No need to worry, Leon. Mahrt, Turkington, Poterak, Ostrowski, OostZinner, Brouwers, Donelson and Carr-Wilson are ON THE JOB. And if you were fortunate to be at last summer's colloquium with Ostrowski, you got both sides of the coin: you do the homework, in the end you follow the director. Period.

FNJ:
A device that lets you hear the past.... have you read Godel, Escher, Bach?

Adam, I'm sure that the Wenger Corporation is testing just such a digital device. Just like Rogers and Allen, dial up one of the four choirs at San Marco, Venice in your cubicle, mic/speaker enhanced room, or St. John the Divine, NYC, Rheims, or the LDS Temple in SLC, or Brooklyn Tabernacle or Hillsong, Australia,and boom, you dere.
Now if we could find a mosquito in resin that sucked some blood out of Palestrina or Lassus, and go all Jurassic......shivers.

This is an ages old post, I realize, but I am the author of "A Blessing in Disguise," and I find that this is an interesting point to raise--and one I'd love to follow up with someday.

My published thesis, the work of over a year of research and a grant from my secular state university, in Sacred Music was in fact concluded thus:
"There is no single answer to how to perform Gregorian chant: it has a rich and diverse tradition and always has had. Scholas such as the Cor Immaculatae Schola Cantorum and the Schola of the Pittsburgh Oratory may choose to practice the Solesmes method because of aesthetic choice or availability of its editions, but all those who practice chant should be made aware of the range of performance styles being explored today.

Final decisions regarding rhythm, melody, stress, vocal technique, and pronunciation lie with the individual schola director. Advocates and followers of Solesmes must not ignore the "blessing in disguise" of the post-Vatican II re-exploration of chant. Solesmes does present a practical and applicable rhythmic method for chant that is aesthetically pleasing today. When one steps back to look at chant throughout the ups and downs of its history, one finds that it never died. Chant is still a living form of music, growing and changing with great diversity just as it did over a thousand years ago. The practice of Gregorian chant gives musicians the freedom to choose a style or mixture of performance styles most appealing to their taste from the numerous methods that have been developed. The riches of the Gregorian tradition continue into the new millennium."

Read more: http://www.readperiodicals.com/201010/2291656681....

While agreeing basically with Francis, I would suggest some nuance of an historical nature. Yes, there are as many ways correctly to perform chant as there are scholas and choirmasters. (And, as we all know, The Choirmaster, whoever or wherever he may be, is the final authority on what is correct... except those who readily admit their scholarly shortcomings.) Going beyond this, however, I would suggest that while we may allow that chanting according to a method claiming (falsely!) to be that of Solesmes, or in the style of the XVIIIth, XIVth, or XIIth centuries, or as the choirmaster in a village in rural South Dakota understands it, all have a certain validity relevant to the genuine artistry and musicianship which is in evidence, we might, nevertheless, consider a thoughtfully informed approach which adheres more or less accurately to current scholarship's understanding of the very earliest notation which we have (which is Carolingian) to be of a category considerably preferred and with greater claim to probable 'authenticity' (however understood) than those representative of later eras. It was, Fr Columba reminded me during his recent visit to Houston, Hucbald, after all, who said that one needed the square notation to know what pitches to sing, but the Carolingian neumes to know HOW to sing them. One is hopelessly subjective, it seems to me, whenever and to whatever degree, he fails to avail himself of the true wisdom had in an approach informed by semiological scholarship. Such a one is not, ontologically, performing chant The Correct Way, but My Way, or the Mid-XXth Century Way, the This or That Method, or the Medicean Way, or What Have You. Absent of semiology all interpretations are equal in their lack of claim to any but a self-referential validity.

And, I would add that chant is fundamentally in the capacity of an ancilla verbae. This would seem elementary. But, I have suffered through inumerable performances, offerings of chant (or witnessed numerous rehearsals) in which the greatest concern, time, and effort was put into the notes and how 'correctly' to perform that salicus or whatever according to this or that method, with scant if any discussion of the text. Chant begins and ends with the WORDS that it exists to communicate. The words are due to be studied BEFORE one even tries to sing the notes of the chant. They are the first and last objects of interest, their meaning the most important aspect to bring to life. Before singing, study the grammar! The grammar, after all, was all that the early cantors had in their cantatoria to sing chants which they had spent years commiting to memory.

Thank you. I think that your responses agree more with my original article which did not intend at all to be "individualistic," etc.

Ah. Glad it was food for thought/refutation... I think the original poster of this thread misread my article in Sacred Music. It was the farthest thing from being individualistic--and it seems like the people who commented on the thread following that weren't aware of what my article really said. In fact, I was talking about Mahrt, Donelson, Justine Ward, Mary Berry, and Solesmes in my extensive research of modern and historical interpretations--everyone doing their best to be true to the purpose of chant.

