This is a fascinating discussion. I have my own quite strong opinions on how Chant ought to be sung, but acknowledge that it is impossible to know exactly how chant would have been sung in earlier centuries, and therefore don't fault anyone else for holding an opinion different than mine. Mine stems mostly from what I grew up with and studied in college, sang for 2 years in a monastery, and have continued to stick with, but I also acknowledge that other "methods," if you can even call them a method, can also be beautiful.

On the one hand, there have always been local traditions, and variances from location to location in the liturgy, and I am sure this has always been reflected in the music from location to location or region to region as well. On the other hand, it's really unfortunate that chant performance in the liturgy is a somewhat divisive topic with many differing opinions. And the reason it is really unfortunate is that the liturgy itself has suffered very, very greatly in the past 60 years, with the advent of the Novus Ordo Missae and its countless options (most of them non-traditional options, but that's not my point here...) - the last thing we need in today's Church is yet another point of disagreement and seeming lack of unity. For decades now (particularly the decades leading to Vatican II) the liturgy has been subject to so much criticism and change supposedly based on early sources, and it seems that in many ways the same has happened with Gregorian chant.

My view on the liturgy is that we really just need to go back to the pre-Vatican II liturgy, and until we live in more sane times, we should just learn to love the liturgy as it developed until then. After the Church (and the world) comes more out of its current crisis, maybe then we'll be able to take a good, better, more honest look at "reforming" the liturgy (although I personally think there is little to no reforming necessary of a liturgy that has developed from Apostolic times into what it was before the reforms of the '60s). I tend to think the same about chant, but it's a little more difficult to pinpoint what "method" would be the most likely for the Church (Latin church at least) as a whole to agree upon and stick with until more sane times.

According to Dom Jean Claire, who was at Cardine's bedside at the time of his death and and to whom Cardine dictated his "Final Testament," Cardine held that the difference between the value of a "long" note and a "regular" note was the difference between the time it takes to pronounce a syllable the consists of a vowel plus consonant and a syllable that consists of a vowel only. Claire urged that chant directors should recruit someone to record this difference and show singers how short it is. Cardine never approved of any recorded performance purpotedly based on his teachings.

Cardine recognized that incorporating all the nuances shown in the adiastematic mss. according to his interpretation was nigh unto impossible and discouraged the attempt except in ideal circumstances.

We need not agree with Cardine 's ideas about note values or anything else; but those who claim to perform "according to the teachings of Cardine" should either embrace his reported ideas or drop their claim.

In the Liber hymnarius Solesmes attempted to show all the nuances evident in the adiastematicmanuscripts. Choirs (monastic choirs, probably) complained that singers were doubling every note marked with an episema, with ludicrous results. So in subsequent recent books Solesmes stopped including the episemas.

My source for what I've written about Claire's statements is, Jean Claire, “Dom Eugene Cardine (1905-1988)" Revue gregorienne XVII (1989), 20.

I would do the notation like this: in melismas - short in sixteenth notes, long in eighth notes; outside of melismas - stemless black note head for long/syllabic time and sixteenth note for short. Some "tenuto" indicating expressive slowing chosen by me as an expressive nuance, an accent notation ">" indicating on a note an important crescendo in intensity and "ictus" marks marking some important downbeats to maintain an interesting flow.


the notation could be interpreted in a nuanced semiological style by considering the distinctions between long and short as not strictly proportional and using "rubato".

Maybe in the future I could spent time writing in this syle of modern notation using the edition of Patrick as a guide to where is long, where is short, where is grace, etc.

To Lincoln_Hein:
When I wrote something similar, people complained that it's too ornate and quoted "tra la sollicitudine" against me.
My version of Ave Maria is still on the first page of this thread