In general, here's what I do:

In most cases, I give chant to the choir in square notes. For the congregation, It's about 50/50, depending on the situation. If it's a one-time-event, I will often do modern notation, though I sometimes do neumes too. If it's an ongoing situation, I tend to gravitate toward square notes in most cases, both because it helps them learn it, and also, it's simply easier for me. With my current computer setup, I can engrave neumes about 3x-5x faster than engraving the same chant in modern notation.

Neumes, neumes, and only neumes.
Chonak's observations are spot on, and, children really enjoy the solfege by which they can discern intervals.

Too bad about your adult children who think the child children wouldn't like Latin. They would very likely find it delightful... if YOU were the one presenting it. There should be a balance between English and Latin.

As long as the notation does not reinforce the notion that all music is diatonic in one tonal center and in the western piano-organ tradition, and all music is speech-based and arhythmic. A string of rhythmless round notes without accidentals or key signature (ie, implicitly forever in the key of C/a minor) on a modern staff is a kind of compromise that - an opinion -- seems the worst choice of the three.

Neumes.

Neumes

But people don't read chant

And that'll never change if directors don't start teaching people how by actually giving them neumes.

PhatFlute

We all at one point in our lives said, 'I don't read chant'. However, it was the insistance of our colleagues who said, 'wait a minute!'. Chant is what we are SUPPOSED to be reading FIRST! The rubrics of 'modern notation' is actually one that is a farce. Modern notation is in a sense, anti-vocal, mechanical verses musical, lacks nuance and more. Don't get me wrong. I like modern notation for writing out polyphony, and I grew up learning it, so it really is like my 'first musical language', native, if you will. But chant really should be the native language of liturgical musicians, and we have been deprived of that luxury all because the world thinks it can redefine a 'better' way. Well that is nonsense. The art of chant notation has developed for hundreds and hundreds of years. It IS the art of writing vocal music par excellence. We don't espouse throwing out modern notation, but certainly don't espouse NOT learning chant notation.

Neumes, hands down. Easy to learn, easy to read and sing.

I agree. Neumes are the way to do it. One issue that comes up in my corner of the world (NYC area) is that the adults seem to think that Latin and square notes are beyond them (this is particularly true for those artisans who play but have no musical training), and they infect the young ones with this fear. I prefer to invite the parents to join the lessons on neumes and the results have been pretty good. Part of the challenge for us is to dispel the notion that neumes and Latin are the province of people with more talent and intelligence than the ones we work with.

singers need to know both forms of notation.

Sad, but ignored.

Melo, I am not sure from rereading this thread exactly what bothered you. However, I do know what the abbreviation you used stands for and I don't think that this is the place to introduce that kind of language even if it isn't overt.

Thank you for all of your responses so far.

As I stated in my questions, the purpose (for me in my idealism) is to create a small, basic children's program for simple sacred music at Mass. I think many of the responses that advocated for modern notation assume a beautiful and sacred music education program. And when I send my daughter to the Pueri Cantores, she should definitely sing sacred music at Mass and read modern notation.

But at the heart of what I agree with most is the idea that Catholics created neumes for unison chant, for the Mass. That whole, sacred "words with wings" thing. Chanting priests with increasing levels of solemnity that is second nature to the way we do things as Catholics. A chanting ethos that doesn't scare people away because the Missal and Proper chants can and should be easier for full and active participation.

- - - - - - - -

In our program's fantasy future growth, there should come a point when people begin to ask us to teach more complex, beautiful sacred music. Or parents who desire their children to become vocal or instrument musicians. In my imagination, I see our program directing them to other groups, or even better, starting a secondary, more advanced group where square note reading is assumed, but modern notation is taught and fostered. Where musical education is the primary purpose, with or without liturgical service. Where they sing polyphony at Mass or become orchestra members in their local secular programs.

But I see a program that teaches the bare minimum by design. Because with the Simplex or Illuminare's publications, that is all that's needed, right? Voices that can stay on pitch with many repeated, spoken/chanted notes?

- - - - - - - -

We now have tools in English (and have had tools in Latin) that provide an approach to option 1.

So with enough of these very basic neume programs, producing basic neumed Catholic chanters, will we not be raising up a group that could take over the music where there is none today? (At my parish, it was difficult to find music for the earliest English Masses; and there is none in daily English Masses.) It occurred to me that those "quiet" Masses might be the easiest places to start.

It seems to me that while the Graduale remains out of reach, we could continue to focus on "The Propers" with an intensity that would continue to bring them to light. So that we could ask for "The Propers", like they ask for a Teen Mass, like they ask for the "Praise and Worship" Mass.

As a catechist, I've worked hard to bring Catholics home. But when I invite them to Mass, there are more distracting options in my community and I find myself always scurrying about like an ecclesiastical scavenger, hoping they aren't distracted by noise of the Novus Ordo or confused by the full immersion into The Ages.

One day, may there be at least one Mass in every parish, with an attempt at something close to option 1.

Of course singers need to know both. I think the main discussion is about singing chant from modern notation, not the merits of modern notation as a tool in and of itself.

tools

This is the key word.

Music is aural, not visual, after all.

So - whatever works.

