Getting started in Chant-- a personal note for those intimidated by the discussions or the Colloquiu
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    I have seen notes from parish music leaders that they find the discussions obscure and intimidating, so I am going to offer one that is not intimidating.

    If you don’t know Chant, you can still get yourself ready for the Colloquium, or just learn a pretty melody to use in Church.

    All this talk about being prepared for the Colloquium took me way back, so I am going to try and be as helpful as I can be and state the obvious. No one did it for me, and I had to sort it out myself.

    Which wasn’t easy. I bought every book at the local Newman Bookstore, I looked things up in Grove—I tried everything, and I just could not figure out where to start. (This may be useless because there might be something on the web, but the last time I looked, the lessons all still began in a fog.)

    That’s because everyone wants to use elevated terminology and stress the importance of learning “solfege” from the get-go.

    Fine and dandy, but it sure didn’t help me in the least.

    Finally, one comment buried in the Liber Usualis itself held the key, and that should tell you how far along I was—and how dedicated to finding it out, as the L. Usualis is over $100. It looked beautiful to me as I held it, however.
    So here it is, for all you newbies, the Grand Secret that will unlock all those strange looking notes and the four line staff.

    No obscure terminology will be used.

    Look at some Chant. At the very beginning, you will see a mark looking like a “C” on one line. It can be on different lines. If it has a little mark or hump on the back, choose another piece. You want the one that looks like a simple C.

    1) Put your hands on the white keys of a piano. DO NOT MOVE YOUR HANDS TO THE BLACK KEYS FOR FOUR MONTHS.
    2) Find a C and the next C up an octave. Two that you can sing comfortably.
    3) Now look at the music and find the “C” written at the beginning of the Chant. That is…C. To figure out which notes you are supposed to sing, simply count the lines and spaces: “C,D,E,F…”going up, or “C,B,A,G…”going down.
    4) The “C” can be on different lines. The space above it is always D, the space below always B.
    5) If the melody seems to all go down from the “C” mark, start at your higher C. If it seems to go several lines UP from the C, start on your lower C.
    6) Oh, and when you see a “flat” sign, you get to play the Bb on the black keys, BUT THAT IS IT. Keep those hands on the white keys, for FOUR MONTHS.
    7) Oh, and to start, repeated notes on the same syllable in a word should be treated as a note held for that many counts. There are different ways to sing that, but fighting over that is what the Forum is for!

    That’s it.

    What about the C with a bump in the back? That’s F. But STAY ON THE WHITE KEYS. So you go “F,G,A…” going up, or “F,E,D…” going down. BUT STAY ON THE WHITE KEYS.

    What to do after that?

    Take the basic Chant Mass setting—the Missa Primitiva, whose melodies you now have some idea about from the new Mass setting—and practice those.

    Take the most famous of all Mass Settings—the Missa de Angelis—and learn that. There are some wonderful instructional videos on YouTube by an Italian named Giovanni Vianini.

    Learn those pieces by heart, and every day or two take a very short chant—you can pull them from the Liber Usualis edition available for download on this website—and learn it. Something just one or two lines long, and plonk on the piano. AND DON’T TOUCH THOSE BLACK KEYS.

    You will not believe how much progress you will make.

    And if someone says, “No, no, no. This is IMPROPER, you MUST learn solfege,” feel comfortable enough to say, “I’m getting there. Now leave me alone.”

    So what IS solfege?

    Start with C, and sing “Doh, re,mi…” Insteade of “C,D,E.” That’s it. It will take you months, if you have any music training so that you are used to the note names, to think of “F” as”Fah” and “A” as “La,” but you will.

    So learn you melody, say “F,D,E,C,” (going down) and then sing it with the Solfege names, “Fah, Re, Mi, Doh.” If you can do it from the start, great, but I say learn the melodies first and get comfortable with that. Do, re, Mi, Fa come naturally enough, but I had trouble remembering "sol" (G) and "la" (A).

    The beauty is that you can make "Doh" any note you want--say, an Eb--and then you just sing the melody in that key.

