Saint-Saens writes of the plainchant melody being hidden in the tenor part of a mixed-voice arrangement during the singing of the Gradual. I remember reading what how revolutionary it was to hear Gregorian being sung to a unison melody. Evidently, the custom in France during the 19th century was to have parts of the Proper sung to some weird counterpoint.

sorry, meant for there to have been images in the original post - should make more sense now.

Undoubtedly, all the various interpretations of chant in our time would have sounded considerably and strangely distilled to early XIX. century ears. Or the ears of most any of our ancestors. The famous, or infamous, Ensemble Organum has some interesting ideas about XVII. century chant which may be heard on their CD entitled Ad Vesperas Sancti Ludovici Regis Franciae, based on the Antiphonaire des Invalides of 1682. These various harmonised treatments of chant very likely retained their currency into the XIX. century era. At least, some contemporary commentary would suggest something similar. That chant was sung rather slowly and with a degree of beaten metricallity would seem apparent from many of the chant books published in the XIX. century.

Now, such performances are merely out of date, in poor taste, have no scholarly or academic foundation and are just old, abused chant.
But not yet old enough to warrant excited correct performance practice on their behalf.
Perhaps in another 100 years it will be chic to do stylistically correct perfomances of XIX. century chant??

This, after all, would not be far removed from the operative rationale which gives us Paul McCreesh'es liturgical reconstructions of given periods and places.

Music tempos in buildings with live acoustics often need to be slower....so there should be a difference in tempo between singing a chant in a 7.5 second church and a "living room" acoustics US church...if you've got carpet, tempos can be faster.

At FSU we actually did a bit of the slow tempo chant for a performance of Rittler's Requiem Mass. It IS maddening to the modern ear for sure. With this in mind, perhaps the tempo of Berlioz's insertion of the Dies irae in Symphonie fantastique is actually at the proper liturgical speed then!

> Racing through organ works, as if those old instruments could actually be played that fast, is the norm.

It also proves that the organist has trained his fingerings! I wonder how much we own this to the ubiquitous piano...

CharlesW,

When you consider hand position, key lengths, and fingerings in some pre-Classical period music, then indeed it is quicker and more articulate (pardon!) to use the "early" fingerings.

One interesting singing technique question is the speed of singing from c. 1500-1725: some scholars seem to imply that the lighter vocal sound desirable to this period possessed greater agility, at least in respect to ornaments. I always wonder about it every time I see a fast aria from a Bach cantata!

"Can you imagine the typical congregation today tolerating 3-hour liturgies, along with the slower pace of nearly everything else?"

Coming from our resident Byzantine... Next we'll be expecting them to stand through it all!

Sadly, the hammer-the-note 'performance practice' is alive and kicking (stomping?) in a significant number of places, at least some of them quite prominent and at least a few very well meaning.

Pews leading to sins of the flesh? Reminds me of High School youth group lock-ins when I was a kid.

Disorders among the congregation go back quite far. In Carthage, Bishop Aurelius, a friend of St. Augustine, had low walls built in the congregation's space to separate men and women and cut down on socializing between the two, which had become unedifying.

[Source: a podcast by Fr. Z (August 19, 2010)]

I don't think that ponderous chanting was among Luther's famous 95 Theses.
Of all the rationales Luther had for leaving, I think that hammer-the-note chanting was not among them. The Lutherans themselves had and continue to have a rather hearty hammer-the-note style of singing. And, the isometric form of the chorals which they yet cultivate lends itself to this. They always sing with a certain gusto not heard elsewhere.

Then, for those who may not have seen it yet, go to The New Liturgical Movement and scroll to the very nice treatment there by Shawn Tribe of the Anglican Ordinariate's patrimony, and you can hear and see the men and boys of King's College singing psalm 50 - without hammer-the-note or 'Anglican thump'.