(from Lat. communio).
The last of the Proper or variable chants of the Mass. The communion is described in the early 8th-century Ordo romanus I as an antiphon and psalm sung during the distribution of Communion. The psalm was sung to the same psalm tones as the introit (see Introit (i)). By the 12th century most sources provide only the antiphon, indicating a curtailment of the earlier format that is most probably due to the decline of frequent Communion among the faithful.
2. Repertory, texts and annual cycle.
JAMES W. McKINNON
The singing of a psalm during the distribution of Communion is attested by several 4th-century patristic authors. It could be said, then, that the communion chant is a particularly ancient item in the Mass Proper; but it might be more appropriate to think of it as a chant of the Mass Ordinary at this early period, because most sources specify the same psalm – Psalm xxxiii (Vulgate numbering). It appears to have been sung in its entirety by the lector or cantor with its appropriate verse 8, ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good’, serving as a congregational response. This proto-communion retained a central position in the medieval Byzantine liturgy, where it served as the regular koinōnikon of the ancient Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, which was said on the weekdays of Lent and on other fast days throughout the year. Schattauer, in his analysis of the 10th-century typikon of the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, has shown how the ferial Geusasthe kai idete (‘Taste and see’) was joined at an early date by the festal Aiveite ton kyrion (‘Praise the Lord’, Psalm cxlviii.1), which survives in the 10th century at several dates of the Paschal season and on Sundays throughout the year. Next came two more chants that functioned as Common koinōnika: Potērion sōtēriou (‘Cup of salvation’, Psalm cxv.4), sung on feasts of the Virgin Mary; and Agalliasthe dikaioi (‘Rejoice ye righteous’, Psalm xxxii.1), sung on feasts of the saints. In succeeding centuries these four were joined, and in some instances replaced, by several koinōnika of a more Proper character, for example, by To pneuma sou (‘Thy spirit’, Psalm cxlii.10), which took the place of the original Aiveite on Pentecost Sunday. Among the later koinōnika a number of non-psalmic and even non-biblical texts were employed in order to obtain a more explicit reference to the festival on which they were sung. By the 10th century the repertory consisted of 22 koinōnika (26 by the 12th century according to Conomos); they appear to have consisted of the antiphon only, having lost their psalm verses at some unknown stage in their history.
The early medieval Roman communion repertory creates a substantially different impression from that of the Byzantine koinōnikon. It is much larger, comprising nearly 150 items, with a Proper chant for virtually every date in the Temporale and a large portion of the Sanctorale. It fails to grant, moreover, a privileged position to a small group of ancient communions. The proto-communion Gustate et videte is used only once in the liturgical year, figuring simply as an undifferentiated member of the post-Pentecostal series. Thus the Roman communion does not display evidence of a centuries-long evolution; its early history is hidden behind what would appear to be a large-scale revision – accomplished within a comparatively brief span of time – that was undertaken to provide a Proper chant for every important date in the annual cycle. What form the communion took before this purported final revision remains speculative, and the most plausible line of speculation must centre on the monastic Office psalmody of the Roman basilicas. There would appear to survive in the Lenten weekday communions, which use Psalms i–xxvi in numerical sequence, a vestige of the recitatio continua that characterizes the psalmody of the monastic Office.
If the core repertory of any particular item of the Mass Proper is defined as those chants that appear in both the Roman manuscripts and the earliest Frankish manuscripts – and thus make up the repertory transmitted from Rome to the north in the mid-8th century – then for the communion there are precisely 140 chants. In addition to these there are eight communions in the Roman graduals that do not appear in the Frankish manuscripts edited in Hesbert's Antiphonalium missarum sextuplex, and 11 in the Frankish manuscripts not appearing in their Roman counterparts (see §4 below for a discussion of this group of 19 chants).
Non-psalmic chants predominate in the core repertory: 80 communions derive their texts from non-psalmic sources, with only 60 taken from the Psalter. Of the former, 57 are derived from the Gospels, eight from other New Testament books, 14 from the Old Testament, and one – St Agatha's Qui me dignatus – from a non-biblical source. The bulk of the psalmic communions (a total of 44) appear during Lent and on the Sundays after Pentecost, while the festal seasons of Christmas Time and Paschal Time rely almost exclusively on New Testament texts. In most instances these latter are Gospel texts, indeed texts derived from the Gospel of the day; such a practice is unique to communions among items of the Mass Proper. Sanctoral texts are also predominantly non-psalmic: 29 out of a total of 39, with 24 from the Gospels.
