POPE GREGORY I
• Leader of Roman Catholic Church from 590-604
• Not the composer of the chants
• Helped to organize and codify the chants that had accumulated, led to the establishment of a uniform liturgical service
• Oversaw the expansion of schools to train singers in performance of sacred repertoire (schola contorum)
LIBER USUALIS
• Latin book:”Book of Common Use”
• Is an important source containing the music and texts in the Roman catholic services
• A late 19 century book almost 2000 pages of ordinary and most frequently used texts and chants for baptism, matrimony, ordination and funeral rites.
• Prepared by monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes(France)
HILDEGARD VON BIGEN(1098-1179)
• Woman poet and prophet
• Practice of “tithing”-donating one tenth of one’s worldly goods to the church
• She was a 10th child of noble family and keeping this tradition
• Accepted the life that demanded contemplation and prayer, but also peruse career wrote music and poetry and medical and scientific writing
• Lived in stone walls and one window , took vows at age 14, foretell the future
• 1150 founded religious order in Rupertsberg (Germany)
• Her morality play Ordo virtutum(“The Play of Virtues”)is the best was written to teach righteous Christian Values to an illiterate audience.
• Also “Symphony of the Harmony and Celestial Revelation ”
• Her monophonic melodies resembled plainsong but were newly composed
• Melodies were often based on repeated motives
• 3 collections of manuscripts: “Scivians”
