An attempt of compromise solution aiming peace among different schools of gregorian chant interpretation and a "notation to performance" ps: I'm sorry for the bad english with google translate helping

I think I've found a compromise solution that has enough theoretical basis and enough aesthetically beautiful creative artistic invention. A means to edit scores that allow either a more mensuralist and proportional interpretation, a sufficiently accurate free nuanced interpretation based on semiology, or an interpretation using rhythmic divisions of more or less equal notes and nuances - in the Solesmes style of Dom Mocquereau.

With rhythmic nuances sufficiently authentic according to the ancient manuscripts and according to the prosody and clarity of the text and at the same time possible for the three distinct schools of interpretation. And intelligible to musicians trained in modern music: without having to do all the semiological and paleographic study that I am having to do studying all three schools.




The final neumatic musical sheet (partial example in the image) would be a kind of update of the solesmes method, with "ictus" markings and three types of "mora vocis" nuances (from the lowest to the highest degree of elongation: episema, dotted, and dotted with episema) and with nuance markings for "less voice" (the grammatical/rhetorical sign of short vowels) corresponding more or less to the "celeriter" (quickly, with "celerity") of St. Gall. I was inspired by the notation from cantatorium.org but avoiding filling the notes of standard duration with episemas and avoiding using white notes.
There are four possible interpretations:

1- Whoever wants to follow a more "old school" way, "a la Solesmes", follows the new indications of ictus (made based on a more accurate reading of the old rhythm, based on updates in mensuralist and semiological research); can ignore "less voice" signals or use as inspiration for agogic "accelerandos"; and you can decide whether to consider the various degrees of "mora vocis" or to lengthen everything in the same way.

2- Whoever wants to follow the method of semiological nuances analyzes the prosody and follows the different agogic proportions according to the indications of "more or less voice" (if you want, you can check the ancient manuscripts personally and draw your own conclusions).


3- Whoever wants to follow the most standard mensuralism, binary and without so many differences between the long notes, can use the sign of the short ones to identify almost all the others as long and can elongate or not in the episema and at the ends of sentences, and can see at context what is possibly a light ornamental note.

4- In a compromise solution of mine trying to synthesize the three schools, a mensuralist and dynamic solution, the mensural mode (transcription in the second image) would have a 6/8 time signature.

It would have binary accent, with short notes in sixteenth notes and three types of long ones: - common long ones in eighth notes; - long elongated in eighth + sixteenth note (dotted eighth notes); - doubly long (crotchet/quarter note or two linked eighth notes); - and triply long (dotted quarter note).

This solution avoids filling with ornamental/acciaccaturas/appoggiaturas notes (light weight lighter than the short one) and through gradual lengthening variations creates a good fluidity in the melody.

This idea of ​​6/8 came from Walther Lipphardt's comparative study of a melody-type of the divine office (STUDIEN ZUR RHYTHMIK DER ANTIPHONEN).

He uses 6/4 and fits all the text variations into a very similar rhythm in order to keep the melody intact by varying the long ones between double long in stressed syllable and single long in unstressed syllable. I took from him the idea of ​​certain long neumes having more than one type of internal long sound, ("pes quadratus" for example, which in his comparison would be a synthesis of a long note of an accented syllable + a long note of an unstressed syllable, placed in a single syllable ).

This use of 6/8 and three types of long allows for uniformity between simple and more elaborate antiphons, maintaining a good distinction between stressed syllables and unstressed syllables (as an example, I put a transcription that I made of an antiphon of the office of a similar text, following the pattern from Lipphardt, but on 6/8).

An interesting detail was that comparing several songs of the same type (I made a version of the office’s rorate caeli also to try Lipphardt’s idea) it was possible to perceive the accent of Vulgar Latin in the melody of the office’s antiphon instead of classical Latin: "erípe" instead of "éripe" - this is extra care when trying to make transcriptions because usage in ecclesiastical is inconsistent between classical and vulgar accentuation.