GMG Classical Music Forum

Quote from: Scarpia on October 11, 2013, 10:55:22 AM
You can try this:

(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ncSdmCR7L._SY300_.jpg)

Quote from: Mandryka on October 11, 2013, 07:14:51 AM
I know practically nothing about chant, but I know I'm very curious about it. That's  because I really like the Byzentine chant that I hear from Ensemble Organum, on their records called Le Chant des Templiers, and also on the CD called Chant de L'église de Rome.

So if you know any good things to read about the different styles, or some major landmark chant recordings, I'd be very interested to hear.

Quote from: Mandryka on October 11, 2013, 07:14:51 AM
So if you know any good things to read about the different styles, or some major landmark chant recordings, I'd be very interested to hear.

Quote from: Drasko on October 11, 2013, 11:55:33 AM
I'd like to read something accessible as well, I hope Tassos will chime in with some recommendations.

From little that I know musical theory behind chant and its different versions is actually quite complex. All chant is based on modes, but Byzantine modes are different than Gregorian. Byzantine chant is based on Octoechos, which is system of eight modes. There are some very detailed articles on octoechos on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papadic_Octoechos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagiopolitan_Octoechos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neobyzantine_Octoechos
http://www.newbyz.org/byzantine_octoechos_chart.pdf

As to the recordings. For 'standard' Byzantine chant best secular group is Greek Byzantine Choir under Lycourgos Angelopoulos, also there are monastic choirs best of which are of Vatopedi and Simonopetra Monasteries, the latter is I believe most often and best recorded.

Ensemble Organum under Marcel Peres is mostly concentrated on pre-Gregorian western chants, like Old Roman, Milanese, Mozarabic ... for which Peres's theories that they should sound much closer to Byzantine (sung in Latin of course) than to Gregorian created quite a stir back in its days.

Then you have Middle Eastern chants which are more or less basically Byzantine but sung in Arabic, like Melkite and Maronite. You can find them on Sister Marie Keyrouz recordings.

Then all Slavic chant styles that developed from Byzantine but are sung in Church Slavonic - Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian...

Quote from: HIPster on October 11, 2013, 11:16:58 AM
As you are already familiar with Ensemble Organum, this is an outstanding release:
[asin]B00001NTI0[/asin]

I rate this disc as my favorite of all of the Ensemble Organum releases I have; a must-own imo.

The group Capella Romana is also outstanding and they have many releases of Byzantine chant.  A good place to start is this sampler:
[asin]B001Q7A8LW[/asin]

Quote from: Mandryka on October 13, 2013, 12:24:50 AM
One key thing in the world of chant seems to be Solesmes Abbey. What are the key Solesmes recordings? What are their ideas?

Quote from: Mandryka on October 13, 2013, 12:16:49 AM
Can you recommend a Marie Keyrouz CD? Same for Lycourgos Angelopoulos, who's on spotify in some quantity?

Quote from: Mandryka on October 13, 2013, 12:24:50 AM
One key thing in the world of chant seems to be Solesmes Abbey. What are the key Solesmes recordings? What are their ideas?

Quote from: Scarpia on October 11, 2013, 10:55:22 AM
You can try this:

(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ncSdmCR7L._SY300_.jpg)

For real.  As I heard it, EMI was doing a typical re-release of a recording by some monks in Spain and they had the inspiration to put that cover on it, probably inspired by:

(http://www.interiors.intendo.net/magritte/golconde.jpg)

It sold zillions!

There is another story I heard, of the head of EMI classics visiting the same monestary trying to convince the monks to do another recording for Chant II, a followup to the record breaking Chant.  The conversation:

"We'll give you a million bucks to do another recording."

"You don't understand, the purpose of our music is spiritual communion with god."

"Ok, if that's the way you want it, two million bucks!"

Quote from: KeithW on October 25, 2013, 08:56:13 PM
Over the years I have built up a large-ish collection of chant.  I found the following resource a great discography (it's not up-to-date but lists many key recordings):
www.beaufort.demon.co.uk/disco.htm (http://www.beaufort.demon.co.uk/disco.htm)

And I recall once picking up a few good recommendations from a discussion at forum.musicasacra.com/forum/discussion/82/x&page=1 (http://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/discussion/82/x&page=1)

Quote from: Draško on October 13, 2013, 04:16:27 AM
[asin]B00005B6RY[/asin]

Quote from: HIPster on October 11, 2013, 11:16:58 AM
[asin]B00001NTI0[/asin]

Quote from: Mandryka on September 25, 2018, 01:17:58 AM
(https://d27t0qkxhe4r68.cloudfront.net/images/records/heraldhavp151.jpg?1285153951)

Does this CD comtain music from The Winchester Troper? Is it true that the Winchester Troper contains the earliest known notated western vocal polyphony?

But then what about the polyphonic stuff here?

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71MW7BqlfYL._SX522_.jpg)

QuoteA short historical summary: (2)
At the end of the eighth century, the Frankish kings began to become conscious of their role in protecting the papacy. Pippin the Short, followed by his son Charlemagne, realised that the importation of the Roman liturgy would be a fantastic tool for establishing their legitimacy and culturally unifying a vast and disparate empire. Moreover, in the eyes of the Carolingians, the chant of Rome seemed to be the best preserved musical monument of the Graeco-Latin culture which they wished to revive at all costs. Conscious of the disaster that the loss of the knowledge of the ancients would represent, Charlemagne surrounded himself with scholars and artists who collected what they could of the artistic and scientific remains of Antiquity and attempted to breathe new life into them. The music of Rome was one of the key implements of this Renaissance. The musical terminology elaborated in Carolingian learned circles borrowed numerous terms from Greek theory, which the Franks discovered through the intermediary of the Romans. Thus the Carolingians developed a sensation of being a living part of a certain form of culture whose expression, according to ancient tradition, was Greek. As a result they acquired a degree of legitimacy which buttressed them in their attempts to forge relations with Constantinople. However, it was necessary to adapt the Roman liturgy to the new liturgical preoccupations which took shape in the course of the ninth century. Successive reforms, and a certain crossbreeding with the old Gallican traditions, resulted in a transformation of the former Roman chant. From this emerged a new dialect known today as 'Gregorian chant'. This chant spread through the Western empire and returned to Rome around the end of the eleventh century, gradually taking the place of the older repertoire from which it was derived. Old Roman chant, whose origins dated back to before the sixth century, continued to exalt the papal liturgy at St Peter's and in the great Roman basilicas until the end of the thirteenth century. The installation of the papacy in Avignon dealt it a fatal blow, and all trace of it was lost in the early fourteenth century, when it ended up being supplanted by the chant now called 'Gregorian'. Like Milanese and Beneventan chant, the other two older Latin repertories, Old Roman chant is situated at the turning point between the music of Graeco-Latin antiquity and that of the Middle Ages. It testifies to a time when the Eastern and Western Churches communed in cultural and spiritual unity.


This programme illustrates the different musical genres in use in the Roman Mass. The chants known as Propers' are specific to a particular liturgical time. These are the Introit, the Gradual, the Alleluia, the Offertory, and the Communion. To these are added the chants known as 'Ordinary', here a Kyrie. The art of reading is illustrated by a Gospel sung in the manner still in force in the Eastern churches, whose tetrachordal musical structure is characteristic of ancient Greek music.


For this recording we have used the oldest Roman chant manuscript. It is dated 1071, and is today preserved in the extraordinary collection of the Fondation Martin Bodmer at Cologny (Geneva).(3)

One must imagine this music in the context of the great Roman liturgies of the first millennium. The glimmer of the candles which makes the colours of the mosaics flicker on the walls, ceiling and the floor of the basilicas, the movements and the static positions of the officiants, the long periods of silence. This music is founded on the art of cantillation, that is to say the act of proclamation and transmission of the sacred texts. On the most solemn feast days, the words were drawn out to extreme lengths so that the faithful might better absorb the meaning they convey. Through the magic of music, sung texts become icons. Time is deployed with sovereign slowness in order to give contemplation all the space it needs and allow consciousness genuinely to settle into the encounter with the Word. The use of the drone, the note held by the lower voices — a form of polyphonic chant then called basilical organum — confers on the sound a hieratic immanence in which time and space are united in a single vibrant truth.


Old Roman chant occupies a central position in the history of music. It is the keystone which gives meaning and coherence to what ought to be the musical consciousness of Western Europe and far beyond. For, looking back to the period before, it gives us the key to the filiation between the chant of the Temple of Jerusalem and the heritage of Greek music. Looking forward in time, it enables us to follow and understand the treasures of Koranic cantillation. Outside certain extremely restricted musicological circles, this repertory is today unknown to musicians, ecclesiastics, and the general public. Yet it offers us the oldest version of Graeco-Latin music of Late Antiquity, and represents the missing link between Byzantine, Coptic, Armenian, and Syrian chant, Arab music, and Western music.
Marcel Peres


Notes (1) The 'hours' referred to here correspond to the system practised in the ancient world. The day is divided into twelve hours, from sunrise to sunset, and the night is similarly divided into twelve hours. The duration of the hour varies each day according to the angle of inclination of the earth towards the sun. At the beginning of winter, the hours of night are much longer than the hours of day, while the reverse is true in summer.
(2) For more detailed account of the historiography of this repertory and the problems of musical interpretation, readers of French are directed to our two works published by Desclee de Brouwer in the series Texte et Voix': - Marcel Peres and Jacques Cheyronnaud, Les voix du Plain-chant (2001); - Marcel Peres and Xavier Lacavalerie, Le chant de in memoire, ensemble Organism 1982-2002 (2002). (3) Our three earlier recordings devoted to the chant of the Church of Rome (HMC 901218, HMC 901382, HMC 901604) used the Latin manuscript 5319 of the Vatican Library. Only five manuscripts of Old Roman chant have been preserved. Aside from that of the Fondation Martin Bodmer, which dates from the eleventh century, the others are from the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century the old liturgical chant books were burnt by the Franciscans, who imposed the Romano-Frankish breviary in the papal chapel.

Quote from: Draško on September 25, 2018, 03:38:43 AM
Most likely because even though Old Roman Chant was probably in use since something like 6th century, and all Ordines Romani, d'Arezzo in Micrologus and treatise Summa Musice from 1200 say that the drone like organum (in a manner of Byzantine Ison, though Peres claims that it is possible that Ison came to Byzantines from Roman chant via Venice and its holdings in Greece) called in Summa Musice diaphona basilica was part of the Roman Chant tradition as early as 7th or 8th century there are just very few surviving sources, oldest manuscript of which is from 1071, which makes it younger than the Winchester Troper, dated at beginning of 11th century.

QuoteThis music is founded on the art of cantillation, that is to say the act of proclamation and transmission of the sacred texts. On the most solemn feast days, the words were drawn out to extreme lengths so that the faithful might better absorb the meaning they convey. Through the magic of music, sung texts become icons. Time is deployed with sovereign slowness in order to give contemplation all the space it needs and allow consciousness genuinely to settle into the encounter with the Word. The use of the drone, the note held by the lower voices — a form of polyphonic chant then called basilical organum — confers on the sound a hieratic immanence in which time and space are united in a single vibrant truth.

Quote from: Mandryka on September 25, 2018, 03:57:47 AM
What I'm really curious about is why in the Gregorian tradition as we know it, there's so little polyphonic singing, why it took so long for polyphony to become a part of the liturgy in the west.

Quotewhat is "hieratic immanence"?

Quote from: Spineur on April 16, 2016, 11:26:52 AM
In the orthodox liturgy, the use of musical instruments is forbidden.  There are two exceptions: the Armenian orthodox church tolerates a modest use of the organ and the the Ethiopian church uses drums. ...

Quote from: Mandryka on September 26, 2018, 08:35:40 PM
As far as I know there's no indication of absolute pitch in any of the manuscripts of Gregorian chant.

Women would sing in convents, much of the music was written for convents, Abelard wrote for Héloïse's order, Hildegard wrote for her community. I don't believe that women would have sung in Notre Dame in Paris, but they may have sung Notre Dame music in their own abbatiale.

No boys as far as I know, or castrated men.

Quote from: Biffo on September 27, 2018, 01:02:12 AM
Boys entered choir schools at the age of 7 and plainchant was the first thing they learned. Some choir schools are very old; the Regensburger Domspatzen founded in 975 is the oldest I know that is still active. When he was in residence at the Escorial, Philip II had the boys of the monastery choir sing mass for him every morning. Plainchant has been sung continuously right down to the present day and certainly in the 1950s when I sang it.

Quote from: Mandryka on September 27, 2018, 06:26:17 AM
(https://img.discogs.com/B3dCOpsxW4pJmdKadJyqnwi5XYc=/fit-in/500x451/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-12026257-1526818285-1842.jpeg.jpg) (https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71x5Vvvex-L._SL1332_.jpg)

Does anyone know the dates of the music on this CD -- I don't have the booklet, I'm listening to it on streaming. It contains some ecstatic chants. I can see from the back of the CD that the manuscript is C16 -- am I to conclude that the music is C 16? Worth hearing.

Quote from: Biffo on September 27, 2018, 06:44:22 AM
This link is to an article about the manuscript, it has a short film embedded. Unfortunately it concentrates on the Antiphonal itself and says very little about the actual music - http://www.smu.ca/academics/archives/the-salzinnes-antiphonal.html

There are quite a few online articles but most seem to concentrate on the Antiphonal as a work of art and historically important artefact. The best I could glean was that the music is from 1550-75.

Quote from: Mandryka on September 27, 2018, 07:44:27 AM
Yes I had a search as well and came to the same results, I'm sure that some of it is C16, but some of it makes me think of earlier music, of Hildegard, but my response is very naive and informal.

Quote from: Mandryka on October 14, 2018, 06:24:24 AM
(https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/619CFolw-9L._SS500.jpg)

The review in Gramophone says something quite interesting about this challenging and stimulating and at times gorgeous recording. It has to do with the resonant ambience of The Vatican, something which the recording captures very evocatively. Of course it means that in polyphonic music things get a bit mushed up. In fact, it's so echoey that even monophonic chant is fuzzy, presumably in context the singing appears to come from all over, from out of alcoves and from behind pillars. A fog of words, like T S Eliot's cat in Prufrock.

The Gramophone review says that this might be a deliberate theologically inspired plan, something to make The Word slightly ineffable, to counter  the idea that understanding The Word is something that is graspable if you attend hard enough - like you might grasp the words of a schoolteacher.

Anyway I thought that was interesting as an idea, at least.

Mary Berry was clearly a bit of an inspiration to her singers, because the sheer variety and intensity of expression that she gets out of them is astonishing.

Quote from: Biffo on October 14, 2018, 06:51:31 AM
The Word of God was handed down by the Church via a priest not the choir.

Quote from: Mandryka on October 14, 2018, 07:03:28 AM
You may be right. What was the point of chant if not to express The Word?

Does anyone have the CD (I don't) It would be interesting to know if they talk about The Vatican acoustics in the booklet essays,

Quote from: Mandryka on October 14, 2018, 08:08:43 AM
Interesting, thanks for such a clear response. Someone once said to me that they thought that the reason people sang monophonic or heterophonic chant in the middle ages was so that the words could be really clearly understood, but as far as I remember it was just an assertion.

Quote from: Mandryka on October 14, 2018, 08:37:49 AM
Thanks

Unfortunately I've become interested in something which you really need to be part of a university to understand, I don't even have access to a decent library, and I have no contact with anyone working in the field!

Quote from: Mandryka on April 14, 2016, 12:39:04 PM


(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BNKG25ZVL.jpg)

For some reason I just can't explain, this one has had less of an impact on me, apart from one song which is a real knockout - called O homo coruit.

QuoteI believe the factor responsible for limiting recognition of the richness contained in Perotin's organa quadrupla has been the attempt to deduce the work's overall tempo from its melodic themes - which are delightfully simple - without taking into account the fascinating variety of har- monies generated at the points where these melodic lines meet, whether on long notes or short. Reproduced below is the passage (conclusion of the vocalization on gentium) at the verse-ending of the Viderunt Omnes [8] quadruplum - an especially moving passage marvelously evoking the mystery of Christmas (musical example on page 13). Thought with a solemn, sweeping movement, this work exhibits a grandiose architectural construction and variety in each section which in no way impede the broad, moving sonority our century's performers and lis- teners still find so impressive today (see illustration of the original manuscript on page 20).

Quoteabove all, we have aimed to adopt a pace and an intensity to match the scale of the building for which this music was written.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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."

.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

QuoteIt is easy to pontificate about a subject like ornamentation of chant in the 8th century. There is no documentary evidence whatsoever, one way or the other, so conclusions must be drawn from other evidence, like neumatic notation.

QuoteThe first reference to three Graduals (not the two Antiphoners, however)  from Rome was published in Paleographie Musicale 2 (p.5 fn) by Dom Mocquereau, who could not explain their differences from all other chant MSS. Contrary to your friend's remark, there was no discussion whatsoever at the time. Apart from one article in 1911 by Dom Andoyer in Revue du chant gregorien, which led nowhere, the first discussion of Old Roman chant was begun by Staeblein in 1950, which led to a decade of intense controversy. After a consensus was reached, more or less, it remains only to choose whether one thinks Old Roman chant (witnessed by five late MSS dated between 1071 and 1300 that were the result of several centuries of oral transmission) or Frankish/Gregorian chant (edited to an unknown degree by Frankish scribes from the Roman chant that they were taught at the end of the 8c., mingling to some degree the surviving Gallican chants such as St. Martin) more closely represents the 8c. Roman chant.

Chant developed in East and West independently, although there was some influence from the East and even a string of Greek and Syrian popes in this time (7-8c.). You must study the liturgies of East and West to realize how independently they developed from antiquity, for all chant is merely the embellished texts of the liturgy.

QuoteMary Berry wrote a masterly diss. on the "The Performance of Plainsong in the Later Middle Ages and the Sixteenth Century" (I read it at Catholic U.) which shows clearly both the state of the chants (melismas truncated, etc.) and the style of singing (more slow as the feast is more solemn). Peres adopts her slow tempos consistently. Peres was totally self-taught after arriving in Marseilles from Algeria. His early studies were at the organ. He has since pursued some study but only after making the first series of recordings for Harmonia Mundi. His first recording was Old Roman chant with the participation of Angelopoulos, a cantor from Athens. As he moved on to every other form of chant as far removed as neo-Gallican (17c.), he retained this cantor and applied the notion of ison singing that they used in OR chant to every other kind of chant, however baseless. I pointed out that, even in the East, there is no documentation of ison singing before the 14c. I picked his records apart in Fanfare regularly, leading Bernard Sherman in Inside Early Music (1997), p. 41, to cite my "persistent" criticism of Peres for "no scholarly basis."

QuoteThe medieval MSS were recognized in France as early as 1811, when the question of restoring public worship after a decade (1794-1804) of the Revolution arose: back to the neo-Gallican that had been used since from c.1640 to 1789 or a return to Roman liturgy (now that Ultramontanism was no longer a bad word). (The answer was neither.) The discovery of Montpellier H. 159 with its alphabetical (hence decipherable) notation in 1847 and the publication of the Reims-Cambrai Gradual in 1852 were among the parallel developments that accompanied Gueranger's work on chant that could be sung at Solesmes, the sole original purpose of his work. Dom Jausions and Dom Pothier studied medieval MSS from the 1850s. The Congress of Arezzo endorsed the Solesmes edition in 1882, and the seminarians at Santa Chiara in Rome embraced his work enthusiastically in 1890, a backdoor to the Roman authorities beginning with the conversion of Fr. de Santi to their cause. Pothier and Mocquereau, in their divergent ways, had no intention other than to restore the chant of the 10c. MSS for use in the liturgy.

