Episema dillema and Salve Regina simplex example
  • cantor_pomeraniscantor_pomeranis
    Posts: 4
    "Follow the text," they say. "Melody at the service of the word," they say.

    It sounds good, but if we completely abandon episemas and dots next to neumes, it's not entirely clear which notes to prolong. In the case of long melismas, this might be less of an issue and allow for more interpretation. But what should be done with simpler, syllabic chant melodies, like the Credo or antiphons? Take Salve Regina for example. Which notes should be prolonged and which shouldn't? Below is a working rendition of the Salve Regina simplex. Please let me know:

    1) If I've understood correctly where to prolong the note.

    2) What your general thoughts are on eliminating episemas and dots.

    3) Whether it wouldn't be easier to revert to episemas, even at the cost of "purity" of notation and adequacy with manuscripts? Given that such a notation has already developed over a 100-year tradition and is clear and legible, couldn't it remain in use as a guide?
  • smt
    Posts: 84
    Salve Regina simplex is maybe not the best example to discuss Gregorian Rhythm as its a very late composition and far from being true Gregorian Chant. Nevertheless ... me personally I don't care about more recent developments in semiology. Not because I oppose semiology, I just think its academic and doesn't help to enforce the use of Chant in our liturgies. On the contrary - I sing in a schola where semiology is used but nobody except the conductor is really competent in it. It really doesn't help to develop a coherent, unified sound in the schola. However - if it works for you and your schola, that's great! And here: if it helps to serve the text. great!

    One thing which I observed (and the reason I write this comment): There is no breathing sign after "exsilium". This is also the custom in Germany as the Gotteslob does not have it. I am heavily influenced by English Catholicism so I am used to have a short break there. Do you know more about this difference?
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,464
    FWIW, I don't recall encountering a breath after "exsilium", only an episema or dotted punctum without a perceptible break/breath. But I am not deeply immersed, and I am just in the US Northeast.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,211
    I think a lot of people breathe there if they learn from memory without the first person, the leader, being competent in chant.
  • Chant_Supremacist
    Posts: 228
    Dots and episemas are great notational tools, but I prefer eliminating the Solesmes ones so I can add my own.
  • FSSPmusic
    Posts: 426
    1) If I've understood correctly where to prolong the note.
    I would question all of your markings. As a matter of course, are you lengthening notes before bar lines, whether marked or not? You have an episema immediately before five bar lines, each time following a word accent, also with an added episema, in a word of two syllables, each set to a single note. When the same pattern occurs elsewhere (e.g., flentes), neither note is marked, so I really don't understand the interpretation. Are you attempting a descriptive notation of how it's sung at your parish, or something prescriptive of how you think it ought to be sung?
    2) What your general thoughts are on eliminating episemas and dots.
    In general I think we need more of them, not fewer. I am reminded of Prof. Praßl's scathing critique of the 2019 tomus alter of the Liber Hymnarius:
    Behind the minimizing and euphemistic statement that the “rhythmic signs” were removed is concealed the surprising and shocking observation that anything that in any way could recall the interpretation of chant in light of the oldest manuscripts has been obliterated. The insights of the semiological school are thereby removed from this Solesmes publication, and the life work of their own confrere, Fr. Eugène Cardine, is blatantly betrayed.... One can only deeply regret what happened with this edition. Distinguished Solesmese [sic] chant scholars such as Pothier, Mocquereau, Claire, and Cardine were always at the cutting edge of scholarly advances in questions of restitution and interpretation. Today, regression and retrospective dominate. That pains the heart. One wonders what is behind this and how we could have arrived at this point.

    3) Whether it wouldn't be easier to revert to episemas, even at the cost of "purity" of notation and adequacy with manuscripts? Given that such a notation has already developed over a 100-year tradition and is clear and legible, couldn't it remain in use as a guide?
    Yes. As others have said, the simple tone Salve Regina is a more recent composition and not authentic Gregorian chant of the sort for which exist ancient adiastematic manuscripts. This is probably the oldest version of the chant in question, from the 17th century:
    https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k11663659/f193.item
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  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,211
    Yes, I often bring up here and elsewhere the criticism of the new Liber Hymnarius, and I also like to reference the fact that, whether we like Mocquereau’s system (and the final decisions taken by the editors who actually brought the monastic antiphonal to publication, the choirmaster of Saint-Benoît du Lac took the revised antiphonal and added the signs by hand. Anthony Ruff has mentioned that Solesmes sings from memory as if the signs were there anyway. (I wish I could find the actual document which explains the practice of the Québécois abbey…it’s a PDF, I believe, out there in the ether.)