    BUT FOR THE FIRST FOUR MONTHS, DO NOT TOUCH THE BLACK KEYS. Except Bb every once in a while.

    Hope that helps.

    Kenneth
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    This wonderful guide is more complete. A very similar explanation is found on page 3.

    http://ceciliaschola.org/pdf/squarenotes.pdf
  • WendiWendi
    Posts: 638
    I've read and re-read the Idiots guide and it was very helpful.

    But so was your post. Thank you very much.
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    I hope it does, so thanks. I should add that the way my mind works, I can force myself to sing the solfege names, but really I can sightread chant pretty comfortably now, so I only hear the pitch in my head and only think of the name if I have to . The music is key--not the theory. But that took a long time. Right now, newbies should plonk away happily and without embarrassment on the white keys. Except Bb. Every once in a while.
  • Darcy
    Posts: 73
    Everyone learns differently, but for me, even with a modern notation background, I find chant much easier to sight-read when I first sing the scale for the mode of the chant on the solfege syllables and then solfege the pitches. (I learned this from the book Gregorian Chant Master Class, which includes an audio CD so you can listen to the mode scales being sung, and it was reinforced in workshops with Scott Turkington and Father Skeris.) It took a few tries to get comfortable using the solfege syllables, but it comes quickly enough. With regular practice, you can sight-read any chant using this method.

    Having accepted the concept of the moveable "Do" clef in chant, I find it very confusing to think of the "Do" as C. To me, it's not necessary. Just take a little extra time to learn the modes (or keep a reference handy) with solfege. Learn the Do scale first (think "Sound of Music") since it's most familiar to our western ears, noting that there is a half-step between mi and fa, and between ti and do. (Note that there is one flat in chant, which is ti-flat or "te", which you'll find marked in many chants.) When you remember where the half steps fall in solfege, you can get the hang of singing a scale that starts on re for instance, or on fa etc.

    It was an epiphany for me when I realized how helpful it was to sing the mode scale of a chant before trying to sight-read the chant. "I could have had a V-8." Get the Gregorian Chant Master Class if you want a really helpful beginning resource, especially for learning the modes and how to solfege.
  • Torculus
    Posts: 44
    Do you mean the book by Theodore Marier? Available from Amazon.com for $219.08 new? (Before I spend that kind of money, I want to be sure it is the same book you recommend). Thanks.
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    I do have that book, and it taught me a lot.

    However, I can sightread German lieder--but not because of the written notes. With the piano accompaniment, I see to be able to see the relationship between the notes on the pages without associating a certain note with a certain pitch.

    Which makes Chant very hard to do solo. (I find the same freedom when I am singing Chant with someone--again, I can see the relationships, but cannot correlate the note from a page with a pitch without other pitches.)

    The Milanese I mentioned, Giovanni Vianini, has had a schola for years, walks around Milan with a tripod and a camera, and does demonstration videos in whatever church strikes his fancy--exactly the kind of person who has kept sacred music alive, and supports CMA. And in one of his how-to videos, he says that the first thing he does is sit down at the keyboard and make sure the melody is correct.

    Of course, in Southern Europe, (the reference books tell me), "Doh" IS "C"--they don't do solfege, strictly speaking. They treat it as a fixed scale.

    So try whichever way works, I guess. I'm not going to let anyone gainsay my pitch or skills as a musician, but I cannot do it just by sight, and, just from comments on this site, I know other musicians find it mystifying. Whatever works, that's the way to use.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    Southern Europe got it right, "Doh" is "C" - where do you think the stylized C and F for the Doh and Fah clefs come from? People need to get it into their heads the fact that there was a "moveable C" (which G.C. modernists call "moveable Doh") - which was prevalent once (before instrumental music took sway). Some places one used "Doh, Re, ..." and some places used "C, D, ..." - they were pretty much interchangeable, depending upon the local lingua franca.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    [Delete double post because of server hiccup]
  • WendiWendi
    Posts: 638
    GIA has the book by Theodore Marier for 38.00

