English in the liturgy - again

This setting of Credo 3 illustrates the real difficulties of the task of adapting Gregorian chant to English texts. The music is written to emphasis the words that are most important. When translating into English, the word order is changed. If the same tune is applied, then the unimportant words are liable to occur at the points of emphasis. A further difficulty is that when the text is put into English, there are generally a few syllables more or less. This means either fitting in the extra ones, and either dropping the extra notes or adding them to one of the syllables.

This is evident in the first line. The syllables in "Credo in unum Deum" are 2-1-2-2, that is seven syllables. "I believe in one God" has 1-2-1-1-1, six syllables. Whereas the original Latin version has a porrectus (three notes) on the word "God", the porrectus ends up on "one" in the the English. Which is a bit strange though perhaps not so terrible.

Despite this difficulty, the overall effect is surprisingly successful but nevertheless ends up feeling uncomfortable. Whether the discomfort is just due to unfamiliarity or something more fundamental needs to be looked at.

The deficiences are more apparent in the English setting based on Credo 1.



This is less elaborate than Credo 3, and there is more scope for adapting the music to the text. But it has not happened. In the second line, "Patrem" is sung to a podatus (two notes). In English, this becomes "the Father", and logically, the podatus would be used for "Father" and an extra note inserted for "the". Instead, "the" gets the podatus, which is inappropriate as the definite article does not need the emphasis of two notes. This happens several times in this setting. The overall effect is clumsy to the point of absurdity.

The mistake seems to have been to allow the music to take precedence over the words. It might not have happened if whoever was responsible had kept to the correct Gregorian chant notation, when this problem of mis-matching would have been evident from the outset. This would also have made life easier for singers as it is easier to see how the neumes fit the words.

The difficulties discussed here are not new. There is no reason why anyone should be struggling with this because there is a perfectly acceptable setting of the Creed together with all the other Mass settings, in the Book of Common Prayer 1550. This was produced by the Anglican John Merbecke, using the translations by Miles Coverdale. These texts are an accurate translation of the Latin and could have been re-issued, with the archaisms brought up to date, as an alternative to the ICEL translation. In fact, one has to ask why the bishops' committee took ten years on the task when most of the work had already been done? Had they simply authorised the Coverdale texts, the musical settings would have come ready-made as part of the package.

What a pity it is that ICEL missed this opportunity.

English in the liturgy

With the new ICEL translations of the English liturgy have come new texts for the propers of the Mass: Introit, Gradual, Offertory and Communion. These actually form part of the readings and although for the last 40 years it has been the practice to replace them by hymns, this is unsatisfactory. One reason is that there is little tradition of hymn singing amongst Catholics in English-speaking countries. Another is that people have diverse preferences, so someone is bound to be upset by whatever has been chosen.

There are various settings for these new English translations, both of the Ordinaries and Propers. Mostly they are a direct adaptation of the Gregorian chant. Having tried to sing them, my impression is that they are clunky and awkward. It is like trying to walk on an uneven floor - one keeps getting tripped up. It does not help that they have been written out on a five line stave in modern notation.

It seems to me that the underlying problem is that the rhythms of the English language are so different from the rhythms of Latin. This is not a new insight, and the Anglicans solved it by developing a modified version of the chant known as Anglican chant. These are used with the sixteenth century translations by Miles Coverdale.

To what extent they could be used within the new English translations is questionable but the possibility is worth exploring... however, I am beginning to wonder if the Novus Ordo mass has much of a future in the longer term.

Gregorian chant in Brighton

Elevation of the Host
Originally uploaded by seadipper.

St Mary Magdalen's church, Brighton, has enjoyed a remarkable revival of the chant over the past few years, thanks to the parish priest and an enthusiastic choir leader. The regular 10.30 Sunday Mass now includes substantial amounts of Gregorian chant, and in addition, the occasional Extraordinary Form Masses is sung, though not, at the moment, regularly.