Quote from: San Antone on May 25, 2019, 05:15:59 PM

But what galled me the most about the Peres quotes you have posted is his (what I consider) unwarranted attack on the Solesmes performance of chant.

Quote from: San Antone on May 25, 2019, 05:15:59 PM


While I enjoy Peres' recordings, as I do with Bjorn Schmelzer, I also understand them as personal interpretations, with little or no historical/musicological underpinning.

As it is I don't know exactly what I have to address. With this sort of thing, it's really important to be specific.

Maybe Weber would like to enrol here so we could talk directly rather than through you.

QuoteMachicotage is an anachronism, a living leftover which remains obliquely in its own time, a surviving element which one no longer knows what to do with. Machicotage is a practice, a savoir-faire of Parisian singers that worked until the 19th century but didn't survive the Gregorian reform. Machicotage is above all a fold in the current of time of oral, operative practices: historical, musicological research can never be solely hermeneutic because the written source is only a (small) factor in the big picture of influences and practices: a similar research progresses via a comparative, interdisciplinary and historical-anthropological way. Machicotage is above all a symptom: of the infamy and complexities of the history of music, and of the diversity of execution practices.

Quote from: Mary Berry in "Plainchant for Everyone"Alternatim

Another whole area of adventurous chanting is the field of alternatim — the reconstruction of polyphonic or organ music involving the alternation of sections of chant with sections of measured music. If your choir is used to singing Renaissance music, search out some of the hymn settings by composers such as Tallis or Palestrina, and sing the alternate verses using the chant of the period. For you must remember that the style of chant performance in the sixteenth century was entirely different from the way in which the chant is usually sung today. By and large, singers today are all attempting to reproduce what they think the chant would have sounded like when notation first appeared: roughly, in what they consider to have been the style of the tenth century. The evidence seems to show that in the tenth century, when the chant was still a living oral tradition, it was sung quite fast, with lightness and delicacy and rhythmic variety. Over the centuries, however, the tempo had become progressively slower, so that if you want to give a really authentic performance of a Palestrina or Tallis hymn-setting, the chant sections will have to be sung in slow, equal notes, very firmly and deliberately. The result, far from being boring, is astonishingly splendid and very moving. It is a marvellous experience to sing it in this way, and it is not difficult to involve the whole congregation in the singing of these sections.

The same principle of authenticity applies if your choir is called upon to sing the chant sections in a performance of a seventeenth century organ mass, such as Couperin's `Messe pour les paroisses'. It would be a complete anachronism to sing the chant sections in these performances as if your choir was Solesmes under Dom Gajard. Each note of the chant should really be sung about as slowly as one bar of the music, and there would be a semi-metrical interpretation of certain words, particularly the dactyls. Incredible! Yes, but extremely effective and moving in performance. That sort of reconstruction requires a great deal of homework, but the standards of authenticity in performance are now such that we cannot get away with howling anachronisms in liturgical music. Ideally, too, these works should be performed in their liturgical context.

Quote from: San Antone on May 26, 2019, 05:12:34 PM
It is a style, most commonly found during the late Renaissance and refers to alternating mass sections with other instrumental music, most commonly organ.

Quote from: Mandryka on May 26, 2019, 10:29:29 PM
Yes but my point was one of style. Berry's suggesting that instead of organ in alternatim in a hymn, you chant in an appropriate style. And my point was that she's approve, logically, of Schmelzer using machicotage for the antiphons on that Ockeghem mass.

Re Berry, can you try to get hold of a copy of her "The Performance of Plainsong in the Later Middle Ages and the Sixteenth Century" for me? And have you read this (I haven't)

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/518V15NwzzL._SX326_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)

Quote from: San Antone on May 27, 2019, 02:59:23 AM
I have that book pictured above, and read it last year and much of it is found on the Solesmes website.  I have the Willi Apel book, as well as two other smaller ones, on the performance of chant and reading the notation. I don't have the other book by Mary Berry you ask about (it is available from Jstor), but I am less interested in that aspect and more interested in chant from the 9th-11th centuries, prior to the development of polyphony, since I feel that chant was compromised from the influence of polyphony.

I am confused what is motivating your apparent need to prove the validity of Schmelzer and Peres's approaches to performance of early music, specifically chant.  There is no need to do that; as obviously gifted musicians their ideas about interpretation and the groups they assemble and the music they create are wonderful.  Whether they represent how music was performed in the 11th - 16th centuries is irrelevant, IMO.  I enjoy their work in the 21st century, and that is enough for me.

For the record, I reject both men's arguments about the authenticity of their performance; and do not think a scholar like Mary Berry would place their approach to the performance of chant above that of the Abbey of Solesmes.

Quote from: Mandryka on May 27, 2019, 04:10:16 AM
Let me explain why this has caught my imagination, though it's a bit convoluted maybe.

I started my working life as a philosopher at Oxford, and there one of the things I was interested in was the way that certain scientific paradigms become entrenched in the establishment's way of looking at the world, so that it becomes very difficult to dislodge them, even when better theories become available.

I'm interested in exploring whether the same thing happens in music.

All this puts too serious a slant on it, it's many many years since I was part of a university milieu, and I'm at best a dabbler now. However once a philosopher, always a philosopher! 

There's another reason actually, Peres' book is good to read! Passionate. If you can read French I recommend it to you enthusiastically, even if you're predisposed to disagree with the conclusions.

There's a third thing I'd like to mention, which is a big question, too big and vapid maybe. In my head I have a nagging voice, the devil's, which keeps whispering "the Solesmes way isn't very poetically satisfying, the Solesmes way isn't very poetically satisfying, the Solesmes way isn't very poetically satisfying, the Solesmes way isn't very poetically satisfying."

Quote from: jf on May 27, 2019, 12:43:58 PM
I have to comment on a few points noticed in this thread in the last couple of days. Writers who cannot spell "Solesmes" show how unfamiliar they are with the whole field of chant studies. Peres and Schmelzer, two of the most individualistic interpreters of chant on record, are cited as models while Mary Berry's deep and lifelong background in chant study, teaching and directing, is described as "individualistic." Her diss. is not published or online, but at the time she was completing it she wrote a summary article for the Proceedings of the RMA, and that may be on Jstor, although a quick search didn't turn it up. Keith W. cites beaufort.demon.co.uk for chant discography, a convenient way to see a brief list of some good recordings, but chantdiscography.com has 37,000 recorded chants, where a search on a single incipit will tend to show the more important versions first and the least important last. Drasko's description of the Peres repertoire as "pre-Gregorian" ignores many much later types of chant such as neo-Gallican chant from the 17c. (two CDs). How he sang Roman chant (with the ison) because of the situation in 7c. Rome is extended to every other rite, no matter how far removed from Greece and Rome or from the 7c. Mandryka's description of "Christians in Milan [singing] in an Easter way" is hardly a valid way to distinguish one Western rite from another. Summing up everything in a few words is the typical fault in this thread. Mandryka ventures to deny the role of boys in liturgical singing. (Biffo corrected him.) Boys were part of the Schola Cantorum in Rome from the earliest existence of that body, and their liturgical function of singing the psalm-response at Mass is cited by St. Augustine (d. 430) in Sermon 352:"He from his boyish heart ordered what he thought would be useful for you to hear" (that is, the celebrant did not choose the psalm for him to sing). Boys had the time to study in preparation for the daily cycle of chants.

Quote from: jf on May 27, 2019, 12:43:58 PM
I have to comment on a few points noticed in this thread in the last couple of days. Writers who cannot spell "Solesmes" show how unfamiliar they are with the whole field of chant studies. Peres and Schmelzer, two of the most individualistic interpreters of chant on record, are cited as models while Mary Berry's deep and lifelong background in chant study, teaching and directing, is described as "individualistic." Her diss. is not published or online, but at the time she was completing it she wrote a summary article for the Proceedings of the RMA, and that may be on Jstor, although a quick search didn't turn it up. Keith W. cites beaufort.demon.co.uk for chant discography, a convenient way to see a brief list of some good recordings, but chantdiscography.com has 37,000 recorded chants, where a search on a single incipit will tend to show the more important versions first and the least important last. Drasko's description of the Peres repertoire as "pre-Gregorian" ignores many much later types of chant such as neo-Gallican chant from the 17c. (two CDs). How he sang Roman chant (with the ison) because of the situation in 7c. Rome is extended to every other rite, no matter how far removed from Greece and Rome or from the 7c. Mandryka's description of "Christians in Milan [singing] in an Easter way" is hardly a valid way to distinguish one Western rite from another. Summing up everything in a few words is the typical fault in this thread. Mandryka ventures to deny the role of boys in liturgical singing. (Biffo corrected him.) Boys were part of the Schola Cantorum in Rome from the earliest existence of that body, and their liturgical function of singing the psalm-response at Mass is cited by St. Augustine (d. 430) in Sermon 352:"He from his boyish heart ordered what he thought would be useful for you to hear" (that is, the celebrant did not choose the psalm for him to sing). Boys had the time to study in preparation for the daily cycle of chants.

Quote from: San Antone on May 25, 2019, 05:15:59 PM
Below are some comments from Jerome F. Weber, the former early music specialist at Fanfare.  Weber is a chant scholar, and since Mary Berry is no longer with us, I trust his expertise more than any other living authority.

I emailed him some of your comments and Peres quotes and below are excerpts from his responses.

QuotePeres was totally self-taught after arriving in Marseilles from Algeria. His early studies were at the organ. He has since pursued some study but only after making the first series of recordings for Harmonia Mundi.

QuoteMASNE DE LHERMONT.
t MICHEL Hugo (1921-2012). — Avec le décès de Michel Huglo, survenu à Washing-ton k 13 mai dernier, k monde de k musicologie médiévale perd l'un de ses plus grands savants. Né à Lille en 1921, Michel Huglo devient moine de l'abbaye Sain, Pierre de Solesmes, où il étudie la philosophie et la théologie tout en travaillant à l'ate-lier de paléographie musicale. C'est pendant ces années que se développent ses capaci-tés d'observation et de critique des sources et la rigueur de sa méthode de travail. Aux côtés des plus grands noms de la musicologie solesmienne - dom Eugène Cardin, dom René-Jean Hesbert, dom Jacques Froger, dom Jean Claire, dom Pierre Combe et dom Jacques Hourlier - il prépare l'édition du deuxième volume du Graduel romain, consacré à l'étude des sources musicales. Après avoir renoncé à la vie religieuse, M. Huglo entre au Centre national de la recherche scientifique et crée la Section de musicologie de l'Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes. Il obtient le titre de docteur de recherche à l'université Paris-IV et soutient son doctorat d'État à l'université Paris-X-Nanterre. Il mène un imposant tra-vail sur les tonaires, qu'il publie en 1971, et produit en même temps un grand nombre de contributions portant aussi bien sur les traités musicaux que sur les tropes, les séquences, les chants ambrosien, vieux-romain, gallican et mozarabe, la polyphonie ancienne, la morphologie des nomes et la pratique de l'enseignement de la musique au Moyen Âge. Il suffit de jeter un coup d'oeil sur sa bibliographie pour mesurer l'éten-due de son domaine de recherche et l'importance de ses études, non seulement pour les savants, mais également pour les étudiants en musicologie médiévale. Tout au long de sa carrière, en effet, il consacre beaucoup de temps à la formation de dizaines de chercheurs, notamment à l'École pratique des hautes études où il enseigne la paléographie et l'histoire de la musique médiévale, ainsi qu'à l'université libre de Bruxelles. Plusieurs universités étrangères l'invitent aussi à animer des séminaires de musicologie. Établi aux États-Unis après son départ en retraite, il reçoit en 1991 k doctorat honoris causa de l'université de Chicago, et à partir de 2000 il est professeur à l'université du Maryland. En évoquant l'activité de ce grand chercheur, on ne saurait omettre les précieux volumes du Répertoire international des sources musicales qu'on lui doit k réper-toire des processionnaux (RISM B XIV 1-2), qui recense plus de 1 500 manuscrits, et k répertoire des sources de la théorie musicale (RISM B III 3-4). Le chemin tracé par Michel Huglo, qui a énormément enrichi l'histoire de la musicologie, de la paléogra-phie et de la liturgie, est d'une importance fondamentale pour les chercheurs d'au-jourd'hui; mais avec k savant, la communauté scientifique perd aussi un collègue d'une grande humanité et d'une immense générosité. — Laura ALBIERO.

QuoteThe eternal chant from cistercian abbeys

The cistercians, known amongst other things for the abbeys they built, attached great spiritual importance to listening. In making their prayer and orison as rich and sumptuous as possible, they were in fact trying to reach new heights of spirituality, though they still tried to keep a certain simplicity of form.
In the 12th century, Saint Bernard wrote the following text to present the service he had composed in honour of Saint Victor:
"If one sings, let it be a song of the utmost gravity, with no place for timidity or vulgarity! And may its sweetness, may it be pleasing to ear and touching to the heart, may it ease sadness, calm anger and rather than lose the meaning of the words, may it reveal them in all the fullness and depth of their beauty".

Saint Bernard has not written about architecture; however, Cistercian architecture still remains a vivid symbol of beauty. It was created by his thought, faith, and rigor, and given form in stone by geometers.
Throughout the century of Saint Bernard's life, Europe was full Cistercian abbeys and priories that were built up in a system of square stones with vaults made in the image of the "vault of heaven" (Abélard), capable of communing with the palatal vault of the singer. The bare stone, treated in such a way, is capable of realizing the harmonics of the voice which glorify the stone and at the same time create a resonant environment for the listener, which is still a subject of wonder for acousticians as well as for architects and physicians.
Saint Bernard wrote a great deal on the importance of hearing, and we could have expected the Cistercians to be a creative musically as they were architecturally. However, reforms in the Cistercian liturgical music were inspired by the desire to return to certain sources which, at that time, were not very well known. Therefore, as they were based on ideological principles rather than musical ones, such reforms remained within the walls of the Cistercian abbeys, and did not influence the development of music, which was undergoing a great evolution at that time.
Nevertheless, in spite of all this, an intense musical life built up around Bernard de Clairvaux, and was influenced by is writings, his vigour and his impetus: there were admirers' or detractors' works in Germany, in England, in Spain, in Italy, as well as in France. Celestial help, love, and light responded throughout Europe to the cantor of Notre Dame, through musicians who often wrote liturgies, and whose amazing musical creations demanded to be revived and "invented".
Inspired by the visions of poet-theologians of the same period as Saint Bernard. "L'Ensemble Venance Fortunat" celebrates the "Angels and the Light" (CD 1), chosen from the favourite themes of the contemplations of St Bernard and his entourage. After the introduction, the programme includes nine parts set within nine Alleluia (the angelic cry: praise to Yaveh) with in the middle, a Kyrie in nine parts. Nine is usually the sign and symbol of the celestial hierarchies.

For a long time it was thought that polyphony had been abandoned for ever in Cistercian chant, first in its reformed version by Etienne Harding, then in the form given it by Bernard de Clairvaux. But a mention in the margin of a Cistercian manuscript in the library at Fribourg shows that the art of polyphonic chant by sight reading from the book (i.e. improvised according to a very precise set of rules) had in fact remained quite usual practice.

The manuscripts of several monasteries reveal some astoundingly beautiful polyphonies. Could this be due to the influence of the 14th c. Cistercian monk Pierre de Picardie, a musical theoretician? These manuscripts come from various European libraries which proves they were not just a local phenomenon. In Oxford, for example, there is a manuscript from Hauteriv Abbey in Switzerland, others are to be found in Fribourg, Lucerne and Las Huelgas, near Burgos in Spain. Two of these manuscripts – the one in Fribourg that comes from Maingrauge Abbey, and the Las huelgas manuscript – were written in the scriptorium of a Cistercian nunnery.
During the 14th century, the same train of thought regarding liturgical chant was being explored by three different theoreticians, with only a few years' interval between each : Jacques de Liège, Pierre de Picardie and Pope John XXII. Their aim and guiding principle was restitution of the vocal parts and the importance of presenting the whole text, whilst the notion of a tempo not broken up into equal parts also became prevalent. This was all happening just at the time when virtuosity of composition and the division of time were moving towards the idea of metre and intermittence (later to become the distinguishing characteristic of the Ars subtilior); but such notions did not fit in easily with the liturgical nature and content of plainchant.

All the pieces on the programme of the CD 2 come from the Cistercian repertory that evolved thanks to the researchers of the 12th to 14th centuries. They are arranged around the Dedicatory Mass of ms. n° 17328 in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (12th c.) (echoing the Clairvaux Dedicatory mass from ms. n° 907 from the Bibliothèque Municipale in Troyes, unfortunately without musical notation). The polyphonies come from Oxford, Fribourg and Las Huelgas, and the monodies from Paris, Troyes, Oxford, Milan and Bruges.

These "mystic chants" are the expression of a certain experience of time and space. Just as Saint Augustine professes in the 4th c. "Memory is the past made present; direct intuition gives the present made present, whilst expectation is the present made future".

The interpretation and performance try to respect all the richness of the texts and its many layers of meaning, whilst leaving room for the responses or the accompaniment from Bonmont Abbey. Within the pauses for silence in this music there wells up a resonance of sound that is totally independent of the singer and which forces his auditive attention.

Anne-Marie Deschamps (traduction Delia Morris & Denise Fowler)

QuoteIn 1904, Pope Pius X entrusted to the monks of Solesmes the work of preparing an official Vatican edition of the Church's chant, and appointed a Commission with Dom Pothier as its president.

QuoteIn the late 19th century, early liturgical and musical manuscripts were unearthed and edited. Earlier, Dom Prosper Guéranger revived the monastic tradition in Solesmes. Re-establishing the Divine Office was among his priorities, but no proper chantbooks existed. Many monks were sent out to libraries throughout Europe to find relevant Chant manuscripts. In 1871, however, the old Medicea edition was reprinted (Pustet, Regensburg) which Pope Pius IX declared the only official version. In their firm belief that they were on the right way, Solesmes increased its efforts. In 1889, after decades of research, the monks of Solesmes released the first book in a planned series, the Paléographie Musicale.[27] The incentive of its publication was to demonstrate the corruption of the 'Medicea' by presenting photographed notations originating from a great variety of manuscripts of one single chant, which Solesmes called forth as witnesses to assert their own reforms.

The monks of Solesmes brought in their heaviest artillery in this battle, as indeed the academically sound 'Paleo' was intended to be a war-tank, meant to abolish once and for all the corrupted Pustet edition. On the evidence of congruence throughout various manuscripts (which were duly published in facsimile editions with ample editorial introductions) Solesmes was able to work out a practical reconstruction. This reconstructed chant was academically praised, but rejected by Rome until 1903, when Pope Leo XIII died. His successor, Pope Pius X, promptly accepted the Solesmes chant – now compiled as the Liber Usualis – as authoritative. In 1904, the Vatican edition of the Solesmes chant was commissioned. Serious academic debates arose, primarily owing to stylistic liberties taken by the Solesmes editors to impose their controversial interpretation of rhythm. The Solesmes editions insert phrasing marks and note-lengthening episema and mora marks not found in the original sources.

Conversely, they omit significative letters found in the original sources, which give instructions for rhythm and articulation such as speeding up or slowing down. These editorial practices have placed the historical authenticity of the Solesmes interpretation in doubt.[28] Ever since restoration of Chant was taken up in Solesmes, there have been lengthy discussions of exactly what course was to be taken. Some favored a strict academic rigour and wanted to postpone publications, while others concentrated on practical matters and wanted to supplant the corrupted tradition as soon as possible. Roughly a century later, there still exists a breach between a strict musicological approach and the practical needs of church choirs. Thus the performance tradition officially promulgated since the onset of the Solesmes restoration is substantially at odds with musicological evidence.

