Gregorian Chant
This is a very SCA-friendly medieval song form. The following is an explanation of how we can use one of the psalm tones to chant our own words. Once everyone knows the tune to the antiphone and the psalm tone, we will be able to "chant" any words with only a little preparation.
Singing the Words
The antiphone (which everyone can sing) is sung in two part harmony. We sing it at the beginning and ending of the psalm tone text. The antiphone will be sung in a lower voice and an upper voice.
The psalm tone is sung one syllable per note, until you come to the two white notes. Those white notes mean, "sing every syllable on this same note." When you come to the underlined words, you know to move on to the black notes again. This sounds more complicated than it is. Listen to the examples while you look at the text to see how it works.
How This all Worked as a Chant to Introduce each Course of a Feast at Guardian
The custom with a psalm is to sing an antiphone in the same musical mode before the psalm and after the psalm. Since we will be singing before each course of the feast, that means we will sing "Hark now the..." first, then the description of that course, then "Hark now the..." again.
Hark now the servers bring a feast prepared | by Lady Mag-da-le-n-a
Course 1 | will be a compound sallat with manchett bread
served with most dainty butters to spread on your bread
Hark now the servers bring a feast prepared | by Lady Mag-da-le-n-a
Hark now the servers bring a feast prepared | by Lady Mag-da-le-n-a
Course 2 | will be a chine of beef served forth on a bed of rice and groats
Peascods and Great Pie also will be brought
Hark now the servers bring a feast prepared | by Lady Mag-da-le-n-a
Hark now the servers bring a feast prepared | by Lady Mag-da-le-n-a
Course 3 | will be a white pudding with a tourt-es par-mer-ee-nay
Don't ask us what it is, we're just here to sing the words she wrote
Hark now the servers bring a feast prepared | by Lady Mag-da-le-n-a
Hark now the servers bring a feast prepared | by Lady Mag-da-le-n-a
Dessert | will be quite a list so pre-pare yourselves
Tarts, custards, suckets and conserves † Oranges preserved after
the Portugal fashion, wafers and who knows what else
Hark now the servers bring a feast prepared | by Lady Mag-da-le-n-a
Below are mp3s of each part separately and then of the two sung together. You can use these to learn the tune well. :-)
- Low Voice (Antiphone) mp3 (Men and altos)
- High Voice (Antiphone) mp3 (Sopranos)
- Both Voices Together mp3
So What Other Words Could We Sing?
At Crown Tourney we chanted a processional for Sir Jean Paul and Lady Gilyan. We used the same tune for the antiphone and the psalm tone. The only difference is that the number of repeated syllables chanted on the same note expands or contracts depending on how many syllables each line has. When you've sung the first two lines, you go back and repeat the psalm tone melody for the next two lines. (They repeat until you've sung all the "chant text.")
Now comes this no-ble knight with his fair la-dy. | He asks the crown to join this list.
Sir Jean Paul is a fear-less knight and a no-ble man.
In a grand court of five kingdoms he was made a knight.
She is the an-gel of death to their foes,
But she raises a shield to protect their friends.
Now comes this no-ble knight with his fair la-dy. | He asks the crown to join this list.
Notes About the Song Form for Those That Care
The Psalm tone above is a variation of Office Psalm Tone 8. In the Middle Ages there was only one psalm tone for each of the eight musical modes, but there was a lot of variations possible for the "moving notes" to be used with each of the psalm tones. It was considered very important that the antiphone be in the same mode as the psalm, and that there be a smooth transition between the two. There is a good practical reason for this-- that way the antiphone ends with a note that it's easy to transition to the first note of the chant, and it also sets your ear into the correct mode so that it's easier to "hear" the little chant tune correctly.
The different sections of the chant have different names. Using the words to the feast chant above, they are:
"Course 1" (Intonation)
"
will be a compound sallat with" (Tenor / Recitation tone)
"manchett bread" (Mediant)
served with most dainty butters (Tenor / Recitation tone)
to spread on your bread (Termination)
Between the first Tenor section and the Mediant there can be a Flex, an extra moving note to show an additional mark of punctuation like a comma in a long line. (In the same way that the Termination shows the Period at the end of the sentence.) I have omitted this since the above chants are short enough that they don't need any additional musical variation, and also to make the chants as accessible as possible to as many singers as possible.
The convention of underlining the moving notes is modern. The medieval music manuscripts I have seen have no indication where to start the Mediant or Termination. This makes sense if you remember that any of the songs could have been sung to any of the 8 psalm tones, and each has a different number of notes for the Mediant and Termination (hence a different number of syllables that would have been sung to the moving notes.)
English stress patterns are different than Latin, so the original rules for stressed syllables falling on a certain note in the termination have to be modified. In psalm tone 8, the third to last syllable should be stressed. Additional notes are added if needed to the end to shift the stressed syllable to the correct spot. (This doesn't sound important, but when you hit a line that doesn't work, this is what's wrong with it.)
These tidy rules that I've set out are used in the Middle Ages, but are not used exclusively. They allowed a lot more latitude than modern church chant use. Hey, after all, they had a lot of practice. Each psalm (all of the 150 of them) would be sung at least once each week in the mass and offices. However, for SCA use I'm adhering to the rules in order to keep it all regularized enough for wide variety of people to be able to sing it.
Extra Information for Those That are Really Getting Into This
The psalm tone on this page is in Tetrardus plagal (hypomixolydian) mode. That means that the final note of the chant is G and the chant tone is C. It also means that the tune stays within 4 or 5 notes of the final. Because the psalm tone is in hypomixolydian, that means that the antiphone is also in the same mode, and you'll notice that its final note is on G as well. If this seems like gobbledy-gook, then check out David Fenwick Wilson's book, Music of the Middle Ages. He has a straight forward explanation of how the modes were used in the Middle Ages.
A Few Links
More information about Gregorian Chant and Psalm Tones
From the Indiana School of Music
MP3s of all the Psalms Sung to Various Psalm Tones
From the Lutheran Liturgical Prayer Brother
(The antiphone we are using is cribbed from one of these recordings.)
Last updated June 11, 2006