The entire annual cycle of the communion displays striking evidence of what might best be called ‘compositional planning’, a phenomenon in which the prevalence of non-psalmic texts plays an important role. Advent and Christmas Day have a series of ten communions with texts derived from the Prophets (including David), while the nine post-Christmas communions (from the feast of St Stephen to the third Sunday after Epiphany) form a sharp contrast with their colourful narratives derived from the Gospels. Musically, the first group is characterized by a restrained lyric style that focusses on the interval re–fa, with a single gesture to upper ut (see In splendoribus, ex.1a); while several of the second group feature a flamboyant dialogue type, exemplified here by Dicit dominus (ex.1b), which presents a vivid portrayal of Jesus's first miracle at the marriage feast at Cana.
The weekdays of Lent, as noted above, derive their texts from Psalms i–xxvi, in numerical order. The sequence is interrupted twice: first by the insertion of six communions borrowed from the post-Pentecostal repertory at the time that the Lenten Thursdays were established as liturgical under Gregory II (715–31); and secondly by the five much-discussed Gospel communions – Oportet te (Luke xv.32), Qui biberit (John iv.13–14), Nemo te (John viii.10–11), Lutum fecit (John ix.6–38), Videns Dominus (John xi.33–44) – that were substituted for five communions of the psalmic sequence, those with texts from Psalms xii, xvi, xvii, xx and xxi. These five Gospel communions with their original simple syllabic melodies and their variety of more ornate settings in the later manuscripts have long puzzled chant scholars (see also §3 below). While the Lenten weekday communions may represent an earlier layer of communion composition, several chants of the Lenten Sundays and of Holy Week show signs of belonging to a more recent layer; there is, for example, the fifth Sunday's Hoc corpus (1 Corinthians xi.24–5), a dramatic setting of words spoken by Jesus at the Last Supper, and Holy Thursday's Dominus Jesus (John xiii.1–22), which provides a moving vignette of the Mandatum.
The communion texts of Paschal Time are almost exclusively from the New Testament: 14 from the Gospels and five from the Epistles. The text of every Gospel communion is derived from the Gospel of the day up to the feast of the Ascension, at which point there is an abrupt change of procedure. The nine communions from the Ascension to Saturday in Pentecost week are borrowed from the responsories and antiphons of Ascension and Pentecost Matins. This sudden abandonment of the compositional principles previously employed in the festival cycles of the Temporale creates the impression of a hastily improvised conclusion to the entire annual cycle.
The post-Pentecostal sequence (perhaps roughly contemporary in its beginnings with the Lenten weekday series) has at its core a group of communions that are bound together by a rich theme of harvest, eucharistic and sacrificial motifs. At a later point in its history it appears to have had several communions added to it and to have had its psalmic communions arranged in numerical order. Among the additions were four psalmic communions at the head of the series, three of which – Cantabo (Psalm xii.6), Ego clamavi (Psalm xvi.6) and Dominus firmamentum (Psalm xvii.3) – were the first three of the five Lenten communions replaced by Gospel communions.
As for sanctoral communions, the tendency for the same chants to be used for many saints of the same category – in effect a proto-Common – might be expected to result in a Sanctorale that is generally older and has a higher proportion of psalmic texts than the Temporale. However, as noted above, this is by no means the case. Virtually every one of the major sanctoral dates has a Gospel communion of direct thematic relevance, whether it be Andrew's Dicit Andreas (John i.41–2), the Holy Innocents' Vox in rama (Matthew ii.18) or John the Baptist's Tu puer (Luke i.76). Even the most frequently used communions – chants such as Beatus servus (Matthew xxiv.46–7) and Qui vult venire (Matthew xvi.24) that would eventually figure in the Common of Saints – are predominantly non-psalmic.
The communion is unique among items of the Mass Proper for its stylistic heterogeneity. There are short syllabic communions, for example, and long melismatic ones; communions of a restrained lyric quality (such as In splendoribus of ex.1a), and chants of a quasi-dramatic character (such as Dicit Dominus of ex.1b). It has been shown that much of this stylistic diversity is due to the fact that a substantial portion of the communion repertory is shared with Office antiphons (McKinnon, 1992) and responsories (Maiani). Some ten communions of the core repertory (including at least four of the five Lenten weekday Gospel communions cited above) are also antiphons, and about 30 are responsories. Thus a simple syllabic communion such as Spiritus sanctus (ex.2a), which has been described as ‘antiphon-like’, is in fact an Office antiphon; and a chant such as Unam petii (ex.2b), which manifests the binary structure and formulaic character of a responsory, also appears in the antiphoners as a Matins responsory.
