Textbook of Gregorian Chant

TEXT BOOK OF GREGORIAN CHANT ACCORDING TO THE SOLESMES METHOD BY Dom Gregory SUNOL, 0. S. B., Monk of Montserrat TRANSLATED FROM THE SIXTH FRENCH EDITION WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY G. M. DURNFORD OBLATE OF SOLESHES. SOCIETY OF ST JOHN EVANGELIST D£SCLEE & Co Printers to the Holy See and the Sacred Coogr. of Rites TOURNAI (Belgium) PREFACE. Few words are necessary to introduce the present work to English speaking students of plainsong. Such a handbook has long been needed and is sure of its welcome. Neither the well- known Stanbrook Grammar of Plainsong nor Madame Ward's valuable school courses cover so much ground as Dom Gregory Suflol in his Spanish " Metodo ". The book first appeared in 1905, prefaced by a commendatory letter from Dom Andre Mocquereau, the famous director of the Solesmes School. Its author has many years of teaching experience behind him, as well as sound theoret- ical knowledge of his subject. His work has proved its popu- larity and practical usefulness by going through a number of editions in the original Spanish, besides being translated into French and German. Indeed by compressing the Solesmes teaching within the narrow limits of a general text book Dom Sufiol has rendered good service to the Gregorian cause. Not everyone has access to the monumental publications of Solesmes, the Mono- graphies gregoriennes or the Paleographie Musicale> and countless students will be glad to find the subject matter of this latter Work, especially the important seventh volume on Gregorian Rhythm, here summed up and analysed, while the extensive quotations from Dom Mocquereau's Nombre Musical gregorien, with which the Spanish author has enriched his later editions, will make them desirous of seeing this fascinating synthesis of the whole subject brought out in English. The French translation of Dom Suitors work was made by Dom Maur Sablayrolles who tells us in his preface that he inserted a few additional chapters and altered and developed his original here and there in inconsiderable ways, always with the author's permission. The present English version is a faithful rendering of the sixth French edition, and except for some extension of the note on Latin pronunciation, now embodied in the text, nothing of any importance has been added. But the work has been prepared under the direct supervision of the Solesmes Benedictine Fathers at Quarr Abbey who have supplied invaluable help on almost every page, mainly in the direction of ensuring greater accuracy, clearing up obscure passages, simpli- fying technical points and generally making the book more accessible to the ordinary student of plainsong. The Spanish handbook was placed under the patronage of our Lady of Mont- serrat. In its English dress it is offered to our Lady of Quarr with the prayer that she may everywhere bless the work of those who are teaching the Catholic world to sing the praises of her Divine Son. In Vigilia Nativitatis Domini, 1929. INTRODUCTION. Preface, introduction or foreword, call it what you will, it still remains the least read portion of any book, and this consoling reflection it is which has in large measure decided the present writer to pen the following pages. Their perusal can safely be neglected alike by the novice in plainsong studies who is anxious to get his teeth into solid technical matters straight away, and the competent Gregorianist already formed in taste and capable of judging the chant without intermediary commentary or explana- tion. What follows is for the middle class of students, if such exist; those who hesitate whether or no to embark upon a subject hedged round with so many thorny technicalities, and doubtful, perhaps, if it is worth while to penetrate such an entrenchment of scientific apparatus in order to discover and wake the Sleeping Beauty. They may even question whether the Sleeping Beauty is there to be awakened; it would be idle to deny the fact that nearly everyone's first impression of the chant comes as a disap- pointment. After being led to expect a music which shall be both socially and personally adequate, glorious and satisfying, we hear something which seems at once too thin for the enthusiasm of great crowds and too calm to carry the anguish or the rapture of the individual soul to God. Other objections immediately suggest themselves, but without particularising further let us own at once that we need re-education both on the artistic and the spiritual side in this matter of appreciating plainsong. Standards change or become debased or lost more quickly even in music than in the other arts, as Pius X did not fail to notice in his immortal Motu proprio 1; today, moreover, we seem to lack a definite idea of what is to be demanded of religious art in any form. The sense of fitness, especially, has been lost, that quality