Quote from: JBS on June 02, 2019, 07:27:18 PM


Final note:
It would seem to me that if chant is a living organic type of music, ot should be always inventing new expressions of itself. Is anyone now composing chant?

Quote from: JBS on June 02, 2019, 07:27:18 PM
Isn't Solesmes the origin and first proponent of the "establishment" version og Gregorian chant? After all, its scholarly work on chant dates back to the 19th century, and it became what might be called the  official guardian well over a century ago.https://reginamag.com/unquiet-home-gregorian-chant/

So it shouldn't be a surprise that alternate views about chant should have arisen in the last 114 years.

Wikipedia contains this description of the context and percieved flaws of Solesmeshttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_chant

Quote from: JBS on June 02, 2019, 07:27:18 PM
Isn't Solesmes the origin and first proponent of the "establishment" version og Gregorian chant? After all, its scholarly work on chant dates back to the 19th century, and it became what might be called the  official guardian well over a century ago.https://reginamag.com/unquiet-home-gregorian-chant/

So it shouldn't be a surprise that alternate views about chant should have arisen in the last 114 years.

Final note:
It would seem to me that if chant is a living organic type of music, ot should be always inventing new expressions of itself. Is anyone now composing chant?

Quote from: Mandryka on June 03, 2019, 04:08:59 AM
SAN Antone, do you know anything about Eugene Cardine? I've just ordered one of his books.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 03, 2019, 04:43:21 AM
No, I ordered "Vue d'ensemble sur le chant Gregorien"

QuoteThe eternal chant from cistercian abbeys

The cistercians, known amongst other things for the abbeys they built, attached great spiritual importance to listening. In making their prayer and orison as rich and sumptuous as possible, they were in fact trying to reach new heights of spirituality, though they still tried to keep a certain simplicity of form.
In the 12th century, Saint Bernard wrote the following text to present the service he had composed in honour of Saint Victor:
"If one sings, let it be a song of the utmost gravity, with no place for timidity or vulgarity! And may its sweetness, may it be pleasing to ear and touching to the heart, may it ease sadness, calm anger and rather than lose the meaning of the words, may it reveal them in all the fullness and depth of their beauty".

Saint Bernard has not written about architecture; however, Cistercian architecture still remains a vivid symbol of beauty. It was created by his thought, faith, and rigor, and given form in stone by geometers.
Throughout the century of Saint Bernard's life, Europe was full Cistercian abbeys and priories that were built up in a system of square stones with vaults made in the image of the "vault of heaven" (Abélard), capable of communing with the palatal vault of the singer. The bare stone, treated in such a way, is capable of realizing the harmonics of the voice which glorify the stone and at the same time create a resonant environment for the listener, which is still a subject of wonder for acousticians as well as for architects and physicians.
Saint Bernard wrote a great deal on the importance of hearing, and we could have expected the Cistercians to be a creative musically as they were architecturally. However, reforms in the Cistercian liturgical music were inspired by the desire to return to certain sources which, at that time, were not very well known. Therefore, as they were based on ideological principles rather than musical ones, such reforms remained within the walls of the Cistercian abbeys, and did not influence the development of music, which was undergoing a great evolution at that time.
Nevertheless, in spite of all this, an intense musical life built up around Bernard de Clairvaux, and was influenced by is writings, his vigour and his impetus: there were admirers' or detractors' works in Germany, in England, in Spain, in Italy, as well as in France. Celestial help, love, and light responded throughout Europe to the cantor of Notre Dame, through musicians who often wrote liturgies, and whose amazing musical creations demanded to be revived and "invented".
Inspired by the visions of poet-theologians of the same period as Saint Bernard. "L'Ensemble Venance Fortunat" celebrates the "Angels and the Light" (CD 1), chosen from the favourite themes of the contemplations of St Bernard and his entourage. After the introduction, the programme includes nine parts set within nine Alleluia (the angelic cry: praise to Yaveh) with in the middle, a Kyrie in nine parts. Nine is usually the sign and symbol of the celestial hierarchies.

For a long time it was thought that polyphony had been abandoned for ever in Cistercian chant, first in its reformed version by Etienne Harding, then in the form given it by Bernard de Clairvaux. But a mention in the margin of a Cistercian manuscript in the library at Fribourg shows that the art of polyphonic chant by sight reading from the book (i.e. improvised according to a very precise set of rules) had in fact remained quite usual practice.

The manuscripts of several monasteries reveal some astoundingly beautiful polyphonies. Could this be due to the influence of the 14th c. Cistercian monk Pierre de Picardie, a musical theoretician? These manuscripts come from various European libraries which proves they were not just a local phenomenon. In Oxford, for example, there is a manuscript from Hauteriv Abbey in Switzerland, others are to be found in Fribourg, Lucerne and Las Huelgas, near Burgos in Spain. Two of these manuscripts – the one in Fribourg that comes from Maingrauge Abbey, and the Las huelgas manuscript – were written in the scriptorium of a Cistercian nunnery.
During the 14th century, the same train of thought regarding liturgical chant was being explored by three different theoreticians, with only a few years' interval between each : Jacques de Liège, Pierre de Picardie and Pope John XXII. Their aim and guiding principle was restitution of the vocal parts and the importance of presenting the whole text, whilst the notion of a tempo not broken up into equal parts also became prevalent. This was all happening just at the time when virtuosity of composition and the division of time were moving towards the idea of metre and intermittence (later to become the distinguishing characteristic of the Ars subtilior); but such notions did not fit in easily with the liturgical nature and content of plainchant.

All the pieces on the programme of the CD 2 come from the Cistercian repertory that evolved thanks to the researchers of the 12th to 14th centuries. They are arranged around the Dedicatory Mass of ms. n° 17328 in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (12th c.) (echoing the Clairvaux Dedicatory mass from ms. n° 907 from the Bibliothèque Municipale in Troyes, unfortunately without musical notation). The polyphonies come from Oxford, Fribourg and Las Huelgas, and the monodies from Paris, Troyes, Oxford, Milan and Bruges.

These "mystic chants" are the expression of a certain experience of time and space. Just as Saint Augustine professes in the 4th c. "Memory is the past made present; direct intuition gives the present made present, whilst expectation is the present made future".

The interpretation and performance try to respect all the richness of the texts and its many layers of meaning, whilst leaving room for the responses or the accompaniment from Bonmont Abbey. Within the pauses for silence in this music there wells up a resonance of sound that is totally independent of the singer and which forces his auditive attention.

Anne-Marie Deschamps (traduction Delia Morris & Denise Fowler)"

Quote from: Mandryka on June 04, 2019, 12:30:30 PM
(http://resources.wimpmusic.com/images/248db3b6/0fac/46bb/a27f/fe3724304a66/640x640.jpg)

This is very beautiful stuff, polyphonic and complex, Anne Marie Deschamps contributes a nice little essay on it for the recording, and one of the things she says, about how the place creates resonances in the silences, seems to me to be spot on. As someone else said, you can't sing chant in a shopping mall.

Quote from: San Antone on June 04, 2019, 02:07:49 PM
She has put out a number of recordings of chant, but it is unfortunate that she uses high female voices.

Quote from: San Antone on May 27, 2019, 04:51:42 AM
I don't think it is either/or, i.e. both things occur: the tradition of chant performance is maintained and new interpretations/approaches come along by creative musicians.  I feel just the opposite as you regarding the monks of Solesmes.  "Poetic", "inspiring", "spiritual" and most importantly without ego are exactly the words I would use to describe their chant recordings, and how I think chant ought to be performed.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 04, 2019, 09:11:01 PM
This suddenly reminded me of something, maybe completely irrelevant but I thought I'd mention it. I remember once meaning a pianist who specialised in recent music, he played Stockhausen etc., and we were talking about John Cage's piano Etudes, and I wanted to get his opinion of one recording I find intriguing,  the most intriguing in fact, Claudio Crismani's, He was very negative about Crismani, which he thought imposed the pianist's ego. I'm not sure I understand this criticism at all, I suspect it just means « makes expressive embellishments I don't like »

Is that what you meant about Gregorian played Solesmes style, it's inexpressive, and you think that's a good thing?

Quote from: San Antone on June 04, 2019, 10:31:20 PM
. . . a mystery to me.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 05, 2019, 06:16:19 AM
Solesmes style is dead, it's not livened up with the energy of ornamentation or spiced up with with microtones, they are so sober and restrained and homogeneous that it's almost inhuman. How anyone can this that this is an appropriate way to present  liturgical music is . . .

Quote from: San Antone on June 05, 2019, 11:34:31 AM
Of course you are entitled to your opinion, but I disagree with you.  However, I don't disagree with the terms in bold.  Contrary to you I do not consider the performance as "inhuman" but an example of the kind of ego-less singing that I think is exactly the appropriate manner in which to sing chant for use in the mass. Now, if you are primarily interested in chant performance in a secular setting, then anything goes.

One could accompany the chant with synthesizers and market it as new age music.

But the Solesmes monks are not singing chant for secular purposes.

Quote from: JBS on June 05, 2019, 11:44:30 AM
The question is not the motive of the Solesmes monks.  The question is, did the monk of the medieval era also think "sober, restrained, homogeneous"  was the best (or at least, a good) way when singing chant? Leaving aside the question of "egoless singing"--undoubtedly some medieval monks did it, some did not not, given the diversity and number of monks then--it's quite possible medieval monks (or some of them) would think a florid exuberance was a better way of singing to the greater glory of God.  Solesmes is, after all, not a tradition directly handed on through a living train of monks that reaches back to medieval times, but a scholarly project of reconstruction that began in the 19th century.

QuoteThe medieval MSS were recognized in France as early as 1811, when the question of restoring public worship after a decade (1794-1804) of the Revolution arose: back to the neo-Gallican that had been used since from c.1640 to 1789 or a return to Roman liturgy (now that Ultramontanism was no longer a bad word). (The answer was neither.) The discovery of Montpellier H. 159 with its alphabetical (hence decipherable) notation in 1847 and the publication of the Reims-Cambrai Gradual in 1852 were among the parallel developments that accompanied Gueranger's work on chant that could be sung at Solesmes, the sole original purpose of his work. Dom Jausions and Dom Pothier studied medieval MSS from the 1850s. The Congress of Arezzo endorsed the Solesmes edition in 1882, and the seminarians at Santa Chiara in Rome embraced his work enthusiastically in 1890, a backdoor to the Roman authorities beginning with the conversion of Fr. de Santi to their cause. Pothier and Mocquereau, in their divergent ways, had no intention other than to restore the chant of the 10c. MSS for use in the liturgy.

Quote from: San Antone on June 05, 2019, 01:33:05 PM
I don't know where you are getting your information, there is no definitive documentary foundation to support your conclusions.  In my discussions with Jerome Weber he indicated that Peres is spreading what can only be described as misinformation, or at the very least exaggerating the evidence in order to support his own (Peres') bias against the Catholic church, and Solesmes.

The fact is that there is no documentary evidence whatsoever concerning ornamentation of chant in the 8th century, one way or the other, so conclusions must be drawn from other evidence, like neumatic notation. This ground has been extensively covered from 1911 on, and a consensus was reached approximately in 1950.  With the Church endorsing the Solesmes method.

Peres and other revisionists may pontificate about the subject endlessly, but there is no credible evidence to build a case that Solesmes are wrong.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 05, 2019, 12:31:57 PM
As far as I know there is no reason to think that the SRH style has anything to do with how anyone chanted before the late C 19.

Quote from: JBS on June 05, 2019, 03:16:12 PM

The point is that there is no real evidence either way.  The Church endorsement says something  about ecclesiastical aesthetics c 1890. It says nothing about ecclesiastical aesthetics c 1100. "Sober, restrained, homogeneous" is what the clergy of the 19th century thought redounded to the greater glory of God. Whether the clergy of medieval times agreed with that is an open question.

Exactly. But I think that can also be said of Peres.

Quote from: San Antone on June 05, 2019, 03:46:21 PM
There is documentary evidence against the use of instruments in the church, as well as written statements against soloists drawing attention to themselves.  There are a number of sources dating to the 4th century and beyond that speak to the kind of singing to avoid in order to preserve a sober, meditative, inspiring, spiritual atmosphere. 

It is hard for me to believe that the kind of melismatic, soloistic style of singing would have been preferred to a more restrained style by the early, middle and late church authorities.

The Solesmes monks' style of singing chant has been endorsed by successive Popes over more than a century. 

I think the debate comes down to the question of how to treat chant. For the Church, and the monks of Solesmes, the purpose of chant is to sing the text of the prayers of the Catholic mass, and to do nothing that would detract from the understanding and intent of the service.

Whereas for a musician like Peres, he is treating chant as just another repertory to mine for artistic expression.

As I've written previously, I enjoy Peres' recordings - but I do not respect his attack on Solesmes and the Catholic church.

Quote from: JBS on June 05, 2019, 06:13:19 PM
To the point I italicized: perhaps the point was emphasized often because the actual singers were not doing it that way.

QuoteAt the very least, we are far enough removed from medieval thinking that we can't automatically think that what they thought of as sober, meditative, and inspiring matches what we think of as sober, meditative, and inspiring. Nor should we be so tied to 19th century aesthetics as to think that the Solesmes way is the only way modern ears can be inspired.* I have not read anything by Peres, but I think that chant be sung in different ways yet still be suitable for worship.

Quote from: San Antone on June 05, 2019, 07:31:34 PM

But we are not so removed from Medieval thought.  There are ample numbers of documents which in the majority say the same thing: the music used in church worship should be done differently than the kind of music sung outside of church. 

Quote from: San Antone on June 05, 2019, 08:32:16 PM
Just to emphasize my general point, here's a couple of quotes from Dom Eugene Cardine: "All pontifical documents, including the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Second Vatican Council, December 4, 1963) recognize Gregorian Chant as 'specially suited to the Roman Liturgy' (CSL Article 116). Not so much certainly, because of its musical quality, but much more for its incomparable power to express prayer."

"To obtain the spiritual effect, and even more, the musical effect of Gregorian Chant, a certain degree of perfection is required:

  -- in understanding
  -- in execution: to strive for a technique as worthy as possible of both the subject matter and its aim, which is nothing less than the praise of God.  Experience proves that there is no choir or congregation, even of
      modest capacity, that could not be sufficiently trained to appreciate Gregorian Chant, and sing properly the part assigned to them and to reach an interpretation that becomes prayer." (Emphasis in the original)

Chant was expected to be sung by non-professionals, as should be obvious from the quote.

Quote from: JBS on June 05, 2019, 03:16:12 PM


Exactly. But I think that can also be said of Peres.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 05, 2019, 09:28:29 PM
Are there any documents that say it must be done without ornamentation and without microtones?

Quote from: Mandryka on June 05, 2019, 09:30:55 PM
How do I know whether an interpretation has become the expression of a  prayer?

Quote from: San Antone on June 06, 2019, 02:56:00 AM
See my Reply #113

Quote from: San Antone on June 06, 2019, 02:59:09 AM
That issue was determined by the Catholic Church authorities.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 06, 2019, 03:42:45 AM
Well that's the end of that then.

Quote from: San Antone on May 24, 2019, 09:09:20 AM
Peres possibly has an anti-Catholic axe to grind.

QuoteAn Interview with Marcel Pérès

By Tom Moore

Marcel Pérès has been exploring a wide variety of chant repertoires for Harmonia Mundi with the Ensemble Organum, which he founded in 1982, including such little-known areas as Mozarabic chant (from Iberia), Corsican chant, and later chant traditions, such as the Gallican chant of Baroque France. His research into these byways is carried out under the auspices of the CERIMM (Centre Européen pour la Recherche et l'Interpretation des Musiques Médiévales), which Pérés directs. His recordings also include polyphony from the Codex Chantilly, and the Ockeghem Requiem. When we met in New York, the Ensemble had just shared a performance of the Machaut Mass in the context of a complete musical Mass.


Q. You have been focusing almost exclusively on music for the Catholic Church. Did you grow up in a Catholic family?

A. Yes. When I was a boy I used to sing in the choir of the Cathedral of Nice, in the south of France. It was here that I discovered chant. The Cathedral of Nice was a very traditional place, and even after the last council continued with the Latin Mass on Sunday, and Latin Vespers also. I was lucky to grow up there. Every time that I work on a new repertoire, I always try to think about the liturgy, its place in the liturgy--I think it's very important for performing this early music.

Q. What did the choir focus on? Did you sing the Gregorian ordinary and propers?

A. Yes. We sang polyphony also, Palestrina and so on. Even though the Gregorian chant was done in the Solesmes way, it was important, because as you know, most of the Catholic places had broken with the tradition. As I was born in 1956, it was just after the council, so for me it was an opportunity to make a link with tradition. Later I studied the history of chant in more detail, chiefly with Michel Huglo in Paris, where I did my scholarly training, manuscript work, and so on.

Q. What musical training or experiences did you have as a child outside the church?

A. I was trained as an organist; I studied at the conservatory in Nice. I am a composer also--I studied composition for seven years. When I started to be involved with medieval music, it was from the point of view of a composer. During the 70s I was wondering a lot about musical notation--what kind of notation to use for this new music--and I realized that I didn't know medieval notation, Renaissance notation, and so I started to study it. My purpose was to reflect on perception of sound. During my training as a composer I used to hear chords with lots of notes and dissonances, and I wanted to go back to another perception of sound, to discover again what the perception of a man from the Middle Ages might be. With this path, I started to have an interest for medieval repertoire, and discovered that this was a huge field--that one could spend years, maybe a lifetime, trying to figure out this music.

Q. When you were studying composition, did you have any notion, before you made the turn, going in the direction you did? So often young composers feel that they must compete with Boulez, with IRCAM--they have to speak that language.

A. I wanted to create my own path, and from the beginning I didn't like Boulez, really. For me he is a good musician and conductor, but what I didn't like was his dogmatic point of view. Now things are different, but during the 70s it was a sort of diktatura --if you didn't do music this way, you were really nothing. I didn't like dictators. When I studied, I studied serial music, because you have to do that, and I composed a number of pieces of this type. But I really wanted to go further, and chiefly to work deeply on the historical references I had in my mind. If you look at writing on music from the beginning of this century, the references to composers don't go further than the eighteenth century, even if from time to time, you meet someone talking about Machaut, for instance, and amazed by the incredible rhythmic and harmonic freedom of the music. It's one thing to be astonished by the music in relation to modern transcription, and another thing to see how it really sounds. It's a bit like the increasing movement over the last thirty years toward old instruments--we have discovered that the sound is different according to the way you build the instrument, for a specific music you must have a specific instrument. It's the same thing for singing--for a specific repertoire you must try to figure out which way the voice production works. I really wanted to increase the background for the composer's intentions, going back to old notation, because each notation is a different way of getting in touch with the music, the sound. I wanted to do some new experiments.

