Organ accompaniments for the ICEL Missal Chants

[AntoineDaniel]

Organ accompaniments for the New Translation of the Roman Missal (ICEL) Missal chants are available here.

http://www.ccwatershed.org/vatican/beginning_of_hymnal/

I hope you find them useful !

[musicus]

Thank you, Jeffrey. There is a good deal of other interesting material to be found there too.

[Gwyn]

Excellent stuff.
Thanks for that.

[oopsorganist]

thankyou

[AntoineDaniel]

My pleasure!

There are also more free organ accompaniments for Mass settings here:

http://www.ccwatershed.org/vatican/harmonizations/1/

[Southern Comfort]

Just had my attention drawn to the accompaniment provided for Agnus XVIII (Latin). While this is on the whole quite nice, there is a very elementary error which unfortunately puts it out of court: the chord change on the "mun" of mundi instead of on the "di". If people are going to harmonize Gregoriant chant, they at least need to know the basic principles of how to do this.

(PS: It's something to do with the Solesmes ictus!)

(PPS: This was the problem with J H Arnold's English Hymnal chant harmonizations. A complete failure to understand that the musical accent and verbal accent are in tension, and therefore different {and balanced}.)

[Calum Cille]

Just had my attention drawn to the accompaniment provided for Agnus XVIII (Latin). While this is on the whole quite nice, there is a very elementary error which unfortunately puts it out of court: the chord change on the "mun" of mundi instead of on the "di". If people are going to harmonize Gregoriant chant, they at least need to know the basic principles of how to do this.

(PS: It's something to do with the Solesmes ictus!)

Well, Dom Gregory Murray knew the basic principles of how to do this. He made it clear with examples on the stave that, in this sort of situation, the chord should appear on 'mun-', the stressed syllable. "If the neume in question moves by step, the first doubled note [mun-] should be treated as an appoggiatura of the second [-di]." (The Accompaniment of Plainsong, 1947) Besides which, it could only be considered an elementary error by one already committing the prior cardinal error of assuming that Mocquereaunics are any kind of historical mandate for how to match modern harmonies to syllables of Gregorian chant. Dom Murray sagely jettisoned Mocquereaunics when presented with real evidence for how Gregorian rhythm worked.

"Solesmes ictus" could mean a couple of things but, judging by what you consider elementary practice (which I consider backward), you are probably referring at least indirectly to something connected in practice with that little vertical episema sprinkled all under the music in Solesmes' publications. As a theoretical tool, it was a complete figment of Dom André Mocquereau's imagination and, since Fr Vollaerts (who died before I was born!), we have seen it to have no proven connection whatsoever to the rhythm of Gregorian chant in the first millenium. In the beginning, Gregorian chant was purely vocal and 'harmonisation' was certainly vocal too, being essentially linked to the movement of the pitches of the syllables, and have nothing whatsoever to do with Mocquereau's conception of rhythmic ictus as exemplified in the Solesmes texts. Similarly, all chant accompaniment which we have a record of since the earliest records until the time of Solesmes has little if anything rhythmically to do with that little vertical episema.

It was nonsense in print and quite useless in practice, leading no less than Willi Apel to conclude very charitably, "Thus, its actual meaning remains rather obscure", and causing Mgr Domenico Bartolucci to remark that "The shoe-horning and distortion of the chant this required is remarkable, and it has been rejected in academic circles and with most chant practitioners as well."

Music of the Middle Ages Vol I (1984), Giulio Cattin, p100.
The proof seems to lie in the performances of the Solesmes choir itself, which, when subjected to analysis by electronic devices such as oscillographs, have contradicted in practice the theoretical statements about the placing of rhythmic stresses (ictus).

Mercifully, we can follow the shining example of these fellows, ignore the Mocquereaunics and keep the chord change on 'mun-' where it makes patent sense in this day and age.

[Southern Comfort]

CC,

I don't think it helps the debate to call people names. Mocquereaunics is a pejorative and furthermore inaccurate shorthand jibe at people who hold no brief for Dom André but are interested in the history and performance of Gregorian chant.

