Greetings! I have taken an interest in the theory presented by Jan van Biezen, a short summary of which can be found here: http://www.janvanbiezen.nl/gregorian.html
And here also is a link to his book with a detailed review of the theory: https://www.amazon.com/Rhythm-Meter-Tempo-Gregorian-Chant/dp/1945416009#customerReviews
I study Byzantine chant and do not practice Gregorian chant, but nonetheless take interest in any new "approaches" to interpreting the Gregorian repertoire besides the famous Solesmes approach. Having found out about Jan van Biezen's approach, I tried to search for audio recordings of chant done according to his method, but found none. Do any such recordings exist? And is there any critique of or consensus on this method by other researchers? Thank you in advance!
Replies
I reproduced that transcription because it was at hand at home. It is of a soloistic rendering by an extremely skilled singer. Unskilled singers in a congregation in Egypt can sing in a plainer manner that comes closer to the likes of what we see in, for example, Laon 239.
Currently, at the following Youtube internet address, you can hear the contrast of complexity and simplicity between soloistic singing and communal singing.
In the communal singing, you can clearly hear more skilled singers warbling away and the others singing the plainer tune.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE3Og5CEYIE Listen from 1:30
Fr Weber,
I for one am puzzled at your disdain for this thread of discussion. It seems superfluous to say the following but your last statement gives worthwhile cause for reply.
What you call western plainchant can be explained by anyone who examines it sufficiently for that purpose.
We have no rhythmically (and therefore mensurally) unambiguous musical notations of western plainchant from the first millenium. We cannot therefore interpret the rhythmically ambiguous notations without applying some rhythmic model or models that we have in our minds, since they are not on the ancient pages. We are therefore entitled to examine those pages for certain features and choose which model or models it may be reasonable to apply to interpret the rhythmically ambiguous notations.
We are here looking at Jan van Biezen's ideas with regard to the rhythm and potential metricality or otherwise of certain notes at the beginning of certain note groupings that can take two graphical forms in Messine notation. We question the reason for the existence of the two graphical forms. We refer to what you call Eastern chant because phenomena of alteration of the first notes of note groupings exist in Eastern chant. We are therefore reasonably entitled to theorize that certain rhythmical features of one genre may be reflected in the rhythmically ambiguous notations of the other genre.
Mr Rooney has well made the point as to the relevancy of mensural principles to any interpretation of such rhythmically ambiguous notations.
Jerome F. Weber said:
To clarify, I have no queries here about liquescence but consider it important to take liquescence into account with regard to the likes of the Sciant neume, especially in the likes of the following instances which can be found in the Graduale Triplex at the pages referred to.
OF Confortamini p26 et iam
OF Tui sunt p49 et tu(a)
CO Lavabo p129 circu(ibo)
AL Exsultate Deo p313 cum ci(thara)
CO In salutari tuo p350 (ver)bum tu(um)
CO Ierusalem p370
The first word of the tract Deus, Deus meus (p144) is very interesting, in that second of the two instances of the curved initial note can be interpreted as at least a substitute for repercussion (if not a repercussion itself), while the first of the instances cannot be so interpreted.
I would be interested to see how you interpret the Commemoratio brevis with regard to the neume at the start of Sciant gentes.
Kevin M. Rooney said:
Mr. Rooney, If you are open to a different opinion, you might read the reviews I wrote in Fanfare (USA) of every CD MP ever recorded. To summarize, he is self-taught, adopting whatever approach to each recording he chooses. He chose Ison singing for Old Roman chant (unknown in Byzantine chant before the 14c.), then introduced Ison into every branch of chant as late as Plain-chant Parisien!
I praised him for tackling unusual repertoire and criticised him for how he interpreted it. My treatment might be summarized in the conclusion to my review of his Mozarabic chant: "Like all of Pe're's's productions, this is not to be missed by specialists, however maddening it might be."
I have not participated in this thread of discussion because it assumes that western plainchant can be explained by those who know only Eastern chant, and apply its principles without showing how they are relevant.
Kevin M. Rooney said:
Fr. Jerome,
Do be aware that the Early Medieval theorists prior to 1050, who can rightfully be called the "fathers" of Latin chant, were unanimous in upholding the Church's tradition of "mensuration", called in Latin modulatio. The very name for chant itself in music theory throughout the first millennium was modulatio, the "measuring" of sound with integral number ratios. Any student of the classical liberal arts will recognize this fact.