Q. Can you tell us about your perceptions of the effect of Vatican II in France?

A. It was a disaster. It was a disaster because the result was a reform that was not the sort of reform wanted by the texts of the council, because the texts said that Latin remained the language of the church, and national languages were simply authorized, but not the rule. Vatican II also said that Gregorian chant remained the repertoire of the Latin church. But in spite of that the bishops wanted to really break with any reference to the past, and now you have this situation where you have Roman Catholic priests who are not able to say a Mass in Latin, and even people who grew up in a very religious environment are unable to understand a word of the Latin liturgy. It's really a disaster, not only in the field of religion, but also in the area of scholarship. When you study the Middle Ages, whether history or music or something else, you must have references to the medieval liturgy, medieval Latin; but now when you start your graduate studies at twenty-one or twenty-two, you must learn everything, the texts of the liturgy, and there is a drop in the level of studies because of that. Now there is maybe a tiny change in the mentalities for some young priests who realize that there is something missing in their education; maybe something is changing, and in the next ten or twenty years we will have a more reasonable attitude. Presently in France most of the clergy is allergic to Latin--it's not a reasonable attitude. So everything has to be rebuilt.

Q. In some sense Vatican II was as revolutionary for French culture as the events of 1968. Can the two be linked?

A. It's very complex. It's a constant in the history of France that the people who have the power do not realize that things must change, and so they always wait till the last moment. The French revolution was typical of that--they wanted to hold onto things until they burst. The decolonization of the French empire was the same thing--they wanted to negate the problem. English people have a more fair way to manage these things.
In the early 60s in France, on one side, you have this political power, with DeGaulle, who didn't want to change anything of what existed, and with the church, it's true that the Catholics had not seen what was going on in the 50s. ...

Everything started with the first Vatican council in 1870. At this time the Catholic Church wanted to make the rites, the chant uniform. It's from this time that you have the idea of one edition of chant, the Vatican Edition. The aim was to have the same liturgy and the same chant in all the Catholic churches throughout the world. It was artificial, since every country had its own tradition, even if more or less every one was singing a sort of Gregorian or Latin vocal tradition. This only really came into practice in the 20s, after the First World War. That created a new aesthetic of Catholic liturgy, Catholic music also, and the way of singing chant that is common now is an aesthetic that comes from this time.

Q. Is this the sort of aesthetic that the chant-based pieces of Duruflé or Poulenc represent?

A. Yes. The model for Catholic music was Gregorian chant and Palestrina; composers tried to compose according to plainsong. At the same time the chant was accompanied. It was a mixture of will to return to antiquity, but also a desire to arrange this antiquity with what was necessary for modern good taste. This aesthetic was triumphant from the 20s through the second World War.
At this point in France there was a breakdown in the Catholic world, because the Catholics had believed in the values of Petain during the war, and they had to think it over. That's why in the 60s the reform of Vatican II was an occasion for the collective unconscious to break with this Catholic style linked with the war. They wanted to do something new.
This is how you can explain why some priests are so pathologically against Latin, against what was real Catholic tradition--in their minds, it was a real way to break with the past. There you have in a few words a psychoanalysis of French attitudes.

Q. Can you tell us a little about how you perceive the interactions between Eastern and Western chant?

A. It's a matter of history, since all this repertoire has a common root, which is the liturgy of Jerusalem. Very quickly the Christian liturgy became Greek. Christianity came to the Latin world in the form of Greek culture. The liturgy in Rome itself was in Greek until the fourth century--it's only in the fifth century that they started to translate from Greek to Latin. When we are thinking of Roman chant, we must always have in mind that in the early centuries there was not a distinction between Roman and Greek culture; since two centuries before Christ these cultures were completely linked. It's very significant that when Roman music theoreticians write of music it's always with Greek terms--the very last great theoretician of music from antiquity, Boethius, is talking of Greek music, and in his mind there is no distinction between Roman music and Greek music. The theory is Greek.

I emphasize that because from time to time I read some article that discusses Greek influence in the Roman liturgy. That's wrong--it's not Greek influence. It's a community. After the fifth or sixth century, Rome and Constantinople start to diverge, but still with many things in common. In fact in Rome until the thirteenth century they used to sing some pieces in Greek. In the seventh and eight centuries in Rome they had fourteen popes of Greek origin, but let us note that most of them were Greeks from Sicily--southern Italy and Sicily in antiquity were Magna Graecia--it was a Greek world, not a Latin world. So when I started to study Old Roman chant, I wanted to put in the perspective of these common roots. There were still in the twelfth century in Roman chant seven alleluia verses in Greek. I thought it would be good to ask Greek singers what they made of that. With my Western education, I wasn't able to see how this music was working--it was very repetitive, it was very obvious from the notation that there was a lot of ornamentation, for instance, but how to do it. ...?

Q. Could you elaborate on the sorts of ornaments?

A. The difficulty is that when we talk of notation, we must bear in mind that the words we are using to name the neumes (like clivis, pes, oriscus) are mostly, except for the quilisma, from the thirteenth century. It was a vocabulary intended for square notation. For the tenth century, the eleventh century, we don't know how they were naming these figures, or even if they were naming them. When we say, for instance, this neume is an oriscus--oriscus is a word from the thirteenth century--it comes from Greek. Maybe it was of old use, but we don't know. It means a little hill--it's on the note, an ornament, but we don't know exactly what. In fact I think the vocabulary was settled on because the square notation was no longer representing the picture of the sound. When you see the older notation, you see that there is a vibration. Square notation is a symbolic notation, so you must have a vocabulary to say that a pes, a two-note neume, is (for instance) a pes quassus, i.e., with a special vocal effect, a strong quaver on the first note.

Q. In a sense the staff notation is clearer in fixing pitches, but less clear in showing the details of the performance.

A. Yes. You must bear in mind also that at this time there was a very important change in performance. They began to sing from the music on the music stand. Square notation is intended for reading from a distance, with a larger group of singers. What you lost from a graphic point of view was supplied by a vocabulary which explained what to do on which note.
Today in most music history they say that square notation is linked to a loss of subtlety--that's absolutely wrong. I think that the way of singing didn't change, just the notation. You don't have the quilisma in square notation, so some scholars say the quilisma was not done anymore. Maybe they were doing more quilismas. Hieronymus of Moravia, a thirteenth-century theoretician, explains that in a specific style, for great solemnities, you must fill all the intervals--when you have a third or a fourth, for instance. Let us note that he describes different ways of singing according to different traditions and different liturgical purposes.
We translated this treatise of Hieronymus--we're going to publish it next year. I worked for ten years on this treatise.  The problem with the performance of chant is that you have very few texts. You have the Qatuor principalia , an anonymous treatise from the fourteenth century, less clear than Hieronymus, but discussing mostly the same phenomena, some authors like Guido d'Arezzo, Johannes Afflighemensis ... one thing is certain about chant, that no one agreed--that is a constant in the history of chant. In the thirteenth century, the Dominicans spent at least thirty years arguing.

Q. Something I have found fascinating in your work is the exploration of later chant traditions. Later chant has not been a topic of research for musicology.

A. You still don't have a history of chant, because of an ideology that comes from the first Vatican Council. They wanted to promote the idea of a uniform chant repertoire, a uniform way of singing, and so they wanted to negate everything that happened between the eleventh and the nineteenth century--most of the history of chant, they say, is ''decadent.'' And so all the scholars have focused on the first manuscripts of chant. Now studies of later centuries are beginning, but we have lost one century, because these studies should have begun a century ago.
The common idea that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century chant is decadent is ideological, because the reform of Solesmes wanted to break with the Gallican tradition, with the affirmation of the specificity of French culture, with the idea ''that we can be Catholic without having the same liturgy of Rome.'' They wanted to destroy that in the nineteenth century, and so they wanted to go back to St. Gregory.

Q. Which goes together with the infallibility of the pope. ...

A. Yes, yes. One liturgy, one infallible pope, one chant, one history of liturgy which is Roman and negated all other liturgies.
When we look at the chant of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it's very good music, as good as Baroque music. If you think about it, why shouldn't this chant have been refined? And so you have a huge repertoire to be discovered. I've tried to show some defects in the ideology, and with the records to show to scholars that they should study this, and in fact you can understand some medieval practices through studying seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources. They had a continuous tradition--the medieval aesthetic was still living. You find some fauxbourdon in parallel fifths in the eighteenth century--a language completely separate from that of the time.In eighteenth century, at the Cathedral of Sens, they were still using thirteenth-century manuscripts. Sens is now a little city, but until the seventeenth century the archbishop had the title of Primate of Gaul and Germany. The decadence of Sens began with the growth of Paris, but until 1620 or so the Bishop of Paris was under the authority of Sens.

Q. Are you intending to explore other Orthodox traditions?

A. In the next few years, we will try to make a sort of federation of centers for study of Orthodox music, having in mind that scholars who work in Western chant must be in contact with scholars of Eastern chant. We need to have a standardization of terminology and methodology.
Another field in which we will work is the tradition of Syriac chant. Next year there will be a meeting in Aleppo for all the world Syriac churches. We must do this because the Syriac tradition is imperiled, because most of the Christians in the Middle East are emigrating. Some Syriac churches are translating from Syriac to Arabic. Everything is in the oral tradition.
Also here we have lost one century. Dom Jeanin a century ago had the intuition that to understand Gregorian chant we must go back to Syriac chant. He had a scholarship from the Vatican to study in Syria, but he had no disciple. He died at the beginning of the century. It's a pity, because a century ago the Syriac tradition was stronger than it is now. But because of the Solesmes ideology it was inconceivable to go to the Middle East to study Gregorian chant. What we must do to improve scholarship is to create tools so that information from Syriac and Byzantine studies comes to Western scholars.

Q. Even if Solesmes was a reinforcement of Roman chant, it also looked back to Charlemagne as a national French figure.

A. We have some funny letters between Napoleon III and the pope in which he presents himself as a new Charlemagne.

Q. Tell us about the singers with whom you're working.

A. I always try to break preconceptions about repertoires. Often it's very useful to approach music with people who don't have an idea about this music, but who have a tradition which contains some elements that can help you to understand the aesthetic you're looking for. This is what I've done with Lycourgos Angelopoulos, with Marie Keyrouz. In Corsica they have a tradition of oral singing of polyphony, polyphonic singing with ornaments. For me that's the next step, to figure out how ornaments work in polyphony. Medieval and Renaissance music was highly ornamented, but nowadays all the standard groups just sing the skeleton of this music. I started to work in Corsica twelve years ago. We are doing a catalog of all the music books in Corsica. Now we have started making the recension of the repertoire of the lay confraternities. When I started to work on the Corsican manuscript, I realized that there were musical activities much wider than are conserved now, and I wanted to perform this music with Corsican singers, because they have the style, the key to the performance. It was a very long project, because I had to find singers who were willing to do it, to learn to read music. Most of them didn't want to bother to learn to read music. The first result was the record we did two years ago on the Franciscan manuscripts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. That was the first step. After these musicians started to be able to read music, I thought maybe I could use them in other repertoire, which is what I've done for the Notre Dame repertoire, and for the Machaut Mass we did yesterday in New York.

These singers bring first, an art of ornamentation in polyphony, secondly, a different way of approaching the music, since they're used to working only by ear. I love working with them. I think it's now an open field. It doesn't mean that the sound is that of the fourteenth century, but it's something different from the standard tradition that we're used to hearing nowadays. Very quickly we go back into our usual routine preconceptions. We are so used to hearing these English singers doing very good musical things, like the Hilliard Ensemble, Gothic Voices--it's a preconception of vocal production that works, but it's not all sure that this was the sound of the Middle Ages. It's important to break the preconceptions. The way to perform this music was a hearing way--we're much too linked to the scores, now. When you look at the scores from the fourteenth century, there are plenty of errors. That means the singers were not really reading, they were correcting the mistakes by ear. Working with singers who are used to working by ear brings you a new approach to this repertoire, even if it's more tedious.

We're going to record the Machaut Mass in two weeks. It will be a step in our research--maybe in ten years it will different.
In musicology, like in the sciences, we must have experiments. Too many people are looking for the truth. The truth is not possible, but we can try to see our preconceptions and go further in our reflections. All the performances you can hear are only what the musician have been able to imagine about the aesthetic of the music they are doing. That's why it is so important to get as much information as we can about a specific time, always bearing in mind that what we present is only the fruit of our imagination.

Quote from: Marcel Pérès via Mandryka on June 06, 2019, 05:27:16 AM
...one thing is certain about chant, that no one agreed--that is a constant in the history of chant...
It doesn't mean that the sound is that of the fourteenth century, but it's something different from the standard tradition that we're used to hearing nowadays...
In musicology, like in the sciences, we must have experiments. Too many people are looking for the truth. The truth is not possible, but we can try to see our preconceptions and go further in our reflections. All the performances you can hear are only what the musician have been able to imagine about the aesthetic of the music they are doing. That's why it is so important to get as much information as we can about a specific time, always bearing in mind that what we present is only the fruit of our imagination.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 06, 2019, 09:09:10 PM
Well no one would say that excessive anything is appropriate!

Quote from: San Antone on June 06, 2019, 11:29:22 PM
There are some short melismatic phrases indicated in the neume notation, almost always at certain cadences.  So, what I am saying is anything improvised beyond what is indicated in the existing notation would be "excessive".  Just because there is a Cypriot chant tradition does not mean that ornamentation improvised by a singer trained in that tradition would be appropriate for Gregorian chant.

Quote from: San Antone on June 06, 2019, 11:29:22 PM
a case that those groups who take a conservative approach are wrong not to embrace that same leap of the imagination.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 07, 2019, 09:05:53 AM
I don't know about cypriot, Byzantine is a bit more to the point. Someone who's been trained in the Byzantine tradition may have a very good feeling for how to turn the score into music.

QuoteI think conservatives confuse the score and the music.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 07, 2019, 09:27:14 AM
I'll tell you one thing that really surprised me about this discussion, San Antone, I somehow had the idea that you were an Orthodox Jew, I don't know how - I vaguely remember wishing you a happy Christmas and you replied saying happy Chanukah, but maybe I'm mixing you up with someone. Anyway for all I know you are Jewish now - it's just that I was was kind of stunned when you said that you were brought up a Catholic.

Quote from: San Antone on June 07, 2019, 09:57:59 AM
I was raised Catholic but converted to Judaism in 2005.  One thing I learned was that music in synagogue is not very good either.  The Church lost a lot when it modernized the mass and music.

Quote from: San Antone on June 07, 2019, 09:57:59 AM
The Church lost a lot when it modernized the mass and music.

Quote from: JBS on June 07, 2019, 10:06:07 AM
I'm not sure most chazzanut (cantorial singing) qualifies as music.  The trop used in public readings of the Torah and accompanying prophetical passages are often merely punctuation guides.  But a good chazzan is expected to have the ability to be highly expressive when the prayers warrant.

Quote from: San Antone on June 07, 2019, 10:56:43 AM
I don't think there is any better liturgical music than chant.

Quote from: San Antone on June 07, 2019, 09:17:46 AM
Neume notation was deciphered long ago, which brought about translating the nuemes into four line square note notation. 

Quote from: Pat B on June 06, 2019, 10:45:40 AM
Thanks for posting this.

QuoteIt is easy to pontificate about a subject like ornamentation of chant in the 8th century. There is no documentary evidence whatsoever, one way or the other, so conclusions must be drawn from other evidence

QuoteYou must study the liturgies of East and West to realize how independently they developed from antiquity

QuoteI came to Paris in 1987 to complete my doctorate in Religious Anthropology and Musicology at the Sorbonne, a thesis entitle The Role and functions of cult chanting in the oriental churches. At that time MArcel Peres was working on a manuscript of Milanese chant and he invited me to see if the chant of this church had been influenced in some way by the eight modes of the Eastern Byzantine and Syrian churches. . .

The idea seemed to me interesting, obvious even, especially because in Northern Italy there was music before the normalisation of the Gregorian repetoire. Also following the 7th century Muslim invasion of middle and near eastern countries, lots of religious Christians, bishops and archbishops and the faithful, took the path of exile and found themselves in, for example, Northern Italy. In escaping they took with them their most precious things . . . relics, sacred garments, religious instruments and above all their poetry and their chants. . . .

Which elements of the manuscript helped you to see the correspondences between musical traditions which a priori are very separate?

It was a liturgical chant in neumes, accompanied by signs indicating the movement of the chant and above all the vocal fluctuations. There was, quite clearly, some funny little signs under some neumes which the paleographers and musicologist couldn't agree about. Marcel pares had a cool idea. He asked me to sing a passage of this famous manuscript in the 1st mode, but thinking of the first byzantine mode.

But Byzantine music is based on intervals, big medium and small, of 7, 9 and 12 commas, with a notation which is made up of signs which show at the same time the interval and the manner of producing the vocal sound: the ornamentation, the nuances etc. We immediately realised that every time that I embellished, lowered or moved a note following the characteristics of the 1st byzantine mode, it was precisely where there were the famous little signs. So we carried on decoding other pieces in the same way. The more we moved on, the more something became clear: we had brought out melodic cells, entire musical phrases and cadences which we now find in the Byzantine tradition.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 07, 2019, 01:49:09 PM
I came across an interview with Sister Marie Keyrouze, who works with Peres. I find what she says really exciting because it reveals what Peres means when he says "In musicology, like in the sciences, we must have experiments", and it shows why the notational issues aren't as simple as San Antone wants to have us think. It also suggests that Jerome may not be completely correct when he suggested

QuoteThe oldest notations are very incomplete, though they are irreplaceable for their rhythmic and interpretive indications.  They represent the melodic line in only rudimentary way.  They clearly indicate the number of notes sung to a syllable, but not the melodic intervals between the notes.  They show only the successive movement - up, down or unison.  Quite often, even these general indications exist only for notes represented within the same graphic entity.  A precise indication of size of the intervals (diastematic notation) does not come until later, its speed of arrival more or less depending on the country.  In Aquitania (the South of present-day France and some of Spain), diastematic indications appear from the very beginnings of notation in the tenth century.  They become perfect in the eleventh, with the notes stratified above and below a line traced into the parchment with a stylus.  On the other hand, the melodically imprecise notation called "in campo aperto" (literally "in an open field," that is, without landmarks) or in "pure neums," persisted the longest in the Germanic countries.  In Switzerland it was used right up to the fifteenth century.

So a schematic view of Gregorian chant's manuscript tradition can be divided into three stages: the eight century, which offers the text alone; the tenth century, when "pure neums" appear above the same text; and the tenth to eleventh centuries, when the neums begin appearing stratified with increasing accuracy above and below a line.  This line was imaginary at first, but was later traced with a stylus, and flanked by one or more additional lines.  Among these, according to a system popularized by Guido d'Arezzo in the eleventh century, one was often colored to indicate the location of the note above the half-step - red for "fa", yellow or green for "do".

It is on these three successive planes that a critical restoration of the chant must be based, taking into account an inevitable diminishing of the unanimity of the manuscript evidence at each successive phase, and in the reliability of the musical version put forward.

At the stage where the neums are written on a staff, which is generally made up of four lines, we truly can come into contact with Gregorian chant, but there are two conditions: first, that we neglect none of the interpretative signs which abound in the oldest notations made in "pure neums"; and second, that we retain only those pieces of the repertory from the still earlier manuscripts containing no notation whatsoever.  We can thus arrive at what is called the "foundation layer of Gregorian chant," which can be reconstructed with a fairly satisfactory degree of certainty and precision.

QuoteAfter the troubled period at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries, musicologists took up the research previously begun in France by Father Jean Lebeuf and Dom Pierre de Jumilhac and more particularly by Dom Martin Gerbert in Germany.  Due to the Romantic spirit of the times, these men were drawn to a study of the Middle Ages even more than their predecessors had been.  The most interesting promoter of the movement was Francois-Joseph Fetis.  Dom Gueranger, the first abbot of Solesmes, took an interest in his work and encouraged it, largely because of his own pressing practical needs.  He was looking for good editions of the chant for a group of monks he had just gathered.

