Gregorian Chant Is the Singing of the Soul: An Interview With Michał Sławecki

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Existing for over a thousand years and still practised today, Gregorian chant is one of the most sophisticated forms of sacred music. It is not only the chant of the Church, but also the chant of the soul, as stated by Michał Sławecki, PhD, professor at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music – a leading Polish Gregorianist, organist, composer, conductor, founder and artistic director of two Gregorian ensembles: Mulierum Schola Gregoriana Clamaverunt Iusti and Schola Gregoriana Cardinalis Stephani Wyszyński.

Beata Baublinskienė: In a few words, Gregorian chant is...

Thumbnail — Michał Sławecki, photo: Beata Baublinskienė

Michał Sławecki: As the famous 19th-century revivalist of liturgical music Abbot Prosper Guéranger said about it, Gregorian chant is the chant proper to the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, the chant of the ages and the chant of the soul. Church documents define it as the first and their own chant of the Roman liturgy. Today, Gregorian chant is more or less 1300 years old, since its inception in the 8th century. But the term closest to me is 'chant of the soul' because it lacks any material reference: it is something that touches the deepest recesses of the heart. I would say for me it is my musical profession of faith through the moment of unification, a perfect connection of sacred texts and melodies, which are the fruit of theological thought and contemplation. They were composed not by accidental musicians, but by people who devoted their entire lives to prayer – singing and psalms, the liturgical texts of the Church.

BB: Gregorian compositions were made by monks. You are also a composer, but not a monk. Is it possible to follow similar creative principles in the 21st century?

MS: Respect for the word – perhaps this is the greatest inspiration for me from the tradition of liturgical music. In my pieces, the text plays a key role: it is not just a pretext for creating a composition, but each time all the musical factors are subordinated to the logic, rhythm and flow of the word.

BB: What works are in your oeuvre?

MS: Mainly sacred works. The greatest thus far is the mass Gaude Mater for two soloists, mixed choir, small organ, large organ and symphony orchestra, the premiere of which I had the pleasure to conduct at the beginning of May 2008 in the Jasna Góra Basilica during the inauguration of the International Festival of Sacred Music. I remember that during the performance, my composition Professor Stanislaw Moryto (1947-2018) and Gregorian Professor Nino Albarosa from Cremona were present. Albarosa was very moved as he heard many references to Gregorian chant.

Another of my masses is Cunctipotens Genitor Deus for soloists, children's choir, organ and wind instruments; the premiere took place in 2009 at the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary in Warsaw. The same year at the National Philharmonic, Reverend Professor Kazimierz Szymonik PhD conducted the premiere of Oratio lauretana, which I composed for the 40th anniversary of the Choir of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University – this is the third choir that I am directing, next to the Gregorian ensembles. For the 50th anniversary of the UKSW Choir I wrote Choral Triptych – the premiere took place in 2019 at the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Bielański forest. A piece that was performed many times is The Last Letter of St Maximilian to His Mother for mixed choir a cappella based on a text by St Maximilian Kolbe.

I have even written works in the Kashubian language: Kashubian Mass and Kashubian Magnificat for soprano, tenor, mixed choir and orchestra, which were recorded on the album Mòja dësza wielbi Pana. These works contain numerous references to the musical tradition of past centuries.

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Concert of the Mulierum Schola Gregoriana Clamaverunt Iusti in Florence, photo: Iga Zatorska / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0

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BB: These and other compositions can probably be found on Spotify, as well as numerous Gregorian recordings? Two of your groups’ albums have been awarded at the Fryderyk Awards.

MS: Yes, on Spotify you can find some of my arrangements, especially Gregorian ones. To be more precise, the album Verbum Incarnatum, which I recorded with Mulierum Schola Gregoriana Clamaverunt Iusti in collaboration with the most outstanding Polish saxophonist Professor Paweł Gusnar, was awarded a Fryderyk in 2016 in the early music category. On this album, alongside Gregorian and Ambrosian chant, one can hear quasi-modal improvisations on soprano saxophone (Paweł Gusnar) and commentaries referring to the speeches of Pope St John Paul II from his pilgrimages to Poland (Emilia Dudkiewicz).

