sollicitudines).
5 9 11 41 63 74Saint Augustine, Sermo 336, 1 (PL 38, 1472): "Cantare amantis est" — "Singing belongs to the one who loves". Sermon for the dedication of a church.
6 48 72The present article deals with Gregorian monody itself. For the multi-voiced music born of it, see Sacred polyphony and Palestrina and the musical reform; for particular pieces of the repertory, The Dies irae and The Stabat Mater.
7 47Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1158, quoting Sacrosanctum Concilium 119, on the harmony of signs (chant, music, words and actions) in the liturgical celebration.
8On the nature and repertory of Gregorian chant (monody, plainchant cantus planus, Proper and Ordinary of the Mass, Divine Office, syllabic/neumatic/melismatic styles): reference musicological syntheses (Gregorian chant, music encyclopedias).
10 13 42 43 44Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium (4 December 1963), no. 112: "Musica traditio Ecclesiae universae thesaurum constituit pretii inaestimabilis, inter ceteras artis expressiones excellentem, eo praesertim quod ut cantus sacer qui verbis inhaeret necessariam vel integralem liturgiae sollemnis partem efficit." — "The musical tradition of the universal Church constitutes a treasure of inestimable value, greater even than that of any other art, mainly because sacred song, united to words, forms a necessary or integral part of solemn liturgy."
12 51 65 73Old Roman chant, the repertory proper to the city of Rome preserved in manuscripts of the 11th–13th centuries, and the Gallican chant of Gaul are the two traditions whose fusion gives Gregorian chant. Cf. notice Old Roman chant.
15 26Saint Paul's Epistle to the Colossians 3:16 (Jerusalem Bible rendering adapted). Vulgate: "…docentes et commonentes vosmetipsos, psalmis, hymnis et canticis spiritualibus, in gratia cantantes in cordibus vestris Deo." Cf. the parallel in Ephesians 5:19: "in psalmis et hymnis et canticis spiritualibus".
16Saint Augustine, Confessions, IX, 6, 14: "Quantum flevi in hymnis et canticis tuis, suave sonantis ecclesiae tuae vocibus commotus acriter!" Augustine recalls the hymns Saint Ambrose had just introduced at Milan (Confessions, IX, 7, 15).
17 18The anecdote of the dove dictating the melodies into Gregory's ear is traditionally reported by Peter the Deacon (Vita Gregorii, ch. xxviii), a source cited by the Catholic Encyclopedia (article "St. Gregory the Great", New Advent). To be distinguished from the Vita of John the Deacon, which establishes the general framework of the Gregorian attribution.
21The Registrum Gregorii (Trier, c. 983) contains the famous miniature of Saint Gregory writing under the inspiration of the dove of the Holy Spirit, the founding image of Gregorian iconography. Cf. notice Registrum Gregorii.
22On oral transmission then neumatic notation of chant, and on semiology: Dom Eugène Cardine, Gregorian Semiology, and the tradition of the Solesmes musical palaeography workshop.
27 28 32Cantatorium of Saint-Gall (Cod. Sang. 359 of the Stiftsbibliothek), copied at the abbey of Saint-Gall c. 922–926: oldest complete manuscript preserved with neumatic notation (adiastematic Sangallian neumes), containing the solo chants of the Mass. Digitised on e-codices.
29 30Laon manuscript 239 (Laon Municipal Library, MS 239), copied c. 930 in the Laon region: major witness of the Metz tradition, in Lorraine neumes. Cf. notice Laon manuscript 239.
31Guido d'Arezzo (c. 991/992–after 1033), Benedictine monk, Micrologus (c. 1025–1026): perfecting of the musical staff (fixed-pitch lines allowing sight-reading) and of solmisation. Cf. biographical notice Guido d'Arezzo.
33 34The hymn Ut queant laxis (Vespers of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, 24 June) supplies, through the first syllables of its six half-lines each rising one degree, the note names: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. Cf. notice Ut queant laxis.
35 36Dom Eugène Cardine (1905–1988), monk of Solesmes, founder of Gregorian semiology: Semiologia gregoriana (Rome, 1968), French edition Sémiologie grégorienne in Études grégoriennes, vol. 11 (1970), pp. 1–158; English transl. Solesmes, 1972.
37On the eight-mode system (octoechos) of Gregorian chant, its authentic/plagal pairs (protus, deuterus, tritus, tetrardus), their finals (D, E, F, G) and their Greco-Byzantine heritage: reference musicological syntheses (Gregorian mode, mode in music encyclopedias). The traditional expressive characters of the modes belong to the ethos inherited from antiquity.