There was, however,  major obstacle impeding any real progress.  Although already judged the best, the earliest notations were still indecipherable.  The neums without staves were like Sibylline signs inviting a whole set of fanciful explanations.  None of these seemed to provide the vital, elusive clue needed to unravle the mystery.  A jesuit priest, Father Lambillotte, had already established the principle of collating manuscripts from the different schools, but that was as far as he went.  Then on December 18th 1847, by pure chance, the key to the notation was discovered when Felix Danjou came across the Codex H. 159 of the library of the Montpellier School of Medicine.

This manuscript, which was later published as the eight volume of the Paleographie Musicale (1901-1905) is originally from Sant Benigne in Dijon.  Written for didactic purposes, it contains pieces belonging to the Proper of teh Mass grouped according to their musical categories and tones.  But the manuscript's special importance lies in the fact that there are two notations, one neumatic and the other alphabetical.  Below the French neums, and precisely corresponding with the groups of notes contained in the graphic designs, are minuscule letters going from a to p in a continuous series.  At the time the manuscript was found, many people imagined that it was the rediscovery of "St. Gregory's original."

Quote from: San Antone on June 07, 2019, 02:57:33 PM
What she describes is pure speculation, and appears to start with a conclusion, i.e. that Byzantine practice is relevant to interpreting Gregorian neumatic notation - and then, lo and behold, they prove it through singing it that way.  That's not how musicology works. 

Quote from: San Antone on June 07, 2019, 02:57:33 PM

Here's some information about chant notation from An Overview of Gregorian Chant, Dom Eugene Cardine::

Quote from: Mandryka on June 07, 2019, 10:36:37 PM
As far as I know, Eugene Cardine proposed himself a radical interpretation of the interpretation of neumes proposed by  Pothier, an approach which put him into opposition with the Solesmes establishment.  Cadine's own work has been disputed by Jacques Vieret.

QuoteMy point is not to get to the bottom of all this, I can't, I'm not part of an academic environment any more. There does seem to be quite a lot of debate about this sort of thing.

Quote from: San Antone on June 08, 2019, 03:50:35 AM


I don't think there is any real debate about the issue of how to interpret chant or the validity of the Solesmes method

Quote from: San Antone on June 08, 2019, 03:50:35 AM
I have seen nothing to suggest that Cardine was in opposition with the Solesmes establishment.

QuoteWhy did Cardine leave Solesmes to go to teach in Rome?


I think that they sent Cardine away from Solesmes. When Joseph Gajard was a schola master and Cardine became more and more aware that Gregorian chant in Solesmes is not properly sung, what happened was that they sent him to Rome. That was the only reason. It is not possible to combine the Cardine and the Solesmes way of singing. It is like
fire and water – this is how Cardine thought.. .

When you met Eugène Cardine in 1957, was his understanding of neumes already fully
developed?

Not completely developed. For example, he was still convinced that each neume has an accent on the first note. This is completely wrong. About 1962‐63, I wrote my first article about torculus specialis. After reading it, Cardine commented: 'Every neume has accent on the first note, except torculus specialis'.

Was it the understanding of Joseph Pothier that every neume has an accent on its first note?

Yes, it was Pothier. Mocquereau's principle was that accents go according to groups of 3
and 2. It is important for history to know how far Cardine's understanding of neumes was
developed when he came to Rome in 1952. I believe his understanding was already scholarly. In Solesmes at this time, and probably until now, they actually sing according to Pothier's principles. Anyhow, 21 years ago when Cardine died, they sang according to Pothier's principles. They never sang according to Mocquereau's principles. One thing for Cardine was studying neumes but the other was singing according to this study. He was able to study neumes but it was not possible to sing according to this study in Solesmes. Only when he went to Rome did he start to realize his scholarly work. Until then, it was just a study of signs. Perhaps he tried out different possibilities for himself, but to realize this in Solesmes was impossible.
 
How do you think, did Cardine also propose his ideas to Gajard?

I do not think that he spoke about it to Gajard. I am convinced that even if he had shared his thoughts with him, a man like Gajard would never change his manner of understanding chant.

I understand that, but it is a very long time from 1928‐1952. Something must have
become known about his ideas.

His solemn vows were 1930 and he started his work after that. Only then was he able to go alone to the 'Paleo' [a manuscript room in Solesmes]. Before taking solemn vows, it was forbidden for novices to go to the 'Paleo' unaccompanied. Therefore, only in 1930 did he have a chance to look at the manuscripts. Of course, he did not know at this time what was going to happen – he was just curious to see the manuscripts or the photos of the manuscripts. You can see it here [Godehard takes the Graduel Neumé]. He started with the same piece that I started with 30 years afterwards. He told me that the first pieces he copied were the Introits Exurge,Ciricumdederunt me,  and Esto mihi. Here he started to copy neumes, as he was convinced that it is important to know what neumes communicate to us.


This happened in 1930?

I would not say 1930, but 1932. We will probably never know. Of course, he had his duties in the community. It was not possible for him to sit all day and study manuscripts. I know that he was an organist and he had to accompany singing of psalms during the Office. He had to do it always using the same sequence of chords. He could never change even one chord. I accompanied the Office in my monastery for many years using different registrations and different harmonies. I asked him once why he did not change the harmony. He said 'No, no, no – I was not allowed. I have to use only these harmonies'. These harmonies were repeated in some cases 20 times, if it was necessary. When Rome asked for one teacher for Gregorian chant in 1952 it appeared to be the best solution to send Cardine to Rome. They used a principle 'promoveatur et amoveatur'. They were glad that he went to Rome and it was 'quiet' again in Solesmes.


I am very interested in this one single question of Cardine going to Rome. I have several
quotes from his friends that he was unhappy about leaving Solesmes. How do you
comment?

I think it is true. When school finished on the day of St Peter and St Paul on 29 June he left Rome immediately. On the same evening, he took a train to Paris where his sister lived and after that, he went straight to Solesmes. He did not stay there for one hour more than necessary. He loved his home and he loved Solesmes. For me it was difficult to study with him in Solesmes. He was a monk of Solesmes and he lived the life of Solesmes in every way. I remember that once I was in Solesmes and we were standing on the opposite sides of the choir. When he was singing he was 'nodding' the book according to the rhythm of Solesmes singing style. I admired his love towards his home monastery. I asked him: 'how can you stay here and still sing Mocquereau's system?' He replied that it is not straightforwardly Mocquereau's system; rather it is Pothier's system. But Pothier's system was like [Godehard sings a short example in a rather floating manner but stressing first notes of every neume element]. You can here it on recordings of Solesmes. Cardine was able to adapt to life and singing in Solesmes for three and a half months until he returned to Rome on 15 October. He was happy in Solesmes. He was happy. 


If Gajard was convinced that he was teaching Mocquereau's system and Solesmes was never actually using it, what was it that he taught?

When he went to teach, he taught Mocquereau, but in Solesmes they still performed according to Pothier. When people came to Solesmes, they were confused, because they did not hear what they had learned from Gajard. If people wanted to hear how Mocquereau's rhythm sounded they had to go to another monastery, where Mocquereau's system was followed.   Cardine always told me that it was not possible to switch in the community from one performance practice to another. It was impossible. During the time of Mocquereau, there were still so many monks who sang according to the system of Pothier. It was not possible for Mocquereau's system to be realised. Novices studied the Mocquereau system but they never performed accordingly in Solesmes.   It would be very interesting to know what was the relationship between Gajard and Cardine. That we probably will never know. 

When was Graduel Neumé finished?

I do not know exactly when it was finished. I think that all neumes were already copied when he was called to Rome. The indexing of course continued. In 1960, I made the first 20 copies of Graduel Neumé by using photos. When they heard in Solesmes that I was already circulating the Graduel Neumé, the director of the Solesmes Editions said that 'we must print it'. Solesmes printed the first version in 1966. 
[...] 
Cardine's obligation in Rome was not to teach the performance of chant. There was another teacher for that. Cardine was teaching paleography. I remember that I went to Raffael Barrata to sing. After that, you had to forget everything before you went to study with Cardine, because it was so different. Only when Cardine left Musica Sacra did they start officially to teach semiology.

QuoteObviously, the practical singing of chant should be based on scholarly research also.  No longer is it necessary to fight the excessive, emphatic articulation or hammering of the notes which was so common in the last century (19th).  But today there can still be an exaggerated equalization of notes, a "plainsong," which is in marked opposition to the variety of graphic designs observed in the early notations.  Consequently, in order to avoid the resulting monotony, some singers fall into the trap of embellishing their performance arbitrarily with crescendos, decrescendos, accelerandos, and retardandos inherited from romantic music.  Such practices spell death for the true nature of the chant.

QuoteThe correct manner of performing and interpreting is perfectly indicated by the neumatic designs.  They show, for instance, one or more long notes followed by lighter, flowing ones in all sorts of combinations.  Their energy and intensity serves to highlight and color the musical accents suggested either by the text or by the melody itself.  This gives the chant its ever fresh, limitless variety.

QuoteOf course, there is also a subjective element in singing the chant, just as in any living musical tradition.  For Gregorian chant, it involves establishing the right balance and proportion between all the prescribed variations in the duration and intensity of the notes.  The margin left to the singers for interpreting the chant is really quite large.  However, there can be no authentic expression of the chant if the objective indications provided in the manuscripts are contradicted.

QuoteHowever, it was on the subject of chant rhythm that debates were most frequent and most vehement.  Many experts wrote on the issue, but without having sufficient knowledge of the chant.  Most of them started off with preconceived notions and prejudices - "musical rhythm must be this way and no other ... ." According to all of them, some kind of measured time was absolutely indispensable.  But that was the only point they agreed upon.  Each one advanced his own theory with different explanations and different practical applications.  In general, they tended to limit themselves to only a few selected pieces of the chant.  Sometimes their choice of pieces was purely arbitrary and quite misleading, since unsuspecting readers were led to believe that the rest of the chant repertory was similar to the examples advanced in support of the theory being presented.

QuoteEven performances illustrating these theories could be deceiving.  Take the system of Georges Houdard, with its theory of neumatic beats, for example.  According to this theory, each neumatic entity or syllable has the same time value, regardless of the number of notes involved.  Performance of the chant according to this theory required extraordinary virtuosity and was capable of producing spectacular impressions.  But Mr. Houdard was quite obviously unaware of the very notion of the neum, which the best manuscripts often represent in different ways without altering its signification in the least.  So far, none of the mensuralist systems has been able to stand up to the test of paleographic evidence.  Their authors either totally ignore the evidence, interpret it incorrectly, or disdainfully reject it.

QuoteThe manuscripts provide the unique link to rediscovering the very life of Gregorian chant performance.  Their evidence is perhaps less direct and less clear on the point of rhythm than it is about the musical construction and the melodic line.  But we must resign ourselves to this fact, and strive in all honesty to discover the surest method of extracting from the neumatic, graphic designs their full meaning in every possible detail.

Such is precisely the object of Gregorian Semiology, a field of study which has already produced significant results over the past century, and which must continue to progress still further.  This science is based on two criteria. The first, which deals more with the material, graphic order, concerns the shape and design of the signs used around the 10th century to transcribe music sounds.  The second, which belongs more to the practical, aesthetic order, concentrates on the musical context in which each sign is used.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 08, 2019, 04:29:26 AM
This may be of interest, taken from an interview with Prof. Godehard Joppich (Frankfurt), for a doctoral thesis by Eerik Joks at the University of York (UK)

Quote from: aligreto on June 09, 2019, 12:23:15 AM
Cross post from the Listening Thread....


Gregorian Chant:


(https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/y2MAAOSwkXRbbXMP/s-l1600.jpg)


Recorded in a warm and slightly reverberant acoustic which greatly enhances the rich tones of the singers. The performance sounds devotional without being academic.


I cannot add anything to the debate but the above old offering was always very pleasing to my ears. There may or may not be a modern digital iteration. It is worth hearing.

Quote from: San Antone on June 09, 2019, 03:15:43 AM
I was able to find it on Spotify.  Very nice.  Hebert Dopf appears to be Jesuit priest, and it is nice to hear a German group.  Thanks for posting.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 10, 2019, 09:45:55 AM
Alleluia has traditionally been a word which has been subjected to vocalise by chanters.

QuoteChant lovers, including me, who enjoy listening to the monastic choirs of St. Peter's of Solesmes and Santo Domingo de Silos will hate this CD set. I bought it because it had chants that are not in my collection. I do not much like my other chant CD in which Godehard Joppich directs the choir. Therefore, I did not expect this to be my favorite chant CD set. Nevertheless, that CD was at least listenable. This one sounds like a bull in a china shop.

In chant one syllable will often be sung to two pitches which call for a slight diminuendo. In this set the two-pitch diminuendo disappears to almost a whisper. Getting so soft in just two pitches results in what sounds more like gasping than singing. Sometimes the group delivers such a diminuendo on a one-pitch syllable. This jerkiness does not express the meaning of the text, either. On the contrary, it only detracts and distracts from it. It clutters the line. Other words in a phrase are frequently detached to no purpose. Such devices might be effective if used judiciously and strategically. Unfortunately, they occur so often in this that one seldom hears a long, legato, graceful phrase. Such overuse is affectation, not expression

Quote from: San Antone on June 13, 2019, 05:58:02 AM
I too appreciate that Amazon review, its first sentence lets me know the recording is not for me.  But I will have to check out recordings by choir of Santo Domingo de Silos.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 13, 2019, 06:50:15 AM
Yes well they're much more forceful, alpha male chanting.

Quote from: San Antone on June 13, 2019, 12:24:25 PM
Sounds like a completely inappropriate way to sing Gregorian chant, IMO, of course.   8)

Quote from: Mandryka on June 13, 2019, 01:24:07 PM
Yes I agree, but the loud and proud singing style seems quite common in this type of music,  one of the reasons I appreciate Joppich so much is that he is very intimate and quiet and peaceful, as that Amazon review which tickled me so much makes clear.

The big bold male singing style came up for me again recently listening to this recording

(http://resources.wimpmusic.com/images/e3b74d9e/2ebe/4a1f/b0f4/44d597a3c4f5/640x640.jpg)

In quasi-declaimed music like this, I just don't like their assertive and explosive way of making sounds with their voices. But there's no other way of experiencing the music, as far as I can see the mass hasn't been recorded by anyone else.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 14, 2019, 09:59:02 AM
https://www.youtube.com/v/BgLZrFHUHLY




Was this music written like a song is written for lyrics?

Quote from: Mandryka on June 14, 2019, 01:05:54 PM
The role of the music is not to express the ideas in the words.

Quote from: San Antone on June 14, 2019, 02:06:26 PM
My understanding is that chant melodies were designed to elucidate the text, i.e., not utilizing word painting but being especially concerned with making the text understood, getting the accents of the words correctly and phrasing for understanding.

QuoteBut one of them, called Caiaphas, since he was high priest that year, prophesied, saying:
"It is best for you that one man shall die for the sake of the people, lest the whole nation perish."
So from that day they plotted to kill him, saying:
"Lest perhaps the Romans come and take away our home
and our nation."

QuoteO be joyful in God, all ye lands:
sing praises unto the honour of his Name:
O come hither, and hearken, all ye that fear God: and I will tell you what he hath done for my soul.
Alleluia.

QuoteLet my prayer be set forth in thy sight as the incense: and let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice

QuoteThe sparrow has found herself a home,
and the turtle dove a nest where she may keep her young:

Quote1. O God, my God, look upon me; why hast Thou forsaken me?
2. Far from my salvation are the words of my sins.
3. O my God, I shall cry by day, and Thou wilt not hear; and by night, and it shall not be reputed as folly in me.
4. But Thou dwellest in the holy place, the praise of Israel.
5. In Thee have our fathers hoped; they have hoped, and Thou hast delivered them.
6. They cried to Thee, and they were saved; they trusted in Thee, and were not confounded.
7. But I am a worm, and no man: the reproach of men and the outcast of the people.
8. All they that saw Me have laughed Me to scorn; they have spoken with the lips and wagged the head.
9. He hoped in the Lord, let Him deliver Him; let Him save Him, seeing He delighteth in Him.
10. But they have looked and stared upon Me; they parted My garments amongst them, and upon My vesture they cast lots.
11. Deliver me from the lion's mouth, and my lowness from the horns of the unicorns.
12. Ye that fear the Lord, praise Him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify Him.
13. There shall be declared to the Lord a generation to come; and the heavens shall show forth His justice.
14. To a people that shall be born, which the Lord hath made.

Quote"My words fly up, My thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go"

Quote from: Mandryka on June 15, 2019, 08:29:01 AM
And yet, what can you make of a setting like this, of Deus Deus Meus?

If you look at the words, it's like the most expressive stuff in the world


but if you listen to the way it's sung in the Solesmes style, you'd say that the singer doesn't give a damn about the suffering expressed in the poem, he's reprehensibly indifferent to it, and as music it is irredeemably boring

https://www.youtube.com/v/Ztm_vLGh2zA

Well that's how it looks to me. Even as a prayer, I don't see how this can work, but maybe I don't understand prayer. It makes me think of Claudius in Hamlet

This is the sort of thing which makes me  think that the Solesmes way isn't the best way. How anyone can think that that interpretation of Deus Deus Meus has an "incomparable power to express prayer" and has a "spiritual effect" or that the singers manifest, indeed can manifest if they sing like that, "perfection . . . in understanding" is a mystery to me and I suspect it's nonsense.

Quote from: San Antone on June 15, 2019, 11:34:05 AM
You seem to want it to be theatrical, which it most definitely should not be.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 15, 2019, 01:33:12 PM
I think my real problem is that I don't know what prayer is.

Here's a better one, solo and longer.

https://www.youtube.com/v/g-3tgsbowUA

I intend to explore this, as there clearly was in medieval times a close connection between liturgy and drama. There's a whole bunch of things on record with very large chanted sections, which I'd like to get to know better, this is something I dip in to from time to time

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41NDKX6RXKL.jpg)

and this is something I very much enjoy

(https://img.discogs.com/3pTjvQlgnKO-J7LHlyAopTifAVQ=/fit-in/595x519/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2085133-1263141956.jpeg.jpg)

Quote from: Mandryka on June 15, 2019, 01:33:12 PM
I think my real problem is that I don't know what prayer is.

Quote from: Mandryka
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41NDKX6RXKL.jpg)

and this is something I very much enjoy

(https://img.discogs.com/3pTjvQlgnKO-J7LHlyAopTifAVQ=/fit-in/595x519/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2085133-1263141956.jpeg.jpg)

Quote from: (: premont :) on June 15, 2019, 02:01:41 PM
This is probably even my problem, and has probably prevented me from getting any serious interest in chant.

What I have heard of the Solesmes  I have found conventional and boring. They really make chant seem endless, which is not the same as timeless.

Quote from: San Antone on June 15, 2019, 03:11:59 PM
Since you admit to not having any serious interest in chant, I take your criticism of Solesmes with a grain of salt.  I have said more than once, they are the reference model, IMO, of how chant ought to be done. 

Chant is sacred music of the most sublime quality, and I consider it highly inappropriate to look for dramatic or theatrical performance aspects, or even to stress solo performance.  Except for short isolated sections sung by the celebrant, the majority of chant is performed by a male choir. 

I suspect Mandryka and, to a lesser extent, yourself are expecting chant to offer attributes that are not native to it.  Separated from the mass experience, chant has become viewed as just another genre of Classical music.  But that is not correct, in my view; it should never be seen as anything but sacred liturgical music, and not to be experienced from a secular perspective.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 15, 2019, 09:02:49 PM

It looks to me as though you believe Solesmes style chanting of deus deus meus is sublime  (= beautiful?)  but I can't see this because I'm not a Catholic and I'm not participating in a mass.

