Chant

Started by Mandryka, October 11, 2013, 07:14:51 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Mandryka

These are both very good suggestions, thanks for taking the trouble to mention them. The Hofburgkappel people I knwew before because there's a Clemencic CD with them -- I will definitely look into it. Just five minutes with the Norcia people reveals that they are very good at managing the silences, which is good.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#61
From the blurb to Marcel Peres's book Les Voix du Plainchant


QuoteCet essai, fruit d'une rencontre entre un musicien et un ethnologue, souligne l'impossibilité de réduire aujourd'hui le chant d'église au seul chant grégorien, tel qu'il a été consigné au XIXe siècle dans le modèle solesmien. En effet, la philosophie de restauration qui présidait à l'élaboration de ce chant et voulait en faire une expression musicale exclusive à l'église catholique, l'a retranché de la modernité et peu à peu condamné. Partant, c'est toute la tradition des chantres qui a pu réapparaître à la fin du XXe siècle, depuis ses origines juive, grecque et romaine jusqu'aux plains-chants de l'époque baroque, en passant par les polyphonies médiévales et le chant mozarabe. Un art consommé de l'ornementation s'y révèle. Outre sa beauté intrinsèque, il pourrait aujourd'hui, hors de tout soupçon d'intégrisme ou de passéisme, contribuer au renouveau de l'art-lyrique et de la liturgie. Le disque joint au livre donne à entendre des extraits de vieux romain, et des chants de confréries corse et espagnole.

My quick rough and ready botched translation


This essay, fruit of the meeting of a musician and an ethnologist, underlines the impossibility of reducing today church chant to just gregorian chant, as it has been represented in the C19 by the Solesmes model. Indeed the philosophy of restoration which governed the elaboration of this chant, and which wanted to turn it into a sort of musical expression which is exclusive to the Catholic church, has removed it from modernity and has gradually doomed it. And as a result, at the end of the C 20 all the tradition of chanting from its Greek, Jewish and Roman origins to baroque plain-chant, via medieval and Mozarabic polyphony, has been brought to light again. A consummate  art of ornamentation has been revealed. In addition to its intrinsic beauty, it will be possible today to contribute to renewing the lyrical art of the liturgy, while avoiding any suspicion of fundamentalism or a backward looking attachment to the past.

This isn't the first time that I've seen people in early music use strongly pejorative ideas like fundamentalismto sully their opponents views. I myself have been part of discussions where we've likened certain quasi baroque ways of singing early renaissance music to colonialism

I suppose with early music we're right up against the other, otherness, just as the colonists were.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

San Antone

Quote from: Mandryka on May 20, 2019, 10:46:33 PM
From the blurb to Marcel Peres's book Les Voix du Plainchant


My quick rough and ready botched translation


This essay, fruit of the meeting of a musician and an ethnologist, underlines the impossibility of reducing today church chant to just gregorian chant, as it has been represented in the C19 by the Solesmes model. Indeed the philosophy of restoration which governed the elaboration of this chant, and which wanted to turn it into a sort of musical expression which is exclusive to the Catholic church, has removed it from modernity and has gradually doomed it. And as a result, at the end of the C 20 all the tradition of chanting from its Greek, Jewish and Roman origins to baroque plain-chant, via medieval and Mozarabic polyphony, has been brought to light again. A consummate  art of ornamentation has been revealed. In addition to its intrinsic beauty, it will be possible today to contribute to renewing the lyrical art of the liturgy, while avoiding any suspicion of fundamentalism or a backward looking attachment to the past.

This isn't the first time that I've seen people in early music use strongly pejorative ideas like fundamentalismto sully their opponents views. I myself have been part of discussions where we've likened certain quasi baroque ways of singing early renaissance music to colonialism

I suppose with early music we're right up against the other, otherness, just as the colonists were.

It can also be true that in an effort to distinguish his approach, and add "value" to his recordings, Peres is making a specious argument.  I consider the Abbey of Solesmes monks to be the reference standard for chant.

Mandryka

#63
Quote from: San Antone on May 21, 2019, 03:32:58 AM
It can also be true that in an effort to distinguish his approach, and add "value" to his recordings, Peres is making a specious argument.

Which bit do you think is misleading?

Quote from: San Antone on May 21, 2019, 03:32:58 AM
I consider the Abbey of Solesmes monks to be the reference standard for chant.

