Choir Growing Pains and the Solesmes Method
  • RagueneauRagueneau
    Posts: 2,592
    It is worth reminding people that Mocquereau never once claimed that his dots and episemata predated his editions.

    For that matter, the Editio Vaticana itself, as well as Pothier's classification and choice of neumes (where he decided which neumes he would include and what they would look like in his editions), are all inventions of the late 19th century.
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    Is is safe to assume that the rhythmic stretchings of notes that these modern signs indicate are an attempt to preserve the verbal traditions and pass them along to people whose connection to chant is only on paper?

    Meaning that singing in a mode there are certain melodic elements that recur and that along with this there are also certain rhythmic alterations that also are tied to that mode and its melodies? Or is that too specific?
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    I would like to know that too. Of course there are many verbal traditions. A big moment for me came a few years ago with that Austrian monastery recording. Here was an uninterrupted tradition of 1000 years. They are singing Cistercian books, not even Roman ones. It has a slightly different feel from Solesmes but not so much really. There is still a pulse, for example, and it was not randomized rhythm at all. But there were special touches. It was really its own thing. I listened and thought: what does this mean? In the end, what does it matter? It is very beautiful and wonderful. Beauty is the goal; the obsession with "authenticity" or whatever really can get in the way of this goal.
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,232
    people kept missing the need to slow the ends of phrases

    Gee. Kinda sounds like a rallentando, no?

    Those are SOP for any musician...
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    Rallentandos are a BIG problem when singing congregational music. Some people assume that doing them at all times makes them "musical"!

    I was saddled with an organist who would fight my tempos while introducing music and then ALWAYS rallentando at the end of the intro and at the end of each verse.

    There was no pulse to the music as a result. There is a special treatment to the end of chant lines, softening, just as almost all chant lines should star softly, but it is more of a relaxation than a rallentando.

    And on metric hymns a rallentando kills the hymn, except for the last line.

    There are also organists and cantors who rallentando the antiphon, which totally fails to set the congregation up to respond. If they stay in strict time, the people automatically know when to sing, if not, they don't and won't. These cantors must do the semaphore thing to get people to sing, since their singing did not clue the people in at all.
  • incantuincantu
    Posts: 989
    Is is safe to assume that the rhythmic stretchings of notes that these modern signs indicate are an attempt to preserve the verbal traditions and pass them along to people whose connection to chant is only on paper?

    Meaning that singing in a mode there are certain melodic elements that recur and that along with this there are also certain rhythmic alterations that also are tied to that mode and its melodies? Or is that too specific?


    I think Noel has hit the nail on the head here, except for that one cannot really say "preserve" about a tradition that had already been lost. "Restore" is perhaps a bit presumptuous. "Reconstruct" might be a better term.

    While the ideas of arsis and thesis might be descriptive rather than prescriptive, looking at the chant (at least the oldest examples) it's easy enough to see that it is in there.

    And as far as cadential dots go, there's no doubt in my mind that certain scribes, especially of the St. Gall school, used short neume forms at the ends of phrases where a slowing of tempo would be assumed. And I have experienced first-hand choirs who, not familiar with this performance practice, will plow straight through cadences unless they are explicitly marked in their scores. In fact, it is often trained musicians who are most afflicted by this cult of musical notation.
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,232
    Well, frogger, I should have been more clear.

    SOME rallentando is apropos for cadences in Propers Chants, but not necessarily in Ordinary Chants, nor in hymnody.

    For the Ordinary Chants, the dot at the end of the cadence (plus the pickup-cipher) is all you need. Yes, congregations are different from trained scholas.
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