So what are the earliest origins of the Gregorian Chant?

How does it relate to Hebrew Cantillation?

What was the earliest ancient Jewish chanting like?

The tradition of chanting scripture, a practice known as cantillation, has a long-established heritage in Judaism with various Old Testament books, especially the Psalms and the Chronicles, testifing to the central function of music in temple worship. Singing and ritual chant also seem to have been a part of the Christian liturgy since the earliest days of the Church and I think its fairly safe to say that in general terms plainsong chant, like Christianity itself, developed out of Jewish practices of religious worship. However I do think there are distinctions between the two forms of ritual chant.

In Jewish cantillation isn't the notation written in the text intended to act as a guide in clarifying how to read the scripture - by indicating textual accents, punctuation, phrasing, liaison and indications of emphasis - rather than giving any musical direction? I thought that the Jewish chant is technically regarded as a ritualised form of speech intonation rather than primarily as a musical exercise like the singing, and any musical interpretation is entirely dependent on an orally-transmittted knowledge of the local tradition. Isn't that why the chant is always referred to as saying or reading a passage rather than singing it?

Plainsong (often misleadingly referred to as Gregorian chant) in its simplest form seems to date from at least the 3rd century with the ritual singing of the Psalms, while in the 4th century St Ambrose (and others) introduced the practice of singing (rather than simply saying) the short refrains (antiphons) of the Christian Mass pertaining to the lay congregation which intersperse with the parts of the celebrant priest chanting alone. As a choral form it's not surprising that plainsong particularly developed within the regimented structure of communal monasticism (cenobitic monasticism, as opposed to solitary eremitic monasticism), the earliest phases of which in western Europe start in the 5th century. Plainsong was used to sing, in brotherly unity, the canonical hours of the monastic office and in the liturgy of the Mass. The exact form of the chants to be used - both the words and the melody - were codified towards the end of the 6th century by Pope Benedict I (hence why plainsong often gets named after him), his aim being that all monks and nuns throughout Christendom should be singing from the same hymnbook, as it were. This was more easily ordered than actually done as while the words of the liturgy could written down, there was not yet any comprehensive system for musical notation so the melodies of the chants, covering every service throughout the day and for every day of the year, could only be learned through years of daily practice and repetition.

In its earliest form plainsong had a basic melody (using only the eight note Roman/Greek musical scale) but no inherent repetitive rhythm and no harmonisation in that everyone sang the same tune, at the same pitch, in unison (it's monophonic). I suppose it was a fairly natural step to introduce a second voice or voices singing in parallel an octave above the base melody - perhaps an inevitable development as soon as monasteries started the practice of accepting boy novices -  to give what is called parallel plainsong. From here it is a fairly simple step to introduce a third voice singing a fifth above the base melody, and a fourth voice singing a fifth above the higher parallel voice. Such singing was known as organum plainchant as it resembles the fuller sound produced by a pipe organ with all its natural harmonics sounding simultaneously when each base note is played. Later modifications included harmonic embellishment of chant melodies - adding musical intervals of fourths and thirds, and then later with the separate voices singing different melodies simultaneously - but while these innovations were an early stage in the development of Western polyphony, none of them strictly belong to the plainsong chant repertory.

The earliest Western notation for chant appears in the 9th century in the form of freeform curved lines and squiggles above the text, known as neumes. I'm not sure it is known how they originated; possibly they developed from the punctuation, accent and phonetic notation of Byzantine chant, or even perhaps the cantillation marks on Jewish religious scripture. Neumes indicated changes in pitch and duration within each syllable but did not attempt to specify the pitches of individual notes, the intervals between pitches within a neume, or the relative starting pitches of different syllables' neumes. Presumably they were intended only as mnemonics for melodies that had already been learnt by ear.



I'm not sure that the system of neumes is fully understood and accordingly how the oldest chants actually sounded is still probably unclear. Musically the melodies of plainsong chant (and all other music, both religious and secular) became a lot clearer once the the musical stave - an innovation traditionally ascribed to the Benedictine monk Guido d'Arezzo in the early 11th century - defined the exact relationship between pitches and clarified the duration of each note.