I think that Peres thinks that the are a reference, not the reference. I've ordered the book and will keep you posted about what I find when it arrives.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka



I'm listening to this for the first time and I'm very struck by the overtones, this is modal singing in the Rebecca Stewart sense, which is good.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#65
Quote from: Mandryka on May 21, 2019, 04:33:10 AM


I think that Peres thinks that the are a reference, not the reference. I've ordered the book and will keep you posted about what I find when it arrives.

I think that may well be to misrepresent Peres's view of Solesmes, which I suspect he sees as irredeemable



Peres opposition to Solesmes comes out rather well in his Compostela CD, in the booklet he writes this

QuoteThis music is not easy to perform, even for specialists. One has to bear in mind information from various different fields: palaeography, metric (of the text end of the music), vocal and ritual aesthetics, the material conditions of performance (positioning of the singers, within the church and in relation to each other) — and also have a clear vision of the different relationships that could be built up between the vocal gesture and what was written down All of these are elements that, in the last analysis, can only be transmitted orally. Oral tradition died out almost completely among Catholics after the great reforms of the early twentieth century. A hundred years later, musicians seeking to revive this music still have difficulty in breaking free from the aesthetic canons established at that time, which brought about a radical change in the rhythmic and vocal approach to church singing. Where rhythm is concerned it was decreed (completely denying the evidence of history and tradi-tion) that plainchant could not have a regular beat, the latter being a sign of materiality, which was incompatible with the spiritual nature of such music. Formulated over a century ago, this sophism is still rife among performers of Gregorian 'chant today. As for the voices, all the vocal gestures that are used to express the interpreter's vitality — timbre, energy in the phonation, ornamentation (to bring out the dynamism of the phrase) — were deliberately dismissed from religious singing, suspected of expressing a non-spiritual materiality, conveying the singers' possible pride. Even today most musicians who perform medie-val music are still bound to those conceptions, without realising their origin. (3)

His book, Les voix du plain-chant arrived this morning, I have only read the first ten pages but I feel rather excited to learn more about what he's discovered about Solesnes and the tradition of catholic liturgical music. He is at great pains to explain the historical context of the Solesnes programme, how, as a matter of historical fact, it formed part of a cleansing of the church from, on the one hand, popular musical forms (opera) and on the other, vestiges of the Ancien Régime. And as you'd expect, he has a view of the patrimony of traditional church singing which sees it as diverse, and well worth preserving, rather than as something to be silenced in a fundamentalist way.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

San Antone

#66
Mary Berry has written about chant, and the Solesmes historical restoration of it.  Gergorian plainchant was on the path of extinction until the Abbot of Solesmes made the important decision to go back to the original manuscripts and restore it. 

During the 16th-18th centuries, the melodies were compromised: "The emergence of polyphony – which distorted the phrasing, melody and especially rhythm of Gregorian chant – at the end of the mediaeval period, marked the beginning of its gradual decline. After being discarded by the Renaissance and Protestantism, many attempts were made to restore Gregorian chant according to the rules of modern music from the early 17th century onwards. This disfigured, distorted version of the chant lost its purity and power of expression and so ceased to interpret and inspire the Church's prayer as it once had."

However, "It was Dom Guéranger (1805–1875, see bust opposite) who took the initiative to restore Gregorian chant according the manuscripts. The aim of his research and restoration was to publish liturgical books. This major work, which the Church has officially requested Solesmes to undertake since Pope Leo XIII, was accomplished slowly but surely in the musical palaeography workshop at Solesmes. " http://www.solesmes.com/history

I consider Mary Berry more reliable, and think that Peres possibly has an anti-Catholic axe to grind.

Mandryka

#67
When you say that Peres is less reliable than Berry, what exactly is their disagreement? Is there a specific thing that Berry says that Peres disagrees with, or vice versa? That would help focus the discussion maybe.

For what it's worth the book is a joint effort by Peres and Jacques Cheyronnaud, who's an ethnologist of some kind.

Mary Berry was indeed a practising Roman Catholic, though whether that makes her views more or less reliable than Peres's about this sort of thing is hard to say. I'm inclined to see Peres as the impartial scientific type, and Berry as a religious figure, but I don't know him and I never met her. I think Berry  lived under some sort of monastic rule, which hardly leads me to think she thought about church matters objectively.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#68
Quote from: San Antone on May 24, 2019, 09:09:20 AM

During the 16th-18th centuries, the melodies were compromised: "The emergence of polyphony – which distorted the phrasing, melody and especially rhythm of Gregorian chant – at the end of the mediaeval period, marked the beginning of its gradual decline. After being discarded by the Renaissance and Protestantism, many attempts were made to restore Gregorian chant according to the rules of modern music from the early 17th century onwards. This disfigured, distorted version of the chant lost its purity and power of expression and so ceased to interpret and inspire the Church's prayer as it once had."

