Amiens Picard chant Kyriale in PDF?
  • raph
    Posts: 9
    I was listening to this: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x52ggr
    And while the performance is terrible, I think the melody is beautiful.
    Is there a PDF of the Kyriale and/or hymns with this kind of chant?
  • ...performance is...
    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.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,216
    Does anyone know whether this sort of music reflects the widely published editions of the past (e.g., of the 1800s), or whether it might have been a regional style?
  • The example shown is not very different from editions I have seen published by the German (Regensburg) firm of Pustet in the middle to late XIXth and early XXth centuries, and is kindred to forms of chant notation printed in earlier modern centuries. Pustet is known for having had a monopoly on Catholic chant and liturgical books well into the XXth century. Note shapes in these editions 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. I have several old (XIXth century) books with notation not terribly different from that illustrated by raph's example.

    This style of chant notation and singing goes back much further than the XIXth century. It was common (universal) not only in France in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, but throughout the continent. The chant sung with the lovely alternatim versets that we love to play most likely sounded much like this post-Tridentine chant.
    Thanked by 1chonak
  • 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.
    Exactly. See the first page of Jeff Ostrowski's article on the Rhythm of the Vatican Edition:
    http://www.ccwatershed.org/media/pdfs/13/08/17/14-49-29_0.pdf
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,471
    Merbecke used similar notation in 1550 for the first plainsong in English. Can one deduce that this is how Sarum chant would have been heard by Henry VIII ?
    maerbecke.pdf
    43K
  • raph, I'm not aware of a Kyriale specific to this region, but you may find some resources at: https://schola-sainte-cecile.com/tag/plain-chant-picard/
    Thanked by 1chonak
  • WGS
    Posts: 300
    Incardination:
    My translator comes up with the expression "stuffed epistles", and I can't get any further information based on that specific translation. I presume it refers to epistles sung with supplementary commentary as perhaps performed in Amiens. Can you suggest a search that would get me closer to whatever "stuffed epistles" means? Thanks.
  • I did a search on the French term (épître farcie) and found a few hits including this definition:

    Stuffed Epistles , a name given during the Middle Ages to the epistles of certain solemn Masses, the verses of which were sung alternately in Latin and in rhymes of the vulgar tongue. This word comes from the Latin stuffed (stuff, fill, intermingle). Father Leboeuf inserted seven in his historic treatise on ecclesiastical chant . Fétis ( Revue de la musique religieuse , 1846) reported many other stuffed pieces that were sung in the churches : some remained in use in Aix , Dijon , Rheims , etc., until the XVIII th century. (P.).

    That might be the best way to search further on this topic.

    For the original site (in response to the OP), I was suggesting that they may be familiar with other resources (including printed books) of chants from this style since there are several examples on the page. I would see if I could contact them - perhaps via their facebook page. I didn't explore, but they list an area for liturgical music books in PDF as well as related blogs and other potential resources.
  • davido
    Posts: 944
    For mensuralist chant in a more musical rendition, check out the link from a contributor to the forum: https://soundcloud.com/seanconnolly/offertorium-ascendit-deus

    This accompaniment is probably post Niedermeyer. The OP recording would be giving Niedermeyer a fit
  • ...would have been...
    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.

    An afterthought in the form of a question - does this style of singing chant bear a resemblance to the semiological approach with its emphasis on textual rhythms rather than the melodic emphasis of pre-Cardinian Solesmes chant?

    Further, there is now, I think, a scholarly consensus that plainchant hymnody was sung typically with short-long (or long-short) values corresponding to the metre of the verse texts. (This may [or may not, probably not?] be a 'hold over' from normal classical Latin speech patterns, in which stress, accent, was enunciated as length, not vocal intensity.)
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,801
    I have to say I'm skeptical about Pustet et al. as evidence of mensuralist performance. Who sings the Solesmes dotted notes 50% longer, or bases a reading of The Hymnal 82 on the typographical details rather than the context of a known chant tradition when deciding whether a stemless minum gets 4 or 2 beats?

    The first Kyrie above is written BBBL S LL, and subdivided in performance 2223122; "eleison" is BBBBBBBBBBBBBB LS L or 22212,222121111 3 1 4 (with some dissenters). Is there some rule to be discerned here?
  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    I don't know if anyone might still be interested in this (since, it's a few months old), but I found the book that this is in on Google Docs: "Paroissien note en plain-chant a l'usage du clerge et fideles du diocese d'Amiens..." (There is also a republication available on Amazon.)

    HERE
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,801
    A little below the bookmark (p685) is a chapter Du Chant Mesuré which gives amusing fauxbourdon settings of Adeste & O filii, with an explanation that a bar of 4/4 contains "2 carées, ou 4 rhomboides, ou 8 lozanges". The last part seems backwards, from the example in which an oblique lozenge is dotted and followed by a round notehead. I also note that in this context the "carée" is evidently no longer a "breve", which makes the relevance of this chant mesuré to Plain-Chant somewhat tenuous.
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen raph