text stress in English
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    I recently read Adam Bartlett's post on Chant Cafe describing his process for the Simple English Propers, and I, like most people, think this project will be a great contribution to the restoration of sacred music.

    One comment he made did get me thinking, however, and that is when he brought up issues of difficulty with English text stress, particularly

    the threat of back-to-back monosyllabic (oxytonic) word accents is ever present in English texts (e.g. to Yóu, Lórd Gód)


    I recently finished a project creating a program of sung Vespers according to the modern Liturgy of the Hours for the 'O Antiphons' of December 17-23 with antiphons in Latin from the newest Antiphonales, and psalms according to the official LotH books (Grail Psalms). I went into the project partly to prove a theory I had had that English texts really can work with unaltered Gregorian psalm tones, they just need to be pointed carefully in advance. I admittedly don't have much experience chanting psalms in Latin, but I do love those melodies, and I would like to think I have some experience with English declamation.

    Granted, I only pointed one week's worth of psalms from the modern Vespers to a handful of modes (not much I know, but a decent amount), and I didn't really see the huge problem that many people describe - a few maybe, but those occur in Latin too. Seeing the Latin texts themselves pointed in the new Antiphonales, I ended up devising a series of rules for pointing the English texts which I think would be helpful to share.

    1) Determine versification, where the asterisks and flexes go. I tried to keep the lines mostly as they were divided in the Liturgy of the Hours, except for some cases where they were simply too short. I consulted the Mundelein Psalter and the Latin Liturgia Horarum, as well as the 2005-2009 Antiphonale Monasticum/Romanum (where Solesmes occasionally made some slight changes), and where those sources didn't all agree - mostly they did agree - I basically chose the option which did the most to enhance the phrase structure of the text.

    2) Go through the English text first without any concern for the psalm tone or mode -- in fact it's best if you don't even let yourself know what mode you're going to be using. Your goal is to have a completely open mind and consider the text purely from the point of view of spoken declamation or even conversational usage:

    Speak the text line by line and determine where the stresses are, marking a stressed syllable every two or three syllables without exception. A line may start with as many as two unaccented syllables as pickups or anacruses.
    a) If it seems that there are three unstressed syllables in a row, the middle of those three will get a sort of shadow accent, and you'll have two groups of two instead of one group of four.
    b) If you find two stressed syllables back to back, you must choose one over the other. Speak it both ways, and find which method of speaking it conveys the meaning the best. In Adam's example above "Yóu, Lórd Gód" I would instinctually choose to unaccent the word "Lord" in this case - however it's hard to know for sure without knowing the context. Of course there were a very small handful of times I could see two equally compelling cases to be made, for example from Psalm 135:

    "from his treasuries he sends forth the wind."
    OR
    "from his treasuries he sends forth the wind."
    The first syllable of "treasuries" is accented and that cannot be argued. One may accent "sends" or "forth" but not both. If you choose to accent "sends," "-ries" of "treasuries" automatically receives the shadow accent. If you choose to accent "forth" then it seems to me "he" would receive the shadow accent as it is a pronoun and a complete word, and the subject of the sentence.

    Nevertheless, they're both valid readings, and if this is the case, I mark the alternative in the margin and save a decision in this instance for when I finally match it up with the psalm tone.

    Well, this has gone on long enough for now. I have an additional set of rules I used for setting these now-pointed texts to the Gregorian psalm tones, which I may share later. I welcome your comments on my system!
  • rich_enough
    Posts: 1,050
    I'm not sure if you are using the traditional Gregorian tones and trying to emulate the accent patterns or "rules" of Latin language psalmody - something I have tried to do in my settings posted at Chabanel Psalms (see also the method described here). If so, of the two examples you give with the lines from psalm 135, only the 2nd - with the accents on "he" and "forth" - would work. In other words, since Latin has the accent either on the penultimate of antepenultimate syllable (De-us or Do-minus), and only second example corresponds to this. The first, with its accent on the last and third to the last syllables, does not. If on the other hand you are not interested in having the accent patterns correspond to the Latin, this would not apply so much.

