Incantu, I appreciate your explanation. But as I understand it, in Semiology (or Rhetorical method) the musical rhythm follows the rhythm of the speech. (Is it possible to have slightly different lengths of syllables in the rhythm of the speech in various areas?)
So I'm not sure your interpretation of subdivision of beat ('the two together equal one in terms of duration"')in Rhetorical method is authentic, or it can be that you are looking at those in terms of 'measured music.'
I'm not saying that all the neums have equal values, and I do agree that there are quicker note groups than others, but my questions is how fast? Are they measured like in the modern music?
I think you also mentioned about the episema as being two beats. Then do you also measure the long last note of Salicus and quick note of quilisma?

Father Kelly mentions about structural and ornamental neums; clivis, pes, porrectus.....in his writing. But I don't see anywhere him saying "two notes being equal one."
Also, I'm not sure his term' ornamental' means 'non-structural' or ornament like trills.
(I understand it as 'non-structural,' which has less value in duration than the structural ones, but not like trills.)
I appreciate this discussion, which has been a productive one for me since I'm very interested in Semiology.
I started to apply some of the basics of the Semiology in my schola singing carefully, and our experience has been very positive and enriching. (it's also very challenging, but I think it can be applied to make chant singing beautiful, which I experienced at the Colloquium for two years in advanced women's group with Wilko. )

I always enjoy Mia Coyne's postings that carry a certain polite tone, due to her Korean heritage I suppose. Especially when people argue with her, something that I would never try to do against someone who studied under Theodore Marier, as she did....

To answer mia's question about the salicus and quilisma, I will say that to my knowledge these are two figures we do not completely understand. However, they are used interchangeably with the scandicus, a figure we do have a grasp of. The difference in their performance was probably not so great. And, in any case, the top note is long!

It may be out of print. I got mine used online. I have seen a pdf of it hosted somewhere, but perhaps without the accompanying musical examples. Musicasacra does have his article on the literary evidence form the "Gregorian" period in its archives.

I highly respect Kelly as well, and I don't think I would contradict anything he has to say. However, he relies heavily on Laon for his conclusions, whereas Cardine focused on St. Gall. Both, of course, looked at both. The main difference is that Laon notated with care many of the nuances that St. Gall left up to performance practice. This is similar to the use of hairpins, fermatas, indications like "poco ritardando" and "espressivo" that we associate with 19th century music that is absent in much 17th and 18th century music. This does not mean that those other repertoires were performed without expression! This concept is brought to its obvious extreme in the music of Boulez, where every note seems to have a dynamic and articulation mark.

I am attempting to piece together a method that is as practical as the Solesmes method but that captures the vitality of the earliest notation traditions. So I have opted to go for a more straightforward approach than Kelly, mostly differentiating between long and short notes (but not every tiny nuance) in my transcriptions. That's where the "rhetoric" comes in. Knowing the pitches and the rhythm is not enough. It it up to the performer to figure out how the music "goes" and to breathe life into it.

Notation is like a map of the earth. You cannot make a flat map of a round earth without making some sort of distortion. There are different ways to do it, but no one is perfect. Similarly, you can't write down music. You can put more or less emphasis on certain elements (rhythm, pitch, pronunciation, articulation, etc), but you can never write it all down. My bare-bones approach to the manuscripts is one that I think is 100% accurate about 95% of the time. It's a big step forward, in my opinion, from the Solesmes editions ASSUMING your goal is to capture the elan of the 10th century performing traditions.

"I am attempting to piece together a method that is as practical as the Solesmes method but that captures the vitality of the earliest notation traditions. "

I think this is a very ambitious project, but maybe needed one for the performance practice based on Semiology.

Incantu, I wish you all the best on your studies and researches. I'll be looking forward to hear more in the future in this forum or in your blog. And thank you for sharing them here.

