Here are excersizes

https://fsspolgs.org/download-chant-exercises/

I also recommend Laus in ecclesia. You can register on their website to get access to the lessons as taught by Fr. Bachman, the choirmaster, himself. The audio exercises are also available as mp3s.

If international shipping is a problem, write to the abbey (email works too). A bulk order for your schola would make it possible for them to send books.

Well, yes, that's burying the lede a little bit, although I think that people should be familiar with the Solesmes method… that aside, I think that the neume identification required by Laus in ecclesia is worth it. You don't have to know all of the distinct possibilities for groups of neumes, but having a common understanding and vocabulary in your schola is essential, and Laus in ecclesia drills that. You should find a way to make flashcards, which would be possible with Anki, as you could make flashcards that have pictures.

Work on solfège; Laus in ecclesia does a lot of solfège, but you can learn elsewhere. I personally benefit from the Guidonian hand, although really, because I'm not good yet at mutating the hexachord (that is, when you get to La and need more notes, so La becomes Re), it's hard to use outside of mode I and IV where you don't have a lot of high notes and of course in teaching the hymn Ut queant Laxis.

As to conducting… I'm partial to Mocquereau's chironomy, but the person to ask would be Jeff Ostrowski, since he prefers the Vatican rhythm, and he probably should put up a video as "how to conduct chant according to the Vatican edition" is an important question if you advocate for it over the Solesmes editions.

I think the best way to conduct in the Pothier style would be to divide the music into measures of two, three and four beats (with the first note of the neume always being on beat 1 and in sufficiently long neumes the highest note being on beat 1 or 3 ) and using circles with hand that mark beat 1 with a descending movement (downbeat), never marking all beats with this movement but trying for the arc to cover the entire "measure".

So you could use something similar to Mocquereau's chironomy, but ignoring the theory of arsis and thesis and ictus and thinking more about a “global melodic gesture” that encapsulates the entirety of each neume with a single gesture of the arms and hands rotating in spirals.

In musical rehearsals with slow tempo you could use the gestures of modern conducting beating all times of each "measure", maintaining a continuous pulse, even with the continuous variation between two-, three- and four-beat measures

Little by little you can find a mixture of the two approaches (spirals similar to chironomy and modern conducting) with a gesture that reflects more the phrasing and some more important points of melodic-rhythmic emphasis or cadentials.

At first, you can practice conducting the choir with the choir singing in a straight tone and marking the Latin accents with "downbeat" movements, studying where to place the secondary accents that occur on syllables that are not grammatically accented.

Thanks, Charles!

I like to alternate between upward and downward movement in the accents, depending on the melodic context and an overall structured rhythm - with a somewhat different understanding of the Latin accentuation than Dom Pothier; and this may have influenced the way I proposed a possible way of conducting the music.


As a native Portuguese speaker I tend to interpret Latin stressed sylables in a similar way to Portuguese stresses (but also similar to Italian): primarily accents of intensity and because of intensity generally more elongated syllables too. In Brazilian portuguese, generally in each sentence (or in long enough part of a phrase) there are three main accents: one towards the beginning of the phrase which is relatively low (in melody), one in the middle towards the end which is more acute and a rhetorical-oratorical climax, and finally an accent which is lower in the natural melody of prosody and works as cadence. Every word has it own stress in a microrythm; but when the whole sentence is pronuciated there is hierarchy between the stresses, and almost always the last two types of more important stresses - the climax of the sentence and the cadential one - are elongated in duration.

In an accentualist-rhetorical method (which I consider the easiest and most practical, although I consider a mensuralism with agogical and dynamic nuances to be the most authentic and most aesthetically interesting), when in the melodic context it is interesting to lengthen stressed syllables (or the last note of the neume of stressed syllables or the highest melodic note of stressed syllables) I often prefer to consider it as what Cardine calls a "hinge note"/"pivot note" (I don't know how this is translated in the English version of "first year of Gregorian chant") - as a synthesis of downbeat and upbeat, thesis and arsis. Even in some cases of an accent such as a "source note" (which begins the melodic movement), I tend to consider a crescendo in the note as a kind of synthesis between thesis and arsis (which begins thetic).

