GREGORIAN BAND - VIVA LA VIDA

VIVA LA VIDA

GREGORIAN BAND

SONGWRITERS: CHRIS MARTIN; GUY BERRYMAN; JONNY BUCKLAND & WILL CHAMPION.

COUNTRY: GERMAN

ALBUM: GREGORIAN 20/2020

LABEL: EDEL RECORDS

GENRE: GREGORIAN CHANT

YEAR: 2020

 

         Gregorian is a German band headed by Frank Peterson that performs Gregorian chant-inspired versions of modern pop and rock songs. The band features both vocal harmony and instrumental accompaniment. They competed in Unser Lied für Stockholm the German national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest 2016 with the song "Masters of Chant". They placed 5th in the first round of the public voting, missing the top 3. They gained 9.06% of the public vote.

       Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe during the 9th and 10th centuries, with later additions and redactions.

           Gregorian chants were organized initially into four, then eight, and finally 12 modes. Typical melodic features include a characteristic ambitus, and also characteristic intervallic patterns relative to a referential mode final, incipits and cadences, the use of reciting tones at a particular distance from the final, around which the other notes of the melody revolve, and a vocabulary of musical motifs woven together through a process called centonization to create families of related chants. The scale patterns are organized against a background pattern formed of conjunct and disjunct tetrachords, producing a larger pitch system called the gamut. The chants can be sung by using six-note patterns called hexachords. Gregorian melodies are traditionally written using neumes, an early form of musical notation from which the modern four-line and five-line staff developed. Multi-voice elaborations of Gregorian chant, known as organum, were an early stage in the development of Western polyphony.

        Gregorian chant was traditionally sung by choirs of men and boys in churches, or by men and women of religious orders in their chapels. It is the music of the Roman Rite, performed in the Mass and the monastic Office. Although Gregorian chant supplanted or marginalized the other indigenous plainchant traditions of the Christian West to become the official music of the Christian liturgy, Ambrosian chant still continues in use in Milan, and there are musicologists exploring both that and the Mozarabic chant of Christian Spain. Although Gregorian chant is no longer obligatory, the Roman Catholic Church still officially considers it the music most suitable for worship. During the 20th century, Gregorian chant underwent a musicological and popular resurgence.

I used to rule the world

Seas would rise when I gave the word

Now in the morning I sleep alone

Sweep the streets I used to own

 

I used to roll the dice

Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes

Listened as the crowd would sing

Now the old king is dead!

Long live the king!

 

One minute I held the key

Next the walls were closed on me

And I discovered that my castles stand

Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

 

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing

Roman Cavalry choirs are singing

Be my mirror, my sword and shield

My missionaries in a foreign field

 

For some reason I can't explain

Once you'd gone, there was never

Never an honest word

That was when I ruled the world

 

It was the wicked and wild wind

Blew down the doors to let me in

Shattered windows and the sound of drums

People couldn't believe what I'd become

 

Revolutionaries wait

For my head on a silver plate

Just a puppet on a lonely string

Oh, who would ever want to be king?

 

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing

Roman Cavalry choirs are singing

Be my mirror, my sword and shield

My missionaries in a foreign field

 

For some reason I can't explain

I know Saint Peter won't call my name

Never an honest word

But that was when I ruled the world

 

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh

Hear Jerusalem bells are ringing

Roman Cavalry choirs are singing

Be my mirror, my sword and shield

My missionaries in a foreign field

 

For some reason I can't explain

I know Saint Peter won't call my name

Never an honest word

But that was when I ruled the world.