Mia

All music has its own rhetoric, some more than others. What I mean by rhetoric is "how it goes," whereas semiology refers to "what is says." I don't see Kelly, Cardine, and Murray as being in conflict with each other except on a few small details.

This would be worth making a fuss about

But most astonishing of all is that Jan van Biezen's rhythmic discoveries now make Gregorian chant amazingly easy to sing. Theoretically, Antiphons could be learned by a congregation without ever looking at a page, and choirs could sing melismatic Graduals in unison without conducting. I shiver with excitement!
[review by 'coemgenus' of Rhythm, Meter and Tempo in Gregorian Chant]

Unfortunately, I can't see a source of this book in the UK, and Amazon.com says it can't ship to me! (I hope that means they don't have distribution rights, not that my location is blacklisted/quarantined)

When I use a semiological approach with my choir, I tend to follow L rather literally instead of trying to piece together what seems "probable" based on comparison of the various manuscripts, but that approach doesn't work as well with mensuralism. The Easter introit Resurrexi is an especially difficult case because of so many contradictory values in the various sources, and apparent syncopation. Before the introduction of the sequences, the Easter Sunday introit must have been one of the most familiar parts of the proper of any Mass throughout the year, if not the most familiar. It would be understandable for a scribe not to take particular care to be precise in the notation of a chant that was so well known; unfortunately, that doesn't help us! I make the presumption that longer note values, which take more effort to notate in the various systems, should be considered more reliable and faithful to what was actually sung and handed down in cases where the manuscripts contradict each other, unless the "long" source is overwhelmingly outnumbered by "short" readings. Does that seem like a sensible approach?

We know that the chant was disseminated to various parts of Europe at least 125 years before the oldest extant neumed manuscripts. That is a long period of time for changes to creep in for all kinds of reasons. Without evidence to support it, another theory claims that chant was already notated in Rome and the original neumed manuscripts have long since disintegrated. Regardless, the agreement among the tenth-century manuscripts from diverse locations is remarkable. But returning to the Easter introit: there's enough disagreement between L and E for this chant that it's helpful to refer to other sources. Even if we're unable to interpret the other types of neumes at sight, we can compare similar figures from the same chant within a single manuscript. The most helpful site for comparative analysis is omnigreg.at. Examine the neumes for the consecutive words alleluia posuisti and draw your own conclusions. The same alleluia figure occurs three times in the course of the chant. Compare the three for each source to get an idea of the inconsistency of the scribes.

A distinctive feature of Van Biezen's interpretation is that the rhythm is ordinarily binary in nature: short notes come in pairs. If syncopation is to be avoided, it is often necessary to lengthen the last note of a neume or to treat its beginning as an initio debilis note. The best solution isn't necessarily obvious. I am attaching a mensuralist reading of this chant, with some alternatives for alleluia posuisti noted at the bottom. (The alternatives are meant to give options for other possible interpretations, not to imply that the rhythm for the whole line is based on a single manuscript.) I have to admit that modern notation has a cleaner look for mensuralist transcriptions. The episema and dot (punctum mora) have the same interpretation, but I have followed L fairly literally here. A note with both marks is double long, which is a non-literal interpretive marking. The "dotted rhythm" followed by two ornamental notes at the end of facta is Van Biezen's suggested interpretation based on an analogous melodic figure in Byzantine chant. Don't slow down for full bar lines, only for the double bar line.

Other editions for comparison:
Graduale Novum
Gregor und Taube

I wonder, @madorganist, could you be persuaded to write out your Resurrexi in modern notation so that we (well, I anyway) can see more exactly what you mean with the double longs and the ornaments. Perhaps a minim for a long and a semibreve for a double long and a crochet for a short and perhaps a quaver or two for the very-shorts.

(The very names show that we've had some temporal inflation octet the last few centuries.)

Thanks, that helps, sort of! Not sure that I see the connection with

Jan van Biezen's rhythmic discoveries now make Gregorian chant amazingly easy to sing

So, does the written evidence for mensural rhythm, in the period when this music was sung this way, also provide evidence of the steady tactus? Or perhaps that's read into this music from Arabic or Byzantine performance practice?