However, "It was Dom Guéranger (1805–1875, see bust opposite) who took the initiative to restore Gregorian chant according the manuscripts. The aim of his research and restoration was to publish liturgical books. This major work, which the Church has officially requested Solesmes to undertake since Pope Leo XIII, was accomplished slowly but surely in the musical palaeography workshop at Solesmes. " http://www.solesmes.com/history



It's interesting this conception of using philological principles to discover the pure heart of liturgical music. It's like they want to cleanse the chant tradition of impurities which had incrusted themselves. You can see why people think it's like fundamentalism.

And you can see why it could be seen as a sort of cultural cleansing, effectively making the living chant traditions which had evolved into a sort of anathema.

I suspect that there were a lot of very contentious decisions made on the way, the devil's in the detail. Decisions about what is pure and what is incrustation, as well as methodological decisions.  I'm looking forward to finding out more about this extraordinary exercise in cultural tyranny.

Imagine someone saying that the English language needs to be purified, we need to go back to its roots and speak like Chaucer, or the pilgrim fathers. That would be daft.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

San Antone

Quote from: Mandryka on May 24, 2019, 09:45:41 AM
It's interesting this conception of using philological principles to discover the pure heart of liturgical music. It's like they want to cleanse the chant tradition of impurities which had incrusted themselves. You can see why people think it's like fundamentalism.

And you can see why it could be seen as a sort of cultural cleansing, effectively making the living chant traditions which had evolved into a sort of anathema.

I suspect that there were a lot of very contentious decisions made on the way, the devil's in the detail. Decisions about what is pure and what is incrustation, as well as methodological decisions.  I'm looking forward to finding out more about this extraordinary exercise in cultural tyranny.

Imagine someone saying that the English language needs to be purified, we need to go back to its roots and speak like Chaucer, or the pilgrim fathers. That would be daft.

Your analogy to the English language is wrong-headed.  A more apt analogy would be the kind of Romantic interpretations (abuses) of early music in which they applied inappropriate forces and stylistic choices according to the prevailing 19th century taste/practice, and excusing them based on bad musicology.  The PI/HIP movement has reversed those mistakes, and the music has benefitted.

Gregorian chant had a long tradition prior to the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and what the monks of Solesmes did was return to the original tradition i.e., remove stylistic aberrations not add a new gloss onto the music.  I cannot help but think that part of the reason Peres is critical of Solesmes, is because the basis of their going back to the original sources was religious, and not strictly musical.  Peres strikes me as biased against religious motivations.  And also causes me to question his entire approach to the performance of sacred music, in general.

I also question the specific rationale in this instance, i.e. the  argument Peres makes that he is "saving" chant, when there is ample evidence of the integrity of the Solesmes approach.

Mandryka

#70
Quote from: San Antone on May 24, 2019, 12:39:11 PM

when there is ample evidence of the integrity of the Solesmes approach.

Err, no!

Quote from: San Antone on May 24, 2019, 12:39:11 PM
Your analogy to the English language is wrong-headed.  A more apt analogy would be the kind of Romantic interpretations (abuses) of early music in which they applied inappropriate forces and stylistic choices according to the prevailing 19th century taste/practice, and excusing them based on bad musicology.  The PI/HIP movement has reversed those mistakes, and the music has benefitted.




No, I think the bad musicology came out of Solesnes. For example, the Solesmes people just refused to accept that ornamentation was an authentic chant practice, despite the discovery of ancient manuscripts in Rome showing richly ornamented Gregorian chants. They were like the pre HIP keyboard players who couldn't accept that rubato etc was an authentic baroque practice.  Or like those scientists who stuck to Newtonian physics despite the Michelson Morley experiment.

Quote from: San Antone on May 24, 2019, 12:39:11 PM


Gregorian chant had a long tradition prior to the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and what the monks of Solesmes did was return to the original tradition i.e., remove stylistic aberrations not add a new gloss onto the music.

But Byzentine singing was part of that tradition, for the first 1000 years of the church in Rome. Solesmes people just exclude that style.  The aberration is theirs.

Quote from: San Antone on May 24, 2019, 09:09:20 AM
This disfigured, distorted version of the chant lost its purity and power of expression and so ceased to interpret and inspire the Church's prayer as it once had."