    http://www.giamusic.com/search_details.cfm?title_id=9339

    Is that the right book though?
  • Darcy
    Posts: 73
    The Marier book is the one I mean, Gregorian Chant Master Class. Scott Turkington conducted the chant examples and narrates on the CD. It's $29.95 from the Abbey of Regina Laudis (the religious order that is heard on the CD) http://www.abbeyofreginalaudis.com/sitelive/cds/order/orderform.htm.
  • Darcy
    Posts: 73
    I guess I'm too entrenched in keyboarding, C is a specific, exact pitch in my mind. I don't associate Do with a specific pitch, so it's easier for me to think of it as something that can change. To each their own.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    To anyone who has played several transposing instruments, a written "C" would sound as:

    B-flat for a B-flat clarinet, B-flat trumpet, (treble clef notated) trombone or baritone horn, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone

    E-flat for an alto saxophone, E-flat sopranino clarinet, baritone saxophone, E-flat mellophone

    F for an English horn, modern French horn, alto or bass recorder, or the F trumpet (valved) specified, for example, in some Bruckner symphonies

    A for an oboe d'amore, A clarinet

    D-flat for D-flat piccolo

    D for a D (piccolo) trumpet

    G for an alto flute or a 5 1/3 ft. organ stop (eg. quint), and G a twelfth above the written C for a 2 2/3 ft. organ stop (eg. twelfth)

    E (two octaves and a major third above the written C) for a 1 3/5ft organ stop (tierce)

    C an octave down for a string bass

    C an octave above for a C piccolo

    B for any of several instruments tuned for Renaissance pitch

    In addition, natural horns and trumpets were often supplied with several "crooks" which could allow written "C" to sound at any of several pitches other than C.

    Singers a couple of hundred or so years, especially if they travelled, sang written "C" at any of a number of different pitches that ranged well over a fourth. And, in addition, polyphonic choral music of the Renaissance was often notated at pitches and in clefs that were quite different from the pitches at which the works were sung: the C, G, and F of the C-, G-, and F-clefs were indeed moveable. In England and Germany and several other countries C was called "C". In Italy, France, Spain and some other countries, C was called "Do" ( the "doh" spelling is for West Pondelians who don't know that the word is of Italian origin).

    Frankly, it strikes me as somewhat elitist to insist that the "Doh" and "Fah" clefs (which I wish people would at least spell "Do" and "Fa") are somehow different than "C" and "F" clefs "because the Doh and Fah are moveable" (with the implication that C a nd F are not moveable). It's okay to think in terms of solfege syllables of a scale, but one must realize that the same syllables have a different meaning in other languages.

    Franck's symphony "en Re mineur" is "in D minor" - "Re" is "D" - at least if we are willing to be a bit more cosmopolitan.

    And, as far as reading/singing music written in G-, C-, or F-clefs is concerned, it's all about knowing where the whole steps and half steps are - just as the "FahDoh"talitarians have learned and tell us.
  • Torculus
    Posts: 44
    Thanks, Wendi and Darcy. I wonder how it is that amazon.com sells this same thing for more than $200? Even the used ones are more than $70.
  • Darcy
    Posts: 73
    Used book sellers on Amazon have their systems for pricing books. If there aren't many other copies selling, they give it a rare book price in hopes someone will bite.
  • TCJ
    Posts: 986
    Today I picked up my Liber read a couple pages of the instructions at the beginning and did exactly what amindthatsuits stated. And then I came here and read his method. I'm also using the chant Masses that I'm familiar with to learn what's what in chant notation. Since I'm familiar with three different Mass settings, I get some variety, too!
  • AOZ
    Posts: 369
    Sometimes I am surprised at how many people think they really need to prepare before the Colloquium re: chant. As if the Colloquium were some big, intimidating thing!!! There is nothing wrong with not having a background in chant and then taking the beginning course at the Colloquium. This year especially we're gearing up to do some very basic teaching. There will be plenty of people there who don't know what solfege is, why we sing on four lines instead of five, etc. People, relax! It's going to be loads of fun.
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