In Assumptione B. M. V.
A few months after Paul the Deacon arrived in Rome,
Hadrian I presented the envoy with a gift: a missal that was to fulfil
the request of Charles the Great. The Gallic Church was then undergoing
a period of reforms. They aimed to introduce the Roman liturgy in its
purest possible form (inmixtum), unblemished by false piety and
error. Medieval people regarded the old and archaic as genuine,
therefore, close to the authentic article. That is why Charles the
Great searched for the original Roman scripts. He counted above all on
finding a copy of the sacramentarium written by St Gregory, the Pope.
Although the fragments of Hadrian's gift for Charles dated back to the
end of the 7th century, the gift was unlikely to be the excerpt from
the Sacramentarium Gregorianum, i.e. the coveted original.
Still, thanks to the worship and piety with which Gallic rulers treated
the missal obtained from the bishop of Rome, the influence of the book
reached nearly as far as the whole of Western Europe. Its traces can
still be found many centuries later in liturgies recited in Aachen,
Paris, Cologne and Bologna.
In the Dominican Archetype (a standard of the entire
liturgy of the Order finally approved in 1256), the missal's junior by
450 years, we can easily find many fragments rooted in the missal,
which Hadrian presented to the ruler of Gallia about 784. Some offices
are fully consistent not only with the oldest excerpts of Hadrianum,
but also with earlier liturgical references. Specific examples of the
archaic texts are the prayers to the feast of the Holy Assumption of
the Blessed Virgin Mary. They date back to the times of Pope Sergius I
(687–701), Syrian by birth, who is remembered by Christians for
enriching the western liturgy with feasts of the Eastern Church. We do
not know whether the texts of in Assumptione existed earlier or
originated only in the 7th century. It is certain, however, that thanks
to the Dominican writings they reached our times almost intact.
Authenticity of pronunciation of the text is not of paramount
importance. Similarly, it is not absolutely vital that the chants
accompanying them should be an exact copy of sounds known centuries
ago. After all, music in particular succumbed, albeit reluctantly and
slowly, to influences of various fashions, to the changing aesthetic
trends or personalities of cantors, both in the music and in the lyrics
of liturgy. From the very beginning something imperishable and
unimpaired remained: glorious mystery.
In in Assumptione there is an empty grave but also
clouds with their blissful dwellers. Unlike at Easter, what counts is
not so much the empty grave as heavenly glory. Here is a Woman, taken
with body and soul to another world. After separation she is back with
her Son. Those connected by Incarnation could not be separated by
death. Eternal, heavenly life had already started here on earth. Mary,
both when alive and having been transferred to glory, has remained with
Jesus. Our lives, although transformed, do not end – we will continue
to live. As early as today we are certain of immortality. One of us
lives in glory. Her life with Christ on earth was changed into heavenly
existence. Death is not the end of the way.
The Mystery of Assumption fascinated our brethren who in the
18th century wrote down the liturgy of the Assumption. They used
ancient texts and the shell of accompanying music borrowed from the
Cistercians. However, striking concurrence between the Cistercian
and the Dominican books can lead to misleading conclusions. True, the
reform introduced by St Bernard's brethren is reflected in the
Dominican liturgy. Nevertheless, at first sight, differences are more
significant than similarities; because the Dominicans applied different
music notation to the one used by the Cistercians and as a result
developed the Cistercian reform. The Dominicans (together with the
Franciscans) first widely used nota quadrata.
Until then (with some sporadic exceptions) square notes were used only
in polyphony. The Dominicans ventured to use them to write liturgical
monodic music. Moreover, they used an unparalleled number of intervals,
with the exception of the mendicants' books (vertical lines between the
notes). It seems that new notes allowed to specify better the length of
the notes and intervals in chanting. Chanting guidelines found in other
Dominican writings imply that chanting was strong, kept in a strict
rhythm and divided into relatively short, decorative phrases.
We have been trying now for a few years, together with Marcin Szczyciński (and this time also with the members of Bornus Consort)
to get closer not only to the form of singing of our brethren but also
to their spiritual experience. We feel that their ancient celebrations
carried beauty forgotten in our times. If we manage to rediscover it,
we will be able to explore better the splendour of the Mystery.
Therefore, the work on the subsequent discs, although still only an
attempt to reconstruct the original, focuses more and more on catching
the cele-bratory atmosphere. We would like it to reveal before us
singing as close to the ancient chant as possible, and to make it our
chant and our prayer. We believe that thanks to this project we will
succeed in joining spiritually with our brethren who departed from this
world long time ago. We hope that by participating in such a spiritual
experience we will merge our voices with uniform chant of glory.
This disc includes missal chants along with the preceding rite
of purification. We have selected an office [1] from the day of our
meeting. We were not looking for any particularly beautiful
compositions; we intended to chant texts of a given day along with
other brethren gathered in the stalls. We wanted – just like our
brethren in the past – to sing the Oficium and watch the celebrant enter with his ministers. Later – in turn with the second choir – we wanted to chant Kyrie eleison, Gloria in excelsis and see a solemn procession with the gospel book and listen to chanted readings to reach, step by step, through offertorium and Sanctus, Agnus Dei and the Holy Communion chant. In our way we have not passed over celebrant chants.
Two last chants on the disc do not belong to oficium. We registered our attempt to recreate the 13th century organum duplum
Alleluia Felix, found and described by Kenneth Levy. We have not
adopted his interpretation but proposed our own instead, resulting from
our exploration of monody. We are convinced that the organum dating
back to the 13th century and stored by the Dominicans in their scripts
had all the hallmarks of common choral brethren's chant. We are looking
for an answer to the question whether the principles of the Dominican
monody could be applied to a greater extent to such chants.
We end with the same Gospel we heard in oficium, however, this
time sung in
the old decorative Spanish tone of the 12th century. Contrary to
appearances, this chant is not far from the Gregorian compositions. The
simplified version of the same melody can be found in the Genealogy of Christ
copied in the Dominican scripts and performed to this day.
In the course of our research we have reached a conclusion that,
contrary to the commonly accepted view, at the time of founding the
Dominican order, the liturgical chant of the Church was far more
homogenous in Europe. The development and dynamic popularisation of the
Dominican liturgy proves that still in the 13th century the liturgy was
a binder of the divided Church.
[1] The Dominicans used the terminology other than the one we find
in Roman liturgy scripts. "Oficium" meant both the entire mass liturgy
and introit, but "responsorium" was the word for a chant following a
reading i.e. Roman gradual.
Dominican Friars
(Translated by LINGUART, Mc Hugh)
