Harmonized formulae used for the singing of psalms and canticles in the liturgy of the Church of England. A single chant ( ex.1) comprises two sections, paralleling the bipartite psalm or canticle verse to which it is sung; the initial chord in each half is the ‘reciting’ chord to which a substantial part of the verse section is freely sung. The first half of the chant is concluded by a progression of between three and five chords, the second half by a progression of between five and nine chords. These are invariably measured out in semibreve, minim and crotchet values, the first comprising three bars, the second, four. Double chants repeat the single chant formula once, and quadruple chants repeat it three times, being sung to two and four psalm or canticle verses respectively (triple chants are occasionally used). There are many ways of ‘pointing’ or fitting the words to these chants, and various systems of symbols are used to indicate how this may be done; in the following examples the barring is equivalent to the barring of the chant: ..\Frames/F922840.htmlThe pointed psalters that are most commonly used are The Parish Psalter, The Oxford Psalter and The New Cathedral Psalter. Congregational chanting was attempted in many churches from the unpointed texts of the Book of Common Prayer, but pointed psalters are essential if a satisfactory standard is to be achieved.
Anglican chant can be traced back to Latin psalm tones and is obviously related to the continental Falsobordone. The earliest sources of harmonized chant are Thomas Morley’s A Plaine and Easie Introduction (1597), manuscript 34 from the first ‘Caroline’ set of partbooks at Peterhouse (c1635) and three early Restoration books: Edward Lowe’s A Short Direction for the Performance of Cathedrall Service (1661, 2/1664), James Clifford’s Divine Services and Anthems (1664) and John Playford’s Introduction to the Skill of Musick (1654, many reprints to 1730). To these must be added various sets of festal psalms (psalmi festivales) by some 20 composers dating from about 1550 to about 1640, many published in John Barnard’s The First Book of Selected Church Musick (1641).
In his Booke of Common Praier Noted (1550) Marbeck did no more than provide examples of the way in which the psalms and canticles could be sung to the long-established Latin psalm tones: he used the 8th tone, mostly without the intonation and with two variant endings, for seven psalms and canticles; the 5th tone occurs twice, while the 1st, 4th, 7th tones and tonus peregrinus are each used only once. The fact that Marbeck did not set out more fully and systematically the system of eight tones indicates that choirs were conversant with it and had no difficulties in adapting it to English use. Morley went one stage further in supplying simple harmonizations to the eight tones, though he gave no examples of how these might be fitted to words. The first evidence that choirs were actually singing the plainsongs in harmonized versions is to be found in the Caroline Peterhouse books, in which two voice parts from a set of chants that were probably for three or four voices are scribbled out on a single page; no words are supplied but the rhythms fit the opening verse of the Venite.
The three Restoration sources – Lowe, Clifford and Playford – provide a comprehensive guide to the use of the tones, as might be expected after a break in the tradition of some 15 years. All eight tones are printed, together with the Benedicite chant (described as ‘from the Sarum Breviary’). What is more, harmonizations of four chants are provided: ‘Adrian Batten’s tune’ (1st tone), ‘Christ Church tune’ (a different harmonization of the 1st tone), Dr Child’s harmonization of the 8th, known as the ‘Imperial tune’, and a chant called ‘Canterbury tune’, which after the Restoration was commonly attributed to Byrd and attached to his third set of Preces.
In pre-Restoration times the psalms would normally have been sung at Matins and Evensong to Gregorian tones, either simply harmonized in the manner of Batten’s tune, or monodically; but special settings of the psalms would have been sung on festal occasions. Many sets of pre-Restoration festal psalms are extant. The earliest are by Tallis for the Evensongs of 24, 25 and 26 December: those for Christmas Day (only the bass part of the others survives) are fairly simple harmonizations of the 1st and 7th tones, not far removed from the Batten tune in style but with the underlay of each verse carefully set out in measured notes. No doubt the simpler festal psalms of this kind provided the model for the later Anglican chant.