The antiphon-communions and responsory-communions offer valuable insight into the chronology of the communion cycle's creation. They tend to cluster at points in the annual liturgical cycle that display signs of later adjustments – Paschal Time, Holy Week, the later Sundays of Lent, the post-Epiphany Sundays, the opening Sundays of the post-Pentecostal sequence and later sanctoral dates like the Purification. The responsory-communions, moreover, share their melodic and textual peculiarities with other communions (such as Dicit Dominus) that also tend to appear in the same portions of the Church year.
The sharing of chants with the Office, especially as it involves responsories, serves to explain another frequently cited musical peculiarity of communions – their high incidence of modal instability. Nearly half of the Gregorian communions that appear in the sources with different maneriae are responsory-communions (13 out of 27, according to the present author). If these chants are removed from the reckoning, the communion displays about the same degree of modal instability as other genres of the Mass Proper. Why responsory-communions are so frequently modally unstable remains a matter for speculation, but the reason would seem to be somehow connected with their late entry into the Roman repertory.
It was mentioned above that eight communions appear in the Roman graduals but not in the early Frankish manuscripts of Hesbert's Antiphonale missarum sextuplex, and conversely that 11 communions appear in the latter sources but not in the Roman ones. Some of these chants are clearly later additions to the Roman and Frankish repertories, respectively, occasioned by the establishment of new liturgies after the mid-8th-century transmission of the Roman chant to the Carolingian realm. On the Roman side, for example, there is the communion for a nuptial Mass, Christus qui natus; and on the Frankish side Inclina aurem tuam, the communion for the seventh Sunday after Pentecost, a Frankish addition to the Church year; and Benedicimus Deum for the Carolingian festival of Trinity Sunday. But not all of these communions are so easily explained, and as a group they present a unique opportunity to study the relationship between Roman and Frankish chant during the period of transmission. It is an intriguing fact, for example, that discrepancies between the Roman and Frankish liturgical assignments appear precisely at the end of the sequences of post-Epiphany and post-Easter Sundays: for the third Sunday after Epiphany the Roman graduals have Puer Jesus and the Frankish Mirabantur, and for the fifth Sunday after Easter the Roman books have Pater cum essem and the Frankish Cantate Domino.
The history of the antiphon-communion and responsory-communion in the Frankish and Gregorian sources is particularly interesting. At first the two genres follow a parallel course: most of the Roman representatives of the two types are retained and a number of new examples of each are added. The antiphon-communion Vos qui secuti, for example, is assigned to the feast of St Simon and St Jude, and Nos autem to Tuesday in Holy Week and to feasts of the Cross. About a half-dozen responsory-communions are similarly added, chiefly to sanctoral liturgies, for example, Qui me dignatus for the feast of St Agatha, and Quinque prudentes for St Agnes. But in 11th- and 12th-century sources the two genres display remarkably divergent behaviour. Antiphon-communions develop a great diversity of more florid melodies, varying from region to region (see Huglo, 153, 171 and 194), but retain their original simple melodies in the Office. The most plausible explanation for this would seem to be that cantors were spurred on to create new communion melodies to avoid singing a text at Mass to the same melody as that sung earlier at Matins. But responsory-communions do precisely the opposite. The original melodies continue to be sung at Mass virtually without exception, while the related Matins responsories are either given new melodies or, as is more often the case, dropped entirely from the repertory. A partial explanation of such contradictory circumstances might be that the antiphon-communions abandoned their original simple melodies because they were obviously stylistically inappropriate to the communion, while the responsory-communions retained theirs because of their approximate compatibility.
