Development of earlier plainchant

Unaccompanied singing has been part of the Christian liturgy since the earliest days of the Church. Until the mid-1990s, it was widely accepted that the psalmody of ancient Jewish worship significantly influenced and contributed to early Christian ritual and chant. This view is no longer generally accepted by scholars, due to analysis that shows that most early Christian hymns did not have Psalms for texts, and that the Psalms were not sung in synagogues for centuries after the Destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70.^[3] However, early Christian rites did incorporate elements of Jewish worship that survived in later chant tradition. Canonical hours have their roots in Jewish prayer hours. "Amen" and "alleluia" come from Hebrew, and the threefold "sanctus" derives from the threefold "kadosh" of the Kedusha.^[4]

The New Testament mentions singing hymns during the Last Supper: "When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives"Matthew 26.30. Other ancient witnesses such as Pope Clement I, Tertullian, St. Athanasius, and Egeria confirm the practice,^[5] although in poetic or obscure ways that shed little light on how music sounded during this period.^[6] The 3rd-century Greek "Oxyrhynchus hymn" survived with musical notation, but the connection between this hymn and the plainchant tradition is uncertain.^[7]

Musical elements that would later be used in the Roman Rite began to appear in the 3rd century. The Apostolic Tradition, attributed to the theologian Hippolytus, attests the singing of Hallel psalms with Alleluia as the refrain in early Christian agape feasts.^[8] Chants of the Office, sung during the canonical hours, have their roots in the early 4th century, when desert monks following St. Anthony introduced the practice of continuous psalmody, singing the complete cycle of 150 psalms each week. Around 375, antiphonal psalmody became popular in the Christian East; in 386, St. Ambrose introduced this practice to the West.

Scholars are still debating how plainchant developed during the 5th through the 9th centuries, as information from this period is scarce. Around 410, St. Augustine described the responsorial singing of a Gradual psalm at Mass. At ca. 520, Benedictus of Nursia established what is called the rule of St. Benedict, in which the protocol of the Divine Office for monastic use was laid down. Around 678, Roman chant was taught atYork.^[9] Distinctive regional traditions of Western plainchant arose during this period, notably in the British Isles (Celtic chant), Spain (Mozarabic), Gaul (Gallican), and Italy (Old Roman, Ambrosian and Beneventan). These traditions may have evolved from a hypothetical year-round repertory of 5th-century plainchant after the western Roman Empire collapsed.

Source : Wikipedia

PATER NOSTER - Sung by Pope John Paul II

The most Beautiful prayer I have ever heard as sung by a Pope.... It is So Spiritual... Take a moment to watch the video....

Gregorian Chant

"Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song of the Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in the Frankish lands of western and central Europe during the ninth and tenth centuries, with later additions and redactions. Although popular legend credits Pope St. Gregory the Great with inventing Gregorian chant, scholars believe that it arose from a later Carolingian synthesis of Roman chant and Gallican chant.

Gregorian chants are organized into eight scalar modes. Typical melodic features include characteristic incipits and cadences, the use of reciting tones around which the other notes of the melody revolve, and a vocabulary of musical motifs woven together through a process called centonization to create families of related chants. Instead of octave scales, six-note patterns called hexachords underlie the modes. These patterns use elements of the modern diatonic scale as well as what would now be called B-flat. Gregorian melodies are transcribed using neumes, an early form of musical notation from which the modern five-line staff developed during the sixteenth century.[1] Gregorian chant played a fundamental role in the development of polyphony.

Gregorian chant was traditionally sung by choirs of men and boys in churches, or by women and men of religious orders in their chapels. It is the music of the Roman Rite, performed in the Mass and the monastic Office. Gregorian chant supplanted or marginalized the other indigenous plainchant traditions of the Christian West to become the official music of the Catholic liturgy. Although Gregorian chant is no longer obligatory, the Catholic Church still officially considers it the music most suitable for worship.[2] During the twentieth century, Gregorian chant underwent a musicological and popular resurgence." --- Source: Wikipedia

That priceless 'CUP OF LOVE'

Every mornin we get up with many hopes in our mind... We would have targets to achieve,promises to fulfill, and many other things to do before we return to the bed at the end of the day...
We may get up at 6 in the mornin or as early as 3 but, did we ever think that there is someone who takes the trouble and get up before us and would make a nice hot cup of tea and bring it to our rooms or keep it on the table and say 'child, drink the tea before it gets cold '????
No matter how late we are,she wants us to take a moment to drink that cup of tea. She must be believing that 'this cup of tea will make my son / daughter stay fit , think wisely , do good things , etc...... ' Yes , it is the truth. That cup of tea would disappear the laziness in our bodies , make us stronger giving an undescribable power.. Indeed , it is not just an ordinary mix of tea and milk. It contains the affection of a mother , her love , her care for us and everything that a mom would give to her child and it also carry a message : ' my dear daughter / son , be a good child. I love you. '
And the taste of that cup of tea , no one else can make it to that taste other than our own moms and that taste would never change.
But, our moms doing all this , how many finds have we said ' thank you mama or mom , the tea was good , thanks !' but in case by any chance if she had forgot to add sugar we would definitely complain to her and make a big fuss.
She would know that she has done her job when we drink it and silently move on...........

Think a bit , the cup of tea we drink every morning , isn't it a priceless cup of love ???