I'm not a professional but IMO if you have such an opportunity go for it. Once I got the hang of reading neumes I found it easier to follow than modern notation.

Do progress with your plan. What a wonderful didactic opportunity: having your people read the square notes to music they already know. I hope you proceed as planned. I have had some people tell me that they couldn't make sense of square notes. I have had more people tell me that they were easier to read than modern notes. So, it's a question of by whom are you going to be influenced. We all know that whiners make more noise, and too much of the time get their way even if they are a pitiful few in comparative numbers. And, what a godsend that your pastor is actively favourable.

Even in very modern parishes, I always give neumes to the congregation when I give them chant. It sends the message that this is different and shouldn't sound like music written in modern notation.

When we first hosted our brand new bishop at the Rite of Election this last Lent, we used SEP full on with congregants from all over our two county deanery. Nary a complaint, full engaged congregation joining antiphon (in SQUARE NOTES) and all's well. We've done other similar mixed notation ordos with equal dexterity and no cognitive dissonance voiced.

I don't have any choice, since the pastor will not allow the congregation to be given neumes. That's fine with me, since I can work with either neumes or modern notation. I'm not against neumes, but I am not fascinated with them, either. I know some wax nearly poetic about neumes. But they are just ink blots on a page conveying information, nothing more. As for the OF congregation, many have had years of school music training in modern notation. I am not sure they are comfortable with neumes, and I find no good reasons why they need to be. That notation is likely more relevant to our EF congregation, since they use much more chant.

I am not overly attached to notes on a page, whether square or round. It seems to me that any notation system, in the hands of a competent musician, can produce great results.

Liam said:

To step back to the more general question, for congregations in general: It can be more of a problem for the musically literate than the musically illiterate.

This! I have taught several choirs, most of them musical amateurs, to chant from scratch, and they almost universally agree that neumes are much more intuitive than modern notation.

"Oh, you sing the lower one, then the upper one? That makes so much more sense!"

A serious note to follow up on my "neumes just look cool" comment: As JT has said before, there's something about the sheer differentness of neumes that imparts the message, 'hey, this is different than anything I'd see in the secular world.'

Mass isn't the time to teach people to read music, neumes or otherwise. Some would refuse to learn anyway, others would be eager to learn; most would be somewhere in between. Many could learn just through repeated exposure. In any case, I don't think it'd take much more than a brief, even off-hand remark from a priest or other authority figure to positively change the general perception of neumes and of sacred music in general… something like, 'this chant notation is really easy to learn, and it conveys such a beautiful and important part of our faith; I'm so glad our music director has provided us with this.'

Great discussion! I'm following it eagerly! Keep it up!

And don't forget the one most important advantage of neumes over MN: they almost always take up less space on the page. That means using neumes means YOU'RE GOING GREEN!!!

That alone should get the liberals on board.

Oh, not on this board. I mean in general. I can't think of finding any liberal on a forum that has a latin name, for pete's sake!!

Long ago, we decided to make leaflets for each Sunday with everything the congregation needed, both proper texts and ordinary with musical notation; volunteers made them. They insisted upon using the neumes, regardless of my apprehension on the issue. This apprehension was unwarranted; they have worked well for nearly 40 years. In my view, those who do not read music can follow the contour of the melody more easily with neumes, and they do so; what the congregation is singing is the ordinary, so the reading is sustained by memory and practice of singing the same chants over more than one Sunday. Those who do read music seem to be able to make the transition on the same grounds. I have only had one person, a prospective choir member, who said that he could not read the neumes, even after several rehearsals, and he was a Juliard-trained pianist.

MJO, agreed.
I love Prof. Mahrt's story about the Juliard pianist. The biggest hurdles are faced by those who read standard notation.
I suppose that's a silver lining of having a largely musically illiterate society in most of the US?

As a singer myself, I can say we are, on the whole, a rather spoiled and lazy lot. We tend to try our best to get by without too much theory, or skill drills. It's a constant embarrassment for singers who strive to be good musicians.

