Gregorian Chant: A Thousand-Year-Old Tradition…

It seems that the tradition attributing the creation of Gregorian chant to Saint Gregory Magnus (†604) was started by his biographer, John the Deacon (†882). St. Gregory Magnus was in fact a great reformer of the Church, of the liturgy and even of singing, but it is not conceivable that he alone, and precisely during his short pontificate (590-604), could have composed, not even compiled, the vast musical repertoire attributed to him. The true labour of this Pope was to reorganise the services in the Roman churches and to establish schollae and singing choirs.

The written records of the music we know today as Gregorian chant are of a much more late-date than its living origin and, as a rule, are not older than the 9th century. This proves that there was at the beginning a very strong oral and aural tradition that did not need a visual support – the mnemotechnic system that was to be the source of neume – for the melodic, rhythmic and expressive elements that constitute the plain song. Chant was then a people’s heritage and did not belong to a group of professionals. Some melodies remaining from the early liturgical music substratum, based on verses and refrains, must have resounded, because their thematic simplicity and style configuration, like a popular outpouring in the great Roman basilica. As this form of singing became more learned and the neume multiplied with large groupings of notes in a single syllable, it was popular no more and became the sole property of a few professionals who, even in the monasteries, were the only ones able to interpret the melodical dash of the new compositions. It was then when the marvelous manuscripts of San Gallo, Ripoll, Silos, etc. were copied to fill the medieval libraries.

The Gregorian chant has been transmitted to us through a multitude of manuscripts scattered through the European geography. The church tradition, that has uninterruptedly preserved these old, venerable melodies for its cult, is to be counted, together with these documental testimonies. Nevertheless, with usage and the influence of so many and varied musical styles occurring along the centuries, the plain song has lost its early beauty or, in any case, genuineness in its performance as they may have been understood by the anonymous composers of the late Middle Ages. In the second half of the 19th century a restoration movement was begun, mainly by the monks of Solesmes.

There is an enormous number of Gregorian master pieces. 

Excerpts from notes by Ismael Fernandez de la Cuesta.