The Second Vatican Counci

The Second Vatican Council, in Sacrosanctum Concilium, affirmed and recognized Gregorian chant as "the chant proper to the Roman liturgy." However, this affirmation by the Council was not revolutionary, as chant had existed as the primordial music of the Church throughout its two-thousand-year history. "Indeed, chant seems to be intimately identified with the rites of the Roman Church since shortly after 313," which is the year that the Emperor Constantine called the Edict of Milan, granting to the Church the freedom to worship openly and without persecution. As a result, the concept of chant has existed within the Church since its earliest days, from which time it has functioned in the role of beatifying and adorning the Sacred Liturgy. Indeed, the Old Testament, prefiguring the Church, speaks of adorning the liturgy through the chanting of psalms and hymns; as a result, the Church, since its institution, has regarded chant as the primary and fundamental adornment of the liturgy, serving to assist in raising the minds of the faithful to a deeper sense of the sacred.

In recent decades, however, this emphasis on chant appears to have virtually disappeared, instead being replaced by contemporary music. A common argument for maintaining contemporary music in the Church is that this music draws the youth to the Church and to worship; however, I maintains that returning, reeducating, and reemphasizing chant's importance is key to evoking and instituting sublimity within the liturgy. This paper will serve to demonstrate the importance of chant to the modern world through examining the origins and history of chant, researching the early Papal decrees regarding sacred music, and analyzing what recent Popes and current authors have concluded regarding the nature of sacred music.

The concept of singing has been a part of the liturgy since the earliest days of the Church. In the Old Testament, God instructed the Israelites in the function of their liturgy; one of His mandates, then, was to praise Him through the singing of psalms and with instruments:

"The priests stood at their posts; the Levites also, with the

instruments for music to the Lord which King David had made

for giving thanks to the Lord - for his mercy endures for ever -

whenever David offered praises by their ministry; opposite them

the priests sounded trumpets; and all Israel stood."

In the New Testament, Matthew 26:30 attests to the singing of a hymn at the Last Supper, the first liturgy as instituted by Christ: "When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives." Following Pentecost, at which point the Apostles began to go out and spread Christianity, the liturgy, and subsequently the singing or chanting of the liturgy, began to develop in the various regions where Christianity had reached. As a result, "each region of the Christian West began to have a repertory of sacred music of its own: there was a single language but different texts and music." Of these separate traditions of sacred music, only Ambrosian chant, also known as Milanese chant, and Gregorian chant exist to this day in the Roman rite. Whereas Milanese chant remains more or less the same as it did approximately two-thousand-years ago, Gregorian chant developed from two separate chants of the early Church.

Gregorian chant, as we know it today, is actually the "result of a long evolutionary process," which combined the Roman chant, which was present in the early Church only in the city of Rome, and the Gallican chant, which developed in the lands of Roman Gaul. This culmination would take place in the later half of the eighth century when a political rapprochement occurred between the Frankish kingdom, under Pepin the Short and his son Charlemagne, and the papacy, under Stephen II and his successors. At this time, the Lombards threatened to take control of the Papal lands and estates. As a result, Pepin the Short promised to protect these lands in exchange for the renewal of the papal consecration of the Frankish King. Pepin the Short, recognizing and appreciating the Roman customs, realized that these customs might ensure religious stability within his kingdom and, thus, affect political unity. Consequently, a type of cross-fertilization took place between the Gallican and Roman chants: while the Gallican cantors accepted the texts of the Roman chants, the Gallican melodies and ornamentation style remained because this style to which they were accustomed. Thus, it would be the Frankish-Roman chant that Pope Gregory would compile during his pontificate and which today is called Gregorian chant.

Accompanying the celebration of the Mass and other liturgical functions, e.g. the Divine Office, Gregorian chant has a long, rich tradition as the music of the Latin Church. The Gregorian tradition, itself named after Pope Gregory I, began to take shape around the eighth century as the primary song of the Roman rite. Pope Gregory I, Bishop of Rome from 590 to 604, "did not himself compose any music for the Church." Instead, he is traditionally credited with ordering the simplification, cataloging, and codifying of music that was assigned to specific celebrations according to the ecclesiastical calendar of the Latin Church. In fact, Robert Hayburn argues, the chants of the Roman rite, as they are present now in the Divine Office and the Mass, probably "received their positions there from the [musical] reforms which Gregory instituted in the seventh century."

Prior to the birth of this musical notation and codifying by Gregory the Great, chant primarily was sung from memory; once the system of notation was established, however, the role of memory diminished and the cantor was no longer able to personally embellish or vocally articulate the chant. Instead, rhythmic values were assigned to chant, followed shortly after by notation, intending to "indicate the pitches of intervals." Gradually, staff lines and clefs appeared, helping to lighten the memory load on the cantors in addition to expanding the variations of chant between the liturgical texts.

Leo IV (847-855), the first pope to issue a document that dealt specifically with Church music, contributed the codification to Gregory I and expressed the forms of chant that must be used in and by the Church. In this bull, entitled Una res, Leo IV states:

This most holy Pope Gregory was a very great worshipper of

God, a renowned preacher, and a wise pastor, providing well

for the salvation of men; he produced the music