Recently I've had the
privilege of joining an
amateur Gregorian Chant choir.
When I say "amateur" I refer to choirs with no paid
chanters, and with few
musically
trained
singers except (
perhaps) the
choir director.
Manhattan is graced with
professional scholas("chant choirs") which could easily get a
gig at
Carnegie Hall, but our
venues
are usually small
parish churches. We never count on
spectacular acoustics.
From the
get go, scholas are
male only (at least in the most
literal interpretation.)
In our group, the chanting is taken seriously as a
vehicle for
worship; yet we do tend to
socialize more than we should (eating too much at
Coffee Hour ...)
We use the
Liber Usualis as our
service book. The
Liber Usualis is the collection
of chants keyed to the
Roman Missal, or
prayerbook used by the
priest and other
ministers
in celebrating
Mass. The Liber is designed to take into effect any possible musical need that
might arise in a
Catholic religious community. Our schola may use little more than 5% of the 1000 plus
page volume in a year.
Contemplative communities might use the settings provided for every
liturgy of the year, while strictly
contemplative communities (i.e.
Trappists) might use
expanded sets of liturgical books (
graduals,
martyrologies, etc.) offering even more options. After
Vatican II many communities
have given away or sold their Libers, replacing
vernacular hymns for
chant in their celebration of the
Divine Office and
Mass. All the Libers on store with our schola have been obtained from
communities no longer using Libers in
worship.
Liber
notation is
complex, and is frequently
substituted with
current notation to aid the chanter able to read music.
Any
simplification of a
bizarre reconstructed medieval notation is
beneficial, but only to those with previous
training.
Because our schola is amateur and mostly
musically illiterate we tend to perfect most commonly used works of music, create a
pat repetoire, and
wing the
the rest of the chants. Our director tries to lead us to the point where we can "feel" what the music sounds like
rather than rely on his
conducting or the first few notes he hands us to get us ready. Usually we grind our way
through the first chant
Introit of the day,
groping our way around before settling in comfortably for the distribution of
Communion (the
longest stretch in which to perform.) Yet eventually most men can recognize at least one or two of the most common
modes,
or scales, used in chant. Armed with that new information, it's easier to pick up unfamiliar works and perform them almost
immediately (albeit not
perfectly.)
I think one of the reasons why our amateur schola
survives is a love of performing the music for its
therapeutic qualities.
It's nice to participate in the re-creation of a very complex and somewhat
ancient genre instead of hearing it on the
CD player
only, and there are very few things in life like the satisfaction of
performing wickedly difficult music . Many of us consider practice one of the
highlights of our
week, maybe because it allows us to set aside
inhibitions about
singing in public and other
social phobias. Many of our chanters are
retired, chanting providing both a
worship and
social outlet, while I quietly
whistle in the corner since I'm the youngest there by 10 years at least. But all of us, for some reason and in our
diversity, have decided to come together twice a
week to croak out
11th
century chants when we could be watching
TV (or in my case,
sleeping.)
While chant is a very relaxing
hobby (
occupation?
obsession?), the practice is usually
couched within religious
devotion.
Though almost all men in our schola are of a
Roman Catholic background, interest and degrees of participation in
Christianity
vary from man to man, and changes his relationship to the physical aspect of liturgy. While chant can and is frequently viewed outside religious
ritual, it is difficult to
divorce the self
from the
liturgical aspect of performance. It might (and is) hard to sing with your mouth what you may not be able to
rationalize or
believe.