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Novititae Cantus, an electronic newsletter pertaining to chant: Volume 4Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 00:20:23 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Guido Milanese Subject: Notitiae Cantus 1997/1 I am hereby sending the new issue of Notitiae Cantus in text form. However, since both HTML and LaTeX files are available, and the output is obviously better, I would like to encourage readers to download one of these two versions, available in my homepages. Please send your articles and reviews to Notitiae Cantus! Best regards, Guido Milanese Editor of Notitiae Cantus Homepage in English: http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/3023 Homepage in Italian: http://www.mclink.it/personal/MC1194 Notitiae Cantus An International Newsletter for Gregorian Chant and other Repertoires of Western Chant IV 1 1997 INDEX 1 Investigationes de cantu 1.1 Gregorian Chant on a Floppy Disk by Guido Milanese 2 Practica cantus 2.1 Summer seminars in Italy by Guido Milanese 2.2 Review: Liber Usualis reprinted! by Guido Milanese Notitiae Cantus Subscription to this newsletter through e-mail is free. A hardcopy of Notitiae Cantus will be made available to subscribers who require or prefer this mode of publication. In order to cover the cost of printing and postage, an annual charge of $15 will be asked for this service. Preferred languages for contributions are Latin and English. Please direct your comments or questions to the Internet address mc1194@mclink.it. For WWW users, the files are available ar http://www.mclink.it/personal/mc1194/greg ornc/ or from the archive for rec.music.early on http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/earlym-l/Notitiae.Cantus/ and on ftp://ftp.wu-wien.ac.at/pub/earlym-l/Notitiae.Cantus/. This issue has been sent to 291 e-mail subscribers; 35 printed copies were sent to musicians, liturgists, and musicologists. Genova, 20 ottobre 1997 Guido Milanese Home Salita del Passero 11, I-16126 Genova GE, Italia Tel. +39.10.252959 Office Universita' Cattolica, Largo Gemelli 1, I-20123 Milano MI, Italia Tel. +39.2.72342-750, fax -740 ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// PARS 1 Investigationes de cantu 1.1 Gregorian Chant on a Floppy Disk by Guido Milanese I am currently developing a new project in order to make the research on Gregorian Chant easier and probably more successful. I am writing a "computerized" version of the Graduale Romanum, including the neumatic readings of an important manuscript of the St. Gallen area and Laon 239 when available (much similar to the system used in the Graduale Triplex). All these data are stored in text mode, but the database outputs data in graphical format, using an excellent program called Scribe (contact Professor John Stinson at musjs@LURE.LATROBE.EDU.AU). This system makes it possible to store data in a very small file, making researches fast and reliable; the output is translated "on the fly" to Scribe graphical format. The first alpha-version is ready and contains a very limited amount of texts. A beta-version should be ready by Summer of 1998 and should contain the texts of the Graduale Romanum, edition 1974, with the addition of the texts originally contained in the 1908 edition but canceled in the new one. The program will be (probably) shareware. If there are volunteers who accept to cooperate entering some pieces, please contact me and I'll send a file with the instructions to follow for the encoding of music and neumes. This kind of help would be quite welcome! /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// PARS 2 Practica cantus 2.1 Summer seminars in Italy by Guido Milanese The fourth "Corso di canto Gregoriano" (the complete name is "Testo, musica, rito", "Text, music, rite") took place in Italy (Arenzano, near Genoa, in the Italian Riviera) during the last week of August. Lecturers were Godehard Joppich (Germany), F.M. Quoex (France), Fabrizio Fancello, Massimo Lattanzi, Giorgio Mazzucato, Guido Milanese, G.M. Tomasi (Italy). Students were about fifty, from absolute beginners to well known musicians and scholars. Students and lecturers performed a concert on Friday, Vespers of Our Lady on Saturday and a Solemn Mass on Sunday. Another interesting summer class was held in Central Italy (Massa, Tuscany) in September. The course (given by G.M.) was organized by H.E. the Bishop of Massa for priests, nuns and laymen interested in chant. The seminar was concluded on Saturday, the 4th of October, with the Pontifical Vespers celebrated by H.E. the Bishop of Massa, and broadcasted by a Catholic radio. The students of this seminar were helped in the performance of the Vespers by Ars Antiqua, the vocal ensemble lead by G. Milanese. After Vespers, Ars Antiqua offered a concert of Gregorian Chant, Ambrosian Chant, and Mediaeval polyphonic music. 2.2 Review: Liber Usualis reprinted! by Guido Milanese A reprint of the Liber Usualis (with introduction and rubrics in English, 1953 edition, with supplemental pages for feasts up to 1962) has been recently made available by St. Bonaventure Publications, 324 Central Avenue, Suite 105, Great Falls, MT 59401-3114, (phone 406- 452-5452; e-mail rebooks@mcn.net. The WWW site is http://www.mcn.net/relbooks/). Price is $95.00 plus $7.00 shipping. This reprint LU is obviously welcome - even if I think that it would have been wiser to reprint the "full Latin" edition, more palatable to users outside the English world. However, this is a very useful edition. But, even if I repeat that this is a useful reprint, I cannot help saying that it is also a "mixed blessing". The LU is something like a symbol of the "method of Solesmes": it contains all the Solesmes "rhythmica signa", that we know - after 40 years of modern palaeographical and semiological investigations - to be useless (if you can read the real neumes) or misleading (if you can't read neumes), because they wrongly convey and instill the idea that Gregorian rhythm is made by long and short notes, while its real nature is of being made by structural notes and ornamental ones, as in many other traditions of Mediterranean music. In other words, this LU will be useful to many choirs: but will it be helpful towards an adequate and competent performance of Gregorian Chant? If a musician wants to perform Chant a requirement exists: those who conduct (not necessarily those who sing) must read and understand the ancient neumes. Otherwise, they will not perform Gregorian Chant but just the notes, nothing more: this kind of performance may be spiritually inspiring, has a certain intrinsic beauty because it preserves at least the notes of the ancient chants, but it is not Gregorian Chant, just its raw material. With the LU alone none can perform Gregorian chant: and it is lamentable that the Traditional Catholic world has so little interest towards a really traditional performance of Gregorian chant. It is deplorable that many among those who use Gregorian Chant in its "real place" (liturgy) perform a modernized and altered version of Gregorian Chant, while many among those who perform this music more "reliably" are interested only in concerts and recordings. One of the purposes of Notitiae Cantus is to give a contribution to fill the gap between musicological research and liturgy. It is an extremely difficult mission: but the editor believes that this is a real mission. |
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