He’s saying that Dom Mocquereau’s theory was wrong, although as @Charles_Weaver reminds us regularly, Mocquereau was also establishing a grand, universal theory of rhythm as well.

Charles

Perhaps - pure speculation here - for us Anglophones, our natural poetic and even speech patterns are so dominated by iambs and anapests that we have a bias towards being upbeatniks?

Charles Weaver.

jamesfrazier342@gmail.com

We spent a ton of time on Beethoven.

in the spirit of a prospective conservatory student in 19th century Paris, perhaps… :)

Yes, although ironically, Couperin lived at a time where certain forms of prepared speech (or so I'm told) were more like modern Italian to my ears a. There's a guy who makes videos in period dress with the rhetorical equivalent of HIP to recite the fables of Jean de La Fontaine; now, it leaves me a little queasy, but it's still interesting.

remember that Durufle was writing for French Latin, not Italian Latin

@Mora citation needed

Depends what you mean by 'French Latin' - if you're referring to Latin with French vowels like with historical performances of Charpentier's Te Deum, I think you might be mistaken. I'll find a source for that claim (or retract it) when I get the chance.

The umtramontane battles between the Curia and the French hierarchy were largely over before Duruflé was composing. Not sure how much Italian Latin pronunciation had permeated French choir culture, but I doubt church Latin was being intentionally taught with a French accent by the mid 20th century.

Also, this is easily verifiable as we have recordings of choirs of this era.

And there is a 1948 recording of the Durufle Requiem on French radio. I will have to go back to listen. FYI; he revised it after this recording.

Mocquereau's own theory accounted for more accord with the manuscripts.

French choirs have a very forward sound and the middle ground is between that and what Italians produce. I’m probably the one who asks for IPA symbols the most here and uses them a lot, but if you use Italian interpretations of that you get « Mario ! » lol

Anyway, that is to say that there is less and less /y/ and /ʒ/: you won’t hear /ʒe.zy/ in modern performance for the name of the Lord, but it’s a decidedly French sound more often than not. And on that one: the voiced consonant is one that everyone seems to devoice correctly…would that people could do it consistently.

Yes, and there were aspects of Mocquereau's interpretation that weren't incorporated into the "official" Solesmes method, such as the quilisma as a portamento and repercussion of each repeated note. Cardine discarded the ictus placement theory but retained the theory of rhythmic nuances. I have no problem with binary and ternary groupings per se—4 is simply 2+2, 5 is either 2+3 or 3+2, and an isolated upbeat has a silent eighth rest before it forming a binary grouping—but a lot of the Solesmes ictus placement is demonstrably wrong. He managed to convince nearly everyone that the long clivis and pes quadratus were long-short figures rather than entirely long, based on a faulty application of the "golden rule" principle, and he erroneously treated the normal syllabic value as short and indivisible on that same basis.

@Mora

I think it is useful to separate Mocquereau's paleographical studies from his theoretical concerns. Also, it would be good to separate questions of melody and rhythm. I believe the fifty-years idea was primarily about melodic readings and the work of the Vatican commission, which was separate from his rhythmic theorizing. The end result of the fifty-years-versus-a-few-years controversy was not the Solesmes theory of rhythm (which anyway was almost fully developed by Paléographie Musicale 7 a few years before) but rather the fact that Mocquereau and the other Solesmes monks left the Vatican commission over the lack of deep and substantive debate about melodic readings, so that the Vatican Edition was based more or less on Pothier's early melodic readings.

As for separating theory and paleography, there is, of course, no basis for 2s and 3s in the Gregorian manuscripts, and Mocquereau never would have suggested there was. He based that idea on basic musical psychology and physiology: humans tend to chunk series of undifferentiated pulses into small prime numbers; groups of two remind us of walking; groups of three remind us of breathing. This is quite separate from his paleographic study, which was quite sophisticated. On the other hand, Mocquereau would suggest that any string of pitches of more-or-less equal length is going to be grouped into 2s and 3s just by nature of how our brains work and regardless of how the neumes are drawn. I don't think that's such an unreasonable idea. I have run across many writings of Mocquereau where he sounds more semiological and less dogmatic about the ictus, but then he turns around and is completely dogmatic. The little monograph on Alleluia Ostende is a case in point of this. He gives a very nuanced and detailed study of each neume and a kind of proto-semiological reading, but he also gives a full Solesmization, which is also replicated in Suñol's textbook. I don't think these things have to be mutually exclusive or contradictory. I've attached examples of each.

the Solesmes theory of rhythm (which anyway was almost fully developed by Paléographie Musicale 7 a few years before)

Which is a problem of great consequence, as Laon 239, a nearly complete Graduale from perhaps 880 and a manuscript source of the greatest value, was not rediscovered until 1906—five years later—according to Mocquereau himself, and published in PM X, 1910. They didn't fully know what they were talking about yet.

