Gaudete! Rejoice!

We refer to the third Sunday in Advent as Gaudete Sunday, or “Rejoice” Sunday.  It takes its name from the opening word of the introit for the day’s Mass: Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice! The Episcopal lectionary is on a three year rotation, and the reading from Philippians from which the introit is taken falls on the third year of the cycle (this year, as it happens).  Regardless of the year, the lectionary readings for this week all exhort us to rejoice.  One can expect the music for the day to be bright and, well, rejoicing. 

As is the case for many, many liturgical texts, the passage for this week’s reading from Philippians has been set to music by composers for the past fifteen hundred and more years. A chanted Mass which would use the afore-mentioned introit became popular in the monasteries and divinity schools from the 10^th through 13^th centuries. Gregorian chant was not actually invented by Pope Gregory I, but he was responsible for first organizing and notating which music was to be used on various occasions in the church calendar. His cataloging system was extensive and included chants for all eight divine daily offices sung in the monasteries. His method of musical notation became the precursor for modern music notation. (You can see an example of Gregorian notation when visit the above hyperlink for the introit.) One of the more prolific schools of composers for Gregorian chant and chansons—that is, secular songs using that notation style—was the Notre Dame School in Paris.  In the early days, chant was monophonic, having only one line of music in a plainchant based on the old Roman rites or Gallican chants. (Gallican chants were use in Roman Christian worship, mostly in France and northern Spain.) 

Gothic cathedral mathematical ground plan

The composers from the Notre Dame School, being progressive and liberal as is wont in an educational institution, began developing enhancements to the music, oft times out of sheer necessity when all voices could not comfortably sing the same monophonic line of music.  But mostly, their compositions were such to complement the mathematical rules and structures of the sacred spaces in which the music would be sung.  The architecture of both the space and the music was for the glory of God.  They composers of the Notre Dame School composed chants (only Léonin and Pérotin, who composed most of the famed Magnus Liber Organi, remain known composers of the institution) with melody or cantus firmus carried by the lower voices and the harmonic line by the voices in higher register. Initially, this radical polyphonic sound was shocking to hear in a religious setting.  But as these gothic churches continued to be built with precision and innovation, so too was the building of the structures of sound used to fill these spaces.  Later polyphonic chants would employ intervals to mimic not only those proportions of the building design, but the intricate and ornate innovations as well. [You may be interested in viewing the BBC 4’s Sacred Music Series 1, the first episode of which delves into the specifics of Gothic sacred music.]

Henry Purcell

As time progressed and rules and protocol for what was divinely inspiring changed, sacred music invariably matured as well.  During the Renaissance, harmonic lines ventured into strategically derived dissonances designed to be quickly resolved according to the rules of counterpoint.  By the Baroque era, those dissonances were composed to provide texture and color to the harmonies and enhance the text.  Harmonies became intricately ornamented—yet those same ornamentations followed precise structural rules.  Composers of Baroque music began with an emotion as foundation.  Using our Rejoice in the Lord Always text as an example, Henry Purcell began the composition with the emotion of the word “rejoice.”  That uplifting, joyfulness is imitated in the structure of the music as can be heard in the rising pattern of the musical phrase accompanying the text.  Still, Baroque composers approached this expression of the foundational emotion with objectivity and deliberate calculation, i.e. joy rises, therefore the music should reflect that with a rising pattern.  The emotional foundation is not that of the composer’s, but of his intellectual analysis and artistic expression of the emotion.  He will use all the mechanics of music, like pitch, volume, tempo, to express an emotional text.  As you listen to Purcell’s Rejoice in the Lord Alway, note how the “rejoice” passages use a more detached, brisker tempo compared to the passage that discusses the peace of God.  This section is more legato—smoother—and gentler in volume.  Also, the intervals of the harmonies are tighter, reflecting a lack of conflict.  Peace. (This gaudete Sunday at Trinity Church in Rutland, the choir will sing the abbreviated version of this anthem.)

Gospel musician, Israel Houghton

Since I seem to be in a pattern of jumping every 400 years or so in sacred music, let’s take a very quick peek at a version of our text in a modern gospel-music setting.  Music doesn't reinvent itself over time; it evolves, hanging onto elements that work.  What you hear in the plainchant of ancient Roman Mass is the basis for the beginnings of sacred harmony in the Gothic rites.  That is built on and embellished in the sacred music of the baroque.  All of those elements can be found in the expression of sacred music in a modern setting.  Israel Houghton, a composer of modern sacred music who set the same Rejoice in the Lord Always text to music, uses modern instrumentation and style.  Repetition is a popular devise to express the emphatic.  Sheer volume and quantity of musicians expresses the abstract of the vastness and diversity of God’s creation and His heaven.  There is also the added physicality of the music, the aspect that compels one to dance.  Yet, even in this very new music, you can hear the elements of the old: the single line of melody that becomes enriched and empowered with the layering of harmonic lines and voices (borrowed from the gothic period); the deliberate utilization of musical devises to expresses the foundational emotion (as practiced in the Baroque era) and various stages not even considered in this article.

Regardless of the historical time period, the text that drives the music is of itself a linguistic work of music.  Take the words and grammar away, but leave the meaning and concept of the expression, then “rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say rejoice” remains as music of God’s spirit within us.  And we become the voices and instruments of God’s divine music.  When that happens, it’s easy.  Gaudete!  And again. Rejoice!