History 03

THE ORAL TRADITION

A last fact is evident: the struggle between a world of oral tradition and a world of written tradition. The Jewish world is still a bastion of the oral tradition though the Bible has been copied for a long time before the 5th century B.C. The same one is learned still as a singing of memory, without books, repeating it versicle by versicle following the teacher. The same thing happens between the Muslims who learn the Koran. Rhythm and melody combined are recorded so deeply into the memory that some rabbis only mention the text with his musical garb.

In opposition to this traditional world, the Greek and Latin universes were cultivating the writing. Nevertheless, the speeches and the important texts were recited as singings, although these regions of "argumentative" reason share with the Gallia a deep tendency towards the analysis. Now then, the singing was escaping to the writing until the idea of trying to denote it came in probably in the Roman Spain or in the Gallia .

It was traversing then the 9th century. Almost three centuries were needed for the notation to be perfectly legible.

The complex process that gives place to the establishment of the canons that we know generically as Gregorian is developed between Gregory the Great papacy (590-604) and the decades that continued the reunifier Charlemagne´s reign (768-814); it is few what actually have to see with the pontiff who gave the name (he was not even a musician) though yes with the spirit that stimulated his vigorous liturgical reform.

Probably it would be necessary to place the starting point in the first Byzantine development, towards the end of the 4th century, under St. John Crisostom´s patriarchy; he was precursor of the codifications that there preserved the liturgical chant of the epoch and a defender of the music in front of the majority of the ascetics, hermits and monks. Justinian the emperor (482-565) marks the following milestone in the process of compilation and fixation of the repertoire; he regulated the forms of the liturgy in his impressive basilica of the "Divine Wisdom" (Hagia Sophia or Holy Sophia, in Istanbul); Andrew of Crete, one century later, fixes the rules of a new genre: the Kanon.

In 8th century, the monks John Damascene, Cosmas de Majumas and Teofan realize a synthesis of the previous elements, for what they are considered to be the real creators of the Byzantine rite.

But when Charlemagne decides to unify the musical habits of the Empire, after his coronation in Rome by Pope Leo III in 800, the process had suffered diverse complications; between these, the minor would not be the own origin of the emperor who contributed with numerous elements of the Francs musical tradition to the Byzantine structures; this will lead to the creation of the conglomerate that would end up in what is known as Gregorian Chant (a slightly precise name).

As a summary of the principal milestones of this complex development that allowed the merger of the Francs traditions with the musical Byzantine climax and the remains of the primitive Roman rite there can be mentioned a manuscript of the 11th century preserved in the Swiss Abbey of Sankt Gallen, in which a compilers' chronology is given, as well as Vita Sancti Gregorii, by John the Deacon, Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731) by Beda the Venerable and the diverse papacies which would have formed a line of uninterrupted succession between the primitive manifestations of the Roman plainsong and the splendor of the Carolingian cycle.

Nevertheless, after the heap of tests and counter evidences that have been contributed to verify or not the evolution of the Plainsong across a unified process, from Gregory up to the low Middle age, everything seems to indicate that it turns out to be more credible to speak about attachés and melting instead of this claimed line without interruptions; that would be difficult to obtain in the convulsed centuries for which the process have crossed.