To chant or to sing. . .

There are many who have reduced “chant” to a generic term simply meaning “to sing.”  I suppose it is an easy enough confusion of terms.  Chant in this way encompasses everything from, well, real chant to hymn singing to the ballad singing of contemporary Christian music.  It is as if they were all the same in the most basic form or expression.  I guess it is also a reflection of how far we have come from the roots of congregational music in Gregorian Chant -- which is not merely a form of chant as a genre but its source and foundation.

Chant is wedded to the text in a way that no other church music is.  Most of us know music that is wedded to a melody or tune and a meter or rhythm.  There is nothing wrong with this but this is not chant.  Think of it this way.  Could you imagine singing a Lenten text to a Christmas tune?  Have you ever tried to put a meter to free texts either from Scripture or your own imagination?  It is not easy.  Meter and rhythm are difficult task masters.  Chant is the only way to let the text dominate.  It is free from some of those demands of rhyme, rhythm, and meter.  You hear the difference when you sing the 23rd Psalm to a hymntune -- even in a setting that is pretty much straight forward Psalm text -- and when you sing that same Psalm to a chant tone.  Of course, chant is still rhythmic speaking or singing, characterized by repetition and a limited range of pitches, but it is definitely not metrical nor does the melody lead the words in the way they do in a hymn or popular song.  Chant maintains the single tone as the dominant note on which the words are sung.  It is not monotone but the single tone is the focus of the bulk of the words.  It is repetitive but not as a chorus might be.  It has limited notes or range though even this may be stretched.

While I do not mean in anyway to diminish the value and blessing of the hymn with its meter and melody that predominate, the place where the text rules is in chant.  It is a wonderful thing when the text and tune of a hymn come together into almost one singular reality in which neither the words nor the melody dominate but both work together to support what is being sung.  It is a wonderful thing but it is not necessarily common to all hymns.  In fact, we all know this and have sung hymns in which the words and the music seem to battle a bit with the words winning some of the time and the tune the rest of the time.

Chant is different.  Take the Psalm tone.  I will not, by the way, defend all the choices made in LSB with respect to the Psalms and the places where the tone changes in those Psalms.  But when the body of the Psalm is chanted on one note with beginning or ending flourishes, you can readily see how the text or Word predominates.  Chant is not necessarily only a single note but can be voices in harmony.  Think here of the difference between Gregorian Chant and the Anglican style Psalm settings so rich and elegant.  They are some of my favorites.

We have become addicts of through composed liturgical music in which the melody is dominant, of paraphrases that force the texts into a specific meter sung to a specific tune, and of music that is appreciated more for its sound than its ability to sing the words.  Part of me laments this.  I have often said that the Fryxell setting of the Common Service in the 1958 Service Book and Hymnal remains a favorite of mine.  It is exclusively chant.  It was never widely popular and easily dropped when the next book came along but I fear we have lost something in finding our comfort solely in rhythmic music in which tune and meter dominate instead of chant.  I wish we had a ghost of a chance to recover what we have lost.  

Just a reminder than not every kind of music is chant and chant is not simply rather specific but also preferred over time for the singing of the liturgy in the Church.  Alas, we may have a rich heritage in this regard but I am not sure we even know what chant is anymore -- much less Gregorian Chant.