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The gradual ( or responsorium graduale) is a certain chant or hymn in liturgical Christian worship. It is practiced in the Catholic Mass, Lutheranism Divine Service, Anglicanism service and other traditions. It gets its name from the Latin gradus (meaning "step") because it was once chanted on the step of the ambo or altar. It is customarily placed after a reading of scripture.
In the Tridentine Mass, it is sung after the reading or chanting of the epistle and before the Hallelujah, or, during penitential seasons, before the tract. In the Mass of Paul VI, the gradual is usually replaced with the responsorial psalm. Although the Gradual remains an option in the Mass of Paul VI, its use is extremely rare outside monasteries. The gradual is part of the proper of the Mass.
A gradual can also refer to a book collecting all the musical items of the Mass. The official such book for the Roman Rite is the Roman Gradual (Graduale Romanum). Other such books include the Dominican Gradual.
The modern Gradual always consists of two psalm verses, generally (but not always) taken from the same psalm. There are a few Graduals that use a book of scripture other than the Psalms (for example, the verse for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception is from the Book of Judith), or even non-scriptural verses (for example, the first verse in the Requiem Mass).
The Gradual is believed to have been so named because it was sung on the step (Latin: gradus) of the altar, or perhaps because the deacon was mounting the steps of the ambo for the reading or singing of the Gospel. However, early sources use the form gradale ("graded" or "distinguished"), and the Alia Musica (c. 900) uses the term antiphona gradalis for the Introit.
In the Tridentine Mass, the celebrant himself reads the Gradual with the Alleluia, Tract, or Sequence immediately after he has read the Epistle, and at the same place, even if the choir sings it too. There is no rule for the distribution of its parts within the choir. All may be sung straight through by the whole choir, but it is more common to divide the texts so that some parts are sung by one or two cantors. A common arrangement is that the cantors sing the first words of the Gradual (to the asterisk in the choir-books), the choir continues, and the cantors sing the verse. Normally it is all sung to plainsong.
In other churches and rites, there are fragments of the psalms once sung between the lessons that correspond to the Roman Gradual. Their placement and structure depend strongly on how many readings there are. In the Byzantine Rite the reader of the epistle first chants "the Psalm of David" and then the "Prokeimenon of the Apostle", both short fragments of psalms. The Armenian Rite, which has kept the older arrangement of three lessons, includes between each a fragment called the Saghmos Jashu (Psalm of dinnertime) and the Mesedi (mesodion), again a verse or two from a psalm. The Nestorians use three verses of psalms each followed by three Alleluias (this group is called Zumara) after the Epistle. The present Ambrosian Rite sometimes has a Prophecy before the Epistle, in which case there follows the Psalmellus, two or three verses from a psalm, which corresponds to the Gradual. The Mozarabic Rite has three lessons, with a psalm ( Psallendo) sung between the first two. Among Protestant churches, Lutheranism sing a Gradual either between the Old Testament and the Epistle or the Epistle and the Gospel readings during the Divine Service.
Graduals are among the most florid and of all Gregorian chants; Clamaverunt iusti, for example, has melismas with up to 66 notes. Graduals as a group are also notable for melismas that stress one or two pitches, both through repeated notes and repercussive . Both the verse and the respond tend to be similar in style, excepting a tendency for the verse to have a higher tessitura.
Like Tracts, most Graduals show clear signs of centonization, a process of composition in which an extended vocabulary of stock musical phrases are woven together. Some phrases are only used for , some only for cadences, and some only in the middle of a musical line. The Gregorian Graduals can be organized into musical families that share common musical phrases. Although nearly half of the Gregorian Graduals belong to a family of related chants in the fifth Church mode, the most famous family of Graduals are those of the second mode, commonly called the Iustus ut palma group after one representative chant. The Graduals of the Old Roman chant fall similarly into centonization families, including a family corresponding to the Iustus ut palma group.
Originally the book was called an antiphonale missarum ("Antiphonal of the Mass"). Graduals, like the later Cantatory, may have originally included only the responsorial items, the Gradual, Hallelujah and Tract.
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