The point is that neumes capture the essence of the sound and feel of chant and express those better than any alternative. The square notes themselves were an innovation by Guido d'Arezzo, father of modern notation. It's not that anyone is opposed to innovation. Musicologists observe that singing from square notes comes closest to replicating the timeless sound heard in the earliest centuries of Christianity. There is no viable substitute for learning how to sing in the way the Church has sung for centuries - with the aid of notation developed specifically for the chant.

In any case, it will sound more like modern music than the sung prayer that it should be. The inflections and 'special effects' will be lost. You will be afraid or unwilling to abandon the written key signature. Meanwhile, the authoritative books of the Solesmes Monastery in France will continue to be forbidding.Īnd there is another problem: if you only sing chant with modern notation, the music will never sound quite right. The propers, psalms, hymns, and many Mass settings will be off limits. If you are not comfortable with neumes, the formal chant that built church music and Western music generally will be forever closed to you. You wouldn't render a Beethoven symphony in neumes any more than modern notes are a long-term chant solution. The square notes are precisely appropriate for the purpose for which they are used. Surely modern notes are more 'advanced' in the same way modern English is over Middle English or the iPod is over the 8-track tape.

Some people look at square notes and think they are some little more than a pious affectation. Rome's efforts in this regard, which date back decades and, indeed, centuries, are intensifying to the point where they will soon touch every musician in every parish if they haven't already. Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor John Paul II have stated this very explicitly. There are serious trends alive today that are going to require Church musicians at all levels to revisit the chant tradition.

This is your time-saving, ten-minute, clip-n-save intro to chant. A less ambitious person assumes that he or she doesn't need to know this old notation anyway, since it is too complicated and outmoded in any case.Įither response leads the person out of chant, and back into the status quo. Modern-note editions of chant are out there but they are difficult to find and the repertoire is limited. An ambitious person scrambles to find the same chant in modern notation, and usually fails. They don't teach reading neumes (pronounced 'nyoomz') in graduate school. Most people have no idea how to read them, and most trained musicians are as much at a loss as anyone else.

Words into music notes