17 Replies to “Presenting the Graduale Novum to the Holy Father”

  2. It's very exciting to see this new edition come to be, at long last! It is clearly in continuity with the early Solesmes editions and the 1903 Graduale, all of which were based on detailed studies of the early manuscripts. Even the Mocquereau method was founded on his understanding of these very same manuscripts.

    The 1934–yes 1934!–Antiphonale Monasticum was a development from the 1903 and 1912 books, and it incorporated new designs such as the oriscus and stropha. These same designs are also found in the Benedictine graduals (take a very look at p. 878 of your 1974 Graduale Romanum if you doubt it!–'subvenite'). Dom Cardine continued this paleographic work in the 1950's and 60's which caused Sacrosanctum Concilium to request a "more critical" edition of the Graduale Romanum. Subsequent books (Graduale Triplex 1979, Psalterium Monasticum 1981, Liber Hymnarius 1983, et cetera) have reflected the growing scholarship, and finally we have a book that responds to this call for a more critical edition of the Graduale. This is a continuous development, there is nothing to fear.

    This book is not a requiem for Gregorian chant. There is nothing to fear. Be not afraid!

  3. I'm with Adam on this one (surprise, surprise). As Adam says, 1934 was a book with much development compared to earlier books. In many ways, it's one of the finest of the Solesmes books. This most recent edition stands within that tradition.
    awr

  6. This is absolutely splendid news for students, singers and teachers of Gregorian Chant. Requiem? I don't understand! On the contrary, it shows great energy and scholarship in the Chant world and for this we should be most thankful. Any fear of this new edition might be compared with the original work of the monks of Solesmes over 100 years ago in replacing the Medicean Gradual- we cannot now imagine a world with this version, the chant sung slowly and semi-metrically often with much of the melody excised, and yet its replacement had its critics.

    News like this is proof of the Chant's health and in no way implies sickness much less death! My young cantors are itching to get their hands on a copy! (J. Morse)

  7. I'm sorry?!!!

    Is it me or did anyone miss the sharps all over the sheets?
    Are sharps a reality of medieval music? Has anybody seen a single sharp in any Solesmes book chant? Sure not!

    With all respect due to Adam Bartlett, there is really something I'm not getting here.

    No enthousiasm here.

  8. Well, the thing is that if you don't like it, you don't have to use it. I hope hope hope we are long past the time when the Vatican would demand that only one music book is authorized for the Roman Rite. Mocq didn't believe that the chant had been codified forever; this is why he kept producing his book of images of old markings. Whether the Novum gets it right or comes closer to authenticity, I don't know. But ruling out the notion of revision strikes me as wrongheaded.

  9. "Is it me or did anyone miss the sharps all over the sheets?"

    I must assume that you are referring to the singular preview sample that was posted online with the announcement of this publication. Have you seen a preview of the entire book? I don't believe that it has actually been released yet.

    "Are sharps a reality of medieval music?"

    The reality is that virtually the entire corpus of Gregorian chant was sung for nearly 500 years before the invention of Guido d'Arrezo's staff. The modal classification system was also a rather late development, hundreds of years after chant had been sung and transmitted only by means of memory and staffless neumes which served as an aid to memorized music.

    The antiphon in the preview page was "Deus in loco sancto suo". If you look on page 310 of your Graduale Triplex you will see this antiphon transcribed in mode 5, with the first note on "Do". The verse is conventionally notated in the 5th mode also – "Exsurgat Deus…". If you look at both 10th century manuscripts contained therein, however, (Laon and Einsiedeln), the psalm tone used for the verse is clearly mode 7! This is very clear proof that the antiphon utilized the final "G" or "sol". This may not have been the clear-cut "mode 7" that we understand according to medieval theory. The composition of this piece predates that. Clearly the 1903 edition decided to use mode 5 for the antiphon–it fits very nicely there! But they evidently made the editorial decision to change the psalm tone from its ancient usage, from mode 7 to 5. So this new edition simply slides up the antiphon a whole step which loosely puts it in mode 7, which will match the mode of the ancient psalm tone, and very likely is the way that it was sung for the majority of its early life.

