Learning how to chant... help!

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roccoangelo

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Greetings,

I’m sure this question has already come up in this forum at some point, but at any rate, does anyone know of any Gregorian Chant cd’s that come with the Latin lyrics? I’m in a relatively new choir at church and I’d like to be able to practice chanting on my own but I don’t have the Latin lyrics to any of my chant cd’s. Any help would be appreciated, thanks. 🙂

Pax Vobiscum,
Rocco
 
roccoangelo said:
Greetings,

I’m sure this question has already come up in this forum at some point, but at any rate, does anyone know of any Gregorian Chant cd’s that come with the Latin lyrics? I’m in a relatively new choir at church and I’d like to be able to practice chanting on my own but I don’t have the Latin lyrics to any of my chant cd’s. Any help would be appreciated, thanks. 🙂

Pax Vobiscum,
Rocco
Click to expand...
Learning the Gregorian chant is a LOT MORE than listening to a CD or seeing a page of the lyrics. It is sort of complicated but not impossible to learn from what I understand.

You can call my parish and they may put you in touch with our choir director who can point you to materials to learn Gregorian Chant.

Mater Ecclesiae Roman Catholic Church
1-856-753-3408

Ken
 
There is this book called the Liber Usualis which contains all of the Gregorian chants used by HMC and preserves the original notation of the Gregorian chants. If you are a complete purist and addicted to historical accuracy, you can attempt to learn this way. I would not recommend this.

The reality is that we children in 1957 starting from the first grade on were taught to sing a) in Latin and b) in plainsong (the easiest form of chant) by the good sisters. We did not chant the LOTH chants which account for most of the Liber Usualis but rather those chants which are in common usuage throughout the liturgical year.

amazon.com/Salve-Regina-Gregorian-Chant/dp/B0000040ZC/sr=1-5/qid=1162521442/ref=sr_1_5/103-8451467-4246223?ie=UTF8&s=music

I have this album on both LP and CD. It was recorded back around, oh, 1960 or so and contains most, if not all, the Gregorian chants you will need - except for the Mass settings - Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Pater Noster (you get a break there, you know the tune already, you just need to learn the Latin) and Agnus Dei. At $10, this is a cheap way to get a basic introduction to the classic chants that I grew up with.

Now, my parish uses Worship III and I know that many of the chants on this album are included in modern notation. Listen to the monks and sing along. Pay attention to the rising and falling of the notes and how your breath inhales and exhales along with the music.

My parish is a cathedral parish and of the 17 tracks on this album we have sung 13 for years in addition to some others (e.g. Jesu Dulcis Memoria) which were standards when I was growing up. It would help if you could hear them in their proper liturgical context too - such as Hodie Christus Natus Est which is sung at the very beginning of Midnight Mass on Christmas or track 18 the Victimae paschalis laudes which is the Easter Sequence (which you may have heard sung in English “Christians to the Paschal Victim”).

Don’t loose heart. Remember I learned (and retained) all of this from 1957 through 1965 (first through ninth grade) when we went to the hybrid transistional Mass for two years before welcoming Simon and Garfunkle and Sons of God, Hear His Holy Word and They’ll Know We Are Chritians by Our Love and other immortal post V II classics.
 
I think all of the CDs by the monks of Solesmes have the Latin text. But…

You should be able to find just about any chant in the Graduale or the Kyriale available here

You can follow along while studying the music and/or the text. And I highly recommend that you learn chant notation rather than modern notation.

There’s probably nothing more important to remember than that chant does not have beats. Chant should sound like the image of waves rolling upon the sea, or like the image of moving a ribbon up and down under water. This is much more difficult to achieve when the chant is written out in modern notation, because we are so trained to treat modern notation metrically, with beats and fixed timing.
 
Mike, with respect, I grew up learning chant by rote. I didn’t learn how to begin to read music (modern notation) until the sixth grade. In high school, the Brothers taught what I alluded to in my post regarding the rising and falling (wave imagery) and the connection to the inhaling and exhaling of one’s breath - Hildegard Von Bingen’s “feather on the breath of God”.

My choir has a special “team” of us old fogeys. We don’t read Gregorian notation but modern notation. BUT, in reality, none of us are “reading” the music. We are chanting in the way we were taught as kids. I don’t “chant” chant…I feel chant and I see chant…I can see Sister and Brother in my mind’s eye teaching us…it is hard to explain…I automatically drop into where I need to be, my mind is focused, chant becomes prayer, and, no, I am not reading the music. I have no need to read the music. I learned these chants by rote as a child and a teenager.

Now, I can add or reduce emphasis on the direction of our choir director. We do our best chanting during the Triduum. From the Pange Lingua on Holy Thursday, the Vexilla Regis on Good Friday…the Vidi Aquam and Victimae paschali laudes on Easter Sunday and then the sequences that follow until the resumption of Ordinary Time.
 
How about “O Lux Beatissima” by Cantores in Ecclesia. Latin words are included in the brochure.

And “Gregorian Melodies, Popular Chants” vol. 2,
by the Monastic Choir of St.Peter’s Abbey, Solesmes.

