Full Immersion in Semiology

Alexis Kutarna (check out her blog Oh, for the Love of Chant) has spent the past week at St. Meinrad Archabbey at the feet of the inestimable Fr. Columba Kelly, OSB, student of Dom Eugene Cardine, in pursuit of the art of Gregorian Semiology.

I believe that Alexis already has two or three music degrees, and is currently completing graduate studies in liturgy, so she is certainly well-primed for the intensity of Dom Kelly’s pedagogy. Here are a few of her newly found insights after just one week with him:

1) The secrets in the signs from Laon and St. Gall (the other notations in the Graduale Triplex) are SO much more expressive than square notation (and certainly than modern notation!) We need to consult them, understand them, and FEEL them to be able not only to do justice to the Latin chants but to express the meaning of the texts, to make music, to enjoy the chants, and to pray. Metering our chant cannot have the same effect. Anyone who says plainsong is boring may be right – if it really is just plain song. Let’s make it CHANT. 

2) We need to be able to be clear with our diction and not be afraid to pause the appropriate lengths in our public speaking as well as our public canting. This is not metered or unnatural hanging pauses though, these are pauses expressive of the meaning of the text, or of natural breaths. 

3) Latin is not (gasp) the only way. Chant CAN be incredibly well-done in the vernacular. It doesn’t work by forcing English to fit the Gregorian melody just because you think you have to preserve that tune intact. No, you have to respect the natural accents and flow of the English language also. It works perfectly if this is thought through. If you don’t believe me, come to St. Meinrad Archabbey and see, and certainly check out one of the many sources of English chant propers for the Mass (most are FREE!). We do, however, need to get something going and widely available in French and in Spanish too – this is where it is going, and we will lose out to bad music if we don’t work diligently on these tasks. 

4) It is incredibly sad that more people can’t experience this. Yes, definitely go to one of Fr. Columba’s workshops. But I mean that people aren’t hearing this is their parishes. It CAN be done. It can be done WELL and BEAUTIFULLY. We need to show people. If they hear it, they will get it. Of course, good and faithful liturgical praxis otherwise is also necessary. 

5) I now know even more how much I don’t know! I need to do this again. That is one smart monk!!!

Here’s the full post.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: Anyone who is serious about Gregorian chant must find a way to learn from this 82 year old master. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.

12 Replies to “Full Immersion in Semiology”

  1. 3) Latin is not (gasp) the only way. Chant 3) Latin is not (gasp) the only way. Chant CAN be incredibly well-done in the vernacular be incredibly well-done in the vernacular.

    Though nothing provides this mortal soul and his appreciation of the recovery of Latin chant, the astute student's declaration is a hill I would be prepared to defend to the death.

  2. As to point 3), Adam has already demonstrated this, as has Fr. Columba Kelly. The great benefit of the vernacular is also that the singers will be able to connect with the text in a much deeper way than most are able to do with the Latin (exceptions will be made for those with the type of fluency a 19th century English public school education used to impart). Understanding gives the music depth.

  3. All of the above comments are true, to some extent. It really depends on how seriously one takes the explicit texts of Vatican II on the preservation of Latin in the liturgy. I attend a bi-lingual parish occasionally, Anglo and Hispanic, which uses Latin as the pontifex, bridge. The use of Latin in that context honors both the actual Council mandate, promotes the universality of the Church and obviates further balkanization of the Faith by language groups. That vernacular was promoted by the liturgical left following the Council while at the same time they screaming "we are the world" seems contradictory indeed.

  4. I'm not against the use of English, particularly in syllabic chant, but to say it 'works perfectly' is quite simply not true. It works, after a fashion, but no-one who has taught me (Mary Berry, Colin Mawby, Nick Gale, to name but three) has seriously advocated it.

  5. By the way, I know Father Columba Kelly and studied chant with him in 1969 after the wreckovation of the liturgy. He was then in the same camp as Mary Berry although he may have changed his tune since then. But for those who say that Gregorian chant is just as good in English as in Latin, then I suggest they make the same argument to afficionados of Italian opera and see what reaction they receive. I fear for their safety

  6. Regarding English chant, I believe that Fr. Kelly ultimately sees Latin Gregorian chant is the true model, as it must be. However, one of his particular focuses is on studying the genius and specific characteristics of the relationship between text and melody in the Gregorian idiom in order to discover the keys or secrets of the Gregorian compositional language in order that them might be applied to vernacular languages according to the laws and inspiration found in the Gregorian repertoire. He will always tell you that English presents many challenges that Latin does not. It's a different language. What is an exception in Latin may become the rule in English, etc. So what he has done is study the way that Gregorian chant solves problems of text and melody in certain situations and has applied these to similar situations in the English language. The result sometimes can be somewhat different from Latin Gregorian chant, as it necessarily must be, but the end result is a composition that abides by the same rules that govern the Gregorian musical vocabulary. Or at least this is the goal!

  7. My week with Fr. Kelly was the best of my musical life, and I hope to repeat it before too long. However, as he never tires of saying, he was in class with Bunigni during the Council, and the "class" (by which he surely means himself or another American) pointed out that there was a contradiction in Sacrosanctum Concilium between the priority of chant AND of the vernacular. Bunigni said simply they couldn't figure out how to square that circle and left it "to your generation to figure out." His generation is passing, and only now is that question even being addressed. It is, of course, nearly impossible to tell if a chant is good or not on first listen, but I heard Fr. Kelly's English chants, which are based on Latin melodies abut adjusted for English rhythms, and they sounded wonderful. It is the third pass for him on some of those compositions. I myself have wondered why Sting and Enya can right beautiful chantlike melodies using Gaelic scales but we don't.. The country scales that form the backbone of much of the plentiful beautiful American folk music of various genres, related to Gaelic music, are there for the using. We live in time, still, alas, and we are supposed to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling." It is not supposed to be easy or self-evident.

  8. Ooof—should proofread. I heard Fr. Kelly's chants FOR A SECOND TIME IN A DIFFERENT CONTEXT, and they still sounded wonderful.

  9. If you read Sacrosanctum Concilium, there is no contradiction. The Latin mass is to be preserved and the people are to be taught to sing, in Latin, the chants proper to them.

  10. In what was quoted above, I was just posting my initial reactions to what I was exposed to last week. I did not mean "perfectly" as in the ultimate be-all end-all of chant, but I meant to say that, as Adam did below, the compositional process that Fr. Columba Kelly uses makes the English language work in chant, rather than sounding forced or worse. I do still believe that the Latin chants are to be held as the model, and certainly Fr. Kelly taught from them last week, I did not mean to imply somehow that he didn't advocate them. My point was that it is not either Latin Gregorian chant OR bad other English stuff that we've got, but that you can take people most of the way there with good English chant. Especially for those of us in "brick by brick" situations, this presents a real solution for liturgical music that is well-crafted and can be taken seriously. And it's beautiful too.

    Alexis

  11. Agreed. Although I prefer chant rendered in Latin, chant rendered in English is far preferable to the bilge that is foisted on the Catholic laity on Sunday by establishment "liturgists."

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