I fell in love with the "Messe de Jour de Noel" - Ensemble Organum (Peres) - back in the early 1990s. It's inspired my interpretation of chant ever since. Particularly the Offertory: "Tui Sunt Caeli" with those incredible verses. My problem is I like Solesmes chant as well, so I guess my interpretation is a trade-off between the two. Rhythmically I'm tending to follow the semiology a la Peres, but I incorporate a lot more of the dynamic range of the Solesmes stuff - softening and slowing the ends of phrases, whereas EO is more blunt and cut off. Not that I object to the latter - it's very effective. (Eg - in the Tui Sunt Caeli, there's almost no dynamic variation at all. Each section is sung at the same volume throughout, though for example the first verse volume is higher than the other sections. It doesn't seem to lose anything by this dynamic uniformity within each section.) Some Vatican choirmaster I can't now recall of a few years back said chant shouldn't be delicate and namby pamby : it was martial, sung while going into battle as it were. Well, that's EO to me.

When I ventured my fondness for EO/Peres to Dr Mary Berry (RIP) when I met her in the early 1990s, she was of accord. But she also added in her own inimitable way: "But Hugh, you have to be careful. In France they say of him "C'est un fou."" (He's mad.) Like Dr Berry, I was unmoved then by that verdict ... as I am now.

To answer the question directly re. "style" - I can only confess to what I do when I try to imitate Peres. It's all "front foot", "no apologies", "in your face". I get up there and think "You're all swine and I'm here to make you listen to me, whether you like it or not."

Obviously I do this with utter interior humility.

It seems to border on chest-tone / belting. I'd be interested to know how Peres' collaborator Jacky Micaelli produces her tone.

Too, I've heard some priests and bishops whose chant sounds not at all different from Perez'. They sing and enjoy doing so, but haven't a clue about nuance and what we would prefer to hear in the way of a nice vocal register. They just belt their chant out, backwoods diction and all. By their unrefined and undistilled example we may see an historic praxis, one that precedes the coached and taught vocal style which our ears expect of singing.

Still, mediaeval English choir boys were said to produce a sound sweeter than any other. We can only conjecture what was meant by 'sweet'. They must not have been untutored in vocal production. What were mediaeval standards of beautiful singing? Erasmus of Rotterdam complained that 'we have money to train boys to squeal'. Perhaps he was just unappreciative of all music - a 'cantatothrope' (if I may be permitted a neologism).

Not that I don't appreciate a more contemplative and exquisite approach. For example, this practice rendition of Missa IV ordinaries helped me appreciate this incredibly beautiful Mass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF0z7-AifmU

For me this Gloria is the most beautiful piece of chant I have ever heard so far. If this Mass was sung in Church, I would want the ordinaries chanted by a schola so PIPs like me could quietly meditate in the pews. Maybe if it was done enough, the PIPs could chant along.

One of the side-delights of heaven (if God willing we make it) will be to find out what chant and polyphony sounded like back in the day.

Scores will be settled, but with the utmost charity!

So now I have a quandry.

Pope St. Pius X basically baptized the work of Solemnes.
Cardinal Bartolucci (an otherwise well-respected musician) says "Solemnes did not understand this".


A Pope, or a man shunned because of his adherence to the principles of sacred music?

Pope St. Pius X basically baptized the work of Solemnes.

Only to the extent of supporting the restoration of the authentic melodies. (Incidentally, this important work did not end with the publication of the Vatican edition of the Gradual in 1908!) I think it is a mistake to view his support of the work of the Solesmes monks as an official endorsement of a particular aesthetic and style of vocal production. Of course, if someone produces evidence to the contrary, I stand corrected, but I believe the papal support was in view of the melodic restoration rather than the "(old) Solesmes method" per se.

PS - My earlier comment was "moderated" (perhaps because of the link?) and does not appear at the point in the discussion where I actually intended to post it. It's redundant after what others have already mentioned.

Pope St. Pius X basically baptized the work of Solemnes.

I believe Dom Pothier oversaw the Vatican's Gradual Romanum of 1908, but it very clearly does not include any of the rhythmic signs pubished by Solesmes, no ictus, no episemata, not even any of the dots to double some notes. Though there are subtle typographical hints of the phrasing in melismata, for which see the lower part of p.XII. The Solesmes markings have been 'tolerated', never officially recommended by the Vatican.

Are there any volumes of chant melodies notated as understood by JWA Vollaerts or Dom Gregory Murray? I find their rhythmic ideas, the very antithesis of Solesmes, quite fascinating.

Thank you, Dr Mahrt -

St Paul, in Ist Corinthians 2.9, put it well -

Oculos non vidit,
Nec auris audivit,
Nec in cor hominis ascendit
Quae praeparavit Deus his
Qui diligunt illum.

Eye hath not seen,
Nor ear heard,
Neither hath it entered into the heart of man
What God hath prepared
For them that love him.

Nor ear heard!
And that goes for music - none of us can have experienced nor imagine any heavenly realities.

When all is said and done, our finest music most beautifully performed will be, to borrow a phrase from the Angelic Doctor, naught but 'straw' compared to what is heard in what we hope to be our heavenly home.

Bartolucci was, in my opinion, correct. Certain practitioners of the "Old Solesmes" style are far to affected and effete in my opinion, singing as if walking on eggshells: To me, to be entirely avoided: There needs to be a certain virilitas about it--whether sung by men or women, adults or children.

The style of singing used by Peres seems to me, to be much more like the old style of singing that one can still hear on early discs--once one gets one's ear wrapped around the primitive techonology--especially those on Sistine Choir during the directorship of Lorenzo Perosi, particularly those from 1904 and before (before the ejection of the castrati). If you listen carefully to the recording made by Moreschi of Palestrina's madrigal "La cruda mia nemica", peeling away the late 19th century surface (the various attacks from a lower pitch--which evidence suggests is actually a stock ornament of the castrato repertory from the 18th century), what you get is a vocal tone not dissimilar (to my ear) to the forward, more chesty tone used by Peres. What it most certainly is not, in any case, is the ethereal 'English' tone invented by A.H. Mann, R.R. Terry, and Boris Ord, nor what passes for "Bel Canto" in the opera world today.

Bartolucci was, in my opinion, correct. Certain practitioners of the "Old Solesmes" style are far to affected and effete in my opinion, singing as if walking on eggshells

This is spot on!