If you want to hear it, just come along. If you want to participate in the choir, speak to the choir leader afterwards.

The revised ICEL liturgy

The revised ICEL liturgy is a huge improvement on the old. We tried it out a few months ago, including the musical settings.

Although the texts cannot reasonably be faulted, the same cannot be said of the musical setting for the responses. In the first place, they are written on a five line stave. Apparently, there was discussion about whether to use square-note/four-line notation and it was thought that round note/five line was what most people are used to.

Of course, the latter is what most musicians are used to, but many choir singers are not musicians and are more accustomed to the Gregorian notation, especially for singing that kind of music.

A further difficulty is that music that works in Latin will almost certainly not work in English because the emphasis falls differently in sentences in the two languages. Both the choir and the priest ended up stumbling over the music for the responses. The notes do not fall naturally with the words.

This is something that will need to be revised if the new liturgy is going to be accepted.

Two new composers to watch

M Therese Henderson and Jocelyn Belamide are two young composers who work together and have been making a valuable contribution to the music of the Catholic church. Little of the liturgical music from the 1970s and 80s will be of lasting value, but this collaboration is something else and it is encouraging to know that there are still composers around who can produce good quality liturgical music.

We had a visiting choir from Italy this week, with a very patient choir master who taught some of us a Mass and some other music by these composers, including a beautiful setting of the Panis Angelicus which was not at all difficult to learn.

However, it seems that most of their work has been in Italy and the settings we sang were in Italian.

They deserve a wider audience. I hope that in due course they will set their music to the Latin texts if they have not already done so, and possibly also write settings for the new English translations. If set in Latin, the music would work well with the Gregorian chant settings of the Propers and could be used for Extraordinary Form celebrations of the Mass

Gregorian Chant Day at Portsmouth, 12 June

This was the first event run by Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge I have attended since the death of the founder, Dr Mary Berry. It was well worth while. I learnt some new things and the day concluded with a performance of Vespers in the Catholic Cathedral.

I had forgotten how impressive and numinous the Office could be. I am sure there would be many conversions if we made the effort and reinstated the traditional Latin Liturgy. Is is extremely powerful, bringing man to God like almost nothing else can.

Five lines good, four lines better

Arguments often arise about whether it is better to use four or five-line (modern) notation for Gregorian chant. The advocates of modern notation are usually people who have had some kind of musical training, and they have even been known to suggest that beginners should start with the modern notation then move on to the "more difficult" four line scores.

If you can't read music anyway there is absolutely no point whatsoever in bothering with modern notation for Gregorian chant. It just adds confusion. Start with the four-line scores.

Why?
The traditional notation was invented for the specific purpose of writing down the chant, so that people could sing it consistently. The notation is tailored to the chant. The groups of notes, called neumes, give a very clear indication of how they should sound, illustrating the pitch, length and dynamic in a compact and concise way with each neume on the stave directly above the syllable it refers to.

So what is wrong with modern notation?
Several things. Five lines are obviously more difficult to read than four. The words are all spread out, which does not help with reading and singing it as a text, which is the primary purpose of the chant, as an embellished form of text reading rather than a musical performance. Modern notation also ties the singers to a key, which may not be the one they would like to sing in, since it might be too high or too low for their voices. And there are many subtleties in the chant which are easily shown in the original notation but which cannot easily be portrayed in modern notation, with the result that the music itself suffers and the refinements get lost. Ultimately, modern notation destroys the chant.

So is traditional notation difficult for beginners?
Not really. Gregorian chant is graded. A single note is shown as a little black square. That could not be simpler. The groups of notes are best learnt a few at a time, starting with the two-note neumes and then going on to the three- and four-note neumes. It is useful, though not essential, to learn the names of the different groups. If you are a novice, do not be scared, just start at the beginning with the simple stuff. If you are teaching, please don't bamboozle your pupils with chant written in modern notation.

How to read chant from a score