I base my semiological interpretations on Ensemble Organum's rendition of the offertory antiphon "Tui Sunt Caeli" which is on their recording "Messe du Jour de Noel" (youtube has this). I don't know if it's authentically medieval or not, but I love it, so what the heck.

I often use this poster when looking at my triplex. Which reminds me I have to send this on.

I read up on cardine but follow Hugh's inspiration so my posters are based on cardine articles but I sing the chant based off what Hugh taught me.
I guess the thing that helped me learn from him was that he was consistent in his approach to episemas etc. it was easy to get a hang of that way. Now I'd rather follow a semiology conductor than a solesmes one.

When you write a mordant or trill sign under a round note in five line notation, it means a trill. Only in transcriptions of Gregorian have I seen it used for anything else -- namely "do here whatever you him a quilisma is".

Why not interpret the quilisma a bit -- at least write a tiny round note, like an appogiatura sign -- to suggest the usual performance?

Why not interpret the quilisma a bit -- at least write a tiny round note, like an appogiatura sign -- to suggest the usual performance?

Since the quilisma predates the modern-notation trill symbol, it is not obvious that the latter gives us a model of how to perform the former.

"99% of chant... "

Much of it is indeed too slow. Not actually 99%, but quite a bit. Especially that which often is heard being done according to what is supposed to be the so-called 'Solesmes method'. Chant done by this method does not, really, have to be slow, but very often it is sung at a snail's pace - and it is astonishing that, inspired by its glacial tempo, snickers are not heard. (Is it any wonder that people don't like chant when this is what they hear? [No, it isn't!].) Further, any books that suggest 'an approximate tempo of 144-160 notes per minute' is inviting a kabuki-like performance. This is as ridiculous in respect to chant as it is for a Beethoven sonata. Chant, like any other music, must live and breathe. There is elasticity in every chant, often within a single word. Imposing any tempo norms on it is to put it into shackles. Weather, the room, acoustics, the text, its meaning, message, or tale, the voices singing it, the choirmaster's expertise, the occasion, and on and on are the arbiters of chant tempo - NOT the metronome, nor any book's presumed parameters.

The title of this thread is 'How does one teach semiology'. If the CMAA were really interested in real chant, it would have Fr Columba teaching semiology at its colloquia, and be publishing his chant literature and chant. It would have daily lectures and study sessions on Cardine's Gregorian Semiology. It would feature the likes of Marcel Perez and Alberto Turco at its colloquia. It would stop perpetrating the in-credible fiction that the 'solesmes-method'-that-isn't-the-Solesmes-method represents the last word in scholarship and anywhere-near-'correct' chant performance. Like Medicean chant, so called 'Solesmes method' chant is a period piece, that and nothing more. The last place to look for scholarly, authoritative, chant tutelage is in Liber Usualis.
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(I wish that I could place that passage in which Dom Saulnier defines 'the Solesmes method'. It sounds like semiology and would immediately discredit any claim on the Solesmes name by those who like to bandy 'Solesmes method' about as if it legitimised their academic cul de sac.)
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Back to learning semiology - look up Fr Columba's week long workshop at St Meinrad's Archabbey this summer and go to it. There is a bonus if you are an organist - you will get to play the abbey's large Goulding and Wood organ - a treat!
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Semiology is what Mocquereau would have developed had he outlived his times. It is the answer to his on-going studies that his successors discovered. Paleography leads ineluctibly to semiology. They are inseparable.

Such colloquium would entice me for sure! I have heard Fr. Columba Kelly has English materials. Has he provided any decent 'starter' material? I've seen his translation of Agustoni's book, and it's not bad but still a bit too academic.

I am really more interested in ascertaining how to teach a semiological interpretion to newbies from scratch, on its own merit, than basing it on a constant comparison with the Solesmes method like many people seem to do (admittedly, it's too easy to do so). For instance, I can teach basic neums, and build up the complexity, but simple orderly examples are scant. Paleographie Musicale doesn't exactly make for a good "semiological chant starter kit". The Antiphonale volumes might give something to start with if Solesmes had only included the neums, and then I could draft a gameplan from it.

