THIS WAS EDITED AT AROUND

THIS WAS EDITED AT AROUND 2PM. If you read it before then, please reread. I added some readings and comments. Sorry. I will try to be more organized in the future, but this is numero uno, so it will have rough edges.

Here are some suggested readings from Grout and Palisca (fifth ed) to prepare for the upcoming analysis.

If you are really pressed for time, skip to Chapter 2 and read pp 42 – 72, particularly the brief sections on our “Orbis factor” Kyrie on p. 65 and Victimae Pascali Laudes on p. 71. Then pick it back up at “Medieval Musical Theory and Practice” (pp. 74 – 82), although if you find yourself in over your head, skip it. The first sections describing the Mass will be redundant to most of you, but there are some gems worth rereading. At least the first 15 pages will go fast!

The sections of secondary importance are “The Judean Heritage” (pp 25-26), “Western Liturgies” (pp 28 – 32), “The Dominance of Rome” (pp 32 – 36), “Boethius” (pp 36 – 39).

If you have time for the sections of tertiary importance, please read “The Greek Musical System” (pp 9 – 23) and “Music in Ancient Rome” (pp 23 – 24). If you really want to get into it, you might want to read the first footnote in The Study of Counterpoint from Johann Joseph Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum, translated and edited by Alfred Mann, W.W. Norton and Company, New York and London, 1965. The information on building a simple melody is scattered through the text, but we get some good basic principles in the footnote. It is not essential to know how to write music in order to understand it, but a good knowledge of the problems encountered by composers is important. Also, we will look at how the actual examples from the Gregorian literature converge and diverge with “the rules.”

If this is not enough reading, ask, and I will be happy to suggest more! If it is too much, don’t worry, as I will try to make the analyses understood by those who have not read the material. There is no test at the end, and how much you learn here will not become part of your permanent record that will follow you for the rest of your life (unless you get the mad urge to get a degree in music or to become a musician or theorist, in which case this stuff will help you immensely).

I may refer to anything in the above readings, but if I do, you can look them up ex post facto and see what I am jabbering about.

If you are not familiar with the concept of mode, I will devote some space to that in the Primer section of the analysis. It is helpful if you can plink the modes out on an instrument, but not essential at this point.

Steven Riddle suggested that we look at other settings of these texts (and other texts that have been set over and over again in different periods, for instance, the Ave Maria), and that is a fine idea. We will look at other Kyrie Eleison settings as well as uses of Victimae Pascali Laudes. Perhaps we should look at a Gregorian “Ave Maria” right after these two chants. That way we have analysis of several chants under our belts before we look at other examples of monophony (the Messaien) and the use of modes (Miles Davis’s “So What?”).