What I learned at the Summer Chant Intensive
  • Dan McGarveyDan McGarvey
    Posts: 59
    Never, ever ask Scott Turkington this question: "How would they sing it at Solesmes?"

    :)

    But in all seriousness, my cup runneth over with new knowledge and experiences. My only regret is that I have to go back to work and miss the Colloquium.

    Cheers!
  • Adam Bartlett
    Posts: 533
    Glad it was a fruitful time of study!

    If you ever get the chance, you should go study at Solesmes and find out for yourself. You could ask Dom Saulnier: "How would Justine Ward have wanted us to sing it?" And you'll probably get an equally colorful answer!

    In the grand scheme, much of this is irrelevant, of course.
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    There is some material in the Page book to the effect that in 1000, Guido himself commented that the chant sounds different in every parish, every monastery, every region. It has always been so. The fights result from the demand for universalization and conformity, where tradition apparently supports diversity. No surprise here really.
  • DougS
    Posts: 793
    That's a very interesting point. Demands for universalization and conformity stem from ignorance, and the abstract idea of "Solesmes" is a case in point.

    Think about this, for example: the geopolitical history of Europe contributed significantly to Solesmes's ascendancy within the chant revival. Western Europeans and the English-speaking world know relatively little about Gregorian chant (or chanting) from Poland or the former Czechoslovakia. German scholars, whom we would assume would be on top of this, have been known to be received with suspicion by convents and monasteries in Eastern Europe. World War II is definitely not ancient history to those who live in the region.

    The research done by Solesmes, its brief relocation notwithstanding, has been a rather insulated enterprise--for better or worse. Had Hitler set his sights in a westerly direction first, or if France had demolished the abbey after 1905, things might have turned out much differently. Where we are today with chant is all woven into the fabric of historical contingencies, a fact that should make us pause when considering any sort of universality or conformity.
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    Well, there was Mocq and there was Ward - and there is a key difference here. Ward had very strict views and worked very hard to impose them, even to the point of copyrighting her method. Mocquereau, on the other hand, was an amazing scholar who promoted scholarship from the original documents and said often that the work of the monastery was not complete. Sadly, my impression is that what most people describe as old Solesmes is really Ward as it came to be implemented in the 1940s and 50s, but this was a method of pedagogy mostly for children. It was never intended to be the universal method for singing.
  • tdunbar
    Posts: 120
    This whole issue of unity with diversity was a major factor in my coming to see The Catholic Church as THE Church, in a Lenny Bruce sense at least ("The Catholic Church is the church we mean when we say 'The Church' "), which also reminds me of Robert Frost's sonnet The Silken Tent:


    She is as in a field a silken tent
    At midday when the sunny summer breeze
    Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
    So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
    And its supporting central cedar pole,
    That is its pinnacle to heavenward
    And signifies the sureness of the soul,
    Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
    But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
    By countless silken ties of love and thought
    To every thing on earth the compass round,
    And only by one's going slightly taut
    In the capriciousness of summer air
    Is of the slightlest bondage made aware.


    My copy of the Page book is due today and this very unity/diversity issue something I hope to learn more about in his book. One of the important functions of Colloquiums, Seminars, etc is to enhance both the unity and the diversity, I think.
  • Adam Bartlett
    Posts: 533
    Well, there was Mocq and there was Ward - and there is a key difference here. Ward had very strict views and worked very hard to impose them, even to the point of copyrighting her method. Mocquereau, on the other hand, was an amazing scholar who promoted scholarship from the original documents and said often that the work of the monastery was not complete. Sadly, my impression is that what most people describe as old Solesmes is really Ward as it came to be implemented in the 1940s and 50s, but this was a method of pedagogy mostly for children. It was never intended to be the universal method for singing.


    I think you've nailed it here Jeffrey.

    The more that I come to understand this whole issue, what you say the more and more rings true.
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