I also follow the following rules in an accentualist aproach: 1- if the accented syllable in isolated note is lower in melody compared to the unstressed one that follows, I usualy make it longer in duration and with intensity and weight as if it were a first note within a modern measure; 2- If the note or syllable before the accented syllable is higher pitched and the following is a certain cadence, I make a special effort to make the accented syllable more intense and work as a rhythmic landmark (I really hate the way everyone sings "re| >gi-na >cae|>liííí >lae-ta|>réééêêê" accentuating the last syllable with a certain intensity and duration instead of "re|>gí-na|>caéee- | lii lae|>tá-re |a le|>luuú-|iaaa " ). 3- always the tonic syllable is accented either by the higher melody, or by the longer duration or by the greater intensity, or a combination of these factors : if melodically it is lower, the accent has to be compensated in another way and if in addition to being lower in the melody it only makes sense in the context as being fast, then it needs to be especially emphasized in the pulse with intensity and as a downbeat. 4- Only when the stressed sylable is long enough it can be in a "arsis" of the measure instead of "downbeat" if the context needs 5-due to the context, sometimes it is the highest note of the neume or the last note of the neume with an accented syllable that I lengthen or both. 6- the lengthenings can be as the "episema" of solesm style or as "dotted note" in solesm style, depending on the context. 7- in music with a more syllabic style, the accent of certain words is adequate enough if it is a downbeat without lengthening, even if it is lower than other syllables (in these cases, the melodic differentiation usually occurs in border with the previous and the following note, both higher than the accented syllable, the change to the lower note and intensity is enough to distinguish the accent as an accent and not something without rhythmic weight).


Generally, when I start to study a song from the Gregorian repertoire with my students, the first thing I do is: "declaim the Latin text imitating a slightly angry Italian person, including the hand movements". Then I ask them to slow down the recitation a little and reduce the emphasis a little, and then I ask them to sing it in recto tono fluctuating the dynamics (singing "crescendo" increasing the volume in accents and "decrescendo" in other parts; and also with acceleration and deceleration of the tempo).

In portuguese chant the aproach is similar: but instead of a "slight angry italian person" I start with asking a solemn declamation "similar to what would be if God was speaking with a powerfull voice commanding a miracle to happen".

Well, because isn’t that ridiculous in English; lengthening, and therefore giving it the character of an accent, is fairly common. But I understand why quia would be annoying, though I’ve just come to live with it and have picked my battles elsewhere (e.g. we do not add a mora vocis in “suscipe” on -pe in Gloria XI.

I’m now especially sad that I missed the colloquium!

The video is helpful.

A few thoughts occasioned by it and some things that I’ve noticed in my own chanting lately:

Although it’s not quite the same as it’s at an incipit and not a part sung by the whole choir, the torculus before barlines (half and full) without an episema in the Mocquereau editions poses a problem, because they are easy to rush through, but you’ve mentioned elsewhere that Pothier treats them exactly the same way, and we (sort of) see this here at “Dei”.

What is the practical way to handle doubled consonants then in the Mocquereau style? n-n as in “Hosanna” is OK in my experience as is the l-l of “tollis” (nicely done) but c-c as in “peccata” is more troublesome (I think that this holds true for most of the Germanic and Romance languages other than perhaps Italian?). If you sing in the accentualist way, then I think the “c-c” solves itself…

Another interesting problem: most people drop the second “s” in “suscipe” which is divided “sus-ci-pe” in the Vatican edition and in the Solesmes books. And “propter” is “pro-pter”, “Sanctus” “San-ctus” in the Mass books. (The antiphonale does not follow this. Or at least the Vesperale excerpt of which I have a scan doesn’t)

All minor details I suppose, but I think that Dom David and Dom Pothier would have addressed them in their teaching sessions!

For instance, a two-note neume (clivis or podatus) can be like a two-syllable word, with an elastic dynamic accent on the first note, followed in a single impulse by a softer note. A three-note neume (torculus, porrectus, scandicus, or climacus) will have an elastic dynamic accent on the first note, followed in a single impulse by two softer notes.

Not totally unlike the Fontgombault/Schola Saint-Grégoire tradition and as one finds in the rules for interpretation from the Liber Brevior, the first note of a podatus on the accent, where the melody ascends, gets a similar treatment in practice; one clearly arrives there differently in theory.

Seems the sus and the cipio come from different places

suscipiō (succip-) cēpī, ceptus, ere
subs (see sub)+capio, to take, catch, take up, lift up, receive :

["Suscipiat Dominus ..." one of the very few prayers I as a layman am allowed to say at Mass, and I have been mispronouncing the first syllable for at least the last 74 years!]

@OMagnumMysterium

Right. Most people say it like that in my experience in the Franco-Anglophone sphere, i.e. more or less the Solesmes sphere.

The Solesmes rules (and sometimes as I have now learned, Vaticana) are not exactly the rules in the hyphenation list of the hyphen-la project now housed under Gregorio. (I think I have noted this particular example as a bit of an oddity in my own version of the rules, as it happens.)

The prepositional affix is generally separated from the root, so sus-ci-pe makes sense.

Also, yes, that creates an issue of pronunciation.

Well, at least in the USA, Anglican pronunciation of Latin was treated as an allergen in the Irish diaspora-dominated Catholic church, and even German national parishes might not necessarily have sustained German habits with regard to pronunciation of Latin (my late father, born and raised in one, never recalled it): most if not quite all bowed to Italian-ruddered pronunciation.