Thank you very much. I have already read this important book and learned something I previously ignored: Dom Guéranger, the founder of the monastery, reformed the style of chanting long before the reformation of the chant books! Which means, simply put, that the monks would sing from an old edition, let's say for example the Editio Medicaea, in a way that would remind us perhaps of the modern "mainstream" practice. You, as a specialist, would notice, of course, immediately that the melodies are "wrong". But I would not be able to tell the difference! This is my question: Was Dom Guéranger's style really completely new? Is it possible? Was the chant tradition completely broken in Europe? When I hear the early chant recordings from Father J. Weber's CD, which were made long before the wide dissemination of the Solesmes recordings, I don't find the basic style to be essentially different (with a couple of exceptions). How "old" is this way of singing?
You will ask perhaps: Why is this so important? Because it is the key to a very significant aspect, that of the "continuity". The melodies we use today in the Greek Orthodox Church are also different from the medieval ones. But if I transcribe a chant from a medieval manuscript and try to sing it, I will use the vocal style and the embellishments that are familiar to me and to the people. So if I perform it in the liturgy, some people will hardly notice anything! This is my point. I assume that a common ground in chant performance existed also in the West, even in the time of decadence. But this is only an assumption.