38 39 40The hymn Veni Creator Spiritus is traditionally attributed to Rabanus Maurus (9th century). Not to be confused with the sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus (12th–13th c.).
45Saint Thomas Aquinas, Pange lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium, composed for the feast of the Blessed Sacrament (Corpus Christi, c. 1264); its last stanza, the Tantum ergo Sacramentum, accompanies Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. To be distinguished from the Pange lingua gloriosi proelii of Venantius Fortunatus (6th c.).
46Saint Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos (Commentaries on the Psalms), On Psalm 72, 1 (CCL 39, p. 986; PL 36, 914): "Qui enim cantat laudem, non solum laudat, sed etiam hilariter laudat; qui cantat laudem, non solum cantat, sed et amat eum quem cantat." (Psalm 72 of the Vulgate = Hebrew Ps 73.)
49Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1157: chant and music "fulfil their function as signs in a manner all the more significant when they are more closely connected with the liturgical action" (quoting SC 112), according to three criteria: the expressive beauty of prayer, the unanimous participation of the assembly, the solemn character of the celebration.
50Saint Augustine, Confessions, X, 33, 50: "Cum mihi accidit ut me amplius cantus quam res quae canitur moveat, poenaliter me peccare confiteor, et tunc mallem non audire cantantem." — "When it happens that I am more moved by the singing than by what is sung, I confess that I sin and deserve punishment…" There Augustine describes his oscillation "between the peril of pleasure and wholesome experience" ("inter periculum voluptatis et experimentum salubritatis").
52Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), The Spirit of the Liturgy (1999/2000), part IV, on sacred music: the author recalls that Pius X wanted to remove the "operatic" element from the liturgy and made Gregorian chant and great polyphony the standard of liturgical music, sharply distinguishing liturgical music from religious entertainment. "Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human performance, it is a sure sign that the essence of the liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment." (pagination varies by edition).
53 71The saying "Qui bene cantat bis orat" ("He who sings well prays twice"), commonly attributed to Saint Augustine, appears in none of his authentic works: it is a late paraphrase, attested from the 16th century on. Augustine's underlying text is Enarrationes in Psalmos 72, 1. Cf. the reference survey taken up by the encyclopedias.
54On the decline of Gregorian chant in the Baroque age (late altered editions, including the "Medicean" edition) then its scholarly restoration from medieval manuscripts by the abbey of Solesmes: reference works on the history of the Gregorian restoration.
56 57Dom Prosper Guéranger refounds Saint-Pierre Abbey of Solesmes in 1833 and restores the integral Roman liturgy there, launching the programme of returning to the manuscript sources of chant.
58Dom Joseph Pothier, Les Mélodies grégoriennes d'après la tradition (1880), then Liber Gradualis (1883): first modern restitution of the repertory founded on the oldest manuscripts.
59Dom André Mocquereau founds in 1889 the Paléographie musicale collection, which publishes ancient manuscripts in facsimile and establishes the rhythmic method of Solesmes. Cf. the musical palaeography workshop of Solesmes Abbey.
60 61At the request of Saint Pius X, a pontifical commission (chaired by Dom Pothier) prepares the Editio Vaticana of chant: Kyriale (1905), Graduale Romanum (1908), Antiphonale Romanum (1912), founded on the work of Solesmes. Cf. notice Roman Gradual.
62Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963), no. 117: the typical edition of the Gregorian chant books is to be completed and a critical edition prepared, along with an edition of simpler melodies "for use in smaller churches" (in usum minorum ecclesiarum).
66Sacred Congregation of Rites, instruction Musicam Sacram (5 March 1967), no. 50 a): in liturgical actions sung in Latin, "Cantus gregorianus, utpote liturgiae romanae proprius, principem locum, ceteris paribus, obtineat" — Gregorian chant, proper to the Roman liturgy, should hold pride of place there, other things being equal.
67Paul VI, Jubilate Deo (booklet sent to the world's bishops in April 1974, accompanying letter Voluntati obsequens of 14 April 1974): collection of a "minimum repertory of Gregorian chant" every faithful should know, for the spiritual unity of believers. "Those who are trying to improve the quality of congregational singing cannot refuse Gregorian chant the place which is due to it."
68John Paul II, chirograph for the centenary of the motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini (signed 22 November 2003; Vatican.va publication dated 3 December 2003), no. 7: Gregorian chant "still continues today to be an element of unity of the Roman liturgy". The document takes up the criterion of Pius X. Text on vatican.va.
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