(I am only an egg, I know nothing.)

So, does the written evidence for mensural rhythm, in the period when this music was sung this way, also provide evidence of the steady tactus? Or perhaps that's read into this music from Arabic or Byzantine performance practice?

The latter. One of the earlier mensuralists surely would have noted it if the former were the case. Blackley writes of the "ordinarily binary nature" of chant but, following Vollaerts and Murray, admits short-long and long-short-long exceptions. (See https://www.scholaantiqua.net/pdfs/RhythmBeforeMid-Twelfth.pdf.)

There is very little difference, ultimately, between them. What is it that sets van Biezen's work apart?

I would say it's his interpretation of ornamental notes. The summary in English (http://www.janvanbiezen.nl/gregorian.html) presents the substance of his theories.

Is Van Biezen wrong when he claims that most semiology is about nuances and "nuances of nuances" rather than fundamentally long and short values? Since Cardine, musicologists for the most part seem to be unimpressed with mensuralism. In the other forum referred to above, it was mentioned that before Van Biezen, Blackley was one of the last to publish on mensuralism, but he self-published instead of submitting his work to peer-reviewed journals. That doesn't mean his research is invalid, but he limited his audience, and he's been mostly quiet for some years. Ricossa has put lots of mensuralist recordings on YouTube, but they're mostly of himself, made with a personal electronic device, with artificial reverb. Blackley's recordings from more than 30 years ago are still probably the best available in mensuralist style. To get an idea of how his interpretation differs from Van Biezen's, let's look at Blackley's edition of the Pentecost introit:

https://www.scholaantiqua.net/rjohnblackley.htm
And the Laon gradual itself:

Already at the second word, we encounter a discrepancy in the hand-copied neumes. Although the a is written, there is no indication that the virga is different from the others, but in fact it's clearly elongated and nearly twice the size of the others in the source. This is exactly the same melodic figure as at facta in the Easter introit, which Van Biezen would interpret as a dotted note followed by a before-the-beat mordent. The same thing happens at continet. (The Graduale Novum is also imprecise about the long form the the Messine virga; compare for yourself.) Otherwise, the neumes appear to be accurate. I'm only concerned here about rhythm, not melody. What else would Van Biezen do differently? Look at the end of terrarum and the word hoc. Blackley seems to interpret the a as applying to the tractulus, which is already long. Others would write short-long-long, but Van Biezen would surely give an initio debilis interpretation to both. We should note that many semiologists would join him for terrarum, which has only a bivirga in E. Back up to replevit. At the second syllable, E gives a long virga+pes instead of double pes. The letters in L might suggest a pes initio debilis (long upper note) followed by a normal pes (long lower note in relation to the previous pes), and no comparison with E or other manuscripts would be needed to arrive at that conclusion. Van Biezen would give an initio debilis again at continet, probably also at the -lu of alleluia right after vocis, and possibly in the next alleluia as well. Could that explain E's use of c as the beginning of those neumes? Blackley misinterprets the epiphonus at omnia and the last two alleluias as short-long. L has another figure for that. The epiphonus is either a single long or two shorts, as he correctly interprets it at the end of Spiritus, at orbem, and at scientiam. (The liquescent s at the end of Spiritus is another can of worms. Does it suggest a voiced [z] sound? Space between the s and d? A "shadow vowel"? Or merely that the s sound has to finish before the beat?) At any rate, this chant is much more straightforward than the Easter introit.

It was not my intention to relate much (if anything) in the way of my own theories, only my understanding of what Jan van Biezen has published.

I particularly liked the recording on youtube by Ricossa. Your example of Blackley's Pentecost introit is quite interesting, but for me a challenge to interpret. Where do the recorded offerings of speculative interpretations by Marcel Perez stand in your estimation?

