Sacred Music: From The Middle Ages To The 20th Century CD1

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共14首歌曲

艺人: Various Artists
语种: 拉丁语
厂牌: Harmonia Mundi ‎
发行时间: 2009年01月01日
专辑类别: 录音室专辑

专辑介绍

The birth of the immense monophonic repertory of Christian music remains extremely difficult to disentangle, whether we look at in terms of language (coexistence of chants in Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, the vernacular languages, and finally Latin), influences (an intricate relationship between East and West, later embodied in the differences between the Churches of Rome and Byzantium) or liturgy. The liturgy, which punctuated the silence of the monasteries at regular intervals during the day, was first organised under St Benedict (480-543). In his Rule, the eight Hours of prayer frame the Mass, which comprises the Proper (specific to a single day in the year; this gave rise to the first polyphony) and the Ordinary (sung at every Mass; it came to constitute the essence of the polyphonic repertory from the time of Ars Nova onwards).

The earliest neumatic notations appeared only around the ninth century, which is to say when the greater part of the repertory was already fixed. Moreover, these notations, mere mnemonic devices without indications of interval, cannot be transcribed today. Fortunately, comparison of this early notation with the later square notation enables us to reconstruct many of these early pieces, which are of extremely diverse geographical origin. Most of them belong to the type known as psalmody, in which a psalm is sung around one or two notes, known as reciting notes, with the aim of making the text easily comprehensible. But there are also antiphons, hymns and responds with much richer melodies, sometimes featuring wonderful melismas (frequently on the word alleluia), which prompted St Augustine to remark: ‘Sometimes I am more moved by the chant than by the content of the words.’

During the whole of the pre-Carolingian period the practice of the liturgies was extremely varied; the order, the style and the content of each repertory could be considerably different, even if the foundation remained the same for them all. Latin progressively began to assert itself around the fourth century, when it was used conjointly with Greek. Out of this western mosaic arose five ‘churches’ (or ‘dialects’) with distinctive geographical and musical traits: the Milanese Church in northern Italy (Ambrosian chant), the Beneventan Church in the south, the Church of the Iberian Peninsula (the Mozarabic repertory), the Church of Rome (Old Roman/Byzantine period) and the Gallican Rite, peculiar to the Gauls. The latter is closely linked to what was to become Gregorian chant.

AMBROSIAN CHANT

It is generally agreed that it was the bishop of Milan St Ambrose (c.340-97) who originated so-called Ambrosian chant, more often referred to as the ‘Milanese repertory’, which is the earliest Christian repertory in the West. A century before the formation of the ‘Old Roman’ repertory St Augustine claimed that Ambrose had introduced the use of antiphonal chanting from Constantinople. He was acclaimed bishop of Milan, then the crossroads of languages and cultures, even before being baptised.

‘A gifted poet, the new bishop composed numerous hymns, many of which are still used today’, Jean-François Labie writes. ‘At the peak of the Arian crisis the Empress-Regent Justina, who supported the heresy, sent troops to take possession of certain basilicas in the city. Ambrose opposed this order and had the threatened churches occupied by crowds of the faithful. It was on this occasion, Augustine says, that they began to chant the hymns and psalms according to the custom of the Eastern regions in order to prevent the people from giving way to sadness and grief.’ And, in support of St Augustine, it may be stressed that not only did this repertory persist for centuries to come, but once the crisis was over, it even spread ‘to the rest of the world’.

Not only did the practice endure beyond the great Gregorian reform, it even survived the Council of Trent. To be sure, it incorporated over the centuries certain elements and parts of the younger Gallican and Old Roman repertories, and in the pieces sung by the Ensemble Organum we find familiar melodic features that have survived down to our own day in the commonest liturgies. None the less, the manner in which Marcel Pérès and his musicians have applied the customs of singing and the modes of the Churches of Athens and of Antioch appears highly convincing and appropriate.

OLD ROMAN CHANT

The ‘Old Roman’ repertory consists of the chants of the early Roman Church. It is anterior to the ‘Gregorian’, compiled during the Carolingian Empire and greatly influenced by it, but which did not entirely oust it before the eighth century. ‘The early chant of the Church of Rome took shape during the seventh and eighth centuries. Its distinctly Oriental character, which gives it the aspect of an ornamental cantillation, is by no means surprising when one remembers that at this period Italy was not only dependent on the Byzantine emperor, but was also a land of asylum for a large Greek colony which had sought refuge there. . . . And the iconoclast quarrel was all the more reason for the monks to flee from the Orient and reassemble in the Italian peninsula. Between 726 and 755 nearly fifty thousand monks took refuge in southern Italy. From this point on many popes of Syrian or Greek origin presided over the destiny of the Church of Rome’ (Marcel Pérès).

In this respect the question of performance is of crucial importance. With the assistance of Lycourgos Angelopoulos, the director of the Greek Byzantine Choir, Marcel Pérès has applied himself to demonstrating the numerous similarities subsisting between Old Roman and Byzantine chant: ‘In certain aspects Old Roman presents itself as a direct manifestation of the old Byzantine chant. For instance, the Greek alleluiatic verses preserved in the Old Roman manuscripts may be seen as direct evidence of the Alleluia as it was practised in Byzantium in the eighth century.’

