Chuck, I think, that first and above all, you are to be congratulated for taking all that on. That's a vocation in the true sense of the word.

Second, my guess would be that your director has also put in a lot of time and effort into training your choir in chant, and feels invested in it. She feels threatened by someone with more knowledge that she has.

You probably know this. You just need someone to tell you you're right.

Finally, I would say - don't push it. If other people in the choir noticed the difference, they will start to ask for you to do more. If they didn't, your studies maybe brought you farther than they are ready to go yet. Be the patient one. It's the right thing to do, as well as the smart thing.

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What should I do?

Begin by purchasing a .38 cal. revolver.

Seriously...a couple of things.

First off, 'modern' conducting is (if practiced well) perfectly capable of showing phrases; that's what the non-stick-holding hand is for. But that's a quibble.

It may help to have a couple of decent Chant recordings at hand, to help your conductor understand what you consider to be the ideal toward which your schola is working. And it may help to remind her that her symphony's conductor does NOT "point-beat".

As to non-Solesmes conducting technique: use the phrases for your down/up strokes, and (once the rhythm is established) you can also use two, three, or four phrase gestures. "Show" the choir how to sing the phrases; use both arms. It is probably better to use circular hand/arm strokes across the body for most work (and to establish rhythm) rather than "modern" towards-the-choir stick/hand technique--which is designed for orchestras.

Roger Wagner used to "wind up" his chorale for Chant with two or three small 'beats' of his hand. That established the rhythm and allows for the 'pickup' beat.

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From reading everyone's opinions of modern conducting, I think my own blurred distinction between chironomy and "modern" conducting comes from the fact I often conduct horizontally in my "modern" four pattern, rather than vertically as I would if I wer conducting a march or something of the like.

I think a truly effective choral conductor will end up conducting a lot of choral repertoire focusing on sideways rather than vertical gesture. Also, I've found that, even with a baton, focusing on the horizontal rather than vertical conducting will help strings play more legato, and the gestures you make correspond to their bow motions. Maybe that's what Mocquereau - who I have heard was trained as a cellist - was really thinking!!!

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I think we both share Mocquereau's philosophy of rhythm - I just happened to learn it from a very talented teacher of modern conducting with no reference to chant whatsoever. I think that a lot of "modern" conductors would do well to experience it, and I think at least some chironomists do the gestures described without understanding the basis of arrival and departure you talk about an truly "willing them to happen" with their gesture. As in modern conducting, just because you move the arms the way you're "supposed to" doesn't mean that it's all going to come out the way it should. There needs to be intent.

Chris, I don't have enough time to comment in depth now, but I will certainly answer your questions asap, likely tomorrow.
I also serve in an EF parish (FSSP). Today I conduct the third sung Mass in as many days, and my thoughts need to start focusing on the Requiem Mass this evening.
I will say I don't take your challenges offensively at all, and I look forward to discussing why I think the Solesmes method and chironomy are highly valuable, but not the full fruition of chant interpretaion.

To me, the issue of this original post is not on the classic Solesmes vs. other chant interpretation, such as semiology. He mentioned in posts that his director conducts the chant like 'rain drops' and referring modern notation as superior to chant notation for singing chants. It seems there are more serious problems here.

He said,

"kind of like she makes individual little raindrops with her pointer finger following the melodic line,'

"My choir director once told me that modern notation was better than chant notation because "it just is."

Chris, does your schola sing chants from chant notation?

There are, it should be noted, important differences between 'modern' conducting methods. Many are quite different from those of band and orchestra conductors, and each yields an entirely different choral style. Some are more congenial to chant than others. Two examples that come immediately to mind are the Anglican, which stresses a certain flow and nuance, and the Lutheran, which stresses metricallity. Each of these results in a radically different vocal and musical aesthetic. One (I'll leave it to you to determine which) is far more kindly to chant interpretation than the other. This is not meant as a denigrance of one or the other respectable idiom, but as an observation that one is more like unto chant than the other. As for those bandmasters who find themselves directing choirs: I shouldn't want to sing under their direction. Likewise, instrumentalists often go through considerable adjustment when under the direction of choral directors.

