Recently I was looking back over some various Gregorian Chant pieces, various masses and propers that I have sung with my scholas in Michigan and Arkansas, and realized just how much I missed being in a group like that, singing my heart out to the finest music ever known to mankind.  Yeah, Gregorian Chant is that good.

When I think back, especially, to my schola experience in Michigan, there is one memory in particular that sticks out. It was when we were singing a piece, I believe it was "Passer invenit," a Communion antiphon. You can look it up if you like. If you don't look it up, all you need to know is that it is a particularly hard piece, or at least it was for me, with some very interesting rhythms and intervals.  If I remember correctly, the Schola (complete name: Schola of the Chair of St. Peter) worked quite a bit on this piece to get it right. Then, we were at Mass, and, amazingly, as we sang verse after verse of the psalm, repeating the Antiphon each time, the piece just came together. I looked up and realized that the rhythm and intervals had become second nature, and as I saw the heads in the front row looking up from their music and bobbing their heads with the steady ictus of the first few measures, I realized that we had moved into something special. The Chant was ours now, a simple, natural prayer from us to God.

That is the power of Chant. The power to unite souls in praise to God. The power to transcend what you think is normal, the normal, simple rhythms of popular music, to the ethereal (is that the right word?) rhythms of the outer courts of God.

Chant has this incredible ability to show outwardly what you are like inwardly. The fact that we were all together, and indeed, were amazingly cohesive in our general practice of Chant was not due to any virtuosity on any of our parts. It was due to the fact that we had an internal order and discipline, if you will, a hierarchy of organization that centered around the leadership by our cantor and director extraordinaire. The Chant was able to show this by the unity with which we sang. With the free rhythms of Chant, if a group is not thinking together, it shows. If a group is thinking of something else, it shows. If a group is thinking of the notes, and not of the whole life of the chant, it shows.

There are some great Chant recordings that show this. Of course, the Chant as performed by the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silas is a perfect example. They know what they are singing, and they think completely alike on singing it. I particularly recommend their second album and their album "Ave Maria" as examples of this. There is also a wonderful recording, I believe called, "A Treasury of Gregorian Chant" or something like it, by the Monks of St. Wandrille, which is the perfect example of chant coming out of a united and liturgy-centered lifestyle. Most of the secular artists, including my favorite Anonymous 4, simply do not come close to the organic and perfect renditions by these groups of faithful monks.

What is Gregorian Chant? What is it's essential definition? This is an essential question for all would-be scholas to ask themselves. Gregorian Chant, first of all, is text. It is the text of the liturgy set to note and representing the song of the whole church, calling and responding between the leader(s) and the whole congregation. You can never forget that the power of Chant lies in the texts that are being sung, or you will miss the whole point, and it will show in the incomprehensibility of your performance. Secondly, Chant is life. It is the Christian life, lived in Music, a life that needs no earthly riches or adornment to make it beautiful, a life that consists in unity with the Head of the Church, Christ, and, consequently, with the priests and bishops of the whole Catholic Church.  Chant represents through the hierarchic organization of psalmist, or cantor, and choir. It also represents charity through the passing of verses between one group of the faithful, one side of the choir, and the other. This charity is reciprocal, and consists of the display of desire for the other's ultimate good through the sharing of the Holy Scriptures with one another. CHANT IS LIFE. Remember that.

How sad it is that we often choose cheap and  modern music for the Mass over this wonderful exchange, this wonderful demonstration of the mystery of our tradition. Now, it is very customary for modern catechists and Catholics to point out that Gregorian Chant is merely a "small-t" tradition that can be altered or set aside without any doctrinal consequences. This is in fact wrong, per the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1124 "Liturgy is a constitutive element of the holy and living Tradition." That is not to say that to neglect Gregorian Chant is to violate tradition, but it is to neglect a source of tradition. For this reason the Council Fathers of the Second Vatican Council gave "pride of place" to Gregorian Chant as the proper music of the Roman Rite. 

Rather, Gregorian Chant, by its very nature, is a way of preaching and interpreting the Word of God as it was handed on to the apostles, since its root is in the sort of chants that were adopted by the immediate successors of the apostles. Yes, it is THAT old. Not every chant is that old, mind you, but quite a bit more than you would think, and, even the new chant, participates in the methodology and expression of the old. By its very nature of call and response, of free rhythmic expression, of the centrality of text in the performance of chant, Gregorian Chant opens us up to the Mystery of the eternal liturgy of which tradition itself is the primary chant on the mouths of the faithful.

So, that is so many words to say: CHANT IS LIFE. So, get out there, listen to it, learn it, demand it from your music directors, and put its teachings through the Holy Liturgy into practice in your own life.