Dear friends:
I have found this paper interesting but I would like to know your opinion about it. It's about rhythm in gregorian chant by John Blackley. I am sure you are just familiar with it.
http://www.scholaantiqua.net/pdfs/RhythmBeforeMid-Twelfth.pdf
Thank you so much.
Replies
I think you minimize the research that has been done decade after decade by scholars engaged in almost every detail of chant research. What goes into "individual articles and books" but exhaustive research into narrow areas of chant study? Remember Dom Hesbert's book-length series of articles (1934-39) on a single responsory, "Tenebrae factae sunt"? Remember Bukofzer's research on the music of "Laudes regiae" that formed a sizable appendix to Kantorowicz's book on the subject? The second-mode tracts and the eighth-mode tracts were the subject of two entire books recently. I made the point that in the span of time Blackley was writing, no one was even mentioning rhythmic theories in peer-reviewed journals.
Jerome F. Weber a dit :
Sorry, my error, I wrote Vellard for Vollaert. I wrote in reply to the inquiry about the Blackley paper. Manuel Tizon seems to have been pleased with the information I provided him. I had no intention of engaging you in so many other issues, the "different things" that you mention. For one thing, in saying that semiology has been a major point of discussion among chant scholars, I was not defending it at all. The discussion has been diverse, and your comments simply reinforce my point that scholars are discussing that subject rather than mensuralism.
I know Mlle Billecocq's LP and still possess my copy. She is a very fine singer of chant. I was responding to the question of John Blackley's writings, relating his opinions to the whole line of discussion of mensural theories. If, quoting Apel to the effect that he prefers the mensuralist theories, I also quoted him as saying they contradicted each other completely though based on the same medieval writings, I took the risk of seeming polemical. So be it. I pointed out that Murray and Blackley were the only ones to defend the latest (and last) mensuralist writer (Vellard). If it seemed polemical to point out the lack of subsequent support or even interest in his writings, so be it. If I suggested that Blackley has not made another recording since 1987, has not written for publication, has never given a paper at the American Musicological Society, the IMS Study Group Cantus Planus, or the Medieval Institute at Kalamazoo (the most accessible venues for him), that is hardly polemical, it is fact as far as I am aware. He published a newsletter, of which I received the first two issues about 1985, but not another issue since then. He writes on his own website, while chant scholars write in respected journals and books of oral tradition, semiology and such issues, but ignore mensuralism entirely. If it is polemical to point out this fact, so be it. If you want to broaden the discussion beyond Blackley to raise questions about the whole history of chant in every rite (I mentioned Byzantine without excluding the other Eastern rites), go ahead. Perhaps it belongs elsewhere than under the heading "Blackley Paper."
I am sorry if we cannot come to an agreement. Have you published your research in a peer-reviewed journal? If not, it does not matter much. Your notion of a "jazz partition" is surprising, since jazz begins with improvised performance quite difficult to reduce to paper, which is my point precisely. Dom Ferretti may have been "silly," but his final conclusion after years of debating with his colleague is illuminating. You must have some unique way of knowing who "wrote down the neumes." It was done in many places at many times, largely before the theorists tried to systematize their view of the chant. They were certainly not "the same people." If their "basic principles are clear," how do you explain a half-century of debate among the modern mensuralists, who used exactly the same theorists to construct diametically opposite conclusions? I do not make theory into "fact" as you so easily do. If Vollaerts agrees with one of the eight (Dechevrens), what does that say to the other seven?
CARRY ON...GENTLEMAN. This discussion is exciting.
Jerome: You have nailed it; he has published it in his website and he has not published anything in journals with peer review. At least there are a vast bibliography in the article but this is not enough.
Ricossa: thank you for your clarification. I have checked the pages of Cardine and you are right.
Incidentally, I am reading this book: http://www.amazon.es/Ritmo-interpretación-del-canto-gregoriano/dp/8438103448
The problem is that it is written in Spanish (Rhythm and Performing in Gregorian Chant). I am still perusing it, but, generally speaking, the author asserts that rhythm in GC is the interaction between neumas.
I think that this issue is very convoluted.
You misunderstand what Hiley meant in his reference to Coptic singers. It was simply one example of how flexible and nuanced singing can be; think of jazz improvisation. Blackley writes in terms of simple measurements such as whole notes, half note and quarter notes. In his rebuttal to my review in Fanfare, he wrote at length in terms of post-modal music; I replied that he was using such examples to explain music that existed long before modern notation: he put the cart before the horse.
I regret that you have not read the arguments pro and con that arose after 1960. In brief, Willi Apel in *Gregorian Chant* (1958) summarized eight mensuralists (before Vollaerts), pointed out that they all quoted the same medieval theorists and arrived at contradictory conclusions. Yet he ended by saying that "they" were right and their two adversaries (Pothier and Mocquereau) were wrong. I asked, which one was "right"?
There is a famous anecdote in which Dom Gajard wrote about a monk who constantly debated with him about rhythmic theories; at the end of his life, Dom Ferretti admitted to Dom Gajard, "There is nothing to be gained from the writers of the Middle Ages—nothing, nothing, nothing!" You may say that they "speak clearly about proportional singing" (you are quoting Blackley), but you may consult Apel to read how unclear their writings were to Houdard, Riemann, Dechevrens, Fleury, Wagner, Jeannin, Lipphardt and Jammers, who came to contradictory conclusions from the same writings. If most of these names are forgotten today, their conflicting theories have also passed into history.
As between Pothier and Mocquereau (the latter with his disciple Gajard prevailed at Solesmes), Apel preferred Pothier. It is interesting that Dom Cardine's semiological method, which has largely supplanted Mocquereau/Gajard, is based on Pothier. Listen to Pothier's recording from 1904 of the Alleluia Assumpta est Maria: it has the coupure neumatique exactly as Cardine taught it!
But he "published" it on his own website! I was looking for something in a respected musicological journal, vetted by peer review. In the 1987 exchange, I listed a dozen journal articles on chant studies in the previous decade; none of them even mentioned the old controversy about rhythm because everyone was writing about semiology, oral tradition, and such areas of research. That remains true today. As for Arvanitis and Lingas, we are not discussiing Byzantine chant. It is a question of the Romano-Frankish developments that are conveniently called Gregorian chant that we know from 10c. notated MSS. There was no interaction with Byzantium in this century. (The Veterem hominem transcriptions as antiphons of a Byzantine hymn are the exception that proves the rule; this was a single visit of a Byzantine cappella to Aachen, not a continuing engagement or exchange of methods.)
Hi Jerome, sorry, I thought that you meant that Blackley's views are difficult to perform but I understand your point now. It was a misunderstanding. Well, the article is quite a lot recent, 2008...
Jerome F. Weber a dit :
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