Both CD’s are very well done. Yes, Chant is more than just listening to a CD but lets be practical about it. Unless you can afford to sign up for one of the excellent Chant seminars and travel to the various locations, I would suggest that you get a copy of the ‘Crisis’ magazine article “Garage Scola” and follow the recomendations listed there
 
brotherhrolf said:
Mike, with respect, I grew up learning chant by rote. I didn’t learn how to begin to read music (modern notation) until the sixth grade. In high school, the Brothers taught what I alluded to in my post regarding the rising and falling (wave imagery) and the connection to the inhaling and exhaling of one’s breath - Hildegard Von Bingen’s “feather on the breath of God”.

My choir has a special “team” of us old fogeys. We don’t read Gregorian notation but modern notation. BUT, in reality, none of us are “reading” the music. We are chanting in the way we were taught as kids. I don’t “chant” chant…I feel chant and I see chant…I can see Sister and Brother in my mind’s eye teaching us…it is hard to explain…I automatically drop into where I need to be, my mind is focused, chant becomes prayer, and, no, I am not reading the music. I have no need to read the music. I learned these chants by rote as a child and a teenager.

Now, I can add or reduce emphasis on the direction of our choir director. We do our best chanting during the Triduum. From the Pange Lingua on Holy Thursday, the Vexilla Regis on Good Friday…the Vidi Aquam and Victimae paschali laudes on Easter Sunday and then the sequences that follow until the resumption of Ordinary Time.
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For beginners, learning by rote is probably the best way (assuming they’re hearing it done properly, as it sounds like you did). That way they learn the “ebb and flow” of chant before becoming shackled to the marks on the paper. And I’m sure that once one knows what chant should sound like, it doesn’t matter whether they then use modern or chant notation.

But…I do think to hand newcomers some chant in modern notation is to immediately plant a false idea in their heads about how chant should sound. When one sees a long string of consecutive quarter notes, one understandably sings a long string of consecutive quarter notes, and there goes the flow which brings chant alive. So that’s why I recommend that people don’t learn to sing chant using modern notation. If they start with chant notation they won’t have as many preconceived notions about how to sing the notation since they will have never seen the notation before.

Oh, and keep up the good work. It sounds like the Brothers planted a good seed. 🙂
 
Thanks, Mike. In reading my own prior comments and then yours, I now clearly see your point about modern notation.

We still have copies of the St. Gregory hymnal in our choir library. I’m not certain what notation is used. This is the hymnal I grew up with.

I went to an all male Catholic high school. From 8th grade through 10th, it was the traditional Latin Tridentine Mass. The Brothers all wore black cassocks, had large pectoral crosses, and a big rosary around their waists as a cincture. One sat with one’s class and one had better sing and chant because Brothers and lay teachers were very ummmm observant. In the 11th grade we transitioned to the hybrid NO dropped the chant but kept some Latin hymns. By my senior year we had nothing but guitars and sang such stuff as “Sons of God” and “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love”. The Brothers moved to black slacks, white shirts, and black tie. It is hard for me to remember that what I see in my mind’s eye may never have been seen or heard by some on these fora.

But, the whole time I was in college and in grad school, when I had to study, I played Gregorian Chant softly in the background. When I am at my calligraphy table - same thing. I play it at work when things get stressful. It puts me “elsewhere, elsewhen”. It took years but we finally got Father to let us use the Gregorian settings for the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei during Mass during Lent. It is not surprising to me that the congregation sings these chants as loudly as they do when we use some of the old traditional Catholic “warhorse” hymns (e.g. Holy God We Praise Thy Name). I am glad to see the interest in Gregorian Chant and wish it would spread.
 
VociMike said:
There’s probably nothing more important to remember than that chant does not have beats. Chant should sound like the image of waves rolling upon the sea, or like the image of moving a ribbon up and down under water. This is much more difficult to achieve when the chant is written out in modern notation, because we are so trained to treat modern notation metrically, with beats and fixed timing.
Click to expand...
Brings back memories. . . when I was learning Eastern chant, hubby and I would come back from choir practice and chant back and forth to one another . . . instructions for hanging wall paper sound wonderful in Tone 4 😛
 
roccoangelo said:
Greetings,

I’m sure this question has already come up in this forum at some point, but at any rate, does anyone know of any Gregorian Chant cd’s that come with the Latin lyrics? I’m in a relatively new choir at church and I’d like to be able to practice chanting on my own but I don’t have the Latin lyrics to any of my chant cd’s. Any help would be appreciated, thanks. 🙂

Pax Vobiscum,
Rocco
Click to expand...
you would do MUCH better if you learned how to read the notes and sing without a CD (some of the Latin pronunciation on those CD’s are awful). Start with simple things- the ordinaries for the Requiem Mass, for example.

Also, when you sing, sing very light. Chanting with too heavy a tone will destroy your voice.

If you already have CD’s and want the words to them, look up the title of the Chant online. You will probably be able to find it somewhere.
 
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