Ambrosian Hymns: Milan - Spring 2008

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This was in 386 A.D.

Those notes and those verses are to this day


the pillars of Ambrosian liturgy and on those melodies
musicians of later times worked and meditated by
their musical variations, by adorned singing,
and elaborations on the low keys taking up
the theme of the ancient Ambrosian notation,
designed for deep notes supporting the musical
building.
Choir and organ, to this day, engage in exploring and
adorning that slight but cultivated musical corpus of rare
communicational power.

Carmina and music, sermons and melodies,


treasures of the spirit, communicated through the
simplest instrument,
that of the voice expanding in a nave.
Ambrose is great at giving each of his hymns
(thirteen are supposed to be authentic on eleven
melodies employed)
the strength of synthesis: in them are encompassed and
described, in the rolling lines of iambic dimeter, the
fundamental truths of Christianity together with the
sweetness of melos expressing and defining in turn in its
ways inner life, contemplation or joy, on the G chord,
before the risen Christ.

The congregation learning to sing with him was divided


into women and men, white and dark voices, opposed
and united in prayer.

An example of absolute modernity still viewed by


contemporary liturgy with utmost ecstatic admiration.
St Augustine is as effective in his outline of the poetics
of an Ambrosian hymn:
” It calls for three elements: (I) singing
because « if you praise God and you do not
sing this is not reciting a hymn »;
(II) the praise of God,
because “if you sing and do not praise God
this is not reciting a hymn”;
(III) praise referring to God, because
“if you praise something which does not pertain to the
praise of God this is not reciting a hymn”
Therefore a hymn has these three components:
Ambrosian hymns are one of the most both a canticle and the praise of God”.
beautiful examples of how doctrine, This is another masterpiece of synthesis
music and poetry can live in harmony together. introducing Ambrose’s hymns.
“In-cantationes”, said the followers of Arius.
Music and verses which may be comparable to magic. All that is left to do is to experience them
in the outgoing natural flow of singing.
The praying congregation sang and resisted, Still nowadays.
supported by the notes of the hymns, to the Roman siege
of the Portian Basilica, preserving high spirits ❦ Gian Nicola Vessia
based on the “cantus” - simple and profound -
that Ambrose had offered them. Milan – Spring 2008

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