As someone who came to this site as a newbie, I have to say I am not put off by some of the more abstruse arguments, sometimes I learn from them, sometimes I laugh at them, sometimes I ignore them as being over my head. I have never posted a request for help which has not been met with some helpful and charitable response.
I appreciate the dilemma of teaching children neumes/modern notation. In my little schola we only learn neumes, for the following reasons:
1. the end goal is to raise up singers who can sing the propers and ordinary of the mass - and that is printed in neumes (graduale etc)
2. Kids can learn anything. Neumes are no more problematic than learning to read or count or any other of the million new things they learn all the time.
3. Some kids are already learning modern notation as they learn an instrument. Neumes puts all the kids on an equal footing, as it is new to all. I notice the kids who have other musical experience seem to have little difficulty noticing the similarity between the two systems (notes that go up and down, line space interval etc). Occasionally I point out similarities and difference to them (four line stave instead of five) and the dot doing something different in neumes than in modern notation. None of their heads have exploded due to excess knowledge yet.
And here is the problem I have encountered - in bringing some of my kids to a pueri cantores day, the music we were given was all in modern notation, even those pieces of latin chant. So I do have a dilemma. But I have resolved it thus wise: 1. we sang our chant from our own music using neumes where there was overlap of common pieces. 2. The more complicated pieces of Mozart etc which should be in modern notation, we were not able to do more than sing along to, so I was happy enough that they would have the words from the sheet music and pick it up by ear. 3 We won't be changing our schola to learn pieces of such quality, that is being driven by a much more well established choir, directed by the country's leading choir director, but it is fun for our kids to go along, and it gives them a taste of what is possible for them personally, even if it is beyond the scope of our humbler parish programme.
My schola is for 6-9 year olds, if I was to have a hope for the long term, it would be that when they graduate they would go on to develop more skills, learning modern notation and developing a choral repertoire of sacred music, alongside their love of and competence in chant.
In the words of one of my favourite songs - you've got to have a dream, if you don't have dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?

The neumes reflect an attitude to the text: no more than one syllable to a neume. A medieval writer said that a neume represents a single stroke of the breath, i.e., a single gesture to a syllable. If you sing each note of the neume as an independent note, you have missed an important aspect of the neumes. This isn't conveyed well by the other notations.

I have always used the neumes for my choir, and my experience is that after a month, singers will agree that the neumes are better.

I was surprised, though, when we set about to make a handout for the congregation with the melodies for the ordinary, I thought modern notation might be easier for them; those making the leaflets insisted upon the square notes. We have used those for about 40 years, and congregation members sometimes attest that for them the neumes are easier.

Neumes. I even transcribe OCP's "missalette's" chants to neumes. Although I do like the barred eighth notes as clear indicators of ictic groupings or graphic separation. Any modern notation beyond an eighth note or a dot can distract from developing good sense of chants' rythmn. And this can be achieved by rote.

I thought the LU had the double barlines as well. Could it be because some traditions sing those phrases antiphonally?

Ah ha, I'm so dumb!
However, in my defense, as the ICEL Glory technically is NOT Gregorian Chant, it seems very counter-intuitive to have those double barlines when I'm reasonably sure it was meant to not be sung in alternatim. And if it was, then USCCB and ICEL should have crafted and noted a protocol in all Missals, doncha think?

Phil, I have some vague recollection of just such an effort. The fact that it is a memory is proof to me of the impossibility of such a hybrid combination.
Everyone of the much more distinguished and knowledgeable folks who've spoken that neumes enables a more fluent and comprehensible performance is correct.
I suggest you start with Bartlett's Simple English Propers, and in short time you'll get the basics, trust me.

The only people that have a problem with neumes in my experience, are older very experienced professional muscians/singers who are perhaps so well versed in modern notation that they are refuse to have an open mind and accept how easy it is to learn neumes.

Children have an open mind and usually can not read any notation, so with them almost always neumes is the best option.

I think all of us forum members commenting are mostly saying the same things in agreement with each other.

Nein, aber die Deutschen sind einen kunstlichen Menschen!

To further explain to Phil and others, back in 07 I started taking Rice's Communio (Latin) antiphons and doing a Bruce Ford on them via Finale. At the time it worked quite well transitionally for my choristers. However, post SEP era, I look at those scores and I find them very difficult to render with as much coherency by comparison to neumatic scores. Further proof is that (as I've mentioned that we sight read the SEP's on Sundays at the contemporary ensemble Mass) I don't even have to use chironomy or conduct our little ensemble of fluent neume singers. It is so natural to be in synch with neumes by comparison to modern notation. To bolster that further, I'll even cite the opposite classic canard of standard notation: the infamous double dots of "Be not afraid." Volumes of useless argumentation over their interpretation have wasted a lot of energy. That doen't happen with "standard,' working neumes unless you're prone to the great semiology wars.

I must admit that I have great difficulty reading chant from modern-notation : The only reason why I never adopted Bruce Ford's American Gradual - other than that, I would've in a heart-beat. (So it was SEP, LCG, Fr. Weber, and Palmer-Burgess for me.)

PhatFlute:

No, not a joke at all. It is for organists who accompany chant and for chanters who sing to an organ accompaniment, reserving the best notation for both worlds. Completely serious, dude.

Good Sir Richard of Richmond, my German is notoriously bad, but I do it from my addled 63 year old decaying brain. I meant to say they are an artistic, or crafty people, but chose to use "Menschen" instead of Leuten. Shoot me now, take my wife please, I'm here all week, please! Badaboom.
Backing outta da room slowly, humming "Sing to the ceiling, sing to the floor. Sing to the windows, then sing some more."