First page of this Ostrowski article touches on it:
http://archive.ccwatershed.org/media/pdfs/13/08/17/14-49-29_0.pdf

I recently saw something about a new edition of the Couperin organ Masses with a transcription of the chants. That's from an earlier period than you're looking for, but the style would be the same.

Here's a recorded example with serpent accompaniment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWlwr_GvBMw

Perhaps this example from outside of chant practice can give us an idea :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWtvbXmWqz4

Fr Pustet, 1874 edition

valet ergo regula : Cantabis syllabas sicut pronuntiaveris

As to how Latin was spoken in Baltimore, or Ratisbon, in those days - I could not possibly comment.

Because.

Given human nature, I think it's helpful to remember that chant in its time of greatest influence probably had its craptacular moments along with supernal ones.

Here is a note from a Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic booklet for "Divine Liturgy with Vespers for Great Thursday", I think this booklet is from the 1970's:

RENDITION OF PLAIN CHANT

Plain Chant is merely words spoken to music. When we speak we say words with inflection and accent and that accent is always on an upward or downward inflection. Furthermore, when we speak we give words and syllables different time values within one phrase. Therefore, Plain Chant must be treated the same because it is words spoken to music. Music must necessarily be written with notes of certain time values - half, quarter, whole notes - but chant cannot be rendered pleasingly if we observe strict and unalterable adherence to the values of notes, otherwise we will hear a da-da-da-da-da-da-da effect. Attempt to give spoken feeling to the words you are singing and Plain Chant will be beautifully rendered.

Irrespective of the probable 'time values' which inhered in historic plainchant renditions is the concept, so prevalent (and rightly so!) nowadays, that chant is 'sung speech'. Yet, this concept is realised in very different ways by XIXth century chant and we adherents of, say, modern semiology. In a look at certain printed editions of chant in the Victorian era one will notice that the chant is often rendered with crotchets on strong syllables and quavers on some weak syllables. There is actually 'method in their madness' - a method which we find somewhat amusing. This is undoubtedly an attempt at rendering the chant with a strong emphasis on strong syllables and a quicker rendering of weaker or less important syllables, as occurs in normal speech. This may reflect patterns of spoken speech applied to chant. Few of us today would apply this system so rigourously either to so-called Solesmes chant, or to Semiological-Cardinian chant. All of which suggests that ideas of 'speech rhythm' are certainly not new - they even appear in the performance of Medician chant and other historical chant traditions. What is new is a particular concept of 'speech rhythm' - not to mention changing patterns of 'spoken speech'.

Addressing Chonak's point just above here - one of the greatest problems in applying speech rhythm to plainchant, particularly with respect to reciting tone texts, but also to neumatic repertory, namely, the rushing together or elision of weak or short syllables as one may do in normal speech. In chant (or any other song), actual, real, speech patterns need to be modified to endow the delivery with grace, and to make the text understandable to the listeners. I spend much effort in coaching singers to give extra clarity to weak syllables in a way that preserves the speech rhythms while making the speech comprehended. Very often, syllables that are dropped in normal speech (say the second syllable of a word like 'middle', or the central syllable of a word like 'jocular') need extra attention and clarity - and they should in no way be dropped or elided. Even professional orators and public speakers give emphasis, in order to make the language clear, to 'less important' syllables which are often glided over in spoken speech. The right balance in this matter is a constant problem for both singers and speakers, teachers and coaches.

I'd rather be specific about the technical aspects. As your previous question indicates, expressions like "sing as you speak" or "sing musically" don't provide the level of guidance that we ought to give singers, the proper training to indicate where "good taste" is.

...to indicate where "good taste" is.

Hear, hear!
Good taste is an objective aesthetic category the nature and substance of which needs, unfortuately, to be pointed out to those who are oblivious to it, or who prefer ugliness or 'bad taste'. Since my childhood I have thought of the aesthetic as a seventh sense. And, I believe that it can be experienced by all human beings who wish to experience it. I have known many 'converts' who were really just realising an aspect of themselves that they had had all along.

I think I would (and do) give wide liberty to singing chant with a variety of interpretations, as long as it is sung well. That is, I have sung with a schola that uses the semiological interpretation, and also is made up of well-trained singers; and I have sung with a schola that did not use that method, and was made up of well-trained singers; and I have heard people sing both ways in other scholas (scholae?), and there are things I think matter more than fussing over rhythmic interpretation, more or less along the lines of the points made by Chris, above.

