Hello all,

As a music director with a Dorico license, working at a parish with no previous exposure to the modal melodies of Gregorian chant, I often find myself transcribing square note melodies into stemless notes on the modern, treble staff so the congregation can digest the new music more easily (and frankly, to give them less to complain about). It is a fun exercise for me, it scratches my itch for uniformity of format, and it has led me to learn so much more about the Gregorian modal systems than I ever knew before.

Though I know it is not important for accomplishing what I am doing at the parish, I wanted to ask those more knowledgable than I about the use of key signatures when transcribing modal, Gregorian melodies onto the modern staff. Whenever I have encountered chant melodies on the modern staff, I have seen key signatures incorporated in the following two ways:

1) they major or minor key signature that most closely fits the mode is used; or more rarely
2) they are completely omitted, and case-by-case accidentals are employed to indicate a flattened Ti.

One example that illustrates this perfectly is the Gloria from Mass VIII. It is a classic mode 5 chant in the Lydian mode that recites on Do and cadences to Fa. Of course, to our modern ears, the Lydian mode with a flattened Ti is simply our diatonic major scale: my problem.

When this chant is notated on modern treble staff, I have noticed something peculiar. Usually, the reciting tone is set as A and the final tone D. This setting gives us the mode 5 Lydian scale starting on D (Fa): D-E-F#-G#-A-B-C#-D. However, the chant almost never uses Ti, as I have noticed with many mode 5 chants. In fact, it is only found once in the whole chant, in the final "Amen." Even then, so as not to create the tritone with Fa, it is flattened to Te. Thus, practically speaking, the scale used in the chant is: D-E-F#-G-A-B-C#-D. Because this is just our modern major scale, the chant, therefore, is usually assigned the key signature of D major. Even in the Kyrie from the same mass, I encounter the same problem. The universally flattened Ti effectively creates the major scale. Thus, Fa becomes Do and the appropriate key signature is slapped on.

However, I wonder: does this not do damage to our understanding of Gregorian chant to identify the chant as a D Major melody? In the Major scale, the "final" tone (what we understand as the tonic) is Do. In no Gregorian mode is the final Do. Even though in modern terms, the Gloria from Mass VIII is a paradigm major melody, this simply is not how it would have been understood. When I have transcribed the Kyrie and Gloria from Mass VIII, I have opted to assign it the key signature of A Major to respect the fact that A is indeed Do. Sure, this requires me to naturalize all the G#s I've just created (a whopping 2 in the Kyrie, thanks to the accidentals carrying through the bar, and 1 in the Gloria), but I think this preserves the modal nature of the melody rather than trying to squeeze the melody into our modern conventions.

Of course, I know I also need to take into account that these chants only date back to the 15th and 16th centuries when our modern musical framework was beginning to develop into the structure we have today. Perhaps this accounts for why the chant was written to be so characteristically "Major" even within the modal framework of Gregorian chant, and why we might actually be doing the melody a favor by unearthing it from its medieval encasement. I am unsure of how this plays into the debate, however.

I know this issue is extremely unimportant to the Church's work for the salvation of souls, but it is something that has certainly peaked my curiosity. I especially wanted to get some other people's thoughts before I continue putting my homemade "Mass VIII in A Major" into worship aids and look like an idiot! :P

What do you all think?