April 26, 2000

High-tech ancient text

Former TC priest writes Gregorian Chant Scribe computer program

By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
       Traverse City native Lewis Burden is making his mark in the world - the world of 11th Century, that is.
      Transcending millennia, Father Burden, a Catholic priest now living in Weyerhauser, Wis., wrote a computer program that that eases the process of writing Gregorian Chants. Dubbed Chant Scribe, the 35,000 lines of computer code that Fr. Burden wrote in his spare time over three years is used worldwide by composers, musicians and scholars as they analyze and revive this ancient musical form.
      Presiding over the marriage of modern technology and ancient theology was not a stretch for the longtime computer enthusiasist, who followed a calling into the priesthood at age 19. He was ordained at St. Francis in 1997.
      "Chant Scribe is basically a desktop publisher program with the notes in it," said Fr. Burden, who is parish priest for four congregations around his rural Wisconsin home. "You can write the music using the composer; I used some of the concepts from regular music composition programs gearing it to Gregorian concepts."
      Fr. Burden was the right person in the right place at the right time when he was a student at St. Meinrad College in southern Indiana during the late 1980s. Fr. Burden fell in love with computers during ninth-grade at Traverse City Senior High School when a teacher brought in an Apple computer for students to play with. Burden went on to study computer programming for a year at Northwestern Michigan College, though he considers himself mostly self-taught as a programmer.
      With this computer background, he began collaborating with Fr. Columba Kelly, a renowned authority on Gregorian chants, to develop Chant Scribe in 1988. Fr. Kelly had been hoping for a notation program for the chants for decades. With the power of personal computer finally able to handle the complexities of his needs, Fr. Kelly began laying our exacting specifications for a Chant notation program.
      After many afternoons of sitting with Fr. Kelly going over the specs, Fr. Burden began coding in 1992. His program, written for the Macintosh, captured the squares and squiggles of Gregorian chants, which formed the beginning of modern music notation.
      "Gregorian chants work on a very different concept from modern music," said Fr. Burden, who had some traditional music training and learned to chant by ear in college. "There is no timing and it is not something you count, it is something you speak. You can hear the ancientness of chants and they are very relaxing and calming."
      Beginning in the 11th Century, Gregorian chants were used by soloists or up to three people to lead prayers during worship. The chants have eight different modes, each inducing a different mood in the listener. The Latin text of traditional Gregorian chants made them less accessible to modern Catholics, most of whom no longer attend traditional Latin mass.
      Chant Scribe fills the gap by easily allowing composers like Kelly, who has more than 2,000 chants to his credit, to create new chants in English. Writing directly in English was a breakthrough from the former, cumbersome attempts to translate Latin chants to English.
      Having Kelly and Burden come together at St. Meinrad was providential in fulfilling one of the Archabbey's missions: reviving Gregorian chants. Since the Chant Scribe software was released in 1995, the Monks of St. Meinrad have released a CD of Advent and Christmas music and plan a release of Lent and Easter chants later this year.
      In addition, the software is used worldwide by monks, musicians and historians from Massachusetts and California to Switzerland and Rome. Fr. Burden even received a letter from a choir director in Rome noting that the display of notes was 1/50th of an inch off.
      "It was very exciting to work with something that was so ancient," said Fr. Burden, who is now writing a cemetery management program in his spare time. "There's a search for spirituality and Gregorian chants very much lends itself to prayer and spirituality."