The most frequent "terrible chant" I've heard in real life involved the following:
1) the schola did not actually know the music very well, resulting in a muddly, painful mess. Even if one or two pretty much know the music, the mess of the rest drags the whole shebang over the cliff. I've run into this in three or four convents, off the top of my head.
2) the schola (or cantor) sings the chant in a forced, awkward way, banging on the notes, robotically, with no sense of phrasing or flow.
3) someone(s) in the group has a terrible voice that sticks out like a sore thumb, either excessively operatic, off-key, or just harsh and nasal.
3a) some random person in the congregation has a voice that sticks out like a sore thumb; such person is usually the one who most loves to sing at the top of their lungs.

These are to my mind all issues of basic music formation and experience.

I saw all these answers, and thought, "Ah, the Collective Wisdom!" But instead, I got the Collective Opinion.

As to Good Taste, was there ever a musician more tasteful than Whilhelm Furtwangler? Even in Bach? What I'm trying to learn is what Good Taste was to a pre-Solesmes chant master.

I started digging, only just. So far:
1. Every note gets an accompaniment chord (accompanied seems to have been more the rule than unaccompanied.) Looking at Singenberger's accompaniments, a late 19th c. Mass in a German-American church probably resembled a black Pentecostal church more than we'd be comfortable with.
2. Longs/virga get 2 beats, breves/(square)punctum 1 beat, diamond punctum, 1/2 beat

Once I get mechanics down, we can figure out taste.

re: useless opinions, my apologies. it is so tempting!!

@jeffrey: you'll be pleased to know that actual Chant singing here in Milwaukee does NOT include accompaniment. However, there are some who accompany who really don't have a clue about 'modal' music. Sad.

Back to Chant singing. I made it a point to give the singers an oral translation of the text to chew on. It seemed to help them deliver the elevated-speech better.

If they had a 'clue' they wouldn't be 'accompanying' chant.

Not necessarily. Chant has been accompanied for probably 1,000 years since the introduction of organs into the liturgy. There are times you might not want to accompany chant but there are other times you could validly accompany - bring back the serpent! I find the same thought process to not accompany exists among those who went off the deep end and played Bach using toes only, required 17 ranks of shrieking mixtures (Bach would roll over in his grave), and could only play clattering trackers. God save us from purists who are often neither pure nor authentic.

An issue I have noticed is that accompaniment for chant can become overpowering and loud. Chant doesn't require heavy registrations but the opposite. For a good Anglican hymn, yeah blow the roof off on the last verse. The two are not the same and have to be played differently.

Schonbergian has expressed perhaps a wise via media in regard to the accompaniment of plain chant by the organ. There are times and congregations who cannot or will not (usually the latter) sing chant or anything else unaccompanied. What we should guard against is the assumption that there are no Catholic congregations who can sing chant unaccompanied - that they all are incapable of this human activity (which is a variant on the pernicious 'Catholics can't sing' syndrome). The truth is that Catholics can sing and will sing chant without help from the organ and do so given the opportunity. It is unfortunate for all that they are so seldom given the opportunity or treated with the expectation. Even those who are taught chant with the aid of the organ can be weaned successfully from that instrument after they have become comfortable with their chant repertory.

We have at Walsingham an early Sunday mass at which a large congregation sing one of the Gregorian masses (in Latin) with gusto and without organ. I have on repeated occasions led two hundred or so people singing Gregorian ordinaries without organ accompaniment at Houston's St Basil's Chapel (UST). I know that all the Gregorian masses were put into English (St Dunstan's Kyriale, ed., Canon Winfred Douglas) for Episcopalians who sang the entire repertory of Gregorian masses without accompaniment. At Holy Rosary (Houston) I led two and three hundred people in several of the Gregorian masses without accompaniment. These results, it must be said, will not be achieved everywhere, but they can be achieved far more often than many think. Our people are not incapable of this accomplishment.

We must admit that there is no historically verifiable 'right' or 'wrong' concerning the accompaniment of chant. This has likely been going on from very early times. It was Pope Vitalian (mid-VIIIth century) who is credited with having introduced the organ into Roman liturgy. What it was used for we do not know. The organ (such as it was, about the size of a positiv or chamber organ) was used by the Romans in ceremonies surrounding the emperor, so one might conjecture that the organ was adapted for similar ceremonial at the great Roman churches. It may or may not have supported chant (such chant as existed at that time). Also, according to Wllm L Sumners, there were German bishops as far north as Metz who requested organs several centuries earlier than Pope Vitalian's use of them. Whether and when the organ was definitely used to support chant in the pre- and post-Carolingian worlds we simply cannot say; and it is in vain that some will insist that it was, or that it was not. Organs have had many ceremonial roles in liturgy throughout much of the Church's history, and the accompaniment of the chant of highly trained cantors and scholae was not, in early times, likely to have been one of them.

