HODIE CHRISTUS NATUS EST

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwwh5NOgbgc&list=OLAK5uy_kgXUhytUmcTgRsA1giv0FuAFwT97dn18Q&index=1

Even if you don’t have the time or appetite for the entire Chanticleer Christmas Album, please listen to the first selection.? This is a rare – or, perhaps, rarely accurate – attempt at representing what church music probably sounded like in the first millennium of Christianity.

For much of the first nine centuries, Christian worship (in both the Greek and Latin traditions) was rendered in monophonic chant (a single voice or melody line) that lay people learned by rote repetition from early childhood.? As in the Jewish temple, there might be a cantor who would be a soloist or professional musician.? Cantors would render well-known chants for specific liturgical texts as a solo performance, which permitted them (like jazz musicians two millennia later) to improvise on the contours of widely recognized chants.? Some of these improvisations, by many accounts, became extremely elaborate and could extend the original chant for as much as twice its original length.

The next conceptual breakthrough of historical significance occurred when liturgical musicians – monks, mostly, with lots of time on their hands – instituted an innovation known as the ‘ison,’ a single, low tone sung by one or more participant(s) during the traditional (unison) chanting by the worshipping community. (See, e.g., ?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ison_(music) ,) ?In both the Eastern and Western traditions, this was a big deal; this innovation was not welcomed by many committed Christians.

The opponents of ison chanting argued that this new practice drew attention away from the altar toward one or more musicians as professional performers, and that the ison violated liturgical practices because ison chanters don’t pronounce the people’s chanted responses simultaneously with everyone else, thereby introducing an unwelcome lack of liturgical focus.

Today, it’s rather obvious which side won that battle. Over time, such innovative tendencies changed the fundamental understanding of liturgical music from something intrinsically accessible to everyone attending a church service to that of a small group of professional musicians who, to a significant extent, took the music-making function away from the clergy.

The next innovation came relatively quickly: The voices singing the ison eventually became mobile, moving in strict parallel with the original chant line, but at the fifth and/or octave above the underlying chant.? This specific style of chanting is known as ‘organum.’? (See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/n .)? As you’ll hear from this excellent performance, organum can add an ethereal, otherworldly patina to the underlying chant line – which must have been quite effective – overwhelming, even – for Mediaeval churchgoers.

So there you have it, nearly a millennium of liturgical chant history in one short performance.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to One and All!

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