I pose this point as an opportunity to raise awareness of Cardine's Is Gregorian Chant Measured Music?, a less-known document outside our field of study, in which Cardine concludes that no, Gregorian chant is not measured, despite the overwhelming evidence otherwise.
In it, Cardine makes only a single comment on the fathers of Latin chant, in a brief footnote on the second page, where he says "Concerning the theorists, we shall say nothing, being aware of the severe criticism made of them by Smits van Waesberghe." His bias against mensuralism, or mensuration, or modulatio, then becomes as apparent as the sun throughout the rest of the book, which is essentially a posthumous ad-hominem against Fr. Jan Vollaerts.
Such astounding bias, or shortsightedness if you will be gracious, must change the color of your perception of Cardine's later teaching, especially Gregorian Semiology as well as his "Last Testament and Will", which again say nothing about the will of the fathers of chant to transmit the mensural tradition which they received from their fathers.
Cardine's entire "semiology" is therefore a novelty built not upon sound historical science but upon a rejection of the church's tradition. His predecessor Mocquereau makes this shared bias even clearer still, as Dr. Ricossa has already exposed in another topic. Jan van Biezen's disproof of the whole nuance theory, mentioned earlier in this thread, is not even necessary, since Vollaerts himself already did so in his 1958 appendix. Yet nobody has read Vollaerts, since most believe that Cardine has allegedly "revolutionized" the outlook on neums. Indeed the nuanced free arrhythmic non-mensuration is a revolution. One which I think the venerable transmitters of the Holy Tradition of first millennium Latin chant would have had plenty to say about.
Jerome F. Weber said:
Ensemble Organum's music sounds good because of its pan-cultural "ethos" or character of Orthodox chant. It sounds masculine, ancient, and beautiful. You can attribute that quality partly to the melody itself (minus the proper rhythm), but moreso to the vocal style and timbre they chose. Their nuanced "target note rhythm", which is entirely arbitrary, has nothing to do with it. A proper metric pulse would not diminish their good sound but only enhance it, as it already does in Byzantine papadic chant where melismas are solemn but memorable, and in Coptic chant where melismas are even singable by the congregation. Rhythm is responsible for that.
A few years ago I contacted Ensemble Organum at http://www.organum-cirma.fr about their choice of non-mensural rhythm, but I got no reply. In the time that I have studied and tested the theories of Vollaerts, Murray, and Van Biezen, I have concluded that Ensemble Organum, at least until the end of last decade, crafted its own rhythms from arbitrary choices.
Their Knights Templar album comes close to being accurate at times, but certain spots in the music make it obvious that they did not do a proper cross-comparative analysis of the note figures with other Latin chant genres, or even with other manuscripts.
For example, on "in diebus nostris" in the Antiphon Da Pacem Domine, the syllables "ebus" are supposed to be a long and two shorts, as is proven by a cross-examination of Hartker's Antiphons, Nowacki's tables of Old Roman Antiphons, and Bailey's tables of Ambrosian Antiphons. Yet Ensemble Organum arbitrarily doubles these two notes into a double-long and two longs.
Moreover their nuanced "target note rhythm" in their Old Roman, Ambrosian, and Old Beneventan albums seems to still be prevalent in their melismatic music. Such rhythm is demonstrably arbitrary, since notes which we now know to be auxiliary are instead given structural weight and lengthened.
Take the cadence of Old Roman G-Plagal melismatic chants. If I capitalize the notes which Ensemble Organum lengthens with nuance, the cadence is G-B-a-C-b-a-G. Yet by comparison to the same phrase in Gregorian chant, mensurally sung as g b | A | B | a a | G, it becomes clear that the Old Roman melismatic cadence of Mode 8 should be rhythmized as g b | A | c b | A | G. Both of those upper notes, the first B and the C, are short in the correct interpretation, but long with nuance in Ensemble Organum's interpretation.
That example shows that Ensemble Organum did not bother to discover the rhythmic structure of the melody, but instead imposed its own rhythmic structure based on the melodic shape alone. It probably did so under an assumption long held in the twentieth century, and unfortunately still held today by some, that Old Roman chant is a different genre of chant from Gregorian rather than a local variant thereof.
