Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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EESPONSOEIAL PSALMODY EESPONSOEIAL PSALMODY 73
when priest and choir join ; the latter when
the choir responds. In many cathedrals no
guiding principle is adopted ; this is undesirable.
(2) The Doxology to the Gospel is always
monotone, the monotone being in the Tenor,
thus
{nSsji^ toTi".*)
^
!->"»•
=l=£
There are, however, almost innumerable original
settings of these words used throughout the
countiy.
(3) The Responses to the Commandments are
an expansion of the ancient
Kyrie eleison,
Christe eleison,
Kyrie eleison,
made to serve as ten responses instead of being
used as one responsive prayer. The ancient
form actually appears in Marbeck (1550), and
the so-called Marbeck's ' Kyrie ' now used is an
editorial manipulation. Being thrown on their
own resources for the music to these ten responses,
our composers of the reformed church
always composed original settings, sometimes
containing complete contrapuntal devices. At
one period of vicious taste arrangemerUs of
various sentences of music, sacred or secular,
were pressed into the service. The Jommelli
'
Kyrie' is a good—or rather, a bad—example.
It is said to have been adapted by Attwood
from a chaconne by Jommelli, which had already
been much used on the stage as a soft and slow
accompaniment of weird and ghostly scenes.
The adaptation of Open ' the heavens ' from
' Elijah ' is still very popular, and may be considered
a favourable specimen of an unfavourable
class. [Both these have happily passed out
of general use at present, 1907.]
The re-introduction of choral celebrations of
Holy Communion has necessitated the use of
various inflexions, versioles, and responses, of
which the music or method of chanting has,
almost without exception, been obtained from
pre-Keformation sources. j. s.
EESPONSOEIAL PSALMODY is the earliest
form in which psalms have been sung in the
Christian Church. It is a development from
inflected monotone (see Inflexion). In the
earliest Christian days the recitation of the
psalms was carried out by a single soloist, who
monotoned the greater part of the psalm, but
inserted various cadences or inflexions at certain
points of distinction in the verse. This was very
probably but the carrying on ofwhat had long been
current in the Synagogue. (See Plain-song,
Synagogue Music. ) It was very advisable not
to leave thewhole of the performanceof the psalm
to the soloist ; and it became customary for the
congregation to interject some small response
at the close of each verse. Such a response
was known among the Greeks as an acrostic
(dxpoffT/x'oc or aKporeKeiriov), and the technical
word in Latin for this performance by the
congregation was Respondere ; hence this form
of psalmody was called ' Eesponsorial Psalmody.'
The refrain was originally very brief,—an Amen
or an Alleluia, a short text like the For ' his
mercy endureth for ever ' of Psalm cxxxvi. or
some pregnant sentence drawn from the Psalm
which was being sung. In the earliest days
the soloist's text was very little removed from
monotone, but already by the time of St.
Augustine it had become more elaborate, and
the ancient simplicity was looked upon as an
archaism. The result was a performance somewhat
resembling the familiar Litany. The
psalmody remained such a short time in this
comparatively simple Stage that very few actual
monuments of it have survived. The Eesponsorial
Psalmody that exists is of the elaborate
sort. Partly as a result of the growing artistic
feeling, partly also in consequence of the
existence of trained singer's in the great Song
School at Eome, the music, alike of the soloist
who sang the verses of the psalm and of the
"choir who responded, was elaborated to a very
high pitch. Then, since it was impossible to
sing the whole psalin. to a highly ornate chant
habitually, certain verses were Selected from
the psalm for this elaborate treatment ; and
there grew up, therefore, the musical form called
the Respond, which consisted in its ' simplest
shape of a choral melody (called the Respond
proper), alternating with one or more Verses
sung by the soloist. This form is found both
in the music of the Mass and in that of Divine
Service, and mainly as an interlude between the
reading of lessons. In the former it is called for
distinction's sake Responsorium GraduaU or the
Gradual. In the latter case it is simply called
EesponsoHuTn ; for the lesser Oflices, which were
sung without musical elaboration, there came to
be a few simple forms of Eesponsorial music,
modelled on the elaborate responds of Mattins
but differing from them in being simpler in
texture. This brief form was then called Responsorium
breve as distinct from the Besponsorium
prolixum.
The highest development of elaboration was
reached in the Gradual ; but even there, in
spite of all the embroidery, the primitive
monotone around which everything else centres
is still traceable ; and careful analysis will
show that with all its elaboration the chant is
still an inflected monotone. This statement can
most easily be proved by the study of a single
group of Graduals which are ordinarily ascribed
to the second mode, and are decorated with
similar melodic themes.
The music falls into eight divisions, each of
which consists of (a) an intonation, (6) the recitation
in inflected monotone, (c) the cadence or
/