Chris, great to see you on here!

Are you implementing Ward at all with your kids? I'm wondering if working the Method of conducting with them might not give more force to your argument about chant. When one hears the difference in their own singing, I think they will take your claim more seriously. How I wish that I could implement the gestures with my older grades! I was so impressed with the difference they made to basic songs like Twinkle Twinkle, up to Arcadelt's Ave Maria. But all this takes time to learn for a choir. I started the old Solesmes chironomy with the Cathedral Chant School about a year and a half ago, and they sing so much more expressively and are so much more unified as a result. (This is not to knock any modern techniques; I simply didn't have a good conducting technique before I started using Solesmes chironomy.)

On a side note, I only have two first graders left in a class of 27 who still can't match pitch -- and I've only been working the Ward Method with them for a quarter. The Ward Method is truly genious. :)

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Chris, Welcome here, but I should note that incantu is exactly right. It seems to me that your experience of Gregorian chant has been limited to the Solesmes method. How much do you know about other approaches and scholarship on chant? I can vouch that incantu's experience is considerable. I can't for my life understand how you took his message to be uncharitable. It seemed utterly professional and courteous to me. There is a wide world of chant beyond the Solesmes Abbey. The little marks in the chant date only to the 19th century. I'm still puzzled, for example, about where the salicus comes from...

To me, one of the strongest bits of evidence that "the little marks" may have only been a good guess is the fact that in the recent Antiphonale Monasticum I-III (2005-2008) and Antiphonale Romanum II (2009) Solesmes has abandoned them! There's also this quote from Dom Saulnier, the current head of paleography for Solesmes:

"It has become customary to use this term for three signs added by the Solesmes editions to XX century books of chant: the dot, the vertical episema and the horizontal episema. These three signs have been abandoned in our edition for the following reasons. The dot and the vertical episema do not correspond to any traditional information about Gregorian chant. They do not appear in any medieval manuscript and have only been introduced into Solesmes editions in order to promote a rhythmic theory of Gregorian chant (based on the views propounded in Le Nombre Musical Grégorien), which has long since been demonstrated to be obsolete. Moreover, they have shown themselves to be in contradiction with the elementary principles of reading medieval neumes. More precisely, this rhythmic theory, to the extent that it inflicts a rhythmic distortion on the words and phrases that are chanted, appears in contradiction to the elementary principles of liturgical music composition, which must be set fundamentally at the service of the sacred text." Many people are now referring to this approach as the new Solesmes method.

All that being said, I think it the traditional Solesmes method as taught by Mocquereau is helpful to beginners or those without a general sense of the rhythm of chant, as well as a common denominator for people from different scholas/backgrounds coming together to sing chant. I think every serious student of chant should be aware of it and know how it works. It certainly seems better than the "raindrop" method you described your current director using. Saulnier's approach, however, is certainly more freeing to those with good musical instincts and experience listening to and singing chant.

As a side note, I've also seen historically "informed" performanced treat quilismas as dotted-eighth/sixteenth rhythmns, seen the salicus lengthened on notes other than the middle one, etc. I believe none of these is "wrong." Why? The people who advance these alternatives are usually well-intentioned and have historical research to back them up. Chant was performed in varying ways across Europe throughout the middle ages and beyond. Scholars have treatises that describe these performance practices, and I'm sure they vary widely. We obviously don't have recordings going back far enough to be useful. Any attempt to get the "one true way" will be met with dissapointment. If you want to hear what the original Gregorian chant sounded like in the first centuries of the Church, from my (limited) knowledge of ethnomusicology, my guess is it would actually sound more like Hebrew cantillation or the Muslem call to prayer.