Quote from: San Antone on June 15, 2019, 11:44:45 PM

This idea is what I am thinking of when I evaluate a chant recording: Does it seem like a holy performance or is it more secular.

Quote from: San Antone on June 15, 2019, 03:11:59 PM

Chant is sacred music of the most sublime quality, and I consider it highly inappropriate to look for dramatic or theatrical performance aspects, or even to stress solo performance.  Except for short isolated sections sung by the celebrant, the majority of chant is performed by a male choir. 

I suspect Mandryka and, to a lesser extent, yourself are expecting chant to offer attributes that are not native to it.  Separated from the mass experience, chant has become viewed as just another genre of Classical music.  But that is not correct, in my view; it should never be seen as anything but sacred liturgical music, and not to be experienced from a secular perspective.

Quote from: (: premont :) on June 16, 2019, 03:09:47 AM
BTW which elements in a performance are required in order to indicate it as being holy?

Quote from: Mandryka on June 16, 2019, 01:06:52 AM
Godehard Joppich was a Christian and so is Damien Poisblaud, I'd be surprised if Anne-Marie Deschamps and Lykourgos Angelopoulos weren't and we know that Marcel Peres has his roots in the church.

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 03:49:16 AM

So?

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 03:49:16 AM

I hear plenty of expressive singing in the Solesmes performances.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 16, 2019, 03:58:34 AM
Just thinking of Deus Deus meus, one of these must be true I think   

1. Their performances are holy and you recognize it 
2. They have tried to perform in a holy way and have failed
3. They have not tried to perform in a holy way, they don't agree with you that it should sound holy
3. Their performances are holy and you don't see it

Quote from: Mandryka on June 16, 2019, 04:22:18 AM
Note two senses of expression in music

1. Intrinsic - the harmonies or the rhythms or some other structural aspect of the score reflects some semantic aspect of the text.
2. Extrinsic - the way the singer creates sounds is designed to elicit a response from the listener, a response which reflects some semantic aspect of the text.

There's no dispute here (yet!) that Deus Deus Meus is not intrinsically expressive. My beef is with a style of singing which deprives it of extrinsic expressiveness.

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 05:26:11 AM
A sacred performance is not dramatic or theatrical.

Quote from: Hornorius of Autun, Gemma Anime, c.1100, describing the massThus our tragic actor [i.e. the celebrant] represents by his gestures in the theatre of the Church before the Christian people the struggle of Christ and teaches to them the victory of His redemption. Thus when the celebrant says the fratres he expresses Christ placed for us in agony, when he commanded his disciples to pray. By the silence of the Secreta he expresses Christ as a lamb without voice being led to the sacrifice. By the spreading out of his hands he represents the extesion of Christ on the Cross. By the chant of the Preface he expresses the cry of Christ hanging on the cross.

QuoteBy the chant of the Preface he expresses the cry of Christ hanging on the cross.

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 05:26:11 AM
These texts are canonical, and the performance is part of a ritual.  The last thing that should happen is for the performer to treat it almost operatically, drawing attention to himself and away from the purpose of the chant in the first place, which is to point to God.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 16, 2019, 05:52:42 AM
But San Antone, the liturgy is a Middle Ages drama.

I repeat

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 05:33:22 AM
Entertainment is the purpose of all commercial recordings....

Quote from: San Antone
Solesmes recordings are made during a liturgical service and are meant for instruction, not entertainment.  There might be other choirs who do the same thing, but any serious sacred music performed outside of a worship service is being treated inappropriately, IMO.  This why my preferred recordings of the Machaut Messe incorporate all of the liturgical aspects, and in a couple of cases (Parrott's and Mary Berry's, I think) they were, in actual fact, recorded during a service.  Those recordings which strip Machaut music from its liturgical context and offer just the composed sections are 100% wrong-headed.

Quote from: (: premont :) on June 16, 2019, 05:56:24 AM
I thought the essence of chant was the words. A good performer may well manage to draw the appropriate attention to the text without drawing attention to himself.

Quote from: (: premont :) on June 16, 2019, 06:10:26 AM
I do not think this is true. There are lots of recordings with spiritually elevating or educational purposes.

QuoteI haven't got the time to sit through a whole service just to hear Machauts messe or part of it. And you can say, that I do not hear it in its true context, but having heard the context a few times, the context is in my mind, and I do not need to hear it all the time.

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 06:10:09 AM
No, it isn't.  The Catholic Mass is not a play; it is a worship service.  I don't care how many people you quote, if they say otherwise, they are simply wrong and probably have a non-religious agenda.

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 06:15:06 AM
How you choose to listen to Machaut's mass has nothing to do with its purpose nor his expectations of how it will be heard. And anyway I was not talking about how an individual might listen to it, but how it is performed/recorded.

Quote from: San Antone
This why my preferred recordings of the Machaut Messe incorporate all of the liturgical aspects....

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 06:12:37 AM
The words are standard texts either from the Bible, Psalms mostly, or the Mass or the Daily Office services.  These are well known to devout Catholics, nothing new there.  What chant brings to the experience are the melodies.  These are designed to enhance the understanding of the text and to focus the mind on God.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 16, 2019, 06:38:10 AM
What!. Honorius of Autun was a fucking monk and a recluse, a hermit, who studied with St fucking Anselm. He was a popular christian writer, he wrote about theology and stuff like that.  If he's not a catholic, a bloody devout one, I'll eat my hat.

Quote from: (: premont :) on June 16, 2019, 06:46:16 AM
I just stated, that I prefer the Machaut messe performed in the most often recorded way, which is without chant.

Quote from: (: premont :) on June 16, 2019, 06:51:33 AM
A good performer may well with the help of the music manage to draw the appropriate attention to the text without drawing inappropriate attention to himself.

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 06:12:37 AM
These [chant melodies]  are designed to enhance the understanding of the text

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 06:12:37 AM
These are well known to devout Catholics, nothing new there. 

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 07:17:56 AM
Nothing wrong with that - as long as you don't go further and say that your way was the intention of Machaut.  He intended it to be a mass setting, which means the entire mass with Machaut's composed sections worked in between the other liturgical sections.

Quote from: San Antone
I agree - but again, chant is normally performed by a choir, not a solo singer.  So, your focus on an individual singer displays a priority I do not think is primary to chant.

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 07:17:56 AM
He intended it to be a mass setting, which means the entire mass with Machaut's composed sections worked in between the other liturgical sections. 

Quote from: Mandryka on June 16, 2019, 09:29:33 AM

I suppose there's a point about texture. Machaut must have intended the new sounding polyphony to contrast with the familiar sounding Gregorian material.  But we're all very familiar with polyphony, and indeed Machaut's mass, so that's not going to work unless the ordinary settings can be rendered in a suitably disorienting novel way . . . shades of Schmelzer here  >:D

Quote from: Mandryka on June 16, 2019, 09:21:10 AM
How do they do that? Maybe take Deus deus meus as an example.

But it's in Latin.

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 10:34:51 AM


"Deus, Deus Meus" is associated with Palm Sunday (the Sunday before Easter).  There are a variety of hymns that can be sung, but usually one is chosen which has to do with the mass of that day.  In this case, Palm Sunday, the text chosen has to do with Jesus' suffering. But the text itself is a Psalm, #22, which predates the time of Jesus by about 1,000 years or more, i.e the time of David.

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 10:34:51 AM



There is absolutely no basis to assume that the choir must sing this hymn as if they were enacting Jesus in Gethsemane.  I

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 10:34:51 AM

  In fact that is a rather superficial way of thinking about the purpose of these chants and how they work in a mass.

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 10:34:51 AM



Solesmes simply sing the text as it should be done, straight-forward, without making a big show of it.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 16, 2019, 11:12:38 AM
I can well imagine that it would an unusual way of doing it in a mainstream white middle class Catholic church in London. But given what Honorius of Autun says it may have been the way it was sometimes done c. 1100.

QuoteWhat would a deeper way be to think of the purpose of these chants and the way they work? In particular, I'd be interested in any ideas you have about the relation of the music and the text. Liturgy in the middle ages was a dramatic affair, with ritual gestures and props and very emotional texts. The question we're concerned with is the role of music in all of that.

QuoteBut let me note that all this started with an appraisal of the idea that the Solesmes way is authentic, it captures the way things were done in the early western church. That's why it's relevant to be enquiring about medieval liturgical practices, and why I was keen to introduce medieval dramatic liturgies into the discussion.

QuoteIntroduction

The Latin liturgical chant that is called 'Gregorian in fact stems from different repertoires ran-ging from Spain to the Gauls of the Northeast, by way of Aquitaine (in southwestern France), Northern Italy and... Rome. The decision to record these Great Offer-tories was guided by a desire to bring out the richness of the purely Hispano-Frankish portion of this 'Gregorian repertoire. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the latter is generally known essentially as choral singing, but History also offers us as a marvellously rich solo re-pertoire calling for the virtuosity of highly experienced cantors.

The long melismas that we encounter in the verses of these anthems show the fantastic develop-ment that these pieces underwent towards the Carolin-gian era. Having progressively fallen into oblivion since the Middle Ages, it would nonetheless seem that they represented the 'cantors bravura piece'.

Melismatic singing customarily means or-namented singing. All musical traditions, be they western or eastern, attest to the importance of vocal ornaments. Moreover, the earliest Latin manuscripts systematically note this, and the extreme precision with which these vocal effects were written down leads us to suppose this that was a general practice in which cantors had to de-monstrate certain know-how. Voce et arte, 'with voice and art', as Raban Maur taught in 840.

Although synonymous with an accom-plished art, ornamentation can nonetheless become a pitfall in which the music can get bogged down or the text is lost. More than an appendix for embellishment, it fulfils the essential function of articulation within a melodic movement. This is what allows for finding the the right supports, meting out the voice's energy, accenuating what should be accentuated so that the melody finds its dynamic balance and that the text is thereby well 'spoken'.

The modern western singer must therefore be particularly careful as to the sense that this ornamen-tation may have. Far from being a difficulty to overcome, it will, on the contrary, help in finding the appropriate intervals (if possible, non-tempered), organising the melodic development and furthering the emergence of the text. The inflections of his voice will espouse the ex-tremely precise graphic notation of mediaeval copyists, whose pen basically only transcribed what the ear was hearing. He will have to discern what comes from the vocal process or from the melodic development itself.

The injunctions of Gregory the Great (590-604) for curbing the extravagances and vanity of the virtuoso cantors should not make us overlook the constant concern of the Latin Church to glorify the Word of God through church singing. 'Let the young man be lacking in neither presence nor agility,' taught Master Alcuin. The cantor must achieve this libertat canendi, which Amalaire de Metz learnt from his teacher, Alcuin—doubtless the freedom of a singer who has thoroughly mastered his art...


The musical composition makes these offertory anthems a unique repertoire by the brightness of the colours, surprising contrasts and extraordinary freedom of expression. The gestures and postures of the characters evoked recall those found in medieval iconography or stained-glass windows: Moses prostrate, turning his face towards Him whom he beseeches; Job, overwhelmed by his ruin, lifting his eyes towards Heaven from whence he awaits new happiness (ut videat bona...); God rushing down the slopes of Mount Sinai to meet Moses or the faces, model the bodies, make praying, imploring passing in the breath of a breeze (dum pertransiero...). breasts thrill, and smile at the intense life palpitating in Here, it is up to the voice to paint the colours, sculpt the heart of the notes!

QuoteThe Great Offertories

The Carolingian liturgical chants known as 'Gregorian' are not authentically Roman but are hybrids built on a Roman foundation. Yet, even recently, a cer-tain taboo hovered over the subject of the real impact of the Carolingian hybridisation. For apologetic moti-ves, consecutive to the history of the restoration of this repertoire at the turn of the 20th, it was necessary that Gregorian chant be Roman. However, this repertoire was not purely Roman any more than the rest of the Roma-no-Frankish liturgy imposed by the Carolingians. They sought to replace the old liturgy of the Gauls by the Ro-man liturgy but succeeded above all in bringing about the blending of the two rites.

Since taking into account the 'old-Roman books, which enlighten us a bit about the pre-Carolingian Roman liturgy, since Dom Jean Claire's discovery of a musical modality that is specifically non-Roman, including His-pania, Gaul and Lombard Italy, and especially since the delimitation of a Hispano-Gallican repertoire within the offrrtoria of the Romano-Frankish gradual, we can no longer ignore that the Romano-Frankish repertoire is the fruit of a hybridisation and lack of education: 'Gre-gorian chant is that which was born outside Rome and spread primarily in France under cover of the name of Pope Saint Gregory, beginning at the end of the 8th cen-tury [...] Gregorian chant is the product of the Pippino-Carolingian liturgical renaissance, which introduced in France a new liturgy labelled "Roman" to replace the Gallican liturgy".

Dom Jean Claire brought to light the predilection of the Milanese, Mozarabic and Gallican repertoires for the archaic recitation note (the 'mother note') of D. Within this modality, the dominant and fi-nal remain on the same D, this being surrounded by its 'mother-cell': A-C-D (but the degrees designated by these notes are part of a diatonic scale, the hexachord defined by Guido of Arezzo in the llth century, which has only an analogical value in relation to melodies ela-borated outside this context—above all if we view this scale via our modern tempered scale). This dynamic musical structure normally corresponds to what theorists of the Latin ocroechos (the eight musical church modes) defined a posteriori as the plagal protus, or second mo-de—when the piece is identified as such, this being far from automatic—, of which the final is in D (or A when this mode is transposed to the fifth) and whose dominant is located a minor third above. However, this principle is sure only for the pieces that are, liturgically and mu-sically, the most archaic: psalmodies, holiday anthems, tracts or recitatives, whose age we know through other channels. It was not easy to change a melody rooted in the oral tradition: 'The Roman cantors having left again, the Gallican cantors set to work [...). As concerned the texts common to both liturgies (Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Pater, Te Deum), they simply kept their traditional Galli-can melodies. (...1. As for the cantilated texts, they took the texts from the Roman [.. .] but kept their traditional cantilation tones (D)

Fortunately, there exist other means besi-des just musical archaeology for updating the origin of a piece. Comparing the Visigothic, Milanese, Romano-Frankish aid old-Roman repertoires, Kenneth Levy, in his article 'Toledo, Rome, and the Legacy of Gaul', had no trouble showing that the famous series of non-psal-mic 'offertories' of the Gregorian antiphonaries could not have come from Rome even though the old-Roman books had taken them in'. It was quite some time be-fore someone perceived the non-Roman origin of these pieces accompanying the procession of offerings before the Eucharist. The strength of prejudices as to the purely Roman nature of the 'Gregorian' forbids it, except for a few more perspicacious minds like Dom Louis Brou'.

The Romano-Frankish series of these offir-toria is, in fact, part of a much vaster, fairly homogeneous series centred on the sacrificial themes of the Exodus, which is found in Milan and, especially, in Hispania'. In Hispania, unlike the old-Roman books in which they are the exception, non-psalmic sacrificia are the rule. Close study of the sources showed early on that the Roma-no-Frankish and Hispanic lessons are much better than those in the old-Roman books. The series is more exten-sive and its texts richer. Rome seems to have restricted it-self to undergoing the Romano-Frankish 'reflux'. On the other hand, the agreement of the Romano-Frankish and Hispanic pieces, between the texts as much as between the melodies, is often quite distinct. Even though we are not yet able to decipher the neumes of the Leon Antiphonary, it is possible to compare them with the Frankish neumes. Whereas Rome still favoured the singing of psalms and avoided centonisation and paraphrase, this was, on the contrary, a characteristic of our series of offer-tories, which does not deprive itself of arranging the text, in the manner of Hispanic lectionaries. What's more, the biblical text is close to those of the Hispanic lectionary and of the Gallican lectionary of Luxeuil. In addition, there is a parallel between the sacrificial typology drawn from the Exodus of these texts and the glosses of Isidore of Seville (De ecclesiae officiis I, 14) concerning the rites and the hymn that precede the Eucharistic sacrifice. Isidore's text indicates that he already knew a chant in this spot (the sacrificium) rela-ted to our series of offertories. This sacrificium is none other than the so-called sonar chant, which several Gallican sources situate being sung before the Eucha-ristic prayer, when the offerings are placed on the altar. If we take as a basis the first Frankish antiphonaries of the Mass, we can establish the following list: Aue Ma-ria (Le 1; but which is surely from the Carolingian era); Sicut in holocaust° (Dn 3); Angelus domini (Mt 28); In die solemnitatis (Ex 13): AMS 84; BCKS (Thursday in albis); Erit uobis (Ex 12); Precatus est Moyses (Ex 32); Oraui (Do 9); Sanctificauit (Ex 24); VIr mat Oh 1); Rlcordare (Est 14); Domine Dew in simplicitate (1 Ch 29); Oratio mea Oh 16); Stetit angelus (Ap 8); Audi Is-rael (non-scriptural and Ps 80); Viri Galilei (Ac 1); Foe-tus as repente (Ac 2); Elegerunt apostoli (Ac 6). We find in Leon: Oraui; Erit uobis; Sanchficauit; Domine Dew in simplicitate; Stair angelus; Foetus es repent• Elege-runt apostoli; certain pieces are also found in Milan.

We can thereby enlarge this Hispano-Galli-can series to certain responses of the Frankish dedication present in the anthems of the antiphonaries of the Ro-mano-Frankish service (dating from the 9th to the 12th centuries). Certain isolated elements related to this series of offertories are found finally in the Aquitaine books from the 11th and 12th centuries such as the Gaillac Gradual (Paris BNF lat. 776) or that of Saint-Yrieix (Pa-ris BNF lat. 903). One can thus add the 'sacrificial' offer-tories Altaria tuts, Holaucausta medullarta, lustorum ani-mae, Immaculatus hostiarum pieces, Sacerdotes Domini... The Aquitaine books are known, moreover, for contai-ning a rich repertoire of pro defimctis pieces of non-Ro-man origin, as well as preces litanies and anthems for the fraction stemming from the Hispano-Gallican ritual.

Even though limited, the series in its Mila-nese ver8ion has a few Hispanic pieces absent from the Frankish books, or provided with a lesson more conso-nant with the Hispanic version. There are other, non-psalmic offertories unique to Milan, such as the highly theophanic Ecce apertum est remplum of the Nativity, which is close to Armenian and Syriac chants, originally from Jerusalem, for the procession of contributions.

The Leon series is by far the richest (the texts being longer and more numerous), even though certain pieces present in Gaul are lacking. There is hardly any doubt that their origin must be sought in the penin-sula, during the golden age of the Visigoth kingdom in the 7th century or even a bit earlier. A few clerics there apparendy got in the habit of imitating the eastern cus-tom of singing a hymn during the procession of gifts but without servility, resorting to a repertoire endowed with a very particular set of themes. From there, it allegedly spread in various forms throughout the rest of Hispania. Shortly thereafter, Milan and Gaul received part of this repertoire in relatively archaic form. Whereas Gaul and Milan would preserve the repertoire more or less as was—enriched by a few local pieces composed subsequently—, Hispania would continue to develop it. In fact, the pie-ces with two or three long verses from the Leon Anti-phonary constitute a systematic re-elaboration of a much older, much more limited Hispanic repertoire, but already more substantial than those of Gaul or Milan; this is attested to by the Hispanic lessons from the old ma-nuscripts. For its part, the Gallican version would be set once it was inserted into the Romano-Frankish gradual to fill in the gaps in the repertoire of Roman offertories.

