What do you consider "proficient" in performance of chant?
  • jabv
    Posts: 16
    When evaluating your own progress or that of a member of your ensemble, what factors and general benchmarks contribute to your practical consideration of "proficiency" in the performance of chant?

    Why I am asking
    --------------
    I have studied chant independently for about a year and a half now, including attending last summer's CMAA workshop in Pittsburgh with Wilko Brouwers. Within my musical background of cello performance, I have a personal set of factors I would consider in evaluating cellistic proficiency, certainly influenced by my primary teachers.

    Now that I have a certain set of repertoire in my voice (in the string world, we often say we have a piece "under our fingers"), including a good portion of general chants in the PBC, a handful of melodies from the '61 GR, and a subset of the Kyriale (Masses VIII, XI, and II, with the latter still a little weak), I am wondering how to focus my practice and general development.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,206
    Well, with chant, especially with square notes, I think you ought to be comfortable with solfege, which often helps strengthen performance of a given chant.
    Thanked by 2jabv ClergetKubisz
  • jabv
    Posts: 16
    @MatthewRoth - I agree completely! What else would you consider when evaluating "proficiency" in your own performance or that of others? Would you expect the musician to be capable of singing particular repertoire independently (presumably while maintaining integrity of melody, rhythm, and style)? Are there particular stylistic traits, interpretive approaches, or performance practices that are crucial?

    Thankfully, I had a good exposure to solfege in college theory. Though there was a war between the theory faculty, who advocated do-minor, and the music ed faculty, who advocated la-minor (obviously both sides were considering tonal, not modal solfege), and then there was the odd faculty member who swore by fixed-do.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,206
    I think you should be, in time, able to intone office antiphons and psalms (knowing the psalm tones and their endings, for the Introits and the Office is a mark, I’d say) with independent practice and with your DM (if you have one), intone the Mass Ordinary and over time know the whole Kyriale, and become familiar with modes (why we have modes, how they work, etc. in a basic way). I think you’ve arrived when you can take the verses of the Gradual and Alleluia on your own along with intoning the Alleluia, one of the more difficult intonations. Those verses are supposed to be sung by a cantor. Be familiar with the Solesmes method as indicated in the Liber Usualis, but avoid scooping like the French monks (really not necessary, unless you are in a French monastery) and learn the how and why of repercussing repeated neumes (which said monks didn’t always do), as well as understand that some people really disapprove of the so–called Solesmes method...
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  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,466
    One "proficiency" marker that I highly respect, and do not possess myself, is the ability to move from a chant in one mode to another in a different mode without having to spend several moments trying to sing the new mode in your head.


    learn the how and why of repercussing repeated neumes


    THI - I - IS.
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  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,390
    One of the most important advances to be cultivated in chant is vocal nuance from one pitch, one neume, one syllable to the next. I suspect that, as a string player, you might appreciate that every note has its own shade. This is what raises any music making from mere note performance to the poetic result of mental musicianship, of which the voice (or whatever one's instrument) is but the agent of realisation of musical thought. There are those whom I wouldn't (yet) burden with such niceties, but something tells me that you can relate to them and 'run' with them.
    It cannot be overstressed that chant is speech song. Translate your rhetorical oration of the text into your guide in chanting it. Nuance of timbre and subtle (very subtle) variations in 'tempo' are fundamental, just as they are in speech. For you I might suggest using your voice as you use your bow (or even your very sensitive left finger pads!). And, of no less importance is excruciating clarity of diction.
    Thanked by 3jabv StimsonInRehab CHGiffen
  • MaryAnn Carr WilsonMaryAnn Carr Wilson
    Posts: 1,738
    I would listen for, and strive for, these elements when singing Gregorian chant:
    Illumination of text
    Cantillated speech
    Comfortable, unobtrusive breath management
    Awareness of mood and specificity of each word, communication of text
    Moving together, anticipating direction of lines together as a group of audibly prayerful singers
    Legato lines (not notey)
    Neumatic fidelity
    Secure, forward, resonant pitch
    Purity, warmth of tone
    Matched, tall, warm vowels
    Dynamic shading that considers motion of line, incl structural and passing notes
    Directional lines with flexibility (not stodgy)
    A lift or launch to the phrase
    Mora vocis, or delay, or restful cadence
    (Not an exhaustive list, just concepts off the top of my head)
    Thanked by 4jabv M. Jackson Osborn JulieColl CHGiffen
  • jabv
    Posts: 16
    What a fantastic and enlightening set of responses - thank you deeply to each of you!
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,206
    I like that my response was more practical, in the vein of when you can do these musically you can be confident in the chant, and the other responses give the choral conductor’s how to do that. Yes, remember it is prayer!
    Thanked by 2M. Jackson Osborn jabv
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,390
    .
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,791
    Solfege and fluency with various notations is very worthy; after you can sing any chant at sight I suppose the next grade might be to have the repertory by heart.

