Fixed images.

Thanks for this beautifully illustrated post. This is a huge topic, and you can read some of my thoughts on the matter over at CCWatershed. Indeed, I owe Jeff a response to his most recent article, touching on this very subject. I find this question fascinating, as is the whole subject of chant rhythm.

I'm pretty new as a commenter on these forums, but since I've been reading for years, I know a lot of this ground has been covered before. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and for making such a nice, solid, succinct argument for the equalist style.

If I might suggest one line of discussion I would love to pursue here based on your post, it is the question of whether Dom Pothier was really an equalist. This idea of equal value seems to be at the heart of what both Jeff and you propose, but I am somewhat skeptical and need more convincing. The Vatican edition preface mentions uniformity, and the diamond notes having no special time value, but the idea that each note has a basic duration equal to that of all the others unless marked with the space does not seem at all obvious to me.

In Pothier's 1880 book, which is fantastic and still worth reading, he seems to suggest a lot more variety between durations of individual syllables. There is a certain hesitancy to pin exact time values onto pronunciations of words. Rather, the syllables take as long as they require to be articulated clearly. This is a line of thinking you also see in the publications of Gontier from twenty years before, which seem to be an accurate description of the early Solesmes way of thinking. Indeed, you still find this totally accentuation-driven doctrine decades later in the books of Dom David.

One caveat about this kind of slight variety in duration: a certain regularity of rhythm seems to sort of flow naturally out of any group trying to sing plainchant, just as it does with any group reading together aloud. If we think of this regularity as proceeding from the pronunciation of the words (rather than from any strict rule of equality) with a slight mora vocis at the end of every word, we arrive at something perhaps a little different from pure equalism. If you listen to Pothier conducting, as here (especially the third line), you hear precisely this kind of slight slowing at each word, just like he describes in the book.

I would argue that the Mocquereau system in many ways simplified Pothier's accentualist doctrine and made it more equalist. His whole theory rationalizes Pothier's theory of word accent in chant by subordinating it to the theoretical framework of the simple beat, derived ultimately from Aristoxenus through some nineteenth-century music theorists. It is in this sense that I think the rhythmic indications from the MSS, i.e., the episemata which have been so controversial over at CCWatershed and here, are a rather small part of Mocquereau's overall theoretical enterprise. And looking at it from this perspective, you get an explanation for why he included so few of them; he was basing his choices on his own musical judgment as formed by his theoretical predilections.

You raise a lot of things here, all of which could be followed up on. I'll leave your discussion with Patrick to the side for the moment, but I will try to address some of your other points, and I'm afraid I'm going to go on for rather a while here. I find the question of musical rhythm really hard to describe and write about.

1. Pothier's book Les mélodies grégoriennes has never been translated into English. You can find it here: https://archive.org/details/lesmlodiesgr00poth

Gontier's book from 1859, which is also of interest, is here: https://books.google.com/books?id=M95WAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Dom Lucien David's book, which describes a simplified sort of accentualist chanting according to Pothier's style is here: https://archive.org/details/mthodepratiq1919davi

Dom David is no proponent of the Mocquereau system, but his book hardly suggests a simple equalist approach. There are rhythms with arsis and thesis, depending on word stress, there are unnotated delays between words even without barlines, there is chironomy, etc.

2. Dom Pothier had access to a wide variety of very early manuscripts, which were almost certainly taken into consideration in making the Vatican edition. In the Paleography room at Solesmes, you can still see the massive comparative tables that were made in preparation for their various editions over the years. it's really quite a remarkable feat of scholarship, right at the dawn of the modern era of musicology; in the early going it was even done without photography. Pothier knew about some of the rhythmic features of the St. Gall neumes (he did not use the term episema, which I believe was coined by Mocquereau a bit later) which he addresses on p. 76 and following of the book linked above. Essentially, he concludes that the rhythmic signs were there to reinforce the natural rhythm arising from the words. He made a conscious choice not to include them in his editions, including the Vatican edition.