QuoteIn their final form, tracts are a series of psalm verses; rarely a complete psalm, but all of the verses from the same psalm. They are restricted to only two modes, the second and the eighth. The melodies follow centonization patterns more strongly than anywhere else in the repertoire; a typical tract is almost exclusively a succession of such formulas. The cadences are nearly always elaborate melismas. Tracts with multiple verses are some of the longest chants in the Liber Usualis.

Quote from: San Antone on June 16, 2019, 05:26:11 AM
My belief is that your first #3 [3. They have not tried to perform in a holy way, they don't agree with you that it should sound holy ] is what is going on.

Quote

Les Paraphonistes

This ensemble came into being when its members met and sang through the score of the Messe des Morts (1840) in the silence of the small Cistercian abbey of Leoncel in the Vercors. The deep emotion aroused by this first reading of the requiem traced the aims of the ensemble.

These are to restore the extraordinary evocative force of Gregorian plain-song ; to present church song in its different performance modes as a locus of intense emotion apt to lead the listener to a certain kind of interior experience (" ut per oblectamenta dulcedinis, animos incitent audientium ", Council of Aix, 816); to give the best possible performances of all kinds of texts drawn from the Holy Scriptures with a view to enabling audiences to absorb and contemplate the words in their " flesh " of sound; and to give justice to a repertoire on the brink of extinction after fifteen centuries of use for prayer throughout the Latin West.

These general objectives guide the ensembles decisions when seeking the necessary but delicate balance between historical authenticity and contempo-rary sensibilities. With regard to the Funeral Service, restoring peace of mind through the acceptance of bereavement, inspiring serenity in the face of death, and providing a dignified departure from this world for the deceased were at least as important as the pursuit of fine singing. In fact, these non-musical objectives were the main concerns of chanters in bygone ages.

Les Paraphonistes are experienced performers of early church music and share a common enthusiasm for restoring the incomparable appeal of this astoni-shingly sober, yet extremely powerful, form of song.

Damien Poisblaud

Quote

What is today known in France as chant gregorien, a chant repertoire with monastic origins, came about in the late 19th century as the result of a long campaign by musicians and churchmen to reform church singing, the current practice of which they considered unworthy of their attempts to renew the historical foundations and " artistic " criteria of the liturgy. The Vatican Edition of Gregorian Chant commissioned by Pope St Pius X made the new reper-toire widely known, despite the fact that it was not always properly performed. This widespread adoption of Gregorian chant unfortunately masked, indeed ous-ted completely, the forms of chant previously in use in some of the older Catholic countries. This was unfortunate, because the older forms constituted a large reservoir of custom and inherited competence combining learned and popular elements passed down orally from one generation of chanters to the next over many centuries.

This recording contains excerpts from the plainsong Requiem Mass and Funeral Service. Plainsong was the result of a thousand years of continuous trans-formation and adaptation of ancient Roman-Gregorian chant. In 1840, when the Cambrai chantbooks used here were printed, plainsong was generally performed slowly and gravely, with variations of tempo depending on the degree of solem-nity of particular church feasts. This kind of chant was " ritual " rather than " artistic ". However, it could be extremely moving, more on account of its appropriateness to situation than owing to any expressive intention. Depending on local resources, it involved the participation of priest, chanter and congrega-tion. In larger churches, it was common to add a choir of clerics and (when requi-
red by the ceremonial) an organ which alternated with the chanters and congre-gation and accompanied the passages sung by all. The chanters robed in cassock or surplice stood at the lectern, generally placed between altar and nave to underline their role as intermediaries between the congregation and the clergy. They performed the plainsong from the old square and diamond notation contai-ned in large songbooks or smaller manuals which could be carried in processions and at the cemetery. Gustave Courbet's famous painting " Enterrement Ornans " shows them standing on the brink of the grave, stiff yet familiar, confi-dent in their function and appearance, suggesting a robust and firm style of sin-ging. In town churches with sufficient financial resources, the chanters, never numerous, were sometimes joined by a few choirboys. Occasionally, the singing at the lectern was supported by an ophicleide, serpent or double-bass, though these instruments were superseded later in the century by a harmonium or small pipe organ. Depending on the degree of particular feasts, the nature of particular services and the resources available, different kinds of plainsong performance were found. Faux-bourdon is one of the most ancient and most prestigious of these.


Castil-Blaze's Dictionnaire de Musique moderne (1825) describes faux-bour-don as " a form of plainsong composition written note-for-note, in which the plainsong is generally placed in the tenor against a bass proceeding in perfect chords ". Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Dictionnaire de Musique (1768) saw it as " a simple and measureless form of chant with almost equal notes and constantly syl-labic harmony ". Clearly, no one saw faux-bourdon as a musical genre in itself, rather as a sub-species of plainsong to which it owed its melodic implementation of text, its slow sustained tempo and its simultaneous declamation of the same syllables of the text by all the voices. In addition, its balanced use of the four parts, the fact that it placed the plainsong inside this vocal envelope rather than at the top as in accompanied chant, and its clear round progression of perfect chords made it admirable spatial music, a second sanctuary of sound investing the place of performance and allowing those present to harken close, drawn to the majesty of the church, the sacred ceremony and the solemn circumstances. The allure both familiar and hieratic of church faux-bourdon made it particularly appropriate to express the grave solemnity of the requiem mass and funeral service. However, the municipal undertakers' tariffs in Paris made it expensive. In the early 1850s, a third class funeral (there were nine classes in all) involved four chanters at 2 francs apiece, two serpents at 2 francs apiece, four clerics at 1 franc apiece, six choirboys at 75 centimes apiece plus 60 francs as " extra fee for chanting in counterpoint with faux-bourdon or faux-bourdon alone ". Even so, this was only half the cost of the hearse with its " bronze gallery, plummets, black drapes with silver stars, fringes and tassles, and pair of plummeted horses". In smaller country towns, however, it was probably more common for just one chanter, one choirboy, one serpent player and the officiant priest to perform the universally known and expected faux-bourdon of the Dies irae and De profundis, presumably at less cost.

This recording may be heard as a revelation of a widespread and highly convincing form of church singing, which it would have been unfair to commit to oblivion.


Jean-Yves Hameline Translated by Roger Greaves

Quote from: Mandryka on June 19, 2019, 06:43:40 AM
What I find so impressive about what you say is that you are able to tell what is holy and what is not.

Quote from: San Antone on June 19, 2019, 08:59:49 AM
It is very simple, IMO, chant divorced from a celebration of the mass is not "holy" since the context is secular, i.e. sung (however emotionally or expressively) for a recording to be marketed commercially.  There is nothing wrong with making a commercial recording of chant, but it is entirely different than chant sung as part of the mass, which is first and foremost a worship service whose primary function is to glorify and praise God and is an example of Catholic religious practice.  A recording made of that service does not negate its religious context, which is the holy environment.

I do not know why that appears to be hard for you to grasp.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 15, 2019, 04:17:00 AM
Here's a magnificent thing from the point of view of expressiveness, Collegerunt pontifices

https://www.youtube.com/v/mfs5WmYl694

Quote from: Marc on June 19, 2019, 09:40:17 AM
Thanks for this... I liked it much.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 19, 2019, 09:31:35 AM

Ah. I'm not sure I've ever heard a holy recording, in your terms. If I understand you correctly,  a recording isn't holy in your terms even if the people singing it do so in a way which is entirely indistinguishable from the way they would do it if they were doing it for a real mass. It's not really a property of how the music sounds, it's a property of the context in which the music was made.

It also, I guess, stops non-Christians (catholics?) from ever singing holily.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 19, 2019, 10:32:34 AM
How do you know if it's ego-less?

Quote from: San Antone on June 19, 2019, 10:45:23 AM
For myself, things that appear to be ego driven would include performance by a solo singer (for me chant is almost always sung by a choir, not a solo singer), bringing attention to himself, treating the chant as if it were art song. 

Quote from: Mandryka on June 19, 2019, 11:34:04 AM
Does the celebrant draw attention to himself in an egotistical way when he reads?

Quote from: San Antone on June 19, 2019, 12:39:52 PM
No.

Quote from: San Antone on June 19, 2019, 10:45:23 AM
treating the chant as if it were art song. 

Quote from: Mandryka on June 19, 2019, 08:57:19 PM
So solo rendition is egotistic when it's following a melody, but not when it's not. I wonder if that makes your point of view incoherent and contradictory.

Quote from: Amy Daniel Waddle in Sacred Music Vol. 137 Number 3, page 11fMary Berry went to Cambridge to work on her doctorate in 1964 when she was forty-seven years old. The thesis that she presented five years later in 1969 was titled The Performance of Plainsong in the Later Middle Ages and the Sixteenth Century, and she gave a lecture with the same title in 1965 for the Royal Musical Association. In it, she poses the questions that are often asked about the authen- tic performance of early chant, "did they measure parts of the chant? At what tempo was it per- formed? Were there variations of tempo?"64 Mary Berry responded:
"on registering the answers, we might discover that it was not so
easy as we had hoped to get a single, clear, overall picture."65 That
is, there is no one picture. Providing many examples of ancient
records and manuscripts, she showed the diversity of chants and
chant practice goes back to the time of even our earliest sources.
Speaking as a scholar who was once merely a practicing musician,
she acknowledged, "Perhaps we are too inclined to generalize when
we think even of medieval plainsong. We may forget that the reper-
toire contains different types of pieces, different styles, sung in
many different countries over a huge period of time."66 She con-
cluded by saying that "there seems no reason why all these styles,
however divergent, should not form, together, part of a complex
whole. . .

. . . Her research of the chants of the Middle Ages uncovered evidence of practice contrary to the Solesmes method that she practiced, but Mary Berry was not afraid to incorporate new developments in research and was excited at the possibilities that paleography continued to open up. Using her new- found scholarship, she went on to found the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge, which spread her practice of chant all over the world with recordings.

Quote" ... we might discover that it was not so easy as we had hoped to get a single, clear, overall picture." That is, there is no one picture. Providing many examples of ancient records and manuscripts, she showed the diversity of chants and chant practice goes back to the time of even our earliest sources.

Quote from: San Antone on June 23, 2019, 07:19:01 AM
what I am mainly interested in is hearing chant done in a sacred setting, i.e. as a part of the mass, for the exclusive purpose of enhancing the celebration of the mass - as chant performance is understood by the Catholic church during my lifetime. 

Quote from: Florestan on June 23, 2019, 07:35:59 AM
The big problem is that after the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church seemed to have lost any faith (pun) and interest in preserving one of its most sacred (pun again) traditions, namely the Mass itself, chant included. I have said it elsewhere but it bears repeating it here: officially renouncing the traditional Latin Mass was not only a theological error but also a cultural crime.

Quote from: San Antone on June 23, 2019, 07:43:00 AM
the chant tradition I am talking about has survived in monasteries.  You can find them, and the mass is said in Latin and chant is sung as it is taught by the Solesmes monks.

Quote from: Florestan on June 23, 2019, 07:57:25 AM
That's true.

Plus, chant is not limited to the Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox churches have a long tradition as well. Actually, chant is the only form of church music accepted by Eastern Orthodoxy --- and if sung properly by a good choir it's a goosebumping experience, but one best experienced as a whole, ie in conjunction with the liturgy proper, the priest's actions and gestures, the smell of the incense and the church's environment, full of icons and painted walls. In this respect I'm all the way with San Antone: listening to chant in the privacy of one's home might be an interesting and pleasant aesthetic experience but it misses completely its original meaning and sole function, which is to accompany the celebration of the Mass in a communal sharing of faith.

With respect to "classical music", the best-known examples of Orthodox chant were composed by Tchaikovsky (Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom) and Rachmaninoff (All-Night Vigils).

Quote from: JBS on June 23, 2019, 11:44:49 AM
Poking around Youtube I found this fairly long one from Solesmes, which was (according to the first frame of the video) recorded c 1930 and/or issued on LP in the early 60s (according to the write up of the person who posted the video)
https://youtu.be/sKm54iQ1i-M

I can't say I find it inspiring or conducive to worship.

Quote from: JBS on June 25, 2019, 05:27:51 PM
Crosspost from the main Listening thread

A CD from the public library which includes part of this
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51IIxi3j0VL.jpg)
Meaning Propers from the Masses for Epiphany and for Dedication of a Church
Schola Cantorum of the Benedictine Abbey of Munsterschwarzach
Fr. Godehard Joppich director

To me, this sounds more fitting to a worship service than the extracts from Solesmes I listened to the other day. Most importantly it has a pulse and a pace I found to be lacking in the Solesmes, and more of a feeling of what San Antone refers to as "holy".  The cantorial soloist, however, suffers from a case of the vibratos.

Quote from: San Antone on June 25, 2019, 06:11:59 PM
There has historically been some conflict between Roman (which essentially means the Solesmes style) and German schools of chant, with Rome siding with Solesmes.  I found the recording you cited on Spotify and found it somewhat choppy in the phrasing.

I am solidly in the Solesmes camp, and consider them far and away better than any other groups I've heard.

Quote from: San Antone on June 25, 2019, 06:11:59 PM
There has historically been some conflict between Roman (which essentially means the Solesmes style) and German schools of chant, with Rome siding with Solesmes. 

QuoteCHANT WARS The Carolingian `globalisation' of medieval plainchant

`Between a stream and its source, which has the purer water?' (John the Deacon, Life of Gregory) The emperor Charlemagne (d. 814) is said to have uttered these words when asked to resolve a dispute between his own Frankish cantors and those of the pope in Rome, each group of vocal-ists convinced of its own authenticity in singing. Charlemagne, who was acutely aware of the de-cline of liturgical singing and the many competing chant traditions in his wide-ranging empire, ex-pressed with this phrase his desire to return to the purity of the 'original source', the chant of Rome (but his motives were many-layered: the ideal of Roman authority, expressed in music and the li-turgy, would also aid the emperor in the consoli-dation of his dynasty's legitimacy). This ideal has been voiced by various personalities between the 9th century and our own time, throughout the long history of the liturgical song commonly known as 'Gregorian chant'; used in reference to opposing views of reality, Charlemagne's phrase continues to witness to the fact that disputes about that mysterious ideal—the authenticity of liturgical chant—have never ceased to flourish.

Having been in almost continuous usage in the liturgy, Gregorian plainchant has not always enjoyed the privilege (or should we say the bad luck?) to be considered as 'medieval' music, and thus didn't necessarily have to conform to the ever-changing aesthetic vogues of the re-cently created world of 'historically informed' performance. As a living music shared today by active religious communities, secular vocalists interested in medieval performance practice, mu-sicologists and liturgists, plainchant continues to arouse opposing approaches to its interpre-tation. Nowadays, unfortunately, this plurality of interpretive styles is not always accompanied by a tolerance of divergent musical ideas. The partici-pants in today's aesthetic 'chant wars' surround-ing Gregorian chant sometimes still harbor a latent belief in 'Romanness', in the supremacy of one singing style over all others, and a desire to be the bearer of the unique 'truth'. In our 'Chant Wars' we attempt to orient ourselves towards the other pole of the problem: by considering the plurality of European chant traditions, we may be able to better understand repertoires which, at the beginning of their existence and for hundreds of years thereafter, were transmitted from singer to singer in oral tradition.

The theme of 'Chant Wars' is the legendary 9'h-century confrontation between the cantors of the Carolingian emperors and the various region-al European chant traditions they sought to re-place with their own musical repertoires and vocal styles. This imperial reform of the liturgy and its music arrived in some regions of the vast Caro-lingian empire as a kind of 'cultural revolution', finding in most places an established local liturgy and singing style with which it had to contend.


In the name of Roman authority over liturgical chant—used by Charlemagne for the political purpose of unifying his empire—a number of important local liturgies were eradicated. Of those ancient traditions which managed to survive, we see that each one was preserved in a different manner. Some local styles survived this con-frontation intact (such as the Ambrosian chant, still sung in Milan today), and some remained in use for a time before being forgotten (the Bene-ventan chant of southern Italy); yet others disappeared or were partially conserved as ele-ments of that complex, hybrid repertoire which we today call 'Gregorian chant'. The manuscript sources which attest to the existence of these local repertoires are relatively numerous and date from various periods. The musical traditions which most particularly inter-ested us for this project form the two most mys-terious layers of Gregorian chant: the traces of those Gallican repertoires which would have been the musical 'mother tongue' of the Carolin-gian cantors, and the famous 'Old Roman Chant', the sources for which, paradoxically, date from extremely late periods (11"-13th centuries).

Medieval witnesses to this confrontation (John the Deacon, Notker of St. Gall, Walahfrid Strabo and Charlemagne himself) help us to illuminate attitudes to the vocal and performative techniques and to the astonishing diversity of chant styles in medieval Europe, at a time when chant traditions were competing for ascendancy in the young em-pire of Pippin, Charlemagne and their successors.


Given the fact that we can be guided by only a handful of late written manuscript sources, to-gether with historical witnesses—mostly anec-dotal—to performance techniques, how can we understand and bring to vocal life again the many diversities between medieval Rome and Caro-lingian Gaul?

In this program, the singers of Dialogos and Sequentia join together to present aspects of these contrasts, these musical and vocal conflicts transmitted to us by singers of the Middle Ages. Surviving texts by such personalities as John the Deacon (a southerner) or Notker of St. Gall (a northerner)—included here in order to better illustrate the musical universe of 9'-century Europe—In our approach to these virtuosic melodies, we attempt to ground our work in the information provided by medieval sources, without however neglecting our own intuition as we encounter the finesse of these enigmatic musical masterpieces. Thus we have created varied sonorities, generated by the combinations of groups and soloists or through the utilisation of different vocal registers (and without hesitating to superimpose them like layers of color, or to make use of a woman's voice when the expression of the piece encourages it), and we pronounce Latin in various manners, according to the provenance of the chant pieces themselves. We examine all these factors as we attempt to put in question the delicate borders between Same, Similar, and Different which con-tinue to intrigue us, as a mysterious link with our own roots.

—Katarina Livljanid

Quote from: Mandryka on July 04, 2019, 01:05:51 PM
I was doing a lethal thing, I was listening to all the versions I could find of a hymn by John Dunstable, Veni Sancte Spiritus. Depressing in a way, not that any are bad, on the contrary, there are none that are less that beautiful, it's just that to often they're basically singing C 15 music in the same way as they'd sing C 19 music, and that can't be right. And there's this renaissance "sweetness" which creeps in insidiously in all the performances, and it's not my cup of tea.

And then I came across an extraordinary performance here from, bizarrely , Mary Berry

(https://www.heraldav.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/havp1611.jpg)

Now, how on earth does she get at such a distinctive interpretation of the Dunstable? The whole recording seems jam packed with interesting things, a little gem I'd say.

Quote from: San Antone on June 08, 2019, 06:21:01 PM

Quote from: Mandryka on July 04, 2019, 01:05:51 PM
I was doing a lethal thing, I was listening to all the versions I could find of a hymn by John Dunstable, Veni Sancte Spiritus. Depressing in a way, not that any are bad, on the contrary, there are none that are less that beautiful, it's just that to often they're basically singing C 15 music in the same way as they'd sing C 19 music, and that can't be right. And there's this renaissance "sweetness" which creeps in insidiously in all the performances, and it's not my cup of tea.

And then I came across an extraordinary performance here from, bizarrely , Mary Berry

(https://www.heraldav.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/havp1611.jpg)

Now, how on earth does she get at such a distinctive interpretation of the Dunstable? The whole recording seems jam packed with interesting things, a little gem I'd say.

