Tea at Trianon: Introduction to Gregorian Chant

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, October 19, 2015

Introduction to Gregorian Chant

Here is a helpful resource. To quote:

The chant we now call Gregorian is the descendent of the basic cantilation that evolved in the Roman rite from its beginning. Although some of it dates from the earliest days of Christianity, using music from the Second Temple, it took its current form between the 8th and 10th centuries, when Roman chant was melded with Frankish (French/German) chant. There were other forms of chant in the West, e.g., Milanese (Ambrosian) and Beneventan, but this chant was recognised as a more universal form. It eventually received the label ‘Gregorian’ because, even though Pope St. Gregory the Great was long dead, naming it for the great pope was intended to enhance its prestige and special place in the Roman rite. That special place has endured.

Following the lead of earlier popes, most notably Pope St. Pius X and Pope Pius XII, Vatican Council II declared in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy that, ‘The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy. Therefore, other things being equal, it should be given the principal place (principem locum) in liturgical services.’ (Sacrosanctum Concilium, Chapter VI, no. 116) And after stating that the vernacular languages should take their proper place, that same document, adds: ‘Nevertheless, steps should be taken enabling the faithful to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass belonging to them.’ (Chapter II, no. 54) (Read more.)