Performance Practice and Mayo-8

Christian Krohg, '22

Chant performance practice has long been debated by scholars and musicians alike. The process of understanding how chant was performed is the best approach to understanding how it originally sounded. The lack of written records and limitations of available manuscripts (and, needless to say, no original recordings) are the largest aspects that hinder the process of recovering or recreating chant in its original form. Chant, much like any form of oral transmission, was constantly evolving and varied depending on geographic region. This constant evolution, lack of written record, and local performance practices make it very difficult to know how close modern renditions come to recreating what these chants originally sounded like. There are two broad approaches to performing chant today: one side argues that performances should be as historically informed as possible, while the other approach allows performers freer artistic rein. With the intentions of best understanding Mayo-8, we will examine as much historical evidence as we can to understand what these chants originally sounded like and how they were performed.

Analyzing multiple components of chant gives scholars the best shot at most accurately reproducing chant performance. A few essential aspects of chant performance include tempo, pitch, vocal color and timbre, dynamics, improvisation, ornamentation, and rhythm. Furthermore, there are aspects of dialect and other speech practices of the time that would impact the sound of chant. Many of the practices of chant performance were passed down through tradition which limits our scholarly ability to know performance practices with any certainty. Some of the specific limitations of Gregorian Chant come from the notation (or lack thereof); the manuscripts usually contain short rubrics that seldom include instructions for the performers, the Latin chant text, and the notes. There is no indication of a specific rhythm. Mayo-8 presents several of these limitations.

Chant was performed with liturgical intentions in a liturgical setting. It is evident that chant would be performed differently depending on the significance of the feast day and in what liturgical setting it was being performed. The specific service or feast the chant was being performed at would have a large impact on the intentions of the performance and the resulting aural product. Additionally, when a day carried more significance the chants would likely be performed at a slower tempo. Depending on the importance of the day, more singers might participate in performing a chant. There were many conventions to performing chant, one of the largest deciding factors of the performance was based on who is performing. Soloist, for example, might add ornamentation, introduce rhythmic differences, and make melodic changes that were not recorded in manuscripts. Little evidence survives concerning these aspects of soloistic practices.

There are several performance techniques used that were commonly noted on the manuscripts or, more often, simply passed down through tradition. One type of chant, responsorial, consisted of a soloist alternating with a choir. Another form of performance is called alternatim chant, which featured alternations between two groups of singers.

In the nineteenth century, a group of scholarly monks attached to the Solesmes Abbey in France undertook a project to revive and improve chant notation and to increase the consistency of chant performance. The Solesmes approach derived rhythm entirely from the texts themselves. It is important to note that the expression of rhythm in its relationship to the syllables of the text is one of the most contested attributes of chant performance. The Solesmes conventions were primarily neumatic, where notes were each sung equal in length for every syllable with select integration of melismas (single syllable receives multiple notes). Other scholars believe that chants would have been performed with a more free-flowing and expansive rhythm. There is, however, no true historical indication that rhythm and note values would be extremely strict and tied to the text in the Solemnes manner.

With a better understanding of chant performance practices, we can begin to imagine what Mayo-8’s original performances might have sounded like. Because there is no continuous performance tradition, no stable meaning for some aspects of the written notation, and no definitive guide to how chant interpretations changed over time, we are left to take make scholarly estimations of exactly how Mayo-8 would have been performed and how it would have sounded.

Works Cited

Brown, Howard Mayer, David Hiley, Christopher Page, Kenneth Kreitner, Peter Walls, Janet K. Page, D. Kern Holoman, Robert Winter, Robert Philip, and Benjamin Brinner. "Performing practice." Grove Music Online. 2001. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040272.

Cardine, Eugène, David Hiley, and Richard Sherr. "Solesmes." Grove Music Online. 2001. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000026139.

“Gregorian Chant History.” Abbaye Saint-Pierre Solesmes, n.d. 

https://www.solesmes.com/history.

Hiley, David. "Recent Research on the Origins of Western Chant." Early Music 16, no. 2 (1988): 203-13. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3127192.

Schenbeck, Lawrence. "Research Report: Liturgical Chant, Part II: Performance Practice." The Choral Journal 43, no. 1 (2002): 59-61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23554200.

Smith, Richard A. "Recovering Gregorian Chant to Renew the Choral Repertory: Part I." The Choral Journal 46, no. 8 (2006): 22-30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23556152.