What's your favorite Gregorian Chant?

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janeway529 said:
I like Dies Irae too, but why does it always have to be used in film scenes when something bad is about to happen?
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Yes, that’s usually the Mozart, and trust me, it seriously weirds out your friends if you can keep singing it when the music in the movie fades out for dialogue or something. 😃 HAHAHAHAHahahahahaha!! (No, they don’t think you’re crazy at all when you do that! 🙂 )

–Jen

P.S. Just to include something relevant to the thread, I don’t know if it’s Gregorian or not, but I really like the chant for In paradisum. I seem to think the one I mean is in mode VII.
 
corsair said:
Here is one of my favorites; youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=sqwV9l-U8ds
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This is the same version used at the abbey I’m associated with (at Vigils of Sundays-except Lent-feasts and solemnities).

Also very lovely.

That’s the problem with Gregorian chant. It’s so darned hard to pin down a favourite.

For people like me fortunate enough to be near a monastery using Gregorian chant daily in its proper liturgical context, that context is really what draws out the true beauty of these chants. Friday for instance I’m going to try to make it to Vespers and first Friday benediction, where a couple more of my favourites-in context- will be sung, among them Ecce Panis Angelorum (verse 21 of the sequence Lauda Sion for Corpus Christi, which is one of the few sequences still retained in the 1974 Graduale Romanum) and Tantum Ergo, and other hymns and antiphons such as In Caritate Perpetua.
 
My favorite chant is Ubi Caritas which is used on Holy Thursday. It is roughly translated in “Where Charity and Love Prevail.” It is truly lovely.

Also on the subject of the Dies Irae, I remember reading an article about this chant in the Musical Heritage Society’s newsletter many years ago. The writer had conducted a survey of classical music literature to see how many times the Dies Irae theme had been quoted. It was a lot. His conclusion was that the Dies Irae theme has been imbedded in the subconsciousness of Western culture to represent death. Just a few notes, and we all know what is meant!
 
I absolutely love the Missal chants (they’re practically the same in the Latin and English as far as I can tell). The solemn tone for Eucharistic Prayer I is particularly beautiful.

Does anyone know what they’re from? They’re the same chants as in Pope Paul VI’s Jubilate Deo booklet. I don’t know if they’re a whole new composition of the Roman Curia during Vatican II, or if they’re largely based off of a pre-existing setting. Anybody know? 🙂
 
M-Dent said:
Missa XI (Orbis factor)
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Trivia:

The title “Orbis Factor” comes from the trope of the same name. Troped Kyries were abolished at Trent, but the title lingers on. To hear what Orbis Factor really sounded like:

Orbis Factor

The lyrics:
  1. Orbis factor rex aeterne, eleison
  2. Pietatis fons immense, eleison
  3. Noxas omnes nostras pelle, eleison
  4. Christe qui lux es mundi dator vitae, eleison
  5. Arte laesos daemonis intuere, eleison
  6. Conservans te credentes confirmansque, eleison
  7. Patrem tuum teque flamen utrorumque, eleison
  8. Deum scimus unum atque trinum esse, eleison
  9. Clemens nobis adsis paraclite ut vivamus in te, eleison.
In English:
  1. Maker of the world, King eternal, have mercy upon us.
  2. O immense source of pity, have mercy upon us.
  3. Drive off all our evils, have mercy upon us.
  4. Christ who art the light of the world and giver of life, have mercy upon us.
  5. Consider the wounds produced by the devil’s art, have mercy upon us.
  6. Keeping and confirming thy believers, have mercy upon us.
  7. Thou and thy Father, an equal light, have mercy upon us.
  8. We know that God is one and three, have mercy upon us.
  9. Thou, merciful unto us, art present with the Holy Spirit that we might live in thee, have mercy upon us.
The troped Kyrie in the OF Mass thus has an ancient precedent!

More trivia: this is from the Gradual of Aliénor de Bretagne (1275-1342). She was abbess of Fontevraud, which was a double community (women and men) in the same abbey though living separately. What was unique about this abbey is that it was governed by an abbess, not an abbot, and both the men and women lived under the rule of the abbess, which for 2 centuries came from the Bourbons.
 
ProVobis, I watched the video clip of the royal wedding, and that motet was indeed lovely, but it was not the Ubi Caritas chant. It was a composition of a guy named Paul Mealor, who was born in 1975. Another beautiful piece written on the Ubi Caritas chant theme is by the French composer Maurice Durufle. Our choir sings it often. Gregorian chant themes have inspired many composers.
 
Marysann said:
ProVobis, I watched the video clip of the royal wedding, and that motet was indeed lovely, but it was not the Ubi Caritas chant. It was a composition of a guy named Paul Mealor, who was born in 1975. Another beautiful piece written on the Ubi Caritas chant theme is by the French composer Maurice Durufle. Our choir sings it often. Gregorian chant themes have inspired many composers.
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This is the Gregorian version, in mode VI:

Ubi Caritas 6th mode

There’s also a monastic variant in the 8th mode, that is similar but not identical. I haven’t been able to find a YouTube version, but the score is in the back of the 1974 Graduale Romanum, in the Proprium OSB section.
 
