        |
 |
| Musical Musings: Miscellaneous | Page 2 |
| |
|
The Sound of MusicSidebar: The Early YearsAs a young boy, Guido d'Arezzo was educated at the Benedictine monastery of Pomposa, near Ferrara, Italy. It was as a young monk that he came to love chant, learned to treasure the great musical masterpieces of the Church's liturgy and found himself appointed to teach the young of the monastery.With another young monk, Brother Michael, he created an "antiphonary" (or chant book), in which, above the text to be sung, he drew lines and notes. These are the same marks that are so familiar to anyone who has studied Gregorian chant. Under d'Arezzo's new system, the young monks could sing anything in the chant repertory, and his choir at Pomposa became famous throughout Italy. When he was criticized for making professional singers out of a bunch of youngsters-and, in the process, making every other monastery envious of him-he moved to Arezzo, where the bishop, Theodaldus, was delighted to have him. The bishop invited the master of music to become the chant master at his cathedral. He also asked d'Arezzo to put his ideas and methods into writing, and from this Guido wrote his first book on music, Micrologus. It was then that the pope heard about his remarkable new method and invited him to Rome. In the 19th century, when the treasure of Gregorian chant was again in danger of being lost, the monks of Solesmes, a Benedictine monastery in France, went back to the old manuscripts and, using Guido d'Arezzo's chant notation, brought them back to life again for the modern world. -Father Clifford Stevens Father Clifford Stevens writes from Tintern Monastery in Oakdale, Nebraska See CNP's Index of Chant |
Back to main article