Jeffrey Ostrowski on Many Secrets of the Vatican Edition of the Graduale Romanum

7 Replies to “Jeffrey Ostrowski on Many Secrets of the Vatican Edition of the Graduale Romanum”

1. Are there recordings of chant sung mensurally? I can't imagine how that might sound. Is it like a Baroque cantata?

2. Actually, the semiologists have adopted mensuralism in their chant interpretations. Order Gloria Dei Cantores to learn more.

3. "Actually, the semiologists have adopted mensuralism in their chant interpretations."

   This is absolutely incorrect and untrue.

4. There are indeed a few recordings of chant in measured rhythm. Conductors are free to perform chant however they like, and there is really no need to resort to pseudo-academic historical justification to do so. No one can really say with any certainty what the rhythmic indications or other unusual signs in early adiastematic notation really mean, so to spend so much time analyzing the spaces between the neumes of a modern edition of chant is silly. Ruth Steiner showed decisively that it is folly to make pronouncements about the history of chant on the basis of modern chant editions when she vivisected parts of Willi Apel's book. To do something similar to make pronouncements about how to perform chant is no different.

   What matters more than how chant might have been performed then — whenever "then" might be, given that chant practice obviously varied so greatly from time to time and place to place — is how we perform chant now, right? So, if you want to lengthen some notes or add some pauses because you think it works better, why not? Choirs and their directors did just that for centuries: it's called a local variant. There is no reason to stretch the evidence to claim that you have some secret understanding of the real chant.

5. I add some lines about the rhythm of Gregorian chant according to my own research:

   Recent research in the Netherlands by Dr. Dirk van Kampen has indicated that the authentic rhythm of Gregorian chant in the 10th century includes both proportional elements and elements that are in agreement with semiology. Starting with the expectation that the rhythm of Gregorian chant (and thus the duration of the individual notes) anyway adds to the expressivity of the sacred Latin texts, several word-related variables were studied for their relationship with several neume-related variables, exploring these relationships in a sample of introit chants using such statistical methods as correlational analysis and multiple regression analysis. Besides the length of the syllables (measured in tenths of seconds), each text syllable was evaluated in terms of its position within the word to which it belongs, defining such variables as ‘the syllable has or hasn’t the main accent’, ‘the syllable is or isn’t at the end of a word’, etc., and in terms of the particular sounds produced (for instance, the syllable contains the vowel ‘i’). The various neume elements were evaluated by attaching different duration values to them, both in terms of semiological propositions (nuanced durations according to the manner of neume writing in Chris Hakkennes’ Graduale Lagal, 1984), and in terms of fixed duration values that were based on mensuralistic notions, however with ratios between short and long notes ranging from 1 : 1, via 1 : 1.2, 1 : 1.4, etc. to 1 : 3. To distinguish short and long notes, tables were consulted that were established by Van Kampen in an unpublished comparative study regarding the neume notations according to St Gallen and Laon codices. With some exceptions, these tables confirm the short vs. long distinctions in Cardine’s 'Semiologie Gregorienne'. The lengths of the neumes were given values by adding up the duration values for the separate neume elements, each time following a particular hypothesis concerning the rhythm of Gregoriant chant. Both the syllable lengths and the neume lengths were also expressed in relation to the total duration of the syllables, resp. neumes for a word (contextual variables). Correlating the various word and neume variables, substantial correlations were found for the word variables 'accented syllable' and 'contextual syllable duration'. Moreover, it could be established that the multiple correlation (R) between the two types of variables reaches its maximum (R is about 0.80) if the neumatic elements are evaluated according to the following ‘rules of duration’: (a) neume elements that represent short notes in neumes consisting of at least two notes have duration values of 1 time; (b) neume elements that represent long notes in neumes consisting of at least two notes have duration values of 2 times; (c) neumes consisting of only one note are characterized by flexible duration values (with an average value of 2 times), which take over the duration values of the syllables to match. It is interesting that the distinction between the first two rules and the latter rule can also be found in early treatises on music, introducing the terms metrum and rhythmus. As Reese's (1940) observation that melodic peaks often coincide with the word accent could also be corroborated, the conclusion seems warranted that the Gregorian melodies enhance the expressiveness of the Latin words by mimicking to some extent both the accentuation of the sacred words (pitch differences between neumes) and the relative duration of the word syllables (by paying attention to well-defined length differences between the individual notes of a neume).

