alleluia, sequentia, antiphony, graduale, Gregorian, Kyrie, liturgy, office
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A Hebrew expression: Praise the Lord! Respect for the tradition of the ancient language was preserved in this. It is a responding song (soloist and choir) before the reading of the gospel in the Catholic mass. At Easter time - as an expression of cheering - it can be added to the end of other genres as an appendix or a short cry. Concerning its musical aspect it is a decorated and melismatic (full of bent tunes) tune. According to St Augustine: where the power of words ends the heart starts to sing.
JM
sequentia
A song performed after the Alleluia in the Roman mass liturgy, which was formed from the extension of the closing part of the Alleluia choir ( it was called the 'jubilus'). In its first, "classical" phase we have to mention Notker Balbulus (from 840). The Notler-type sequentia was characterised by the principle of proceeding repetitions: it connected verse pairs of alternating length, which had the same melody, and these were usually introduced and closed by a single verse line. Early sequentias usually had a syllabic structure (every sound was one syllable). The outstanding centre of the first phase was the St Martial monastery of Limoges and the St Gallen monastery in Switzerland. Sequentia poetry united a punctual and sophisticated theological thinking with a high-quality, sometimes extravagant poetic and musical language.
The central figure of the new style sequentia (about 200 years after the 'classical' period) was Adam Szentviktori, an Augustine canon from Paris. By this time the sequentia was completely separated from the Alleluia, and in place of the assonance there was a rhymed, stressed verse, and the great-scale, expanding tunes reflected a new taste. The strong influence of this Szentviktor poetic-musical style could be felt in the offices of Hungarian saints. By the end of the Middle Ages there were several hundred sequentias, and the songs of local saints played a fairly important role besides the generally used ones. The 16th-cetnury synod of Trident banned almost all the sequentias from the liturgy, and only four were left for the whole church year: Victimae paschali laudes, Veni Sancte Spiritus, Lauda Sion, Dies ira; later Stabat Mater was also included.
JM
antiphony
A choir book containing the songs of the office.
JM
graduale
1. A decorative Gregorian song following the reading of the mass. 2. A choir book containing the songs of the mass.
JM
Gregorian
The only high-quality artificial music of the turn of the millennium. Its roots go back to the Mediterranean music culture before Christ. Its final form was gained in three phases: in the second half of the 4th century; to the encouragement of Pope Gregory, who gave the name, at the beginning of the 7th century; in the 8th century, through the work of Charlemagne's educated priests. It reminds us of ancient melodies, it encourages the birth of different genres adaptable to situations and traditions, but in its varieties it uses a uniform musical language.
JM
liturgy (Greek, Latin)
Originally it meant "common work" (leiton ergon), the believers praised the Lord together: with their words and deeds. In the legal sense of the word it meant the official services. For the Catholics it also means the practice of the office outside the service, including the tunes with liturgical texts, as "the melody accompanying holy texts is necessary and essential part of the solemn liturgy" (the second Vatican council, Liturgical Constitution, paragraph 112).
JM
office
According to Roman rite, it was a series of sung prayers consecrating the changing process of days and nights. Hours of prayer were connected to parts of the day, which go back to Jewish traditions, show a fixed sequence by St Benedict's time (around 530). According to this the horas were the following: matutinum, laudes, prima, tertia, sexta, nona, vesperas and completorium. The most important of these were the dawn laudes and sunset vesperas. The basic material of the office were the psalms, these were supplemented by antiphonies functioning as frame-songs, recited readings and the responsories answering those. Verse hymns in the middle of big office hours (laudes, vesperas and completorium) were performed before the canticum of the New Testament, while they were sung at the beginning of small horas. Both at monks and cathedral-parish practice the commonly sung choir prayers were quite general; the individually read breviary (encouraged by Rome in the 12-13th centuries) spread only in modern times.
JM