- Key People:
- Guillaume Dufay
- John Dunstable
- Binchois
- PĆ©rotin
- LĆ©onin
- Related Topics:
- divine office
canonical hours
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What are the canonical hours in music?
In music, the canonical hours are settings of the public prayer service, also known as the divine office, in the Roman Catholic Church. These services are divided into specific times of the day and night to sanctify the Christian communityās life through praise and worship.
The canonical hours consist of eight prayer services:
* Matins
* Lauds
* Prime
* Terce
* Sext
* None
* Vespers
* ComplineThese services include musical items such as:
* Antiphons
* Psalm tones
* Responsories
* Hymns
* Lesson tonesGregorian chant, a monophonic liturgical music, is used to accompany the text of the mass and canonical hours. The earliest musical settings were sung in plainsong, featuring one voice part in unmeasured rhythm. Over time, the music absorbed tropes, which are musical and textual additions, especially in the responsories of Matins.
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How are the canonical hours related to church services?
The canonical hours are a cycle of daily public prayer services in the Roman Catholic Church, also known as the divine office. These services consist of psalms, hymns, prayers, and readings and are observed at specific times of day and night. The canonical hours include:
* Matins
* Lauds
* Prime
* Terce
* Sext
* None
* Vespers
* ComplineMusical items include antiphons, psalm tones, responsories, hymns, and lesson tones. Early settings were sung in plainsong. The hours preserve some of the oldest examples of polyphony, where multiple melodies combine.
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What kind of music is typically sung during the canonical hours?
The music sung during the canonical hours, or divine office, includes Gregorian chants, which are unison liturgical music used to accompany the text of the mass. The musical items found in the hours consist of antiphons, psalm tones, responsories, hymns, and lesson tones.
The canonical hours are divided into Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. Each includes antiphons or refrains, short texts that precede or follow each psalm and are set mostly in syllabic chant; psalms, with each set to a psalm tone; hymns, usually metrical and in strophes or stanzas, and set in a neumatic style; responsories, which follow the lessons of Matins and the chapter, a brief lesson of the other hours, and have the form responseāpsalm verseāpartially or entirely repeated response.
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How did composers create music for the canonical hours?
The canonical hours, also known as the divine office, are a series of eight daily prayer services in the Roman Catholic Church. These services include Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline.
Composers created music for the canonical hours by setting texts for various musical items, including:
- Antiphons (texts sung before and after psalms)
- Psalm tones (formulas for intonation of psalms)
- Responsories (texts sung after scriptural readings)
- Hymns
- Lesson tones
Early musical settings were in plainsong, featuring one voice part in unmeasured rhythm. As musical styles evolved, settings of the hours incorporated tropes, polyphony, and various compositional techniques such as fauxbourdon style and melodic imitation.
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What is Gregorian chant, and how is it connected to the canonical hours?
Gregorian chant is the liturgical music of the Roman Catholic Church, used to accompany the text of the mass and the canonical hours, also known as the divine office. Named after St. Gregory I, it was collected and codified during his papacy (590ā604). The canonical hours consist of eight prayer services that include antiphons, psalms, hymns, and responsories. The responsory relates to the form and style of the Gradual. Each canonical hour includes psalms, with each set to a psalm tone; hymns, usually metrical and in stanzas, and set in a neumatic style; responsories, which follow the lessons of Matins and the chapter, a brief lesson of the other hours, and have the form responseāpsalm verseāpartially or entirely repeated response.
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How did the tradition of music for the canonical hours influence later Western music?
The tradition of music for the canonical hours significantly influenced later Western music through its various musical components and evolving styles.
The canonical hours are the public prayer service of the Roman Catholic Church, divided into Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. Musical items within these hours include antiphons, psalm tones, responsories, and hymns. Early settings were in plainsong, evolving to include tropes.
Notably, the hours preserve some of the oldest examples of polyphony, with the Winchester Troper containing early two-part settings. LĆ©onin and PĆ©rotin expanded polyphony at Notre-Dame Cathedral, contributing to the Magnus Liber Organi. By the 15th century, polyphonic settings for Vespers were common, with composers like Guillaume Dufay employing three-part treble-dominated and fauxbourdon styles. The 16th century saw renewed interest, with reforms from the Council of Trent leading to new settings for major feasts and the use of falsobordone style for psalms. Later, composers like Claudio Monteverdi revolutionized ecclesiastical music with orchestrally inspired services.
