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(sm) All the more so in this season of Advent, the great liturgy of the Catholic Church is literally at the antipodes of the rampant new religion of nature, with the earth as mother goddess.
Let the heavens “rain down the Just One” and the earth “be opened and bud forth the Savior.” This is what the Church sings and hopes for, as it will do in a few days in the admirable Gregorian introit “Rorate caeli” of the Fourth Sunday of Advent. Nature and man have no other ultimate reason than in God their Creator and Savior.
Gregorian chant is a perfect expression of this biblical and Christian vision of the earth. And that is what is explained on this page of Settimo Cielo by Maestro Fulvio Rampi, a great expert and devotee of this age-old chant that is all of a piece with the Catholic liturgy, a liturgy whose current obfuscation is in part due precisely to the unforgivable abandonment of the Gregorian.
Rampi teaches pre-polyphony at the Turin Conservatory and conducts the “Cantori Gregoriani” and the “Coro Sicardo” of Cremona, where he was also choirmaster of the cathedral. He is one of the top Gregorianists in the world, the author of important books, has conducted and recorded an impressive corpus of chants, and his lessons can be followed on his personal website, in Italian and English.
Have a good read and enjoy listening to the eight tracks included in the text!
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ECOLOGY ACCORDING TO GREGORIAN CHANT
by Fulvio Rampi
What identifies every Gregorian chant – that “sound of the Word” which the Latin Church in exclusive terms has defined as “its own” – is first of all its being situated in a precise moment of celebration, which in turn is necessarily and intimately characterized on the aesthetic level by its own texts and by a specific stylistic-formal structure.
To this must be added the equally essential diachronic dimension, that of belonging to a season of celebration, which sets each passage in the heart of the Christological journey marked by the liturgical year.
But in this immense musical treasury it is also possible to glimpse common threads that run through and mark the flow of liturgical time, that connect different pieces to a recurring theme.
One of the threads that can be discerned is the theme of the earth, meaning the regard in which Gregorian chant holds the “ecological question,” so to speak.
The theme of the earth is dear to Sacred Scripture, which from the book of Genesis teaches us that man and the earth are placed by God in a close relationship with Him and with each other. Man is formed from the earth, made of “dust of the ground,” but into him God breathes his spirit. In open contention with every ancient and new myth that would sacralize the earth goddess as ancestral mother, biblical wisdom recalls that man is indeed earthy, a fragile, transitory fruit of the earth, but he is not its child, because he is created by God.
Far from any idolatry, Israel and the Church therefore do not celebrate the earth in and of itself. Everything is a vehicle and a token that leads back to the One from whom everything comes. All the institutes and events of salvation are gifts of the powerful breath of God, which starting from the creation of man continues to make this earth and its history fruitful, making it live and revive, beyond all its possibilities. Gregorian chant, in its flowing along the liturgical seasons, confirms precisely this interpretive key.
Already the “communio” of the First Sunday of Advent, “Dominus dabit benignitatem,” is set in the perspective just mentioned. The analysis of this piece reveals the primacy of the subject, “Dominus,” brought into special emphasis by the melisma on the final syllable of this decisive first word. The Lord is the protagonist from whom all the rest of the antiphon originates: the earth “dabit fructum suum,” will bear its fruit, precisely because “Dominus dabit benignitatem.”
> LISTEN
“Dominus dabit benignitatem:
et terra nostra dabit fructum suum.”
Psalm 84, from which the text of this “communio” is taken, sounds forth again in the offertory of the third Sunday of Advent with verse 2: “Benedixisti Domine terram tuam,” where it can be noted how the musical emphasis on “terram” is subordinated to the divine blessing, mentioned right at the opening of the passage.
> LISTEN
“Benedixisti Domine terram tuam:
avertisti captivitatem Jacob:
remissisti iniquitatem plebis tuae.”
The binomial man-earth, extensively developed in the Old Testament, finds its solution in Jesus Christ. The Incarnation, in fact, manifests their irreversible link to God’s saving plan. The Son of God, the Word through whom everything was made – as the prologue of the Gospel of John declares – becomes man, by reason of which the earth no longer receives an idea but a Person: no longer justice, but the Just One who realizes it; no longer salvation, but the Savior.
This is what is proclaimed on the Fourth Sunday of Advent with the introit “Rorate coeli,” the original text of which, taken from the prophet Isaiah, was forced into a Christological vein by Jerome in his Latin translation. In this way the gift of God, which the Old Testament had identified in the gift of the earth, is transferred to the person of Christ.
