Chorus

CHORUS. - With the term χερός the Greeks originally designated the group of dancers who sang the dithyramb around the altar of Dionysus; then the term came to indicate the song that accompanied the dances; thence also the place where the dances took place. The same happened in parallel among Christians. The term chorus comprised: the group of singers, the sacred song, the place where the singers performed their song.

I. CHANT

In the beginning the chorus of the faithful sang psalms and chanted in responsorial or antiphonal form, that is, it recited the verses of the psalms and intoned hymns and canticles in praise of God, respectively responding to the praecantor (first cantor) or alternating, on the same recitation or melody, its own voice with that of another chorus, to end together in unison with an acclamation or a doxology. However, antiphonal chant, or as it is more commonly called choral chant, established itself only at the end of the 3rd century or at the beginning of the 4th in the Eastern Church, and from the East it then passed to the West; but, derived ab antiquo from the synagogue, it must already have existed in the time of St. Ignatius (beginning of the 2nd century), subsequently growing in importance with the growth of the liturgical needs of Christianity after the edict of Constantine (313). Still in the 3rd and 4th centuries "hymnody" (choral singing of hymns) established itself as a formidable weapon against heresy, which had been the first to use the same means, well suited to taking hold of the faithful because of its strophic simplicity and its new, easier rhythmic conception (accentual meter). After the definitive arrangement given by St. Gregory the Great, choral chant began its slow and difficult, though in the end (11th century) victorious, penetration throughout Europe. But already in the 9th century the symptoms of a crisis of choral singing revealed themselves, marking the beginning of the decline of religious music itself. The principal causes are to be sought on the one hand in the practice of "diaphony" and its subsequent developments (descant, counterpoint and great polyphony), and on the other in the introduction of instruments, already begun (7th-8th centuries) with the use of the organ in church. The organum or diaphony (end of the 9th century), that is, assigning to one of the two choruses the functions of the organ instrument, following the principal melody in fourths or fifths, represented the first step toward a more restrained and aristocratic choral style, which would reach in the successive forms a greater complexity and difficulty of execution. In descant (v.) and in counterpoint the place was then yielded to a limited number of specialist singers. If one adds that with the barbarian invasions the people unlearned how to speak Latin and therefore became estranged from the liturgical language, giving rise to a flowering of songs in the vernacular, and furthermore that with the arrival of Humanism and the Renaissance the sense of the profane was accentuated, one will have a fairly complete picture of the conditions in which the art of religious choral music found itself up to Palestrina (1525-1594). Counterpoint passed from the Flemish and from France to all of Europe and flowed into the great polyphony that represented in reality an outward intensification of the manifestations of religious faith, generally to the detriment of the interiority proper to the primitive monodic Christian chant (gregorianus or cantus firmus), to which the liturgy had remained faithful. In Palestrina, however, there is still the demonstration of how polyphonic (diatonic) choral music can be reconciled with the liturgical requirements of the Church, and, contemporaneously with him and even before, it is legitimate to see the signs of a renewed choral spirit in G. Okeghem (restorer of the church style for voices alone, in contrast to the use, by then long established, of instrumental supports and reductions), Josquin Des Prez, Orlando di Lasso, A. Willaert (who renewed in Venice at St. Mark's the two antiphonal choruses in the ancient manner), A. and G. Gabrieli, etc. As one approaches our own times, choral music increasingly confuses the religious element with the profane and invades above all the concert halls and the theater. Chorus of instruments and chorus of human voices balance each other in importance: the same happens even in Church, and the former sometimes comes to replace the latter altogether, while the term is used indifferently to designate the one and the other. In G. Gabrieli the choral apparatus accompanied by instruments even reaches, at certain moments, no fewer than 16 voices; O. Benevoli (17th century) brings together the imposing mass of voices divided into 12 choruses with the accompaniment of a full orchestra supported by 2 organs. The meaning that each individual part of each chorus formerly had has now become an entirely secondary matter, and, while the instrument emancipates itself from the role of accompaniment and completely instrumental music (17th and 18th centuries) and symphonic music (18th-19th centuries) develops to the utmost, vocal music directs itself for the most part to melodrama (18th-19th centuries). For Bach the chorus is still felt in the function of a religious spirit; but in Beethoven and then in the Romantics in general, as today in the contemporaries, almost all choral production is concerned now with the sacred, now with the profane, and confuses them together. Nevertheless, from the middle of the 19th century, the movement for the restoration of sacred music, begun in Germany and subsequently penetrating all of Europe and the United States, has triumphantly brought back to light the Gregorian and polyphonic choral art, the object of careful study and repeated performances (L. Perosi, I. Pizzetti, A. Honneger, Z. Kodály).

II. LITURGY AND ART

By ch. is meant that part of the presbytery which, depending on the position of the high altar, lies in front of or behind it. The apse (v.) is always reserved to the ch.; however the ch. may, for peculiar reasons, also be located in another space, as in side chapels (winter ch., summer ch.). The ch. is always furnished with stalls or benches from which the secular or regular clergy take part in the liturgy. The stalls are often to be counted among the most distinguished products of the art of woodwork. The present-day ch. combines in itself the elements of the ancient presbytery and of the schola cantorum (v.), where the singers gathered, to whom today the cantoria (v.) is reserved.

