How chant is (sort of) like folk music
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This is a fantastic article. Even if the author did steal the ideas RIGHT OUT OF MY HEAD!
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ha ha.
I had a very difficult time getting information for this piece. My overall impression here is very much formed by Page's book. Still, it is an important topic. If G chant is only for the courts and the elites -- imposed by the sword on the rest of the world, as legend has it -- we have a problem. We need more research on the cultural basis for its origin and spread.Thanked by 1Ruth Lapeyre -
Page's book is fantastic!
It seems to me (a rank amateur, for sure) that truth is a combination of the "Church Imperialism" model and the "sprang up from grassroots" model. (Not unlike Catholic Folk Music, BTW, which had groundswell momentum but was also patronized by certain progressivist Bishops and cartelized by commercial endeavors).
I think part of the problem in discussing it (as with discussing "Gregorian Chant performance practice") is that even those of us who know better have a tendency to mentally collapse all of it into a single category- Gregorian Chant as a single genre, with a single, knowable history. It is, of course, no such thing.
Thanked by 1CHGiffen -
(Not unlike Catholic Folk Music, BTW, which had groundswell momentum but was also patronized by certain progressivist Bishops and cartelized by commercial endeavors).
Yeppers, AW. Also not unlike the development of chorale-based hymnody within and without the the post reformation traditions. -
I find the comparison somewhat disingenuous, in that Catholic folk music (as we know it) is none of those three - I say this partly in jest, but I do wish to dispute its association with the folk idiom.
What I got out of the article (and my limited ethnomusicological understanding) is that "folk" is more a means of propagation than a definable genre. Perhaps like "indie". Chant certainly fits this model, to some extent. But my understanding of the Catholic musical system of the 60s and 70s, what most would call "folk music", is that the repertoire which developed was mostly drawn from the model of pop music: an elite cadre of celebrated star performers/songwriters who sought to sell records and hymnals. I understand there was a "folk" tradition which began - I think "Peace is Flowing" may be an authentic folk song, for example - but this gave way to the pop model as the SLJs and others sought to gain profit and fame from the new musical model.
Pop music is about the cult of personality, and this is the model that "Catholic folk music" embraced. On the other hand, the social propagation of music for the sake of the music is the model that Jeffrey ascribes to Gregorian chant. Hence, I think it is somewhat misleading to imply the equivalency which is asserted between chant and the so-called "folk" repertoire.Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn -
Gavin, I think that's a backwards-compatible view of Catholic Folk, but it's not exactly what happened.
The SLJ's, for instance, started writing music for their own situation. It began spreading around to other parishes in the area and then in the larger region before it was commercialized and packaged. The first wave of for-sale material largely drew from stuff that was being sung already. The demand was there, because everyone wanted to know how they could be cool too.
A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Bob Schutte. I asked him if he had any advice about how to get published, etc. He said, essentially, to just do your own new stuff in your own parish. Word spreads if it's good.
(Melocharles, our resident geezer-with-game was actually there, though- so I'm hoping he will expand on this a bit) -
Hmmmmmm.
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I think that if the SLJ's and others were writing folk music at the time, it would have been far more organic/traceable/established, and widespread. Perhaps the largest reason it was a publishing success is that it resembled the commercial folk music (pop-folk) of that era. It was picked up by publishers because they thought it would sell.
I do agree that Gr chant, in it's various genres, fits the ethos of folk music better, with certain modes and melodic formulae used/preferred more or less in certain regions, and over many centuries. The ordinaries, and later the hymns, are especially good examples of folk music as it's been traditionally understood, partly because they are the domain of the Everyman.
When I teach beginners, I often make the connection between folk music and Gr chant. The chants are a long-established part of a Catholic's liturgical heritage. After learning to sing a little bit of it, most people who are open even a little to chant feel it's "in their blood". I've heard that time and time again. The chant connects them to many of their patron saints and fellow believers across continents and throughout centuries. It's a spiritual folk music, certainly.Thanked by 1Ruth Lapeyre -
Folk music, real folk music, is the native song of the Ozark or Allegheny back woods and such, the folk-generated sea shanties familiar to many English, as well as the indigenous song of native Cotswolders, country village Indians, and such throughout the world. Folk church music does not and never did exist. Folk religious songs, yes. But folk music of the mass is historically and currently a non-existant genre. What people frequently refer to as folk music, such as that too often being sung AT mass, is not at all folk music; not in any meaningful sense of the term, 'ethnomusicological' (thanks Gavin) or otherwise. It is composed music and is a marketed, multi-billion dollar publishing house industry. Our various bodies of liturgical chant are not and never were 'folk music.' Some of our grand-, or great-, or great-great grandparents probably knew some real folk music. It isn't likely that many of US do.
