![]() Gregorian chant throughout the centuries has enriched and deepened the Latin liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church and has been a source of inspiration in almost every period of European music history. With the help of these manuscripts it is possible today to restore the original melodies of Gregorian compositions. In the eleventh century, we find manuscripts the notation of which documents the exact melodic line through precise graphic positioning of signs, through the use of lines or of a lettering system that indicates pitch. They contain, rather, nuanced indication for a rhythmic-agogic interpretation of the music. These neumes supply no more than a relative key to the melodic line. Written above the text in these manuscripts one finds a system of signs, the neumes that stem from the hand-signals of the director and from rhetorical signs these represent a detailed notation system. In the ninth and tenth centuries we find the first Gregorian music written down, representing the earliest examples of musical notation in the West. It was originally by oral tradition that these chants were handed down. The sound bodies given to the biblical texts stem from this contemplative spirituality. The composers often were monks, formed by their daily contact with the Bible and particularly with the psalms. From this convergence arose a new symbiosis of word and song, a perfect unity of text and melody, of great artistic expressivity and spiritual depth. In their present form, the great majority of the chants originated in the course of the standardization of the liturgy that took place under Carolingian rule in the eighth and ninth centuries, from the convergence of two previously independent traditions: the song of the Roman liturgy and the chant of the Gallican liturgy. Gregorian melodies developed largely out of these liturgical recitatives, and in particular from the psalmody. As early as the fourth century AD we find evidence for the antiphonal singing of psalms (alternating between two choirs) and for responsorial singing (between a precentor and a schola). Simple psalm recitations and prayers were adopted into the Christian liturgy. The Gregorian melodies have their roots in the Jewish synagogue service.
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