At the same time, Mocquereau chose to include them from the very beginning of the Vatican edition in the Solesmes versions, which he did with permission and within the framework of obedience to the Church and to the letter of the relevant papal decrees. If this history seems to be in dispute or if you have specific questions, we can certainly go further into the details. I will have to respectfully disagree with Jeff's understanding of this history.

3. I won't argue with you that Semiology and Mocquerellian chant (is that a word?) are a bit more complicated as far as performance goes than either equalism or mensuralism. But again, I think you have it a bit backwards as to how the barlines are treated by Pothier and Mocquereau. With the obvious caveat that different choirs do things differently, the mainstream Mocquereau approach (quarter barline adds no time and no breath, half barline adds no time but you take a breath, and full barline adds a real pause and a breath) is relatively simple, in accordance with the Vatican-preface instructions, and also just sort of clarifies Pothier's more loose instructions about a hierarchy of distinctions.

Just as a matter of personal experience, I have seldom experienced any difficulty in singing with the Solesmes method with any number of conductors in rather far-flung locations on our first time singing together. On the other hand, the Ostrowski method leaves many things ambiguous, especially with penultimate syllables. In your first score of Beata es, is the second note from the end of the chant longer than the others or not? How would one know this from the notation? This question is almost ubiquitous in the repertoire. One can certainly disagree with the editorial choices of the second score, but at least it makes that particular question easier to deal with.

4. Perhaps your most important question is the one at the end, about lengthening the marked notes in the antiphon. A few points to consider there. First, let it be noted that in Patrick's system and in the practice of semiology, they aren't lengthened at all, they are just restored to "full length," whether one interprets that idea within a steady beat framework or not. In those ways of doing things, it is the two-note groups not so marked that are actually sung faster than the "normal value." Second, the signs accurately transcribe the rhythmic differentiations in the Hartker MS, which is their source. (Pause here for the usual discrepancy over which notes of the two-note neumes the long rhythms apply to. Pretty much everyone agrees now that they apply to both notes. I have written in the past on why Mocquereau and consequently Gajard didn't draw them that way). Not only in this chant, but in many mode-eight antiphons featuring some of these same melodic formulas, where, for instance, the distinction between the long and short forms of the pes on the two syllables of tibi holds across many different melodies.

Those episemata are historical facts, and setting aside interpretation, they record the testimony of one rather important manuscript. One can certainly argue about the proper performance practice of these signs and whether that is even a worthy goal, as you mentioned in your first post. I guess what remains is whether there is any aesthetic value to sticking with the Solesmes method for this chant rather than either equalism or one of the other approaches. I think I would answer that yes, one could certainly make the case that the signs can be a carrier of beauty within that way of singing. This is an aesthetic argument, and probably of low value. I am still sometimes thunderstruck by the beauty of the old Solesmes recordings or the Fontgombault recordings.

How would I make this beautiful in the context of my own Solesmes-oriented schola? One point would be not to stress them too much, but to treat them with delicacy and in the context of the whole musical line. You mention further up the problem of "how long to hold the episema." One often overlooked principle of "context" as the Mocquereau tradition defines it is the idea of a hierarchy of time. This is a vespers antiphon, so the so-called expressive neumes are to be given considerably less weight than at Mass. I don't regularly sing vespers anymore, but I think in that context that my own group would benefit greatly from observing these "expressive" signs. But we sing together all the time and we are quite steeped in this way of singing. It might be different for other people.

Anyway, perhaps you can come sing with me some time and I can convince you that the signs can be part of a beautiful interpretation. I'm certainly open to the other way too, and I would happily sing for you or Jeff conducting too, but I do think a "Pothier approach" is not nearly so simple as Jeff makes it out to be.

Afterthought: when I have raised this final point with Jeff, he has suggested that we can't really read Pothier's earlier work as a suggestion for how the Vatican edition should be sung, which should be simple and universal and therefore devoid of any such rhythmic differentiation. Which brings me back to my previous question of whether the Vatican edition really is promoting equalism, or rather leaves some of these rhythmic questions open and unanswered!

Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

That's what I would expect from Laon for equal note values for the first line of your first example above. How else could one notate equalist rhythm using the Messine neumes?

On the subject of bar lines: I would be interested to read a history of their origin and development, but frankly, I'm simply not interested enough to research it myself.

I published my own gradual here and some people think it's too ornamented, my starting point is some greogorian symbols are actually ornamentations (especially porrectus corresponds to trills and gruppettos, climacus corresponds to 16th notes, and torculus to triplet or trills) if one listens to Eastern Catholic/Orthodox Byzantine chant or even islam call to prayer, one can clearly hear such ornamentations. I attached a picture showing the original gregorian chant of the start of Ascension's offertory and my interpretation.
I uploaded the chant mp3 here, because I fixed the problem where embedded firefox player can't play the music. I should untick save meta when saving files in adobe audition

For demonstrative purposes, here's the first line of Ave Maria notated with short values as the norm:


Compare the Novum:


We can only give the Vatican edition a grade of 80% at best as far as the authentic rhythm is concerned. [EDIT: See comment below.]

Thank you for taking the time to make a transcription! A few comments:


You have written the first note as long. The separation at Do- would imply long notes, and the angular form at -mi-, the pes quadratus, would also be read as long. The circled element at -ne should be a plain torculus. -fli- should be short, the pes rotundus. You have written two identical clives at the second nos, which would imply either four longs or four shorts, but not two longs plus two shorts; there is also a note missing in between. Eos is notated backward and long instead of short. O- should be short, and where is the ascending element (scandicus) of -de-? The beginning of -fu- appears to be short-short-long-long, which isn't accurate. The angular figure at the end would imply longs. It's not an awful attempt though!

As for the Requiem gradual example, I find it perfectly legible. My reservation with it is that the only connected notes are long, and the short notes are all written separately, which is the opposite of the oldest notation. We could try something like this:


But that's barely different from Royce's edition:


As for the quarter bar lines, I think it's more correct to treat them as optional breaths; whether or not breath is taken, they mark the end of a phrase and the beginning of another. Others will know better, but some of the Solesmes method people insist that you should breathe there only if absolutely necessary and singing alone, otherwise stagger breathe even if there are only two cantors. That approach seems too extreme to me. I might suggest that where a quarter bar line is preceded by a long note (and aren't they all by definition long according to the Vatican edition??), the whole schola might fittingly breathe together if there's a comma in the text, if the bar line follows a word ending in a vowel, or if it's within a melisma.

@weikangcai
Congratulations on completing such a huge project. Although I disagree with the general idea behind your project (which I understand to be soloists singing the Propers in a more ornamented way), I nevertheless wish you the best, and hope your endeavors are fruitful. I am skeptical about the Gregorian symbols being ornamentations in the way you describe, but I'm not the most knowledgeable person myself, so I will leave that debate to others.

Ironically, some people also think my Graduale is too ornamented, but that's more the fonts and visual choices. And admittedly, some of them weren't commenting on the Graduale, just another book in the same style.

I didn't mean to belabor the point, but to give an adiastematic example with movement in short notes instead of longs.

Matthew, very interesting comments as always. It seems to me that Denise Lebon and the circle around her must have something to do with this rather interesting style. It would be interesting to hear more of Schola Saint Grégoire's activities. There are pockets of that same tradition here in the states as well, as you and I have both witnessed.

I know for sure that there are a certain extra expressive neumes and other musical indications observed at Fontgombault and the daughter houses, and that these are reported to have come from Dom Gajard through oral tradition. I've never heard that this tradition has extended to the ordinary.

I also note that, and I feel bad for this, it is indeed sa-lú-tem but most people sing it d sá-lu-tem. This comes out in the Fontgombault recordings, so my own scores will get some kind of marking…

Yes, I need to actually purchase Dom Guilmard's book. As an aside, I've heard really nice things about Dom Guilmard, so there you go.

