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Jasmine RielGroup-Organum Assignment: EssayMH-247-02, Music
Historiography IDr. HungOctober 15 th , 2012
In a liturgical service, I think hearing a sustained-note
organum and hearing just a chant can
have very different experiences. I think a sustained-note
organum involves more leadership from the
organal voice and more attention from the principal voice
because those or the soloist who is singing
the organal voice, like in our performances, had to be able to
sing their own part while remembering to
cue in the singers. I also think that everyone singing the same
chant, for example, in class when we sang
the principal voice together, it was easier to sing in unison
and to move together. I also feel that hearing
an organal voice above the principal voice has a freer essence
to it because it is not constantly bound to
singing the same rhythm of a particular chant. In a large
chapel, the drone of the sustained-note
underneath would reverberate throughout, with a soloist or
specific group flying through the air above
the drone (since the new part is usually taken at a higher
register than the principal voice).
If I had to make an educated guess as to why these chants were
created, it is that chant, in a
way, is praising the glory of god through voice in a way that is
more musical as opposed to just speaking
it. Id think that in hearing a unison chant, the members of a
mass congregation would be moved and
want to even sing along. Maybe while hearing a sustained-note
organum, listeners would rather relax
and listen to the soloist(s) travel freely, allowing the
singer(s) to take them on a floating-like journey in
praising the Lord. But both of these forms of prayer music are
sim ilar in that they are both meant for
praising God and praying to God. I think by adding more
melismatic techniques and more parts to
these chants makes them even more creative in how the singers
try to reach out to the Lord, allowing
more ideas to emerge.
When my group went about completing this project, it was
extremely difficult in both
treatments of the sustained-organum as an oral tradition and
written tradition. As an oral tradition, we
had a difficult time in a few different aspects. First of all,
we had to improvise and not all of us were
used to singing chant. Ive sung chant a few times before in
[Catholic] mass, so I was somewhat
accustomed to the feeling of moving freely here and there, but
like my members, it was hard to stray
from step-wise motion and do a few written/improvise leaps
without forgetting to eventually get back
to the note where I had to cue in the rest of my group. Because
we were only improvising, it was hard to
make the music flow more evenly and more freely. We were more wo
rried about getting the right
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notes and not sounding bad and making sure that we eventually
came in and ended at the same
times even though the point of improvisation is to feel
worriless and move freely. But I feel that back
then, this was also difficult to develop as well, especially
since there was no notation system right away.
Like us, they had to practice improvising frequently, probably,
in order to ensure a lovely chant. But also,
without a notation system, I think it was easier for them to
improvise because there were not that many
rules that they had to worry about. Today we have so many
different musical ideas and concepts so we
are accustomed to adhering ourselves to specifics.
As a written tradition, creating an organum seemed more feasible
for us. It was easier to just
write down notes play it and sing it, and then change whatever
we didnt like. I feel as though in the
past, they were used to not having to be bound to a written
system, therefore, writing down the music
was not completely necessary. For us, writing down the music
functioned as a tool to help us remember.
It served as a very technical assistant that helped us know when
to move and when to cue in everyoneelse. But back then, writing
down chant served as a cultural function the necessity to record
music and
share it with other people. For us, we were not hoping to have
our chants be sung by other people in
mass we just wanted to make sure we knew what we were singing.
But in the past, people wrote
down music in order to save it and to spread it to other people
and be able to teach other cultures how
to sing their music.
