Charles_Weaver

My thoughts on chant rhythm (and a few other things)
@MatthewRoth Perhaps the clearest example of Mocquereau thinking this way is in the study on Alleluia Ostende, which appears in PM vol. 10. Attached is a snapshot of the beginning, with his presumably idealized notation.

Comment by Charles_Weaver February 2024 permalink
My thoughts on chant rhythm (and a few other things)
@francis I take your point, but I wonder if the passion some of us feel about this question is not very much augmented rather than diminished in reaction to the problems in the Church. After all, Patrick and I, along with most of the commenters her…

Comment by Charles_Weaver February 2024 permalink
My thoughts on chant rhythm (and a few other things)
Ok, attached is a little table showing the four sources you cite of that melody, OMM. I didn't try to beautify the spacing or anything. While there are a couple of discrepancies in terms of which notes are longer etc., there is also quite a bit…

Comment by Charles_Weaver February 2024 permalink
My thoughts on chant rhythm (and a few other things)
I don’t have time this evening to draw up a table of this passage, but I think you are overstating the lack of uniformity. I’m all for skepticism and looking at things from a different point of view, but I do think if you were to arrange and align t…

Comment by Charles_Weaver February 2024 permalink
My thoughts on chant rhythm (and a few other things)
OMM, thank you for posting this. I'm sure Patrick will have much to say, but I just want to make a few comments. For one thing, L has an entirely different melody, which is quite uncommon, but it makes the comparison a little less useful here. …

Comment by Charles_Weaver February 2024 permalink
My thoughts on chant rhythm (and a few other things)
A little bit more about "speech rhythm" in melismas. One thing that has occurred to a lot of writers since at least Dom Pothier is that the rhythmic organization of the melismas is probably a lot like the organization of the syllabic chant…

Comment by Charles_Weaver February 2024 permalink
My thoughts on chant rhythm (and a few other things)
Yes, the principle of charity, or as we might say now, steel-manning, is important, most especially when people get passionate about a disputed subject. What I was trying to do with the MMVs in number 1 was to treat them as a very slight amount of s…

Comment by Charles_Weaver February 2024 permalink
My thoughts on chant rhythm (and a few other things)
Patrick has done this before, and I'm sure he could share his very nice video again. It would be good to have a really short example, though, so I just recorded the first two words of the Ave Maria offertory mentioned above in this thread four …

Comment by Charles_Weaver February 2024 permalink
My thoughts on chant rhythm (and a few other things)
I second the recommendation of Dom Guilmard's little book! Matthew, perhaps I showed it to you in California last summer. To your last question, OMM, there is a bit more really practical stuff from the "mainstream semiology" point of…

Comment by Charles_Weaver February 2024 permalink
My thoughts on chant rhythm (and a few other things)
@OMagnumMysterium Regarding the quarter barline, you write: I have taken serious issue with this for a long time. This contradicts the principles of effective notation. If the quarter bar does nothing, it means nothing, and is useless. This is an …

Comment by Charles_Weaver February 2024 permalink
My thoughts on chant rhythm (and a few other things)
Matthew, very interesting comments as always. It seems to me that Denise Lebon and the circle around her must have something to do with this rather interesting style. It would be interesting to hear more of Schola Saint Grégoire's activities. T…

Comment by Charles_Weaver February 2024 permalink
My thoughts on chant rhythm (and a few other things)
You raise a lot of things here, all of which could be followed up on. I'll leave your discussion with Patrick to the side for the moment, but I will try to address some of your other points, and I'm afraid I'm going to go on for rathe…

Comment by Charles_Weaver February 2024 permalink
My thoughts on chant rhythm (and a few other things)
Thanks for this beautifully illustrated post. This is a huge topic, and you can read some of my thoughts on the matter over at CCWatershed. Indeed, I owe Jeff a response to his most recent article, touching on this very subject. I find this question…

Comment by Charles_Weaver February 2024 permalink
About the most recent organ accompaniment of the benedictine abbeys (Fontgombault, Saint-Wandrille)
I think the Fontgombault accompaniments are among the most successful. I've run into that style elsewhere too, always among people that are heavily influenced by the Schola Saint Grégoire and Denise Lebon, such as in various ICKSP places. Nick …

Comment by Charles_Weaver January 2024 permalink
Instant chant engraving with Gregorio
@OMagnumMysterium That feature isn't built into Gregorio (yet!). The solution in LaTeX that you can find at the Gregorio Project, which I've also adapted successfully for some big projects, involves creating tab stops within the gabc file…

Comment by Charles_Weaver January 2024 permalink
Instant chant engraving with Gregorio
@GerardH Thank you for pointing that out. That’s fantastic.