    For an earlier discussion on this Forum about the methods of pointing psalms in English, as well as the merits / demerits of the various ways of employing the Gregorian tones, see this discussion.

    Sam Schmitt
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    Thanks Sam. I've read the discussion you linked to and the method - which I seem to mostly agree with.

    My main point is that it seems people are under the false impression that there frequently occurs times in English where you have two accents in a row or more than two unaccented syllables in a row. My point is in context that almost never happens. Accents are either created or removed by context so as to always provide accents in groups of two or three syllables (just like Latin!) I write this so as to test this, so I welcome challenges to this principle.

    Of course the fact that the final syllable in an English phrase is so often accented has to be accounted for in your actual method for setting the text to a Gregorian tone, but it seemed to me there was an initial step in the process being left out of the discussion - that of determining the text stress (properly in context) without even thinking about the tone yet.
  • rich_enough
    Posts: 1,050
    And a very good point it is. I basically agree that adapting English to Gregorian psalm tones is not as problematic as it is sometimes made out to be. While It is true that Latin has its own accent patterns whcih are simply not the same for English, accommodations can be made in the setting of English which preserve the traditional Gregorian patterns.

    Perhaps the biggest issue in English is the preponderance of accents on the last syllable of a line. (They seem particularly common in the rather clunky NAB psalms.) These are not unknown in Latin, and indeed, special accommodation is made for them in the Gregorian tones, but they are the exception rather than the rule. One method would apply these special accommodations "literally," but again, it is possible to avoid most of these by pointing according to a previous accent (as in the second example you give above ". . . sends forth the wind" - placing the "accent" only on "wind").

    Some question the value of preserving the Gregorian tones in English given that they were conceived for the setting of Latin texts. I think the inherent beauty of the tones, their simplicity, adaptability - and, in many cases, their familiarity - argues for their use in English. I would argue further that preserving the original accent patterns as much as possible without doing violence to an English text is a large part of this.

    I have found that "testing" the English text across a number of psalm tones can reveal that certain tones work better with a given text than other tones. Naturally this does not apply if the mode is already determined for you, as in the case of Vespers using existing antiphons.

    Sam Schmitt
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    I believe Solesmes instructions now ignore the "special accomodation" that used to be made for accents on the final syllable of the line - although I have seen it described in older sources like the Liber Usualis. If there is in fact an accent two syllables before an accented final syllable, it leaves you in fine shape to make use of the hollow note and preserve the orginal accents. If the previous accent is three before a final accented syllable, you basically just take the syllables as they come not using the hollow notes. I'm pretty sure those are the rules for Latin when not applying the "special accomodation." This does not seem to happen with alarming frequency in English - especially in Grail Psalms (as opposed to the NAB) - a major purpose of that translation's genesis being to accomodate chanting. In samples I've seen of the revised Grail Psalms (still not released), I believe accented/stressed syllables are all marked in every line of every Psalm.
  • IanWIanW
    Posts: 765
    Fr. Ruff's article Gregorian Psalm tones with English Texts? is of interest in this connection.
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    Thanks, Ian. I've read it before. I just don't agree with all the perceived "difficulties."
  • IanWIanW
    Posts: 765
    The importance of the text in chant requires us to think seriously about its use with a particular language, and I think Fr. Ruff's article is a good example of such enquiry, whether or not one agrees with its conclusions. However, the issues are sometimes used by two very different camps as sticks with which to beat the very idea of vernacular chant: those who only want Latin, and those who don't want chant, at least in its Roman form.
  • SkirpRSkirpR
    Posts: 854
    Speaking of camps and sticks - and not the purpose of this thread at all - I find it interesting that if text (and therefore, I assume text stress) is so important, why does the most widespread method of chant conducting propose a solution that often ignores text stress in syllabic chants!

    It's not my intention to resurrect this debate, but I just wish to point out the irony that some people who claim text stress is so important that one must abandon Gregorian tones when using English, also swear by Mocquereau's ictus. That confuses me.
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