Chant

“ They stood for a time with arms upraised, while to the straining ears of a youth whose heart felt like a lump of ice came the subdued notes of a chant which, he knew full well, was music not of earthly origin. ”

“ At the time of year when there is no other work and no other sign of activity in the country than the ploughing, that sweet and powerful chant rises like the voice of the breeze, which it resembles somewhat in its peculiar pitch. ”

“ A voice flees, when the breeze has touched and passed,
And glides within the singing chords....
As a light wind sings at a vessel's mast,
The sweet breath mounting from the river towards
The singer, binds a chant on the lyre's chords.
It is a wing wrinkling the wave, and in it glassed:
It is the vague word moving Nature through and through,
And which the human lip shall never speak.... ”

“ There—hark!—how the chant comes up the street, like one voice—the voice of a solitary droning witch! We lie breathless, and shape to ourselves Guy Fawkes in the dark! Our hearts beat quicker and quicker as the chant becomes louder ”

“ The singing, instead of being the solemn chant of the sixth century to which mountain folk for generations adapted the words of their traditional hymns, is in swift tempo, almost jazz such as can be heard at any point on your radio dial any day in the week. ”

“ The measured sound of the oars grew stronger, keeping time to a low murmuring chant which proceeded from those who pulled them, more for the purpose of preserving the regularity of the stroke than for any music that they might have made. ”

“ At the beginning we have a joyous chant full of sound and colour, gradually changing into the elegiac strain of foreboding, the dread of pitiless divinities, the lamentation for the hero's unmerited fate. The exquisite [Pg 268] modulations of the verse, the splendid choral antiphonies captivated all who were susceptible to the enchantment of poetry. The delicate adaptation of the English language to quantitative harmonies in high resonant lyrics showed extraordinary skill in the difficult enterprise of communicating the charm and cadences of the antique masterpieces. ”

“ Plain chant, you know, and all that kind of thing—so wonderful, I always think, though of course I’m no judge at all, since I never really like good music—only tunes I’ve known all my life, which are not plain chant at all, as you may imagine, since they’ve only revived it quite within the last few years. ”

“ In those countries where plain chant is exclusively used every sort of device is resorted to on festival days to escape its monotony, e.g., by harmonies on the chant which are out of all keeping with it, as also by interludes on the grand orgue, by which one-half of the words of the text are absolutely omitted, and the recollections of the world are frequently as vividly brought to mind as by any modern vocal compositions. ”

“ It is artificial to speak in the ordinary manner, while the priests' chant, and every chant are purely natural. For the proof of this you have only to read a little—a very little—about primitive, or "natural" peoples, or, more simply, to listen to children at play. You will always find that where convention has not cast out nature, some kind of "sing-song," some sort of chant is the entirely natural utterance of man in his most fervent, that is, his most natural moments. ”

“ CHANT (derived through the Fr. from the Lat. cantare, to sing; an old form is “chaunt”) , a song or melody, particularly one sung according to the rules of church service-books. For an account of the chant or cantus firmus of the Roman Church see Plain-Song. ”

“ Heart of my heart, the world is young;
Love lies hidden in every rose!
Every song that the skylark sung
Once, we thought, must come to a close: [Pg 93]
Now we know the spirit of song,
Song that is merged in the chant of the whole,
Hand in hand as we wander along,
What should we doubt of the years that roll? ”

“ Having settled that plain chant should have a part, and indeed a large part, in our choral service, but that figured music should not be excluded, it remains for us to say what figured music is to be used in alternation with plain chant, or substituted when plain chant is completely set aside. ”

“ In an interesting article of the Dublin Review (New Series, vol. ii. January-April, 1864) , the effect of official pronouncements on the questions affecting the plain chant and concerted music is thus succinctly summed up: "1. That music, properly so called, may be admitted as well as plain chant. 2. That the music of the church is to possess a certain gravity and to minister to devotion. 3. That instrumental music may be allowed, under certain restrictions." ”

