The Art of Music, Vol. 06 (of 14): Choral and Church Music

A comprehensive historical survey and reference work written in the early 20th century. It examines the development of choral and church music from early Christian chant through medieval polyphony, the mass, motet, madrigal, cantata, and oratorio, up to then-contemporary practice, also treating the organ and national traditions. The focus is on musical forms, styles, and trends rather than on biographical portraiture, with analyses and classifications of a wide array of works. The opening of the volume sets its method and scope: Cole’s preface explains the need to condense a vast field, privileging the evolution of forms and styles over personalities, and acknowledging omissions (such as hymnology and some contemporaneous church topics) due to space. Frank Damrosch’s introduction frames choral singing as a communal art rooted in both church liturgy and folk-song, outlines its functions and types, and argues for disciplined leadership, singer training, and civic choruses as cultural assets. The first chapter then sketches early church music: the shift from congregational to clerical chant, the rise of the liturgical-musical alliance, and the codification and teaching of Gregorian chant (with Ambrose’s and Gregory’s roles), including sequences and tropes and their later pruning. It traces technical advances—neumes to staff notation, organum to discant to counterpoint (Hucbald, Guido, Franco)—and shows how secular song (troubadours, trouvères, minnesingers, mastersingers) and early forms like the chanson, frottola, and madrigal emerged alongside, highlighted by the English round “Sumer is icumen in.” The narrative closes by emphasizing how folk impulse and freedom in melody gradually influenced art-music, just as the next chapter turns to the polyphonic Netherland tradition.