In fact, see if this link works (that issue isn't up on the archives for some reason):
http://www.scribd.com/doc/51552124/Fall-2010-Issue-of-Sacred-Music

Yes, yes.

And your original article does not (to me) suggest either of the two "heresies" of free-for-all individualism and fundamentalist Platonism. (As I said in the article, and above - I didn't think you thought either of those things.)

But: your hasty late-night quotable, and the responses that followed, was a blessing in disguise for me. The essay at the Cafe is essentially one that's been floating around in the Platonic perfection of my brain-space, yet imperfect in its lack of instantiation. Like sugar hyper-dissolved in water (WHY CAN'T I STOP WITH THE ANALOGIES AND METAPHORS?!), it needed some thread on which crystallize. So thanks for that.

Not sure why there is any contention,

our duty and responsibility to try to determine the most accurate way to sing, the most accurate style, the most accurate notation.

No one said there was a "duty and responsibility" to, for want of a better verb, enforce this accuracy, merely to be aware of it.
"Pastoral" realities apply.
And note that she said nothing about "ideal."
Don't all of us kinda work on a sliding scale of doing the best we can, with what we can know, given our situations? wouldn't accuracy be part of that?
Aren't all of us, hopefully, growing in our knowledge?

(Save the Liturgy, save the World)

Actually, everyone has missed the boat on chant. Chant was developed by Guido the Gimpy before records were kept of such things. Guido discovered that the second beat of every two-note pattern received the accent, just like he walked with his wooden leg. So every 2nd note accent goes ka-THUNK with the accent on thunk.

Guido also had his first organum at the age of twelve. He found it so pleasurable, he highly recommended that all musicians should have frequent organums.

On a more serious note - F## which is always serious - archaeologism, which Pius XII referred to as "exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism," came to my attention during the 1960s. I was a teenager at the time, and saw it developing in organ performance, instruments and in liturgy. Suddenly, there was this "right way" to do things based on the practices of the ancients in that pure time when God was in his heaven and all was surely right with the world.

I agree that God was, is, and will ever be in his heaven, but rarely has everything been right with the world. Archaeologism ignores the fact that organic development happens for good reasons. Things change over time, and they always will. That is not automatically a bad thing.

Or apparitional hysteriography, perhaps?. Do we really know if current performance practice is authentic, or just the way current scholars enjoy having their ears tickled?

If we were able, by some miraculous means, to go back and hear music performed in the 10th century, could we stand listening to it? No one knows, but we do have several hundred years worth of written music where we can see the organic development over time. Those documented changes have been significant.

All this is hard to describe, but a former organ prof said, "When you play, make it musical and beautiful." I knew what she meant.

So, um, does this mean that now, really to be on the cusp of musicological evolution, we have to incorporate Aspirationl Historiography into our chant interpretation?

Well- the whole idea is this is a way of understanding what other people are doing as a cultural phenomenon.

A: Have you read Adam Wood's argument that the Middle Ages represent a period of unparalleled academic freedom and economic activity, within the context of a society ordered around a fundamentally liturgical understanding of the universe?

B: Yeah. I liked some of what he said, but I think he's engaging in a bit of aspirational historiography.

how, according to this system, would one perform correctly (authentically or 'authentically') the salicus?

In the manner that best expresses your deepest longings and unspoken hopes for the culture.

This 1,000 year old tradition, may have been altered numerous times before it was first written down. This guy's take is as speculative as anyone else's. Even after writing it on paper, it has been open to wildly differing interpretations ever since.

"exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism,"

Charles. Another slant on your slant.

I always steer clear of bumpy pronouncements like this, even if they carry some truth or are declared by a prelate. It's a loaded phrase that modernists love to wield to bolster the argument in dismissal of tradition. I think the word "Archaeologism" (very similar in slant) was invented in the last century, (by modernists) and may likely become known as a heresy of the 20th Century in the future.

Francis, it seems to me that much of the liturgical disruption we have both witnessed, stems from discontent with what we had. It is an attempt to recreate what once was, or at least what some think once was. Unfortunately, it destroys centuries of genuine organic development. The problem I see with such archaeologism is that current recreations of past practices are now completely out of context and are divorced from the philosophies and cultures in which they developed and made sense. It also seems to me that there is a listlessness in the modern world similar in some ways to what the ancient monks called acedia or accidie. Have you noticed that the revisionists are really never happy with anything related to tradition? There is this restless and pointless search and striving for something that even if found, might not be understood.