This situation - of the interpretation of music - seems difficult for those of us who are very dogmatic about our faith. There is right and wrong about matters of theology for us traditional Catholics. There is also clearly right and wrong when trying to follow rubrical instructions in liturgy. Our mistake is that we assume those guidelines about the use of music carry over to the smallest details of interpretation. The fact of the matter is they do not. Nowhere has the church prescribed with any force of law how to sing a quilisma or where to place the ictus. Le Nombre Musical Grégorien is not that. It is only (for its time) a well-reasoned, very specific guide to creating a standard method of interpretation, and as such it is very useful.

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If you want to hear what the original Gregorian chant sounded like in the first centuries of the Church, from my (limited) knowledge of ethnomusicology, my guess is it would actually sound more like Hebrew cantillation or the Muslem call to prayer.

I was in Scott Turkington's class in Houston this past month. He has an amazing (to me) sense of pitch. Anyway- every now and then he would be scanning through a piece of music quickly outloud (to find his place, or to establish modality in his head, or whatever). When he fast-forwarded through the melismas, it sounded SO MUCH like Muslem and Jewish cantilation, and also a lot more like what I've heard from the Orthodox.
I often wonder if our entire conception of the sound of Gregorian chant is too influenced by the Western Classical sensibilities of it's reconstructors.

Right- not "too"
The point is not to recreate some imagined (or even actual) authentic performance practice from the past, but rather to create something holy, sacred, relevant, beautiful, solemn, and universal in our own age.

But to the extent that musical aesthetics are used to understand or develop faith and theology, I wonder if our conception of God, or holiness, or any number of spiritual principles, would be different if the music in our churches sounded more like this:
http://www.ccwatershed.org/video/10488462/?return_url=/projects/massabki/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K-u6UYSjpY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0_vnon5owE&;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOAtTU36qVk&;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSWwVinHQfw

I just wonder.

This seems to be a situation that may deteriorate.

There are quite a few EF scholas out there are singing poorly due to people being drafted out of the pews and a lack of understanding by some priests that a musician is like a plant. Transplanting it into a new hole in the ground and walking away almost always means the plant is going to die, since it is out of the environment in which it was able and knew how to seek nourishment, had the exact amount of light needed to grow and also was buried at the exact depth in the ground that it needed to survive.

Stick a classically-trained pianist in a jazz ensemble with a lead sheet and chord names to play from and the pianist in most coses will be out of their element.

As chant becomes popular (did we ever think that phrase would be uttered?) people who are intrigued by it will learn more and realize that things in their schola are not what they might be.

The schola does not need a power struggle. It's her group. Makes me think that the best solution is a meeting with the priest that started this all with an intent to get him to provide the director with the opportunity to attend a chant conference and be exposed. She will have a much better chance of getting on the bandwagon if she is around others in the same situation and not being "challenged" by someone within the group, as well meaning as you obviously are.

[paragraphs courtesy of Kathy]

True respect for JT requires the wearing of the ceremonial ≥•≤.

Noel meant the ceremonial bowtie (depicting it thus). (Mr. Tucker is frequently encountered wearing a bowtie.)

Hi, Chris! It's good to see another of our Ward 1 class here on the forum: Angela also posts from time to time.

hmm, I just re-read that post linked above and I don't find anything in it with which to disagree. I was pleased to put Mocq's treatise online because the poor man has suffered amazing attacks for so long, his views caricatured and blamed for everything wrong with chant. Reading his book, one finds that he was incredibly learned and subtle. (I now suspect that this heritage of hostility was actually directed at the imperious attitudes of a certain American benefactoress but I won't go there). In any case, I'm really happy to see that this whole debate, which strikes me as nearly pointless, is starting to relax and die down into a more productive environment of mutual learning, and I certainly regret anything I've written that has intensified hostilities. For example, even on this forum, we can see that these discussions are more civil than they used to be. that's great!!

I really like what Dom Dupont has to say about this subject: "The first [stumbling block] is competition between schools of interpretation. Instead of contributing to an improvement in the quality of the chant, this leads in some cases to rivalries or mutual snubbing. Besides the damage that this does to unity -- of which Gregorian chant out to be a sign, as I mentioned earlier--these quarrels end up discrediting Gregorian chant."