The second album – Historia de sancto Paulo primo heremita patre nostro, which is part of a larger project (the Musica Claromontana series) including a recording of all the monophonic compositions found in the Archives of the Pauline Monastery at Jasna Góra – was recorded with my male ensemble Schola Gregoriana Cardinalis Stephani Wyszyński. It is a recording of the whole Liturgy of the Hours for the Feast of Saint Paul the First Hermit, Patron Saint of the Pauline Order. This two-disc album, of which I am very proud, has also been nominated for a Fryderyk in 2019 in the early music category.

BB: In addition to your creative activities, you lecture at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw (you are dean of the Department of Church Music) and at numerous courses in Poland and abroad. Would you be so kind as to give us a brief lecture on the history of Gregorian chant?

MS: The origin of Gregorian chant is linked to the history of when in the 8th century Pope Stephen II asked for political and military help from Pepin the Short, king of the Franks, and his sons, among whom was the future ruler of Europe – Charlemagne. The papal territories were constantly being invaded by the Lombards, who colonised the papal lands and plundered the local treasuries. Their leader Astolfo was particularly good at this. The Pope as monarch of the State of St Peter felt very threatened. As a result, he moved to the Abbey of Saint-Denis in Paris, where he felt safe under the wing of the Carolingians. And because he came with his entire court, he also brought his liturgy – books, cantors, his customs – and this is where the problems began. At the time, every region of Europe had its own liturgical and – inextricably linked to this – musical culture. In Milan, in the diocese of Lugano in Northern Italy and in what is now Italian-speaking Switzerland, Ambrosian chant was practised; on the Iberian Peninsula, Spanish chant, known as Visigothic or Mozarabic (meaning ‘not Arabic’), along the Pyrenees – Gallican chant, in the Patriarchate of Aquileia – Aquileian chant, in the diocese of Benevento – Beneventine chant, in the papacy and in all territories dependent on it – Roman chant.

Charlemagne, a brilliant ruler and the greatest politician in Europe at the time, believed that a year without war was a lost year, so he conquered the surrounding peoples. At some point, a real problem arose: how to manage all of this? He was subject to different monetary, judicial and legislative systems, but above all, different languages and cultures. He decided to take political advantage of the fact that he had the Pope with him. He made the general quantifier – as if we would say mathematically, that is, the point at which all these states would meet – to be the liturgy. He ordered the adoption of the papal liturgy in all the territories he conquered. While most of it did not cause much trouble, the indigenous Gallican people and cantors, very attached to their tradition, stood up. The Franks found Roman chant predictable, repetitive, undeveloped and composed entirely without fantasy. They said they would not perform it, but Charlemagne refused to give way. Eventually, it came down to a situation, which the eminent Gregorian Chant Professor Alberto Turco calls the Round Table in Metz, where Roman and Gallican cantors, i.e. Franks, sat. Following heated discussions, the modal structure of Roman chant, the locations of ornamental melismas and the accentuation of words were accepted, but the whole concept of ornamentation remained Gallican.

Thus, in the 8th century, a new collection of compositions was created, which is completely different from Roman compositions (today we call them ‘Old Roman’). It was named Gregorian chant in honour of Pope Gregory the Great (540–604) more than two centuries after his death (it was a legend to enable faster transmission of the repertoire). However, the holy pope had nothing to do with Gregorian chant, which today in scientific literature is actually called Roman-Franconian or Frankish-Roman chant because it reflects his true roots. The activities of St Gregory the Great in the field of liturgical singing reference the Old Roman repertoire.

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Michał Sławecki, photo: artist's materials

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BB: Today there are several ways, schools, or traditions of performing Gregorian chant. Would you include yourself in any of them?

