g) Responsories as Products of an Oral Culture
D. Other Genres of Chant
Three kinds of Mass chants show interesting parallels with responsories: graduals and tracts and Old Roman offertories. In addition, two special kinds of responsory, the responsory-communion and the responsory-gradual, have been the subject of recent studies. The present discussion outlines how these chants relate to the analysis of responsories and shows connections between the responsory repertory and other kinds of composition in the chant repertory.
a) Graduals
Graduals are sung at Mass as a musical reflection on the lesson, just as responsories are sung in the Night Office. There are 115 graduals in the earliest sources.
They have two sections, a respond and a verse, and are sung in the same manner as responsories, with the exception that the complete respond is sung after the verse instead of beginning at a repetenda. Stylistically, graduals are more melismatic than responsories and their verses are not sung to standard verse tones, but the overall melodic composition of graduals is similar to that of responsories. The composition of a gradual uses recurrent
78 This mental process is also discussed, in the context of Tracts, in Hornby, Gregorian and Old Roman Eighth-Mode Tracts. A case study in the transmission of Western chant 2002
melodic elements organized in pre-determined orders, resulting in a formulaic, yet individual melody.
Since these chants are composed of standard elements in standard orders within modal groups, it is possible to identify several themes in the gradual repertory. Apel lists all the graduals according to modal assignment in his book Gregorian Chant79. The first group, made up of nineteen chants, is sometimes called the "Justus ut palma group" after the representative gradual from the feast of John the Evangelist. These graduals are constructed in mode 2, transposed up a fifth to A ("h"), according to strict formulaic guidelines. Both the responds and the verses of these graduals display a "rigid centonization technique" matched only by the Tracts of Holy Saturday, according to Apel.80 Based on their location in the repertory (Advent and Easter) and their formulaic melodies, van Deusen suggests that this group of graduals "may well represent an early gradual type, an aid to memorization in the absence of notation".81 In mode 5, Apel identifies eight thematic groups unified by their opening phrase, although these melodies also include passages of non-standard material and are less formulaic on the whole than the mode 2 group.82 Other, smaller and less cohesive groups are found in modes 1, 3, 4, 7 and 8.
It is unclear whether gradual melodies are part of the oldest core of the repertory or form a more recent compositional layer. On the one hand, the stability of their transmission and use on ancient feast days seems to suggest that they are very old. As is the case with responsories, some of the formulaic graduals may have been the result of an oral compositional process. On the other hand, these melodies are ornate and melismatic and some of the melodic elements show the influence of newer styles. Hucke and Hiley suggest that singers might have integrated newer musical material into the performance of older graduals, resulting in a mixture of elements in the earliest notated repertory.83 Hucke posits that the E mode graduals were probably composed in the middle of the 7th century to accompany feasts introduced at that time and that those in mode 2 and 5 were introduced afterwards. To believe that these 7th-century compositions remained the same until they were notated two centuries later, however, would be "over-optimistic" in Hiley's view, considering the particular difficulties of transmission of the repertory to the Franks around this time.
Because of their striking formulaicism, graduals have been the subject of a considerable number of analyses. Peter Wagner84, Helmut Hucke85 and Willi Apel86 conducted studies on the gradual repertory in the second quarter of the 20th century. The presence of standard phrases and their ordered use suggested to Wagner and Apel that gradual composition was a process of 'centonization', comparing it to the Jewish practice of singing with the help of signs to indicate which formula should be selected from a memorized
79 Apel 1958, 344 - 363
80 Apel 1958, 359
81 Van Deusen 1972, 393
82 Van Deusen 1972, 346-348
83 Hucke, Gregorianischer Gesang in altrömischer und fränkischer Überlieferung 1955, 74-87 and Hiley, Western Plainchant: a Handbook 1993, 81
84 P. Wagner, Einführung in die gregorianischen Melodien, 3 vols. III – Gregorianische Formenlehre 1921
85 Hucke, Die Gregorianischen Gradualweisen des 2. Tons und ihre ambrosianischen Parallelen. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung des Ambrosianischen Gesangs 1956, 285-314
86 Apel 1958
Other Genres of Chant 29 set.87 More recent research on the gradual repertory has revealed that, just as is the case with the responsories, formulaic composition entails more than identically applying a set of memorized formulas to different texts. Nancy M. van Deusen's work compares Gregorian and Old Roman graduals, focused on the stylistic differences between the two repertories.88 Her study reveals that the Old Roman repertory is modally less "rigid" than the Gregorian, but more unified melodically through the use of recurrent melodic motives, owing to its longer history as an exclusively oral tradition.89 A critical edition and analysis of the Gregorian tradition alone, as found in mode 1 graduals, was completed by Jeffrey Wasson.90 Like responsories, graduals vary in their degree of formulaicism depending on mode.