Every time I see this thread title, I just hum "What is all the fuss about?" to the tune of "Where have all the flowers gone."

It's getting annoying.

Edit: the humming, I mean, and the earworm, not the thread.

I corrected my previous post where I had written omnia instead of continet. I also failed to note the a at the alleluia after vocis. For clarity, here's a rhythmic edition based on the Graduale Novum:

And the same in modern notation:

I did these quickly and may have made errors. There are several discrepancies between L and E:
replevit (already noted above) - virga+pes instead of double pes
terrarum - liquescent at end of first syllable, bivirga instead of pes+tractulus
continet - first note is long in E
scientiam - last three notes are long in E

A good question, Greg - I didn't know of any prohibition of music at Muslim worship. It would definitely seem, though, that the persons who call to prayer from minarets are speaking in a sort of cantilation, if not outright chant.

I have an aunt who married into a muslim family years ago. I was at her house once and remarked at a beautiful manuscript of my uncle's on the wall. She told me that it was the "muslim equivalent of the 'Our Father' and its very beautiful when they sing it". I agree with MJO: calls to prayer are chanting, at least as far as I'm concerned. It is definitely different, but in a weird way, I suspect it is closer—at least in some respects—to what chant likely sounded like a thousand years ago. It's more related to other varieties of eastern music and likely derived from similar provenance to our own chant.

Thanks for drawing our attention to this. She does have a beautiful voice and is singing the Offertory Immittet Angelus in the new Solesmes style. She does it very well.

Dr Ford, what are the aspects of her singing which make it right to say "new Solesmes style"?

I missed the party! Shame on me for checking in once a year or so. I had no clue anyone was bothering to explore this topic so deeply. Thank you, madorganist, for stirring up a subject close to my heart!

There is WAY TOO MUCH to say on the subject of Jan Van Biezen's work. For future readers, I will post my responses to the posts from August 2020.

Please pardon the sequential posts I am about to make. I can't recall Musica Sacra's policy.

Weaknesses of JvB's interpretation

I also saw in a French forum a Gregorian scholar saying that Van Biezen's researches answer all the objections that Cardine raised in relation to Vollaerts' mensuralism

I hope I wasn't the one that said that! On the whole yes, but not case by case. A few of Cardine's minute nitpicks (excluding his ad hominem) concerned cases that Van Biezen's interpretation only allows options for. One has to derive the solutions after the rhythmic interpretation, using formulaic analysis, and that is not always easy to do.

Compare the three for each source to get an idea of the inconsistency of the scribes.

Kenneth Levy has a theory (Gregorian Chant and the Carolingians, 1998) that the neumatic discrepancies --- which, notice, are mostly rhythmic and syntactic, hardly ever affecting the shape of the melodic contour --- are due to typical Early Medieval human error combined with deliberate dialectic derivations into more rhythmically/syntactically precise neum forms from what was earlier a less rhythmically/syntactically precise massively distributed archetype that Charlemagne produced around the 790s or 8-naughts, itself based on one or more 'prototypes' of Paleo-Frankish notation from the decades before. The discrepancies in many cases would indicate details that were not there in the archetype.

Emma Hornby at Bristol, who discovered the formulaic comosition rules of the Tracts, put out a counterargument to Levy's theory some years back, that I have yet to read. Still, Levy's data is pretty thoroughly convincing to anyone who recognizes the sheer impossibility of the observed melodic consistency in the 10th-century neum manuscripts without an 8th-century ancestral source.

Last post.

What comes next after Jan van Biezen's interpretation

There may be a kernel of truth in what he and others have proposed, but it would seem that we can never know with any certitude how the very earliest cantors performed their chant ... not to mention something so basic as how they 'felt' their chant, influenced immeasurably how the chant was performed.

Keyword: It would seem.

This is extremely new research, but the psycho-cognitive framework of musical motion, that moved the Roman cantor in improvising by heart and composing from only a text, is derivable from the structural skeleton of the melody.

