One of the places the Mass showcases chant in its purest form is during the gradual. The gradual is the psalm chanted between the epistle and the Gospel in the Tridentine Rite. These moments of the Mass are, as Abbe Claude Barthe states in his book A Forest of Symbols, “a time for listening and meditating.”1 Being that many chants are derived from Scripture, especially the Psalms, the gradual can be a time of genuine meditation within the Mass.
There are a variety of methods of meditation. Sometimes we meditate on a scene from the Gospel, or some virtue of Our Lady, but the most popular form of meditative prayer throughout Church history has been the Lectio Divina, or “divine reading,” method. Lectio Divina involves the slow and deliberate reading of Scripture. One author describes the process stating,
“One would gently read a selection from the Bible, and when a thought, line, or word stood out and captured the reader’s attention, he or she would stop there to dwell on that text…[and] stay with that same text until it dried up, and would then move on with the reading until finding another.”2
Scripture is both the main content of meditation as well as the main content of chant. Chant directs us as to how we can engage with Scripture in this meditative manner by slowing down the syllables of individual words, placing emphasis on certain words or syllables by elongating them with melismata. Melisma is a term used to label instances in which multiple notes are sung on a single syllable.
Chant lingers over the words most essential to the meaning of the text, while floating over smaller word particles like et or in. For example, in the gradual for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (June 30), the melisma continues for over thirty notes on the word progenie (translated “generation”). The melisma links the melody to the meaning of the text. The syllables are prolonged to symbolize the ongoing and eternal love of God who “hast been our refuge from generation to generation.”
Chant forces us to slow down, to savor the individual words, to pause and dwell on them instead of quickly reading and forgetting them. When we quickly gloss over the words we are merely reading, when we linger on the words it becomes prayer. Chant, then, becomes a way of training us to meditate on Scripture. When embraced as meditation, chant becomes not only music, but prayer, so that they begin to work in tandem. In the words of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange:
“When the spirit of prayer prevails, real life begins, and one understands that mental prayer gives the spirit of the chant; whereas the psalmody furnishes to mental prayer the best possible food, the very word of God…prayer is no longer a succession of words; we are able to seize the vital spirit running through them.”3
Next time you are able to listen to chant with the text in front of you, allow the melody to direct your mind to the words of the Psalm, meditate on them, and try to discover what meaning can be gleaned from its composition.
Gradual for the Sixth Sunday After Pentecost: Convertere Domine
*also used for Ember Saturday in Lent*
Text & Translation
Convertere Domine, aliquantulum, et deprecare super servos tuos.
Return, O Lord, a little; and be entreated in favor of Thy servants.
Domine, refugium factus es nobis, a generatione et progenie. Alleluja, alleluja.
Lord, Thou hast been our refuge from generation to generation. Alleluia, alleluia.
In te, Domine, speravi, non confundar in aeternum:
In Thee O Lord have I hoped, let me never be confounded:
in justitia tua libera me, et eripe me: inclina ad me aurem tuam,
deliver me in Thy justice, and release me: bow down Thy ear to me,
accelera, ut eripas me. Alleluja.
make haste to deliver me. Alleluia.
Abbé Claude Barthe, A Forest of Symbols (Brooklyn: Angelico Press, 2023), 61.
Sam Anthony Morello, Lectio Divina and the Practice of Teresian Prayer (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1995), 21.
Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life (Kindle Direct Reprint, 2013), 440.
Wonderful post. The ability to linger over some words and pass quickly through others is one of the things that is lost in polyphony. Chant is sometimes maligned as "primitive", but it has distinct aesthetic advantages.