SEP from the non-music reader's perspective
  • benedictgal
    Posts: 798
    First of all, I have to thank Adam Bartlett for his great gift to the Church in the Simple English propers. I have been trying to chant them for the better part of a month now.

    The tutorials have been most helpful, especially for someone like me because I do not read music. I have to listen to them repeatedly just so that I can get everything right. I even play a recording of them on my way to Mass so that I can review it.

    I admit that it is a challenge to learn two new pieces of music every week so that I can chant them at Mass; however, I am a firm believer in putting my money where my mouth (and my vocal cords) is because I believe in adhering to the GIRM. I use the Entrance and Communion chants and then have a hymn for the offertory and the recessional. I do have a Communion hymn after the antiphon, though. The faithful at the Mass I sing are slowly getting used to it.

    As challenging as they are, the Simple English Propers do live up to their name. The melodies (for lack of a better word) are easy after a few hearings. Even though I have messed up a couple of times, I am still chugging along. Thank you, once again, CMAA and Adam, for helping to bring the reform of the reform.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,189
    You have an indomitable spirit and evolving gift, benedictgal ... you are making enormous strides with every small step! God bless you.
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    Yes, this is wonderful. You say you can't read music but this is a way to learn!
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,610
    "Well, officer, I was learning this new chant and...."
  • Adam Bartlett
    Posts: 533
    This is a great testimony, benedictgal, and I'm so glad you've shared it. Your method of singing the Mass proper is actually much like it was done in the early days of Gregorian chant. Of course then there was no musical notation and the entire dissemination of the repertoire was done orally. While it will be important to make an effort to learn to read neumes (and if you pay close attention to the scores that you're singing you eventually will) singing from rote can actually make for a more effective singing of chant, I think. So often people get so caught up in the notation that the chant drags in order to compensate for poor reading, or inflections or expressive elements are lost because they are not contained in the notation. So I say keep up what you're doing, and sing as beautifully as you can, and allow the reading to come in time. The good thing is that people can actually sing the propers in this way without having to read music. This is the reality of where most of our parish musicians are in this day in age.
  • MaryAnn Carr WilsonMaryAnn Carr Wilson
    Posts: 1,738
    Adam, amen to your point about oral transmission of the chant.

    When asked about scholas learning with solfege during last year's chant course in Solesmes, Dom Saulnier advised rather that one or two strong singers teach the others the chant. He did not negate the value of solfege for interval training and precision work in difficult passages, but put a priority on singers getting the natural phrasing of chant.

    I experimented with that this year, and I have to say the schola is singing better. Of course this has reduced my ability to skate through propers preparation by sight-reading in rehearsal (did I just admit that?) as I have to know it to sing it to them. But the trade-off has been worth it.
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    I am not a systematic learner of music, but I have made great strides doing what I heard Scott Turkington say about solfege: step by step.

    That was true with sightreading in general. I took singing lessons and found that eventually I could sing on sight fairly well. I once sightread a famous Brahms lied in a voice lesson pretty much on the money, but my voice teacher can sightread a Brahms score and Brahms gives a lot of hints for the singer.

    Nevertheless, Chant eluded me. I gave myself an extended version of the kinds of exercises that are in the New School of Chant on the literature page here, singing different intervals--say, fah-sol-then every other note. I picked chants with things that mess up your ears--for instance, written at the top of the Doh scale, so, in C, your brain is thinking F-G-A-Bb-C, when that Bb shouldn't be there, or a phrase with a Perfect Fourth, a hard interval to call out of the air-- and memorizing that. I just spent two months off and on on Pentecost, to just learn one feast, and am now moving to Advent-Christmas, but I just successfully sightread a complicated offertory.

    So if unsystematic me can do it--after more years than I care to admit--pretty much anyone can. The thing of having a strong singer teach the chant makes the most sense for amateur scholas, however, that is for sure, but over time people WILL pick it up, and God bless you for trying.

    And, as a "Rome has spoken" kind of guy, bless you benedictgal for dedicating yourself to following the GIRM in both letter and spirit.
  • benedictgal
    Posts: 798
    I am making some very slow progress. I messed up the antiphon on the second go-around; however, I was able to nail the Communion antiphon rather easily. We are chugging along.

    I am in panic mode because Vimeo is saying that it does not have the 23rd Sunday uploaded, even though it shows up on the screen.
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