Chapter 9
NINTH CHAPTER
How many Psalms are to be said at the Night Office During the aforesaid winter season, the night office is to be opened with the versicle: "Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare thy praise" (Ps. 1, 17).1 This is chanted three times and is immediately followed by the third psalm with the doxology, Gloria Patri, etc. After this there is chanted the 94th psalm together with its antiphon, or on occasion simply without an antiphon. Next should follow a hymn (Ambrosianum),2 and close upon it should come six psalms in succession with their
(prescribed) antiphons and a versicle (with its rejoinder). These having been sung, let the abbot intone the blessing. And while the rest of the monks are seated on the benches, three lessons are read from the book on the lectern by (three of) the brethren taking turns, a responsory being chanted after each lesson. After the first two responsories, there is no Gloria Patri, etc., but after the third responsory, the doxology is chanted by the last reader.
As he begins to sing this, all the brethren rise and bow in honor of the Most Holy Trinity.
The books read at the Vigilia (Matins) are the inspired (books) of both the Old and the New Testaments, as also com mentaries on them written by well known and orthodox Catholic
Fathers. Following these three lessons with their responsories, there come the other six psalms, which are to be chanted with allelujas. Immediately after the last six psalms with their allelujas, comes a lesson from the Apostle, which is to be recited from memory, then the versicle and the plea of the Litany, that is, the Kyrie Eleison; therewith the Vigilia come to a close.3
' After the very strict night silence (cf. chap, xliii), this plea is especially mean ingful and impressive. A later generation thought that the praises of God at the Vigils should be introduced by a Deus in adjutorium, etc. The author of the Holy
Rule did not think the added verse was called for.
2 The Rule uses the synonomous term Ambrosianum (Ambrosian hymn) four times for hymnus. St. Ambrose of Milan (f 397) was known as the great com poser of hymns, so that the two words came to be used interchangeably.
3 We no longer have any idea in how far the texts used in the divine office as out lined in the Holy Rule coincide with those in use today, except, of course, the
Excursus.
The Chants of the Holy Rule.—Even if the Holy Rule, in keeping with its unique character, seems to concern itself more with the extrinsic performance of the singing, it is nevertheless obvious that sacred song was zealously culti vated at Montecassino. The essential monastic restraint placed upon most monks in the matter of music did not meet with much encouragement in the Rule of St. Benedict (St. Augustine's Confessions X xxxiii). And if in his monastery the art of song was in fact fostered, this, in harmony with the old monastic viewpoint, was done primarily not for mere esthetic reasons, but from genuine religious motives (cf. chap, lviii).
The Individual Song-forms.—By far the most important song or chant in the Holy Rule was the singing of the psalm with its antiphon, then the psalm alone
(i.e., without an antiphon), the responsory after the longer lessons at Matins, the short responsory after the brief lessons at Lauds and Vespers—not omiting the hymns, the short responses after the versicles, the Kyrie eleison, and the supplication at the end of the Pater Noster (namely, "and deliver us from evil"); in a wider sense, the lesson might also be called a chant.
By the word "antiphon," St. Benedict/understood those short intonations which not only introduced the psalms and were repeated at the end of them, but which also indicated the precise tonal melody according to which the psalms were to be chanted. Its text was taken either from the psalms them selves or from other books of the Sacred Scriptures. St. Benedict also called the alleluja an antiphon, calling attention to antiphons made up largely or wholly of allelujas (cf. chap. xiv). The chanting of the psalms at the various prayer periods is, even today, a song of chastely simple melodies. And still the psalmody is both textually and musically enriched by the addition of the antiphons. Wherefore the singing of the psalms without antiphons is that wholly simple kind of psalmody of which the Rule speaks (cf. chaps, ix, xii, and xvii). Naturally, even this type of chanting was not so monotonal as our modern recitation on one pitch. Worthy of note here is the fact that St.
Benedict knew of only the two mentioned types of melody, whereas St.
Augustine speaks of three.
By the term responsorium (responsory), the Holy Rule understands a chant that is quite independent—as contrasted with that of the antiphon— and yet belongs to the lesson as the antiphon belongs to the psalm. The large responsory consisted of several verses between which like an echo, so to speak, there was repeated a responsum (answer). The final verse of the third responsory was the Gloria Patri. etc., (chap. ix). The number of verses, however, could be shortened (cf. chap. xi). The historical development of psalms, the canticles of the Benedict us and Magnificat, and the hymns, Te Deum and Te decet laus. The same remark applies to the melodies of the chant. Like wise, we know nothing certain concerning the size of the lessons or their arrange ment.
responsorial melodies shows, judging from their characteristic individuality, that these tended towards a musically richer and more artistic expression than the antiphons of the other prayer periods.
