Does it have to be Gregorian chant? Because your paper might become a lot more varied and fun if you include Byzantine chant, Cistercian chant, Corsican chant, etc. etc.

As far as Gregorian/Roman chant goes, my favorite is the really, really old stuff, which was still in Greek half the time. Ensemble Organum has a CD out from when they scoured old Vatican manuscripts and figured out how to sing them. Here's the CD I'm talking about. Unfortunately, they don't have samples on the website, but if you're interested in any of the tracks on that CD, I can email to you.

I would recommend listening to the Hec Dies, which has a particularly awesome use of ison, which is a characteristic of Byzantine chant. But this chant is in Latin, and was from Rome. I'll email it to you.

It's interesteing to hear different groups singing the same chant. When my schola was learning "Qui Manducat," we listen to the same chant by Adorate Deum, Stepping Stone Chant Project with Olbash and Gloria Dei. We discussed the different style after the listening. It was a good learning experience.

But I really like Solesmes monks condcuted by Gajard.
You can hear some in

http://isaacjogues.org/chants
Listen to Pascha Nostrum , Easter Sunday Communio. It's just amazing.

Ooops, you are right, Adam. Now you'd better hurry, because I like it myself :-)

Turco's Nova Schola Gregoriana is very fine indeed. "Adorate Deum" is a good sampler, but they're all good. Alessio Randon, one of his soloists, also directs "Aurora surgit," a women's group, which is also wonderful. David Eben's Schola Pragensis is superb, similar in style. Their chants for the liturgical year disc is wonderful. All three groups are loosely "semiological" in style.

Schola Hungarica, directed by Laszlo Dobszay, are reported to be absolutely terrific, but I haven't heard them -- I'm glad to see this thread, since it's an inducement to explore them! Discography: http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/performers/hungarica.html

For Old Roman Chant, I second very strongly the Ensemble Organum: you really can't go wrong.

Variations on the Solesmes approach? The monks of Einsiedeln sing riveting chant on an older compilation called "The Tradition of Gregorian Chant" or something. (I'm typing this on the fly.) Solesmes recordings are of course of unquestioned value. "Cantores in ecclesia" do a beautiful job. The Vienna Hofburgkapelle under Hubert Dopf was excellent. Get the recordings with him from the early eighties (I have the Immaculate Conception Mass, which is lovely), and of course bear in mind that their pronunciation is not Italianate but German.

Here are three readings of Pascha nostrum. For the sake of comparison, I used the pitches from the Gregorian missal, even when they differ from what the St. Gall notation suggests.

In this proportional reading, I apply a strict ratio of 2:1 between the short and long notes, according to the St. Gall notation.

For this structural reading, I treat all non-structural notes as ornamental, and therefore light (except at cadences, where the dissonances are prolonged).


This is my best effort (well, in a single take on a whim) at a Classical Solesmes reading. Even though I have extensive experience singing according to this method, it was actually the most difficult for me to perform for a chant that I already knew because I had to try to fit the melody I knew into the rules of this interpretation.

All of these would sound better with a choir, and in a church (rather than a soloist in my living room). I think the structural reading in particular would sound good with an organ or vocal drone supporting the structural note(s).

I know this is not supposed to be a discussion of which way is "better," but I can tell you that what I prefer to do most often is somewhere between the proportional and structural readings. I must admit, though, that I had the most fun singing proportionally, and it almost made me want to go and write polyphony! I'd have trouble using the other readings as a basis for composition.

I would have to list Turco's work as, in my opinion, the finest. In addition, I am moved by Chanticleer's work, even if it is somewhat removed from a liturgical environment and ethos. Art, after all, is an act of God and is surely pleasing to him (and aedifying to us) in or out of Divine Worship. There are, also, times when I take pleasure in the stodgy, all wrong and rather wooden style of many English choirs. This is, at best, no worse than the groaning mumble of an organ accompaniment. The work of Marcel Perez and his ensemble organum is commendable in its daring to imagine the sound of our distant ancestors. They may be somewhat off, but, methinks, not by far. Also commendable is the Choralschola der Wiener Hofburgkapelle, and Stirps Iesse among other Italian groups. My least-liked are most any French or Spanish chant.

One of my choir members just sent me this recording of our actual performance of Pascha nostrum from Easter Sunday. We unfortunately did not rehearse the chant except for about 15 minutes during our rehearsal before Mass, and we had one very loud singer who, buried in his Communio book and not watching my chironomy, sang very square notes indeed. As you can hear, it actually gets better as it goes on. But it never sounds like any of the example readings I gave above.

When I was demonstrating Hoc corpus for Holy Thursday, one of my singers said that I never sing the rhythms like that when he and I chant together, and my answer was, "Exactly." When singing chant, one must submit to the group; there is only so much that one can do by leading either with their voice or with their hand. So as much as we talk about which interpretation we prefer, I can't really say this performance is my "interpretation" of the chant (as can be heard in the post above), only my "performance" of the chant, and really, only my performance that one day.