What is known as Gregorian chant seems static and timeless today, and to an extent it was. One of the important political developments of the Middle Ages was the spread of what became the Holy Roman Empire, and among its reforms was the standardization of chant: with a few prominent exceptions, monks in France, Germany, and Italy would sing the same music. But the musical notation that helped make this standardization possible also helped fuel a new spirit of creativity in the forms of the sequence (original poetic-musical ...
Read More
What is known as Gregorian chant seems static and timeless today, and to an extent it was. One of the important political developments of the Middle Ages was the spread of what became the Holy Roman Empire, and among its reforms was the standardization of chant: with a few prominent exceptions, monks in France, Germany, and Italy would sing the same music. But the musical notation that helped make this standardization possible also helped fuel a new spirit of creativity in the forms of the sequence (original poetic-musical compositions incorporated into the celebration of Mass) and trope (chunks of added material providing commentary or gloss on an existing chant). This album by the Ensemble Gilles Binchois under Dominique Vellard, with full translations into English, German, and French of the original Latin texts, is devoted to sequences and tropes from the monastery of St. Gallen, now in Switzerland, composed in the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. Some of these pieces are among the earliest in the...
Read Less