Audio examples of decadent (pre-Solesmes) Gregorian chant?
  • ProfKwasniewskiProfKwasniewski
    Posts: 242
    Recently, I was telling a bunch of students about how badly chant got corrupted in the early modern period leading to the Medici/Ratisbonne (?) editions, how its melodies and rhythm had been deformed, and how the Solesmes monks pioneered a paleographical effort to recover the original melodies and rhythms -- and how we are all very much in their debt whenever we sing or listen to beautiful chants with their melismas intact.

    They then quite reasonably asked me if there were any audio examples of the decadent pre-Solesmes chant, and I said -- I didn't know but I would find out!

    So... Are there any???
  • mrcoppermrcopper
    Posts: 653
    I don't know, too, but very good question. Kudos to your inquisitive students.
  • smvanroodesmvanroode
    Posts: 966
    See this thread from 2012. In it, Andrew Malton refers to a video on dailymotion.com:

    Perhaps the most interesting recordings easily available are those of plainchant from Picardie recorded in a parish church in Vaudricourt, in 1971. This should sound close to plainchant sung in churches during the 19th c., before Solesmes' restotation of "medieval" chant. Here is one example. You could find several more on dailymotion.com.

    http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x52ggr_plain-chant-picard-a-vaudricourt-1_music


    And especially for this season Advent:
    http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4da6w_plain-chant-picard-messe-de-l-avent_music
    Thanked by 2Ben_Whitworth CHGiffen
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,046
    There is plainchant on Paul McCreesh's Mass recreation recordings which is pretty, uh, plain. Some of it might be the "revised" edition (source of Ratisbon chant) but some might be earlier. Contrariwise, when I hear HIP performances of medieval chant...hoo boy! That's some wild stuff.
  • MaryAnn Carr WilsonMaryAnn Carr Wilson
    Posts: 1,738
    Well that first Kyrie seemed a near perfect combo of bombastic singing and chordally saturated organ accompaniment.
    Yikes. Didn't sound a thing like cantillated text.
    And didn't sound like anyone was asking for mercy, either. More like going downstairs drunk and sloshing stout about.
    Thanked by 2Ben bonniebede
  • cantorconvert
    Posts: 79
    Leaving aside the lousy singing and obvious lack of musicality, those recordings are very interesting, if only because they demonstrate that the aesthetic sensibilities driving the (French) chant revival have never been universally accepted.

    I read something by an Orthodox cleric once wherein he spoke disparagingly of western monasticism as being rather neutered and not very manly. It seems to me that pre-Solesmes chant offers the possibility of ritual music that has a little more hair on its chest. The chordal accompaniment style also reminds me of the eastern adoption of harmonized chant, providing a more lush sound without the necessary virtuosity of Polyphonic and figured music.
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
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