Jes's chart is nice and simple, but would like to see things taken further than just the rudiments.

"The title of this thread is 'How does one teach semiology'. If the CMAA were really interested in real chant, it would have Fr Columba teaching semiology at its colloquia, and be publishing his chant literature and chant. It would have daily lectures and study sessions on Cardine's Gregorian Semiology."

Absolutely true MJO, they are not interested in recent understandings of chant, they are stuck in 1952.

Chant, like music more generally and speech, is composed of phrases. Learning how to put the phrases together, to put the proper punctuation in, to put the emphasis correctly, and not put the ac-CENT on the in-COR-rect syl-LA-ble is, for those with a musical ear and basic reading ability, not super difficult. To go from accurate to beautiful is harder.

Ok... I can be humble enough to be corrected. Thanks for the info.

The thing is, Ye Olde Solesmes Methode is the "canonized" method of the FSSP and the ICKSP, and many of their parishes require their Directors of Music to use that method, to the effect that many EF priests and layfolk erroneously believe that Mocquereau is the only permitted method of interpretation---Remember the "Dubia" submitted to PCED by that Polish priest? Among his questions was whether or not other methods could be used at Mass; the answer was : Yes, other interpretations can be used; no-one is bound to use the Solesmes method.

Regardless of what the scholarship is, it is simply practical to have an actual "method" to teach. Sticking to the "old Solesmes method" is a concrete way to do this. Study of the chants is fine, but when we subject the chants to constant change based on the continually advancing study, in my opinion we do the same thing as we have done to the liturgy (and the chants ARE the liturgy as liturgical texts) the past 50 years - making it unstable and subject to the tastes of the director/singers.

It's interesting, I think, to adjust from understanding notation as a fixed system of rhythm and melody, and approach it instead as a mnemonic device to remind one of the song that one is learning by ear. If I teach someone here (Brazil, in a parish) a song/chant, they are like to listen and imitate, even if they are holding sheet music. They will memorize the rhythm and melody by ear, while using the paper as a reminder of the words. In fact in all the parishes I've attended the hymns are only written as text, never with notation, even for the choir. What this means is that the rhythmic interpretation of a Gloria, Salve Regina, or hymn is not a problem. In other words, the relationship to written notation is very different. Of course in a schola chanting the propers or in a choir singing classical music or polyphony, reading is needed and has to be learned. But a rather large repertory can be covered without a real knowledge of reading music. This then simply sidesteps the 'old solesmes versus semiology' issue. They sing it however the director teaches them to sing it.

Well, I sometimes wonder who's the less fortunate. I heard from a former Pastor that cathedral choirs in Rwanda have huge repertoires with no books at all: they rehearse 7 nights a week.

Medieval life might have been richer than we decadent Gutenbergers can easily imagine.

The regimen described by CatherineS was once ordinary even in the advanced parts of the world.
Time was (not so long ago) when hymnals were printed with the text at the bottom of the page and music at the top. Many a gesangbuch had only the words, and one can be sure that the whole populace knew the tunes. (I have one such, printed in 1759 - words, no music). In my youth Episcopal churches had pew edition hymnals (about 3x5) which had music at top and text beneath it. I don't recall that that affected adversely the robust singing. That people have to have music and text integrated as they are nowadays is not an advance. The latest evidences of decadence and mental atrophy is the increasing presence of the (hideous) screen because oh-so-highly-advanced-and-sophisticated 21st century mankind cannot (or, will not) hold a hymnal, and very often will not sing, no matter what the incentive.

I had a choir once who, when I asked if they knew a certain hymn (say for instance, 'Come Down, O Love Divine'), they would say 'I don't know, how does it go'. They knew tunes but not hymns. I would often come back with 'one of these days I'm going to hum a tune to you to see if you know it, and you will say "I don't know, what are the words"'.

Also - I do love some hymnbooks with words and music separate.

...especially when you have to turn pages after the second stanza... :-/

The late Fr Columba Kelly OSB used these materials to teach his chant courses, along with Cardine's semiology textbook and the Triplex.