In the pieces on this recording the presence of an ison (a note sustained by the lowest voices in order to emphasise the modal changes) seems to be indicated by contemporary accounts referring to a ‘polyphonic’ tradition in Rome, manifested by the presence in the Papal Chapel of three paraphonists (para/phonos: one who sings beside the melody), but also by the music itself, which appears to be constructed around degrees peculiar to a specific mode and which it seems natural to bring out in order to reveal it in its true sonic dimension.

The fall of Constantinople did not bring about a break, contrary to what certain western European musicologists have thought. Quite the opposite is true: it becomes increasingly apparent that Turkish and Arab music inherited an enormous amount from the Byzantine aesthetic. The confrontation with Old Roman chant is illuminating on this point. Certain pieces in this repertory, which cannot be considered to have been subjected to any kind of Islamic influence, present constructions and formulas which are absolutely identical to pieces from the Byzantine repertory.

BENEVENTAN CHANT

At the beginning of the Middle Ages the city of Benevento in the south-western corner of the Italian peninsula played the role of political and cultural capital of this of the then dominant Lombardic civilization. And yet, the Beneventan liturgy would soon be called ‘Ambrosian’ even by those who practised it – a token of recognition of their common heritage with the Lombards of

the north . . . unless the invocation of Ambrose was intended to mark their hostility towards ‘Gregorian’ chant.

Whatever the case may be, Beneventan texts, liturgical structure and musical styles were distinctly different from the Milanese. Moreover, they were less fortunate in their fate, because practically all the manuscripts were destroyed and the liturgy was proscribed by Stephen IX in 1058. However, one relatively rich source has survived in the manuscripts of the Cathedral of Benevento which contains the Mass for Easter; here, the Communion, Qui manducaverit, attains an altogether extraordinary degree of musical elaboration. ‘The music of Beneventan chant has a style that is characteristic, pure, archaic, and elaborate. It is highly ornamental, often having several notes to a syllable. The music is full of formulaic repetitions, small melodic units that recur throughout the repertory and give it a particular flavour’ (Thomas Forrest Kelly). It is true that the Introit of the Mass for Easter Day seems to be based on the periodic repetition of a single melody.

The music is not divided into modes, and it has not suffered the restructuring that results from the importation of the system of eight modes. It is a music that transmits a particular cultural and aesthetic moment, and it has a value for us, not as archaic and outmoded music of little aesthetic interest, but as an example of stylistic purity and maturity from a culture of which it was the supreme artistic expression.

MOZARABIC CHANT

With Mozarabic chant, we move from one peninsula to another.

Born with the evangelisation of the Roman provinces of Hispania and firmly established during the rule of the Visigoths (466-711), Mozarabic chant (the Mozarabs were the Christian communities of the ‘Arabised’ Iberian peninsula) put up a long and obdurate resistance to the criticisms of the Church Universal, and was not supplanted by the Gregorian dialect until 1081 (Council of Burgos). ‘Throughout the duration of this vehement controversy between Carolingian Rome and the Hispanic churches that went on for over two centuries, diligent scribes in the abbeys of Castile and León had ample time to copy a goodly number of liturgical codices in the beautiful Visigothic neumatic notation, with its fine wavy calligraphy’ (Ismael Fernandez de la Cuesta).

Certain churches in Toledo never submitted to the liturgical reform imposed at the end of the eleventh century and maintained the tradition of Mozarabic chant. Around 1500 this chant was written down, thanks to the farsightedness of Cardinal Cisneros, one of the great figures of the Reconquista. He reinstated the Mozarabic rite by setting aside a chapel in the Cathedral, that of Corpus Christi, for the preservation of these ancient traditions. He entrusted the task of the reconstitution of the liturgy to Canon Alonso Ortiz who might have modified certain chants, notably those of the schola (choir), but given the present state of our knowledge, we cannot estimate the extent of these transformations.

Marcel Pérès: ‘This chant has come down to us in only three manuscripts, two of the Mass and one of the Office of Vespers. They are conserved in the Mozarabic Chapel of Toledo Cathedral and we were permitted to consult them thanks to the courtesy of the choirmaster. The music is written in late fifteenth-century mensural notation and is therefore perfectly legible as regards the rhythm and the melody. In spite of the date of their publication, these pieces reflect an extremely ancient tradition, the chants of the celebrants generally having been transmitted with great consistency. The dialogues between the celebrants and the schola are essential for grasping the rhythm and the spatial aspect of these liturgies, whose roots go down to Near Eastern and North African antiquity.’

Sacred Music: From The Middle Ages To The 20th Century CD1 - Chant of the Early Christians　Les premiers chants chrétiens

专辑介绍

最新简评（共33条）

Sacred Music: From The Middle Ages To The 20th Century CD1 - Chant of the Early Christians Les premiers chants chrétiens

专辑介绍

最新简评（共33条）

Sacred Music: From The Middle Ages To The 20th Century CD1 - Chant of the Early Christians　Les premiers chants chrétiens