> LISTEN
“Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum:
aperiatur terra, et germinet Salvatorem.”
This brings us to the three Masses of Christmas, where in all the respective offertories the theme of the earth is cited with extensive emphases: “Laetentur ceeli et exsultet terra” at Midnight Mass; “Deus enim firmavit orbem terrae,” God has made firm the earth, in the offertory for Morning Mass; lastly to proclaim in the offertory of the Mass of the day: “Tui sunt coeli et tua est terra.”
None other than the Mass of Christmas Day is the context in which this theme is most present: in the alleluia “Dies sanctificatus,” for example, where at a certain point this is sung: “Hodie descendit lux magna super terram,” but above all in the gradual and in the “communio,” which take up the same line of Psalm 97: “Viderunt omnes fines terrae salutare Dei nostri,” all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. With particular emphasis reserved precisely for “terrae” in the first part of the “communio.”
> LISTEN
“Viderunt omnes fines terrae
salutare Dei nostri.”
With Epiphany, the theme of the earth is joined by the theme of adoration. It should be noted that those called to adoration include not only the Magi, the kings of the world, and the nations (as the alleluia, the offertory, and the “communio” tell us) but the earth itself, all the earth, it too called to worship the Lord.
On the second Sunday after Epiphany, in fact, the introit takes up the text from Psalm 65: “Omnis terra adoret te, Deus,” let all the earth adore you, O God. The decided musical emphasis, both melodic and rhythmic, is precisely on the verb “adoret”: the earth, all the earth, is called to worship God, in resonance with the manifestation and kingship celebrated a few days earlier on the solemnity of Epiphany.
> LISTEN
“Omnis terra adoret te, Deus, et psallat tibi:
psalmum dicat nomini tuo, Altissime.”
It is interesting how also at Easter the theme of the earth is brought to the forefront. The offertory for the Mass of the day begins with this very word, paired with the next two verbs opposite in nature: “Terra tremuit et quievi,” the earth trembled and was still.
> LISTEN
“Terra tremuit et quievit,
dum resurgeret in iudicio Deus, alleluia.”
On the following day, the “feria secunda” of the octave of Easter, the introit revisits the theme with an allusion to the exodus from Egypt and to the entry into the promised land, in a Christological vein: “Introduxit vos Dominus in terram fluentem lac et mel,” the Lord has brought you into a land flowing with milk and honey.
The Easter season is the season of the alleluia, that is, of jubilation and proclamation. Even the earth participates in this, and every Sunday of Easter, after the Sunday “in albis,” contains this summons in its proper chants, especially in the introits.
So it is for the joyous introit in the eighth mode for the third Sunday, with the text of Psalm 65: “Iubilate Deo omnis terra.” The jubilation of the earth finds its root and reason in the mercy with which the Lord has filled the earth itself.
This is what the introit of the Fourth Sunday of Easter tells us, with the words of Psalm 32: “Misericordia Domini plena est terra.” The melodic-rhythmic unfolding of this antiphon is much more contained than the exuberant “Iubilate Deo” of the previous Sunday: here we are in mode IV, the “deuterus plagale,” the same tonic modality of the surprising Easter introit “Resurrexi.”
On the Fifth Sunday of Easter the theme of jubilation returns, in the offertory that proclaims: “Iubilate Deo universa terra.” And after preparation, adoration, mercy, jubilation, here is the theme of proclamation that finds its place in the introit of the Sixth Sunday of Easter “Vocem iucunditatis annuntiate”: a joyous proclamation destined to reach the ends of the earth, “usque ad extremum terrae,” expressed melodically with the wide-ranging register of the melody of the whole piece.
> LISTEN
“Vocem iucunditatis annuntiate,
et audiatur, alleluia:
nuntiate usque ad extremum terrae:
liberavit Dominus populum suum, alleluia, alleluia.”
The common thread that, starting from Advent, has also run through the Easter season finally comes to Pentecost, the definitive arrival point of a journey marked by the divine initiative over all creation, solemnly condensed in the incipit of the wonderful introit: “Spiritus Domini replevit orbem terrarum.”
> LISTEN
“Spiritus Domini replevit orbem terrarum, alleluia:
et hoc quod continet omnia,
scientiam habet vocis, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”
In short, Gregorian chant, constantly suspended between heaven and earth, becomes a voice both noble and humble (from “humus,” earth) of precisely this superabundance of grace. Always intoning the appropriate response and made its own by the Church.
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