Gregorian Rhythm Wars contains all previous installments of our series.
Please refer to our Chant Glossary for definitions of unfamiliar terms.
ARRING THE POSSIBILITY OF A CENTURIES-LONG CONSPIRACY by Protestant printers, it is safe to say that the isometric versions of the sixteenth-century chorale and psalm tunes amount to real proof of a rhythmic alteration. There is absolutely no chance that melodies originally notated with semibreves and minims were originally sung with notes of equal value, nor that the semibreves were only sung as slight expressive nuances rather than strict proportions; to think so would be contrary to both the plain meaning of the notation and good sense. Besides occasional passing tones, added later, the isometric versions represent the authentic melody with near-100% accuracy and are easily recognizable as variants of the same tunes, despite their different rhythm.
A Sterling Example • After my last post, it occurred to me that a tune heard in many Catholic churches during Advent (or perhaps the final weeks of the liturgical year) makes for an exemplary case study. Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme is most commonly known in the United States as either “Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying” (Catherine Winkworth’s translation) or “Sleepers Wake, a Voice Is Calling” (William Ball’s translation). Here are three versions of the melody, all transposed to C major: 1. the original by Philipp Nicolai, 2. Bach’s version from the final movement of BWV 140, and 3. Bach’s version from movement 4 of the same cantata, rescored as an organ chorale prelude in the Schübler collection, BWV 645, no. 5.
Red noteheads signify major melodic alterations. Blue signifies rhythmic alteration, and purple signifies both melodic and rhythmic alteration.
- The parenthesized notes are minor melodic variants such as passing tones or other ornaments.
- Because of the added passing tone, this note is considered long.
- Regardless of the melodic variant, none of these three notes can be considered rhythmically accurate.
- The dotted rhythm here could be rewritten as two quarter notes; therefore, this note has not been marked as an alteration. The phrase has been rebarred.
- Because of the added passing tone, this note is considered long.
- We are not concerned with the syncopation here; in fact, the third version has been rebarred.
- Because of the added passing tone, this note is considered long.
- We are not concerned with the syncopation here.
- Because of the added passing tone, this note is considered long.
The Same, but Different • Counting the repeats but not including the two notes in parentheses, the original chorale has 82 notes. You can confirm for yourself that Bach’s isometric versions reproduce the original melody with 98% accuracy. What about the rhythm? In the second version, only 20 out of 82 notes (37%) retain the relative long or short values of the original version. In the third version—mostly the same as the second, but with the normal value treated as relatively short instead of long—67 out of 82 note values (82%) are correct. Despite significant rhythmic discrepancies, we can easily recognize all three versions as the same melody, just as when we compare vastly different interpretations of chant. We could argue about which version is superior and why, whether Nicolai would love or hate Bach’s settings, or what constitutes an “authentic” performance for a congregation or group of singers that has known only one version their whole life, but all of that misses the point. If we were assigned the task of restoring the original chorale, only one of the three versions would be satisfactory, no matter how old, familiar, beloved, singable, beautiful, artistic, or prayerful the other two versions might be. Furthermore—and I really can’t overemphasize this—we cannot reconstruct the original rhythm from the isometric versions alone, just as we cannot reconstruct the original proportional chant rhythm from the equalist versions. We have to go to older sources, or at least to editions based on the older sources.
***PLEASE NOTE: The following paragraph contains statements that might not be entirely accurate. I have not altered the text of my original post from January 2, but two days later, I received a message saying that Dominican chant had also been mensuralist before coming under the influence of Dom Pothier. My colleague recommended “Medieval and Modern Dominican Chant in the 19th Century” by Fr. Innocent Smith, O.P. (PW, 1/5/23)
Uninterrupted Equalist Tradition • I recently received a visit from a friend and former choir member of mine, who now sings for a traditional Latin Mass in the Dominican rite. He reminded me that their chant represents an unbroken tradition from the thirteenth century, when the Order of Preachers was founded by St. Dominic. They have retained a version of plainchant unaffected by either the corruptions of the Renaissance era or the theories of Doms Pothier, Mocquereau, Gajard, or Cardine. Rhythmically, it is closer to what Jeff Ostrowski espouses than anything proposed by the Solesmes masters—old, classic, or new. Like the pure Vatican edition, the bar lines serve as rhythmic indications; but unlike the Vatican edition, the melismatic mora vocis, neumatic break, and praepunctis neumes have no special rhythmic significance. Here is the officium (introit) Si iniquitates for the twentieth Sunday after the octave of Trinity (twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost) according to the Dominican Graduale:
Applying the rhythmic indications of a tenth-century MS to Dominican chant from the thirteenth century would be just as misguided as applying equalist rhythm to Messine or St. Gall chant from the tenth century. The equalist plainchant of the High Middle Ages is as far removed from the rhythmic chant of the Early Middle Ages as the isometric chorales are from their rhythmic predecessors. I would now like to re-present three of my previous examples using the Graduale Novum and the Dominican Graduale for comparison.
Introit Deus in loco for the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
(officium for the ninth Sunday after the octave of Trinity):
Gradual (responsorium) Tecum principium for Christmas Midnight Mass:
Gradual (responsorium) Eripe me for Passion Sunday:
Focus on the rhythmic implications of the note grouping and the adiastematic neumes, not the melodic differences. Don’t miss the point! Here is another example from an upcoming chant, the offertory for Epiphany:
In the Dominican variant, the mutilation of the repeated notes at -sis and in- is unsurprising. The Solesmes edition, which only marks two notes long in this little passage of 33 notes, is included in the middle. Anyone familiar enough with Solesmes’ editorial principles can make an educated guess about nine additional long notes (including some not explicitly notated as long in Einsiedeln 121):
Unfortunately, the Vatican and Solesmes editions leave no trace of another eight long notes:
The excerpt has nineteen long notes. In typical fashion, the Solesmes editions make no distinction between the long and short forms of the pes and climacus.
