I think this is someone's idea of what chant "really" sounded like back then.
My guess is that there was no pedal point bass in the background making harmony and that the main tune was not sung in such a very flexible manner, which is suitable only for a solo voice like the one here, but rather by something closer to what we know as Gregorian chant today.
Reminds one that Gregory was a Papal legate to Constantinople and picked up a lot of chant influence from there for his adaptations later. This is beautiful chant Jeff - heard a LOT very similar to it in the Orthodox churches and monasteries I've visited.
Though the earliest surviving mss of this stuff are much later, and scarcer, than what we have for the Gregorian corpus (which itself is some centuries on from whenever it actually arose).
To Jeff: if this is (as a quick google suggests) a tractus (sung instead of Alleluia on various days) then as I recall (I'm familiar only with one, atypical, monastic usage, and have forgotten most of the stuff I knew in theory) it is a chant sung by the schola, not by the whole monastic (or capitular?) choir. Moreover the contemporary accounts we have (much earlier than the earliest musical record we have of this repertory) suggests that there was a "performance practice" in Rome rather different from that Oop North. Probably things sounded very different in different places, much as they do today: horrible whiny old Solesmes recordings are not much like Pluscarden are not much like Westminster Cathedral are not much like six elderly hermit nuns and a tone-deaf novice are not much like plainchant with a Debussy-esque organ support are not much like Marcel Peres - who is quite like this recording ... :-)
6 comments:
Hmmm.
I think this is someone's idea of what chant "really" sounded like back then.
My guess is that there was no pedal point bass in the background making harmony and that the main tune was not sung in such a very flexible manner, which is suitable only for a solo voice like the one here, but rather by something closer to what we know as Gregorian chant today.
Reminds one that Gregory was a Papal legate to Constantinople and picked up a lot of chant influence from there for his adaptations later. This is beautiful chant Jeff - heard a LOT very similar to it in the Orthodox churches and monasteries I've visited.
Lovely.
Very beautiful. It reminds me of the "Codex Engelberg" CD that was put out a while back...
Though the earliest surviving mss of this stuff are much later, and scarcer, than what we have for the Gregorian corpus (which itself is some centuries on from whenever it actually arose).
To Jeff: if this is (as a quick google suggests) a tractus (sung instead of Alleluia on various days) then as I recall (I'm familiar only with one, atypical, monastic usage, and have forgotten most of the stuff I knew in theory) it is a chant sung by the schola, not by the whole monastic (or capitular?) choir. Moreover the contemporary accounts we have (much earlier than the earliest musical record we have of this repertory) suggests that there was a "performance practice" in Rome rather different from that Oop North. Probably things sounded very different in different places, much as they do today: horrible whiny old Solesmes recordings are not much like Pluscarden are not much like Westminster Cathedral are not much like six elderly hermit nuns and a tone-deaf novice are not much like plainchant with a Debussy-esque organ support are not much like Marcel Peres - who is quite like this recording ... :-)
Yes, Berenike, this reminds me a lot of Perès.
It must be from the "Messe of St. Marcel", right Jeff?
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