Comment by Charles_Weaver January 2024 permalink
Instant chant engraving with Gregorio
@francis I think you mean the vertical positioning? The x is the flat sign and the letter before the x is the pitch it's on. So ix is the flat sign in the top space. etc. gx would be the flat sign in the space below that. @liampmcdonough A gr…

Comment by Charles_Weaver January 2024 permalink
Abandoned Solesmes nocturnale
Thank you, Matthew. for bringing this to our attention! I’ve only been posting here very recently, although I’ve been reading the forum for years. But this really is right up my alley, as you seem to have noticed. It’s remarkable that Dom Mocquere…

Comment by Charles_Weaver January 2024 permalink
Cantus Varii Et Kyriale
I'm glad it's helpful. I can't tell you how many hours of work knowing that command would have saved me if I'd learned it sooner.

Comment by Charles_Weaver January 2024 permalink
Cantus Varii Et Kyriale
Gregorio is a wonderful thing! You can actually get much more specific. The first argument can take values like vepisema, hepisema, or mora if you just want to get rid of particular signs.

Comment by Charles_Weaver January 2024 permalink
Cantus Varii Et Kyriale
The selection of chants looks good. I think Matthew's suggestions are all good (and thank you for your kind words, Matthew). As for the rhythmic signs, why not print versions with and without, as Solesmes did in the years after the Vatican com…

Comment by Charles_Weaver January 2024 permalink
Ictus note not sustained?
For the general case of the salicus, yes. People who follow other methods (semiology, accentualism, mensuralism, etc.) do not consider that note to be longer than the notes around it but (if they are inclined to sing any notes longer than the others…

Comment by Charles_Weaver January 2024 permalink
Ictus note not sustained?
According to the method, a note is not emphasized just because of the ictus. Emphasis goes on the accented syllable, which may or may not align with the downbeat. Dom Mocquereau considered this point (the independence of accent and downbeat) the cen…

Comment by Charles_Weaver January 2024 permalink
What's a "lonely note"?
That's a good question, which I think I can provide a helpful answer to! To be sure, I was a little imprecise/over-general in my comment above. Elsewhere you have made a useful distinction among several generations of the classic Solesmes meth…

Comment by Charles_Weaver January 2024 permalink
What's a "lonely note"?
For those who sing Mass in the extraordinary form, there is a perfect example of the phenomenon on the second syllable of the word tenerent in today’s introit (Sunday in the octave of Christmas). According to the classic Solesmes method, this note i…

Comment by Charles_Weaver December 2023 permalink
Books on how to direct chant?
In reply to this most recent question, there are no such books. The placement of the ictus within the classic-Solesmes system is more or less fixed according to the rules developed by Dom Mocquereau. It is often useful for a beginning conductor wish…

Comment by Charles_Weaver December 2023 permalink
Descending faster?
I very much agree with NihilNominis, and I have nothing to add to Patrick's learned discussion, which shows that the three-note descending figure can come with a variety of different rhythmic profiles in the earliest manuscripts. As with what P…

Comment by Charles_Weaver December 2023 permalink
Corde Natus ex Parentis
Thank goodness for the PBC! This is off-topic but closely related: perhaps this harmonization I wrote a couple of years ago might be useful for someone. I usually just improvise when I accompany, but I wrote this one down for some reason.

Comment by Charles_Weaver December 2023 permalink
Chants for Christ the King
Also, Dom Johner's book is invaluable for tracing this kind of thing. I should add that the most striking example of this kind of adaptation is with the communion chants for Pentecost and Corpus Christi, since they occur so close together in th…

Comment by Charles_Weaver October 2023 permalink
Chants for Christ the King
Hi Kenneth, Your question is a natural one, and you are right to point out the familiarity of the tunes. All of the propers for this feast are taken from other chants, which is typical for many feasts established in recent centuries. If you want to…

Comment by Charles_Weaver October 2023 permalink

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Username: Charles_Weaver
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