Wilson (1996) provides a detailed account of Anglican chant and chanting after the Restoration. Extant manuscript collections of chants compiled between 1660 and 1750 illustrate the formation of a repertory consisting of adaptations from festal psalms, psalm tone harmonizations and, increasingly, new chants. A post-Restoration repertory associated with the Chapel Royal, Westminster Abbey and St George’s, Windsor, copied into a manuscript owned by the Precentor of Windsor, Dr John Butler (GB-Lbl 17784, 1670), consists of three psalm tone harmonizations and 18 chants attributed to Blow, Humfrey, Edward Purcell, Henry Purcell (i), Thomas Purcell and Turner. This ‘royal chapels’ repertory’ circulated to provincial cathedral choirs where local additions were made. Henry Aldrich’s collection of ‘Proper Tunes’ for Christ Church, Oxford, (GB-Och 48, late 17th century) is typical; of 28 chants 12 come from the royal chapels repertory and five from Lowe's collection; the remaining 11 are by Oxford composers, including Richard Goodson, Francis Withye and Aldrich himself. John Alcock, organist of Lichfield Cathedral, published the first printed collection (1752), but one of the most significant was that edited by (but not ascribed to) Granville Sharp: Fifty Double and Single Chants being the Most Favourite, as performed at St Paul’s, Westminster and Most of the Cathedrals in England (c1770). Instructions on chanting became more numerous in the 18th century, and there was recognition of the relationship between the nature and mood of the psalm and the chant to which it was sung; John Jones (1785) classified the psalms as ‘Rejoicing, Penitential or Historical’. John Marsh (1804) and John Beckwith (1808) were the first to provide a specific chant for each of the 150 psalms. The first system of ‘pointing’ was published by Robert Janes, organist of Ely Cathedral: The Psalter or Psalms of David (1837) was
Carefully marked and Pointed to enable the Voices of a Choir to keep exactly together by singing the same Syllables to the same Note; and the accents as far as possible made to agree with the accents in the Chant …
These publications marked the beginning of a flood of 19th-century chant books, serving the rapidly expanding number of parish choirs with cathedral aspirations. Rimbault, deploring the tendency to increasingly ‘pretentious’ chants (such as ex.2) edited a retrospective collection of chants (1844); among the earliest composers are Tallis, Byrd, Richard Farrant, Morley, John Farrant and Child, some of whose chants prove to be highly simplified adaptations from festal settings, and who are complemented by Restoration and 18th-century composers. The Cathedral Psalter with chants (1874) compiled by John Stainer and others, was widely used until the 1950s, and can still be found more often in its revised format. Cathedral and other church musicians continued to compose chants in the 20th century, some of unbelievable chromatic decadence; others adopted a simpler modal style or re-introduced the Latin psalm tones. The select cult of polished Anglican chanting continues, and includes several recordings of the entire psalter, most recently by St Paul’s Cathedral. Since 1960 the use of Anglican chant has diminished greatly in parish churches, some preferring responsorial psalms, Père Gelineau’s method of psalmody, or modern songs based loosely on psalm texts, while others have abandoned sung psalms entirely.
HDM2 (L. Ellinwood)
Le HurayMR
T.G. Ackland: Chanting Simplified (London, 1843)
E.F. Rimbault: Cathedral Chants of the XVI, XVII and XVIII Centuries (London, 1844)
H.B. Briggs, ed.: The Elements of Plainsong, Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society (London, 1895)
P. Scholes: ‘Anglican Chant’, The Oxford Companion to Music (London, 1938, rev. 10/1970 by J.O. Ward)
J.E. Hunt, ed.: Cranmer’s First Litany, 1544 and Merbecke’s Book of Common Prayer Noted (London, 1939) [facs.]
K.L. Jennings: English Festal Psalms of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (diss., U. of Illinois, 1966)
R.T. Daniel and P.G. le Huray: The Sources of English Church Music, 1549–1660, EECM, suppl.i (1972)
J. Aplin: ‘The Survival of Plainsong in Anglican Music: some Early English Te-Deum Settings’, JAMS, xxxii (1979), 247–75
C. Monson: ‘The Preces, Psalms and Litanies of Byrd and Tallis: another “Virtuous Contention in Love”’, MR, xl (1979), 257–71
P. Marr: ‘An 18th-Century Collection of Anglican Chants’, Soundings, viii (1979–80), 71–80
D. Hunter: ‘English Country Psalmodists and their Publications, 1700–1760’, JRMA, cxv (1990), 220–39
I. Spink: Restoration Cathedral Music 1660–1714 (Oxford, 1995)
R.M. Wilson: Anglican Chant and Chanting in England, Scotland, and America 1660–1820 (Oxford, 1996)
PETER LE HURAY, JOHN HARPER