See also Bernard, Du chant romain, 413: “The ancient responsorial psalmody between the readings was characterized by the alternation among one or more soloists who sang the versets of the psalm and the faithful who, between each of these versets, took up a short refrain. Now we will bring together some contemporary judgements about the new French liturgies, and show that illustrious prelates—Jean-Joseph Languet, archbishop of Sens; Charles de Saint-Albin, archbishop of Cambrai; François-Xavier de Belsunce, bishop of Marseille; Jean-Félix-Henri de Fumel, bishop of Lodève; etc.—were not the only ones in the 18th century to defend liturgical tradition and judge the work of the reformers with severity.
The Institutions Liturgiques (pub. “The Magi of the Gospel are but the first in a vast pilgrimage in which the beauty of this earth is laid at the feet of Christ: the gold of the ancient Christian mosaics, the multi-coloured light from the windows of our great cathedrals, the praise of their stone, the Christmas songs of the trees of the forest are all inspired by him, and human voices like musical instruments have found their most beautiful melodies when they cast themselves at his feet.
. Such was the naïve effrontery of the new liturgists that they, in agreement with each other, proposed nothing less than to. . When reading the description of these entrance rites, the liturgical historian may very clearly distinguish the still silent origins of something that would appear later, during the Carolingian period: the prayers at the foot of the altar. In the English translation, the editorial conventions of Antiphon are largely followed.
[1] Even after their arrival at their destination, it had to be put into practice by inexperienced clergy. II of the Institutions Liturgiques, 1st edition, Mans, 1861, pp.
, itself a daughter-house of Keur Moussa in 2003, whose chant is accompanied by a marvelous plucked string instrument, the kora, which is the African lute, and also the balafon, also called a balani, which is a sort of xylophone that usually has between sixteen and twenty-seven notes produced by keys of wood that are struck with sticks. It is clear that the syncopated rhythm—which consists of starting a note on the weak beat of a measure or on the weak part of a beat and continuing it on the strong beat of the following measure or on the strong part of the following beat—, so typical of contemporary music, especially of commercial music, ever since the appearance of jazz, is little suited to meditation that leads from silence to adoration of the living God. To illustrate my point in a positive way, let us take two examples of beautiful liturgical chants besides Gregorian chant in your country, France, and on the African continent. Each movement is executed by the assembly as such, following a basic structure: the bringers, named in the order in which they come (men and women, pontiff, bishops, priests, deacons, etc. For, let us remember, if they were going to interfere they should have been able to do a better job than the Romans. “At the proper times all should observe a reverent silence,” as, Liturgical chant is there to make us pray, and in our day its primary objective, even before leading us to meditation and adoration, is to soothe the inner maelstrom of our passions, of the violence and divisions between the flesh and the spirit. For the third beat, which closes the ternary rhythm, come from the natural “trinity” deeply inscribed in the soul of every person like a seal. By leaving them to the mercy of the degraded artists of the age of Louis XV, he did not allow their consciences to sense the degree of profanation they allowed them to carry out. Yet we must be careful to note that this Oremus is not followed by any precise prayer. They were a matter of making certain pre-existent rites “speak” that until then had remained “silent” as the schola cantorum performed a chant: the prayers at the foot of the altar during the chant of the introit and the “apologies” during that of the offertory. The Church of Saint-Sulpice,[20] so bare and stripped of soul and mystery, was soon found too mystical. At the end of this, a regional sub-deacon, holding the maniple of the pontiff placed on his left arm, exits the secretarium and cries: “Scola.” The archiparafonista, or quartus scolae, responds: “adsum.” The sub-deacon inquires from him the name of the cantor who is to perform the psalmody (“Quis psallit?”). [6] When performing these boring new melodies, they could not have enough serpents, double basses, and counterpoint, under the noise of which the chant almost entirely disappeared. We read how they hurried to Bethlehem and found Christ in the manger. dicite, annuntiate nobis, in terris quis apparuit? With assurance of my prayers, for the intentions that are dear to your hearts, I would like to take this opportunity to express my profound gratitude to your president, M. Denis Crouan, and to each of you for your determination to defend and promote the liturgy of the ordinary form of the Roman Rite in the Latin language, even despite obstacles that stand in your way in this undertaking. Then, at the precise moment when the fraction is to begin, the archdeacon makes a sign to the scola cantorum to begin the Agnus Dei (no. For all that, he approached this task in good faith and, since he appreciated the ancient chants, he strove to introduce its motifs into many of the new pieces. When the African peasant works he sings following a natural ternary rhythm, with this third beat that recalls the foot firmly planted in the soil and dust of our earth. Even a cursory comparison of modern Latin practice with the chanting traditions still cultivated by Eastern Christians, Jews, and Muslims would suffice to make manifest how impoverished the Latin Church is in this respect. Hariprasad Chaurasia, flute He was born in 1805, when most of the chapter system was already completely destroyed, so would not have heard most of what he is describing in actual liturgical use. The most ancient, produced in northern Italy around 800, is conserved inside the treasury of the basilica of San Giovanni in Monza (Cod. In addition, there is no trace of a change in vocal tone for the doxology “Per ipsum.”[30], From another point of view, it is evident from our text that only the pope pronounces the words of the Eucharistic anaphora. Such was the upheaval of ideas in the 18th century that one sees prelates oppose heretics and, at the same time, by some inexplicable zeal, undermine tradition in the sacred prayers of the Missal.
[3] See the seminal remarks of Michel Andrieu, Les Ordines Romani du haut moyen âge, 5 vol., Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense 11, 23, 24, 28, 29 (Louvain: Peeters, 1931–1961) vol. It is well known that from the shadow of their cloisters and their silent meditation on the Word of God, Benedictine monks in the course of the centuries developed, for the needs of the prayer of the Divine Office chanted in common, a cantillatory phrasing for each verse of the Bible that had to be proclaimed, beginning with the Psalms. As for literary form, the offertory became a sort of second gradual by the addition of one or more versets by the schola; the offertorium acquired the nature of a refrain very close to that of the gradual. The interest of OR I also lies in the fact that it represents an epoch when the Roman liturgy had not yet undergone a hybridization through contact with Franco-German uses.