which the ancient world conceived of as the very end, nature and essence of art : caput artis decere; so that, amid a welter of contemporary produc- tion, of one kind and another, nearly all the outcome of individual fancy or imagination, there is always a sense of something restless, incongruous and isolated, and this even in the best work. But the Liturgy, and with it the chant which is an integral part of the sacrificium laudisy is possessed of a standard, it presents an unvary- ing basis to which art must adapt and submit itself; here the discreet sense of what is fitting must reign supreme. Indeed the music of the Church needs to be more strictly appropriate even than her architecture or her ornaments, in that it is much more closely interwoven with the liturgical action than they. It has 1 See Appendix, p. 164. Introduction. vtf. been well said that "Solesmes guards an unchangeable ideal",1 and in order to apprehend it rightly we must free ourselves from the tyranny of fashion, acquire the Gregorian temperament and recapture the antique soul. If the modern world is ill-equipped for appreciating Gregorian music on the aesthetic side, it is at least equally so on the religious. When plainsong is condemned as melancholy, is it not generally by those who are themselves out of tune with the old spirit of holy fear and contrition, the spirit of Abbot Moses in the desert who said, " Let us often chant the psalms that we may excite true compunction"?2 In some ways, moreover, the trend of modern spirituality is set towards a very personal, individual and—may it be said? — a somewhat feverish type of piety; and in face of this the chant is felt at once to be so austerely impersonal, so "coldly tranquil. Here possibly the process of re-education cuts deepest into preconceived notions. It is with a shock that is not alto- gether agreeable that we realise that our poor little emotions, our hectic joy or fretful woe, must be transcended and sacrificed in accomplishing the work of liturgical praise. It has often been said that the difficulty of singing Gregorian music well is a spiritual rather than a material one. Yet when he bade his children " pray in beauty " Pius X did not confine his holy ambi- tion to the special field of the cloister; he was addressing the whole Catholic world. And it is with this renunciation of personal taste and temperament that we buy the freedom of real escape from ourselves. Alongside the slow laborious work of mastering the Gradual and the Antiphonary there goes the slow laborious work of grace, till we learn at last to merge our individualities in the mystical body of the Church. When this is thoroughly under- stood the sacrifice will hardly prove too costly. Classical Music. Form. Rhythm. Even the briefest survey of Gregorian aesthetics involves giving the chant its historical background, replacing it in the long pers- pective of the centuries which have contributed to its formation. This type of generalisation is proverbially dangerous; it will suffice to warn the reader not to expect accurate consistency of detail in all points. It has been conclusively proved by Dom Mocquereau3 that much more light is thrown on the whole subject of the chant by studying the classical origins of prosody, accent and rhythm, than 1 CAMILLE BELLAIGUE, Les Apoques de la Musique, p. 112. 3 CASSIAN, Conferences, chap. XVII. 3 Nombre Musical Grtgorien^ VoL II, Part I. No 724L — a* viij. Introduction. could ever be gained by approaching plainsong from the stand- point of modern harmonised music. The Greeks appear to have concentrated mainly upon the ethos of music, its psychological or sentimental character, the morality of the art; they regarded it primarily as a valuable educational influence to be used to obtain that equipoise of soul which is the necessary basis of disciplined activity. To this end it was that they employed the melodic variety of the eight modes, the indivisibility of the simple beat, the peace of diatonic movement; in a word, the form of ancient music which is now the heritage of the Catholic Church. There is probably no Greek word in our language which carries with it such a sense of all that immortal civilisation as does the word " rhythm ". It reminds us that music, poetry and dancing were of old inseparably bound up together like a threefold cord, that the ancients could not have borne the incongruities which we suffer today in consequence of their separation—the unlovely surround- ings and personnel of a modern orchestra is one instance, the songs in which the words are a mere scaffolding to be covered by the intricacies of sound another—lastly that their high sobriety and exquisite sense of equilibrium saved them from straining after those vague, difficult or exaggerated effects which prove the ulti- mate death of art.

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