One of the first things one discovers when studying Gregorian paleography is that some neumes (pes, clivis, torculus, porrectus, etc.) are chironomic—that is, they resemble the movement of the conductor’s hand. Other neumatic signs (the oriscus / tilde, trigon, quilisma, strophae) have a symbolic meaning, often borrowed from punctuation or contraction, that does not necessarily depict the shape of the musical gesture.
A challenge for modern conductors is to develop a technique of chironomy that is faithful to the manuscript tradition while still being understood by singers who do not have the same frame of reference as a 9th century cleric. Here’s a little clip of the gradual Requiem aeternam from our recent Day of the Dead concert where I employ a chironomic style influenced by my time singing with the schola at La Sainte Trinité in Paris, Theodore Marier’s take on the Solesmes method with its arsic and thetic ictuses, and a handful of grammar school conducting tricks. The end result resembles no one of these influences in particular, but it does seem to serve the purpose of keeping the ensemble together without beating time.
Once again, Euouae is creating an uproar in the international Gregorian chant blogosphere. Today our 2010 performance of Audi filia inspired this comment:
non è cosi che si canta il Gregoriano! non siete in gara di velocità e nemmeno dovete fare agonismo! potete stare più tranquille e pregare senza miagolare!
I am reminded of the Leonard Bernstein song “I Hate Music,” performed here by the inimitable Barbra Streisand:
Although to my knowledge no medieval theorist ever described Gregorian chant as “peaceful,” there are many today who hear chant performed as anything other than a shapeless dirge and say “that’s not what I call music!”
Well, this is very exciting. I just found a recording of Luigi Agustoni, who literally wrote the book on the semiological performance of chant, directing the Nova Schola Gregoriana in their interpretation of the introit Spiritus Domini. I happen to have recorded this chant myself during a live concert a while back, not with the professional singers of Euouae, but with my volunteer church choir.
This was my first attempt at using this approach with amateur singers, and it was before the publication of the Graduale Novum. I had never heard Agustoni direct, let alone his performance of this particular chant. Yet I can’t help but think our readings of the chant are very similar. What do you think?
Here they are, side by side, along with the St Gall notation from Einsiedeln 121 that I used as a source (and which accounts for the few melodic differences in our performances).
Note: this one is not for the workshop. Those recordings begin below with “Gustate.”
The idea for this came to me by accident. I made three separate single track recordings of the same chant and was comparing them side by side to see which was the best. I was shocked with how little variation there was from take to take and decided to lay them on top of each other, fading in and out to create solos, duets, and trios.
My point is there is no way you could achieve this kind of precision when reading from a printed score, with or without a conductor. In order to capture a feeling of improvisatory spontaneity, this music must be absolutely memorized.
I’m actually pretty happy with this recording (unlike some of the others below that were dashed off). Those familiar with the Vatican edition of the chant will notice some differences in the melodic reading.
The mystical numbers 7 and 3 feature prominently — from the number of singers in each movement to the overall musical structure of the composition – in Jacob Obrecht’s Missa Sub tuum praesidium, which Euouae will perform at Old First Concerts on November 18th along with motets by Josquin and 10th century Gregorian chant.
We are thrilled that Arts & Culture section of 7×7 has chosen this event as one of the top three classical concerts in San Francisco for the month of November.
Apparently, the men’s schola at the 17th International Gregorian Chant Seminar in Italy are as confused about chant as I am! Because, without even consulting me or reading about my crazy mensuralist theories, they seem to have come up with an interpretation of the offertory chant Laudate Dominum that is remarkably similar to my own.
Here is my single-take home recording, after about five minutes of study:
For comparison, here is the Seminar choir after working with one of the founding members of the International Society for the Study of Gregorian Chant (AISCGre, the group that edited and produced the Graduale Novum). As you listen, you may wish to look at the notation in the Laon manuscript (p. 74, beginning on the bottom left hand side) or else risk a case of motion sickness from the, shall we say, less than ideal camerawork in this video:
This is perhaps the most important post to date here on Euouae dot com, because if you believe that these two renditions are similar, that is evidence that my forthcoming chant method is in fact a practical way to sing chants from the Graduale Novum the way the editors of that volume intend for it to be used.