I would simply say this:

(1) My own preference is for the chant to be unaccompanied.

(2) However, if we are to use accompaniment, it makes perfectly good sense to use the Solesmes principles of accompaniment, given that we are using the chant as edited by Solesmes. If we were using a different kind of edition, then accompanimental practice could certainly be different.

(3) It seems clear that you do not accept the tension between verbal and musical accents which is such a feature of the Solesmes school of chant and which lends it its unique character because you do not understand it.

(4) This 'theory' is not attributable to Dom Mocquereau alone by any means, and it is quite unfair to caricature it as such. It actually began with Dom Pothier in the 19th century and has continued down the line of Solesmes chant scholars ever since.

(5) Dom Gregory Murray was a genius, but like many geniuses he was also an eccentric. He changed horses in midstream several times in his life. What he thought in 1947 he later completely repudiated, as a matter of fact. Have you read the later writings, in which he said he was completely mistaken? Later still, he claimed that actually he did not know what he thought about any of this. I had several conversations with him on this very topic. In the course of his repudiations, by the way, he comprehensively debunked Vollaerts, whose book makes very strange reading today.

(6) Bartolucci is scarcely someone to be given credence in matters of musical sensitivity, when you think that he presided for all those years over the horrendous braying of the Sistine Chapel Choir, and we now know that Willi Apel's work was already out of date at the time it appeared.

[NorthernTenor]

CC,

I don't think it helps the debate to call people names.

Nor does it help, Paul, to loftily dismiss others’ ideas as if from a position of authority with little explanation or reference, particularly where the point you make is merely arguable. I’m afraid the exchange above merely confirms the usefulness of the rule of thumb that the more firmly you assert something, the less clear-cut it is likely to be.

[John Ainslie]

The subject of accentuation of chant - important for writing or reviewing organ accompaniment - inevitably leads one to Solesmes and Dom Mocquereau.

For an update on the way that Solesmes itself views the tradition established by its own monks, may I refer you to http://palmus.free.fr/Article.pdf, an article by Dom Daniel Saulnier about the principles of revision of the Antiphonale Monasticum. See especially page 12.

It's interesting in view of the sometimes heated discussion about the value of the Solesmes rhythmical signs in the early years of the Society of Saint Gregory (the 1930s). Only after several years did the powers-that-were come down on the side of Solesmes. The Vatican never did, which is why books carried titles like Graduale Romanum a Pio X restitutum etc, et rhythmicis signis a Solesmensibus monachis diligenter ornatum. The latest Antiphonale Romanum leaves out all the rhythmical signs and the sub-title, saying simply 'cura scriptori paleographici Solesmensis praeparatum' - and therein lies the whole different approach to the presentation of the chant repertoire.

[quaeritor]

SC and CC clearly stand on opposite sides of a debate of whose existence I was blissfully unaware. I learned whatever I know about accompanying chant in the 1950s when Solesmes was of course the Bible. I may well have read the very 1947 book referred to above (quite new then) - I know I read something (in addition to the mandatory introduction to the Liber Usualis). Curiously, at the same time I learned to play the Piano Accordion, and both exercises teach you in none too subtly different ways that as long of course as you stick to the same "key" you can get away with almost any chord as long as you have a series of progressions that feels as though it is going somewhere, and the "tune" and the chord sequence can both be felt to be tending to, and eventually arrive at, the same "home". Since then I've had a lot of enjoyment in both genres but as the years have passed a yearning for more authenticity has grown. I'd be delighted to know of simple (and brief, if possible) outlines of both sides of the argument (and, pace John Ainslie, in English would be good!).

Q

[Calum Cille]

See new thread "Mocqurray".

[Calum Cille]

SC and CC clearly stand on opposite sides of a debate of whose existence I was blissfully unaware.

See the new thread, quaeritor.

[John Ainslie]

I'd be delighted to know of simple (and brief, if possible) outlines of both sides of the argument (and, pace John Ainslie, in English would be good!).

Try Wikipedia's article on Semiology (Gregorian Chant). As it raises some contentious issues, there's bound to be some who will disagree...