“ The singing of the Passion is in reality a dramatic representation. The narrative is given by a strong, manly tenor voice. The words of Our Saviour are in a deep, solemn bass, and whatever is spoken by any other person is given in a high contralto. Each part has its particular cadence of old, simple, but rich chant suited to the character represented. ”

“ As the more complicated dancing steps become more pleasing than the primeval monotonous step, the melodic chant becomes more pleasing than the simple rhythmic chant; that is, a rhythm of rhythms is developed which makes melody. ”

“ Playing the while our little children sing:
⁠The world is full of music — not for me!
I dreamed last night of some dim abbey choir:
⁠The lights were burning where the singers stood
Chanting my anthem. I crouched in the dark,
⁠Weeping for joy to hear they called it good!
O music of my sleep, that mocks my soul
⁠With cruel joys that are fulfilled no more
Than his who dreams of light and love at home. ”

“ The chanting must have been much like the sing-song that some people fall into when reading verses now. The first thing in scanning a line of poetry is to drop into its rhythm,—to let it sing itself. When the regular accent is felt, the lines can easily be separated into their metrical feet. ”

“ The principle upon which choice is made of it in preference to chant, and which has extorted the restricted and evidently unwilling toleration of it, forbids us to entertain such a hope. We fancy that such a chastened style of music, composed so as to meet this requirement, would soon be voted as “confessedly unequal to the task of evoking and expressing the feelings of Christian joy and triumph,” and, with plain chant under the same ban, this world would become indeed a vale of tears and
“... ”

“ Though driven by them through all lands—
Love them—and keep on singing!”
That lot is common to us bards.
Men may have our songs chanted,
But with what had brought on our song—
None cares to get acquainted. ”

“ A minstrel might be attached to a Court, or a noble; or he might go wandering with song and harp among the people. In p. xiiieither case, this class of men developed more regular and ample measures. They evolved the hexameter; the laisse of the Chansons de Geste; the strange technicalities of Scandinavian poetry; the metres of Vedic hymns; the choral odes of Greece. The narrative popular chant became in their hands the Epic, or the mediæval rhymed romance. The metre of improvised verse changed into the artistic lyric. ”

“ One man would recite or chant for two or three hours at a stretch, and when he had finished, his auditor would start at the beginning of the chant and go through the whole mele or story without missing or changing a word. ”

“ CANTORIS. One of the most prominent features of the singing in the services of the Christian churches is its antiphonal character; that is, the manner in which the singers on either side of the church answer one another in the chants or in passages of the music. ”

“ But a different feeling gradually arose as to the essential character of church music; double chants, and pretty melodies with modern major or minor harmonies, came to be substituted for the single strains, the solemn and manly recitation tones, and the grand harmonies of the 16th century. ”

“ THE NATIONAL LYRE. A collection of Psalm and Hymn tunes, with a selection of chants, anthems, etc. Designed for the use of all choirs, congregations, singing-schools, and societies throughout the United States. ”

“ Chanters are found in various churches, he says, who with inflated cheeks imitate the noise of thunder, and then murmur, whisper, allow their voice to expire, keeping their mouth open, and think that they give thus an idea of the death or ecstasy of martyrs. Now you would think you hear the neighing of horses, now the voice of a woman. With this "all their body is agitated by histrionic movements"; their lips, their shoulders, their fingers are twisted, shrugged, or spread out as they think best to suit their delivery. ”

“ But though these compositions show that harmony was recognised in English church music before 1550, it is difficult to show to what extent they were used, and whether they were regularly introduced in the way that anthems by various composers are now employed in cathedral service. Possibly at ferial times plainsong may have predominated, and at festal times harmonised compositions, chants, and canticles, as well as anthems, may have been used ”

“ With every sweet, every charming word of sympathy, every holy whisper received into the soul through the portal of the ear, we adore Thee. Aye, with every other sense in us we strike up a universal chorus, a song celestial of praise and a Hymn heavenly of glory unto Thee! ”

