anglican chant

Anglican chant is a method of singing prose translations of the Psalms in the Anglican church. Each verse or pair of verses is set to a simple harmonized melody of seven or fourteen bars, with the majority of the syllables freely chanted on the extendable reciting notes, which occupy the first, fourth, eighth and eleventh bars. The origins of the method are obscure, but it was well established by the eighteenth century. Canticles such as the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis may also be sung in this manner.

How chanting works

To explain how chanting works, is is best to use an example. The following is the first four verses of the Magnificat, with the text coloured to show which words correspond to which notes in the music ("the chant") shown in the image above.

  1. My soul doth ' magnify the ' Lord : And my spirit hath re'joiced in ' God my ' Savior.  2. For He ' hath re'garded : the ' lowliness ' of His ' handmaiden.  3. For be'hold from ' henceforth : all gene'rations shall ' call me ' blessed.  4. For He that is mighty hath ' magnified ' me : and ' holy ' is  His ' Name.

Precise rules for chanting very according to the particular psalter in use. The rules used in the Parish Psalter (one of the most popular) are as follows:

The chant is sung to the words of one verse.
The barlines in the music correspond to the inverted commas (called "pointing marks") in the text.
The double barline in the music corresponds to the colon in the text.
Where there is one note (a semibreve) to a bar, all the words for the corresponding part of the text are sung to that one note.
Where there are two notes (two minims) to a bar, all the words except the last syllable are sung to the first minim. The final syllable is sung to the second minim.

There are various additional rules and terminology which apply occasionally:

Sometimes the second minim of a pair is replaced by two crotchets. In this case, the relevant syllable is slurred across the two notes.
For longer psalms, it is common for two chants to be combined into a "double chant". In this case, verses alternate between the first half and second half.
A chant is divided into "quarters", each of which has the music for half a verse. Thus a double chant has four quarters (hence the name), whilst a single chant has two quarters. Somewhat rarer are "triple" or "quadruple chants", containing six or eight quarters spanning three or four verses.
Where a psalm has an odd number of verses, an odd numbered verse will be marked "2nd part". This means if the chant is sung to a double chant, that verse is to be sung to the 2nd half of the chant, rather than the first. After that, verses continue to alternate between chants. It is common for such a change to be used to signal a thematic shift in the words of the psalm.

The most common chants used are double chants, due to the extra musical interest they provide. It is only for very short psalms (half a dozen verses or less) that single chants are used.

Anglican Chant

How chanting works

See also