How did the first schola cantorum learn their chants?
  • Ruth Lapeyre
    Posts: 341
    I am becoming increasingly interested in how those 6th 7th and 8th century singers managed to compose and memorize so many chants. Does anyone know if there have been articles or books written about the subject? Or perhaps you have your own ideas, I truly am interested in how they might have been able to do this. Even learning these chants with the music is no easy task but they had to memorize as well and with no system of notation. I have read McKinnon's Advent Project and he touches on the subject but I was wondering if there are other sources which discuss how it might have been accomplished.
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    My understanding is that memories were much more well-developed in those days. It just became a matter of "that's the tune to which those words are always sung, and they are always used on that day." The tempos may have also been much, much slower so as to facilitate remembering the chants. I don't have any sources on it, other than a discussion of medieval scribing, which was often based on memory as well.
  • smvanroodesmvanroode
    Posts: 970
    This is an excellent source: Christopher Page, The Christian West and its Singers – The First Thousand Years. (Yale Univeristy Press, New Haven, 2010). An absolute must-read if you're interested in how chant spread across Europe.
  • Chrism
    Posts: 869
    The tempos may have also been much, much slower so as to facilitate remembering the chants.

    How do Sean-nós singers do it, then?
  • Ruth Lapeyre
    Posts: 341
    smvanroode,

    Ordered yesterday. It should be here within the week, thanks for the recommendation.
  • mahrt
    Posts: 517
    James McKinnonm, The Advent Project, while somewhat speculative is replete with fascinating liturgical detail.
  • mahrt
    Posts: 517
    Correction: author's name is James McKinnon
  • Ruth Lapeyre
    Posts: 341
    Yep I am in the process of reading McKinnon's book for the second time. I would think that almost everything is speculative when it comes to chant. McKinnon makes some interesting points though about Old Roman chant and Gregorian Chant. I need to educate myself more and that is why I am so grateful for the help you guys have given me on this forum. Thanks a bunch!
  • Ruth Lapeyre
    Posts: 341
    smvanroode I want to thank you for directing me to this book, it is wonderful! Between McKinnon's Advent Project, Christopher Page's book and the archives of Gregorian Review (GR) I am getting a pretty good education this summer and having a great time too. I found that we have all of the issues of Gregorian Review at the seminary and am currently reading all of Dom Jacques Froger's article "The Chants of the Mass in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries" published in segments in the GR in 1955 and 1956.
  • Michael O'Connor
    Posts: 1,637
    Remember that there were fewer chants in the 7th century than in the 8th. By the late 10th century Guido of Arezzo noticed that it was becoming harder to remember them all and there were more and more new singers to train.
  • Simon
    Posts: 153
    Many singers started as young boys - given to the church or monasteries by their parents to be housed, fed and educated. Starting young is the key. Young children are like sponges. Even today one can see that with boys in several Cathedral choir schools in the UK where evensong is sung with them 4-5 times a week plus a mass on Sunday. (Or young boys in the muslim world being able to recite the whole Koran by heart - often not even understanding a word they were saying as their language wasn't Arabic.) Cathedral choir school boys start as probationers at age 7 or 8 and stay until age 12/13 or so. After this 4-5 year period these boys know over 1000 pieces of music by heart. And these boys only effectively sing a few months of the year during school terms. Think of what the effect would be if you were engaged fulltime living in a monastery where masses were sung daily plus the whole office. Plus the fact that the repertoire was, for the most part, fixed during one's lifetime - one sings the same thing every year during the week following Easter, for example. By the time you were 18-20 years of age you would know every respond, gradual, introit, antiphon, etc. by heart - no problem.
  • Jenny Donelson
    Posts: 243
    Medieval Music and the Art of Memory by Anna Maria Busse Berger is a good book for looking at the psychology of the issue, and her comparisons to memory in other domains are also really helpful.
  • Ruth Lapeyre
    Posts: 341
    Thanks Jenny it looks very good. First I think I will check around and see if we have it in the library before buying it. Have totally fallen in love with Christopher Page's book and can't believe I got a new copy for under $40! It is one weighty tome.
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