“ And then mark! how, amid the chorus of a hundred voices and a hundred instruments,--of flutes, and drums, and trumpets,--this universal shout and whirl-wind of the vexed air, you can so clearly distinguish the melancholy vibration of a single string, touched by the finger,--a mournful, sobbing sound! Ah, this is indeed human life! where in the rushing, noisy crowd, and amid sounds of gladness, and a thousand mingling emotions, distinctly audible to the ear of thought, are the pulsations of some melancholy string of the heart, touched by an invisible hand. ”

“ I. "Encore un hymne, O ma lyre Un hymn pour le Seigneur, Un hymne dans mon delire, Un hymne dans mon bonheur." One hymn more, O my lyre! Praise to the God above, Of joy and life and love, Sweeping its strings of fire! ”

“ Not to thy gifted numbers known?—
But the latest touch was light and calm,
As the voice of a hymn, the night-falling balm;
Holy and sweet, as its music were given
Less from a vision of earth than of heaven. ”

“ We can set our deeds to the music of a grateful heart, and seek to round our lives into a hymn—the melody of which will be recognized by all who come in contact with us, and the power of which shall not be evanescent, like the voice of the singer, but perenninal, like the music of the spheres. ”

“ Sing of glory to God and of good-will to man!
Hark! joining in chorus
The heavens bend o'er us!
The dark night is ending and dawn has begun;
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,
All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one! ”

“ Imagine some old psalm tune, screamed forth, line by line, from the cracked throats of the old, and by the shrill voices of the young, all singing the air, each voice pitched on a different key, and some idea of their style of music may be formed. ”

“ The hymn, the tune, the style, are each too closely associated with to be easily separated from herself, and when sung in one of her most animated moods, in the open air, with the utmost strength of her most powerful voice, must have been truly thrilling. ”

“ And, to the same end, why is it that your school can sing readily, even without the book, the first two or three stanzas of so many songs, while every stanza beyond is an unknown land to them? It is because, owing chiefly to the slowness of our ordinary singing, we seldom compass the whole of a hymn. At the close of a well-written hymn is the climax, the thought up to which the whole has led, which binds it all together. Our songs, if they are to get hold upon our minds and lives, must be sung beyond their prelude, sung straight through. ”

“ I make heaven jubilant with anthems of praise. My voice is heard on earth in the lullabys of the nursery, in the songs of childhood, in the hymns of the sanctuary and in the ballads of the nation. My power is felt by the refined and the savage.
Let me be the ruling angel of the Sunday-school. I will furnish each department with an organ. I will teach all to sing. The tunes and the time shall be perfect, and no discord shall be heard amid the blended notes. Books of music shall be in abundance and all hearts shall thrill with gladness.
[Listen to Music] ”

“ An old hymn tune, or an old song, a turn of phrase, a scent in the garden, a tone of voice, a curve in the path—everything comes to us weighted with its own treasures of memory, bitter or sweet, but always significant. ”

“ The globe of poets then, The choir of angel-men, Each sing a different song, That doth to each belong. Yet the songs one and all, Are of a single call. And make one body free, Doth with itself agree. Then in society. Rises an anthem high, 'Tis as a perfume cast From all flowers far and fast ; A STRANGE BOOK 359 And every fibre heaves With perfume in its leaves, And every part doth thrill With perfume from its will. But when men sing on earth, Song hath no heavenly birth. ”

“ When my Lord comes I trust I shall
—through all the loving rotations of the crude hymn-tune. Such song-births of spiritual enthusiasm are beyond enumeration—and it is useless to hunt for author or composer. Under the momentum of a wrestling hour or a common rapture of experience, counterpoint was unthought of, and the same notes for every voice lifted pleading and praise in monophonic impromptu. ”

“ The speaking voice, as well as the voice in song, reveals thought and feeling to the hearer; those subtler shades of meaning which distinguish man, made in the image of God, from his humble companions, are made clear to those about him by this instrument—this wonderful, persuasive, cajoling, beseeching, enthralling, exciting, thrilling, terrifying instrument! ”