Eamon, this is a good guide to reading St. Gall, but he seems to be under the impression that a beginning schola should actually sing from St. Gall. Actually he goes further. He believes that singers should not have any music and instead should learn everything by rote under the iron hand of a master director. What's more, he is against counting and opposes anything like normal musical rhythm.

I can't even imagine what a schola would sound like under these conditions.

In any case, the whole project is rather dubious on the face of it: chant made simple in which lesson #1 is St. Gall from the Triplex???? I can't understand what the publisher was thinking in giving this book that title.

That aside, there are some good interpretative remarks here concerning specific chants and, as I say, he provides a rough and ready overview of early neumes - not that a parish schola ever needs to know about these.

What about this view that singers should just repeat what the chant master does? That they should learn by listening only?

Yes, that's true. But I can recall all-to-well singing with a large schola that prided itself on singing all the propers every week at the EF. One day the director had to be away. Not a single member of the schola could render even the simplest chant. It turns out--and I was not aware of this for years--that no one was actually singing the music. Someone could have come along and changed all the notes and rhythms in their Libers and it wouldn't have made a bit of difference. They had become masters of mimicking the directors sounds, a fraction of second late. It was like the kid's game of saying what another person is saying an instant later. To me this was just tragic. The director had taken a short cut early on and look what happened. No investment was made in these people's educations. Of course they didn't really sing together because they weren't actually singing so much as mimicking sounds.

I can understand the grave temptation on the part of directors to do this, dominating the sound with their leadership and sound and dragging everyone else along. It takes conscious effort to avoid this pitfall and it requires making a big investment in the singer's own personal capacity for producing a good sound.

Jeffrey, I have no doubt of your mastery and I long for the day when all your students are turned out into the world to populate Catholic parishes as music directors. Every report is that you have set up a model and ideal at your parish, and you deserve every bit of congratulations for your work. And I would certainly defer to your mastery and experience as compared with mine, which is minimal by comparison. At the same time, I wonder if you see the danger associated with the method of pedagogy that discourages reading and independent production of music (and I'm not suggesting that is your approach) in favor of rote listening and reproduction?

By the way, I see this as a problem of old fashioned Suzuki violin too, and this is one reason that it isn't used much anymore. There are good things about ear training but there surely must be more to it than that.

Just a little clarification. Fr. Ruff did not suggest St. Gall/Laon natation be used specifically as a conducting tool. My comment was in
reference to a previous discussion.

Note to Jeff Morse: I look forward to meeting you sometime. I've heard a lot of wonderful things about you! Will you attend the CMAA
Colloquium this June?


Janice Clark, Music Director

Schola cantorum of St. Anselm
St. Anselm Church
Ross, California

Music Program for the EF Mass
Chapel of the Holy Rosary
St. Vincent School for Boys
Marinwood, California

Road trip!

My volunteer choir is not made up of amateur musicians, but mostly non-musicians. I find they sing with more expression when learning something by rote than my professional choir can when reading from notation. Untrained singers even seem to memorize "timing" instead of rhythm, so that if the tempo is changed it's like a new piece. Some even memorize pitches, so if a different starting pitch is given they don't recognize the sound. I think teaching by rote can be a very valuable tool for getting a nuanced performance, provided the director really is a master singer himself.

This goes for music in modern notation as well. I swear some singers think that a composer writes down music first and then says "Now let's find out what this sounds like" rather than hearing the music first and then trying to communicate it in a written form. I spend more time trying to explain that just because you see five eighth notes in a row doesn't mean they are all going to have the same rhythm, or that just because a composer didn't write a hairpin mark doesn't mean there is to be no change in dynamic during a phrase.

So while rote learning can be helpful, one doesn't want a choir just to mimic. I sometimes like to give my choir two or three recordings of the same piece to listen to, so they can hear what they have in common (in most cases, what's on the page) and how they are different (interpretation).