The expansion of the communion repertory in later centuries varied considerably from region to region. Central European sources are remarkably conservative in this respect. Manuscripts as late as the 14th-century gradual of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig (see Wagner, 1930–32) and the early 16th-century gradual of St Adalbert's at Esztergom (see Szendrei) have almost precisely the same repertory (apart from a handful of obviously necessary additions such as Quotiescumque for Corpus Christi, and Beata viscera for the votive Mass of the Virgin Mary) as early manuscripts such as CH-SGs 339 and CH-E 121. Aquitanian and Italian sources, however, add a significant number of communions to the repertory, principally to accommodate new liturgical occasions such as nuptial and funeral Masses, votive Masses of the Virgin Mary, and dates added to the Sanctorale such as the feasts of St Benedict, St Bartholomew and St Martin. A large portion of these new communions – at least a dozen – were created for the Mass of the Dead. Most of the later communions, chiefly products of the 11th and 12th centuries, have newly composed melodies, but the Carolingian Per signum crucis for the Exaltation of the Cross and Benedicimus for Trinity Sunday were adapted from Ab occultis and Feci judicium, respectively, and Quotiescumque for the 13th-century festival of Corpus Christi was adapted from Pentecost's Factus est repente.
P. Wagner: Einführung in die gregorianischen Melodien: ein Handbuch der Choralwissenschaft, i: Ursprung und Entwicklung der liturgischen Gesangsformen bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters (Leipzig, 2/1901, 3/1911/R); (Eng. trans., 1901/R), 54–63
J. Pothier: ‘Antiennes de communion “Ego sum vitis” et “Ego sum pastor”’, Revue du chant grégorien, xx (1912), 133–9
U. Bohm: Der Wechsel der Modalitätsbestimmung in der Tradition der Messgesänge im IX. bis XIII. Jahrhundert (Einsiedeln, 1929)
P. Wagner: Das Graduale der St. Thomaskirche zu Leipzig (14. Jahrhundert) als Zeuge deutsche Choralüberlieferung (Leipzig, 1930–32/R)
M. Andrieu: Les ordines romani du haut Moyen Age (Leuven, 1931–61)
P. Pietschmann: ‘Die nicht dem Psalter entnommenen Messgesangstücke auf ihre Textgestalt untersucht’, Jb für Liturgiewissenschaft, xii (1932), 87–144
P. Ferretti: Estetica gregoriana, ossia Trattato delle forme musicali del canto gregoriano (Rome, 1934/R); (Fr. trans., 1938), 266–90
J. Froger: ‘Les chants de la messe aux VIIIe et IXe siècles’, Revue grégorienne, xxvi (1947), 165–72
J.A. Jungmann: Missarum sollemnia: eine genetische Erklärung der römischen Messe (Vienna, 1948, 5/1962); (Eng. trans., 1951–5/R as The Mass of the Roman Rite), i, 320–33
W. Apel: Gregorian Chant (Bloomington, IN, 1958, 2/1990), 166–78, 311–12
M. Huglo: Les tonaires: inventaire, analyse, comparaison (Paris, 1971)
J. Murphy: The Communions of the Old Roman Chant (diss., U. of Pennsylvania, 1977)
K. Fleming: The Editing of Some Communion Melodies in Medieval Chant Manuscripts (diss., Catholic U. of America, Washington DC, 1979)
W. Heckenbach: ‘Responsoriale Communio-Antiphonen’, Ars musica, musica scientia: Festschrift Heinrich Hüschen (Cologne, 1980), 224–32
T. Schattauer: ‘The Koinonicon of the Byzantine Liturgy: an Historical Study’, Orientalia christiana periodica, xlix (1983), 91–129
D. Conomos: The Late Byzantine and Slavonic Communion Cycle: Liturgy and Music (Washington DC, 1985)
J. McKinnon: Music in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge, 1987)
R. Crocker: ‘Chants of the Roman Mass’, NOHM, ii (2/1990), 184–90
J. McKinnon: ‘The Roman Post-Pentecostal Communion Series’, Cantus Planus Study Session IV: Pécs 1990, 175–86
R. Steiner: ‘The Parable of the Talents in Liturgy and Chant’, Essays in Musicology: a Tribute to Alvin Johnson, ed. L. Lockwood and E.H. Roesner (Philadelphia, 1990), 1–15
J. McKinnon: ‘The Eighth-Century Frankish-Roman Communion Cycle’, JAMS, xlv (1992), 179–227
D. Hiley: Western Plainchant: a Handbook (Oxford, 1993), 116–20
J. Szendrei, ed.: Graduale strigoniense (s. XV/XVI) (Budapest, 1993)
J. McKinnon: ‘Properization: the Roman Mass’, Cantus Planus Study Session V: Éger 1993, 15–22
B. Maiani: The Responsory-Communions: toward a Chronology of Select Proper Chants (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1996)