SCHOLA CANTORUM

The introduction of the choir into Christian religious music is related to the practice of antiphonal singing between a group of precentors and the congregation. In earliest times choirs were composed of boys, of young women, of lectors, of clerics, or of other groupings. A special type of choir is found in monastic communities. Their choir and congregation are one. After the 5th century there is testimony that monastic communities were entrusted with the Office (and ecclesiastical chant) in important churches (basilican monasteries). As the chorus monachorum or the chorus clericorum took over responsibility for chants formerly sung by the congregation, the need arose to establish within it, or in addition to it, a specialized group of singers; and it was suggested that in doing so they might make use of lectors and cantors and of boys preparing for the priesthood. That priests excelled from youth on in divinis scripturis et cantilena is learned from papal epitaphs of the 7th century.

The first documentary evidence of a separate group of singers in Rome is found in the Vita of Pope Sergius I (687–701) in the Liber pontificalis. It is said there that he came to Rome during the reign of Pope Adeodatus II (672–676) and was taken into the Roman clergy. "Studiosus erat et capaux in officio cantilenae, prior cantorum pro doctrina est traditus." In the Liber diurnus (end of the 7th century) there is mention of an ordo cantorum, which is probably the same institution that is later encountered under the designation schola cantorum. Its responsibility was to provide the music for papal Masses. Since the schola cantorum of the 9th century traced its founding to Pope St. Gregory the Great, it may well have been on of the products of his reorganization of the stational Mass (see stational church). Gregorian chant grew up in the Roman schola cantorum of the 7th and 8th centuries; the Gradual was referred to as "libellum musicae artis scolae cantorum." As the Roman liturgy and Gregorian chant spread in the West, scholae cantorum were established, according to the Roman model, at important churches. With the introduction of secular musicians into church music in the later Middle Ages, the schola cantorum fell into a decline. In the Renaissance it was incorporated into the chorus musicorum.

Bibliography: k. meyer, Der chorische Gesang der Frauen (Leipzig 1917). j. quasten, Musik und Gesang in den Kulten der heidnischen Antike und christlichen Frühzeit (Münster 1930). j. handschin, Musikgeschichte im Überblick (Lucerne 1948). h. hucke, "Die Entwicklung des christlichen Kultgesangs zum Gregorianischen Gesang," Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und für Kirchengeschichte 48 (1953) 147–194. "Zu einigen Problemen der Choralforschung," Die Musikforschung 11 (1958) 385–414. j. smits van waesberghe, "Neues über die Schola cantorum zu Rom," Internationaler Kongress für katholische Kirchenmusik, v. 2 (Vienna 1954) 111–119. f. l. harrison, Music in Medieval Britain (New York 1958). s. corbin, L'Église à la conquête de sa musique (Paris 1960). s. j. p. van dijk, "Papal Schola 'Versus' Charlemagne," Organicae voces: Festschrift Joseph Smits van Waesberghe angeboten anlässlich seines 60. Geburtstag, ed. P. Fischer (Amsterdam, 1963) 21–30. j. dyer, "The Schola Cantorum and its Roman Milieu in the Early Middle Ages," De musica et cantu: Helmut Hucke zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. p. cahn and a.-k. heimer (Hildesheim 1993) 19–40.

[h. hucke/eds.]