Meles meles wrote:

The tradition of chanting scripture, a practice known as cantillation, has a long-established heritage in Judaism with various Old Testament books, especially the Psalms and the Chronicles, testifing to the central function of music in temple worship. Singing and ritual chant also seem to have been a part of the Christian liturgy since the earliest days of the Church and I think its fairly safe to say that in general terms plainsong chant, like Christianity itself, developed out of Jewish practices of religious worship. However I do think there are distinctions between the two forms of ritual chant.

In its earliest form plainsong had a basic melody (using only the eight note Roman/Greek musical scale) but no inherent repetitive rhythm and no harmonisation in that everyone sang the same tune, at the same pitch, in unison (it's monophonic). I suppose it was a fairly natural step to introduce a second voice or voices singing in parallel an octave above the base melody - perhaps an inevitable development as soon as monasteries started the practice of accepting boy novices -  to give what is called parallel plainsong. From here it is a fairly simple step to introduce a third voice singing a fifth above the base melody, and a fourth voice singing a fifth above the higher parallel voice. Such singing was known as organum plainchant as it resembles the fuller sound produced by a pipe organ with all its natural harmonics sounding simultaneously when each base note is played. Later modifications included harmonic embellishment of chant melodies - adding musical intervals of fourths and thirds, and then later with the separate voices singing different melodies simultaneously - but while these innovations were an early stage in the development of Western polyphony, none of them strictly belong to the plainsong chant repertory.

So you're saying that the plainsong such as the Gregorian Chant were entirely of ancient Greco-Roman pagan heritage and has nothing to do with ancient Jews. Thanks for letting me know. I got you.

Meles meles wrote:

I suppose it was a fairly natural step to introduce a second voice or voices singing in parallel an octave above the base melody - perhaps an inevitable development as soon as monasteries started the practice of accepting boy novices -  to give what is called parallel plainsong. From here it is a fairly simple step to introduce a third voice singing a fifth above the base melody, and a fourth voice singing a fifth above the higher parallel voice. Such singing was known as organum plainchant as it resembles the fuller sound produced by a pipe organ with all its natural harmonics sounding simultaneously when each base note is played. Later modifications included harmonic embellishment of chant melodies - adding musical intervals of fourths and thirds, and then later with the separate voices singing different melodies simultaneously - but while these innovations were an early stage in the development of Western polyphony, none of them strictly belong to the plainsong chant repertory.

So you're saying that the Christian chant being sung by multiple people is actually Greco-Roman pagan influence and has nothing to do with Ancient Jews.

Thanks for letting me know. Appreciated it.

Gduj15662 wrote:

So you're saying that the Christian chant being sung by multiple people is actually Greco-Roman pagan influence and has nothing to do with Ancient Jews.

No! That is not what I said.

Why do you lie and try to twist what I actually said? I am prepared to discuss history with anyone, but you, what game is it that you're trying to play?

To have got such a reply to your excellent, informative and well written posting Meles is simply the embodiment of the Latin phrase 'magaritas ante porcos'.

Meles meles wrote:

Gduj15662 wrote:

So you're saying that the Christian chant being sung by multiple people is actually Greco-Roman pagan influence and has nothing to do with Ancient Jews.

No! That is not what I said.

Why do you lie and try to twist what I actually said? I am prepared to discuss history with anyone, but you, what game is it that you're trying to play?

But you later stated bit by bit how the later Christian Church put 2nd voices, 3rd voices, and so on when it comes to Christian choir. Isn't that what you mean?

What a very strange response ... have you actually understood anything that I've said? What has the number of voices in a choir got to do with the questions you raised in your original post? I only mentioned the multiple voices as background information, although perhaps it does indicate that, even in the highly regimented environment of medieval monasteries, plainsong gradually shifted away from the forms of Late Roman/Carolingian monophonic religious chant, albeit rather slowly and somewhat tentatively.

I thought the basic questions raised by your OP were interesting - though you singularly failed to give any background evidence to support what you were saying. I will also freely admit that my knowledge of the history and development of religious music is somewhat limited. At school I did a couple of years on musical theory and the history of music, but my only practical experience of religious music has generally been limited to singing hymns (Anglican) at various baptisms, marriages and deaths and, many years ago, playing carols (I played trumpet) alongside the Salvation Army and the Boys' Brigade in our town's annual Christmas market. Likewise I've had family reasons to attend the occasional Catholic Mass ... but I have very little knowledge about Jewish devotional practices, either modern or ancient, nor indeed those from any other religions.

Anyway, as it was you that made the original post, do you actually have any thoughts of your own, or is that asking too much?