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Disagree, MJO.
Chant grew out of the native folk music of religious communities, communities that were both rooted in one locale as well as often connected with other religious houses.
Villages and towns that grew around monastic life knew a folk music that existed within the church walls (chants of the Office, of the Mass) as well as beyond them. Consider so many seasonal hymns and processionals. Puer natus and Gloria, laus come to mind.
In the time when chants were being composed, improvised, and then sung for centuries, the lines between sacred and secular weren't always so sharply drawn. More's the pity.Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn -
MACW - a qualified agreement:
There are, indeed, a very few extant chants that pre-date the main body of chant that we have inherited. For instance, a few examples (Mass XVIII?) of parts of the ordinary, a very few hymns, and not much else other than some few non-liturgical items that may indeed have had a 'folk' origin. Nearly all the hymnody that we have could hardly be called folk music, but was composed and highly literate. There aren't more than a very few examples of music that was 'liturgical' in concept and performance that do not have a literary pedigree and display the work of skilled musicians and cantors. Very early on a clear distinction seems to have been drawn between para-liturgical music, religious hymns and sacred songs, and the chants of the mass and office, actual liturgical chant. Some may, though, conjecture that extra-liturgical music was, in distant times as well as now, occasionally sung AT mass; but this was not what an ethnomusicologist would call folk music. While recognising that your assertion has a quite valid basis, I continue to be convinced that there is precious little in the repertory of liturgical chant which betrays the unlearned lack of literacy that would characterise folk origins. -
It’s true that there are many formulas in chant too, but what always strikes me is how often the formulas are adapted to accommodate the textual meaning.
Nothing more formulaic than the graduals/ tracts/ and alleluias but what the chant composer does with the verse text in the tract for the 4th Sunday of Lent (EF) is truly painting the text. Montes in circuitu ejus: et Dominus in circuitu populi sui
http://www.ccwatershed.org/video/12860194/?return_url=/goupil/
Lovely music and a very fine article Mr. Tucker -
Thank you! I'm glad to see that many of you have picked up the spirit of what I'm saying. Chant does not fit the formal definition of folk music by any stretch but it has the features and qualities that attract people to folk music -- more so than the material that made inroads in liturgy in the 1960s. This point is completely forgotten so far as i can tell
Thanked by 1Adam Wood -
Hey, JT- I totally (like, toooohtally) got that point.
That's what I meant when I wrote, "I do agree that Gr chant, in it's various genres, fits the ethos of folk music better [than 60's stuff pub buy the usuals]". -
Folk music (as a whole genre, including Lit. Folk) has characteristics X, Y, and Z.
X, Y, Z are in conflict with each other- contradicting each other- cancelling each other out.
Most people, when thinking of Folk Music, only see Z. Which is unfortunate.
Chant has qualities A, B, C, X, and Y.
Most people, when thinking about Chant, only see A, B, and C.
The correlation of X and Y is often overlooked.
JT is not only pointing out the correlation, but also saying, "X and Y are the heart of folk music. They are more important than Z. Z is ruining the whole thing!"
At least, that's how I understood it.Thanked by 1Jeffrey Tucker -
When I listen to the local university bluegrass station, the thing that strikes me the most (besides the toe-tapping goodness) is the SAMEness of it all. One song ends, and the next song begins, and they are almost identical. Same instruments, same tempo, same chord progression. Any child could understand the sound in a matter of minutes. It is completely domitable.
Whereas bluegrass is a terrarium, gregorian chant is the great outdoors. You've heard one bluegrass song you've heard almost every other one as well. Whereas if you've heard one chant, you've heard one chant. (Well, ten, maybe, because of copying. But you have definitely NOT heard them all.) Chant cannot be mastered. We're fish in its ocean. Bluegrass is fishing in a bucket.
