Restoration of Gregorian chants is the process of restoring the original
melody
A melody (from Greek language, Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a Linearity#Music, linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most liter ...
in
Gregorian Chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe durin ...
manuscripts.
Research
All mainstream editions of chant books (
Vatican,
Solesmes, etc.) are known to contain a large number of errors. Comparative studies have been undertaken in which related groups of the earlier rhythmic unheightened
neumatic manuscripts are set in large tables of comparison which is juxtaposed with a similar table of later
melodic linear notations.
Description
Research by Dom. Jean Claire in the field of
modality
Modality may refer to:
Humanities
* Modality (theology), the organization and structure of the church, as distinct from sodality or parachurch organizations
* Modality (music), in music, the subject concerning certain diatonic scales
* Modalitie ...
has shown that the third and eighth modes have had their dominants raised from B to C. In mode III is E authentic; the dominant a fifth above is B, which in many chants is raised to C in official editions. Not only are many chants in mode III and VIII in need of melodic restitution, there are errors in all other modes. The Munsterschwarzach-Group (Godehard Joppich, Stefan Klockner et al.)(publishers of the ''Beiträge zur Gregorianik'') have been issuing their own melodic restitutions, as has Anton Stingl, and Geert Maassen with his
Fluxus
Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...
.notation. Whereas some of the researchers are hoping to establish an
Urtext edition, others have given this up as unrealistic and prefer not to mix manuscripts into 'editorial soup' but to respect them as local variants in their own right.
In 2010 Con Brio, Regensburg, published the
Graduale Novum
The gradual ( la, graduale or ) is a chant or hymn in the Mass, the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, and among some other Christians. It gets its name from the Latin (meaning "step") because it was once chanted ...
, pro Dominicis et Festis, which is another step along the way of melodic restitution, and judging by some essential critique, not the last word on the issue.
Though much has been published concerning melodic restitution in academic circles, it has not reached the area of chant performance practice and remains a mostly specialist subject.
References
{{Reflist
for the melodic restitutions of Anton Stingl, see: http://www.gregor-und-taube.de/
for Geert Maassens melodic restitutions in Fluxus notation, see:
www.gregoriana.nl where you can find as well a downloadable file of Chis Hakkennes'
Graduale Lagal
for the Graduale Novum, see: http://www.conbrio.de/musikbuch/graduale/graduale.php
Christian chants