Chant composed for the neo-Gallican liturgical movement in France from the second half of the 17th century to the first half of the 19th. For non-metrical texts a pseudo-Gregorian style was usually adopted; for metrical texts (hymns, sequences etc.) tonal melodies were composed.
The bull of Pope Pius V, Quod a nobis (9 July 1568), gave to all churches whose liturgical use was demonstrably more than 200 years old the right to retain their liturgies. The Roman Breviarum Pianum (1568, rev. 1602 and 1632) and the Graduale … Medicaea (1614–15) were not universally adopted. Most French chapters stood firmly for their customs, and only prelates such as the unscrupulous François de Harlay (Bishop of Rouen, 1614–51), ambitious for a cardinalate, were able to impose a Romanized liturgy on their dioceses. However, the idea, borrowed from Rome itself (witness the controversial breviary of Cardinal Quiñonez of 1535), that reforms and modifications were permissible, eventually took root and by the mid-17th century the tide had turned in favour of ‘correction’.
The main aesthetic notions that guided the reform were that texts of doubtful authenticity, which as far as chant was concerned meant any non-biblical text, should be suppressed, Holy Scripture alone being deemed worthy to be chanted (this had been a characteristic of the Lyons liturgy and that of the Carthusians for many centuries); and that religious songs such as hymns and sequences should be revised along classicizing lines, their metres adjusted and so on. These ideas found expression in such publications as P. Clairé’s Hymni ecclesiastici novo cultu adornati (1676), the new breviary of Henri de Villars (Bishop of Vienne, 1662–93, and primate of Gaul) of 1678, compiled with the aid of the Jansenist Sainte-Beuve, and the breviary (1680) and missal (1684) of François de Harlay (Archbishop of Paris, 1671–95, and nephew of the François mentioned above), prepared by a committee including two other Jansenists. The breviary had a musical supplement by Claude Chastelain which gave a system of psalm tones with neo-Greek names. Even more than these books, it was the breviary of Cluny (1686), a completely new composition, that influenced many French churches to rewrite their books in the first quarter of the 18th century.
The movement had always been as much a matter of ecclesiastical politics as liturgical taste, and reform was but one aspect of the whole relationship between France and Rome. The increasingly independent attitude of Louis XIV (1643–1715) led eventually to a particularly fierce dispute during the reign of his successor; in 1728 Pope Benedict XIV tried to enforce the observance of the feast of St Gregory VIII, instituted in 1584 by Gregory XIV (who had been a bitter opponent of Henri IV of France), where the Office contained a lesson offensive to French pride. It is not surprising that the next new breviary and missal prepared in Paris, under Guillaume de Vintimille (archbishop, 1729–46), did not receive papal approbation: these appeared in 1736 and 1737 respectively and were largely the work of the Jansenists François Mesenguy and Charles Coffin. At the time of the Revolution, 80 French dioceses were using neo-Gallican liturgies. In 1814 Louis XVIII and Paris returned to Roman use; but not until the 1840s did the rest of France begin to follow suit – Orleans, in 1875, was the last.
As a representative example of neo-Gallican use, the Proper of the 3rd Mass of Christmas Day as found in the Graduel de Paris of 1754 may be cited. The introit is Parvulus natus est nobis: the text of the Gregorian Puer natus has been brought into line with the Vulgate, and a completely new 1st-mode melody composed. The offertory Hostias et oblationes and the communion In hoc apparuit caritas Dei are new compositions, again in pseudo-Gregorian style. The gradual Recordatus est Dominus … viderunt omnes enlarges the traditional text, from the Vulgate; its melody is an unhappy attempt to strengthen the ‘G major’ element in the Gregorian melody, mostly by transposition of phrases such as the opening F–A–C figuration up to G–B–D; but ‘F major’ phrases uncomfortably remain. The Alleluia, Verbum caro is likewise a reworking of the Gregorian Alleluia, Dies sanctificatus. While all these pieces date back to the François de Harlay missal of 1684, the sequence dates from 1737. Earlier books had used the sequence Laetabundus (the Roman restriction to five sequences was not observed in France, where 17th- and 18th-century books usually contained sequences for Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, Corpus Christi, the Blessed Virgin and patronal feasts, with a small ‘common’ supplement); here the sequence is Votis Pater annuit (C.U.J. Chevalier: Repertorium hymnologicum, ii, Leuven, 1897, no.22173; for the first verse see illustration).
Although neo-Gallican pieces such as these may seem clumsily derivative to the connoisseur of restored plainchant, subtle and sophisticated performance, with sympathetic organ accompaniment, no doubt made them worthy embellishments of the liturgy. In better-endowed establishments the chant might, from the end of the 17th century, have been decorated with improvised polyphony, chant sur le livre. This was usually in three parts, basses (perhaps reinforced by an instrument such as the serpent) singing the chant in strictly equal notes, with tenors and countertenors adding parts above them. Another method of performance, known as chant figuré, also involved measured chant with ornamentation, especially by soloists. Lebeuf and La Feillée gave instructions on this complex technique: La Feillée’s treatise has examples of a complicated notation with signs for ornaments, and simple polyphonic compositions that could have been improvised.
More non-traditional chant is found in the repertory of Plain-chant musical. In this movement, the leading spirit of which was Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers, reformed and newly composed chant was sung to a harmonic organ accompaniment.
The advanced taste of the late 19th century, moulded by such proselytizers as Dom Guéranger of Solesmes, favoured a return to ancient usage. The French church followed Roman acceptance of the restored Gregorian chant, although there are still in some French parish churches examples of a 19th-century book containing neo-Gallican chants (including a sequence) for the Mass of the patron saint. By comparison with the intense research made into medieval chant books, neo-Gallican chant is practically unstudied.
See also Plainchant, §10(ii).
G.-G. Nivers: Dissertation sur le chant grégorien (Paris, 1683)
J. Lebeuf: Traité historique et pratique sur le chant ecclésiastique (Paris, 1741/R)
F. de La Feillée: Méthode pour apprendre les règles du plain-chant et de la psalmodie (Paris, 1745; rev. and enlarged 3/1775, as Méthode nouvelle pour apprendre parfaitement les règles du plain-chant et de la psalmodie)
P. Guéranger: Institutions liturgiques (Paris, 1840–51, 2/1878–85), ii
A. Gastoué: Musique et liturgie: le graduel et l’antiphonaire romains (Lyons, 1913/R)
H. Leclercq: ‘Liturgies néo-gallicanes’, Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq, ix/2 (Paris, 1930), 1636–1729
C.E. Pocknee: The French Diocesan Hymns and their Melodies (London, 1954)
J. Prim: ‘Chant sur le livre in French Churches in the 18th Century’, JAMS, xiv (1961), 37–49
J. Schmidt-Görg: ‘Ein handschriftliches neu-gallikanisches Graduale aus dem Jahr 1852’, Festschrift Karl Gustav Fellerer zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. H. Hüschen (Regensburg, 1962), 474–80
G. Fontaine: ‘Présentation des missels diocésians français du XVIIe au XIXe siècles’, La Mason-Dieu, cxli (1980), 97–166
F. Brovelli: ‘Per uno studio dei messali francesi del XVIII secolo, saggio di analisi’, Ephemerides liturgicae, xcvi (1982), 279–406
DAVID HILEY