Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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72 KESPONSE EESPONSE
This is the old and commen
Response
It
::f:
- ra pro no-bis.
and to this are adapted the Responses, '
us, good
'
Lord ' ; Good Lord, deliver us '
'We beseech Thee to hear _ us, good
;
Lord';
Have mercy upon us '
'
'
Grant us Thy peace ' ;
;
'
Christ, hear us ' (the first note being omitted
as redundant) ; and ' Lord, have mercy upon us
Christ, have mercy upon us.' At this point,
the entry of the Lord's Prayer brings in the
old law of medial and moderate accents ; the
above simple melody, therefore, is the true
Response for the whole of the first (and principal)
portion of the Litany. It is necessary, however,
to return now to the preliminary sentences of
the Litany, or the Invocations,' ' as they have
been called. Here we find each divided by a
colon, and, in consequence, the simple melody
last given is lengthened by one note, thus
i *=
M-J-IL
This is used without variation for all the Invocations.
The asterisk shows the added note,
which is set to the syllable immediately preceding
the colon. It happens that each of the
sentences of Invocation contains in our English
version a monosyllable before the colon ; but it
is not the case in the Latin, therefore both Versicle
and Response differ from our use, thus
h
{jasro;}"— { '^XSLT-la-MesUmers.
Pater de coelis De • us.
etc.
In the petitions of the Litany, the note marked
with an asterisk is approached by another addition,
for instead of
a
1
i-
1 we have fer^
with UB for ever.
The whole sentence of music therefore stands
thus—
(Petition chanted by
Priest.)
(Response by Choir and
People.)
We have now shortly traced the gradual
growth of the plain-song of the whole of our
Litany, and it is impossible not to admire the
simplicity and beauty of its construction.
But the early English church-musicians frequently
composed original musical settings of
the whole Litany, a considerable number of
which were printed by Dr. Jebb ;
nearly
all, however, are now obsolete except that by
Thomas Wanless (organist of York Minster at
the close of the a7th century), which is occasionally
to be heard in our northern cathedrals.
The plain-song was not always entirely ignored
by church-musicians, but it was sometimes included
in the tenor part in such a mutilated
state as to be hardly recognisable. It is generally
admitted that the form in which Tallis's
responses have come down to us is very impure,
if not incorrect. To such an extent is this the
case that in an edition of the ' people's part ' of
Tallis, published not many years since, the
editor (a cathedral organist) fairly gave up the
task of finding the plain-song of the response,
'We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord,' and
ordered the people to sing the tuneful superstructure
We be seech Thee -to hear us, good Lord.
It certainly does appear impossible to combine
this with
But it appears that J
—
this ancient form
existed
us,
-— m-
good Lord.
OhriS'te ex - au - di uqs.
This, if used by Tallis, will combine with his
harmonies ; thus
r r T^r r -^ r
We be - seech Thee to hear us, good Lord.
(FlaiD-song in Tenor.)
Having now described the Preces, Versicles
and Responses, and Litany, it only remains to
say a few words on (1) Amens, (2) Doxology to
Gospel, (3) Responses to the Commandments,
all of which we have mentioned as being responses
of a less important kind.
(1) Since the Reformation two forms of
Amen have been chiefly used in our church,
the monotone, and the approach by a semitone,
generally harmonised thus
The former of these Amens ' ' in early times
was used when the choir resporided to the priest
the latter, when both priest and choir sang
together (as after the Confession, Lord's Prayer,
Creed, etc.). Tallis, however, always uses the
monotonic form, varying the harmonies thrice.
In more modern uses, however, the ancient
system has been actually reversed, and (as at
St. Paul's Cathedral) the former is only used
i