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canonical hours, in music, settings of the public prayer service (divine office) of the Roman Catholic Church, divided into Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. The early monastic communities composed a complete series of hours for morning, noon, and evening; cathedral and parish churches had incorporated all the hours by the 8th century, and by the 9th century the structure was fixed.
The musical items found in the hours include antiphons (texts usually sung before and after psalms), and psalm tones (formulas for intonation of psalms), responsories (texts usually sung after lessons, or scriptural readings), hymns, and lesson tones. The first musical settings of the hours were sung in plainsong (one voice part, in unmeasured rhythm). As in the case of the mass, the music of the hours absorbed tropes, or musical and textual additions, especially in the responsories of Matins (see trope; Gregorian chant).
Settings of the hours preserve some of the oldest examples of polyphony, the art of simultaneous combination of melodies. Thus the Winchester Troper, a 10th- or 11th-century manuscript copied for services for Winchester Cathedral, contains one of the largest body of early two-part settings of the responsories for Matins. The Spanish Codex Calixtinus (about the 12th century) also includes two-part polyphony for the Matins responsories.
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The polyphony common at the monastery of Saint-Martial at Limoges in France was expanded by LĆ©onin, a composer at Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris, c. 1160ā80, in his two-part responsories for Matins. His successor, PĆ©rotin, expanded the work of LĆ©onin, composing not only in two parts but also in three and four parts. Both men worked on the Magnus Liber Organi (āGreat Book of Organumā), a collection of two-part organums for the entire church year.
In the 15th century polyphonic settings for Vespers were most common, but there are some settings of responsories for Matins and hymns for Lauds. The Burgundian Guillaume Dufay especially, as well as another Burgundian Gilles Binchois, and the Englishman John Dunstable provided a standard repertoire that survives in manuscripts all over Europe. This repertoire includes Vesper hymns, psalms, antiphons, and Magnificats (settings of the canticle of the Virgin Mary) in three-part treble-dominated style (elaborate top part over two often instrumental, slower moving lower parts). They also used three-part fauxbourdon style, in which the middle voice moves in parallel to the upper part at the interval of a fourth below it, while the lowest part moves in parallel sixths (as in EāC) with the upper part. Psalm settings became more frequent only after 1450. The plainchant psalm-tone formula sometimes alternates with a polyphonic three-part setting, often in fauxbourdon style. By 1475 melodic imitation was increasingly used in all the musical settings, and four-part texture became standard.
In the 16th century renewed interest arose in the polyphonic settings of the hours. The Lutheran publisher Georg Rhau brought out several Vesper publications between 1538 and 1545. Consequent to the Roman Catholic liturgical reforms promoted by the Council of Trent (1545ā63), cycles of hymns and Vesper services as well as settings of Matins, Lauds, and Compline for the major feasts appeared. These were performed in many local churches and newly formed seminaries. The psalms were now set in falsobordone style: a four-part chordal texture having the plainchant psalm tone in the upper part.
Very important in the 16th century were the settings of Matins and Lauds for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of Holy Week during the service of Tenebrae (ādarknessā), in which 15 candles were individually extinguished until the church was in total darkness. In Matins, there are nine lessons, each concluding with a responsory. The first three lessons are taken from the Book of Lamentations in the Bible. Numerous polyphonic settings were made of Tenebrae texts. Among the most famous are the Spaniard TomĆ”s Luis de Victoriaās Lamentations and Responsories (1585). With Claudio Monteverdiās Vespers (1610), a new style emerges. Orchestrally inspired church services revolutionized the polyphonic tradition of ecclesiastical music.
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In the 18th century Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote two Vesper services for soloists, chorus, and orchestra. In the 19th century attempts were made to revive the singing of Vespers by republishing 16th-century settings. Composition in this style was also encouraged by the Cecilian movement (founded 1868), which promoted reform in Roman Catholic church music.
In the 17th and 18th centuries the Lamentations were set to music for solo voices and musical instruments. In the 20th century settings of the Lamentations and responsories have been composed by Igor Stravinsky (1958), Ernst Krenek (1957), and Francis Poulenc (1962).