I agree with your taxonomy, Adam.

My only disagreement with your entire analysis is this: some posters never say anything good about any hymns.

And, I'd like to hear further as to how you define "Gregorian" hymnody, sufficient to justify its reservation from the category of "Everything else."

Only those hymns extant at or before the 7th Century A.D.?

Good point, miacoyne. Yet another issue to be considered in whether "hymns" (howsoever they may be defined) have any place within the liturgy.

Adam

I think you could categorize in different ways.

One obvious way is Catholic and non-Catholic. Of course you would have to investigate origins.
Then there is metrical and prosaic. You would have to analyze the body of Gregorian Hymns to begin to evaluate where they fall. Under metered texts you can classify by specific meter as do most hymnals.
Then you have Hymn Tunes irrespective of text. You could start the Dewey decimal system of hymn categorization. I tell you what would be really cool. The complete chronology of hymnody which would show the progression of hymn and song writing in various geographies of the world.

Christmas and other kinds of carols were a Catholic devotional hymn category several centuries before Protestantism existed. I'll grant you that we don't have music for most of the Old English/Middle English carols for which we have lyrics, but that's not history's problem. :)

Re: composers, I guess there's that guy in the Liber, unless he wrote all his verses to old tunes. Probably some of the more experimental early music groups, too.

Miacoyne

One would have to study the rudiments of composing Gregorian Chant probably from books that espoused the analysis of GC music theory. Dr Mahrt or others might be able to enlighten us on this matter, but I would wager it is a remote knowledge to most. I believe the old Cecilean Journal may have touched on the theory of composing chant and polyphony following Gregorian rules, but I have only glanced at a few. JO has them posted somewhere on Chabanel or CMAA ... I can't remember.

rob - missing point.
Propers are already not included in "hymnody" (except perhaps Sequences, which are sometimes Proper).

Propers when and where proper. Yes, of course.

Beyond that... there is this huge body of texts and tunes people call hymns. Clearly they are not all the same. So how do we differentiation.

Thank you Francis. I'll be keep searching. After I started to sing Gregorian chant, I'm fascinated with non-metered hymns. You write beautiful music, and I'm wondering whether there are reasons (maybe difficulties) that not many modern composers write 'hymns' in the style of Gregorian melody. I only mentioned about 'texts of the Church and individuals' to clarify what I meant by
'hymns' because Gloria and Sanctus are hymns, and we know that there are modern music written in Gregorian chant style to those. So do Jeff O and Adam Bartlett for the Propers. But not 'other hymns.'
( by the way, do you know Five Mystical songs by Vaughn Williams, especially "Love bade me welcome"? I don't know whether you can call it a hymn but It's a beautiful song to listen to at home.)

Adam,

Hymn: A song of praise...In early Christian era, the term hymn was applied to all songs to praise of the Lord. (Harvard concise dictionary of Music)

Hymnody

1. The singing of hymns.
2. The composing or writing of hymns.
3. The hymns of a particular period or church.


I'm not sure you can say Propers are not included in hymns or hymnody in general terms. Even if some people make a distinction here, others don't seemed to.

DougS,

Would you explain or describe what 'post-modern "sacred" styles' is? (I believe you are talking about purely musical style?)
Also you have mentioned that "Protestant-style" hymnody doesn't denote anything about musical style. I believe "Protestant-style' here means 'German chorale style.'

Chorale: A hymn tune of the German Protestant church. Martin Luther (1483-1546), an accomplished musician himself, considered the chorale a pillar of his reform movement and played a very active part in building a suitable repertory of texts and melodies. In conformity with his principle of congregational participation, he favored vernacular texts and simple, tuneful melodies. ...
(Harvard Concise dictionary of Music)

Kathy,

That's precisely why I think metered text is an intermediate-level classification. There are metrical hymn texts that sit comfortably within multiple musical eras.

Mia,

A "post-modern" setting of a Latin hymn might be Penderecki's "Stabat Mater." Secondly, I agree wholeheartedly that "German chorale style" is a better designation than "Protestant-style" and that most people mean "German chorale style" when they think of "Protestant" music. It is wrong if we conflate the two. There is a lot of Protestant music that isn't in a chorale style. There is also plenty of Catholic music in German chorale style.

I would add that I find it interesting that the commentary is already vacillating between music and text, which shows why it is important to keep discussions of the two separate from time to time.

The book that I would like to get my hands on is the Fux "Gradus Ad Parnassum

I believe this is THE book on rules. Does anyone have a digital copy?

Fux's Gradus is available in two parts, cheaply:
The Study of Counterpoint (covering the sections on species counterpoint)
http://www.amazon.com/Study-Counterpoint-Johann-Joseph-Parnassum/dp/0393002772
and
The Study of Fugue (including the sections about Fugue writing, plus the same subject from a few other writers)
http://www.amazon.com/Study-Fugue-Alfred-Mann/dp/0486254399


To my knowledge, those two books contain the only decently translated English version of Gradus.
I have not GRADUated all the way to the fugue book yet, but I can tell you the species counterpoint lessons are excellent.

Rules?

Kathy, read Noel's post above. Apparently there were some! I'm curious...

This, from WIKI "how to write counterpoint":

Students of species counterpoint usually practice writing counterpoint in all the modes except Locrian (that is, Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian and Aeolian). The following rules apply to melodic writing in each species, for each part:

1. The final must be approached by step. If the final is approached from below, the leading tone must be raised, except in the case of the Phrygian mode. Thus, in the Dorian mode on D, a C♯ is necessary at the cadence.

2. Permitted melodic intervals are the perfect fourth, fifth, and octave, as well as the major and minor second, major and minor third, and ascending minor sixth. When the ascending minor sixth is used it must be immediately followed by motion downwards.

3. If writing two skips in the same direction—something which must be done only rarely—the second must be smaller than the first, and the interval between the first and the third note may not be dissonant.

4. If writing a skip in one direction, it is best to proceed after the skip with motion in the other direction.

5. The interval of a tritone in three notes is to be avoided (for example, an ascending melodic motion F - A - B natural), as is the interval of a seventh in three notes.

I think we should contact Solemnes and see how they compose chant. Does anyone here have connections with them?

In other words, Noel, pretty much what I said.

There is a big conceptual difference between "the rules for composing chant" and "how chant was composed."

Good points, Skirp.

I"m told that the rules were developed after the fact to describe what composers did.

Bach did not follow the general norms, as I prefer to call them (instead of rules), for composing chant. He developed a heightened chromatic polyphonic style that also stretched harmonic resolution and anticipation to the maximum that few have even attempted to mimic or absorb. He was able to pass through two key centers at one time in separate voices and then return to the 'footing' of the established key center. He sometimes did this by leaning toward major seconds and ninths as one of the tools in his arsenal.

Chant is highly modal in construction, and it is easy to 'brand' it's style, especially in the composers who utilized it in counterpoint. It Is not that different to learn the rules by osmosis or compare specimens of various manuscripts. The oddities of different eras of composition are tell tale signs as they correspond with the style of their day.

So, in that regard it is not that important which came first... the chicken or the egg - the rules or the composers of the music who formed the rules.

As a composer of polyphony, especially of the vocal type, I am always keen to the shape of melody and harmony of ages gone by, but intellect and the human soul guided by the Holy Spirit reveal ever new sounds and sonorities that emerge from our own new epoch in which God has placed us.

Unfortunately, most experimentation that was practiced in the musical institutions I attended was not grounded in the fundamentals of melodic and harmonic science. In fact, many dismissed fundamentals outright all for the sake of experimentation and that creativity would have it's own end. A big disconnect in that much of the music is now just fragmented concepts in the history books. Music that found no purpose, wasted efforts, creativity gone amuck.

The same occured with the precepts of liturgy. The chant was thrown to the wind and frenzy ruled. Now there is a desire for structure, for rules, for the continuity we forsook. (Cont'd)

The "rules," particularly in regards to species counterpoint, are not rules for composition, but rules for training. Fux was not concerned with describing theoretical practices, or in circumscribing the behavior or future composers- he was interested in presenting a logical, step-by-step process of training a student to think about music polyphonically.
And, by the way- I've worked my self all the way through the species counterpoint section of Gradus ("The Study of Counterpoint" book). The process works. You can choose to "break" rules or not, you can follow your own sense of aesthetics and style- but the process of working through species counterpoint rules teaches you to think contrapuntally.
I highly recommend the Fux book.



Now, um... could we get back on track?

Adam

Forgive our wanderings. Sometimes they bring us to places no one of us would have thought of before.

I sure am...I notice that Fux's lessons on how to write melodies correspond with what I had just studied concerning chant melodies and now it appears that I have, among others, a conceptual problem. ;<)