I received a really nice email this morning from Louisiana. It asked me some hard questions, and since I just spent the morning trying to compose brief answers, I think I'll just post the letter.
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Dear friend,
So nice to hear from you. What an opportunity you have, to be able to fill a need and possibly have the chance to sing this beautiful music in liturgy.
I firmly believe "If it is liturgy, it is to be sung." We teach that the mass, even when it's celebrated simply, should always have:
A gathering song that involves all the people
A sung/chanted responsorial psalm
A sung gospel acclamation
Sung acclamations to the Eucharistic prayer (Sanctus thru Doxology)
A communion psalm, song or hymn.
I think this pattern would be true for the Tridentine mass as well, don't you? And if you are starting up in a church where people are not accustomed to singing, you wouldn't be bound to the practice of singing the variety of ever-changing liturgy that characterizes a more mature singing situation. I would take advantage of the common psalm approach.
You ask me questions that it would take a book to answer. I'm not an expert, but a seeker. Be aware that my answers are colored by these considerations:
1>Recent research gives us clues to a rich understanding of chant that might be different from current practice. This, combined with knowledge of cognition and social development, takes me to an exciting place. Much of the literature on chant is written without this knowledge.
2>I believe strongly in the chant heritage of the Catholic Church as fundamental to all parish practice, including the renewal of liturgy since Vatican II. So I'm not working to reinstate the Tridentine mass. I want us to connect to our roots in scripture and liturgical music.
3> Now that I've "unlocked" the code, singing chant according to ancient practice is pure pleasure and powerfully meaningful.
Given that introduction, I go to your questions, which were an enjoyable exercise for me this morning. Thank you.
> > 1. Do reliable instructions exist for singing from St. Gall neumes?
First, look at
Chant Made Simple by Robert M.Fowells.
The definitive source is supposed to be
Gregorian Semiology by Dom Cardine, but I have yet to get my hands on the book. Fr. Columba Kelly, at St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana, has studied this extensively, and he provides many materials in his seminars. I highly recommend his two-week summer seminar at the abbey. (But you have young children, so maybe it should wait.) I don't know how you found me, but I post my experiences to the web at http://randomlight.blogspot.com/ and hope others will add their experience to it.
> > 2. What information do these neumes convey that the square neumes cannot?
Square notes give us pitches. They do not tell us how to sing those pitches.
The first source of HOW to sing is neither the pitches nor the neums, but the text. The chant is an extension of proclaimation of the text, based first and foremost on the natural accent of the words.
The St. Gall neums also record pitches, but not in the sense that we are used to, and we aren't able to read this until we have a lot of experience singing and "know" the forms. The academic resource for this concept is Alberto Turco's "Gregorian Chant" Tones and Modes, Edizioni Torre D'Orfeo, Roma 2003,
All research agrees that Gregorian chant predates the concept of the "beat" in music, and that neither square notes nor neums are intended to imply mensuration (or marking off, counting) of time elements in the music.
The neums DO tell us relationships, including shorter, longer, emphasized, held-out. These relationships are not based on a hypothetical "beat", as we are used to today, but are based on the spoken accents of the text.
> > 3. How do you use these neumes?
I use the neums and the square notation to decode a historically-informed rendition of the chant.
First: translate the Latin text. Even better, know its context(s).
Next: Make sure I know which syllables are accented. Underlining them is not a bad idea. It's surprising how often I "read" modern tonal emphases into the chant and only detect my misunderstanding when I look back and re-emphasize the word syllabication.
Next: sing the piece according to the neums and the square notes. At some point here, I find it helpful to sing solfege. Again, it is a check for mistakes in intonation.
I use these pieces as meditation, so all the above considerations are secondary, but if we plan to teach and share the music, I think all those factors are important.
When I teach chant to choirs, I prefer to give them the text and the St. Gall neums (which I copy onto a sheet). I ALWAYS give them the oral (call-and response, text-and-meaning-based) experience of the chant before I give them notation on paper.
> > 4. How do they lead you to sing square neumes differently?
Every chant recording I can find has an unspoken, often unrecognized commonality, in that the separate square-note pitches are relegated to a measured identity. There is a flow of either steady notes, or a combination of duples and triples.
I don't do this. You would have to hear the recordings and look at my scores to get a feel for the difference. I simply DO what the scholars teach. The recording are on the www.iglou.com/watchmakerpress/chant/ChantIndex.html. I'm posting manuscripts in standard notation at www.SibeliusScores.com.
I'm sure they are not definitive. I do NOT have the years upon years of study that are necessary to decipher each nuance. But they may be the first place that this concept is actually carried out.
> > 6. Who else uses the
Graduale Triplex , that you know of?
A Louisville group--Evensong--sings a weekly Compline service at the Chapel at St. Philip. They sing chant with a similar understanding, but their repertoire is more Anglican-based. I should talk to them and find out their resouces.
Who uses it consistently in liturgy? No one in my personal experience. We do not sing (or say) the latin mass. I'm parish Sunday-mass based. We sing chant regularly, but melismatic chant only occasionally.
I'm carefully studying my options for starting a Schola Cantorum St. Joseph Proto-cathedral, but I haven't made the move, yet, so I'll be VERY interested in your experiences. You're invited to post them to www.randomlight.blogspot.com. There are always places for comments. Or if you email to me, I'll post what you send me.
Thank you for an enjoyable morning. Please stay in touch about your experience.
In Christ,
maggie hettinger
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So, basically, I'd like to offer the same invitation to anyone else. If you find it meaningful to explore the treasures of historically-informed chant style, please share your experience--no matter how small.
We are at a nexus. The butterfly's wing can change the world.
Fr. Columba told us that when Dom Moquereau at Solemnes gave out the information that became the "Ward System" of chant in the U.S. American Catholic School systems, he knew that he had not yet unlocked the meanings of his own research. He gave them an approximation that they could use, because they had the funding and wanted to move on it NOW.
I find it interesting that when I teach chant to parish choirs, unlike those who already sing chant extensively, they don't hear the "difference." They say things like: I can hear the sounds of my childhood. I can hear the monks. I can just hear (Father ____).
So, maybe this 40-year hiatus of chant in our church is not totally bad. We get to pick up again with the advantage of expanded knowledge, and without the memories of Sister Mary Holywater beating out with her pointer (or even worse, a "clicker") the thumps and bumps that found their way into the Ward system of learning chant.
I'm excited.
