Introduction

Summary

A spontaneous response to hearing liturgical chant might well highlight its apparently simple beauty and its spiritual qualities, in which the architectural space, the tone quality of the singers, and the imagery and style of CD cover design might also play a role. Such a response might also focus on the way in which liturgical chant provides an acoustic and temporal space for meditation or prayer. And, within such a spontaneous response, one might also find a certain resistance to the idea of looking more closely at the textual and musical techniques which underlie the repertory. Is there not a danger that an appreciation of the beauty of chant and of its potential for mediating a spiritual experience will be lost under the scholarly microscope? The primary aim of this book is to demonstrate the opposite, through a case study of a single genre of liturgical chant, the second-mode tracts. By looking closely at the compositional principles of this genre, we can begin to appreciate not just the melodies’ beauty, but the melodies’ structured beauty. We can uncover the intimate way in which the musical shape articulates the text, helping listeners to follow the semantic and syntactical rhythm of the prose text as it passes by them, and thus to appreciate not just an attractive sound, but also a holy text. Furthermore, peculiarities of the melodic construction draw particular attention to certain words or phrases which, as I shall show, were important within the patristic tradition of exegetical commentary on these biblical texts. The second-mode tracts provide more than an acoustic and temporal space for meditation and prayer. The words highlighted by the melodic emphases guide the meditation of listeners in particular directions, connected to the theological themes of the biblical text and of the feast day.

A tract, broadly speaking, is a solo chant, sung straight through without repeats, which replaces the alleluia between the readings of the Mass during penitential times of year, especially Lent. Tracts appear in two melodic families, categorised within the church modes which emerged in the ninth century as eighth-mode tracts and second-mode tracts respectively.