   – Dirk van Kampen (1994). Het oorspronkelijke ritme van het Gregoriaans: Een ‘semiologisch-mensuralistische’ studie. Landsmeer, The Netherlands.
   – Dirk van Kampen (2005). Uitgangspunten voor de ritmiek van Gregoriaans. Tijdschrift voor Gregoriaans, 30, 89-94.
   – Dirk van Kampen (2010). Gregoriaans ritme. Dutch Wikipedia contribution.

6. I forgot to say the following:

   It's really silly to try to detect the authentic rhythm of Gregorian chant by drawing attention to the 'white spaces' in the Editio Vaticana. I admire Pothier for his pioneering work, but to claim – like Ostrowski did – that Pothier offered the key for understanding the rhythm is absurd.

7. I add some lines about the rhythm of Gregorian chant based on my own research:

   Recent research in the Netherlands by Dr. Dirk van Kampen has indicated that the authentic rhythm of Gregorian chant in the 10th century includes both proportional elements and elements that are in agreement with semiology. Starting with the expectation that the rhythm of Gregorian chant (and thus the duration of the individual notes) anyway adds to the expressivity of the sacred Latin texts, several word-related variables were studied for their relationship with several neume-related variables, exploring these relationships in a sample of introit chants using such statistical methods as correlational analysis and multiple regression analysis. Besides the length of the syllables (measured in tenths of seconds), each text syllable was evaluated in terms of its position within the word to which it belongs, defining such variables as ‘the syllable has or hasn’t the main accent’, ‘the syllable is or isn’t at the end of a word’, etc., and in terms of the particular sounds produced (for instance, the syllable contains the vowel ‘i’). The various neume elements were evaluated by attaching different duration values to them, both in terms of semiological propositions (nuanced durations according to the manner of neume writing in Chris Hakkennes’ Graduale Lagal, 1984), and in terms of fixed duration values that were based on mensuralistic notions, however with ratios between short and long notes ranging from 1 : 1, via 1 : 1.2, 1 : 1.4, etc. to 1 : 3. To distinguish short and long notes, tables were consulted that were established by Van Kampen in an unpublished comparative study regarding the neume notations according to St Gallen and Laon codices. With some exceptions, these tables confirm the short vs. long distinctions in Cardine’s 'Semiologie Gregorienne'. The lengths of the neumes were given values by adding up the duration values for the separate neume elements, each time following a particular hypothesis concerning the rhythm of Gregoriant chant. Both the syllable lengths and the neume lengths were also expressed in relation to the total duration of the syllables, resp. neumes for a word (contextual variables). Correlating the various word and neume variables, substantial correlations were found for the word variables 'accented syllable' and 'contextual syllable duration'. Moreover, it could be established that the multiple correlation (R) between the two types of variables reaches its maximum (R is about 0.80) if the neumatic elements are evaluated according to the following ‘rules of duration’: (a) neume elements that represent short notes in neumes consisting of at least two notes have duration values of 1 time; (b) neume elements that represent long notes in neumes consisting of at least two notes have duration values of 2 times; (c) neumes consisting of only one note are characterized by flexible duration values (with an average value of 2 times), which take over the duration values of the syllables to match. It is interesting that the distinction between the first two rules and the latter rule can also be found in early treatises on music, introducing the terms metrum and rhythmus. As Reese's (1940) observation that melodic peaks often coincide with the word accent could also be corroborated, the conclusion seems warranted that the Gregorian melodies enhance the expressiveness of the Latin words by mimicking to some extent both the accentuation of the sacred words (pitch differences between neumes) and the relative duration of the word syllables (by paying attention to well-defined length differences between the individual notes of a neume).

   – Dirk van Kampen (1994). Het oorspronkelijke ritme van het Gregoriaans: Een ‘semiologisch-mensuralistische’ studie. Landsmeer, The Netherlands.
   – Dirk van Kampen (2005). Uitgangspunten voor de ritmiek van Gregoriaans. Tijdschrift voor Gregoriaans, 30, 89-94.
   – Dirk van Kampen (2010). Gregoriaans ritme. Dutch Wikipedia contribution.

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