    But singing is a study in itself. I studied cello too, and am struggling (and obviously failing) to suppress a quip along the lines of "chant proficiency is to vocal proficiency as viola proficiency is to cello proficiency". The Offertory Iubilate Deo covers a good part of the gamut, and if I'm ready to sing it with myself in organum of the octave I consider my warmup to have been successful.
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  • jabv
    Posts: 16
    @Richard Mix: your quip makes sense, actually. I think it is not unique to this performance area that proficiency with the instrument is distinct from proficiency within a genre, style, or piece of the repertoire. (Also, there is a viola joke to be made in there somewhere, but I am not sure where!)

    Do you ever accompany your chant with your cello? I haven't experimented yet, but I suppose it could be effective.
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,055
    FWIW, I suspect proficiency might be delineated differently in monasteries over the centuries.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,390
    ...suppose it could be effective.

    Certainly more so, I should think, than a serpent.
    Poetry begets poetry.

    But beware: this could lead to an overly romantic (in musical terms) result.
    Thanked by 1jabv
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,791
    No, I haven't yet tried chant with cello, except a sort of alternatim performance of Sculthorpe's Requiem (and that back in pre-tendonitis times). It's considerably easier to accompany oneself on a fretted instrument: one of the great adventures of my university days was reading through Machault's two-part songs on a gamba.

    I've occasionally come across Italian lenten motets with a "violoncello" part instead of basso continuo and wondered if this was a way of avoiding organ playing, like young Beethoven's fortepiano Tenebrae. If one is going to accompany chant organ can just as easily lead to "overly romantic" (is that first word really necessary? No doubt MJO is thinking of the 'Russian School of Vibrato'.) I would hope not for unison but for an accompaniment as colorful as Ernst Reijseger's playing in The White Diamond or The Wild Blue Yonder (My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done must count as Herzog's red film; here the player is in the film clip.)
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  • jabv
    Posts: 16
    Ernst Reijseger - now there's a name I didn't expect to see on this forum. I love the soundtrack he did for Herzog's The Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,206
    You will find that we are diverse and somewhat ecclectic in our interests.
    Thanked by 1jabv
  • MaryAnn Carr WilsonMaryAnn Carr Wilson
    Posts: 1,738
    Ecclectic.
    And eccentric.
    :)
    Thanked by 4MatthewRoth M. Jackson Osborn CHGiffen jabv
  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    I'd call a proficient singing of a chant one in which all the notes are hit without error or lack of confidence, and at least a basic, non-mechanical phrasing.

    Obviously we ought to strive for excellence, but that's what I'd call proficiency.
    Thanked by 3CCooze StimsonInRehab jabv
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,390
    ...strive for excellence...

    As Socrates is said to have said:
    We are what we do repeatedly.
    Excellence, then, is not an act
    but a habit.

    I praise my scholars and choristers when they excel at nuance and musicianship.
    Anyone can sing right notes.
    Thanked by 3Ben CHGiffen jabv
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