Then again, when singers are paid a lot less than other musicians, (thankfully this isn't my situation) they feel they are justified in not working as hard as they should. It's a bad cycle.

When parishes and cathedrals want good singing, they should invest in good singers. (Who expects virtuostic organ playing from a volunteer or underpaid organsit?) It was, after all, the skilled singers that took up chant propers and polyphony initially.

But when I say these things, I'm considered a rebel. Alas.

So as not to derail the thread more than I have...
up with neumes!

Although I don't wish to take issue with som:e of the comments made, I do wish to make a couple of points.

(1) Of course, we all know that singers are the worst readers, anyway: most of them cannot read a score from sight without a piano or sing well without coaching.

One of the very worst things that one can do when teaching chant or other a cappella music is to use the piano or organ as a means of learning the music. The (usually equal) temperament of a keyboard instrument completely destroys the proper temperament of the musical lines and, for polyphony, the tuning of the musical ensemble. And reliance upon repeated hearing ones part banged out on a keyboard can greatly impede (or even prevent) the learning process necessary for singing the music correctly. In the twelve years I sang with the early music ensemble Zephyrus, the only time a keyboard was ever used was for accompaniment of Baroque and late Renaissance works that actually had accompaniments! If and when a singer had difficulty with a part in rehearsal, the director did not play the part on a keyboard instrument but had the all the singers of that part sing it again, perhaps with him singing along, after pointing out the error(s). It was a far more rapid learning process for these singers than I have experienced when learning and singing such music with other choirs and ensembles that rely on the hired accompanist to "play along" with a cappella music until the singers learn their parts and using the piano to "correct" mistakes in individual parts. Singing, particularly a cappella music, is all about listening, listening, listening – to each other, not just to a keyboard instrument – and realizing just how one fits into the ensemble, whether monophonic chant or complex polyphony.

(2) They insisted upon using the neumes, regardless of my apprehension on the issue. This apprehension was unwarranted ... I have only had one person, a prospective choir member, who said that he could not read the neumes, even after several rehearsals, and he was a Juliard-trained pianist.

    The biggest hurdles are faced by those who read standard notation.

    Yes, often it is that the real musicians who read music quite well are the ones who throw the greatest boulders in our way. They often shamelessly refuse to learn neumes, and would fain yet for us to regard them as complete church musicians ... [H]e was told by all the professional choir singers he knows (quite a few!) that they couldn't and wouldn't read square notes.

Learning to read basic neumes is really, really easy... very simple: what are people saying about themselves or others when they say that they can't learn neumes??? I would say that that was evidence of being rather mentally challenged. Either that, or we are being played games with by some very shamelessly facetious people

For the most part, I have to agree with MJO's last paragraph that learning to read basic neumes is quite easy. I do, however, have a problem with the oft-declared shibboleth here that trained singers, usually professional but also others without previous exposure to neumes, cannot or will not learn neumes and continually throw up their hands in dismay and make vociferous objections to them. Sure, we get anecdotes; indeed, Prof. Mahrt gaves us a total of precisely one example from his years of experience without problems, who happened to be a Juilliard trained pianist. I suspect that others making blanket pronouncements upon the expressed disdain which professional singers have about learning neumes borders on a certain amount of hyperbole. There are, indeed, professional (and other) singers who don't like or have difficulty with learning neumes, but in my experience they are way, way, way in the minority of real singers; in fact, the fraction of such singers is probably not much at variance with the fraction of untrained or non-active singers, many of whom might profess that they cannot read any sort of musical notation and only learn by rote.

