History 04

THE TRAJECTORY

The specialists qualify currently as ancient Roman the repertoire that evolved from the catechumens epoch disappeared in the course of the XIVth century. The recasting of this repertoire in what it will be known since then as Gregorian Chant, takes place concretely between the years 680 and 730 and in concrete centers as Corbie and mainly on Metz, in the Gallia, or in the already mentioned Sankt Gallen Swiss abbey, place of which are original the first semiologic notations known (see "Gregorian Semiotics " by Dom Eugene Cardine. Solesmes, 1970. Edited by Abbey of Silos, Burgos and translated by Francisco Lara). From them, the Gregorian Chant leaked out rapidly in the north of Europe.

Later, Gregorian Chant suffered important modifications that can be summed up in four points: the introduction of the stave; the difference in the forms of execution; the increasing generalization of singing to several voices and the imposition of the regular measure, indispensable condition for the harmonic cadenzas in vogue from the 12th century.

The typical elements of Gregorian chant, essentially monodic (antiphons, psalmodies, gradual, tracts, responsories, hallelujahs ...), were nevertheless of a considerable richness as to survive and to reappear in the inspiration of the goliards and of the first troubadours songs. The production of liturgical works that could be considered to be authentic Gregorian concluded towards the ends of the 11th century, but his trace or his imitation becomes aware in many later compositions, even so late as Du Mont's masses, in the 17th century.

What has remained of that is considered to be the Golden Age of the plainchant, between the 5th and 8th centuries; it snatches often of enthusiasm the musicologists and seems to justify the disconcerting massive renaissance that has experienced the genre in the last years (as it has been the case of the monks of Abbey of Silos recordings). Nevertheless, despite these devotions and the precise pointed rules, it continues being complicated to have an idea of the Occident musical reality in the Carolingian unification epoch. Apart from the Celtic rite eliminated in the practice about the 7th century, it is important to aim at the survival of other three:

Ambrosian Rite: Previous to Roman liturgy, it seems to be characterized by the exuberance of the exercises for vocalization and for the preponderant role that the antiphons and the responsories performed in it. Limited at first to the diocese of Milan, in which remains most of his original texts, though it turns out to be impossible to reproduce with these documents the authentic melodies that St. Ambrose sang and taught.
Mozarabic or visigothic rite: Recovered in the 16th century by the chapter of the Toledo Cathedral, it had been already abolished nevertheless in the 11th century, for what the interpretation of the ancient neumatic notations on which it is based turns out to be at least difficult to certify, though from them there descend the interpretive modern rules of the Mozarabic chant.

At the end of the first millennium, the Gregorian liturgy of the Roman papacy was finally accepted at universal level. Up to this time, the Western Europe got accommodated to a wide variety of liturgies which were influenced, at least partly, by the ethnic characteristics of the local population and of the social prevailing structure: the ancient Gallic rite that was one of the merovingian state religion, the countless Irish monasteries Celtic liturgy, the liturgy adopted in Milan, which was per centuries the most powerful city of Italy, the courtesan ceremonial of the Lombard dukes in the south of Italy, two rites of the Roman and finally the liturgy of the Iberian Peninsula, which claims a special attention according to his colourist nature and his highly revealed individuality due largely to his national character.

The old Toledan rite bloomed during the 7th century during the visigoth's reign with his political and ecclesiastic center in Toledo. It owes his revelation to the scholar Isidoro of Seville (dead in 636), as well as to three visigoths prelates, the nobles Eugene III and his successors, Ildefonso and Julian. As the visigoth kingdom was submitted by the Arabs in 711, seven centuries of this government along Spain brought some changes in terms of religion and rite. In general, the Christians were not forbidden to practice his faith, but they were described also as Arabs or rather as Mozarabs (literally "false" Arabs); this is the reason for assigning to the visigoth rite the name of Mozarab.
The situation did not change even after the year 1000, when visigoths and Mozarabs led the gradual reconquest of the peninsula to the progressive suppression and to the possible eradication of the old indigenous liturgy together with his singings, all that were allowed under the mastery of the Arabic people. It is necessary, in any case, to distinguish between two different liturgies: on one hand the so called Mozarab (also described like "Hispanic" o "visigothic"), and the Roman liturgy which came to dominate slowly the totality of the Iberian Peninsula after 1050.

The traces of the Mozarabic rite survived across the oral tradition and it was thanks to one of the biggest national Spanish figures, the Cardinal Jimenez de Cisneros (dead in 1517), that this tradition was saved in two different ways: the melodic formulae sung by the preacher or in alternation with him during the mass printed by Cisneros in the year 1500, and the current melodies that there were transcribed in three big coral books preserved in the Mozarabic Chapel of the Toledo Cathedral , which were reproduced by Casiano Rojo and German Prado, two Benedictine monks of Silos, in a monograph published in the year of 1929.

Though the majority of the melodies published in the collection of 1500 can be considered to be, at least in his stylistic base, genuinely Hispanic, there cannot be said the same for the chants contained in the coral books . It shall be noticed, for example, that its melodies differ from the ancient set of neumes, although the texts in itselfs are virtually identical. We would say that none of them inspires palpably the Mozarabic rite, since no one can be located in any of the stylistic well-known categories that existed about the year 1500, for which we might name them as neo-Mozarabic melodies, and though it is possible that they are not completely genuine, certainly at least are closer to it and being according to what we know.
Gallic rite. More ambiguous is still the heredity of the liturgy of the Galias church, since it was suppressed by Charlemagne´s father, Pipino the Brief, in the 7th century. Therefore, despite the efforts of the current known like "neogalicanism", little or nothing is what could have been recovered of his original characteristics.