Psalm Tones and Propers
  • I wonder if anyone can help me. I am interested in finding out the history of using psalm tones to set the Propers. How long has that been done? I know of one such use in the 18th century in California, though the tone used was not, properly speaking, a psalm tone. (In that instance, a single melody was adapted to set the texts of a great many Introits, Offertories, etc.) Has anyone else used psalm tones to set Propers before about 1812? Any help is most appreciated!
  • I cannot help you with this, but am curious about the Spanish Californian examples you mention. Can you put examples up here.

    So far as I know 'psalm tone propers' are a development of the early XXth century. No doubt there are some here who can speak more authentically on this subject.
  • Let me see if I have photos. I did not photograph the choirbook in question, but I have a complete photographic copy of another choirbook, in the same hand as that, but from another Mission. Since I was more interested in the "polyphonic" (read: multivoice homophony) music at the time, I copied little chant from the book in question.
  • gregpgregp
    Posts: 632
    I have been told (so this is simply third hand evidence) that at the missions, since they had no books, they would simply sing the Introit for the Feast of All Saints "Gaudeamus omnes in Domino diem festum celebrantes sub honore ______________" and then fill in the genitive form of whoever the Feast belonged to. In the present Gradual I believe
    that these examples are still included: "Mariae Virginis", "omnium sanctorum", "beatae Annae" , "Thomae martyris". How they handled the other propers, I have no idea.
  • M. Jackson Osborn, I don't know how to upload a photo, but I have an example I'd like to show you.
  • gregp, that is not correct. They certainly had music books at the Missions! Most did not survive; still, the surviving corpus constitutes the largest collection of colonial Spanish music north of Mexico. Gaudeamus was the model, but, as you will see if someone can show me how to upload a picture, the music was written out.
    Thanked by 1gregp
  • Ah! Figured it out. Here are three examples, all from the same choirbook, showing an adaptation of the single melody for almost all introits.
    California Mission quasi psalm tone.png
    2128 x 2080 - 3M
  • Interesting, indeed!
    These have a rather 'late' air about them. I would like to know what others more knowledgeable about colonial and provincial chant musicianship would have to say about them. What jumps out at me is not so much the multi-textual use of a tune (which we carry on about quite a lot with regard to post-Gregorian, harmonised hymnody!) but other evidence of notational degeneracy. To wit, the absence of podati, clivi, and other such neumes, and their replacement by just right to left note after note notation, plus long notes to take the place of repercussive ones, plus a mis-use of the rhombus to indicate (presumably) a quick note (speech rhythm?). All this is evidence of a degenerate chanting style - degenerate in relation to presumed very early, seminal, methods which we associate, with period variations, with the last thousand (at least) years. While the five line staff appeared quite earlier than many think, as early as the XIIth century, these examples are obviously not older than a very few hundred years, if that.

    Most here will certainly know that this Gaudeamus chant appears with multiple texts in the GR. However, it is indeed curious that it became in mission territories an, as it were, 'default' tune for a great number of texts. Rather modern a practice, wasn't it? As if they were saying amongst themselves - 'oh, we'll sing it to this tune that everybody knows' - some things never change, and I'm sure that some of us, had we been there, would have wretched at the practice.

    I probably haven't helped you much, Steve, but what you have shared here is quite interesting. Perhaps others will do it more justice.
  • All this is evidence of a degenerate chanting style - degenerate in relation to presumed very early, seminal, methods


    Lately, I have begun to bristle at the term "degenerate" when used to describe the pre-Solesmes chant, particularly with regard to the chant I encounter in the repertoire of the California Missions. I wonder if it is more accurate and helpful to simply see this for what it is--chant as practiced in this place, in this time. While I have not yet begun to investigate the particular origins of this repertoire, I suspect it has more than a little to do with the Medicean edition and perhaps the so-called "Mozarabic" chant: there are numerous requests from priests of the Missions for chant books of the rite of Toledo.
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • And this is just one choirbook, but in general, one will only find the breve, long, and rhombus (along with the dot) in Durán's choirbooks. In choirbooks by other scribes, the virga and various joined neums do appear, but the notation is not more varied. I see a nacent rhythmicization, and there is indeed at least one work, a Credo, for which we have a free rhythm chant-like setting which later appears on both sides of the Atlantic in a fully-rhythmic version, canto figurado version.
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,795
    The use/'misuse' of the rhombus goes back at least to the invention of printing. Passionarios of the 'golden century' use two or three shapes to notate every syllable of the reciting tone and one can either attempt a rhythmic interpretation or regard them as indications of accent within an equalist style.

    Narciso Durán's Mission San José (in Fremont) was just down the street from my old Methodist job and has a very sweet meantone organ by Rosales. That (the San José) choirbook (with quaint polyphony of somewhat uncertain attribution) is in Berkeley's Bancroft library.
  • In the mission repertoire, the use of the rhombus, bread, semibreve, and long come from the prontuarios of late-Renaissance and early-Baroque Spain (which were reprinted through at least the end of the nineteenth century). In the chant repertoire of the CA Missions, the rhombus is used without regard to the direction of the melody.

    The organ you mention is a fabulous instrument, in the Mexican-Ibrerian tradition. It was Fr. Durán who initially ordered the organ, on January 7, 1821 (Manuel's site lists the wrong date.)

    Also, the choir book from which the above photo was taken is not the Bancroft choirbook, but a different Durán choirbook. The identity of the original composer or composers are not known; Durán was certainly not one of them. It is more likely that many successive Friars have had a hand in the shaping of the repertoire as it has come down to us.
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn