Gregorian chant and the birth of notation

Picture an abbey in the 9th century. Several times a day and part of the night, the monks gather to pray in song. They sing in Latin, all together, the same melody, with no instruments at all. This vast repertoire — several thousand chants — is called Gregorian chant.

A misleading name

The name refers to Pope Gregory I (c. 540–604). A legend shows him receiving the chants from a dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit, whispering in his ear. In reality, the repertoire took shape much later, in the time of Charlemagne and his successors (8th–9th centuries), when the Frankish rulers wanted a single liturgy across their empire and blended Roman chant with local traditions. Crediting the chants to a famous pope gave them unquestionable authority.

What to listen for

• A single melodic line (monophony), sung in unison or at the octave, unaccompanied.
• Free rhythm that follows the pronunciation and meaning of the Latin text: no bars, no regular pulse you could tap your foot to.
• Supple melodies, mostly moving by step (neighbouring notes), in a modest range, easy for a group to sing.
• Modes rather than our major and minor scales. Chant sorts its melodies into eight modes, according to their final note and their range. The one most easily recognised is the mode on D, which you can play on the white keys from D to D:

M:none
L:1/4
Q:1/4=80
K:C
D E F G A B c d |]

Some chants set one note per syllable (syllabic style); others unroll long garlands of notes on a single vowel (a melisma), like the great Alleluias.

From memory to notation

For centuries, singers learned everything by heart; mastering the repertoire took around ten years. In about the 9th century, scribes began adding small signs above the words: neumes (from the Greek pneuma, breath). They show whether the voice rises or falls and how notes are grouped, but not the exact pitch: they are memory aids for someone who already knows the tune.

Then came the decisive idea: draw a horizontal line standing for a fixed note, then two lines, then more. In the early 11th century the Italian monk Guido of Arezzo made the method systematic: lines a third apart, notes placed on the lines and in the spaces, and a letter at the start to fix the pitch (the ancestor of our clefs). This is our staff. Gregorian chant is still written today on a four-line staff, with square notes inherited from writing with a reed pen.

Ut, re, mi: a hymn as a method

Guido also invented a memory aid for his pupils: a hymn to Saint John the Baptist, Ut queant laxis, in which each half-line starts one note higher than the one before. The first syllables give the names ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. Si was added later (from the initials of Sancte Iohannes), and ut became do in the 17th century. Listen to the hymn's melody as it is transcribed today in modern notes (free rhythm): each key syllable falls on the next note of the scale.

M:none
L:1/8
Q:1/8=120
K:C
"^ut"C D F D E D | "^re"D D C D E E | "^mi"E F G E D E C D | "^fa"F G A G F E D D |
"^sol"G A G F E F G D | "^la"A G A F G A A | G F D C E D |]

The result: for the first time, a singer could read a melody they had never heard. Guido claimed that with his method, pupils learned in a few months what used to take years. All written Western music, down to the score on your music stand, descends from this invention.

A woman composer in the 12th century

Liturgical chant is not only anonymous. The German abbess Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) — scholar, poet and visionary — composed her own chants, with sweeping melodic arcs that often climb very high, and a sung play, the Ordo Virtutum. She is one of the first women composers whose name and works we know.

A living tradition

In the 19th century, the monks of the abbey of Solesmes in France studied the old manuscripts to restore chant as it was sung in the Middle Ages; their editions are still in use. And in 1994, an album of Gregorian chant recorded by the Spanish monks of Santo Domingo de Silos became a worldwide best-seller: proof that this very old music still speaks to listeners today.

Listen

• The Dies irae and the Victimae paschali laudes (two famous sequences).
• An Alleluia from the Mass, to hear long melismas.
• The hymns Ut queant laxis and Veni Creator Spiritus.
• Hildegard of Bingen: excerpts from the Ordo Virtutum.