Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P. writes:
In reply to the question about chant practice in the Solesmes congregation--this second-hand from a Dominican who studied chant in France and a monk of the congregation who was an old friend.
The congregation is divided as to what method is used. Fontgombault and its daughter houses follow the old Mocquereau method. Solesmes and the other houses follow a modified version of Cardine's method. The problem with Cardine (as noted above) is that it involves certain practices that are hard to learn and very hard to execute properly in choro. Reprecussing together is one of these things.
I might add that Bill Mahrt (of CMAA and Stanford's Music Dept., known to many here), does not follow either method. He considers the Mocquereau's ideas on rhythem and the expressive neumes probably anachronistic for the middle ages and Cardine's method too difficult for ordinary monks to have sung day in and day out. The results he gets with the St. Ann Chapel Choir are very impressive and do not sound as "mannered" as some executions you hear on recordings following either method. I have a suspicion that Bill's ideas are related to his first encounter with chant at Univ. of Washington--where it was the Dominican version, which never used either of the Benedictine methods. He does now have his choir execute the quilisma, which is absent from the Dominican tradition, but I can forgive him that. He has them execute it with a kind of vibrato.
Dom Christopher responds:
Since I am a monk, I have a particular approach to chant that may be useful. So here are a few thoughts.
Fr. Thompson's quick sketch of chant methods in the Congregation of Solesmes is broadly correct. However, Solesmes never used Dom Mocquereau's method in an absolute way; they never lost sight of the fundamental importance of verbal rhythm, Dom Guéranger's original intuition at the base of the whole movement of restoration of Gregorian chant. We at St-Wandrille never used Dom Mocquereau's ideas at all, but remained faithful to the tradition of our abbot Dom Pothier, who was himself a faithful disciple of Dom Guéranger. And St. Pius X asked Dom Pothier to undertake the revision of the official books of chant of the Roman Church, not, despite the strenuous effort of Abbot Delatte of Solesmes, Dom Mocquereau!
Father Thompson raised the difficulty of repercussing. That is one place where counting is actually useful.
Is an interpretation based on Dom Cardine's ideas really too difficult? Well, here, we have a few good musicians, a number of middling ones, and a few brothers with tin ears and voices I will not attempt to describe. Yet our chant is, I think, good. So it can be done. It is true that we have one great advantage over any secular schola: we spend at least 3 1/2 hours a day singing Gregorian chant, in all its forms, and it is the only thing we sing. I would guess that most of us know most of the repertoire by heart, as did our fathers in the Middle Ages. While it is highly unlikely that you'll find this outside a monastery, there is one means of approach that is available to everybody. Most of the time we spend singing is spent on psalmody, which is the basis of everything else.
Sometimes people wonder what they should start with, and when they do, they always seems to mean "which Mass setting". This seems to me to be completely wrong, like trying to dance before you can walk. So it's no wonder they need rhythmic crutches. Start with psalmody. Why? 1. It is the only way to get a proper feel of the natural rhythmn of liturgical Latin. 2. It is prayer. It is harder to pray in a recollected manner when singing more technically difficult compositions. I said harder, not impossible, and of course the effort of singing such works is itself a form of prayer. But to become accustomed to the idea that chant is first and foremost a school of prayer, to get to know this truth from experience, you need to start with what consitutes the staple of chant, psalmody. 3. You don't need co-operative clergy. Any group of people that wants to get together to chant the Office can. It is a practical way to get started. It is also a way to help reverse the tendancy to privatise the Office, that the efforts of the liturgical movement over the past century have yet to achieve.
Some (all? most?) of this may seem too idealistic. I really have no idea. It is just an attempt to transpose my own experience for Catholics who aren't monks or nuns in the hope that someone may get something out of it.
Fr. Thompson:
Dear Dom Christopher,.
Yes, I remember the chant at Saint-Wandrille well from a visit there a number of years ago--I sat opposite Pere Louis Boyer (RIP) at lunch. The chant was lovely and not mannered at all. By the way, the Benedictine I quoted was Pere Harold Fisher, now of the Congregation de N. D. d'Esperance.
I agree completely that the first thing a choir should do is learn to sing the psalms. It gives a great sense for the rhythm and encourages recitation with a good legato. I does take lots of time to get used to how the varying accents require extra notes in the metrum and termination but that is good too for gets a sense of the flow of the language.
Doable or not, I still don't like repercussing (or quilismas and expressive neumes for that matter), but that is probably because I am used to Dominican execution, which had none of that--until the failed attempt to impose Solesmes methods of singing on us in 1965.
Perhaps the quick arrival of English was for the good--it put a quick end to this misguided "reform," and I don't know any friars that actually learned to sing using it. Some convents of nuns did, or so I understand.
pulsator organorum writes:
I am glad to hear from Dom Christopher, at St Wandrille. I have visited the Abbey for to attend the Mass or Office on a number of occasions over the last 29 years, and I made a short retreat there for the Epiphany last year. The chant on that occasion was simply beautiful, and my view from the retreatants' pew bears out completely what Dom Christopher says. The psalmody was the best I have heard: unanimous, intelligible and un-mannered. And the profound recollection of the choir (with many of the monks singing by heart) was extremely moving.
The other monastic choir which has impressed me in recent years is Le Barroux - and again the methods of chant used owe very little to (either of the!) Solesmes methods. The singing is virile and straightforward, with much less use of organ accompaniment than in (say) Fontgombault.
Mike O'Connor points out that there were and are large variations between national schools. There are also wide variations in chant singing due to the building and type of choir. Westminster Cathedral and Brompton Oratory, with small professional scholas singing in vast buildings, have developed their own styles, which emphasise clarity of the text and projection of the voices rather than dynamic shading (an important aspect of Dom Mocquereau's overall vision which no-one has commented on).
All of which proves ...? Well, not very much, probably. There are, even in these days when chant is the exception rather than the rule, many different approaches. What works in one building may not work in another. What worked in a 19th century monastery may not be appropriate in a 21st century one. The best school is the chant itself, and as Dom Christopher reminds us, the psalmody at its heart.
So Le Barroux is different? Is this the style Fr. Berger used? Or does he use a mix?
Gregorian schola, from Mark Klein (proponent of Cardine):
1. Schola gregoriana pragensis (director David Eben - CD Adoratio crucis) GR-Christus-SGP.mp3
2. Nova Schola Gregoriana (director Alberto Turco - CD In passione et morte DNJC) GR-Christus-NSG.mp3
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