Of course, I have not heard their material from the 2010s. Perhaps their interpretations have improved since then. I believe Marcel is here on the forum, if you want to ask him, but I don't know if he is active.
Fyodor N said:
I saw a few of Arnold van Teuling's transcriptions of the Offertories. There is much room for improvement, but I must say it is a good start.
Meanwhile, Prof. Ricossa, please continue with your recordings. However, if you don't mind, I might request more Great Responsories than Alleluias, since the former are standard core material with typical Roman chant figures that should be easily parsable according to these new discoveries.
Regarding pre-beat (acciaccatura, portamento, grace) versus on-beat (appoggiatura, 'snap') ...
I find Gregorian chant rhythm (per Jan van Biezen's theory) to be more straightforward and smoother, less 'jolty', less adventurous than those Coptic transcriptions, even with the stylized ornaments removed from the latter. I find after-beat snaps or appoggiaturas to be more 'jolty' and dynamic, whereas Latin chant rhythm, from my studies, is more calm, at least in the notation. On the other hand, that is forgetting the probability that Gregorian was stylized with unwritten turns and ornaments in Italy. I imagine Gregorian chant might have evolved to sound this way by the 1200s, just like Coptic and sticheraric modern Byzantine sound, if the Rhythmic Decay of the tenth and eleventh centuries had not mutated its mode of performance.
Concerning punctum + initium debilis, I would interpret both samples you mentioned with the initium debilis before the beat.
At first glance, Offertory Erit vobis may suggest on "(ce)lebra(bitis" and also on "(memo)ria(lis)" that the Laon scribe (or his prototype) intended the punctum to take half of its beat, while the initium debilis took the other half. This could be the explanation for the punctum + initium debilis on "bene(dicta)" in Offertory Ave Maria. Perhaps contrary to this interpretation is Einsiedeln's absence of the initium debilis in one of these samples, and absence of 'c' for 'celeriter' over the first note.
Let's step back and see the functional purpose of this figure. It is an introductory leap ("aanloopje" in Jan van Biezen) with the C pitch being the target. The double-long on C is a sudden stop to the rapid upward motion from the note below and before it, a jolt in deceleration, which would be felt as a rhythmic weight. You might point out that such jolt is also felt after the beat in the appoggiaturas that you indicated in your Coptic chant samples. But notice here is a difference. In the Coptic samples the 'snaps' are later in the phrases, when the rhythm has already been established, and the cantor's mind has a reference frame for the pulse despite the musical syncopation. In contrast, in these Gregorian samples the movement is at the beginning of a phrase, where the reference frame of the pulse (perhaps) has to be recovered after a pause while the cantor was breathing. In such a case, an on-beat snap, which is meant to be felt as carrying the pulse at the bottom note of that leap, might shift in feeling to a pre-beat performance, since the top note carries more weight.
This same general introductory leap is visible on "Mari(a)" in Ave Maria, as well as countless other places in the neumatic-melismatic repertory. Similar is the common spring from the brief D to the G at the beginnings of phrases in Mode 3 Introits, etc., along with the D-A leap you noted in the Mode 1 Antiphons and Introits.
It might be argued in all these cases that the initium debilis indicates not a particular note but rather a movement of the voice upwards towards the target note. Jan van Biezen made this point in a more general context when he quoted Notker saying that the neums indicate transitions, not particular tones. Therefore, the initium debilis is an indicator of a legato-driven vocal style typical of Mediterranean monody. If we remove that style, namely, remove the initium debilis transition altogether, to see what lies underneath, we have the two basic options: the first syllable is either a short or a long.
1) If the first syllable is a short, then, with the portamento indicated by the initium debilis, the punctum on A (or G) is in principle an eighth note, enduring for only half a beat after the pause, but in reality for slightly less than that, since the initium debilis has non-zero duration. Or, equivalently, the punctum is a dotted sixteenth note, and the initium debilis a thirty-second note.
2) If the first syllable is a long, then it endures in principle for a whole beat, but in reality for half or 2/3 or 3/4 of a beat, with the initium debilis taking the rest of the beat's duration. This option would suggest that the Messine cantors depicted the two notes as a punctum and initium debilis for the reason that in practice they tended to give a larger slice of time to the transition than the Swiss cantors did.
