Sequence Hymns Aren't Scary!

Pentecost is next week! With the celebration of Pentecost, the Easter season comes to a close. To bookend this season, the church sings two sequence hymns, one on Easter Sunday (Victimae Paschali Laudes) and then on Pentecost Sunday (Veni, Sancte Spiritus). Whether or not to sing these sequence hymns, and whether or not to utilize the traditional chanted style is a point of confusion and lack of information for many church musicians. The following contains many excerpts from one of my capstone projects during my Master's degree studies. I ventured to write an informative paper incorporating a great deal of research and analysis to serve as a pastoral guide for utilizing the sequence hymns of the church.

Sequence hymns were quite in fashion back in the 10th-13th centuries, back in the days of such pivotal players like Hildegard von Bingen, Guido d'Arezzo, and the dynamic duo of Notre Dame: Leonin and Perotin! I think it is no small coincidence that such strong figures of musical history thrived in this age where the development of sacred music for the liturgy was championed by the Catholic Church.

What is a Sequence Hymn?

A sequence hymn is a sacred poetic text that is sung or said on feast days of particular importance in the church. Traditionally, it had been sung at the conclusion of the gospel acclamation ("Alleluia") before the gospel is read. Today, it is most often sung after the second reading in the modern liturgy.

Excerpt of "Veni, Sancte Spiritus," the Pentecost Sequence Hymn

By the tenth century, the sequence became firmly established as an “integral part[s] of the complete structure of the Mass.”(1) This provided ample opportunity for composers to flex their artistic talent in the service of the Church. The compositional output was outstanding, with “over 1400 melodies and 3000 texts in 1400 major extant sources.” (2) The sequence was an important development in the Catholic Mass, one that had as much artistic benefit as it did liturgical. The sequence gave the Church an opportunity in the Mass to pause and reflect on the content of the Liturgy of the Word, connecting scripture with the liturgical season or feast being celebrated. These hymns added solemnity to worship and signified the importance of liturgical feast days in the life of the church. Sequences are a great example of the development of music and liturgy that worked hand-in-hand to edify worship for the faithful.

“Sequences signify connection. Joined to the Alleluia, connected on the other hand to the Gospel, sequences included allusions to both and thereby provided a copulation between the two.”(3) The sequence helps as a means of presenting the meaning and significance of a particular liturgy. Consider it a mini-(sung) homily, or a sacred poem. Following the principle of progressive solemnity, adding the sequence to the liturgies of Easter and Pentecost, for example, marks these special days with even greater solemnity in the sung presentation of the sequence hymn. The form of the sequence tends to follow a consistent structure:

“A sequence usually begins with an independent introductory sentence or an Alleluia (an intonation with its own melody); then follow several pairs of strophes, each pair with its own melody; in the earlier periods the conclusion is uniformly an independent sentence of shorter or longer form. Each pair of strophes is composed of strophe and antistrophe, which exactly agree in their length and the number of their syllables (later also in rhythm and rhyme).”(4)

Sequences grew from the roots of unrhymed and uneven verses into the more formal structure that was enjoyed before many sequences were left behind. (5)

Analysis of Sequence Hymns

The phrase structure for these hymns is in couplets, where two phrases contain the same musical material back-to-back. By defining each of these couplets as one phrase, there are some similarities between the melodic sections as well. This repetition can be helpful for all levels of musicians, from the pew to the choir loft. By analyzing two of the sequences, “Victimae paschali laudes” (Easter), and “Veni Sancte Spiritus” (Pentecost), it is clear that not only are the melodies singable, but they may even be more accessible to a congregation than many of the current songs selected for worship. Comparing sequences to popular modern-day songs for liturgy is a good litmus test to see how effectively the music can be sung by a typical congregation. To do this, I compared the two sequence hymns above against 3 of the modern classics that are common to most Catholics in today's missal publications. (If interested in more of the specific analysis and selections, let me know!)

