Customer Reviews

Chant Made Simple

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Unfortunately, there is nothing in this book that makes gregorian chant "simple".

First, it is *very* short. A mere 57 pages in a smaller-than-average size book. Everything having to do with explaining chant notation is contained in 4 short pages (the amazon.com "excerpt" has half of the entire explanation), and leaves a lot out. Latin pronunciation takes 2 pages. Learning to chant takes 2 pages. The explanation of the 8 gregorian "modes" takes up all of 3 sentences (compare that to the wikipedia entry). The entire rest of the book (about 75% of the book, 43 pages) is sample chants (latin lyrics and notation) with translation and commentary.

Second, the book assumes that you have a lot of musical background. Music terms are used frequently without, or with very little, explanation ("dominant", "final", "c-clef", "f-clef", "ornament", "ornamented minor third"). The most basic chant notation, the square shaped "neume" is never actually introduced and defined -- you have to figure it out from the context of the sentences. A chart on page 4 has no explanation whatsoever (the author must have assumed that it was self-explanatory).

Third, the use of a complicated set of hand-written notations in the sample chants, adds an entire level of complexity to it all. Sometimes these notes are so frequent and so small, that you can't even tell what the notes are. This seems mostly due to the quality of the photographic reproductions (and reductions) of the sample chant notation.

There is no discussion whatsoever of the practice, becoming more common now, of chanting in English.

On a positive note, the commentary for the example chants are frequently well-done. In particular, they explain the symbolism that accompanies the chant made for a particular piece.

This book is almost exclusively suited for academics, advanced students and scholars of music, than interested lay people. A lay person with a love for the sound, and with some experience in the choir, will likely walk away more confused after reading this book than they were at the beginning.

Update: A far better work is the article "An Idiot's Guide to Square notes" by Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker. Google it.

The question of Gregorian chant rhythm has been of intense interest to scholars. During the period of the restoration of Gregorian chant in the late 19th and early 20th century, a system of understanding Gregorian rhythm was put forth by Dom Andre Mocquereau, O.S.B., a priest of the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes and a great Gregorian chant scholar. His method became widely used throughout the world and gave the chant the beauty for which it was renowned. One of his students, Dom Eugene Cardine, O.S.B. (also a monk of Solesmes) sought to study the question of rhythm anew. By returning to the manuscripts, he sought to bring forth rhythmic subtleties which had not been addressed in the method of Dom Andre Mocquereau. This little book seeks to introduce the reader to Gregorian Semiology, that is reading the ancient notation and the rhythmic signs of the ancient manuscripts. This book is a wonderful introduction to reading the the neums of St. Gall. This will also ease the reader into understanding and using the Graduale Triplex (a version of the Graduale Romanum with the medieval square notation, the neums of Laon, and the neums of St. Gall). To those musicians who would be interested in learning the chant, I can think of no better beginning resource than this.

Simple? This is actually layman's attack on the old Solesmes method in order to advance, well, not much at all. He asserts the proposition that chant cannot be sight read by groups but rather that everyone must hang on every note of the director and mimic him. He further says that chant has no rhythm of its own. My goodness: it's a wonder anyone sings it at all! Indeed, he doesn't come anywhere close to describing how to sing a single one. He discusses some particular chants but never mentions where they fit in liturgy. He is fixated on the old St. Gall neumes to the exclusive of every advance since then -- and then wraps it all up in the garb of the Cardine school. It is really a radically unhelpful volume, and I'm keeping my rhetoric really in check here. Indeed, I feel bad for anyone who buys this book in the hope of singing chant.

A good, simple introduction to gregorian chant. Don't get this book thinking that when you finish you'll be qualified to start a gregorian chant choir at your church or to consider yourself a scholar on the subject. What this book does accomplish is familiarize you with enough of the notational basics that, (1) if you're a listener you can better appreciate the music, (2)if you decide to do further study you'll have the necessary background to get started, or (3) if you're already leading a choir, you could add a couple of the book's short, simple chants to your repetoir.

This little book doesn't actually tell you how to read chant. It seems more like a how to conduct it lesson rather than "what the heck do those dots mean?"

It could be useful for a choir director who knows how to read chant notation already but needs help directing a choir. At least, thats the impression I got.

The author suggests teaching a choir to sing a chant by the oral/aural method and not allowing the singers to see the printed notes until they have learned to sing the chant by memory. The approach he proposes is theoretically defensible because Gregorian chant was taught by oral transmission for several generations before the easrliest forms of notation were developed, and because paleographic research indicates that the significance of the early notational forms was variable, depending on context. His approach might work witha volunteer choir learning to sing a small amount of chant in an unlimited amount of rehearsal time. It is, however, totally impracticable for use with a professional choir that must learn a considerable amount of chant in addition other difficult music within very limited rehearsal time. To insist on Fowells's approach would be, effectively, to sound a death knell for chant.
A more practicable approach to performance of chant based upon semiology is needed. The most important indications of augmentation and diminution of notes can be incorporated into performance scores; and in most real world milieux the others will have to be ignored. Both Eugene Cardine himself and his disciple Jean Claire decried performances in which the singers were "bridled" by their efforts to observe every nuance conveyed in the early neumes. In the tenth century the members of scholae cantorum spent several years learning the chant repertory by the oral-aural method, and were, therefore, able to master every rhythmic nuance. Today's singers simply do not have the time to do so.

What excited me about this book when I first saw it was that it explains the old neumes - the signs over the text that bear no resemblance to our contemporary staff oriented notation. However, the greater value of this volume is the careful notes on performance that are provided for the chants. These notes are otherwise available only if you have a superb chant instructor - something many of us do not have access to. Even if you have no intestest in singing Gregorian chant, these notes teach you to listen well to chant.

This is a very slim volume but it contains a large does of clear and accurate information regarding Gregorian chant.

42 Chants from GRADUALE TRIPLEX.

For anyone who admire Gregorian chant, all of the right pages (pp.13-95) in this book, it will be very fascinating for the people who can easily read well the staff, but, it won't be utterly interesting for the people who cannot read the staff.
All of the left pages (pp.12-94), only Latin verse with its word-for-word English translation perhaps will be inviting for the both.
The rest will be no need for the both. It is impossible and reckless that someone who intends to explain for St Gall's music only through on the papers, even if he ignores its delicate differences between the square neums and St Gall's neums.

Now, this book has a wrong music. (May be called "Fault-edition").
On the page 31, this three staff is obviously wrong. There are no neums of St Gall. The correct music is shown on the page 99 of the book, titled "GRADUALE TRIPLEX" 1979, Solesmes French edition. ("lower 3 staff" is correct; and the wrong music now we have is exactly reprinted from "middle 3 staff" on the same page of this French edition).

I had informed this case to the publisher Paraclete Press, but no reaction for it.
There is a problem in which what the publisher's responsibility should be.

A great book for those who want to get deeper into chant in an easy way.

This is a small but impressive book that enables the reader to cope well with what at first appears a complicated manner of singing psalms and canticles. Here and there the language could loosen up, but overall it is an excellent publication - a very useful edition to any library, music or not.