Essaias
09-06-2005, 11:35 AM
Greetings! I am new here, but I am dying to get some feedback on this subject...
Are there any musicians here who understand the concept of plainchant/plainsong?
I have been working on trying to develop a way to sing the Psalms - as written - and plainsong seems about the only way it would work. Metrical psalters have to rearrange or even re translate the words, and some of the versions I have seen are pretty lame.
The Scottish Psalter of 1660 (?) seems to have done as good a job as can be done overall, although some Psalms couls stand a reworking. The problem though is that the Psalms weren;t written metrically.
So I figured I would try my hand at plainsong. Now, Christians (and Jews) used plainsong to sing the Psalms, as well as other hymns, from time immemorial. But the only plainsong that has survived - which is actually a huge chunk of western musical history - is the music of either the Roman catholic church (also known as "Gregorian chant"), or the music of the Eastern Orthodox churches (called Byzantine chant, generally). And almost ALL that music is either in Latin, Greek, Russian, Slavonic, Romanian, Arabic, Coptic, etc etc.
The Orthodox Church in America (OCA) has been working on redoing their psalms and hymsn, etc in English. Some clips are available on the web, and it actually sounds pretty cool. The neat thing about Byzantine plainchant is it structurally dates back to the 4th century and earlier, and is a direct link to 1st century Jewish (and thus early Christian) musical style.
Anyway, I have been studying the underlying theory behind plainchant, and this weekend I came up with a psalm tone (melody) for the 23rd Psalm. It doesn;t follow the rules of either Roman or Byzantine plainsong completely, but I was able to take a basic concept (that of the oktoechoi, or 8 tones/modes, which define how psalmtones are developed) and make a workable plainsong version for the 23rd Psalm. The words are identical to the KJV, except in two spots where a "the" in I think 2 places was dropped to make it smoother.
Does anyone else here understand plainsong theory, or does anyone else here have any workable ideas on how to do Psalm singing without distorting the texts (as in metrical Psalmody)?
peace-
Are there any musicians here who understand the concept of plainchant/plainsong?
I have been working on trying to develop a way to sing the Psalms - as written - and plainsong seems about the only way it would work. Metrical psalters have to rearrange or even re translate the words, and some of the versions I have seen are pretty lame.
The Scottish Psalter of 1660 (?) seems to have done as good a job as can be done overall, although some Psalms couls stand a reworking. The problem though is that the Psalms weren;t written metrically.
So I figured I would try my hand at plainsong. Now, Christians (and Jews) used plainsong to sing the Psalms, as well as other hymns, from time immemorial. But the only plainsong that has survived - which is actually a huge chunk of western musical history - is the music of either the Roman catholic church (also known as "Gregorian chant"), or the music of the Eastern Orthodox churches (called Byzantine chant, generally). And almost ALL that music is either in Latin, Greek, Russian, Slavonic, Romanian, Arabic, Coptic, etc etc.
The Orthodox Church in America (OCA) has been working on redoing their psalms and hymsn, etc in English. Some clips are available on the web, and it actually sounds pretty cool. The neat thing about Byzantine plainchant is it structurally dates back to the 4th century and earlier, and is a direct link to 1st century Jewish (and thus early Christian) musical style.
Anyway, I have been studying the underlying theory behind plainchant, and this weekend I came up with a psalm tone (melody) for the 23rd Psalm. It doesn;t follow the rules of either Roman or Byzantine plainsong completely, but I was able to take a basic concept (that of the oktoechoi, or 8 tones/modes, which define how psalmtones are developed) and make a workable plainsong version for the 23rd Psalm. The words are identical to the KJV, except in two spots where a "the" in I think 2 places was dropped to make it smoother.
Does anyone else here understand plainsong theory, or does anyone else here have any workable ideas on how to do Psalm singing without distorting the texts (as in metrical Psalmody)?
peace-