Performance practice of pre-Solesmes chant?
  • ViolaViola
    Posts: 411
    Getting back to chant: I have a 19th century choir book (published 1822) that includes harmonised metrical chant. We tried singing some of it; very odd.
    Unfortunately the book is in my office at the cathedral (all locked up) and I'm furloughed. I'll see if I can sneak in one day soon and scan the odd page.
    Thanked by 3CHGiffen M. Jackson Osborn igneus
  • stulte
    Posts: 355
    Viola, that would be very interesting to see when you get the chance.
  • ViolaViola
    Posts: 411
    I have a photo of a page from the book, showing a two part arrangement of the plainchant Ave verum corpus. I also have a quote from a priest in the 1820s describing chant as a 'wild style' of music, which presumably they thought had to be made to conform to current tastes. This is one such attempt. I'll see if I can attach it.

    image
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,086
    This just dropped, and is very topical: A reconstructed Mass from a German parish in Cincinnati in the late 1890s. Sean Connolly has been working on this for about 5 years. It's very musical, though the pre-Solesmes chant does take getting used to.
    Thanked by 6madorganist CHGiffen M. Jackson Osborn JonathanKK Viola Elmar
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    It's enough to make one wonder whether ever in its entire history there has been a time when chant was done 'right'!

    This method is still alive and well at Notre Dame (and at other European places). The priest or schola-choir sings something that is presumed to be chant, and then a blast of full organ is the people's cue to sing their part of what is presumed to be chant. This procedure is likely hundreds of years old. Much as some of us will do our best to 'restore' chant to its golden age (take your pick of golden century) most people will continue to sing it just as they 'always have' (whatever way that may be).

    One thing that is evident
    in Mr Quick's offering just above here is that CATHOLICS CAN (or at least did) SING!
    Thanked by 1Elmar
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    @MJO

    It is worth listening to https://schola-sainte-cecile.com as they sing the French organ Masses, and they also sing chant in that flowing triplet way, that is supposed to be how we sung chant until Solesmes came up with an supposedly older method.
    Thanked by 4M. Jackson Osborn CHGiffen Viola Elmar
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    ...supposedly older...

    Ah so.
    And until another generation at Solesmes (Cardine, et al.) came up with an even older method. -
    and then until musicologists like Marcel Perez came up with yet an even older method -
    and then....

    (Perhaps some day we will figure out just how the chant of the early fourth century cantors and scholae sounded - but not any time soon.)
    Thanked by 4tomjaw CHGiffen Viola Elmar
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,471
    One thing we know for sure about performance in the past: somebody was complaining.
    Thanked by 5CHGiffen M. Jackson Osborn Elmar CharlesW CatherineS
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,093
    Or patting themselves on the back for refraining from complaining.
    Thanked by 3CHGiffen Elmar CatherineS
  • ViolaViola
    Posts: 411
    In 1782 the English composer Samuel Webbe wrote his treatise Essay on the Church Plain Chant enlarged and reprinted in 1799. It includes instructions on how to sing chant, and breathing marks in the music show that it must have been sung extremely slowly. It can be found in UK libraries, and a search on Google shows that it's in the Library of Congress, probably in universities also.
    Thanked by 2Elmar tomjaw
  • madorganist
    Posts: 906
    I've spent the past half hour or so searching in vain for the reference, but I recall reading an anecdote somewhere of the colorful reminiscences of one of the Solesmes monks (Dom Pothier? Dom Mocquereau? Dom Gueranger himself?) of High Mass from his childhood. L'abbé chanteur intoned the chant in a stentorian voice, singing alone throughout, breathing after each note and accompanied by a serpent! Does anyone happen to know where I might have come across this account?
  • CatherineS
    Posts: 690
    This just dropped, and is very topical: A reconstructed Mass from a German parish in Cincinnati in the late 1890s. Sean Connolly has been working on this for about 5 years. It's very musical, though the pre-Solesmes chant does take getting used to.


    Definitely odd, but so nicely enthusiastic!
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