Our schola uses neither schools of rhythm, but instead interprets the adiastematic neumes from modern editions of Gregorian Chant (Graduale Novum, Anton Stingl, Liber Gradualis by Alberto Turco).

Singing according to a certain rhythm means making decisions. Not only about which school to follow, but also – in our case – which manuscript to follow (because, while chant has spread surprisingly uniform across Europe, there are certainly differences between areas and ages).

But above all, singing Gregorian Chant should be joyful. You can't go wrong when there's a sincere desire to sing God's words. Don't be afraid to do what feels good, whatever others may think of it. There's no one true way to sing Gregorian Chant, let alone that it set in stone.

I don't wish to merely parrot the Master as the Padawan which I am, but I think that Dr. Weaver is supported by Pothier's recordings! The mora vocis naturally coming at the end of words varies. (Of course, you could mean something else, OMM.)

On that note, I wish that the Chœur de chambre de Namur had recorded the proper from a gradual which would have been known at the time. This album is amazing, but we don't have the full experience as it were.

Also, for my part, something which has come out of the linked discussion is singing more freely. That is, following a fairly straightforward view of the Solesmes editions can lead to very beautiful and prayerful chant, but so can following what naturally happens and what gets passed down as a result.

Re: the Vaticana, we particularly emphasized the virga in our class… and I think that this was passed on to Mocquereau and particularly Gajard as well, particularly if something like the first note of a climacus. Interestingly, Pothier's recordings don't do what we expect at the quilisma, but I understood that this is what's passed on to Mocquereau (IOW, it's not his invention), who apparently kept to this more strongly.

Dr Weaver

that really is quite beautiful, musical and really does wander away from mechanical. I would love to be able to do this but it just seems so impractical to do this with a group. Doing it solo is really stunning. I think because 9/10 of the schola are strictly amateurs and can barely even get the pitches. The other reason is because our schola is also a subset of the SATB choir which does a very heavy repertoire of polyphony up to eight parts every week. It really comes down to a matter of time and priorities.

@francis

Thank you! I get your point completely, and I think what you say about practicality relates in a really interesting way to the history of how things proceeded in the wake of Pius X's motu proprio.

Pothier's method was developed among monks who were mostly not musicians but who had from the beginning a deep commitment to the revitalization of the liturgy through Gregorian chant. They were liturgists and historians who read deeply in the historical sources and determined that the current editions of plainchant were obscuring a rather rich melodic tradition that had been disrupted by the Council of Trent and its aftermath. So Guéranger and Pothier and the rest developed a way of singing based entirely on rhetoric and text.

The reason I get excited about this is that there is a whole thread running through Western music history of how music can relate to speech rhythm, especially in opera: Monteverdi, Lully, Mussorgsky, Debussy. It's a tantalizing idea, to say the least. Then it seems that in the late nineteenth century, a central point in research into this idea is in the heart of the Catholic Church and is applying it to the oldest notated music we have in the West. This is what Patrick has elsewhere called the "nuance" theory of chant. Now obviously not everyone agrees with whether this actually has anything to do with historically informed reconstructions of the "original rhythm." Pothier and Mocquereau both thought it did.

Coming back around to my point (I promise!), this method was designed for people who spend a significant percentage of their waking hours singing psalmody in Latin. The results are so apparent when one goes to Solesmes: the monks who sing their now are not really following Mocquereau or Cardine, but they still have that elusive sense of timelessness that I find so captivating. Dom Hala told me he believes this came straight from Dom Guéranger. I was only able to go to Solesmes once a couple of years ago, but I found the chanting absolutely beautiful in this regard; I will never forget it.

When Pius X promulgated the Vatican Edition, everyone had to figure out how to incorporate this in different places with different received traditions and different linguistic backgrounds. And different publishers wanted to publish accompaniments, etc. And the situation now is only compounded by how we expect every little parish everywhere to have competent music-making, which according to the letter of the Church's documents ought to privilege Gregorian chant over other kinds of music.

It is in this situation that just reading the Gregorian melodies with equalism, or making rhythmic choices on the fly, is a perfectly reasonable approach for a parish musician. After all, certain amount of rhetorical spacing tends to just occur naturally, especially with familiarity over the years and with some attention to the meaning and the liturgical context.

I know plenty of people here are not so interested in Mocquereau, but as I have tried to say elsewhere, the Mocquereau method considered in light of what has been happening at Solesmes since the beginning is also an interesting hybrid of (a) continuing/simplifying/quantifying Pothier's rhetorical rhythm (counting, dots to show the mora vocis, clear directions on how to sing a phrase with arsis and thesis) and (b) the beginnings of semiology (printing a selection of St. Gall signs like the episema, specific rhythmic treatments of the quilisma and salicus).

A lot of the discussions on the rhythm of chant online, including here, focus on (b). This is reasonable because we are living in a moment of great interest in historically informed performance throughout the field of classical music. As to my own opinion, I think what I am most attracted to in recordings of Fontgombault etc. is what they do with (a), which is something also shared by recordings in some other musical traditions.

@smvanroode hits the nail on the head above:

But above all, singing Gregorian Chant should be joyful. You can't go wrong when there's a sincere desire to sing God's words. Don't be afraid to do what feels good, whatever others may think of it. There's no one true way to sing Gregorian Chant, let alone that it set in stone.

I couldn't agree more. I only would add that because a lot of people have written about this question from within the heart of the Church, that there is a lot of value to be gained in reading and studying their work.

Dr Weaver, what do you think is the connection between the tradition of Geuranger/Pothier and the musical concepts of phrasing, dynamics, and rubato such as might be discussed in the orchestral world?

I once sang a role in Little Women by Mark Adamo. It is a modern work with much of the dialogue written in speech patterns with angular melodies and constantly shifting meter. After the performances, our conductor (who was a rehearsal conductor at the MET) shared that he had advised Adamo that if he revised the work, he should just put the dialogue in common meter, as all the speech rhythm effects which he wished to convey by means of the crazy, shifting meter, would be realized simply by artistic, sensitive performances by opera singers.

I often wonder if some of the questions on chant are really musical problems approached through non-musical solutions?

In this thread, I brought up that communion antiphon Justus Dominus that Dom Pothier writes about with such detail. Today, the Wednesday of the second week of Lent, was the day for this antiphon, and I sang it this afternoon at the school Mass at my parish. I was singing from the Graduale Triplex, as I usually do on those occasions. It was interesting to note (I think I noticed this last year too but didn't dwell on it much) that there were essentially no rhythmic signs added in the Solesmes edition of this chant, and I have to imagine that this was a small homage from Dom Mocquereau to his great mentor and his big book.