The New Texts: Implementation without Accompaniment

[Calum Cille]

AUP files are Audacity's native project files - they store your recording project and allow you to edit it in future, but they are not what you need to share your music or to post it online. For this, you need to use the 'Export' option (on Audacity's File menu) and export your recording as, say, an MP3 or a WAV file. You can certainly post MP3 files on this forum. (On a Mac PC, Audacity prompts you to download a free plug-in to allow the exporting of MP3s. I'm not sure what happens on a Windows PC).

To export as an MP3, I would apparently need LAME, the website of which is gobbledygook to me. Perhaps NorthernTenor will just have to use his own sight-reading skills to hear what that interpretation sounds like!

[mcb]

Attempt at Calum Cille's Sanctus XV.pdf

This may or may not be anything like Calum Cille intends, but it's perhaps more helpful than being told to work it out for oneself. Calum, is this along the right lines? Perhaps you can tell us how it should look, if I've interpreted your guidance incorrectly. (I don't know what the 'ornament' is for the repeated notes, so I've just given the notes themselves.)

[Calum Cille]

Attempt at Calum Cille's Sanctus XV.pdf

This may or may not be anything like Calum Cille intends, but it's perhaps more helpful than being told to work it out for oneself. Calum, is this along the right lines? Perhaps you can tell us how it should look, if I've interpreted your guidance incorrectly. (I don't know what the 'ornament' is for the repeated notes, so I've just given the notes themselves.)

I'm sorry if I've put you to any trouble, mcb, but, as you will know, some people prefer quadratic notation because the ligatures help to form clustered patterns which are less visually neutral to the eye than successions of spaced-apart crotchets or tail-less note-heads bounded by phrase-marks. This being a forum for liturgy and music, I assumed that most people would be comfortable with reading quadratic stave notation. Since the horizontal episema or dash would already be familiar as a lengthening mark from Solesmes, and since the only extra sign I was conjuring up was dotting above and below notes to indicate half values, I thought the system of markings would be readable and comprehensible without too much effort.

My version of the Sanctus XV is the only rhythmic stave copy I've prepared and I had it on hand because I'll be using it with my Gregorian chant group soon. Consequently, I put this square notation forward in response to presbyter's request as it would give an indication of rhythmic style to him and anyone else interested. I certainly didn't devise the markings as a smug and aloof contrivance designed to make things difficult for people and be unnecessarily unhelpful. Likewise, I certainly didn't tell presbyter to work it out for himself: I explained the markings as clearly as I could, the dot representing a half length note, a double dash representing a double length note and a dash and dot represent a one and a half length note. That should be enough information on a forum of this nature. It's not exactly rocket science in comparison to modern standard western European stave notation, as your transcription shows.

[mcb]

No worries, I'm just trying to help. (Not everyone here can be presumed to read music, let alone neumes!) Did I get it vaguely right?

[Calum Cille]

No worries, I'm just trying to help. (Not everyone here can be presumed to read music, let alone neumes!) Did I get it vaguely right?

Do you really have to ask that question ... ?

[mcb]

Um... yes! Curious to know whether I've understood you correctly.

[Calum Cille]

Well, assuming that this isn't a wind up and that you're using a crotchet to represent an unmarked note in the square notation, and using a quaver to represent a duration that is half the value of a crotchet, and a minim to represent double the duration of a crotchet, and a dotted crotchet to represent the value of one and a half crotchets, then your transcription would appear to be accurate ... !!

[Calum Cille]

Back to the point about an essentially equalist and accentualist interpretation of the chant being used to guide construction of the new English versions. Now, I have no problem with that. It can be argued that equalism was anciently used as the replacement for the longs and shorts. However, if we are aiming at being true to the nature of Gregorian chant even when singing in English, the ICEL setting of the eucharistic doxology is a prime example of equalist-inspired interference with the relationship between syllables and relatively fixed melodic formulae, the operations of which can readily be seen in the Exsultet.

Given that the quantities expressed in some of the most ancient chant notation are still not generally employed in most parishes for the singing of Gregorian chant, it is no surprise to find that the ICEL settings play so willy-nilly with the formulae of the eucharistic doxology in this way. As I say, if authenticity is to play no part in the English versions, I'm happy with that. However, whether the Bishops' Conferences wish to continue to be so inauthentic as the new ICEL and the current English setting (which displays the same phenomenon) is another matter.

"It is important to note that the music available on this site is for study rather than immediate liturgical use as determining definitive versions is the responsibility of the Bishops' Conferences."

The appropriate assignation of notes under a proportionalist interpretation would differ from the ICEL version as follows.

Through him, and with him, and in him a c, c c c-b, a a-b b

This question has nothing to do with Latinate rhythm and everything to do the neutralisation of the melodic stress of formulae in order to facilitate changing verbal stress from line to line of the text. This is best realised under proportional conditions and distinctly not under the equalist-accentualist conditions Fr Ruff evidently (from the video) supports for these formulae. If each note of the note pairs c-b and a-b is interpreted as half the duration of the other notes, no syllable is given more rhythmic weight than any other.

As can be seen from the attached chart of transcriptions of quantities from Einsiedeln 121 and pitches from the Graduale Novum, the proportionalist viewpoint produces a degree of melodic and rhythmic patterning between the mass psalm tones terminations which is not ruled by word accent. This rhythmic patterning would deteriorate under an equalist interpretation of the formulae. The technique of matching syllables to quantity-based rhythmic formulae at the end of lines of poetry, but not having to match word stress to specific positions in the formulae, is of course as old as ancient Greek quantitative poetry.

Clausulae of mass psalm tone terminations.jpg

[John Ainslie]

This question has nothing to do with Latinate rhythm and everything to do the neutralisation of the melodic stress of formulae in order to facilitate changing verbal stress from line to line of the text. This is best realised under proportional conditions and distinctly not under the equalist-accentualist conditions Fr Ruff evidently (from the video) supports for these formulae. If each note of the note pairs c-b and a-b is interpreted as half the duration of the other notes, no syllable is given more rhythmic weight than any other.

...but that is precisely what is at stake here. English has a complex and subtle rhythm of accentuation, which must be respected. In the case of simple syllabic chant, is the text to be adorned by the music, or the music to govern, even straitjacket the text?

Let's take a look at the ICEL setting of the 'Holy, holy'. Fr Ruff (if you persevere to the end of his four-part lecture) is evidently relaxed about how it should be rendered, especially the opening phrase. Here below is one proposed rendition.

Notes:
1) Initial two 'Holy's. We need to remember that Solesmes itself has now disowned its own rhythmical signs, with which many of us were educated in Gregorian chant. That includes all the dots you find in plainsong books to indicate lengthening - notably those after the second and third notes of these 'Holy's.
2) I have distinguished the final syllable of phrases according to whether they are accented or not.
3) The '-est' of 'highest' has a neutral vowel: say it to your yourself! Latin, as rendered in Italianate fashion, has no neutral vowels, so English has to find its own solution. A neutral vowel cannot therefore bear lengthening, much less the two notes with which this setting ends. (There is a musical source problem as to why, in the original Latin, the final 'Hosanna' phrase has a different reciting note to the rest of the piece...)

[Calum Cille]

If each note of the note pairs c-b and a-b is interpreted as half the duration of the other notes, no syllable is given more rhythmic weight than any other.

...but that is precisely what is at stake here. English has a complex and subtle rhythm of accentuation, which must be respected. In the case of simple syllabic chant, is the text to be adorned by the music, or the music to govern, even straitjacket the text?

Stressing unstressed syllables in English metrical song has a very ancient lineage.

Thu ert icumen of heghe kunne,
Of David the riche king;
Nis non maiden under sunne
The mei beo thin evening,
Ne that swo derne lovighe kunne
Ne non swo swete of alle thing;
Thi love us brouchte eche wunne:
Ihered ibeo thu, swete thing.

O soldier, o soldier, will you marry me?
O no, my sweet lady that never can be.
For I've got a wife at home in my own country,
Two wives and the army's too many for me.

For Christ is born of Mary
And gathered all above
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love
O morning stars together
Proclaim the holy birth
And praises sing to God the King
And Peace to men on earth

However, I'm not even proposing that. The kind of rhythm used for communal Christian chant elsewhere in the Mediterranean, which I propose here, has a very similar feel to the music for the following line, only switching between duple and triple.

Ooooo liiiiiiitllllllle toooowwwwwwn ooooooof Beeeeethleeeeehem.

The third, fifth, seventh and eighth syllables would not normally hold the main stress of the word and their pronunciation would not impose any great discomfort on the average parishioner. Your theory suggests that a clear 'of' is inappropriate as its vowel would most often be neutralised in speech. Ordinary people seldom complain that the stresses of this line, or that holding syllables such as '-tllllllllle' or '-leeeeeee-', are uncomfortable or odd; only those with restricted ideas of beauty would feel that this was undesirable straitjacketing. The reality is quite the contrary. I seem to remember someone criticising people for shortening the '-hem'. Lengthening an unstressed syllable is seldom remarked upon as sounding unnatural in English, eg, "IIIIIIII'm forever blooooooowwwwwwing bubbllllllllllles" or "Daaaaaaaisyyyyyyyyy, Daaaaaaaaisyyyyyyyy" or even "and it's noooooo, naaaaaaay, neverrrrrrrrrrrrrr".

Latin chant melodies, sung with proportional measure, are entirely compatible in nature with musico-linguistic practices relating to English song which go back hundreds of years and which have for generations been considered perfectly acceptable by the ordinary practitioner.

[John Ainslie]

Thank you, CC.

Metrical song is an entirely different musical form to the form required by unmetrical liturgical text. The difference is illustrated by the distinction between metrical versions of the psalms - singable but inexact translations - and canonically exact translations (like the Grail psalter) where the text has primacy. It is what led Joseph Gelineau to propose his psalm melodies for the canonical psalter which depend on the accented syllables of psalm verses. Gregorian psalm tones and their English derivatives all depend on the last accented syllable (or two) of each hemistich.

For other examples of musical treatment of recitatives - for this is what these liturgical texts are - see Handel and Purcell passim.

[musicus]

Loath as I am to disrupt this discussion, could subsequent posters please take a look at the Original Post and the first page of discussion and then develop that? I am sure there is still a good deal of practical wisdom and experience to be shared and no shortage of people eager to read it.

I did look at how I might split the present discussion off to a new thread, but I cannot see a reliable way to achieve that - the forum's underlying software is rather flaky and unforgiving in this area. However, contributors are always welcome to begin new threads (perhaps by copying an existing post with which to start it.

Let me emphasise that on this forum no question is too simple and no discussion too complex: we genuinely want to encompass the full gamut - but not necessarily within the same topic!

[alan29]

My take on the infelicities that CC quotes in carols in particular is that those of us of a certain age will have been well drilled at school not to land on those syllables with a bump, but to taper off. And unhappy precedents is not an excuse to create new examples.
I didn't know that Solesmes had disowned their rhythmic bits and pieces. I learned my plainsong many moons ago from Fr Des Coffey who had been taught at Solesmes. He was one of the many teachers who have opened my ears to the utter diversity of music that is available to us ..........
Anyway, attempting to drag the discussion back, I wonder if lumpen unnatural verbal stresses help or hinder a congregation to sing unaccompanied. And whether that should have had any bearing when ICEL were preparing those gobbets of "chant."

[presbyter]

I'm fascinated by the exchanges on this thread. I will try to add my two-penneth tomorrow and request that "The Bear" doesn't close us down, for we are gradually getting back on topic. I think we are tending towards how to interpret the ICEL new translation chants and I'm almost in a position to offer my own version of the Liturgy of the Eucharist chants - in the light of JA and CC posts and the lecture from Dom Anthony Ruff. Hang fire folks!

[Calum Cille]

I've actually set up a new thread for any further venturing into the deep matter of this topic - "Unaccompanied singing 2."