It can be parsed by comparing the standard ("Gregorian") and Late Roman ("Old Roman") versions of the Graduals, Tracts, Responsories, and (to a lesser degree) Mass Antiphons (Introits/Communions). I believe 100% that the 'feeling' component of the oral tradition responsible for both Gregorian and Late Roman chant is completely reconstructable by tapping into this framework.

Jan van Biezen's interpretation, while not perfect, basically sheds light on the ground layer of that cognitive framework, namely the feeling of the rhythmic pulse. There are three other layers on top of that to discover before the code is cracked, which concern motivical mechanics, formulaic development, and compositional planing.

If we can crack the code of that framework, we hypothetically have a means of subjecting own hearts to the 'organic' aspect of the first-millennium Roman orality, thus enabling us effectively to resurrect the more important half of the oral tradition, which is its vitality, i.e., the ability to learn and sing 50 to 100 hours of Gregorian chant material by heart, even without paper.

The whole field of Latin chant studies will have to undergo two breakthroughs in progress before they reach this point. First, the musicologists would have to abandon semiology and revisit the neums, using JvB as their starting point, and synthesizing it with the stellar analytical techniques they've developed since the 1980s in their examinations of Latin orality. They would then look past the rhythmically interpreted neums to the true melos, catalogging and explicating the patterns of errors, and reverse-engineering the correct motives behind them, and how they evolved. Finally, they would have the means of scoping the motivic, formulaic, and compositional rationale of each melos, thus 'completing' Gregorian chant, and leaving it to the next 100 years of scholars to reexamine every open problem in light of what was found.

The lessons learned from such a massive, probably half-century-long project would revolutionize the whole field of ecclesiastical, even to the point of deciphering the Mozarabic chant, and resolving the problems of Znamenny rhythm.

Our musicians are parched thirsty for this splendor, but unfortunately musicological progress seem to be stagnating, and the musicologists haven't exactly synthesized their methods. Theories come and go, even the most profound ones, and they pay homage by devoting books to each other, but no one is bold enough to carry any particular proposal to its extreme logical conclusion. By and large, they opt instead for incremental progress, posting articles on Academia.edu and other places whenever they have a thought, but then leaving the topic alone after that.

I may post some conversation starters on this subject over on Musicologie Medievale to get them thinking, and see where it goes.

Anyway, I admit this subject is entirely too complicated to wax on eloquently about in a forum like this.

But, oh, the results! One of these years, we will look back and never again want to bother with unmensurated chant. If we take the science that far, we will glance back at what we have labeled "plainchant" for almost 800 years now, and be utterly baffled at how much sublimity it was missing in hindsight, when we finally restore it.

Jan van Biezen is only the beginning, folks. Don't treat it as perfect. Perfect is yet to come.

madorganist, I looked through some of the examples of the cantatorium link you shared. I have to say, as someone who is unfamiliar with this method, I shudder to think of having to sing from those scores. They are so cluttered with markings one might as well try and sing from the triplex.

@Andrew_Malton
1. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhIyPvt-f6OH-NrVt_emQXAowbu7yL3E0
and 2. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mHA26lIJukaxbCVs18qScVffrac_vyu_8
are ensemble recordings. 3. https://www.youtube.com/user/CantorRomanus/videos Ricossa's are one man singing into a digital recording device, as are 4. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM1uEmpb9_JgPJhOPqDwctw/videos. I believe most of the double-long ("4") values are purely editorial. The Cantatorium site has Van Biezen's examples in Gregorian notation: https://www.cantatorium.com/vanbiezen, and you can compare his modern notation transcription in the Dutch article: http://www.janvanbiezen.nl/gregoriaans.pdf

Honestly, with gregobase, there's really little need (apart from highly-skilled singing directly from the triplex) for terrible copies anymore. It's so easy to print off pristine PDFs these days. I guess a lot of directors just don't know about gregobase.