    Matthias Bry has added a ton of rhythmic signs to the draft of the Nocturnale Romanum. I recently got a message from someone from a Germanophone country wherein the inquirer was horrified, and I deflected a bit, because I think that it’s partially practical, in that most of the users are French or English speakers used to the Solesmes way, or at least the way of Dom Cardine (e.g. the Chœur grégorien de Paris) and would prefer more lengthening explicitly marked than not. (I wonder too if there’s a bit of national pride at stake for each person, not to say that anyone is acting in bad faith, but if one is used to Solesmes versus the Vatican edition or something else due to cultural reasons as much as musical ones, well, one is inclined to want that in a new edition.)
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  • Xopheros
    Posts: 71
    This raises the interesting question whether the modern reconstructed singing style for medieval chant should also be applied to later monodic music like, e.g., the simple tone "Salve Regina" from the 17th century.

    AFAIK, there is evidence that in the 17th century plainchant was sung either with all notes of equal length or, in the case of some hymns, with a metric rhythm. One evidence is the 17th century chant teaching book "La science et la practique du plain-chant" by Pierre-Benoit de Jumilhac (Paris, 1673).

    I thus wonder whether the 17c "Salve Regina" should perferrably be sung in the contemporary (i.e. historic) way or in the Solesmes way.
    Thanked by 2tomjaw cantor_pomeranis
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,211
    It depends on one’s preferences. @Charles_Weaver prefers singing the Solesmes way, and so do I, for the chants which were written originally with a mensuralist rhythm, such as the familiar Salve Regina tone or Credo IV.

    I have heard mensuralist interpretations of Dumont masses, but the actual liturgical practice seems to sort of split the difference.
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  • Chant_Supremacist
    Posts: 228
    Credo IV you could call a preference, overall style you could call a preference, and how to authentically sing later compositions is a valid question in itself... but with this song, in a parish context, I wouldn't really call it a preference. At the very least it's like a collective folk preference rather than a personal one. Trying to make everyone sing something intimately familiar to them in a speculatively reconstructed original rhythm is ridiculous from a pastoral perspective and just plain unlikely to work out.

    Edit: I guess if one were introducing it to a parish where most don't know it, it could be less unreasonable and more doable, but I still think this a song where you just have to do it as close as possible to how everyone else already does it.
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  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,627
    @Xopheros There is a more detailed discussion of the notation in later editions of the Oratorian Directorium chori here (1753) in the preface, page v [Strana v.]
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  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,211
    Yeah, I wasn’t even thinking of that, but yes, people wouldn’t be able to sing it IMHO.
  • Chant_Supremacist
    Posts: 228
    Apologies to @Xopheros if I took his comment other than he intended it, perhaps as an academic question, or related to ensemble/concert performance rather than congregational singing.

    There is some local variation in how it's sung - minor tempo differences, a different note lengthened here or there, breathing in a different place, and as a recent thread pointed out, a certain phrase sometimes sped up. I've probably heard it sung at a couple dozen parishes, and more in recordings, and I've never heard it sung in a way that wasn't basically the Solesmes style.

    I just find something wrongheaded about disrupting things that belong to the people with ivory tower concerns. To the extent that even thinking about it in the abstract kinda gets to me. I mean if there were something actually wrong or deficient with the common way it would be another story. Anyway, end of rant.
  • Charles_Weaver
    Posts: 150
    Patrick, if it makes you feel any better, people willfully ignore sound performance practice research in other kinds of music as well, including polyphony. One thing that comes up every year in Holy Week is the abominable version of the Allegri miserere with the high Cs. The situation is no better in opera (e.g., vibrato, ornamentation, tempo, the fact that there should be no conductor for earlier operas, etc.)

    When I have sung chant with secular groups, I have often encountered a completely made up and free performance approach based on nothing, and often dismissive of the Solesmes style from an ignorant rather than learned point of view. I have heard so many offhand comments dismissing the Solesmes approach, often from musical colleagues who are also downright hostile to the Catholic faith, that I think it is often understandable that church musicians circle the wagons.
    Thanked by 3MatthewRoth tomjaw cantor_pomeranis
  • FSSPmusic
    Posts: 426
    I think this is actually a reply to my comments in the other thread? Yes, "a completely made up and free performance approach based on nothing" could describe a lot of chant renditions I've heard from otherwise fine choral directors who know nothing about chant except that it's in "free rhythm," and if they even know what the Solesmes style is, they disregard it out of ignorance rather than as a matter of historically informed performance practice. The problem is when people take a late-Romantic era style and claim it's how the music was performed x-number of centuries prior.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,211
    When I have sung chant with secular groups, I have often encountered a completely made up and free performance approach based on nothing, and often dismissive of the Solesmes style from an ignorant rather than learned point of view. I have heard so many offhand comments dismissing the Solesmes approach, often from musical colleagues who are also downright hostile to the Catholic faith, that I think it is often understandable that church musicians circle the wagons.


    It’s indeed made up. A friend sang polyphony with a choir formed to get polyphony going at the parish. They were expected (pros and Catholic parishioners alike) to also chant. The men practiced the Salve, and my friend was baffled when the bass section leader decided that he didn’t know chant but that it was chant and so it had to be slow, somewhere around 80 bpm if you set a metronome. (Now, maybe that was true of certain periods of chant, but still…)
    Thanked by 3FSSPmusic tomjaw cantor_pomeranis
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