Original scientific paper
Primary education students' experience of the expressiveness of authentic modes in Gregorian chant
Tihomir Prša
; The Chair of Arts The Faculty of Teacher Education University of Zagreb Trg matice hrvatske 12, 44 250 Petrinja, Croatia
Jelena Blašković
orcid.org/0000-0003-2552-6802
; The Chair of Arts The Faculty of Teacher Education University of Zagreb Trg matice hrvatske 12, 44 250 Petrinja, Croatia
Abstract
Expressiveness of the church modes is reflected in their character and association of
certain states with a specific mode or single Gregorian composition which possesses
unique expressiveness. An important characteristic of Gregorian chant on the
tonality level is diatonic singing based on scales without chromatics, using only
one semitone in the tetrachord whose musical structure reflects the expressiveness
of Gregorian chant. Such expressiveness achieves character specificities which
each mode respectively reflects. Various modal material in the form of typical
melodic shifts in a certain composition conditions the expressiveness of Gregorian
music and influences the listening impression and assessment of individual
Gregorian tunes. The goal of this work is to examine primary education students'
experiences of the expressiveness of Gregorian modes and explore if today's auditory
sense accustomed to two tonality genres, major and minor, recognises what has
been stored in the heritage of Gregorian chant repertoire for centuries. The research
was conducted in the school year 2018/2019 with students of first, second, third
and fourth grade of primary school (N=100). The results have shown that first and
second grade students express higher auditory sensibility in recognizing specific
characteristic of authentic Gregorian modes. Third and fourth grade students are
audibly less open and perceptive considering tonal character differences in the
authentic Gregorian modes.
Keywords
Gregorian chant; modality; old church scales; students in primary education
Hrčak ID:
247850
URI
Publication date:
21.9.2020.
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