Standard elements are slightly differently applied in different graduals, producing a body of individual melodies out of recognizable musical material.
Although Apel categorizes the standard melodic elements in the gradual repertory and sets them out in clear tables in his book, little attention is given to why these standard elements are found where they are, or what musical function they might have had. With the exception of noting elements which are meant to signal opening and closing sections, the musical functions of standard elements and the implications of their use are not addressed.
Perhaps new research will reveal whether the standard elements in graduals play the same structural and tonal roles as their equivalents in the responsory repertory.
b) Tracts
Tracts are sung during Mass in the pre-Easter period, from Septuagesima to Holy Saturday, and on the four Ember Saturdays between the gradual and the Gospel. There are 21 tracts in the core 10th-century repertory, six set in mode 2 and fifteen in mode 8. Another ten tracts are found later for additional Sanctorale feasts. Tracts are not responsorial; they were sung by soloists from beginning to end with no repeats. Tracts in mode 8 have up to five verses and several of the mode 2 tracts are more than double that length. Three tracts in mode 2 are labelled as graduals in the earliest sources indicating that they were performed as such (i.e., with a repeat of the respond after the verse).
Stylistically, tracts are more ornate than responsories, but seem to have been composed in a similar way. Standard elements appear in consistent orders, building mode-specific themes in mode 2 and 8 in the same way that groups of responds have been shown to do in this study. There are nineteen different standard elements to be found in the mode 8 tract repertory (amounting to 60 verses) and 22 standard elements for the mode 2 tracts (with 80 verses in total). Since tracts are limited to only two modes and amount to a comparatively small number of chants, relatively few individual standard melodic elements make up this repertory. An examination of the composition of tracts is useful as a microcosmic parallel to the study the responsories.
Although tracts are usually considered to be extremely formulaic, even they cannot be said to have been created out of pure 'centonization'. Although earlier writers have suggested that these chants may have originated as different embellishments of a consistent
87 Hornby 2002, 395
88 Van Deusen 1972
89 Van Deusen 1972, 410
90 Wasson 1987
psalm tone,91 Hornby's work on mode 8 tracts contradicts this view: "By the time the genre was structured in the manner in which it appears in notated manuscripts, the chants were constructed of melodic phrases that are much more complicated than those of psalmodic recitation, each associated with a specific formal and textual context".92 Hiley's discussion of tracts points out that the analogy to psalm tones is misleading if "the temptation arises to strip the music down to some sort of basic tone, and see the tract as the result of historical development out of imagined simple beginnings".93 Like responsories, the composition of the tract repertory depends on the contextually-sensitive combination of standard elements to create individual melodies.
Recent studies of the tract repertory have helped to refine the idea of tract composition. Nowacki has examined the mode 8 tracts from a textual perspective94, while Kainzbauer takes a more musical approach95. Hornby has tackled questions about oral transmission and the stability of the repertory in her comparative study of the Gregorian and the Old Roman traditions.96 Investigations of the earliest graduals containing tracts (i.e., St.
Gall 359, St. Gall 339, Einsiedeln 121, Chartres 47 and Laon 239) have shown that the tract tradition was widely unified in the 9th century. Hornby itemizes and discusses the following constraints acting on the oral composition of tracts: text division and cues, verse divisions, phrase divisions, overall pattern of chant, phrase types, accent patterns and rhetorical cues.97 Eastern Frankish sources which post-date the aforementioned 9th-century graduals show more variations in the tradition suggesting, perhaps, that the methods used to preserve tracts without notation met with more success than written efforts.
Although tracts do not have the same structure as responsories, the use of standard elements in standard orders is common to the two genres. Standard element function in the tract repertory confirms that while formulaicism cannot be used as the sole indicator of the (great) age of a chant, it does strongly suggest an oral origin. The limited number of tracts has enabled several comparative studies between the Gregorian and Old Roman tradition to take place. Future study will perhaps complete the same kind of comparison for the (larger) responsory repertory.98
91 P. Wagner, Einführung in die gregorianischen Melodien, 3 vols. III – Gregorianische Formenlehre 1921, Apel 1958 and Hucke, Tract 1980
92 Hornby, Gregorian and Old Roman Eighth-Mode Tracts. A case study in the transmission of Western chant 2002, 13
93 Hiley, Western Plainchant: a Handbook 1993, 85
94 Nowacki, Text Declamation as a Determinant of Melodic Form in the Old Roman Eighth-Mode Tracts 1986, 193-225
95 Kainzbauer 1991, 1-132
96 Hornby, The origins of the eighth mode tracts: what kept the oral transmission stable? 1998, 135-162 and Hornby, Gregorian and Old Roman Eighth-Mode Tracts. A case study in the
transmission of Western chant 2002
97 Hornby, Gregorian and Old Roman Eighth-Mode Tracts. A case study in the transmission of Western chant 2002, 140-151
98 Cutter, Die altrömischen und gregorianischen Responsorien im zweiten Modus 1970, 33-40 makes the first step towards such a comparison with mode 2 responsories.
