[PDF of the score (sheet music) for Ave Regína Cœlórum - Organum Novi Mundi
https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/images/d/d4/Ave_Regina_ONM_medM004-1b.pdf]
MED: Peace and welcome to ChantHacks, where we discuss Gregorian chant and Classical Polyphony, and how to get you singing it WELL, sooner rather than later.
Female voice: ChantHacks with Mark Emerson Donnelly
MED: As I've been preparing these first few episodes, I realize that each subject of ChantHacks is pretty detailed. So, I'll just try to do my best to stay right down the middle. If you think I need to get more detailed or less detailed, let me know in the comments.
[00:01:00] This first episode is a presentation of my Organum of the Ave Regina Coelorum. Before I get started on that, I thought it would be good to define the different kinds of performances that we have with regards to singing by yourself, singing the same thing with other people, and singing along with the other people on different parts.
The first kind of singing, which is solo singing, is called Monody. It comes from the. ancient Greek mono + odé, which is a solo song or solo poem. Monody is when you're singing by yourself, whether you're singing a song or, like at the beginning of our ChantHacks [00:02:00] introduction where the cantor sings "Jubilate" on his own [musical example].
That's called Monody. It's followed up by something called Monophony. Monophony is when you have more than one person singing the same thing. That's what happens when the monks follow after the cantor at the beginning of the chant. So the cantor sings, "Jubilate", and then the choir sings [00:03:00] "Deo universa terra.". [musical example] Now we can have a second kind of Monophony. By the way, Monophony comes from mono + phonos, which means one sound, and it means the same thing asthe Latin root word, which is uni +sonus. or one sound, orUnison. They mean the same thing, one sound.
Now, we have two different kinds of one sound. We can haveall lower voices as in the " [Deo] universa terra". We can have, also, higher voices altogether.We would call these Absolute/TrueUnisons[or Absolute/True Monophony], because all the voices are low, or all the voices are high. We can have another kind of unison, which can be called a Choral Unison [or Choral Monophony], where you have [00:04:00] treble(high) voices and base (low) voices singing together. They're both singing the same line, but they're not singing in the same octave. An example of this would be a hymn that I wrote a few years ago to the text of "Forgive our Sins as We Forgive" [lyrics by Rosamund Herklots (1905-1985)].[musical example]
So you can hear thatthe ladies are singing, "Forgive our sins" [musical example], and the men are singing, [00:05:00] "Forgive our sins" [musical example], but they're both singing the same melody [musical example]; but when they sing together, we say it sounds like they're singing the same thing, even though we know one is high and one is low. They're singing the same melody or the same melodic line.
Now we have another kind of singing together, which is where different lines are being sung, but they're all moving at the same time. This is called Homophony or homo + phonos. Which means like sound. Not one sound, but like sound.
So they're sounding at [00:06:00] the same time. For an example of this, again, I'll use [the hymn] "Forgive Our Sins", where in verse two, the choir sings in parts, but they're all moving at the same time. [musical example]
So to recap, what do we have? We have Monody, which is a singer singing by himself as in a solo or an incipit(the beginning of a chant). Or we can have Monophony, which is a bunch of people singing together, but singing the same thing. [00:07:00]We have two kinds of Monophony:we have Absolute Monophony [or Absolute Unison], which is when it's just low voices singing together, or high voices singing together, or we have what's called a Choral Monophony[or Choral Unison], where high voices and low voices are singing together, but they're singing the same musical line separated by an octave. And then we have what's called Homophony, which is like hymns, where all the voices are [changing notes] at the same time, but they're not singing the same parts.
Now when you have a schola of male voices only, or female voices only, they most often sing Monophonically, or in Monophony.And that would be Absolute Monophony. [00:08:00] But oftentimes when we sing the Ordinary of theMass, we all sing together. The congregation sings all together; so it's high voices and low voices together.[musical example] This is also true for many Gregorian hymns such as Adoro te Devote,Veni Sancte Spiritus, or Pange Lingua [musical example]; but also the Marian Antiphons. The one that is the most well-known and is done in the time after Pentecost until Advent is the Salve Regina. During Advent up to the Feast of the Purification, we sing [00:09:00] Alma Redemptoris Mater; and at Easter time we sing the Regina Caeli.
During Lent, which is the time that I'm making this video, we sing the Ave Regina Coelorum. Oftentimes, [the seasonal Marian antiphons] are sung at the end of Compline, which is the [final] prayer office of Psalms for the day;but [they're] also sung either as a recessional after low mass, or sometimes during the last gospel, during a Latin [sung] Mass.It's most often sung in ChoralMonophony. So all the treble voices (the women and the kids) and all the lower male voices sing together.We sing in unison, but it's aChoral Unison or Choral Monophony. [00:10:00]
Now, for some people, that sounds a bit dry or plain. And so my hack for trying to make the chant a little more palatable to modern ears is the organum style that I developed, which I call Organum Novi Mundi(Novi Mundi, becauseI've spent my whole life in North America,and that's[referred to as] the new world. So I thought, "Why not apply the same treatment that we do for hymns to the chant?" The first time I thought of this was when I was the choir director at Thomas Aquinas College. I found a setting of the Stabat Mater from the MainzHymnal of, I believe, I don't know the date [year 1661], sometime in the 17th century [00:11:00].It sounded very dirge like doing it the speed of a hymn [musical example], which is not the speed the chant should be sung at. It should be...[musical example].It should be moving at that speed. So I asked the choir, "Let's just sing it as fast as the chant should go," even though it was in four parts.It really seemed to come alive!
After I graduated from Thomas Aquinas College, I started writingsome organums.I started off with one, Adoro te Devote, and it seemed to work.Eventually, I wound up doing all four [00:12:00] [seaonal] Marian Antiphons, the first of which was the antiphon for Lent [Ave Regina Coelorum].
What [my Organum Novi Mundi does] is give a certain richness that you don't get with the chant simply Monophonically or in Unison. Now, I'm not saying it's necessarily better or worse, but it's an option. It's a way of adding, not so much luxuriousness, but adding a little more richness to the chant.
[I'll sing] the chant. I can't sing it monophonically by myself, right? [I'll have to sing it as]Monody. So if I sing it, Monodically(not monotonously!), [00:13:00] it would go like this...[musical example]
If you were leading a congregation, you'd sing it something like that. But we can also do it as anOrganum Novi Mundi. [00:14:00] A quartet that I'm singing with recorded it [in January], just before my daughter, Allanna, went back to Thomas Aquinas College for her last semester. And so this is what we were able to put together.[00:15:00] [musical example]
I hope you liked that. And I hope you think it's a good hack, as a way of introducing people who are not used to listening to Gregorian chant, by presenting it in a way that, perhaps, they're a little more familiar with [i.e., Homophonically]. It really is for modern ears. I still love hearing the chant sung Monophonically, but I also like hearing it in Organum[Novi Mundi] too.
If you have any comments, please leave them below, and until next time, I'm Mark Emerson Donnelly. God bless.[00:16:00] [end music]
