CHANT - Easy or Hard?

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My brother was the same; boy soprano soloist as a youth, bass-baritone as an adult. I hope it isn’t ‘wrecked’ but rather 'recovering!"
 
I found it easy, but I grew up with it. Apparently, I joined in “qui ex Patre Filioque procedit” before I was singing nursery rhymes. There go my chances of joining the Eastern Orthodox! I was a chorister at school and the Introit from our founder’s day Mass was quite complicated. I could chant it then, but I don’t think I could do it now.
 
I didn’t find it impossible to learn and I started from Ground Zero: absolutely no musical notions. I find chant notation in fact easier than modern music notation. I think most simple chant settings are well within the reach of a congregation.

However the more complicated and melismatic chants of the Propers is probably not so easy for beginners. It takes a while to properly form a newbie in our schola. The tough part is blending the voices so that we all sing with one voice, no one voice dominating.

The toughest are graduals and offertories of the Graduale Roman. They require a lot of practice. Some introits, alleluias and communion antiphons can also be a handful.

For less experienced choirs, there is also the Graduale Simplex. The antiphons and psalmody follow the style of the Divine Office, that is simpler less melismatic antiphons, and psalmody on the simple version of each tone rather than the solemn version.
snarflemike said:
I’m in a schola that sings for one Mass a month, plus occasional feast days (last was Assumption) and weddings.
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Same here, about the same frequencies. We also do the Liturgy of the Hours (Vespers) in Advent and Lent, and Lauds on Holy Saturday. Plus we do recitals; our mission is to make Gregorian chant known. As church attendance isn’t so great in Québec, we do a lot of that through recitals, fundraisers, etc.

We also do funerals and a wedding. I say that jokingly: we do many funerals, but alas so far only one wedding in my 17 years as a chorister, and it was the daughter of one of our choristers… I wish we did more weddings, the one we did was very uplifting.

I’m also the only one in the choir who has mastered the Gregorian psalm tones, so that makes me the go-to person for pointing psalm texts for the others. I myself hate using pointed psalms. I find that does to my singing skills what GPS does to my navigating skills.
 
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We’ll be doing our third wedding of the year in October. Young people are coming out of the woodwork for chant. 🙂 (the last was our parish youth director)
 
Entwhistler said:
That is the toughest part of getting a schola going. This can take time…
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Exactly, and because of that ex-opera singers are not always the best candidates for a schola. The founding principle of blending is humility.
 
snarflemike said:
Getting rid of the American 'R’s is also an ongoing effort.
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Oh man is this ever true! Fortunately our schola is made up almost entirely of native French speakers, so we know how to roll our “R’s”, but when I hear a schola made up of anglophones… it can be cringe-worthy.
 
I’m okay with chanting! However, most people in my church who had no previous experience in Latin and are speaking a completely different language (such as Korean) had a lot of trouble.

I may have been used to the chanting as I lived in Canada for 10 years and was confirmed and conditionally baptized in a Catholic church in Canada.
 
There is actually interest in chant and polyphony in the Far East (and they’re not at all affected by the Chant Cooties syndrome so prevalent now in the West). One example:



 
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Actually simple tone is easy enough for most people. Full Gregorian chant is complex and difficult for experienced singers and takes an enormous amount of work to accomplish well. As someone who has sung the Latin Mass, I can say that we practiced—a lot. The parish did not sing the chant except for those they knew well. This held true for English hymns as well. As a note I find that for me the Latin Chant adds a pious beauty to mass that hymns do not
 
stpurl said:
I hope it isn’t ‘wrecked’ but rather 'recovering!"
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I still go to Southern Gospel singings in the area, but the voice usually shot by the end of the 3rd or 4th song, and I’m reduced to sotto voce for the rest of the event. However, at the most recent one (a week ago yesterday) I was able to sing full-voice for the entire three hours; it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to do that.

D
 
LilBiddyLeah said:
Actually simple tone is easy enough for most people. Full Gregorian chant is complex and difficult for experienced singers and takes an enormous amount of work to accomplish well. As someone who has sung the Latin Mass, I can say that we practiced—a lot. The parish did not sing the chant except for those they knew well. This held true for English hymns as well. As a note I find that for me the Latin Chant adds a pious beauty to mass that hymns do not
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I would assume we mean the kind of chant that some members of the faithful would have done at some point in the past? In other words, plainchant?
 
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I don’t think learning chant notation is all that hard. And one you get the hang of the breathing rythmn that’s not so hard.

What I think many people have trouble with is maintaining pitch.

I think western ears are used to finding pitch through multi-part harmony. Without other voice parts they tend to lose pitch much more quickly than they would otherwise.
 
It is easy to do poorly, and it is hard to do well; even harder to do excellently.
 
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