Gregorian chant and its neumes, explained step by step

This blog is for anyone who is curious : no knowledge of music, of Latin or of medieval history is required. Step by step, we are going to learn how to « read » Gregorian chant as it is written in a fascinating book, the Graduale Triplex.

Imagine a chant more than a thousand years old, handed down first by word of mouth, then written with little signs traced by hand : the neumes. These signs look nothing like our present-day notes ; they are drawings that suggest the gesture of the voice — rising, falling, lingering, bouncing. Learning to read them is rather like learning to decipher an ancient script : strange at first, then surprisingly logical.

What is this about ?

Gregorian chant, in a nutshell

Gregorian chant is the official chant of the Roman Catholic liturgy, fixed between the 8^th and the 9^th century. It is sung in Latin, in a single voice (we call it monodic : everyone sings the same melody) and without any instrumental accompaniment. It is a « bare » chant, entirely at the service of the sacred text. cré.

Why a « triple » book ?

The Graduale Triplex (published by the abbey of Solesmes in 1979) is a chant book that superimposes three scripts for one and the same chant — hence its name « triplex », triple :

• in the centre, modern square notation, on a staff, giving the exact pitch of every note ;
• above, the neumes of Laon, copied from a manuscript of the 9^th century ;
• below, the neumes of St Gall, taken from other early manuscripts.

Looking at all three at once, you get both the right note (thanks to the square notation) and the way to sing it — lively, weighty, light, drawn out — thanks to the two early scripts. We shall go into all of this on the page devoted to it.

Our six sample chants

To keep things concrete, we start from six famous chants : four pieces from Christmas and Easter, completed by the two Alleluias of those same Masses — enough to run through the whole palette of neumes, from the soberest to the most jubilant.