I was thinking the other day about one of my pet peeves in chant accompaniment, stemming from being a singer/director who prefers the chant unaccompanied but recognizes that accompaniment to chant is legitimate and can be quite beautiful and effective and helpful.

I will try to describe what frustrates me. In unaccompanied chant, the schola breathes together at the ends of phrases, then enters together on the next neume. The little 'window' of silence is occupied by the inhalation of the schola. Trained singers usually have been taught that to begin a new phrase, one inhales and then immediately phonates, i.e., there is no ready (inhale) SET (hold the breath) go (phonate) because to stop between the inhalation and the phonation creates a hitch in the phrasing and a laryngeal tension that is inimical to healthy singing.

The smooth movement from inhalation to phonation also enables the schola to properly accent the next phrase. For instance, if the first neume is, accentually, an anacrusis (upbeat), the word accent naturally falls on the following neume; if the first neume's syllable is accented, the syllable is properly accented. There is a flow that is predicated on the natural inhalation/exhalation-phonation and which serves to create beautiful phrasing.

But what I see written in (mostly modern) chant accompaniments and too often done even if not written this way is:
sing the phrase, end the phrase (with an inhalation, which is good technique if another phrase immediately follows)
accompaniment strikes a chord
singers wait until the chord has been struck, breathe, and come in

An ubiquitous example of this would be responsorial psalms in the OF: in the verses, the cantor waits for a chord at the beginning of each new phrase; at the response, the congregation waits for a chord to enter, even when the cadence at the end of the verse (let alone the windmill/touchdown gesture) lets them know that it's their turn to sing.

I also see this in many contemporary accompaniments to Latin ordinaries.

To me, this 'waiting for the accompaniment' has several deleterious effects:
1) it trains singers (in particular, those assisting at Mass from the pews) that they have to wait for something/someone to guide them.
2) It makes the chanting from the schola and/or cantor unbelievably ponderous and boring.
3) Repeating #1 but with respect to our cantors: it tells them that they are too stupid to sing the chant naturally.

Okay, perhaps #3 could be said more charitably: it teaches our cantors to be timid.

Why Aris' Mass in Honor of Our Lady of Good Help lead me to start the discussion after ruminating on it for a while is that its accompaniment is written to discourage this practice--it is written as I believe accompaniments should be! In general, when the next phrase starts on an accented syllable, he has the accompaniment and singers start together (and has those places marked with the quarter bar). In a few spots, when the next phrase begins with an anacrusis, he has the chord strike 'on the beat', but often there is a single note that could be held across (akin to an ison) so that it doesn't have to be "CHUNK-sing".

(I do recognize that an accompaniment notated like Aris' could still be PLAYED by the organist/keyboardist with forcible phrase-beginning chords, thus destroying the care he has taken to make the accompaniment flow and serve the flow of the chant. That is also an issue, particularly where people are accustomed to accompanying the responsorial psalm and the Alleluia and Verse in that manner.)

The other reason this comes to mind is in thinking about the teaching of the ICEL chants of the new translation. I do not want to teach anyone that they have to wait for an accompaniment in order to respond or chant; I want responses to be as natural as they are in speech: Good morning, Mr. Henson. Good morning, Dr. Warren.

Any thoughts?