I really don't get the comparison. -
Whereas I think Kathy's analogy is a good stab, it fails only because she doesn't know bluegrass very thoroughly. It might have worked better with straight up country. But if you'd put her description of bluegrass to Bela Fleck, Chris Ziehle, the late Ralph Stanley or David Grisman, Bryan Sutton, Tony Rice or Ricky Skaggs, and a host of NewGrass prodigies, maybe even Kathy would change her tune. And then if she'd listened beyond the first blush, I'm sure she'd acknowledge the complexities of that genre are well beyond childish, in fact that bluegrass has a great deal more in common with the subtle beauties one has to discover as they go deeper into the form and evolution of chant. Chuck, the Vivaldi comparison would only exist at a players' competition or weekend festival that's a y'all come affair. Your appreciation of bluegrass at a Bela Fleck concert live would forever dispel the comparison however.
I know this takes us further from Jeffrey's analysis, but I might offer that if one spent enough time examining the "hootenanny era" of American folk (New Christy Minstrels, Limeliters) which was nailed and parodied quite mortally by Chris Guest's "A MIGHTY WIND" mockumentary, one would find a more apt analogy with the church child of that being primarily Carey Landry, with a little help from Ray Repp, Joe Wise and Jack Miffleton along the way.Thanked by 1Gavin -
Oh honestly. And I suppose that in future centuries, when bluegrass is absent from all popular uses, musicology departments will keep it alive because of its sheer musical importance.
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Kathy's posts make me wish this software had a "no thanks" button.
(jk!)Thanked by 1MarkThompson -
Bluegrass (and I say this as a fan) is a very small slice of the folk pie.
Chant is bigger geographically, and presents a much larger history. It IS totally (toooohtally) a many-splendored thing, and a lot of it IS also folk-based, orally transmitted, decorated, improvised, accompanied in varied ways, etc.
So, they both contain certain characteristics of folk.
Its interesting that almost all of the folk references above are English-speaking ones, and ones that are of relatively recent origin.
When I think of folk music around the world, and how it compares to Gr chant, I'm thinking more of the Finnish and their Kalevala. Various poets and singers of various skill degrees produced a large body of work telling about a certain people, etc. The certain people's tradition in Gr chant is us Christians with our local and Jewish heritage.
Considering Gr chant this way, one could also claim that it is more authentically inculturating than... other productions of published liturgical music that attempt to invoke/honor/give voice to specific cultures.
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Kathy -
We needn't wait for future centuries. Musicology departments already have studies in all sorts of genres that we would not think would be a part of musical academia or serious musicianship. Glaring proof of this would be a glance at the contents of most any contemporary issue of JAMS. -
Maybe part of my disconnect is my recent visit for 6 weeks to two Solesmes monasteries. There the chant isn't something you do for an hour a week on Sundays, but a way of life. The wide variety of forms, the intricacies of the antiphons, 7 graduals per week, 7 chanted offices per day, each with 4-8 antiphons. And the responsories! It's obviously a studied culture and a purposeful culture. It's meant to bear a very heavy spiritual responsibility. There's no folk music that is supposed to do any of that.
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One criticism of the article... as long as we're investigating the "no thanks" button...
I don't think its accurate or desirable to portray Gr chant as the efforts of an uneducated group of people. Probably many composers were uneducated, but just as likely many were highly skilled and musically savvy. If the melodic intricacy of the Offertories, or the improvisational elements of so many Graduals and Alleluias are considered, the composers and first performers had to have highly developed musical abilities. Seriously, I admire their work immensely- the richness and variety of so many of those melodies have not seen a rival in Western vocal music since.
So I don't see a tension between the beauty-loving Everyman and the learned virtuoso cantor-composer. In the huge repertoire of Gr chant, they both made valuable and complementary contributions to sacred music. We, ardent educated musicians and ardent amateur musicians, are all One Body... -
While I don't dispute the facts of what anyone has said, I sometimes wonder if this group wouldn't respond to one of Jesus' parables with, "Well, actually- God is so much MORE than just a woman looking for a coin. I mean, really- when you compare souls to money you really are doing a disservice to souls- and also, you probably don't understand money all that well, either."