In Italy there are important examples in the 14th century; thus the ch. of the cathedral of Orvieto, begun in 1325, on a design by Giovanni Ammannati, of Siena, and executed by Lorenzo di Accorso, Giovanni Talini, Meuccio Nuti and others; the side stalls of the cathedral of Siena (1363-97) by Francesco del Tonghio, his son Jacopo and other masters; the ch. of S. Domenico in Ferrara by Giovanni da Baiso. From the 15th century date: the ch. of the cathedral of Pienza, adorned with Gothic arches supported by twisted small columns, that of the chapel of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, by Domenico di Niccolò (1428), inlaid and carved with representations alluding to the Creed, still Gothicizing; that of the lower church of S. Francesco d'Assisi, by Apollonio di Giovanni Petrocchi of Ripatransone (1471), Gothicizing, carved and inlaid; that of S. Maria Nuova in Perugia, carved in the Gothic style by Paolino da Ascoli and Giovanni da Montelparo (1456). Domenico Indivini da S. Severino is the author of the ch. of the upper church of S. Francesco d'Assisi (1491-1501); Giangiacomo Genovese finished in 1471 the ch. of pointed-arch forms of the cathedral of Piacenza, derived from the art of Giovanni da Baiso; the Canozzi da Lendinara carved the ch. of the cathedral of Parma. And still one cites the ch. of the cathedral of Reggio Emilia, from the school of Giovanni da Baiso, that of S. Prospero in the same city, that of S. Sisto in Piacenza, of S. Zeno in Verona, of the Frari in Venice, a work, like that of S. Stefano in Venice, by Marco da Vicenza. Echoes of French art resound in Piedmont throughout the 15th century: distinguished is the ch. of the cathedral of Aosta, by Giovanni Vion of Samoens and Giovanni di Chetro, whose back panels are adorned with bas-reliefs representing apostles, prophets and saints; equally notable is that of the collegiate church of S. Orsola in the same city, by Pietro Mochet, of Geneva, with back panels with Gothic ornaments and bas-reliefs with apostles and prophets, seats and armrests with small figures of monks, warriors, animals and hunting scenes. One recalls, still in Piedmont, the ch. of S. Giovanni in Asti, of the cathedral of Susa, a work by Balbino di Suro da Pavia (1477), of the abbey of Staffarda, now in the Museo Civico of Turin.

Intarsia, which was already found in the 14th century, undergoes a broad development in the following one, especially in Umbria and Tuscany. Giuliano da Maiano and Domenico del Tasso decorate with saints and ornamental motifs the ch. of the cathedral of Perugia (1486-91);

In 1515 Fra Giovanni da Verona completed with marvelous artistry the inlay of the choir stalls of the church of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, depicting there birds, fountains, views, still lifes. And inlays are found in the church of Badia in Florence, in the cathedral of Todi, where Antonio and Sebastiano Bencivenni da Mercatello worked, in S. Maria in Organo in Verona, in the cathedrals of Genoa and Savona. The choir of the Certosa di Pavia presents carvings by Bartolomeo De Poli and inlays by Pietro da Vailate with figures of saints; that of S. Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, inlays by Francesco Capodiferro after cartoons by Lorenzo Lotto (Judith and Holofernes, David and Goliath, The Entry into the Ark, The Crossing of the Red Sea), by Moretto and by others.

Carving once again asserted itself advantageously over inlay in S. Maria delle Carceri in Prato, in S. Pietro in Perugia, in S. Anastasia in Verona. In the cathedral of Siena the central stalls are by Bartolomeo Neroni, called il Riccio, in which one sees added inlays by Fra Giovanni da Verona, coming from the destroyed church of S. Benedetto.

And one may still cite, in the sixteenth century, the choirs of S. Sebastiano in Biella, of S. Giustina in Padua, of S. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, etc.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries choirs became sumptuous and complicated according to the common tendencies of the time; one recalls the choir in the chapel of the canons in St. Peter's in the Vatican; that, unfortunately destroyed, of the abbey of Montecassino by G. A. Coliccio, richly carved; that of S. Domenico in Lucera, by Fabrizio Jannulo da Monopoli, who carved there the figures of Christ at the Column and of saints in the back panels; that of the church of S. Sigismondo in Verona, by G. Capra; of the parish church of Mosso S. Maria, with lively elegant ornamentation; of S. Maria di Moncalieri, carved with refined elegance. Among the carvers of this period Andrea Fontoni da Rovetta excels, author of the choir of the church of Sorisole (Bergamo), with images of saints inside niches and other decorative figures.

Outside Italy one recalls the stalls of the cathedral of Amiens, begun in 1598; in Germany the choir of the cathedral of Ulm; in Spain those of the cathedral of Seville, by Nufrò Sanchez and the Fleming Dancart (ca. 1478), of the cathedral of Léon by Teodorico Tedesco (1481), of the cathedral of Palencia by Pietro di Guadalupa (1519), of the cathedral of Toledo by Rodrigo Alemán, by the Biguerny and by A. Berruguete; in Portugal the stalls of S. Croce of Coimbra and of the church of the convent of Belem.

Among modern works one may cite the stalls in the church of the Immacolata in Genoa, inlaid with ivory and metals. - See plates XXIV-XXV.

Vincenzo Golzio