For other reasons worth discussing later, I suspect the authors of Gregorian chant did not think it to matter too much whether that first syllable was sung to a whole beat or half beat (the Alleluias give support to this), just as they also seem to be imprecise in their choices of which pitch it should be. Is it a G or an A? The same leap elsewhere is found on both pitches. Just like the D to A in Gregorian Mode 1 is E to A in some Ambrosian antiphons, and also the G to D is alternatively A to D in some chants of Mode 7.
Wherever the lower note of that introductory leap at the beginning of a phrase in general has variability in its notation as well as its pitch, in my opinion it is safe to conclude that the note carries no rhythmic structure, that its functional purpose is merely as a prelude to the next note, and that its execution is largely up to the cantor. The punctum + initium debilis shape in Laon is then an example, not a prescription, of how it might be sung.
As a side note, the fact that we call the term "initio debilis" is a striking coincidence. In the Early Middle Ages this note would have been called a "tremula", which has a similar meaning to "debilis". More on that later.
Alasdair,
Thank you for posting the transcriptions of Coptic chant. Those were quite the challenge to read with the subdivisional notes specified. I imagine with neums the ornaments would be more intuitive to comprehend. I will reply when I have time to your queries about the initio debilis and liquescent.
I am grateful you raised the question of tempo and the sixteenth note. You are absolutely correct that the question "How subdivisional can you get?" cannot be answered without knowing the lower and upper bounds on the speed of the chant. To this I have a working explanation, worthy of an article when I get the time.
To begin, take a look at the closing pages of the Commemoratio Brevis on the speed or tempo of Psalm and Antiphon.
Signor Ricossa,
First of all, thank you for posting your singing of all those office chants.
It is good that you brought your examples above to the attention of the group because it provides an opportunity to discuss a certain difficulty with the examples, which is that a vocal repercussion is a form of vocal slur, which is highly unlikely to be melo-rhythmically protyptic, whereas a short liquescence is highly likely to be protyptic. I have not yet heard, in any Christian chant of any provenance, a short liquescence which is not protyptic.
I therefore regard those examples as indicative of melo-rhythmic alteration and therefore inconclusive with regard to whether or not the curved note in the Messine neume is protyptic or not.
That the same curved note appears at the beginning of the gradual Sciant gentes and the mode VII Messine Gloria Patri, is very persuasive evidence that the curved note can, at least on certain occasions, not be protyptic. A parallel with a different pitch pattern would be the neume at the start of the introit Factus est Dominus.
The production of a slur may reduce the second pitch of such a neume from a long duration to a less than long duration. It may even reduce it to be short, since we occasion find the letter C on the left side of certain relevant kinds of neumes, eg, in ter(ram) in the introit Introduxit vox and (exsul)tati(onis) in the introit Omnes gentes; or even dixit in the introit Dominus dixit ad me.
The evidence that the note following the first curved note is also curved and may be marked with the letter C in the Messine notation may be added to by the evidence that the Messine notation has two forms of three note neumes of this kind, one conjunct in form and one disjunct in form, the first two notes always conjunct, and that, as a general rule, conjunction iindicates shortening of pitch duration for the prior note.
On another point, the phenomenon of verbal syllables starting on protyptic notes occurs in Coptic chants which, when communally sung, are sung to a theoretically regular beat. Such a phenomenon is a form of verbal syncopation so even if we consider the first curved note of a Messine neume of three or more notes as protyptic, I would not view that evidence alone as indicative either way of Messine chant being, or not being, sung to a theoretically regular beat and I would moreover view evidence of such a phenomenon as opening the very door to the possibility that Messine chant was sung to a theoretically regular beat. Jan van Biezen's publications are very important in this regard and I am still nonplussed that, as our understanding of the earliest notations refines, such interpretations as his are belittled, given the ambiguities and inconsistencies in the earliest notations concerning rhythm, the evidence of surviving communal Christian chant traditions, of the benefits of a theoretically regular beat to the memorisation of melody, of the ease it gives to communal performance from memory and, most significantly, of the theoreticians who described the chant of latin Europe contemporaneously.
-
2
-
3
-
4
-
5
-
6
of 7 Next