Charles... Yes there are 'the poles' of the liturgy wars, or as one of my good priest friends call it, the pew wars. But for the most part, the TLM was celebrated right up until VII with all the trappings. It wasn't an 'antiquated' event by any stretch of the imagination. I celebrated it when I was first an altar boy, in all it's pristine and perfect form. It wasn't staged or fake or anything that 'harkened back' to an ideal time. It WAS the MASS. I remember the sudden change. And even then at the age of 7, my world was rocked as I did not understand what was happening or why, but the loss and sense of something going very wrong was very much present to me even then as I remember that era very distinctly.

As for MJO, perhaps he can give us some insight into his retraction. I haven't ever posted something I wanted to take back (yet) because I always hit the SAVE AS DRAFT if I have the slightest inkling I am speaking from my stomach instead of my brain. With MJO the greatest fear he would realize would be someone gutting his console and putting in a simulacrum. I think he would just expire at that point.

ah... thanks for the clarification.

If I ever reach a point where people referred to me as antiquarian, I think I would have to take it as a compliment.

People who label and insult others are nothing but idiotic fussbudgets.

My opinion (to restate, since no one seems to know what I mean) is this:

Some old things are good. Some good things are old. Some old good things have been abandoned, and it would be good to start doing them again - and blessed are they who do the work to discover them, uncover them, and revive them.

At the same time, its good to recognize that our knowledge of the past is often sketchy, reconstructed, and incomplete. This is helpful, so that one doesn't become dogmatic about things which not only might not matter, but might not even be factual. But, other than being wrong (which usually doesn't matter) and being occasionally annoying, this isn't that big of a problem.

The only danger (and there is a similar danger in pretty much every area of passion and interest) is turning some aspect of human culture or imagination into an idol.

But avoiding passion for human culture and imagination is not a solution either, because that also become an idol.


An goldsmith who has an encounter with the Real Presence in the Eucharist may respond to that experience by crafting a beautiful monstrance for use in Adoration. This, in turn, may help others in the their devotions, through its beauty and craftsmanship. An art historian in a later age may take up a fascination with monstrances, seeing in them the embodiment of the spiritual character of a particular era and admiring the devotion and care taken by the individual artists.

But another person may become envious or prideful about such things. He may believe that his wealthy parish is more holy than than poor one in the next town because they have a tall golden monstrance while the other place cannot afford such things. Some other person, a shallow and distraught priest perhaps at that poor parish, might feel like their lack of a monstrance is an impediment to holding Eucharistic Adoration, and so allows his materialism to curtail devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.

And so, we can then imagine some caring and pastoral leader - the local Bishop perhaps - seeing all this and trying to help people remember that it isn't at all about the monstrance. That's just a tool, and aide, and assist. Forget about it. Focus on Christ. He's a bishop, so he sends a letter suggesting that all parishes hold Eucharistic Adoration with a less ornate receptacle to hold the consecrated hosts. Perhaps a plain ciborium, or a simple plate.

The prideful materialist with the tall monstrance gets offended now. He stops coming to Adoration because he was really only there to see the tall gold thing. But, one has to wonder - even though he was clearly there for all the wrong things, isn't it still better that he be there? Isn't this just the sort of person who ought to be at Adoration? Isn't this a person in need of an encounter with the True Presence?

And the art historian, what about her? She was fascinated by culture and history, learning a lot and sharing her insights with others. Now, suddenly, the object of her interest becomes not a living part of the history she studies, but a dead relic in a museum. That she is interested in it at all makes some people suspicious of her faithfulness and sincerity.

And over in the Western reaches of the Diocese there's this one lonely Catholic parish with priest who seems a little goofy and unpredictable. He keeps using their monstrance, which is a ridiculously huge and ornate piece of the gaudiest litugibling you have ever seen in your life. The story is that he found it in an attic in Barcelona when he was visiting his brother's wife's family. People who go to Adoration there get judged by the good people at the other parishes - clearly they are disobedient traddies.....

And hence, we who have given all our life to perfect and hone the craft of sacred music are now looked upon as 'antiquarian' in our approach, philosophy, practice, devotion, and whatever other label you want to put on giving everything to be what one is called to be.

We certainly don't want the cathedral to upstage the poor parish on the other side of town, so we better level everything. That way, there won't be a "noticeable difference" from one part of the body of Christ to the other.

And this can all be applied to ANY of the differences of one congregation to the other. The vernacular of this person may not be the same as the vernacular of that person, so let's include it all, so that all feel welcome, all feel at home, all feel 'part of the body of Christ'.

How far will we carry this thinking?

hmmm... All Are Welcome In This Place... except... me.

The term "false antiquinarianism" was used by Pius XII in one of his docs on liturgy (IIRC). He referred to scholar/practitioners who were attempting to denude the Roman liturgy of any practices added since the Year 50 or so. (I exaggerate only slightly.)

As Charles and Francis would agree, this deserves condemnation, right?