Take a Chants at Christmas

Some Beloved Christmas Hymns & Their Kinship to Chanting

I am a lifelong protestant Christian who was reared in the church all my life. I am currently on staff at a church and am pursuing a Ph.D. in Church Music and Worship. As I have focused more on the great wealth of hymnody and psalmody in the church, I have noticed how averse some protestants can be toward chanting psalms and hymns—until Advent/Christmastide, that is.

It is worth noting that the readership of Musically Speaking is both Protestant and Roman Catholic (thanks in large part to the kind recommendation of Anthony & Debra Esolen’s Word & Song). This post is more geared toward my protestant brothers and sisters than my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters. Hopefully, both groups will find something interesting below.

We All Chant At Christmas

At Christmas, we all do a little chanting or what you could call glorified chanting. We sing “O Come, O Come, Emanuel” or “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” which both have memorable melismatic melodies rooted in early church chant melodies and styles.

Melisma is when multiple notes fall on a single syllable, as demonstrated above in “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” on the third line word “have.” There are five different notes that flow and have a glory there that is irregular and rhythmic. Below is a short example of yours truly singing this above chant in two styles.

In my recording, I try to demonstrate both the good and the bad of singing this melody. It sounds wooden or robotic when poorly done, as in the second part of my recording above.

Melismatic Melodies are Memorable

Think of the well-known “Angels We Have Heard on High” and its melismatic “Gloria” section. I suggest it is memorable because it is unique and active with its sixteen notes on one syllable. I think that is why the hymn is so famous. I don’t think it is so well-loved because of the musical content of the verses, but rather because of the melismatic melody that is the “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” in the refrain. See the image below.

My Overall Point

The more significant point here is that I believe that there is a quality to chanting that is memorable and desirable, even if the “Average Joe” cannot articulate precisely what it is. Many of my protestant brothers and sisters have resistance to chanting in general but do not have any of that resistance when it comes to Christmas hymns sourced in chant melodies or styles, such as the ones referenced above. I ask that we be patient and have a broad tent in accepting the exalted and intoned words of scripture that we call chanting. It does not have to be weird. It does not have to be wooden or robotic. It can be glorious, and it can be the inspiration for even more glorious musical settings of psalms and hymns for Christmas and other times of the church year if we’ll only give it a chants. I know, I know. I’ll stop now, lest I be tempted to subject you to yet another corny pun.

Merry Christmas to you and yours!