The branding of trained singers with what is really just a problem with a few singers is, in my opinion, unfair. These few singers may have legitimate reasons for not wishing or being able to invest the effort to learn neumes: other overriding professional commitments, or an honorable feeling on their part that learning neumes might well entail a long-lasting and thorough study to do the matter the justice that it deserves, or some sort of genuine dislike of or inability to appreciate chant accompanying a complete lack of desire to sing chant (for whatever reason, not unlike those in the congregations who simply will not sing anything for a host of reasons). A singer in a professional or semi-professional chorus, when presented with neumes and told that this is something they must sing, will either learn them (with or without grumbling) in almost every instance; and, if not, then they will leave the group (or be dismissed).

If you want another anecdote, here is one from the other side. In my dozen seasons with Zephyrus, from the very first concert in which the off verses of Palestrina's "A solis ortus cardine" were sung in square notation from the Liber, on through many other instances of having to sing chant from neumes (rather than standard notation or stemless round notes), there was never a single complaint from any singer. We simply did our work and rejoiced that we could make beautiful music. Although the group never exceeded 18 singers at any time, this represents a total in excess of 40 different singers. The director was initially using a notation program that could not do stemless notes. And when that program (written by the singer whom I replaced) was no longer supported, he switched to Finale (which I had begun using, too), and sometimes used stemless round notes (the Finale early music notation plug-in was way too quirky to be of use), although we both lamented it when we did. However, more often than not, we would sing from neumes. Additionally, with my short stints as choir director in both Catholic and Episcopal churches, I never had problems with having singers learn basic neumes.

By all means, use square notation and neumes! But do it without adverse commentary or apology. And, please! please do not denigrate trained and professional singers as a class, by highlighing the point that there are a some who have problems with neumes. Such an attitude does nothing but foment discord where, instead, there should be harmony (or unison). We are a family, a confraternity of church musicians, of one sort or another, but a family nonetheless. It's better, if you need to, to bite your tongue and say nothing. I apologize to any who might think I should have continued to bite my own tongue and say nothing on this issue, but I have far too many dear friends whom I treasure in both camps (professional and non-professional) to say nothing.

I've worked exclusively with neumes at my school job (K-8) and with another congregation where I work on Sundays.

Both children and adults are easily able to read them (ordinaries from MR3 and propers from SEP), and have said that its easier to follow - especially, as someone else noted, on some of the vertical neumes.

How much easier is it to see that a single syllable gets two notes than to have two notes directly above that syllable?

Neumes definitely have a legitimate use. Unfortunately, some would imbue them with near divinity. Some anachronistic individuals do appear to have an unrealistic attachment to them. I fully expect one day, for some nut case to proudly post that he has set the Beethoven 9th to neumes - PDF attached. Neumes are a system of notation, nothing more. They work for chant and appear relatively useless for much else.

I am in agreement, StDenis, that most congregations do sing based on familiarity and don't need music after an initial learning period.

Yes, but that happened in a culture of orality rather than literacy. People in our culture would have a hard time remembering a Homeric epic by heart the way people in oral cultures would. The advent of literacy and the expectations created by it re-wires the brain, in point of fact. So, even with people who are musically illiterate, if they are otherwise literate, you are not dealing with the same capabilities in large as would be the a case in a truly oral culture.

Regarding "oral teaching", I'd like to see some understanding here that the congregation is not a homogeneous body - it rarely is. You often have visitors, neophytes, or even an ad hoc congregation altogether. To give a congregation "just the words" and make them memorize a melody they hear once every 168 hours is an offense against good hospitality for the regular attendee, let alone the newcomer who will not have had the benefit of being educated in these melodies.

At the VERY least, I always make an effort, when a hymn board is available, to clearly mark the Mass ordinary numbers on the hymn board. Preferable is to the put the music notation - whatever you want it to be - in their hands.

Just this weekend, my sister (not a musician) told me how she stands mute at her church because they use only a screen with lyrics on it. Giving only the words says, "we don't care whether you sing or not." Message received.

A friend of mine posted on my Facebook today that when she visited Trinité in Paris not too long ago (this was, of course, Messiaen's parish), they passed out a sheet with neumes on it and everyone sang, including the children. Go figure!