Regarding the golden rule, the preface to the Vatican edition states that, “there must be no pause at the end of any neum followed immediately by a new syllable of the same word; by no means must there be a lengthening of sound still less a silent beat, for this would break up and spoil the diction.” Elsewhere in the preface, pause means a lengthening, not a rest or breath. In contrast, Engelbert of Admont (ca. 1250–1331) uses the word pausa to refer not to a lengthening, but a rest. I think the thirteenth-century golden rule refers to a breath/rest, not an episema, long note, or mora vocis. Regardless, it tells us nothing about first-millennial performance practice. In the oldest manuscripts, long notes before syllabic breaks are more the norm than the exception; more on that momentarily.

In the Al. Ostende nobis example above, note the different ictus placement at -lu- than in the official Solesmes edition, where there is an ictus on the first and third notes, and the liquescent note is disregarded. The authentic rhythm according to the ancient manuscripts is short-long-short-long. In my edition, I have placed an ictus mark on the lower note as a warning of syncopation. The fourth note is also ictic. Another possibility is that the lower note is a grace note and the second note is dotted. Either way, the neume has a value of three long beats, not two. Of the seven syllabic breaks in Mocquereau's quintuplex example, four of the preceding neumes conclude with a definitely long note, and two others are long by interpretation, leaving -no- as the sole example of a short note before a syllabic break. At least the Cardinians have more sense about this "golden rule" than the Mocquereauvians and generally respect more of the long values.

And?

it is perhaps not that earth-shattering in their view

But that's precisely the problem! It is a manuscript of great clarity, written perhaps four generations earlier than the oldest St. Gall sources for 60% of the Mass chants.

Right, and Solesmes seems content with the Graduale Triplex. I don’t think that they feel inclined to move beyond the Vatican Edition as some would wish they would.

I’m always ready to call out longwinded poetic nonsense from French scholars, but I don’t see why it’s unreasonable to hold that the Laon manuscripts are not entirely disruptive or inconsistent with what those more aligned with Cardine hold about chant. Perhaps the unspoken assumption is “earlier is not necessarily better in the end”. I don’t know. Maybe Dom Guilmard would have some more insights. Or Père Damien at Le Barroux who is also very open-minded IMHO (he is working with Matthias on the Nocturnale).

But you have very particular ideas about what is true or not true about chant. I don’t really care about the long-short thing. I don’t, in the end, for pretty much every reason that Dr. Weaver has laid out, just as much as I don’t sing with historical ternary meter for polyphony as much as I’d like to do that.

But I think that you’re in a bit of a tough spot if people (as early as Gajard) have more clearly acknowledged the problem and when those folks today already agree with you but don’t clearly agree about the need to really focus on Laon and what it brings.

I don’t speak for Solesmes and the Atelier paléographique of course. But I would say that pretty much no one has a problem with the examples from the end of word syllables so that may be why folks like me sort of shrug our shoulders in the end.

But anyway my point is simpler: I think good, reasonable scholars not singing from Laon is probably bad if what you say is true, but on the other, that’s the case, so we should ask why this is.

I don't think we are really in disagreement, nor do I think you're really refuting my point. I have suggested, based on what I have read of Mocquereau, that the reason the episema-over-clivis figure is drawn over the first note only in the Solesmes editions (with a few exceptions at ends of sections, like in the introit for Advent I) is because he felt constrained by the rules (specifically the so-called "golden rule") laid out in the preface to the Vatican edition, which he did not write. I do not think Mocquereau did this because he believed, as a matter of semiology, that the non-cursive clivis was long-short. The upshot of this is that singers working within the Solesmes/Fontgombault tradition should feel empowered to lengthen both notes of the clivis-with-episema; and indeed this is something that I have observed in the oral tradition.

To the extent that there are singers who lengthen only the first note, this seems like a predictable consequence of the particularly acrimonious debate over what signs should be allowed in chant editions in the early twentieth century. I'm not sure there's really anyone defending such an interpretation on semiological grounds. Of course, people are free to follow the notation they are singing from, without delving too much into the history behind it. What lesson can we draw from this? Especially as the Church has moved away from a heavy-handed involvement in performance practice and towards a hands-off lack of implementation of the pro-chant language of Sacrosanctum concilium? Can you imagine an official of the DDW now telling one of us that we cannot extend an episema over an entire two-note neume in a published edition because it would undermine the interpretation of the Vatican Edition?

In Duruflé, I'm trying to think of examples where such a single-note-lengthening happens. As far as I can recall, Duruflé often either ignores the episema or applies it to both notes. One spot where that is not true that comes to mind is the podatus in "In paradisum" at "suscipiant," where just the first note is lengthened. Maybe I even sing it that was as a result of listening to Duruflé!

In the third instance, the Solesmes edition contradicts the melismatic mora vocis of the Vatican edition.