Sacred Music Part II-- Antiphonality and the Chants of the Mass LMP004

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Proper and Ordinary Sung Texts

 There are, in fact, 10 texts in a Sunday Mass that are sung by the people and the choir. Five of these texts change from week to week, and these are called the sung propers or the proper chants, five remain the same, and these are called the ordinary chants.

The proper chants are:

1. The Introit
2. The Gradual
3. The Alleluia (or tract in Lent)
4. The Offertory
5. The Communion

The ordinary chants are:

1. The Kyrie (Lord, have mercy)
2. The Gloria (Glory to God in the highest)
3. The Credo (I believe in One God)
4. The Sanctus-Benedictus (Holy, holy, holy)
5. The Agnus Dei (Lamb of God)

These are texts of the Mass usually all or in part drawn from the Psalms, the Church's "prayer book." The proper chants are generally comprised of an antiphon and/or verse, and can take on different musical characters. For example, the Gradual tends to be "melismatic" (having many notes for certain syllables in the text; more "ornamented"), whereas the Introit tends to be somewhere in between melismatic and "neumatic" (having approximately one note per syllable). This also holds for the ordinary chants. The larger texts, the Gloria and the Credo, are generally fairly neumatic, while the Kyrie can be quite melismatic. 

A melismatic chant can give the text an added emotional power. We see this particularly in the Jubilus, which is the "cry of joy" expressed in lingering on the last syllable of "alleluia" in the Alleluia proper chant.

The Structure of Chant and Role of the Choir

Chant is not a dry recitation of a text, but a music that both serves and embellishes the text so as to bring out its spiritual power. In fact, the very antiphonal structure of chant points to the heavenly liturgy envisioned in Isaiah chapter 6, which depicts the angelic hosts crying out "holy, holy, holy" to each other. This back-and-forth singing is seen at numerous points in the sung Mass, between the priest and people, between the choir and people, or between two choirs. For example, the Gloria and Credo are written to be sung antiphonally, alternating line to line between choirs or between choir and people. Two choirs might also sing the Introit, with one singing the antiphon, each alternating on the verse, and all singing the repeated antiphon.

The choir, then, as the angels in the heavenly liturgy, have an integral role to play in the sung liturgy. Pope St. Pius X called it the "Levitical choir" in order to point to its priestly character. Indeed, the choir used to be composed of clerics (priests, deacons, subdeacons, etc.) when they were more numerous. Traditionally, two choirs of clerics faced each other in pews located between the altar and the nave (where the people stood). Thus the image of the Body of Christ was revealed in the placement of the different roles at Mass: Christ the Head at the altar, with the "neck" composed of the facing choirs and the "body" comprised of the people.

That Christ's Body is present in the offering of the Mass is further revealed in the way in which the prayers or chants of different roles overlap at times, showing that the Church is a living organism in which each part of the Body has something to contribute to what is ultimately a single action done by a single actor: Christ the Priest offering Himself as an acceptable sacrifice to the Father. The Mass becomes a harmonious whole, then, in the very structure of its chant and the roles of the different parts.