Old Roman Chant

Old Roman Chant

Old Roman Chant is a body of chant undoubtedly subject to the most contention of any, simply because it is both among the oldest (historically speaking) and because there are no original texts nor documentation of an oral tradition. The term refers to the chant tradition of the Church of Rome and those areas directly under her influence, from the time of the Early Church through the late 8th Century when Gregorian Chant began to predominate in the Western Church. We are left therefore with academic conjecture and re-creation.

OVERVIEW

The two principal positions regarding Old Roman Chant result from the fact that there are no manuscripts from before the 13th century that accurately and indisputeably represent the form, and thus (at best) accurately documenting the chant form would be a function of "oral tradition." What comprised Old Roman Chant tends to be seen two ways. What might be described as the “academic liturgical” view essentially begins with the thesis that the Roman chant that was completed by about 750 is inaccessible to us in its original form. Further, it is only the Roman chant that was transmitted to the Franks after 754 AD and was modified in significant ways by them (giving us what we know as Gregorian chant), that is accessible to us via extant manuscripts. In the Roman Catholic chant manuscript corpus, it is known that the five manuscripts labeled as “Old Roman Chant” are dated from the late 11th to the mid-12th centuries. Thus, by general agreement, the Old Roman and Gregorian sources each represent a development or modification of the same original, the Roman chant of around 750. Little, if anything, however, is said by proponents of this view about the nature of the liturgical chant sung in the Church of Rome up to that time and it is no surprise that their interpretation of Old Roman Chant sounds like a simplified Gregorian chant. Examples are recordings by Schola Hungarica.

In contrast, what might be described as the “historical reconstructionist” view begins with the common sense assumption that the early church exemplified a high degree of homogeneity, and therefore since early Christian music forms were based on older Greek music forms, it can be safely assumed that Old Roman Chant had its roots in, and probably sounded very similar to pre-Byzantine chant in the early church period. Most of the proponents of this understanding of Old Roman Chant have begun with the oldest manuscripts they have available, and informed by a variety of "extra-musical" datum, set out to try and recreate Old Roman chant--this is an undertaking akin to playing classical compositions on original instruments with the goal or recreating the original sound intended by the composer. In addition, this approach considers manuscripts outside the traditional Roman Catholic corpus to be valid, and since the earliest have notation akin to Byzantine notation, are not afraid to involve Byzantine musicologists to try to understand and recreate the sound. Thus it is no surprise that their interpretation of Old Roman Chant sound somewhat like early Byzantine chant. Examples are recordings by Marcel Peres and Ensemble Organum.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

Liturgica.com offers the following additional content on this subject:

1. Early Western Liturgics

2. Early Western Chant

3. Gregorian Reforms

4. Carolingian Reforms

5. Old Roman Chant

The Liturgica.com Web Store offers:

1. Old Roman Chant recordings by Schola Hungarica and Ensemble Organum

2. A wide range of books on the development of liturgical worship

3. A selection of books on chant and its development

4. Books on iconography