This process of comparison was very enlightening, revealing that some of the assumptions we seem to make about supporting congregational singing may be unfounded. Comparing the variance of intervals, there is no significant difference between these sequences and the popular modern selections. The intervals are all within a controlled range no greater than an octave, and there are no more than six unique intervals in any given song or sequence. I also combed through each selection to determine how many unique rhythms were present. I defined the 'unique rhythms' as being patterns of three to five notes that are distinctly

Table of interval comparison I conducted during my research and analysis

different from other patterns. Smaller variances (such as a measure in common time with a dotted half-note and a quarter note, compared with another bar in common time with a dotted half-note and two eighth notes,) were not marked as unique. (6) It is worth noting that the rhythmic values of the chant melodies are not metered in the modern sense of rhythm. Chant is written with neumes which may include 1-3 pitches with varying patterns determining the singing of a given set of notes. Modern editions have been written to help give a sense of 'rhythmic flow' intended for each chant. As such, I utilized the same publisher (OCP) for all 5 selections to compare and draw information from in this comparative analysis. I found that sequence hymns contained very few unique rhythms, while the modern songs contained, if not similar, more than twice the number of unique rhythms for a singer to navigate. As an objective statement: the modern music is more technically complex than the chanted melodies of sequence hymns.

Conclusion

We may not be as familiar with the chant melodies, but by and large, the technical considerations of chanted sequence hymns (and other chant melodies for that matter!) make them no more difficult than anything else we've given our congregations to sing over the last 60 years. The assumption seems to be that the congregation will only sing if the melodies presented to them are more modern in style, which makes it accessible based on exposure from the musical world outside of the church; i.e., it has to be written like secular music. Without getting into the weeds of the nature of liturgical music being sacred or secular (another blog for another time), I just want to consider the objective information from my analysis: the chanted sequence hymns are technically accessible for congregational singing. People can absolutely sing these melodies, they just lack exposure. It should be no surprise that the congregation will struggle with a form of music that is not sung on a regular basis. This does not mean that we pick whichever form of music is 'easiest' and repeat it ad nauseum for the benefit of 'active participation.' The value of sacred music is not in its accessibility to make a lot of noise in the church, the value of sacred music is in the content: the words, the music, dignified and true, proclaiming the good news of Christ and his Church.

The sequence hymns of Easter and Pentecost are required to be proclaimed (preferably sung of course), and if we want to ensure that our congregation can participate in something that is required twice a year, we can't expect them to participate externally or internally with something they receive little to no other exposure to. Chant should not be an infrequent guest in our liturgies; chant is the primary mode of singing within the liturgy. As the GIRM states, "All other things being equal, Gregorian chant holds pride of place because it is proper to the Roman Liturgy."(7)

I am well aware that many congregations do not appreciate chanted sequence hymns. But as I said before, the value of sacred music is not about accessibility, it is about the "glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful."(8) Not only do sequence hymns fit perfectly the definition of sacred music, but they also are indeed accessible! Admittedly, not so much in the cultural milieu of our church at current, but that is easily remedied by nothing more than offering the exposure, appreciation, and practice of singing chant year-round. See a sequence hymn? Sing it! It's not scary, it's just new (to you). This is inherently Catholic sacred music, it belongs to the church, and it is high time we uphold and treasure the music of our liturgies.

-McChoir

References:

(1) van Deusen, “The Use and Significance of the Sequence,” Musica Disciplina, vol. 40, (1986): 18. (2) Hanning, Concise History of Western Music, Fifth Edition, 5. (3) van Deusen, “The Use and Significance of the Sequence,” Musica Disciplina, vol. 40, (1986): 22. (4) “Prose or Sequence,” Clemens Blume/The Catholic Encyclopedia. June 1, 1911. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12481d.htm. 

(5) Alec Robertson, Christian Music (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1961), 45 (6) though if I did, the amount of rhythmic variance in each of the modern song selections would be devastating to anyone who claims 'singability' as an objective feature of these modern compositions.

(7) General Instruction of the Roman Missal, #41

(8) Sacrosanctum Concilium, #112