Unaccompanied I enter the day Though soon comes my band of choristers To join me. We go forth with familiar resolve, There’s a balance to what we do. Each day brings monotony of execution With occasional high notes-- I sit with evolving expectation, These gray skies match my mood. I have my checklists and my Trello boards We show love through Instagram memes -- We offer respite via Office gifs But mostly we are home alone. This story rises and it falls But it mostly shuffles over plains-- One must guess the birdsong in the mornings But also count its absence in the afternoons. Amen.
Plainsong was a single-word prompt suggestion from my writer friend Heather. I was a little intimidated by this word.
It hadn’t occurred to me when I first saw the word this morning that I already knew what it meant.
In the Roman Catholic mass, the responsorial Psalm (during the readings) is almost always sung by the music leader as “plainsong.” Also known as “Gregorian chant,” plainsong is “unaccompanied church music sung in medieval modes and in free rhythm corresponding to the accentuation of the words.”
Basically, plainsong is a kind of chanting in single-note monotone with occasional change in the note based on accentuation of syllables or words.
The rhythm doesn’t follow traditional time signatures, which makes all of the Psalms capable of being sung to the same chant “tunes.”
Here’s an example of “plainsong” chant of the 23rd Psalm:
I find this kind of music incredibly soothing (despite my navigation away from the Catholic Church).
The focus moves to the message with meditative sameness that has a healing property for me.
There’s a Plainsong and Medieval Music Society! They’ve been around since 1888 but the SEO for their website isn’t great because I didn’t find their site without a link from Wikipedia. But they are taking new members, FYI!
Are you familiar with plainsong?
Yes, very!! I spent three of my seminary years singing in a chant choir that practiced Gregorian chants multiple times a week throughout the school year and sang them in chapel at least once a week. During my last year at the Seminary I took a semester class in Gregorian chant (Solesmes style), learning Chironomy (conducting chant). I was first exposed to it in a Music Methods class in my third and fourth years of college (strong minor in music) before entering the Seminary. It is such a marvel with overlapping arcs of arsis and thesis of neumes, phrases, lines, stanzas and the entire chant and the stress between the natural emphases of the words contrasted with steady pulse of the chants. Our conductor was obsessive about honoring each element. The fifteen or so of us had to match our voices perfectly so that we sounded like one voice. We worked very hard.