Knowing the difference between a quarter note and a half note, for example, and knowing how to count is really very basic and after being able to match pitch, I require this basic knowledge of the singers in my choirs. The choristers are different of course (they come in at 7 or 8 years old), I take care of teaching them chant notation and modern notation (the last with the help of the Royal School of Church Music's chorister training program). When the choristers are learning polyphony with tricky rhythms I have them count, clap and sing these rhythms, often all at the same time! The chorister audition therefore, focuses on the ability to match pitch and to read words, they are also strongly encouraged to take piano or another instrument at the same time. So yes Jeffrey, I would heartily agree about the necessity of a knowledge of rhythm in modern notation for choir members, at least a basic knowledge.

Now, the Chant Made Simple states that Dr. Robert Fowells founded the "Los Angeles Gregorian Schola at California State University, Los Angeles". Does anyone know ANYTHING about this group? I did a couple of simple searches, to little avail. I will keep searching and post any information, but I was hoping one of our forum members might know more.

It is very exciting to hear about your program, Jeffrey M.! Thank you for sharing your experiences. I hope to share similar success stories after a few years of rigorous building at my current parish.

In regard to the Triplex--As a director, I use it exclusively but have to say that I do not expect to singers to necessarily sing from it. I have them use the Gregorian Missal, although they take notes in it, adding some of the rhythmic and expressive nuance that I pull from the Triplex. I also require all of the musicianship that is required to read the notation and accurately sing the pitches--I wouldn't endorse singing from just St. Gall notation. I have to say, though, that I could see why it would be tempting to do so. When talking to any musical performer they will almost always tell you that you will have a better command of the music when the music is memorized--especially when the music is complex. My fear in exclusively using St. Gall and rote learning, though, resonates with Jeffrey T's experience described above. There's an element of "catching a man a fish" and "teaching a man to fish" here and I would rather build a program that can go on without me than one that is useless if I am not present. I will say, though, that notation like this engraving at Gregor und Taube would be very useful to me and I would teach any and every singer to sing from editions like this in a heartbeat! The St. Gall notation corresponds perfectly to the square note notation and a singer could sing from the St. Gall if they know the melody by rote, or from the diastematic notation if they do not, or both if they are able. What a joy it would be to me if we had a complete Graduale typeset in this fashion!

Bruce, have you looked through Dom Gajard's essay on Mocq and the old Solesmes method? He says something very similar to what you say here.

Jeffrey T.-- Can you provide a link for the Gajard essay? I'm not sure if I've read it but would like to.

Jeffrey Tucker: Were you referring to the essay Jeff Ostrowski had in mind? If so, can you point to the section you had in mind. I read through it and could not figure out where he might have been saying what I said.

We are not going to resolve a one-hundred-year-old dispute here; but I cannot forbear to make the following points

He asserts that when an accented syllable is set to a single note and the following un-accented syllable is set to a multi-note neume, the multi-note neume “draws” the rhythmic impulse to its first note. He offers no evidence in support of this assertion.

He derides as “labour-saving formulas” the systems of those who define rhythm as “a matter of intensity ... [that] consists in the alternation of strong and weak sounds...”

To support his stand he proposes that “ we give to each [note in a group of eight] an equal stress but arrange them by duration, doubling the length of every other note. “Once again,” he writes, “ the sounds fall into groups of two; no longer by means of intensity but of duration. The grouping is equally real, but is formed in another manner.”

He ignores the fact that the human voice cannot give an equal stress to each of the eight notes in the group. We can render them as:

SHORT long SHORT long SHORT long SHORT LONG

or as

short LONG short LONG short LONG short LONG

and, possibly, in other ways; but we cannot sing more than two notes without placing some degree of stress on one of them, and it cannot sing more than three notes without placing some degree of stress on two of them.

He asserts that classical Latin had a pitch accent. Some linguists agree with him. Others disagree. But linguists are united in saying that by the fourth century A.D. Latin had lost its pitch accent--if it ever had one--and had acquired a stress accent.

He refers to the quantitative meter of classical Latin poetry. Medieval Latin poetry (e.g., the hymns of Ambrose) was not based upon quantitative meter but upon accentual meter. And medieval Latin prose rhythm was certainly based upon accents.

He scans a passage from one of G.F. Handel's compositions according to the Solesmes Method, thereby proving that it is possible to do so; but he prompts me to ask, "to what advantage..."

It is POSSIBLE to scan chant according to his rules; but once again, I raise the question, "What is the advantage of adopting such a counter-intuitive system of rhythmic analysis?"