    The sharps might seem a bit strange to our sensibilities that have been conditioned by a slavish adherence to medieval modal theory, but we must remember that theory always follows practice!

    Fear not! The sky is not falling. There are surely good reasons for the decisions that were made. Let us not be afraid to investigate in order to find the answers!

  10. Thank you, Adam, for your explanation.

    May I add that the sharps may also result from the transposition of centonization formulae? If one finds out that a formula was written in the wrong place, one has to add accidents to maintain the tone/semitone relations that characterize that formula.

  11. Una grande opera di ricerca musicologica e storica; si restituisce la lectio più antica dei testi dei canti. Il Graduale novum si pone a pieno titolo accanto ai grandi lavori di studio del canto gregoriano, alle edizioni pregiate approntate dagli studiosi più famosi, dediti a rivedere la Vaticana e le edizioni solesmensi.

  12. A doctored Google translation of the above:

    "A great work of historical and musicological research; returns lectio oldest texts of the chant. The Graduale novum stands next to a fully-fledged study of great works of Gregorian chant, the editions prepared by the finest most famous scholars, devoted to review the Vatican and Solesmes editions."

  15. There is another aspect to Bill's remarks that could be considered. Bill is right in that Guido's staff notation only allowed a deviation on the pien, the b flat. At the time of Guido and of the Psuedo-Odo transposition was important because of the growth of polyphony, but it was also applied to fitting chant notes onto the newly invented staff so as to keep the proper modal finals. Of course, this was not possible for all chant, such as some mode 7 compositions, where there was even a "modulation" from one mode into another within the same chant. The modes by then were defined sine qua non by their finals, and this Graduale Novum seems to take that as a given. I say this if one considers the example from another post on this, the introit Deus in adjutorium intende, which in the Solesmes version uses the transposed version that avoids all accidentals except for the pien, but because of the new final on F makes it a mode 5 introit if one adheres to the importance of the final for the mode. The Graduale Novum tries to "restore" it back to a mode 7 introit but then has to introduce the sharps on several notes using Guido's staff, going centuries ahead of him. I wonder why this new Gradual just did not use modern notation at this point.
    Also, what is being restored here? The melody certainly… But as the classification into mode 7 was originally done using staffless neumes and may not have been according to the finals, which is a later theory, but perhaps by melodic content as was done in Byzantium, what is the claimed authenticity? Classic tetrardus compositions do not just end on G but also begin on it, and this introit does not. Are the editors trying to fit this introit into a dubious modal classification theory that probably did not exist when the chant was composed?
    I certainly expect the editors' insight to be better than mine and so I await this work with great anticipation to answer these and many more such questions.

  16. Sorry, I meant "Deus in loco sancto suo", which in Laon 239, St Gall 387 (according to Cardine), and Einsiedeln 121 are classified as mode 7.

  17. I have just seen a copy of this new book. Since I am not a musicologist I cannot comment on the quality of the edition of the music.

    However, I am very much disappointed about the incongruent layout. The 'woodblock' initials and the font used for the texts of the chant resemble chant books from the early 20th century (or rather reprints of them), whereas the headings are in modern typefaces and the bars at the top of each line look like the invention of a 21st-century graphic designer.

    The concept of reconstructing an 'original' version was not limited to the music, also quite a few texts are changed, and in some cases (e.g. Graduale, Missa pro defunctis) the entire verse was replaced by a different text. It would have been better to include both versions, also for liturgical reasons.

    The edition contains very few alternatives for chant – in many cases (as with the Alleluia verses for Requiems, which have disappeared) this does little harm, yet it is surprising that the most common melody of the 'Asperges me' is apparently missing – probably because it is 'only' high medieval.

    I would guess that today a respectable percentage of Masses with the chant propers follow the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. However, this form is (as far as I could see) totally ignored in the Gradual. I understand that the work on this edition has started long before Summorum Pontificum, yet adding at least a concordance with the 1962 Missal would have made the book considerably more useful.

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