As to its actual use in supporting chant in later centuries it seems plausible, but not certain, that it was so used at least by the XIIth and XIIIth centuries to play 'organum' while the choir sang. (This may or may not have been the inspiration for vocal organum [or vice versa!].) This is a question mark. We do know that the organ was used in alternatim fashion by the late XIVth century, as is attested by both the Faenza and Robertsbridge Codices.

Later, we are on firmer terra firma. The serpent was in use probably by the mid- to late XVIIth century, as were, possibly, other 'continuo' instruments. What seems apparent from the genesis of chant in the very early centuries is that the chant (such as it was) was sung by highly skilled cantors and, later, scholae cantorum. There are conflicting accounts of some instruments, such as the aulos, finding their way into early Christian worship, but these were categorically forbidden by the ecclesiastical authorities.The serpent, then, would seem a very late participant in the chant genre. Nor can we say that the presence or absence of 'accompanying' instruments does or does not represent a degeneration of chant. Using the very earliest cantorial music of the Church as a guide, we could well assert with certitude that they are a late accretion to an originally purely vocal art.

This brings us to today. There are those who may accompany chant because it is needful in given locales, but will not do so unless it is absolutely needful. There are those who will accompany their chant no matter what for the simple reason that they like their chant accompanied - regardless of any scholarship that would seem to assert the inappropriateness of doing so. So - today - we have it all - just as we have a variety of schools of thought about how to sing chant - so-called 'Solesmes', Semiological-Cardinian, Victorian, Medician, and, thanks to Marcel Perez, on back to the twelfth century or earlier. That is the beauty of living when we do - our scholarship reveals realities of early centuries and allows for a variety of 'modern' accretions. And, whether they be pleasurable or not, or have a certain history, they remain just that - accretions.

The problem with authentic performance practice is that no authentic performers are still alive. Then if someone from that time did indicate correct practice and it doesn't jive with what the musical mafioso today hold to be correct, it will be ignored - Bach's son on how his father played organ in church as opposed to how he played other keyboard instruments. Widely disregarded today.

I think what you are doing is exactly what I would do, Jeffrey.

The truth is that Catholics can sing and will sing chant without help from the organ and do so given the opportunity. It is unfortunate for all that they are so seldom given the opportunity or treated with the expectation.

This!

I would add that Catholics can also sing hymns and responses without help from the organ. I did the 'no organ with responses' with a small congregation (200+/Mass) and it went very well. Same with the simple Propers.

Cutting back on the organ during the Lent re-enforces the point of the season, too.

But "mo' music" still reigns in a lot of places.

Dad,

You borrowed my line.

@CHGiffen

There are those, too, who ascribe to the Post-Solesmes school of chant.

You borrowed my line.

Nope. That's a direct quote of Roger Wagner, KCSG. (Unless you're Roger, who died a few years back....)

Dad,

I'm glad to know someone of worth had the same sentiment.

Jeffrey,

Can we manage (perhaps as a separate thread) the difference between music and organized noise?

Music vs. Organised Sound -
There is a very real difference between a musical tone (of, unfortunately, any 'music') and noise. The sound waves of musical tones are highly regular in shape and, in fact, make a beautiful pattern of waves. Not so the sound waves of noise, which are highly irregular and are quite ugly. This means, unfortunately for us, that much of what we would like not to call 'music' is, in fact music insofar as it is crafted (albeit poorly and tastelessly) of musical tones, whereas that which is made of 'noise' (jackhammers and silverware falling onto a cookie sheet [or Stockhausen's helicopter]) is not music and cannot make music (although Karl-Heinz Stockhausen (not to mention John Cage) and his ilk might beg to disagree).

I should think that much rock music (noise), which consists of the noise of highly amplified and unmusical sounds from electronic instruments would largely be considered noise. To wit, I once read of a famous rock musician who attended the dress rehearsal of a symphony orchestra under the direction of a famous conductor. When a certain piece, fraught with multiple dynamic levels, moods, and subtle nuance, was over the rock musician was asked what he thought of it. All he could say of it was 'wow! I had no idea that you could generate that mush noise without amplification'. All, it would seem, that interested him was 'noise'. One could be forgiven for noticing that the greater part (if not the whole) of rock music is just that - noise.

All we, like sheep, have gone astray....... -
from the 'Performance Practice of pre-Solesmes Chant'.

What with the organised noise of Stockhausen and his ilk the pendulum has swung about as far away as it can get - perhaps it's time for it to swing back?

Let's see, Elmar -
Of the percussion instruments in an orchestra the ones that actually make musical pitches are the piano, tympani, bass drum (?), triangle (?), chimes, and celesta - that's all I can think of right now.
The percussion instruments that do not make musical pitches (noise) are snare drums, cymbals, wooden blocks, gongs, rattles, castinets, tambourines, there must be another several that don't come to mind just now.