Forum on Music and Christian Scholarship

Contemplation and Fifteenth-Century Polyphony
Robert Nosow, Jacksonville, NC

The practice of divine contemplation in the late Middle Ages represented a pinnacle of religious piety, to which laymen as well as those in clerical orders aspired. Monastic writers of the twelfth century, such as Guigo II the Carthusian and Richard of St. Victor, were taken up in the fifteenth century as practical guides. Art historians have long realized the correlation between contemplation and a type of painting known as the ?devotional image,? particularly in the Netherlands. Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, in The Vision of God, expounds the use of a painting of the Salvator Mundi for the practice of contemplation. Two writers on music, Gilles Carlier of Cambrai and Johannes Tinctoris of Orléans, assert the usefulness of polyphony for contemplation, as well. Carlier, in his Tractatus de duplici ritu cantus ecclesiastici in divinis officiis, contrasts the effects of plainchant and discant. Tinctoris, in the Complexus effectuum musices, offers pithy statements that directly tie polyphony to the practice of contemplation. Both writers show an interest in the effect of external, musical stimuli on the psychology of the individual.

These theoretical formulations are backed by the direct testimony of three different authors: Richard Rolle, an English mystic from the first half of the fourteenth century; Gianozzo Manetti, writing on the dedication of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, 25 March 1436; and Lapo da Castiglionchio, who describes the papal chapel during the Council of Ferrara, 1438. Their personal experiences lend credence to the efficacy of polyphony in leading the listener to a state of divine contemplation. The harmonies of the choir, in imitation of celestial angels, bridged the gap between subject and object, the parishioner and the saint.

St. Augustine’s Time And Eternity In Medieval Music
William Peter Mahrt, Stanford University

Music, of all the arts, focuses most upon the temporal. Although other arts are temporal, using some kind of natural time, music constructs its own kind of time which transcends the natural sense of the passage of time.

The most acute discussion of time for the Middle Ages was provided by St. Augustine, especially in his discussion of time and eternity. The Biblical account demonstrates that the world had a beginning, contrary to the pagan account of the world as eternal. God exists outside this beginning of time in an eternal now from which He sees all of time from a single vantage point. In contrast to God’s eternity, we exist in time, which implies change, motion, and mutability, past, present, and future. Yet the only time which has real existence is the present; the others exist only in the mind. Yet man, while existing in time, seeks a participation in the wisdom of God, in a glimpse of eternity.

This paper addresses several ways in which Medieval music gives a glimpse of eternity in its construction of time. In the liturgy of matins the coordination of time is askew, with lessons and complementary responsories following their own temporal cycle; this dis-coordination of the cycles creates an intimation of eternity. Melismatic chants, based upon texts from the Scripture, stretch the performance of their texts, so that the sense of passage of time is slowed down, again giving an intimation of eternity. This kind of stretching of time is extreme in the case of the organa of the Notre Dame School, where a single note of chant in a tenor can represent the eternal in juxtaposition with the upper parts, whose rhythmic modes represent a more earthly passage of time. Finally isorhythmic motets, particularly those showing “total isorhythm”—isorhythmic structure in all the parts—represent a stationary view of the passage of time, again, an intimation of the experience of eternity.

Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Méditations pour le Carême as Reflections of Ignatian Spirituality
C. Jane Gosine, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Méditations pour le Carême (H. 380-389) are miniature musical tableaux that lead the listener on a reflective, Lenten journey from the desolation of the first meditation, through mourning, repentance, despair, and personal sacrifice in the final meditation. While it is uncertain for whom Charpentier’s Méditations pour le Carême were composed or precisely for what purpose, the choice of scoring for three male voices (haute-contre, taille and basse) and continuo, and the texts set by the composer strongly suggest a Jesuit use. Since Charpentier was employed by the Jesuits at the Church of St Louis in Paris during the 1680s and 1690s, it is probable that these pieces were destined for use there during Lent. Like St Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, Charpentier’s emotive writing in the Méditations inspires the penitent believer to respond to the texts by visualizing and experiencing the scenes described within them in order to share in the Passion as a present reality. In the Entretiens doux et affectueux pour tous les jours du Carême, Charpentier’s contemporary, the Jesuit Jean Crasset reminds those undertaking a spiritual Lenten journey that “To meditate fruitfully upon the Passion of Our Lord, Saint Bernard says that one should not regard it as though in the past, but as in the present.” (p. 52) Charpentier’s Méditations represent the musical equivalent of the Lenten reflections written by Jesuit preachers and writers, such as Louis Bourdaloue and particularly Jean Crasset--both of whom were associated with the Church of St Louis. This paper examines the way in which Charpentier uses musical devices to explore these meditative texts in a manner reflecting Ignatian spirituality. Just as Jean Crasset reminds his reader that “a second way of meditating fruitfully on the Passion of the Son of God, is to believe . . .that He not only suffered for all men in general, but for each of us in particular . . . and that He had us before his eyes at each stage of His suffering . . .” (p. 56), so Charpentier emphasises this personal relationship between the penitent believer and his or her God through his profoundly intimate musical settings.