The hymns spoken of in the Holy Rule are of two types: those with a free flowing text and absence of meter (e.g., the Te Deum laudamus) and those that had been composed in strophes (stanzas) and measured verses, most of them known as Ambrosian hymns (cf. chaps, ix, xii, xiii, and xx).
One must surely assume that there were very old lesson melodies, in a word, that according to the Rule there was a musical rising and falling of the pitch at the principal punctuation marks (particularly, the periods, colons, and question marks). St. Benedict had very much at heart a good and edifying rendering of the lessons, in fact, of all the chants at the "Work of God" (Psallife sapienter, Ps. xlvi, 8; HR, chap. xx).
Distribution of the Chants.—The duty of intoning the psalms, reading the les sons, chanting the responsories and their verses, the Gloria Patri, etc., the first member of each versicle, and most likely the first verse of each hymn, was distributed regularly and in turn among all the monks (probably from week to week), the monk to whom this task was assigned during a particular hour or week standing in the middle of the choir for its performance.
The abbot assigned the duty of doing the intoning or chanting to those monks who were reasonably good at it and were not under monastic excom munication; and they had to prepare themselves well for it before the monks assembled for the "Work of God" (cf. chaps, xxiv, xliii, xliv, and xlvii). We must not overlok one pertinent fact, one that is certainly no longer true in our time, that the individual monks in the stalls, or on the benches, had no books in front of them, wherefore it was necessary that the parts which the choir had to chant had first to be intoned: and this became in time a structural principle of choral song.
Whether there was such a person as a cantor, or official director of the chant, in St. Benedict's monastery is not wholly clear from the wording of the Rule, although it is most likely (cf. chap, xlvii). It is possible, also, that the cantor directed the singing of the choir or schola with hand signals for the un dulating character of the melody so dear to the monks of antiquity.
All the other monks present in the oratory "answered," that is, repeated the antiphon after the psalm verses of the intoning monk. We do not know whether this repetition took place after every verse or only after two or three verses, but certainly after the last one. Furthermore, all the monks chanted the answers to the versicle and the plea of the Litany (Kyrie eleison), especial ly the general "answers" (e.g., sed libera nos a malo; cf. chap. xiii).Whether the choir as a whole took part in the chanting of the large responsories after the lessons is questionable; probably not, since the monks were seated during them (cf. chap, ix) and usually stood up when they chanted. In fact, the execution of these larger responsories presupposes the existence of a schola.
There is nothing in the Holy Rule to indicate the existence of a "double choir," or alternating choir, as we know it today from our public recitation of the psalms. Nor need we assume that there was such a choir for the chanting of the psalms with antiphons. In any case, the opinion that the antiphon pre supposes the existence of an alternating choir is also contraindicated. Like wise, we do not know when the intoning chanter (whom we call the first acoly te) was given an assistant (now our second acolyte). The Rule is silent on the point. Considering the distribution of the chants between the acolyte and the choir as we have described it above, it is quite possible, from our modern viewpoint, that a very important function fell to the choir as a whole, and that all the praying and chanting was assigned piecemeal, in a sort of mosaic fashion, among the individual monks present; for by this time the task of intoning the various parts of the night office fell at least to 20 individuals. Un doubtedly this practice of giving so prominent a function in the divine office to these solo performers had this special advantage, namely, that each single monk was called upon for an entirely personal participation in the "Work of God." In addition to this, the whole psalmody was thereby endowed with more life and variety. One need but think of 20 voices, each chiming in at intervals, one after another with its own distinct individuality, during the course of one night office.
Gregorian Plain Song.—The melodic individuality of the chants which we have been discussing belongs to the style of music which we call Gregorian
(after Pope Gregory (f 604) ) and pre-Gregorian respectively. The style had already reached a high degree of development at the time of St. Benedict, who died in 547, and hardly progressed much further from then on. In the great thesaurus of choral melodies which have come down to us from that time, we can distinctly recognize some pre-Gregorian ones. Of course, we cannot say which of these were heard in the cloister of St. Benedict.
Monastic Chants and the Songs of Art.—The Holy Rule counted on a com munity that was happy in song and trained for it. In fact, even the boys in the monastery were so well instructed in the chants that they could be entrusted with the task of intoning them (cf. chap. xlv). The art of psalmody was at that time in full flower. Familiar as they were with the Latin language, be cause it was their mother tongue, even the unlettered monks, who were not wanting in St. Benedict's monastery, could sing along with the rest so easily and fluidly that the choir could finish with many psalms in not too long a time. As was the chanting of the psalms, so was the singing of the hymns, full of rhythmic vitality. But the melodies of the psalms as well as those of the Ambrosian hymns had as yet in their simple form reached only a minor degree of musical expression as compared with the more artistic melodies of the later
Gregorian Chorale (for example, those of the Introit and Offertory of the Mass). Nevertheless, we do not know whether the rich antiphonal (such as the Introit) and the responsorial chant (such as the Gradual) at the Eucharistic