Other Genres of Chant 31 Offertories are two-part chants, like responsories, divided into a respond section, (sometimes also labeled "A" for "Antiphona") and a verse section. They are sung during Mass, to accompany the bringing of gifts to the altar before Eucharist. The earliest six sources of mass chants, edited by Hesbert in Antiphonale missarum sextuplex contain 107 offertories between them.99 Offertory texts are usually taken from the psalms; the same psalm will usually be used for both the respond and verse. Although Augustine of Hippo (354-430) writes of a new custom of singing hymns from the Book of Psalms before or during the offering100, the first mention of the offertory as a self-contained genre is found in Ordo Romanus I (written around 700).101
Offertories and responsories have many differences, despite their similar structure.
Offertories are generally more melismatic and have a wider ambitus than responsories.
Offertory responds are usually longer than responsory responds, containing at least four (but often eight or more) phrases. They regularly include long and elaborate recitations around F or C ("k") but are not composed of the kind of recurrent, standard elements found in responsories.
Offertories have been the subject of several important studies. Work on offertories began with Ott's edition of the Offertoriale triplex in 1935.102 Gregorian and Old Roman offertory traditions were examined (separately) in 1939 in Hubert Sidler's dissertation, 'Studien zu den alten Offertorien mit ihren Versen'103, and in 1971, in Dyer's thesis, 'The Offertories of Old Roman Chant: A Musico-liturgical Investigation'.104 Other, later studies by Grover Allen Pitman105 and Roman Hankeln106 focused on the Aquitainian offertory tradition.
Dean Justmann completed a critical edition of mode 1 offertories in 1988.107 Maloy's recent comparative study of Gregorian and Old Roman offertories mentioned above provides detailed melodic analysis as well as clarification about the musical and chronological relationship of these two traditions.108 The collected proceedings of an international symposium on offertories and their verses were recently edited by Hankeln and reflect some of the current ideas on the subject.109
Some interesting parallels emerge between offertories and responsories when offertories of the Old Roman tradition are considered with their Gregorian counterparts. Both Steiner and Maloy point to the comparatively high degree of formulaicism, particularly in the Old Roman offertories. This may be a result of Rome's perpetuation of an oral culture for a considerable amount of time after the Gregorian tradition had begun to be notated. Maloy's melodic analysis identifies sets of pitches which are consistently emphasized either "through
99 Hesbert, Antiphonale missarum sextuplex 1935
100 Apel 1958, 363
101 Maloy 2001, 606
102 Fischer 1985. [Ott 1935 with neumes of Laon 239 and Einsiedeln 121 or St Gall 339]. The reliability of Ott's work was most famously questioned in Ruth Steiner's paper Some Questions about the Gregorian Offertories and their Verses 1966, 162-181
103 Sidler 1939
104 Dyer, The Offertories of Old Roman Chant: A Musico-liturgical Investigation 1971
105 Pitman 1973
106 Hankeln, Die Offertoriumsprosuln der aquitanischen Handschriften. Voruntersuchungen zur Edition des aquitanischen Offertoriumscorpus und seiner Erweiterungen 1999
107 Justmann 1988
108 Maloy 2001
109 Hankeln, The Offertory and Its Verses: Research, Past, Present and Future: Proceedings of an International Symposion at the Centre for Medieval Studies, Trondheim 2007
repetition or embellishment [as well as] those adopted as cadential pitches". These emphasized pitches have tonal functions in the formulas found in the Old Roman repertory.110 The regular overall structure and formulaicism of Old Roman offertories, as well as the presence of certain emphasized pitches, is echoed in the most formulaic responsories. Maloy asserts that the high degree of formulaicism in the Old Roman offertories is a not a sign that they represent an older compositional layer than the Gregorian tradition, but that they were maintained orally for longer. She establishes that formulaicism in melody must not be thought of in terms of age, but of orality. The present study confirms this idea, although it is concerned with only the Gregorian repertory and does not include a comparison with Old Roman sources. The core of the idea - that formulaicism is a result of composition and performance without musical notation - may be applied to any traditions selected for comparison.