Here we have two recordings of today’s Communion chant, Laetabimur. The first, from St. Benedict’s in Sao Paolo, Brazil uses the organ to provide a harmonic accompaniment:
When we performed this chant today at the French National Church in San Francisco, I decided to use an organ drone:
Neither of these practices is justified by the notation itself, so I cannot make an argument for or against their “historical authenticity” based on manuscript evidence. But I will ask, does the addition of the organ help to bring rhythmic vitality to the chant, or does it stifle the suppleness of the Gregorian composition?
For those interested in chant accompaniment, there’s no better online resource than the Leland Library of Rare Books, which also hosts a number of treatises on the subject. If nothing else, these collections provide valuable insight into various rhythmic theories that have been in practice in the previous two centuries.
Adam Bartlett (English chant pioneer, disciple of Columba Kelly, and otherwise stand-up guy) has publicly accused me of espousing Mensuralism (the belief that music, including Gregorian chant, has any sort of discernible rhythm), which he states was “one of Cardine’s greatest fears.” Cardine! Who wrote THE BOOK on Gregorian Semiology. What was it called again? Oh yeah: Gregorian Semiology.
Apparently, Cardine and Kelly, both of whom devoted their lives to studying the notation of medieval manuscripts, have come to the conclusion that the length of the notes in Gregorian chant “cannot be measured.” Now, I remember when Robert Shaw once told us in a rehearsal that “music is based on the belief that time can be measured, and that anyone who has ever held someone’s hand while they were dying or being born knows that it cannot.” It was touching, really. But then he went on to lead a hundred and fifty people in count-singing every single subject and counter subject in the contrapuntal sections of the Brahms Requiem. Why? Because Robert Shaw was a mensuralist.
The idea that Gregorian chant could have been passed on through oral tradition for centuries before it was written down without any sort of “measurable” duration of notes is far-fetched enough. But when you examine a number of independently produced manuscripts that in all but a few cases agree with one another about which notes are long and which are short, it’s hard to believe there wasn’t some sort of regularity to them, some way to measure the lengths of notes.
But who knows? Maybe I’m wrong. So before I put any more time into developing a practical method for normal people who are not medieval scholars to actually sing this stuff, I guess I should try to find out if I’m just totally bonkers.
Here is a recording of me singing the Introit Rorate caeli as it appears on p. 15 of the Graduale Novum. Again, as in my previous few recordings, I did not spend hours studying this chant. I just looked at the limited information about pitch and rhythm found in the Graduale Novum and sang what it appears to say. Then, for comparison, I have superimposed Columba Kelly’s rhetorical analysis (which IS the result of many hours of study, in addition to textual and modal analyses), where he uses small, medium, and large notes to indicate normal, augmented, and diminished syllabic value. [Note: he uses a different source for the actual pitches, so we're primarily concerned with the rhythm].
With one exception (the first syllable of “super,” which anyway I think I hold a little bit too long), these do not appear to me to be in wild disagreement. But maybe that’s because my judgement has been clouded by mensuralist brainwashing. What do you think?
When what we now call Gregorian chant was first written down around the 10th century, scribes used symbols called neumes to notate the ornate melodies. The earliest manuscripts do not give precise indications of pitch, since the notation served only as a memory aid for notes that were already committed to memory. The great variety of symbols must therefore represent a diversity of rhythm. This is the foundation of the field of study known as Gregorian Semiology.
We come to our conclusions about the rhythm of 10th century chant not by mere speculation (as skeptics of the most recent research would have you believe), but by comparing numerous manuscripts and methodically decoding the meaning of the various neumes. In some cases, however, a particular chant might only appear in only one manuscript. How, then, are we to be certain of its interpretation? Take a look at this excerpt from the mode VII gradual Audi filia sung by members of Euouae according to the notation found in the Cantatorium of St. Gall:
Since this chant does not appear in the Laon manuscript, you might think it was impossible to confirm our rhythmic reading. However, substantial portions of this melody also appear in another mode VII gradual: Salvum fac populum tuum, sung here by our friends in Lisbon, Portugal according to the three-line notation in the Graduale Novum.
Here’s another phrase that is common to both chants:
While the stylistic interpretations of the two ensembles are quite different, the rhythmic readings are actually remarkably similar. (And I think if you asked either director, we’d probably admit that these single-take live recordings do not necessarily reflect our absolute ideal performances). The fact that we independently arrived at near identical readings (in terms of rhythm) leads me to believe that a practical method for performing chant according to the 10th century practice can be taught with as much consistency as the wide-spread Solesmes method. It is not, after all, rocket science:
