The New Texts: Implementation without Accompaniment

[musicus]

Thank you, CC...

...and do please continue to discuss the new translation chants on this thread, presbyter.

[Calum Cille]

Gregorian psalm tones and their English derivatives all depend on the last accented syllable (or two) of each hemistich.

It is not the case that "all" Gregorian psalm tones do this. For example, mass psalm tone I only 'depends' on the penultimate stressed syllable in the first hemistich and no stressed syllable at all in the second hemistich.

The melody of mass psalm tone I ends the first half of the verse by very purposefully accenting the penultimate stressed syllable but the ultimate stressed syllable is moveable in relation to the flexible melody. The termination of the second half of the verse is inflexible and disregarding of verbal stress altogether so that ultimate verbal stress can sit in three positions in the melody and penultimate stress can actually occur either within the termination formula or on the reciting note before the termination formula begins. This is not the only psalm tone to do this.

[Southern Comfort]

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!

You can download LAME at the same place as you download Audacity, if you're downloading it from the same place that I did last year. Très simple, mon ami.

I concur with musicus that Audacity is an excellent free programme. I use it a lot for transferring old cassette recordings to MP3 files, as well as for doing the usual recording editing stuff.

[Calum Cille]

Musicus sent me the LAME files and I managed to get the whole thing working but the trouble might be microphonic as the recordings have sound effects on them rather like Skype. Thanks for all the advice though.

[Southern Comfort]

Musicus sent me the LAME files and I managed to get the whole thing working but the trouble might be microphonic as the recordings have sound effects on them rather like Skype. Thanks for all the advice though.

You might find you can solve that problem by setting the mic input levels lower. Too high with Audacity and you get a lot of distortion, I've found. In other words, resist the usual recording engineer desire to have levels set as high as possible without overpeaking in order to have maximum signal to work with and be content with a lower level.

[Calum Cille]

Yes, I did try that, as I was wondering if my desktop had a hidden microphone! No change at all. I'll just have to fork out as Musicus suggested.

[Calum Cille]

Presbyter,

Here is my cheekily re-edited version of the ICEL Sanctus. As you can see, it doesn't vary much from the good work already done.

ICEL Sanctus.jpg

I would have rests at each instance where there is a vertical line.

Again, I've placed dots above notes to indicate that I would interpret them in practice as half the duration of the unmarked notes. Liquescent notes on pitches which are genuinely interpolated into the melody would historically never have been considered as having the same duration as a one note syllable. Since I would sing this in duple time, I'm following one of the plica options in Lambertus, and assigning a half value to the liquescent note here and a half value to the note preceding.

I've removed the repeated notes which are not desirable for marking length as they are more appropriate for indicating the existence of a repercussion or a 'pressus'; I prefer the horizontal episema for marking length, as the episema is the ancient sign for marking lengthening. I've also not marked the lengthening of the syllables which ICEL marked thus, as such lengthening is not prescribed as a feature of the original melodic source. It has obviously been introduced here as a feature by accentualists who can't resist the lure of binary or ternary patterns!

|Holy Lo-ord |God of hosts.
anapaest anapaest
|Heaven and |e-earth are |full of your ...
tribrach trochee tribrach
|Blessed is |he-e who |comes in the |name of the ...
tribrach trochee tribrach tribrach

I don't have any problem with this, except that the Latin style doesn't customarily accentuate syllabic text rhythmically in this particular way. This is not because Latin doesn't have long and short syllables (Italian still does); it just (for the most part) prefers to use pitch change for the purpose of accenting syllables. I suppose this is partly why I prefer Latin chant in Latin and modern English chant melodies in English with limited crossing over of the two genres.

[musicus]

Forgive me if this has already been posted, but I think these mp3s are well done and potentially useful:

http://www.npm.org/Chants/index.html#sign

[presbyter]

http://www.npm.org/Chants/index.html#sign

The link on the above page tells the story -

http://www.icelweb.org/ICELMusicIntroductionRev809.pdf

[Calum Cille]

Ah, the inner workings of the minds of equalists-accentualists:-

"lets get rid of all these interesting extra notes, especially on the last syllable"
"simple tunes using only two notes are too difficult for congregations"
"the congregation can't sing a response unless it is an echo of the priest's part"

Ding dong dumb down, down dumb ding dong.
Ding dumb dong down, down dumb ding dong.

[gwyn]

Ding dong dumb down, down dumb ding dong.
Ding dumb dong down, down dumb ding dong.

Indeedy doody. The gnenral absence of colour and beauty is painful. I think I'll be doing some tweaking before they're let loose here.

[musicus]

Ding dong dumb down, down dumb ding dong.
Ding dumb dong down, down dumb ding dong.

Indeedy doody. The gnenral absence of colour and beauty is painful. I think I'll be doing some tweaking before they're let loose here.

OK, perhaps they're not as well done as I thought (I was pleasantly distracted by the lack of transatlantic twang).

But is the problem that the ICEL chants are just wrong or is it that they are OK, but these recordings are poor?

(If it's the latter, can anyone point us to a better online source?)

[John Ainslie]

I suppose this is partly why I prefer Latin chant in Latin and modern English chant melodies in English with limited crossing over of the two genres.

Ah, I can certainly agree with Calum Cille on that. But we'll have to agree to differ on the relationship between English accents and 'cantillation' as many of us have known it.

But is the problem that the ICEL chants are just wrong or is it that they are OK, but these recordings are poor?

I think some serious study needs to be done on chanting in English and its liturgical function. There was plenty of time to do this in the last 45 years. Simply adapting Latin formulae won't do, for the reasons that Calum Cille and I, from different points of view, have tried to explain.

[gwyn]

The general absence of colour and beauty is painful. I think I'll be doing some tweaking before they're let loose here.

OK, perhaps they're not as well done as I thought (I was pleasantly distracted by the lack of transatlantic twang).
But is the problem that the ICEL chants are just wrong or is it that they are OK, but these recordings are poor?
(If it's the latter, can anyone point us to a better online source?)

Apologies, I've not been specific. The recordings are fine Musicus. The melodies themselves seem to lack any lustre. I'll sift through and point to a few examples.
Gwyn.

[John Ainslie]

For those like me who don't like the blobbiness of the ICEL orthography of the Mass chants, here are the same in traditional four-line notation - and in a convenient booklet: http://musicasacra.com/pdf/ICELchants_neumes.pdf

Besides being much more attractive typographically, four-line notation makes it much clearer that the pitch is relative.