.

This is interesting. The claim is that Solesmes is giving music its former power to inspire prayer, something which it lost in more lavishly ornamented, byzantine ways of singing. But that presupposes a certain conception of prayer, a C 19 one. This sentence of Mary Berry's is very revealing -- it may show the roots of prejudice which led to  the Solesnes fallacy.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

premont

Quote from: San Antone on May 24, 2019, 12:39:11 PM
Gregorian chant had a long tradition prior to the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and what the monks of Solesmes did was return to the original tradition i.e., remove stylistic aberrations not add a new gloss onto the music.

I am not that focused upon Chant, but as far as I have understood, this process was not strictly musicological in our sense of the word and included a fair amount of conjecture. This is of course more or less the situation with all Early music even when the latest musicology is included, but will often lead to large variance in opinions of performance practice, and to some extent everyone - Peres included - is free to have his own opinion.
γνῶθι σεαυτόν

San Antone

Quote from: Mandryka on May 24, 2019, 01:31:40 PM
Err, no!

I wonder why you doubt the Solesmes investigation of the manuscripts?


QuoteNo, I think the bad musicology came out of Solesnes. For example, the Solesmes people just refused to accept that ornamentation was an authentic chant practice, despite the discovery of ancient manuscripts in Rome showing richly ornamented Gregorian chants. They were like the pre HIP keyboard players who couldn't accept that rubato etc was an authentic baroque practice.  Or like those scientists who stuck to Newtonian physics despite the Michelson Morley experiment.

While the manuscripts are consistently uniform, there is little, if any, evidence of ornamentation, other than at the very end of some concluding phrases.

QuoteBut Byzentine singing was part of that tradition, for the first 1000 years of the church in Rome. Solesmes people just exclude that style.  The aberration is theirs.

What was done in the Eastern church is entirely separate, and not part of the tradition of the Western church, and irrelevant to it.  If what Peres is hoping to do is perform in the Byzantine style, his criticism, and even consideration of Solesmes is completely inappropriate, since Solesmes represents the Western church, not a Byzantine style.  Are you aware that the two traditions, Eastern and Western, were so distinct that for a while there were two Popes?

QuoteThis is interesting. The claim is that Solesmes is giving music its former power to inspire prayer, something which it lost in more lavishly ornamented, byzantine ways of singing. But that presupposes a certain conception of prayer, a C 19 one. This sentence of Mary Berry's is very revealing -- it may show the roots of prejudice which led to  the Solesnes fallacy.

I do not recognize any fallacy on the part of Solesmes, and disagree that the concept of prayer being employed by them is a product of the 19th century.

The claim that the purpose of chant is to create/enhance a reverential and spiritual environment, as well as, to enunciate the texts clearly and appropriately is not a stretch to surmise; this goal was articulated by church authorities and documented in many manuscripts and even Papal declarations across several centuries, dating back to the early Christian period.

San Antone

Quote from: (: premont :) on May 24, 2019, 01:33:17 PM
I am not that focused upon Chant, but as far as I have understood, this process was not strictly musicological in our sense of the word and included a fair amount of conjecture. This is of course more or less the situation with all Early music even when the latest musicology is included, but will often lead to large variance in opinions of performance practice, and to some extent everyone - Peres included - is free to have his own opinion.

Yes, of course, Peres is entitled to his own opinion.  But I object to his criticism of the Solesmes performance practice in order to create a brighter contrast between what he is doing and the long tradition they have established. I cannot help but be skeptical pf his motives.

Mandryka

I'm busy today so I'll deal with what you say in bits and bobs, as it were. But I can deal with one thing straight away.

Quote from: San Antone on May 24, 2019, 02:04:21 PM



While the manuscripts are consistently uniform, there is little, if any, evidence of ornamentation, other than at the very end of some concluding phrases.



No, not the manuscripts of chant in Rome, in St Peters, St John Lateran and St Cecelia. They were unearthed in 1890, ironically enough by a Solesnes monk. There were papers published about it at the time and the official view was to minimise it ("an exception which proved the rule")  rather than to see it as a record of the freedom authentic chant to use rich expressive ornamentation.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#75
And now another free 5 minutes for this one

Quote from: San Antone on May 24, 2019, 02:04:21 PM


What was done in the Eastern church is entirely separate, and not part of the tradition of the Western church, and irrelevant to it


Why do you say this? Are there any writings from before C9 which mark out the differences between Greek and Latin liturgical music? I doubt it.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#76
Quote from: San Antone on May 24, 2019, 02:04:21 PM
Are you aware that the two traditions, Eastern and Western, were so distinct that for a while there were two Popes?
not a stretch to surmise; this goal was articulated by church authorities and documented in many manuscripts and even Papal declarations across several centuries, dating back to the early Christian period.