I have a respect for all of these methods, in their own way: duplex or triplex editions, new editions (there are several semiological editions for example), making notes on the chant based on semiology or custom…

I second the recommendation of Dom Guilmard's little book! Matthew, perhaps I showed it to you in California last summer.

To your last question, OMM, there is a bit more really practical stuff from the "mainstream semiology" point of view in languages other than English. But no matter what, you have to be able to separate the paleography/semiology (just reading the signs on the page and gleaning information from them) from the performance practice being advocated. Cardine's book is foundational for the whole field but is probably too discursive to be a simple, practical guide. However, the various tables of neumes, if studied carefully, have an awful lot of explanatory heft. Even playing around with the nabc feature in Gregorio is really useful, especially in conjunction with the versions of Cardine's tables printed in the nabc reference document. Probably the best short book from a semiological point of view I can recommend is Rampi and De Lillo's Nella mente del notatore from 2019.

Actually I would also highly recommend the various mensuralist materials on Cantatorium on learning to read semiology as a matter of distinguishing relative note values. Semiologists and mensuralists generally agree on relative lengths implied by individual signs (i.e., they largely agree on the paleography), even if they are in complete disagreement about whether the resultant durational relationships between sounds are strictly proportional or not.

There are some complications inherent baked into a non-proportionalist semiological approach. You write "Even if you are saying that there are a variety of different note lengths beyond simple longs and shorts, you have to at least be able to organize them and explain what they are." Well, I'm not sure that any of them would consider it that kind of problem to address. In their view, the neumes we have sort of mediate between the sound of the speech as modulated through the melody, and the signs of the neumes variously diminish or augment the value, but they don't do so in nearly as regimented a way as the proportionalists.

As for the problem of applying "speech rhythm" to melismas, there is a forthcoming book (that I helped out with over the last 8 months by doing gabc engraving) that addresses that very question. I hope it will be interesting to all of you, even though the author is quite a bit more skeptical than any semiologist I've ever met about the supposed rhythmic meaning of the neume signs!

Yes, it would be possible. Although I don't have very good equipment for recording personally, but perhaps that's besides the point. Do you have a particular chant in mind?

Very beautiful. I liked the first one the best (aesthetically), although I would have wanted to emphasize the MMV a tad more. But they were all beautiful, and if I remember correctly, presenting all arguments (especially those you disagree with) in the best possible light is something Saint Thomas Aquinas says we should do.

It's a shame I only understand English, because if I could, I would definitely look into the books you've mentioned above, especially the one by Dom Pothier. Do you know of any resources in English which explain how natural speech rhythm works in singing?

Yes, the principle of charity, or as we might say now, steel-manning, is important, most especially when people get passionate about a disputed subject. What I was trying to do with the MMVs in number 1 was to treat them as a very slight amount of space, like the kind of gap you naturally put between small words when you speak. If you think of the melisma like a sentence, the neumes are the individual words, and the ones with space after them are like groups of words. Anyway, it's very easy to default into the MMVs just being double length. This is actually one of Patrick's strongest points of agreement with Jeff O.!

Anyway, I like all four approaches well enough. I think 3 is probably my favorite here, although I would do 2 with my schola, modified, perhaps, with a few of the niceties from 3.

For speech rhythm, Fr. Columba Kelly did translate the first volume of the big Agustoni & Göschl book into English, but it's expensive and hard to find. It may be possible to get through interlibrary loan. Anyway, speech rhythm as applied to music is notoriously difficult to put into words!

A recording from 2022 is attached. Now I would interpret both of the notes marked with t and long-and-a-half (=dotted quarter). I previously treated the incipit in free rhythm, with the beat not established until gratia. It's not considerably different from the semiological interpretation Charles shared, is it? We use the restored melodic reading, which has sol instead of la at Ma-, and my tempo is slower. He holds the last note of A- a bit longer and doesn't hold the penultimate note of -ri-.

