Lesson Six: Chant Notation

So far, we've been working on singing psalms entirely by ear. Now it's time to branch into a new level of expertise in our singing of the chants and have a look at how to read simple chant notations.

Part of the excitement in the contemporary revival of contemplative psalmody is that monastic communities all over the world are beginning to compose new melodies to sing their psalms to and are developing simple and effective ways of writing these melodies down--"pointing" them is the old, official word--so that anyone with basic sight-reading skills can look at a psalm and see how to sing it.

Let's try our hand at one simple form of modern psalm notation developed by the monks of New Camaldoli Monastery in Big Sur, California. We'll work with the well-known and well-loved Psalm 100, "Shout with joy to the Lord, all you lands." Follow the text as you listen to the whole chant:




Shout with joy to the Lord, all you / lands.
Serve the Lord \ with gladness.
Come into his presence \ rejoicing.

Know that the Lord is / God.
He made us and we \ are his,
his own people, the sheep of \ his pasture.

Come into his gates, giving / thanks.
Enter his courts \ with praise.
Give thanks to him and bless \ his name.

Praise the Lord, for he is / good,
his love endures \ forever
his faithfulness from age \ to age.

Doxology:
Praise the Father for his merciful / love;
taste and see that the Lord \ is good;
give him praise in the Ho\ly Spirit.

Now let's try to get oriented on the page for sight singing. In the middle of the page, you'll see what looks like three musical measures. Underneath each one is a caption: "odd lines," "even lines," and "last line only." These three "measures" furnish our psalm tone--which simply means they give us the tune we are going to sing this psalm to. The first one (the "odd line") goes like this:

La La

The second one (the "even line") goes like this:

La La La

The third line (the "last line only") goes like this:

La La La

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