Some Mary Berry recordings I've been listening to:

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61q9fco8WIL._SY355_.jpg)

The Coming of Augustine

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61JgKpqTKJL._SY355_.jpg)

12th Century Chant

(https://direct.rhapsody.com/imageserver/images/Alb.250384550/500x500.jpg)

Pentecôte à Pontigny, Music in honour of 3 Archbishops of Canterbury

Wonderful singing.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 25, 2019, 09:31:53 PM
I can't say anything more interesting about the stuff on this recording other than that I like it. It would be interesting to have the booklet, I'm not at all sure what I'm hearing, how the performing edition was made. Can anyone upload the booklet essay for me?

(https://webservices.bibliotheek.be/index.php?func=cover&ISBN=&VLACCnr=9936076&CDR=EAX1914&EAN=3760195733950&ISMN=&coversize=large)

Quote from: Florestan on June 23, 2019, 07:57:25 AM
Plus, chant is not limited to the Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox churches have a long tradition as well. Actually, chant is the only form of church music accepted by Eastern Orthodoxy --- and if sung properly by a good choir it's a goosebumping experience, but one best experienced as a whole, ie in conjunction with the liturgy proper, the priest's actions and gestures, the smell of the incense and the church's environment, full of icons and painted walls. In this respect I'm all the way with San Antone: listening to chant in the privacy of one's home might be an interesting and pleasant aesthetic experience but it misses completely its original meaning and sole function, which is to accompany the celebration of the Mass in a communal sharing of faith.

Quote from: J.II.9 on July 06, 2019, 09:55:32 AM
https://outhere-music.com/en/albums/dalmatica-chants-of-the-adriatic-a-395/booklet

Quote from: J.II.9 on July 06, 2019, 11:58:48 AM
Some years ago there was an amazing discussion board connected to www.diamm.ac.uk website. Almost all people there were actual scholars who discussed a lot subjects mentioned in this thread like Peres vs Solesmes disagreements. I remember seeing posts from author of book on Codex Chantilly (Jason Stoessel, I think) which I was actually reading at the time! Also, you could find there a lot of rare chant recordings digitized from vinyl. Few years ago there were some problems with funding the costs and it seems they closed it, unfortunately.

Quote from: J.II.9 on July 06, 2019, 11:58:48 AM
Let me recommend a french choir singing eastern chant:
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51q4rlGyRQL._SX355_.jpg)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vya2xSYSz1c

QuoteLUX LUCIS ORIENT/OCCIDENT FÊTES ET LITURGIES DE LA LUMIÈRE


Le thème de la lumière irradie le chant liturgique dans ses strates les plus anciennes. La lumière, plus particulièrement celle du matin, est un symbole fort de renouveau et de présence du divin.


La plupart des sources manuscrites qui ont permis de construire le programme « Lux Lucis » proviennent du XII» siècle. Qualifié siècle de renaissance, légataire des traditions carolingiennes, de l'influence byzantine et de l'Orient, le XII' siècle est à la croisée des rencontres. Il est par essence dépositaire de la spiritualité de la Grèce antique où se conjuguent deux visions du monde : l'une platonicienne tournée vers l'origine, la seconde, aristotélicienne, où prend naissance le concept de modernité.

C'est en gardant à l'esprit ce foisonnement des possibles entre passé, présent et avenir à l'aune des grandes traditions monothéistes que nous avons conçu ce programme qui est avant tout un espace d'échange où les temporalités se mélangent sans autre désir que le partage de sensibilités artistiques complémentaires.


Pièce centrale de notre enregistrement, le Gloria de la Missa Graeca (Doxa en ipsistis) participe pleinement à cette liturgie de la lumière. Le Gloria était en effet, dans la tradition orientale, un chant au lever du soleil.


La source la plus ancienne que nous connaissons date de 380. Le Gloria y est indiqué comme chant du matin et repris sous une forme plus courte en louange vespérale. Il s'intitule encore « chant du matin » dans le Codex Alexandrinus, fameux manuscrit de la Bible grecque, copié au Ve siècle. La forme entière du Gloria en grec, Doxa en ipsistis, est pré-sentée avec le texte en latin dans plusieurs manuscrits du IX» au XII» siècles. La restitution musicale de notre enregistrement s'inspire du travail de Michel Huglo à partir des manuscrits de St-Martial de Limoges et de Laon. 2


Les pièces grégoriennes — Benedicat nos / Pax eterna — qui accompagnent le Gloria sont issues de l'abbaye de St-Denis. Elles nous donnent une vision dynamique de ce haut foyer de culture où le grec fut chanté jusqu'au XII» siècle, tel un souvenir de l'héritage byzantin dans le monde latin d'Occident. Le répons nocturne Occidentem emprunté à l'office de la Couronne d'épines provient d'un manuscrit du XIII» siècle. Il a été choisi en raison du caractère théoso-phique de son contenu : l'Orient comme source de lumière. Le long mélisme final sur le mot « largiens » n'est pas sans évoquer les somptueuses pièces de l'ancien répertoire gallican. Comment évoquer l'influence orientale du chant liturgique sans faire appel aux répertoires ambrosien — Lux lucis / Lux orta est (réinterprété par Georges C. Abdallah avec cet art de la note tenue et du legato propre à la psalmodie du Moyen-Orient), Lux Lucis, et vieux-romain (Alleluia Epi si) qui attestent de la richesse de l'ornementation vocale et du faste des offices antérieurs à la globalisation carolingienne.

L'essentiel des polyphonies du programme sont issues du répertoire aquitain des manuscrits de l'abbaye St-Martial de Limoges : Orienti oriens / Lux refulget / Rex Salomon. Nous avons choisi d'interpréter cette dernière pièce sous la forme d'un dialogue où monodie et polyphonie se répondent afin d'en accentuer le caractère didactique et la force émotionnelle qui s'en dégage. Puissante abbaye, St-Martial est jusqu'au XII» siècle un haut lieu de création poétique et musicale, également héritière de la culture grecque. Le thème de l'Orient et de la lumière sont récurrents dans les versus polyphoniques qui lui sont attribués. Ils témoignent d'un souffle nouveau dans la tradition du chant monastique paraliturgique. Le duplum de l'antienne Occurunt turbae a été écrit dans l'esprit de ces versus polyphoniques non mesurés. L'Alleluia Dies sanctificatus appartient également au répertoire aquitain ; il a été pour nous l'occasion d'une belle rencontre entre Taghi Akhbari et Stephan Olry, mettant en lumière le contraste et la complémentarité de l'expression vocale propre aux deux traditions que sont le chant persan et le chant grégorien. Les deux conduits polyphoniques, Novi sideris / 0 Maria stella maris, proviennent de manuscrits du XIII' siècle. Ils sont écrits dans le style de l'École de Notre-Dame, avec cette particularité d'appartenir au répertoire anglais. Nous avons choisi de traiter ces deux pièces insulaires dans un style à la frontière entre le rythme mesuré (mensurabilis) et non mesuré (immensurabilis) ; concepts chers aux théoriciens de la musique du Xllle siècle, en par-ticulier Jean de Garlande connu pour son traité De mensurabili musica.


Dans le répertoire du Moyen-Orient, nous avons choisi un poème du grand mystique perse Shahab al-Din Sohrawardi (1155-1191). Ce texte est ici porté par l'improvisation de Taghi Akhbari (Rencontre amoureuse). Influencée par celle d'Avicenne, sa philosophie de l'Orient (Ishraq) renouvelle la mystique de l'illumination issue de l'ancienne Perse.

Cette même mystique de la lumière est véhiculée durant tout le Moyen Âge occidental par les traducteurs arabes de Plotin sous la forme du texte faussement intitulé la « Théologie d'histote ». Ainsi, la « théosophie de la lumière » inspirée de la tradition néoplatonicienne, irrigue aussi bien les chants sacrés des grandes abbayes d'Occident que les odes mystiques de la tradition spirituelle du Moyen-Orient, chantées dans les khanqas, ces « couvents » soufis où Shahab al-Din Sohrawardi aimait tant assister aux séances de danse et de musique.

Dans l'espace que chaque être humain accorde à la spiritualité, les traditions du chant grégo-rien, byzantin et perse se rejoignent en un lieu : celui de la lumière renaissante.


1 Jacques Verger, La Renaissance du XIP siècle, Paris, Cerf, 1996. Voir également le merveilleux texte de Simone Weil sous le pseudonyme d'Émile Novis écrit en 1943, Le Génie d'Oc, Œuvres, Gallimard, coll. Quarto, 1999 / Byzance l'Empire de mille ans, In : L'Histoire n° 80, Hors-série 2018.

2 Michel Huglo, Les chants de la Missa Greca de Saint-Denis, dans Essays presented to Egon Wellesz, Oxford, Clarendon press, 1966, p. 74-79. Gunilla Iversen, Corpus Troporum XII, Tropes du Gloria, Volume 1, Stockholm, Studia Latina Stockholmiensia 61, 2014.

3 Olivier Cullin, Penser la musique au XI1P siècle, In : Médiévales n°32, p. 21-30, 1997.

4 Henry Corbin, En Islam iranien. Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, tome II. Sohrawardï et les Platoniciens de Perse, Collection Tel (n° 190), Gallimard, Paris, 1991.

Quote from: Mandryka on June 11, 2019, 03:59:26 AM
I just want to put here some preliminary reactions to interpretations 9th century music which I've started to explore a bit more, manuscripts in Switzerland, St Gallen, some of which is attributable to a named poet, Notker (the stammerer -- Balbulus.) I can find three recordings with substantial amounts of the music viz: Joppich, Morent and Vellard

(https://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0003/562/MI0003562361.jpg?partner=allrovi.com)   (https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81-DAen8HuL._SX355_.jpg)     (https://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0003/278/MI0003278854.jpg?partner=allrovi.com)

The thing I want to point out is that prima facie both Morent and Vellard are fast and inexpressive, while Joppich takes his time to let the musical gestures be felt. It sometimes feels to me as though Morent's and Vellard's singers are going on about a shopping list while Joppich's are declaiming poetry.

I'm a bit cautious here, I don't think I am but I could be doing Morent and Vellard an injustice. And maybe, just maybe, Joppich is gilding an already beautiful lily and hence spoiling it. I'd be surprised to find either of these things were true, but I'm certainly open to the possibility.

So this makes me wonder how their tempos were determined. And how the details of their expression, of note formation etc -- the vocality and sonority of their singing--  were determined. The booklets to Morent and Vellard are full of paleographic stuff, but they are disappointingly silent about their performance decisions, I don't have the booklet to Joppich (can someone upload it for me?)

QuoteEnfin une réponse fondée sur des preuves scientifiques selon la sémiologie de Dom
Cardine à des courants de pensée qui font étalage de théories sans jamais parvenir
à des conclusions prouvées et irréfutables.
Un nouveau livre de chant grégorien était-il vraiment nécessaire ? Était-il opportun d'intervenir pour
modifier des mélodies millénaires, présentes depuis des siècles dans la tradition chantée vivante ? En
des temps où l'Occident a abandonné progressivement la langue latine, une proposition de
restauration ne semble-t-elle pas anachronique ?
Face à ces interrogations, et à d'autres, l'auteur explore l'histoire de la genèse du travail
monumental qui, en trente ans de recherche et d'étude approfondies au nom de la sémiologie
grégorienne, a conduit à la publication des deux volumes du Graduale Novum et, sur des bases
scientifiques, il offre les réponses aux maintes questions qui se sont soulevées, parmi les chercheurs
et en dehors de la communauté scientifique, à l'apparition de cet ouvrage, destiné à changer le cours
de l'histoire du chant grégorien.
Johannes Berchmans Göschl décrit chaque pas de ce travail, avec sérénité et précision,
documentant et justifiant chacun des choix effectués selon les manuscrits les plus anciens, à partir de
l'impulsion initiale donnée par le Concile Vatican II qui, dans la Constitution « Sacrosanctum
Concilium », percevait la nécessité impérieuse d'une nouvelle approche vis-à-vis du patrimoine de
chant inestimable de l'Église de Rome, et décrétait l'achèvement des éditions de référence et la
réalisation d'une édition plus critique des livres en usage alors.
Rien d'envergure n'avait encore été entrepris, sinon de faibles et timides tentatives qui n'ont
rencontré ni le succès ni l'intérêt escomptés. Les compétences et la constance remarquables d'un
groupe de spécialistes au sein de l'AISCGre (Associazione internazionale Studi di canto gregoriano)
ont permis au contraire de concrétiser avec le Graduale Novum ce qui n'était resté jusque là qu'un
augure. Désormais, le chant de la liturgie romaine est plus proche que jamais de ses origines.
Johannes Berchmans Göschl, Graduale Novum. Commentaire, Isotta Conti, 2019.
15 x 21 cm
160 p
50 exemples musicaux
Reliure brochée avec dos carré, cousu, collé
Couverture cartonnée de 280 g avec rabats de 10 cm
ISBN 978-2-902305-00-1
PVP : 25 € TTC + frais d'expédition
Souscription jusqu'au 31 janvier 2020 au prix de 20 € + frais d'expédition
Paiement anticipé par chèque pour la France ou par virement bancaire aux coordonnées suivantes respectivement :
• Isotta Conti Éditions
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75005 Paris
• Isotta Conti Éditions
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IBAN FR76 3000 3030 1000 0202 0051 967
BIC SOGEFRPP
Motif: Souscription Graduale Novum Commentaire
Le livre sera envoyé à l'adresse postale indiquée par chacun à partir du 1er février 2020.

Quote from: Mandryka on February 25, 2020, 10:57:20 AM
(https://static.wixstatic.com/media/37175f_63ce56e2601c4e89bdd72dec324c4563~mv2_d_1425_1425_s_2.png/v1/fill/w_400,h_400,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01/37175f_63ce56e2601c4e89bdd72dec324c4563~mv2_d_1425_1425_s_2.webp)

I didn't know about this until today . . .really impressive, impeccable, fluid, beautiful singing as far as I can hear, atmospherically recorded, well worh a listen. Performance inspired by C16 manuscripts of a Christmas mass.

Quote from: deprofundis on February 25, 2020, 03:08:13 PM
.Dear Mandryka, I this wonderful album , Tallis Scholars outdone themselves here, Love Sarum Chant, About Chant music from Europe, have you heard of Croatian-Dalmatian Chants album called Dalmatica Chant of Adriatic
Dialogos Katarina Livjanic, Kanduri -Josko Calleta on (outhere  division arcana, you might like it, I find a strange similitude on Corsican Chants, but perhaps it's me.

Quote from: Mandryka on February 25, 2020, 10:57:20 AM
(https://static.wixstatic.com/media/37175f_63ce56e2601c4e89bdd72dec324c4563~mv2_d_1425_1425_s_2.png/v1/fill/w_400,h_400,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01/37175f_63ce56e2601c4e89bdd72dec324c4563~mv2_d_1425_1425_s_2.webp)

I didn't know about this until today . . .really impressive, impeccable, fluid, beautiful singing as far as I can hear, atmospherically recorded, well worh a listen. Performance inspired by C16 manuscripts of a Christmas mass.

Quote from: Mandryka on February 20, 2020, 01:53:00 PM
(https://sklep.dalmafon.pl/environment/cache/images/500_500_productGfx_2333/1207.jpg)

https://sklep.dalmafon.pl/Jerycho-Marcel-Peres-966

Quote from: vers la flamme on April 10, 2020, 03:49:34 AM
You know, I've just realized that I don't have any Gregorian chant in my library.

What would be a good place to start? One or two discs, please, I don't want to overwhelm myself.

Quote from: Mandryka on July 23, 2020, 03:56:17 AM
Useful looking online discography here

http://chantdiscography.com/index.php?home

Quote from: Mandryka on May 13, 2021, 09:49:46 AM
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91kR9pwrT2L._SS500_.jpg)

They may be OK at singing monophonic music like some church chant,  but to me they sound chaotic when singing music with different simultaneous melodies - it may be the reverb, but honestly - they decided to recorded it with so much reverb! And their singers - especially the woman (or is it a female impersonator) - sound amateur to me. An interesting concept CD but badly executed IMO. What a disappointment.

That being said the Dunstable is priceless, I remember commenting on it before - it would be interesting to know what thinking led them to sing it like this. It's just weird - and I'm not sure if it's good weird! The Johannes Nucius (who he?) is strange too - with a womanny voice  singing like Mary Poppins. Yuck, bad bad baddy bad.

QuoteThe Abbey of Pontigny, second daughter-house of Cîteaux, was founded in 1114 in the valley of the River Serin, a typical rural Cistercian site. The Abbey church is the largest Cistercian church surviving in France today.

The imposing height and length of the building give it a remarkably warm and resonant acoustic, well suited to chant. The brilliance of the white stone enables the purity and simplicity of the early Cistercian architecture to be revealed in all its beauty.

The Abbey is rich in history. In particular, during the 12th and 13th centuries three English Archbishops of Canterbury sought refuge there: Thomas Becket (1118-1170), Stephen Langton (d.1228), and Edmund of Abingdon (c.1175-1240), who became patron saint of Pontigny.

Pentecost has a special meaning for the people of Pontigny because it was on a Whit Monday that Edmund of Abingdon, – St Edme in French – was transported from Soissy, where he died, to his final resting-place above the high altar in the Abbey church.

This recording enters into the spirit of ‘Pentecôte at Pontigny’: ritual music for the feast of Pentecost, chants gleaned from Cistercian service-books, and a selection of pieces that honour the three Archbishops.

Quote from: Old San Antone on May 13, 2021, 03:18:12 PM


I could be wrong but I think this schola is a male group.

QuoteIN MEMORIAM

Rosemary McCabe, R.I.P. Died 5th January, 2015

The Schola is indebted to Rosemary for its foundation. In 1975 while lying in
her bath reading the magazine "Early Music", Rosemary was struck by the
omission of any chant or reference to it. Leaping from her bath, she called her
colleague Mary Berry, and begged her to do something immediately to save the
chant declining into total oblivion. Thus was born the Schola Gregoriana of
Cambridge, run by a triumvirate consisting of Mary Berry as Director,
Rosemary as Secretary, and Margaret Aitken as Treasurer.

It was Rosemary who organised gatherings of Associates, retreats, concerts,
liturgical dramas, pilgrimages and recordings. Her attention to practical details
ensured all events ran without hitch. Her 'down to earth' attitude complemented
Mary's flow of plans, though occasionally she had to say 'no, quite impossible'
to some of Mary's wilder ideas. Working for Mary was virtually a full time job
dealing with volumes of correspondence and telephone calls, preparing music
for instruction days, gathering material for lectures and writing reports. Her
previous work as a professor of mediaeval history until her retirement was light
in comparison to her work with the Schola.

Rosemary had a good sense of levity. During a week's retreat at Glastonbury,
whilst Mary was lecturing Associates on the finer points of Gregorian
semiology, she suddenly asked Rosemary why she was looking out of the
window. Rosemary said her concentration had been diverted by a green
woodpecker feeding her young. Mary: "Do show us, Rosemary", and the class
immediately relaxed.

Rosemary's constant companion was her elderly terrier, Spy. Spy always lay
dormant at divine offices, but when the words 'Benedicamus Domino' were
sung, he would rouse and quit the chapel with unusual agility. He knew
Rosemary would have prepared an excellent supper for him in the kitchen.
The amazing output of the Schola during its earlier years would not have been
possible without Rosemary's outstanding contribution.

Quote from: (: premont :) on May 15, 2021, 04:39:11 AM
I think (Choral-)Schola's originally were male groups exclusively, and that women haven't participated until quite recently. This quote from WIKI seems to confirm that:

A Choralschola, known simply as schola, is a choir for singing Gregorian chant or plainsong. It consists traditionally of only men, but more recent groups sometimes also include female voices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choralschola