You are correct: the performance is terrible - so terrible that it's beautiful. This is what most chant in most places likely sounded like before Solesmes. Notice particularly the metrical long-short treatment of accented versus unaccented syllables. The Gloria that follows the Kyrie is even worse. Still, I would rather have this than what took its place after VII. Whatever its faults it is far more authentic than Haugen & Company. A very interesting post. Thank you....performance is...
Exactly. See the first page of Jeff Ostrowski's article on the Rhythm of the Vatican Edition:Note shapes indicated stressed-long versus unstressed-short syllable-note values. I'm sure that we must have someone on the forum who is more learned than I about this subject.
Mr Hawkins asks if this is how Sarum chant would have been heard by Henry VIII, the Bad. Yes, it very likely would have been quite similar. Indeed, it is not altogether dissimilar in notation or performance to post-Tridentine Medicean chant, which (but for the savaging of melismae) likely reflects to some degree an earlier praxis. If one listens even today to Orthodox chanting there is a similarity to the long-short syllabification of our example. Something about this style, to settle on strong syllables and skip over weak ones, just seems to be 'human nature' and reflects habits of normal speech. One has, even in the reading of the Lectionary at mass, to train people not to do this, but to give articles and prepositions and weak syllables their due. Without doing so the reading or chanting will be unintelligible....would have been...
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