Space and time fade fading under wavy vaults in Gregorian music

What do you do if you want to get all the residents of a country with the noses in the same direction? In the Netherlands of the 21st century you let John Ewbank write the Koningslied and organize joint singing moments in every province. Music as a binder to unite millions of citizens from border to border: Charlemagne also knew that trick. Around the year 800 he did his best to ensure that everyone, from priests on a Frisian terp to monks in a Tuscan monastery, sang the same liturgical songs: Gregorian chant. Just like the King’s Song, the Gregorian chant did not immediately enjoy those who had to sing it, but as the King’s Song became a number one hit, despite (or thanks to) all fuss, the Gregorianian also made it to the musical foundation of the Roman Catholic Church.

How does it sound?

You sing a Latin text on a wavy melody, which only makes small steps up and down. There is no emphatic size type and there are no instruments. It is only possible, in a group and with a kind call-and-response-cartridge. In some chants there is one or a few nuts per syllable, with others-especially the joyful-you are driving a lot of nuts on one syllable: al-lu-ia-ha-ha (x20) -ha. Sing it under a medieval vault and the reverb makes space and time fade.

Where does it come from?

Rome, kind of. In the first centuries AD, a tradition of one -voiced hymns arose in the ever -increasing Christian area. Gallisch, Mozarabic, Celtic, Beneventan … Everywhere there was its own musical ‘dialect’. The tide then turned Charlemagne that from now on the church service should go according to the Roman liturgy. Adopting these songs ‘new style’ did not go without a struggle. The ensembles Sequentia and Dialogos once made an album with the appropriate title Chant Wars. But after a few centuries, the whole Frankish empire was subject to Gregorian chant. All the realm? No, one place continued to resist the ‘Roman’ domination: Milan. There they kept successful Gregorian chant in favor of their own Ambrosian, which sounds even waver.

The term ‘Gregorian chant’ comes from Pope Gregorius I (ca. 540-604), who would have written down the hymns after they had been whispered by the Holy Spirit in the form of a pigeon. But the Gregorian chant that Charlemagne let the Great spread did not sound like they sang in the Rome of Gregorius, but was a Frankish Remix. So pure myth that Gregory story, but good for marketing.

Where can you still hear it now?

Recently the whole world heard Gregorian songs, on the funeral of Pope Francis. In the Netherlands there are Gregorian choirs active and ensemble Wishful Singing developed a Gregorian Singing course together with Herman Finkers. In Den Bosch every year in June the Dutch Gregorian Festival (13-15/6, see Gregoriaansfestival.nl). You also hear Gregorian chant in a lot of other music. Composers use the songs to this day as a musical and symbolic basis for their music. Take the ‘dies Irae’, the Requiem singing over the day of judgment: this unmistakable melody appears in countless compositions and soundtracks. And then there was the New Age hype in the nineties. There we have Enigma’s hit Sadness left, with that sultry mix of monk songs and electronics. A few years later, the monks from Santo Domingo de Silos, Spain, conquered the charts: four million albums were sold. Too bad that Gregorius cannot collect his royalties.

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