Transcript Newman Center Scholar Seminar 1

Women & Music of the Church
Presented by Jessica Ducharme
Music in the Early Church
Singing hymns
Basilicas, 4th century
More standard Christian
services, late 4th century
St. Peter’s Basilica in
Rome c. 4th century
Rejection of Music for Pleasure
“The Church Fathers”
reverted back to ancient
Greeks
Music can affect ethos
Feared the enjoyment that
music stimulated
Plato’s principle
Instrumental Music?
Music as a servant to
religion
Unaccompanied voices
What about the instruments
mentioned in the Bible?
Divisions in the Christian Church
Disputes about theology and governance led to a division in
395 and was made permanent in 1054
Western church became the Roman Catholic Church and
Eastern church became the Orthodox church
Rite, Calendar, Liturgy , & Music
Rite- a set of practices that defines a particular Christian
tradition
Church Calendar- in a Christian rite, the schedule of days
commemorating special events, individuals, or times of year
Liturgy- the prescribed body of texts to be spoken or sung
and ritual actions to be performed in a religious service
Plainchant- the repertory of unaccompanied liturgical songs
of a particular rite
Chant Dialects
Byzantine
Ambrosian
Old Roman
Gregorian
Byzantine Chant
Services included Scriptural readings that were chanted
Reflected the phrasing of the text
Categorized into 8 modes or echoi
Composition with centonization
Many are still sung in Greek Orthodox Churches today
Ambrosian Chant
Developed from Milan, Italy and named after St. Ambrose,
bishop of Milan from 374-397.
Ambrosian liturgy and chant still survive today in Milan
Many ties and influences from Rome and the Pope
Gregorian Chant
Named after Pope Gregory I (II)?
Schola Cantorum, early 8th century
Assert control and unify the church
Spread by Charlemagne and his successors
Legend of Pope Gregory I
Chants were dictated to
Gregory by the Holy Spirit
in the form of a dove
Old, authentic, and divinely
inspired
Painting by Rubens, 17th century
Old Roman Chant
Another body of chant surviving from Rome
Preserved in manuscripts dating back to the 11th and 12th
centuries
Very similar to Gregorian chant, but more ornate
Still unclear which form of chant-- Gregorian or Old Roman-was spread and adopted
An Oral Tradition
Liturgy determined by the 8th century
Passed down by oral transmission.
Simple melodies were passed down verbatim
How were the 100s of elaborate melodies learned? Some
were only sung once a year!
A Need for Notation
Oral transmission = not
efficient or accurate enough
to fully standardize the
repertoire
A need to perpetuate
uniformity
The Evolution of Notation
First innovation: neumes- figures placed over text to indicate
the number of notes for each syllable and whether the melody
ascended, descended, or repeated a given pitch.
Did not show specific pitches, but melodic shape
Innovations of Notation
Heighted or diastematic neumes were placed above text at varying
heights to indicate the relative size and direction of the intervals
being sung
A single line drawn to indicate a specific pitch, everything else is
relative
4 lines = staff
Moveable clefs on the staff to indicate all pitches
Rhythm?
Solesmes Monks
The Monastic Scriptorium
With notation, the liturgical
repertoire could be
preserved
Monks and nuns as scribes
Communal process
Roman Catholic Liturgy & Music
Liturgy
Proper of the Mass
Ordinary of the Mass
Liturgy of the Hours or
The Divine Office
A series of 8 prayer services of the Roman Church,
celebrated daily at specified times
Provides a lot of structure in convents and monasteries,
codified in the Rule of St. Benedict (ca. 530)
Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, Nones, Vespers, Compline
Where are the women?
Commonly excluded from music history--not because they
didn’t contribute!
Most importantly serve in convents
Profess the Divine Office
Compose music
Transcribe music
What’s up next?
Exploring new trends in feminist musicology
Learn about Hildegard von Bingen and other female
composers
Learn about modern women in the Church