Now don't be patronising! I was in Avignon a few months ago!

Are you aware that, at the time of the Carolingian programme of global uniformisation of church chant, Gregorian singing was very diverse? Church music in Gaul was not at all the same as church music in Milan or the south of Italy or Spain.

(By the way, are you sure that the Avignon Papacy has anything to do with the differences between the church in the east and the church in the west? Would you spell that out, I must be going stupid but I can't see the logic of your point.)
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Quote from: San Antone on May 24, 2019, 02:04:21 PM
disagree that the concept of prayer being employed by them is a product of the 19th century.


This is something I'd like to think about more deeply, and I suspect, as I said, that it is le nerf de la guerre.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

San Antone

Quote from: Mandryka on May 25, 2019, 01:24:54 AM
And now another free 5 minutes for this one

Why do you say this? Are there any writings from before C9 which mark out the differences between Greek and Latin liturgical music? I doubt it.

I remember reading several quotes about the kind of singing to be encouraged from the 4th century, but it I am unable to dig them up since my subscription to that JStor has lapsed.

Quote from: Mandryka on May 25, 2019, 01:27:37 AM
Now don't be patronising! I was in Avignon a few months ago!

Are you aware that, at the time of the Carolingian programme of global uniformisation of church chant, Gregorian singing was very diverse? Church music in Gaul was not at all the same as church music in Milan or the south of Italy or Spain.

(By the way, are you sure that the Avignon Papacy has anything to do with the differences between the church in the east and the church in the west? Would you spell that out, I must be going stupid but I can't see the logic of your point.)

I was merely to indicating that the Eastern and Western traditions were different, and at odds for a while, in order to question how much similarity there was between the singing of chant, and how useful it is to use the Byzantine tradition of ornamentation (if it existed) as proof of what was done in Rome, or the West in general. My understanding is that the Liber Usualis has roots from the 11th century, at which time there was already a set system of melodies for all chant used in Catholic churches. All the monks of Solesmes did was to organize it and make it available for use in modern churches.

Quote from: Mandryka on May 24, 2019, 11:14:55 PM
I'm busy today so I'll deal with what you say in bits and bobs, as it were. But I can deal with one thing straight away.

No, not the manuscripts of chant in Rome, in St Peters, St John Lateran and St Cecelia. They were unearthed in 1890, ironically enough by a Solesnes monk. There were papers published about it at the time and the official view was to minimise it ("an exception which proved the rule")  rather than to see it as a record of the freedom authentic chant to use rich expressive ornamentation.

Can you be more specific?  I do not know what resource you mean from 1890.

Mandryka

#79
Quote from: San Antone on May 25, 2019, 02:09:02 AM


Can you be more specific?  I do not know what resource you mean from 1890.

I believe there are only five manuscripts from the Church of Rome dating from the 11th and 12th and start of the 13th cenuries, and that they are rather different in terms of the content of the music from manuscripts from elsewhere. The chant resembles gregorian melody, but the ornamentation is much more prolonged.

Three of them were discovered in 1890 by a Solsmes man, Dom Mocquerezu, and it was, of course, a real challenge to the Solesnes project, because they wanted to present this type of thing as a decadent incrustation which robbed the music of its godly purity. These were not additions made in the 16th century, so they couldn't just be dismissed.

To Dom Mocquerezu's credit, he didn't try to hide it. But he did bury it in a footnote. He wrote it up in Volume 2 of Paleographe Musicale (page 4 note 1) I've got the note here but I don't have the time to translate it . . . it ends with the comment  " ici l'exception confirme la règle"

What seems to be happening is that Dom Mocquerezu is so caught up in the fallacy  that the way the music was written corresponds to the way it was sung, he's blinded by his paradigm. He just couldn't see that the Rome manuscripts are, possibly, evidence for performance practice of Gregorian chant, and that the authors of the manuscripts expected the chanters to apply expressive ornaments creatively.

We've seen exactly this fallacy in the interpretation of C17 keyboard music by pre-HIP performers who confused the music with the score, Walcha is an example.

(I've started to feel like the Reverend Edward Casaubon.)
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen