MusicaSacra keeps us updated on materials to help us better understand chant. From their 8/2 post:
We are pleased to announce that there is a compelling source for understanding the old-style Solesmes approach to rhythm: The Rhythm of Plainsong by Dom Gajard (1943), now available in a free download.This marvelous book is defense of the Mocquereau approach to the rhythm of Gregorian chant, with Gajard clearly explaining, in non-technical terms, what is historical, what is deduced from musical understanding, and what is pure speculation. He makes a very persuasive case.
2 comments:
Thannks for this link, Philip. It is important, however, for us to keep in mind that Gajard's method was only one of dozens of chant interpretative styles that have been prevalent over the past 1600 years or so.
Gajard's method was challenged by a later chant scholar at Solesmes, Dom Cardine, whose "Gregorian Semiology" translated into English by Robert Fowells, founder of the Schola Gregoriana of Los Angeles.
One of the other major chant experts, Dr. Mary Berry, professor emeritus of Cambridge University in England and founder of the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge has been teaching and performing the Cardine method for years.
The Fowells book, which I suppose distills the thought of Cardine, argues that chant should never have a pulse, that there is no rhythm that can be set down and understand (notes are all long or short or somewhere in between), there can be no counting in chant, that the text must be primary always, that the only way to sing together is to memorize what the director sings, etc. Now, all of this is fascinating but two critical points: it seems that this theory forgets that chant is, after all, music, and singing this way will not produce a beautiful sound.
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