Neo-Gallican Chant
  • edward.yong
    Posts: 30
    Hello! Obscure chant question again... would anyone here know where to find the Neo-Gallican chants composed by Nivers, Delalande, Campra et al?
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  • igneusigneus
    Posts: 385
    When I looked for Nivers some time ago, I found quite a few of the chant books he edited at Google Books.

    An oratorian chant handbook (containing, among other things, an early version of today's "tonus simplex" of Salve Regina) can be found at Gallica, more stuff could probably be dug up there.
  • edward.yong
    Posts: 30
    Thank you!

    I find some notes have an x above them. That looks suspiciously like a French baroque trill... is it?
    Thanked by 1Simon
  • igneusigneus
    Posts: 385
    Can you post a link to some example?
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  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,411
    If it really does look like an x it is very likely a sharp.
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen edward.yong
  • edward.yong
    Posts: 30
    Two examples here! You're right, in context, on reflection, they look like sharps. The little + looks like a trill though. I wonder if chant in this period would have been accompanied.

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  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,411
    The +'s are trills and the x's are indeed sharps.
    This chant was sung much as non-chant sacred music or secular songs would have been sung, with appropriate ornamentation, rhythmicisation, and shamelessly 'tonalised' modality. A prime concern was modernity and erasure of the 'barbaric' mediaeval aesthetic.
  • Deryck_Webb
    Posts: 7
    I used to sing with a French group (based in Bordeaux) called Les Chantres de Saint Hilaire which specialised in this sort of stuff. I seem to remember a disc of Eustache du Caurroy we did had a couple of tracks of chant with serpent. It was a while ago & I don't think the disc got a very wide distribution & I no longer have my copy (nor do I any longer live in France,sadly) although I think I may have it somewhere on file. I shall look it out. As you correctly say, it has a lot of ornamentation.
  • Deryck_Webb
    Posts: 7
    Here's one of them.
    06.Christus delexit nos - Plain-chant gallican.mp3
    3M
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