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Views from the Choir Loft

Sanctus/Benedictus: Should It Be Divided At Mass?

Jeff Ostrowski · October 29, 2014

741 Sacred Mass HROUGHOUT the Church’s history, there have been various schools of thought regarding “breaking” the Sanctus-Benedictus. (When broken, the second half is sung after the Consecration.) Pope Pius XII took a “via media” in his 1958 document, declaring:

(27d) The Sanctus and Benedictus, if chanted in Gregorian, must be sung without a break; otherwise the Benedictus is to be sung after the Consecration.

Certainly many compositions are written in a way that clearly suggests being broken. An extremist might be bothered by this. After all, didn’t Pope Pius X make the following declaration in 1903?

(11c) In the hymns of the Church the traditional form of the hymn is preserved. It is not lawful, therefore, to compose, for instance, a “Tantum ergo” in such wise that the first strophe presents a romanza, a cavatina, an adagio and the “Genitori” an allegro.

We must guard against looking at music the same way we look at speech. Someone who does might exclaim, “When we speak the Sanctus, we don’t break it, so neither should we when singing it.” Such an approach is faulty; for example, some melismas in Gregorian chant have more than 70 notes on a single syllable; that’s because it’s music not speech. To learn more, please read Thoughts on Englishing the Gradual.

Medieval Catholics avoided the SING AS YOU SPEAK error. Often, they would use a chant melody as cantus firmus and “let the chips fall as they may.” In other words, the various sections would not take into consideration individual words, so a word like BENEDICIMUS might be broken in one voice: “BENEDI” for one movement, and “CIMUS” for the next. Some people have suggested those lines were played by instruments, but scholarly opinion differs on whether this was the case.

At the same time, I would never suggest we do something merely because it happened during the Church’s history. After all, some silly medieval Church composers had multiple languages sung simultaneously! 1

Oregon Catholic Press recently sent me a book that tries to revive this custom. It is a book of hymns with Spanish and English lyrics. The editor of the book suggests that those who know Spanish sing the hymn in Spanish, while those who know English sing the hymn in English … at the same time!



NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:

1   A secular chanson in French might be placed on top, a Latin religious text in the middle voice, and so forth.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Sanctus Benedictus Split Broken Divided Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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About Jeff Ostrowski

Jeff Ostrowski holds his B.M. in Music Theory from the University of Kansas (2004). He resides with his wife and children in Los Angeles.—(Read full biography).

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PDF Download • Trinity Sunday (22 pages)

Feel free to download this Organ Accompaniment Booklet for Trinity Sunday (Second Vespers). Notice how the modes progress by number. Psalm 1 is mode 1; Psalm 2 is mode 2; Psalm 3 is mode 3; Psalm 4 is mode 4; Psalm 5 is mode 5. I am told by an expert that other feasts (such as Corpus Christi) are likewise organized by mode, and it’s called a “numerical office.”

—Jeff Ostrowski
10 June 2022 • “Official” rhythm of plainsong

I continue to search for the most beautiful way to present the “pure” Editio Vaticana scores. (Technically, the “pure” rhythm of the official edition is what everyone is supposed to use.) You can download my latest attempt, which is the Introit for this coming Sunday: Feast of the Most Holy Trinity. Because this is not an ancient feast, the Introit had to be adapted (perhaps around 750AD). Prior Johner says the adaptation is “not an entirely happy one.”

—Jeff Ostrowski
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Random Quote

“In all this mediaeval religious poetry there is much that we could not use now. Many of the hymns are quite bad, many are frigid compositions containing futile tricks, puns, misinterpreted quotations of Scripture, and twisted concepts, whose only point is their twist. But there is an amazing amount of beautiful poetry that we could still use. If we are to have vernacular hymns at all, why do we not have translations of the old ones?”

— Fr. Adrian Fortescue (d. 1923)

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