Page 23 - LOTN Advent issue 57

FAITH AND CULTURE
‘Gregorian chant’

a misnomer?

BY DR SHELAGH NODEN

any readers will be familiar with illustrations
of Pope St Gregory the Great, with the Holy
Spirit in the form of a dove singing into his
Mear, while he apparently dictates the chant
he has just heard to a scribe. In mediaeval times Gregory,
who was Pope from 590 to 604 was widely credited with
composing most if not all of the corpus of chants himself,
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. However, this has
now been shown to be untrue, as many chants date from
before St Gregory’s time. Added to which, there was no
standardised form of musical notation until the early
eleventh century, so the scribe could not have notated
chants composed by St Gregory or anyone else. All music
was learned from memory, with just the odd mark added
to the written text to serve as a memory aid to the cantor.
So how did the plainchant we sing today get its title
‘Gregorian’ and is this justified?
Music in early Christian worship is thought to have been
grown out of the music of the Jewish liturgy with which
many people would have been familiar. Gradually new
customs were developed, as when in the early fourth Pope St Gregory the Great under the guidance of the Holy Spirit
century St Anthony and his monks in the desert started
the practice of singing all 150 psalms during the course of said to take ten years to train a cantor! Expert cantors were
each week. This was adopted by St Ambrose in what is now sent out far and wide by Gregory to instruct the singers in
northern Italy, and around 520 AD St Benedict developed local cathedrals and churches, using the books compiled by
the sung Office in the monasteries that he founded. So by the Pope.
the time Gregory became Pope in 590, Christian church Pope Gregory also worked on standardising the format of
music was already well established. A schola cantorum, the Mass; for example, he extended the use of the Alleluia
or singing school, had been founded in Rome in the fifth verse outside of Paschal time, but disallowed its use during
century. Lent. This is still the practice today. He also organised
th
The problem was the lack of uniformity. As Christianity the psalmody of the Divine Office. Writing in the early 9
spread, initially around the Mediterranean and then century, the Bishop of Metz commented that such was
more widely, the music used to set Pope Gregory’s influence on the Divine Office that it had
the liturgical texts tended to reflect become known as the Gregorian Usage.
local practice. We must remember that Perhaps here we can see the beginning
because there was no generally accepted It is scarcely credible to of the legends which attribute the actual
way of writing music everything was us today that the cantors composition of the chant melodies to
learned and transmitted from memory, had to learn all the Gregory himself.
therefore it is not surprising that there chants from memory. Not Cantors made long journeys, reaching
th
were discrepancies. Nor was there any surprising that it was said the furthest corners of Europe. In the 7
one definite way of celebrating Mass at to take ten years to train century St Bede, who lived in what is now
this date. This is where Pope Gregory a cantor! the North East of England, was aware of
stepped in. Pope Gregory’s influence. Bede praised the
His major achievement as regards Bishop of Rochester ‘for his knowledge of
chant was to collect the existing chant the Roman Chant which he had learned
texts and codify them according to the needs of the liturgy. from the pupils of St Gregory’. He also gave special mention
He created two large volumes: the Gregorian Sacramentary to a cantor called Maban, who was employed by the
and the Gregorian Antiphonary, and had handwritten Bishop of Hexham, saying ‘He had been instructed by the
copies made. He also made sure that cantors were successors of the pupils of St Gregory in Kent’.
instructed in the approved melodies for the chants. Little is known for certain about Pope Gregory’s own
It is scarcely credible to us today that the cantors had to prowess in music, but he certainly took a great interest in it
learn all the chants from memory. Not surprising that it was and recognised its importance in the liturgy. He is believed

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