Here's the video of mine that Charles mentioned:

Mr. Williams,

As you have often encouraged, I have been looking at the manuscripts myself this morning, and I am struck by the lack of uniformity between the oldest sources. I wanted to look at the Requiem Gradual, but I was having difficulty finding it in some of the manuscripts, so I used the Gradual Angelis Suis from the first Sunday of Lent for examination instead. Because there were so many images, I put them into a pdf.

One can certainly argue that my transcriptions are bad, and that's probably true, but what really strikes me is the lack of uniformity, comparing the various manuscripts to each other, and then to your edition. The earliest manuscripts don't give just one rhythmic (or melodic) tradition. So if in the ninth and tenth centuries the chant was sung with differing rhythms and pitches in different regions, who are we to say how it was sung in the fifth century, hundreds of years earlier?

I think your work has a lot of musical and historical value, but perhaps you are trying to recreate something which never existed when you speak of "The Authentic
Traditional Rhythm". As history has shown us, chant can shift from being rhythmically differentiated to equal, but it can also shift the other way, from being equal to being rhythmically differentiated.

Yes. I tend to think there is no way to identify what “authentic” is or was or should now be. IMHO, All of the schools of thought tend toward favoring an artistic interpretation which in the end exhibit very slight nuances from one to the next.

I don’t have time this evening to draw up a table of this passage, but I think you are overstating the lack of uniformity. I’m all for skepticism and looking at things from a different point of view, but I do think if you were to arrange and align these neumes over the melody of the Vat, you would find quite an impressive regularity in groupings, as well as a fair amount of agreement in which notes are longer or shorter, especially if you take into account the habits of each individual scribe, which would require a lot of study. I guess I’m suggesting that skepticism in approaching historical sources and theories is good, but don’t just dismiss all the research that scholars have done. This actually tends to support the idea of some kind of rhythmic tradition in the early sources.

In general, I’m as skeptical as you, but I do think it’s healthy to foster a thorough knowledge of what the signs are and what they likely mean.

If I remember, tomorrow I will draw up a bit of a table of this to show you what I mean.

Yes, let's hope and pray that chant will shift from being equal to being rhythmically differentiated!!!

For a very very small percentage of musicians devoted to sacred music this may be a wish that is possible. At the risk of sounding dismissive I will still put this forward. This effort at this particular point in time and in history seems to demand an exponential amount of energy displaced compared to the smaller benefit of it's summary result on both the liturgical milleu and the spiritual landscape of the church that is presently dissolving from within.

Could it be invaluable work for a future moment? That is entirely possible. But us musicians in the trenches are just hoping and struggling to keep the dirt out of our firing mechanisms. In other words I don't believe one method over the other will alter the cause of the salvation of souls.

Perhaps a metaphor would be “shall we eat rotten moldy bread out of fine china or just a plain clay pot?” I have said it in the past and I will say it again: I may be completely wrong, but it seems to be along the lines of straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. Am I the only one that thinks this? If so, I will try to revisit the entire matter again.

Recording of this Ave Maria offertory from my graduale. like the previous "Ascendit Deus" it contains extra verses. Note: some notes don't match the solesmes editions. pdf is an excerpt from my graduale

@francis

I take your point, but I wonder if the passion some of us feel about this question is not very much augmented rather than diminished in reaction to the problems in the Church. After all, Patrick and I, along with most of the commenters here, are also in the trenches in parishes.

For my part, chant played a big part in my coming back to the faith, and specifically this was the curious beauty and spirituality of the Mocquereau method. Later I studied the other approaches; I do still have a soft spot for the spiritual witness of the writers in the Solesmes orbit. Consider among these Simone Weil, from Gravity and Grace:

The beautiful is the experimental proof that the incarnation is possible. Hence all art of the highest order is religious in essence. (That is what people have forgotten today.) A Gregorian melody is as powerful a witness as the death of a martyr.

What a strong idea that is, and what a responsibility for those of us who do it week in and week out! I think a lot of that special quality is not just the melody itself, but also the way the rhythm differs from so much of our mundane musical tasks. I have to do a million other things in my musical life, but there is something set apart about the chanting I do on Sunday mornings, which is as it should be, since I consider Gregorian chant to be a sacramental. That is, it is so special by its nature that it is worth all the fuss, probably way more fuss than any other kind of music would merit.

For this reason, I place a really high value on exploring the rhythmic question in both teaching and performance.

Teaching children by passing on this study of the chant is also passing on the patrimony of the Roman Church. I often find that kids respond well to the little bits of Solesmes/Mocquereau tradition that I pass down to them. I imagine that would be true if I were in a schola geared toward semiology or mensuralism too.

In performing, I think the rhythmic differentiation we make in our schola is extremely important for the beauty of the chant. First, it gives the singers more to think about, more to chew on spiritually; see Gajard's idea that the episema is an invitation to turn within and contemplate the indwelling guest, as I have written about elsewhere. Second, I think our chanting sounds more beautiful for the people in the pews, because we sing it with vitality and interest, drawn from the rhythmic approach. Equalism is fine, but it is also more possible in singing that way to sort of go on autopilot, or to think about the chanting as something to be got through (putting the plain in plainsong). I've been there before.

I'm not saying incorporating the rhythmic study of manuscripts is the only good way to sing chant, but I think it really can help the chant to do its jobs, which are primarily the glorification of God and secondarily the sanctification of the people.

Anyway, that's why I think it's worthy of our study and attention, regardless of which method you follow, even in the present ecclesial climate.

Yes, Francis, I agree with you, at least for the most part.

When I had talked about chant shifting from equal to rhythmically differentiated, I was talking about the transition from the late medieval chant to the chant used after the Council of Trent.

I suppose as long as one is trying to sing beautifully for God, the exact method doesn't really matter. Just make sure whatever you choose isn't going to cause unnecessary confusion and frustration for your singers. By which I mean, be consistent with your principles so your singers know what to expect.

I have a personal disdain of the Solesmes signs and editions, but it's probably unreasonable of me. I don't even have any control over the music we do at our parish, so I had better just stop spending so much time arguing on the internet, start deflating my pride, and focus on the things I do actually need to be working on in life now.

It's a free country, so Mr. Williams is certainly entitled to spend the "exponential amount of energy" on his new edition, and I pray God will bless his efforts. I still reject the idea of "The Authentic Traditional Rhythm", but I respect his work as being one side of the dice, and frequently consult his website for things such as offertory verses.

I am honored that such knowledgeable people have been willing to take me seriously enough to answer my questions and correct me.

To narrow down the example even further of the mode II graduale, I will offer the following point. It is clear that Mr. Williams (and I am assuming semiologists in general) believe the torculus on the first syllable of the chant is two shorts followed by one long note. There seems to be no indication that the last note is long. When I transcribed the proportional edition using a "T" and an episema, I was using forms found elsewhere in those notations (Laon and St. Gall). If the simple torculus is short-short-long, what are the ones marked with an episema or "T" at the end?

OMM, you write: "It is clear that Mr. Williams (and I am assuming semiologists in general) believe the torculus on the first syllable of the chant is two shorts followed by one long note."

I don't think that is the opinion of semiologists in general, but some of them consider the last note of a syllable in a longer group like this to regain its “full syllabic value.” You won’t find this rule in the Guilmard or Rampi books mentioned above. Patrick posted about this some in our discussion at CCW, where I believe he found it in some later Cardine editions.

I think there is probably some value in maintaining a distinction between the cursive torculus and the other forms you mention.

This Troyes 522 is interesting. It's a Missal, not just a Graduale.
https://portail.mediatheque.grand-troyes.fr/iguana/www.main.cls?surl=search&p=*#recordId=2.2541