The New Texts: Implementation without Accompaniment

[Calum Cille]

http://liturgy.nd.edu/web-catechesis/fr ... mentation/

At the above webpage, Fr Ruff displays some rather spurious ideas about what constitutes "Latinate" melody. One example he gives is "to give you thanks" from the Preface to Eucharistic Prayer IV. According to this example, spreading the five notes over the four syllables c c-b a b (two notes on "give") is apparently English-sounding whereas c c b-a b (two notes on "you") is apparently Latin-sounding.

It doesn't take too much brains to work out that Fr Ruff's criterion for judgement over something being "Latinate" or English is based on whether two notes are assigned to a stressed syllable/word or to a lesser-stressed syllable/word. Well, that scuppers any English sound to "and did those feet in ancie-ent time" "and did the holy Lamb o-of God"; apparently only "Land of Hope and Glory" is English sounding in this respect. What should be done with "Dear Lord and Father of mankind" which shows both phenomena, as does the Exsultet? If these are the kinds of grounds for the ICEL editions ...

"Cry out togethe-er a-and acclaim" b b b b a-g g-a b a versus "cry out together a-and acclaim" b b b a g g-a b a. The former was dropped, for no good reason except it being allegedly "Latinate" and purportedly fitting the English text better. The reality is that the English text is just as musically neutral in these examples as the Latin text - unless you're a non-proportionalist, like Fr Ruff and so many others. So much for the machinations of non-proportionalists: it leads to quite a re-interpretation and re-working of Latin chant aiming at reducing the number of notes per syllable, evidently for no good reason. Spurious "Latinateness" is certainly no good reason.

[presbyter]

I just wish those who compiled the Missal chants had used a bit more common sense and used their ears. Why, for example, does the adaptation of the chant for the Sanctus not reproduce the liquescent note in Hosanna that's there on the same page as the Latin text chant? Are we supposed to avoid the double "n" sound when we sing in English?

For chant settings -

I'm going to promote Walker's Belmont Mass and Jeff Ostrowski's Sherwin, I think, alongside the Missal chants in workshops, and leave the matter of what works best to those who hear/sing them. I'll try the Psallite Mass too, when it's available.

[John Ainslie]

We use a chant Mass of my devising regularly - and found it worked better for the congregation without accompaniment. It includes the ex-Rimsky-Korsakov Lord's Prayer. The weekday Mass congregation sing an Alleluia and a Holy, holy derived from Sanctus XVIII unaccompanied as normal practice - as it should be.

We used no instruments on Good Friday for the first time, and the congregation sang well, even refrains they had never heard before, notably Martin Foster's 'We adore you, O Christ'.

I have to admit that in my parish we have experienced music leaders and a priest who also sings and encourages singing.

May I use this space to appeal for rhythmed chant singing, i.e. using the natural accentuation of the English words. I've heard some awful, heavy, unrhythmed, martello-type recordings which are ipso facto uninspiring and do chant and the liturgy no favours. The blobbiness of the ICEL music orthography doesn't help: I write out all my chant with quavers beamed to indicate the rhythm of the words.

[gwyn]

I just wish those who compiled the Missal chants had used a bit more common sense and used their ears. Why, for example, does the adaptation of the chant for the Sanctus not reproduce the liquescent note in Hosanna that's there on the same page as the Latin text chant? Are we supposed to avoid the double "n" sound when we sing in English?

Indeed.

[Calum Cille]

Why, for example, does the adaptation of the chant for the Sanctus not reproduce the liquescent note in Hosanna that's there on the same page as the Latin text chant? Are we supposed to avoid the double "n" sound when we sing in English?

Indeed.

I think the technical term for this is "dumbing down".

May I use this space to appeal for rhythmed chant singing, i.e. using the natural accentuation of the English words. I've heard some awful, heavy, unrhythmed, martello-type recordings which are ipso facto uninspiring and do chant and the liturgy no favours. The blobbiness of the ICEL music orthography doesn't help: I write out all my chant with quavers beamed to indicate the rhythm of the words.

Fr Ruff's online tutorial is clear evidence of a link between such an accentualist approach and the rationale behind a lot of unnecessary mis-shaping of the individual chants for English. Viewing all notes as being essentially of equal length, to be drawn out and pushed in oratorically, is surely an impoverished way of seeing the chant considering what most scholars now accept about the earliest notations (which the proportionalists had been telling them for a century), namely, the notes can be divided into long and short durations.

In staff notation, I write out syllabic chant with crotchets. You probably won't like the style exhibited at 2.30mins into this Youtube clip, then, Ainslie. You must find it very unmusical, its rhythm being so independent of the "natural accentuation of the ... words".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw01tZG8z8U

As Hartley so famously wrote, the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. If we are to continue the search for historical authenticity, may I use this space to appeal for some diversity of approach to the singing of Gregorian chant? The pan-oratorical, equalist-inspired wash flowing over Latin liturgical singing is such a bind, and an unwarranted one, there being no historical proof of such an approach being used until the monks of Solesmes come along in the 19th century and introduce the theory.

[John Ainslie]

In staff notation, I write out syllabic chant with crotchets. You probably won't like the style exhibited at 2.30mins into this Youtube clip, then, Ainslie. You must find it very unmusical, its rhythm being so independent of the "natural accentuation of the ... words".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw01tZG8z8U

As Hartley so famously wrote, the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

...and Greek liturgy, its music and language is another country, too, so I can't possibly comment on this clip.

There are many possible modes of interaction between words and music, from Sprechgesang and cantillation, where the words take priority, to jubili and coloratura, where music is supreme. It seems to me that principal liturgical texts should fall into the first category, because of their ritual importance, and the music should therefore serve their proclamation. That demands a simple musical form, and while I do not rule out judicious interplay of longs and shorts, the natural rhythm of the English language has a lot going for it. Indeed, my principal gripe is that the natural accentuation and variation of pitch in English is poorly served by a chant invented for Latin. Why hasn't anyone done anything about developing a form of liturgical chant for cantillation in English?

Settings of Amens, alleluias and other acclamations, and melodic music used for hymns, kontakia and other forms, are a different matter.

So yes, let's have musical variety, even in chant, but let the liturgical function determine the musical form.

[presbyter]

I think we could end up chatting without necessarily understanding each other.

CC - any chance you might be able to post a .pdf of, say, how you think the ICEL adaptation of the Sanctus is best sung - with standard notation rather than blobs?

[NorthernTenor]

Viewing all notes as being essentially of equal length, to be drawn out and pushed in oratorically, is surely an impoverished way of seeing the chant considering what most scholars now accept about the earliest notations (which the proportionalists had been telling them for a century), namely, the notes can be divided into long and short durations.

... while I do not rule out judicious interplay of longs and shorts, the natural rhythm of the English language has a lot going for it. Indeed, my principal gripe is that the natural accentuation and variation of pitch in English is poorly served by a chant invented for Latin. Why hasn't anyone done anything about developing a form of liturgical c, hant for cantillation in English?

Interestingly, the Anglicans have, and the attempts show the interplay of these ideas. Marbeck's Prayer Book settings are measured, but the performance tradition has frequently moved towards speech rhythm. Modern Anglican psalm-chant is essentially fluid, though measured rhythm often appears at final cadences. Preces and responses frequently employ both approaches. The virtue of ICEL's minimalist representation (of which I'm not, on balance, a fan) is that it facilitates such a range of interpretations.

There was also an Anglo-Catholic tradition of English settings of Gregorian chant (e.g. the earlier work of the Gregorian Association) that pre-figured modern Catholic initiaves such as those found in my British copy of Jubilate Deo, and the work of Fr. Weber and Adam Bartlett in the USA. I believe this calls into question John's "principal gripe", and I am confirmed in my opinion by recollection of our congregation's unnacompanied singing of an English Gregorian Gloria at this year's vigil mass. Sure, there are places where sensible adaptation is called for, but that's not the same as replacement with a different style.

[Calum Cille]

Presbyter,

Here's my interpretation not of the ICEL Sanctus but of the Ante saecula Deus Pater Sanctus (mass XV) to give you some idea of my approach to Latin chant.

Sanctus - Ante saecula Deus Pater SG380-SG376 meud 512-384.jpg

If you click on this and magnify it in another tab or window, you should be able to see that I've (hastily) scribbled notation from Sankt Gallen 380 and 376 above an altered Vatican version. The markings on the square notation roughly represent how I sing the Vatican version and will give you an idea of how I would sing at least this Sanctus in Latin.

My markings of the square notation work as follows. All unmarked notes are long. Notes marked with a dot are half the length of an unmarked note. Notes marked with two lines are double the length of an unmarked note. Notes marked with one line and a dot are one and a half times the length of an unmarked note. I separate the repeated pitches on one syllable here (which equivalate with the Sankt Gallen 'pressus') with a vocal ornament in performance. My stops for breath aren't marked. The positions of the Ante saeculi Deus Pater sections are marked above the stave with an asterisk.

How long is long and how short is short is our watchword. The notes which I've marked as longer than normal are not indicated as such by the notation and their employment is the resultant of comparative study. This is because the mid-11th century Sankt Gallen notation is not reliable in its use of virga and virga plus episema to indicate long and longer.

Consequently, the neume running E F E D on the last syllable of 'Hosánna' often appears in certain sources of certain chants as four straight longs in certain sources but as two longs, a short and a long in other sources. While some proportionalists interpret this strictly, I interpret both neume formations as covering the same time period, thus dictating the existence of a note with a compound value of one long and one short.

At 'tua', I've used a double long on both syllables in line with the musical idiom in certain other notations of mass ordinary items. I've also lengthened the top A of the first syllable of 'Hosánna', partly inspired by the absence of an episema on G and the presence of an episema on A in the Sankt Gallen notation. I've lengthened the last D of 'Hosánna' to compensate for the value of the note present in the Sankt Gallen version but absent in the Vatican version.

I've added a number of liquescents. The Solesmes theory about liquescents seems borne of the following logic: we, Solesmes, can work out the form of a chant as first sung (!) and if the ancient neumes indicate a liquescent pitch added on to the main note where there is no equivalent added pitch in our original version, then that must mean that we liquesce the main note.

This of course is very inconsistent. Liquescents are (most often) written precisely because a consonant or semi-vowel is sung with a different discrete pitch. Otherwise, liquescents are not marked. For example, the middle section of psalm tones on one note will not normally indicate any liquescents as the consonants are all sung on the same single pitch that the vowels are. See Graduale Triplex p86 Lex Dómini, psalm verse, 'eius'. The only reason that preceding virgae A notes alter into subsequent tractuli A notes in the Einsiedeln 121 notation given there, is on account of an added higher pitch (compare 'glóriam' in the psalm verse or the pitch notation of this psalm verse on p16 of the Graduale Novum). So, we shouldn't assume, when the Vatican version does not provide us with an added on liquesced pitch, that the Einsiedeln 121 notation did not represent an added on pitch, especially since we don't have the pitches of the Einsiedeln version. Montpellier H159, which shows both liquescent neumes and pitches, is very instructive in its degree of consistency marking liquescents with separate, different pitches.

Consequently, I added several extra liquesced notes into my performance of the Vatican version. The pitches might not be right, but we technically should be singing the Vatican notes anyway. The enunciation is original with the Sankt Gallen version at least.

Sankt Gallen 380 runs out after 'Benedíctus' so I've filled in with Sankt Gallen 376 which is a close version.

[NorthernTenor]

Any chance of a sound file, CC?

[Calum Cille]

I've got a headset but have never managed to find a good programme I could use it with to record something of listenable quality, NorthernTenor.

[NorthernTenor]

I'm not sure whether you describe a technical problem or one of modesty, Calum Cille. I think I get your explanation of the representation, and it interests me sufficiently to want to have that understanding reinforced by sound!

[musicus]

I've got a headset but have never managed to find a good programme I could use it with to record something of listenable quality, NorthernTenor.

Audacity is free and available for Windows, Mac, Linux etc. Many people think it does a perfectly serviceable job.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

[Calum Cille]

I've got a headset but have never managed to find a good programme I could use it with to record something of listenable quality, NorthernTenor.

Audacity is free and available for Windows, Mac, Linux etc. Many people think it does a perfectly serviceable job.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

It must be the microphone. I can't get rid of the phasing effect which squeezes the sound dreadfully. Anyway, the forum says, "The extension aup is not allowed."

[musicus]

It must be the microphone. I can't get rid of the phasing effect which squeezes the sound dreadfully. Anyway, the forum says, "The extension aup is not allowed."

Headset mics are really only intended for speech, not music. Many computers these days have built-in mics which are much better. Failing that, very reasonable quality USB mics are available. I recommend the Samson Q1U (£39 from Amazon) - it sounds good (for the money) and is a doddle to use. However, £39 is probably not in the 'impulse buy' category!

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).

I know this sounds rather nerdy, but it's worth it. Audacity is a really useful and powerful piece of software - and it costs nothing.