MS: There are indeed ways in which the performance ideals of Gregorian chant can be sought. Undoubtedly one of them is the Solesmes school, originating from the famous Benedictine Abbey of St Peter in Solesmes, France, which has been publishing liturgical and musical books for over 100 years. The performance practice of this school is based on the Graduale Romanum, published in 1908 still by the Vatican ‘Editio Typica’, and preceded by the edition of the Kyriale Romanum in 1905. These two books satisfy the liturgical repertoire of the entire church year.

At first they did not contain any rhythmic symbols, only in the late 1920s and early 1930s Father André Mocquereau added them. It was then that all the books with the addition of rhythmic symbols began to be published once again. Unfortunately, it has to be said that this kind of interpretation does not pay attention to the word. All that matters there is the rhythmic sequence according to which one tries to ‘interpret’ the melody.

There is also the so-called Parisian school, most associated with the French musicologist Marcel Pérès. Although the same Vatican editions are interpreted, completely different rhythmic criteria are applied to it. Very briefly, all ornamental notes are played disproportionately fast in relation to notes that are sung in a long and mensural manner. The performance rules are based on a scholastic and very ambiguous treatise by Jerome of Moravia (13th century), who was not a musician and described liturgical singing as he felt.

Apart from that, a certain natural factor is used in the Solesmes performance – the chant is free, although supporters of this school say that what is free is the succession of double and triple rhythmic groups. Whereas, those interpreting in the manner of Pérès, as they claim, use the vocal technique of Corsican woodwinds. And this is a rather complicated situation, because it is impossible to imagine a monk who would be able to sing the breviary, the nocturnal officium, the liturgy of the Mass for five or six hours a day, using such a vocal technique. This is unacceptable, all the more so since the musical iconography depicts singers with serene faces and without the grimaces that appear when using the Corsican technique. Apart from that, there are a lot of schools that are unidentified and unclassifiable. Additionally, in Poland almost every musicology graduate considers himself an early music specialist, especially priests... Please forgive me for this statement, but it is so.

In which group of interpreters would I place myself? Well, certainly – in the group of people who interpret Gregorian chant on the basis of early adiastematic notations, i.e. lineless records of neumatic signs – the first, the most faithful, being the closest to the stage of oral transmission of the chant, as soon as a kind of palaeographic musical script was ‘invented’, or rather discovered, which best reflects the pure character of this chant. In the second half of the last century there was even a special branch of science started by Father Eugène Cardine – the so-called Gregorian semiology, which is a combination of palaeography, aesthetics, and modality. It gives a specific interpretative meaning, and thus also a rhythmic meaning, to particular graphic forms of neume (a medieval musical sign). I cannot call it a school, because here we are interpreting the original notation: Gregorian chant is ‘coded’ in the neumatic notation, so we are talking here not about a school, but about the key necessary for the proper reading of the signs accompanying the text. This interpretation is based primarily on the assumption that the rhythm of chanting is free, oratorical, conditioned above all by the word. On the other hand, it is impossible to sing the word in its integral form without legato. So we are dealing with a melodic-word style: that is, the word cannot be considered in isolation from the melody, nor the melody in isolation from the word. Each particular word was composed in this way and not in any other, hence I condemn all attempts to 'translate' Romano-Francophone Latin chant into national languages and naively force it into the framework of Gregorian composition in the hope that it will have a chance to function without harming the art. Let us remember that Gregorian chant is the highest art form produced by Christianity in Western Europe.

BB: You could probably talk about the interpretation of neumatic notations day and night.... Do medieval manuscripts fascinate you?

MS: Yes, that’s true. I have a very extensive library at home, consisting of all the available paper editions of manuscripts that I have managed to accumulate over the years. This collection is growing all the time and I already have a bit of a problem with space. But nowadays, most manuscripts are available digitally on the Internet, so this kind of library will soon be a thing of the past. Personally, however, I prefer this kind of contact with the music of past centuries – authentic, as the materials are closest to what was available to the performers of the time. Another fascination of mine is the freehand rewriting of neumes and square notes from various schools in order to understand them in depth, but this is a topic for a completely different conversation.

Written by Beata Baublinskiene, translated from Polish by Agnes Dudek

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