I'm thinking in particular of all of those music school geeks, modern notation types, who understand neumes "theoretically speaking," but couldn't sing their way through the simplex if their lives depended on it.

I can read it enough to often successfully sing a chant, but I couldn't name every single type of neum there is, that's fer sure! ;)
BMP

Brian, Jscola30, and Jeffrey - whether you know the names of the neumes or not, or whether you are fluent or not is not the question. The question is - can you read neumes? If so, then I count you among my 3,672. Do you understand how the four line staff and clefs and all of that work? Do you have an understanding of how the whole and half steps are represented? Do you know to sing the bottom note of the podatus first? Could you, with a greater or lesser degree of difficulty, get through an ordinary you've never seen before if you had to? Could you, in a hostage situation, explain to your captor how to read some of the the simple chants printed in the Liber Cantualis? If so, then again, I count you among the 3,672.

Or wait, maybe we just need a clearer definition of what it means to read neumes....what does it mean?

Eh, maybe not all those things you said, but most, I know the Do and Fa clefs etc.,

Add myself, my choir at St. Paul's K Street DC, and however much of our congregation reads and sings along to our weekly chanting of the seasonal marian antiphon between evensong and benediction, handed out in neume notation.

I've known plenty of people, including myself, who can sightread through the graduale and LU - so it's not a high bar to cross. Just a bit of training and intuition.

Although I haven't risen to the level of "geek" yet (that being the operative word), I've understood the concept of singing neumatic notation since my Oberlin days, and I suppose in a hostage situation I could muddle through some fairly complex chants.

While at the University of Michigan, some of my colleagues in the organ DMA program formed a "Vespers" club, and we gathered every week in a freezing cold church (selected by the group leader for its acoustics, not its climate) and sang through vespers for Sunday (I believe we ended up using the appointed chants, etc. for "Low Sunday") from the Liber Usualis. It was an interesting experiment both in developing a facility in reading neumes and coming to grips with the complexities of the rubrics for singing the office in choir.

On a slightly different note, I've begun having our parish choir sing the communion antiphon and psalm (for the Sunday or season) as set in BFW, which has been discussed in another thread. When we started out, I had to do a cheater's version with each verse written out with the formula notated. I also included the pointings (italics, bolds and other marks) so that they could begin to see the connection between the two. We had only begun this in Advent, and I'm happy to say that for Baptism they sang the chant as it appears in the book without needing a cheater version. Now they're beginning to get comfortable with the modality of chant and how to read pointings.

I hope to move them on to singing the communion chants out of the Gregorian Missal. Any suggestions on how to beging the tutoring process in reading neumatic notation?

david andrew--A GREGORIAN CHANT MASTER CLASS by Dr. Theodore Marier & Turkington is excellent. (Yes, Turkington as in our own Scott Turkington!) THE BEGINNER'S BOOK OF CHANT by a benedictine monk gives a very practical lesson plan approach with a section on choir rehearsal methods for chant beginners. I've used a combo of both along with a handout to practice sight reading using the numerical approach rather than do-re-me (which in my experience, many average parish choir-types find confusing.) Have not used the WARD METHOD. Might want to ask Arlene about that.

G--Very true about some (many?) parish adult choir's resistance to reading neums! Some older members who sang chant pre-V2 associate it with a 'retro movement' of some sort (we have a lot of educational work to do with this issue!) One gentleman in the Adult Choir suggested I leave Gregorian Chant to the schola. Even though for 'ever' (way before the schola was formed) the Adult Choir sang the Gregorian Gloria each Holy Week! I've noticed this reaction
since the 7-7-7 Summorum Pontificum.

There are at least 20 in the Central Coast of California, plus we've been using "neum" versions of some responses in our worship aid, so the entire parish has been exposed to them. We couldn't count all of them, but that's at least a couple hundred. Heck, if they can't read modern notation, what difference does it make using neums instead?

I learned to sing most of the Ordinaries in parochial grade school in the early 1960s. It was with western notation. It was accompanied by the organ. ALL of us sang it. Each class took turns learning the day's Propers from the Rossini book, and I still have 2 copies from those days in my past! I was already married with children and 30+ when I started chanting from the Graduale Romanum. I was 50+ before I went to my first CMAA Colloquium. Like some already posted, I can read them and sing them, but only know some of their names. I can compare Vatican versions to the Solesmes versions, and make whatever pencil marking on my western notation organ accompaniments reminding me of the 'basics' of the rhythm. I read with interest references to the historic neumes in the Graduale Triplex, but am too busy with 4 jobs (two of which are playing the organ for mostly EF Masses) and putting my knowledge to practical use to spend much time in reading. I am chanting some of the melismatic Propers as accompanied solo before Mass and during Communion, and the people love to hear it.

PS I love the poem, and will send it on to some of my local RC music friends!