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MeloCharlie ... my bluegrass question vis-a-vis Vivaldi was only rhetorical. I've been a bluegrass aficionado for ages. I even played 5-string banjo and autoharp in another life (a.k.a. graduate school).Thanked by 1melofluent
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chant is like folk music in that poor people can learn it
That's not a bad point, either.
Although it does remind me of:
Off-hand, drawing both from JT's points and my own thoughts on the matter, I would offer the following points of similarity:
-they do not require instruments
-when people started harmonizing, the harmony was improvised
-neither one is particularly compatible to functional harmonic development in the classical sense(although many people have added such to both, but most lovers of the genres tend to feel something is harmed in this process)
-they are both primarily vocal idioms, and so...
-they are both primarily about the text and the stories the texts tell
-they are both largely the creations of anonymous collaboration across many generations, rather than individual hero composers
-they have become the source material for a lot of classical/art music, but they both exist outside that tradition
-they grew up in an oral tradition, and so...
-they show regional variations, both at the level of repertoire (which pieces exist where) and melody (how a single piece varies from place to place)
-they have both been deliberate means of pedagogy and instruction for subjects other than themselves (morals, ethics, biblical literacy, reading and writing)
And because of those things (and others), some people suggest (JT apparently among them, and I have also written on this)...
The spirit and ethos of Folk Music- the heart of the thing- is a certain spirit of freedom and simplicity which is also shared by Chant. Further, it is probably this underlying reason that pseudo-folk music (psFM) was allowed to invade liturgy.
MOREOVER (and this has been my point for a while):
(some of) The reasons offered for the use of psFM in liturgy are not bad understandings of liturgy, they are bad understandings of music (both chant and folk/psFM)- the "effects" desired/sought by folk music are actually supported by the use of chant, and are not at all supported by the use of psFM.
If this is an accurate (if partial) picture (and it might not be, but if it is)- it means we can affirm the intentions of many good people, and show them a way in which moving towards more sacred and traditional music is in continuity, not rupture, with their existing life and work. -
"-they do not require instruments
-when people started harmonizing, the harmony was improvised
-neither one is particularly compatible to functional harmonic development in the classical sense(although many people have added such to both, but most lovers of the genres tend to feel something is harmed in this process)
-they are both primarily vocal idioms, and so...
-they are both primarily about the text and the stories the texts tell
-they are both largely the creations of anonymous collaboration across many generations, rather than individual hero composers
-they have become the source material for a lot of classical/art music, but they both exist outside that tradition
-they grew up in an oral tradition, and so...
-they show regional variations, both at the level of repertoire (which pieces exist where) and melody (how a single piece varies from place to place)
-they have both been deliberate means of pedagogy and instruction for subjects other than themselves (morals, ethics, biblical literacy, reading and writing)"
VERY helpful. Good to see this spelled out. So to summarize, chant's development was like folk music's development--in some ways. A quibble here and there: folk music is not everywhere or even usually a vocal idiom. The Psalms were written with instruments in mind, for example, and they weren't the last folk songs to do that.
An old argument for excluding instruments from churches arises from the Incarnation. Since Christ took on a human nature, the human body, including the human voice, has an elevated dignity. The human voice alone makes better liturgical music than the accompanied human voice--after the Incarnation.
"The spirit and ethos of Folk Music- the heart of the thing- is a certain spirit of freedom and simplicity which is also shared by Chant."
Chant is anything but simple. It arises from an educated culture with the intention of handing on that culture. Its freedom is the freedom to believe a teaching. Chant cannot be subsumed. Folk music in its simplicity can be mastered. Chant masters us.
Thanked by 1CHGiffen -
Kathy, I'm not sure I disagree. My point is that chant is more like the 1960s understanding of folk music than people realize, and it is less like 19th century classical than people realize. It is simple, evocative, orally transmitted, humble, reflective of real stories, is centered on the text, and has a universal destination that has nothing to do with class and social hierarchies. In that sense, it shares qualities with folk music. Yes, this analogy can be stretched too far but my piece is intended as a corrective to a misperception.Thanked by 1melofluent
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