Origins • In my last post, I made the bold claim that the chant with its rhythm was handed down from the Fathers of the Church. Depending on how literally you take certain versions of the hagiographical dove legend, the chant either comes from the Fathers or from a singing pigeon:
A dove is his special emblem, in allusion to the well-known story recorded by Peter the Deacon (Vita, xxviii), who tells that when the pope was dictating his homilies on Ezechiel a veil was drawn between his secretary and himself. As, however, the pope remained silent for long periods at a time, the servant made a hole in the curtain and, looking through, beheld a dove seated upon Gregory’s head with its beak between his lips. When the dove withdrew its beak the holy pontiff spoke and the secretary took down his words; but when he became silent the servant again applied his eye to the hole and saw the dove had replaced its beak between his lips. (Catholic Encyclopedia)
MS 171a, Stadtbibliothek, Trier
This story was later embellished to recount that the bird cooed the chant melodies to St. Gregory, which the holy Pope dictated on his parchment. As far as solid historical evidence is concerned, the chant melodies that have come down to us as “Gregorian” are associated more strongly with the reign of Charlemagne (768–814) than the papacy of St. Gregory the Great (590–604), but we also know that they were based on preexisting Roman chant disseminated to other parts of Europe during the papacy of Adrian I (772–795). As a point of chronological reference, the Second Council of Nicaea took place in 787. Like plainchant, the term Gregorian chant came about after the chant itself.
An Incredible Claim • Jeff has asked me for a “transitional” semi-rhythmic manuscript of Gregorian chant. I have told him where to look, and I believe he will more easily find it than a “transitional” semi-rhythmic edition of the entire Genevan Psalter. Although providing us with a glimpse into the process of rhythmic deterioration, transitional MSS would have been of little contemporary interest after the change to equal rhythm was completed. Rhythmic MSS might have been preserved as curiosities, but a transitional MS, being neither fish nor fowl, would have been redundant, of negligible value, and therefore disposable. That any have survived is remarkable. It is incomprehensible to me how anyone in 2023 can believe that chant was sung in equalist rhythm in the tenth century. How am I to take such a position seriously? Better yet: why should I or anyone else take that position seriously in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary, adequately addressed in the scholarship of the past 140 years?
There can be no doubt that rhythmic differentiation was an essential element in the practice of those choirs for whom the St Gall, Laon and other sources were written. The fact that the Laon source is widely separate geographically from the others suggests that this way of singing chant was quite widespread. How long it persisted is unclear. (David Hiley, Western Plainchant: A Handbook, p. 379)
Avoiding any and every form of mensuralism is often now [2017] considered a hallmark for correctly singing Gregorian chant. Noting, however, that early manuscripts from different countries often strongly agree about which notes are long and which are short, it seems hard to believe that only nuanced note lengths would characterise the rhythm of chant. Moreover, the idea that Gregorian chant could have been passed on through oral tradition for centuries without some way to measure the length of the notes sounds incredible. (Dirk van Kampen, “The Rhythm of Gregorian Chant: An Analysis and Empirical Investigation,” p. 15)
The idea that Gregorian chant could have been passed on through oral tradition for centuries before it was written down without any sort of “measurable” duration of notes is far-fetched enough. But when you examine a number of independently produced manuscripts that in all but a few cases agree with one another about which notes are long and which are short, it’s hard to believe there wasn’t some sort of regularity to them, some way to measure the lengths of notes. (Sven Edward Olbash, “Fear of a Mensuralist Planet”)
Throwing Out the Baby with the Bath Water • According to Dom Gajard, the foremost expositor of the classic Solesmes method after Dom Mocquereau, the various mensuralist theories were, “in fact, based upon pure imagination. What stands out as most absurd is that, although they all contradict one another, they are all based on the same texts by medieval writers, whose clarity they all extol and whose obvious meaning each one claims to know. This in itself is a condemnation of one and all” (The Solesmes Method: Its Fundamental Principles and Practical Rules of Interpretation, p. 7). A rasher and more sweeping assertion could hardly be fathomed! When the Solesmes theorists don’t base their own method on those same passages from medieval writers, they simply ignore them and say that they are of no value. Granted, the writings of the medieval theorists are not divine revelation, but the “classic Solesmes” hermeneutic is like rejecting certain scriptural passages altogether and deeming them unsuitable as a foundation for doctrinal orthodoxy on the grounds that they have been misinterpreted by heretics, who disagree among themselves. It’s not a sound approach in either theology or musicology. In fairness to Dom Mocquereau, later scholars have claimed that he only had a defective version of the Commemoratio brevis available to him. Today, we can no longer use that excuse. Unless we are singing for the liturgy of a religious order or otherwise have good reason to use the chant of the High or Late Middle Ages instead of that of the Early Middle Ages, promoted by the Catholic Church for use in the Roman rite, why should we cling to equalist rhythm, when the ancient authors all tell us otherwise?
Realistic Expectations • I don’t expect my singers to learn to read adiastematic neumes in duplex or triplex notation at sight; what I do expect is for them to learn to read the notes and rhythm properly from an edition with clear rhythmic markings. If I can teach third graders how to do it, you can learn too! Too many people, even those who ought to know better, take a look at my editions and immediately suppose that I have added rhythmic markings according to my own taste. Jeff Ostrowski seems to make the same assumption about Dom Mocquereau and the Solesmes editions. The vast majority of Dom Mocquereau’s markings, like mine, come directly from the adiastematic MSS, as I’ve demonstrated previously and will continue to do in subsequent installments.
