Early Church Music

Early Church Music

Western Europe may have inherited modes, (early scales) through an oral tradition (hearing tunes sung or played and then playing them yourself) but many ancient texts include a "vocal notation' or "instructions for singing'

St Ambrose, who produced numerous "hymn-like' texts, was said to have improvised the Te Deum Laudam when baptising Augustine.

The ancient hymn "O, Gladsome Night' is still used in the Orthodox Greek Church to this day.

Around the beginning of the 7th century Pope Gregory the Great was responsible for reforming church melodies and instigated the notation of music that was commonly used in the church. We can hear those melodies performed today as Gregorian Chants or plain-chant.

Figure 1: An example of plain-chant notated in square neumes.

Unaccompanied singers today can still be seen covering an ear so their performance is not influenced by the harmonies of other performers

Neumes – Square Notes

Many plain-chant melodies were written down with a system of square notes called neumes (see Fig. 1).

The notes were square because the nib of the pen was a shaped piece of reed cut to a square end.

Neumes date from the 9th century and the plain-chant performance tradition is still alive within the Roman church and monasteries today.