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Chant is one
of the most distinctive features of monastic life
in all religions and Gregorian chant in particular
has been one of the defining elements of Benedictine
life. For monks and others who join us it is a
way of prayer, combining both a contemplative and
an active dimension, in the way it draws us as
human participants through meditation on the mysteries
of our faith to the worship of God who is beyond
words. |
St
Bernard said that the person who sings prays twice.
This is because music lets us express ourselves
in more than just words: our heart, soul and spirit
can sing. It helps us bring a very deep level of
our being to the work of prayer. Music engages
our body as well as our minds, and it unites us
with other people at prayer both in body and in
spirit. Music expresses the unity and the diversity
of the community at a human level, and to create
a deep relationship in the spirit between the human
and the divine. Although it seems to conflict with
the solitude a monk needs to make space for God
in his heart, in fact it fulfils him because a
monk is able to rediscover himself in relation
to God as part of the communion of those who worship
him in spirit and in truth.
This communion in the spirit reaches across time
and culture. The traditional chants of the monastic
liturgy seem to go back to the synagogue and other
religious milieux of the Eastern Mediterranean –
and to extend into Mesopotamia and beyond the borders
of the Roman empire. The music created to meditate
on Christ’s passion, death and resurrection
was born from the texts and forms of Jewish worship,
above all in the psalms and canticles that stand
at the heart of monastic liturgy; it has been elaborated
by the Christian imagination in the hymns, antiphons
and responsories that complement the psalmody and
teach us to share in the contemplation of the mystery
of our faith has been handed on across generations
of communities at prayer.
What has long been shared in this way by peoples
of all nations and cultures, can help especially
today to reach out across the conceptual boundaries
of Christian faith to people of all religious persuasions
and even of none: the chant is truly one of the most
universal of all forms of prayer.
Besides making us part of this great communion of
faith and hope, monastic music also has an intensely
personal dimension. Nearly all music expresses human
passion in one form or another. Someone has said
that the eight traditional modes used in Gregorian
chant encompass the complete range of human feeling.
So monastic music helps us to express our human passions
and to earth them in the poetry of the liturgy; music
helps the work of prayer transform us. This explains
the peace many people find in monastic chant; it
brings into harmony the discordant noise of the human
spirit.
Monastic life follows rhythms which itself has a
musical quality similar to that of the chant. In
the darkness of Vigils, the chant is simple and unadorned.
As the day advances, the chants gain in amplitude
and often in musical interest: some of those sung
by monks during daily Mass are very elaborate. The
music of Vespers already expresses a sense of completion
and at Compline the quieter sense of commendation
of oneself to God’s care for the night. Similarly
the different tones of the Christian year and the
feasts that punctuate it help us take the particular
meaning of those times and celebrations to heart,
and to let our lives be modelled by the mystery of
Christ. In this way, the monk is able to say ‘For
me to live is Christ.’
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