OraLabora said:
Gradual of Aliénor de Bretagne (1275-1342). She was abbess of Fontevraud, which was a double community (women and men) in the same abbey though living separately. What was unique about this abbey is that it was governed by an abbess, not an abbot, and both the men and women lived under the rule of the abbess, which for 2 centuries came from the Bourbons.
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The Abbey of Fontevrault and it’s history does appear quite interesting. Thanks for the note about it.
 
EphelDuath said:
I don’t know if they’re a whole new composition of the Roman Curia during Vatican II, or if they’re largely based off of a pre-existing setting. Anybody know? 🙂
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Some food for thought on the topic.🙂
Saint Augustine recounts in his autobiography, Confessions, an experience he had during the singing of the Mass: “How I wept, deeply moved by your hymns, songs, and the voices that echoed through your Church! What emotion I experienced in them! Those sounds flowed into my ears, distilling the truth in my heart. A feeling of devotion surged within me, and tears streamed down my face — tears that did me good”.
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How can we explain this overwhelming and transforming experience that led one of our greatest saints to the Church? Clearly, this was much more than a man simply being moved by a well-performed song. His entire being was penetrated and transformed through music. How can this be?
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** At Mass, Christ Sings to the Father**
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1157) makes a direct reference to Saint Augustine’s experience when it teaches that the music and song of the liturgy “participate in the purpose of the liturgical words and actions: the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful.”
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The Mass itself is a song; it is meant to be sung. Recall that the Gospels only tell us of one time when Jesus sings: when He institutes the Holy Eucharist (Cf. Mt 26:30; Mk 14:26). We should not be surprised, then, that Christ sings when He institutes the Sacramentum caritatis (the Sacrament of love), and that for the vast majority of the past 2,000 years, the various parts of the Mass have been sung by priests and lay faithful. In the 1960s, the Second Vatican Council strongly encouraged a rediscovery of the ancient concept of singing the Mass: “[The musical tradition of the universal Church] forms a necessary or integral part of solemn liturgy” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 112). The Mass is most itself when it is sung. This recent rediscovery of “singing the Mass” did not begin with the Second Vatican Council. Following a movement that stretches back at least to Pope Saint Pius X in 1903, Pope Pius XII wrote in 1955, “The dignity and lofty purpose of sacred music consists in the fact that its lovely melodies and splendor beautify and embellish the voices of the priest who offers Mass and of the Christian people who praise the Sovereign God” (Musicae Sacrae Disciplina 31). –
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Singing the Mass - Liturgical Music as Participation in Christ
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by Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted
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See more at: adoremus.org/0512SingingtheMass.html#sthash.qOdj9t0W.dpuf
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Now, just a little footnote on the Gregorian Chant. In reflecting on these things about Church music, I began to think about the Psalms a few years back. And a very obvious idea suddenly struck me. Why it didn’t come earlier I don’t know, but the fact is that the Psalms are songs. Every one of the 150 Psalms is meant to be sung; and was sung by the Jews. When this thought came to me, I immediately called a friend, a rabbi in San Francisco who runs the Hebrew School, and I asked, “Do you sing the Psalms at your synagogue?” “Well, no, we recite them,” he said. “Do you know what they sounded like when they were sung in the Old Testament times and the time of Jesus and the Apostles?” I asked. He said, “No, but why don’t you call this company in Upstate New York. They publish Hebrew music, and they may know.”
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So, I called the company and they said, “We don’t know; call 1-800-JUDAISM.” So I did. And I got an information center for Jewish traditions, and they didn’t know either. But they said, “You call this music teacher in Manhattan. He will know.” So, I called this wonderful rabbi in Manhattan and we had a long conversation. At the end, I said, “I want to bring some focus to this, can you give me any idea what it sounded like when Jesus and his Apostles sang the Psalms?” He said, “Of course, Father. It sounded like Gregorian Chant. You got it from us.”
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I was amazed. I called Professor William Mart, a Professor of Music at Stanford University and a friend. I said, “Bill, is this true?” He said, “Yes. The Psalm tones have their roots in ancient Jewish hymnody and psalmody.” So, you know something? If you sing the Psalms at Mass with the Gregorian tones, you are as close as you can get to praying with Jesus and Mary. They sang the Psalms in tones that have come down to us today in Gregorian Chant.
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So, the Council isn’t calling us back to some medieval practice, those “horrible” medieval times, the “terrible” Middle Ages, when they knew so little about liturgy that all they could do was build a Chartres Cathedral. (When I see cathedrals and churches built that have a tenth of the beauty of Notre Dame de Paris, then I will say that the liturgists have the right to speak. Until then, they have no right to speak about beauty in the liturgy.) But my point is that at the time of Notre Dame de Paris in the 13th century, the Psalms tones were already over a thousand years old. They are called Gregorian after Pope Gregory I, who reigned from 590 to 604. But they were already a thousand years old when he reigned. He didn’t invent Gregorian chant; he reorganized and codified it and helped to establish musical schools to sing it and teach it. It was a reform; it wasn’t an invention. Thus, the Council really calls us back to an unbroken tradition of truly sacred music and gives such music pride of place.
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Essay is based on a lecture on the liturgy given by Father Fessio in May, 1999.
catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0540.html
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