Stomping Feet, Clattering Hooves, and Other Chant-Related Matters
Did you know that St. Augustine described the sound of one hand clapping?
“If we do not love those whom we see, how can we love God, Whom we do not see?” Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
Dr. Charles Weaver is on the faculty of the Juilliard School, and serves as organist and director of music at St. Mary’s Church in Norwalk, Connecticut. His research interests include the history of music theory and the theory of plainchant rhythm. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and four children.—Read full biography (with photographs).
Did you know that St. Augustine described the sound of one hand clapping?
“Nothing so arouses the soul, gives it wing, sets it free from the earth, releases it from the prison of the body, teaches it to love wisdom, and to condemn all the things of this life, as concordant melody and sacred song composed in rhythm.” —St. John Chrysostom
A proposal: if we are going to study something as important and mysterious as Gregorian chant, we ought to be able to perform it convincingly in several different ways.
Dom Mocquereau’s editions are a compromise between tradition and paleography. This explains his sometimes surprising semiological conclusions.
The beginnings of a response to mensuralism from the classic Solesmes point of view.
Every Gregorian melody is a precious gift, and every time we meet a melody again, we have a chance to consider some new aspect.
I recently appeared on Square Notes, the Sacred Music Podcast to discuss some of the basics of Dom Mocquereau’s system of Gregorian rhythm. It’s impossible to give a full treatment to such a complex topic in a mere forty minutes, but I touched on a lot of the foundational ideas, with especial emphasis on the […]
We should define our terms. What makes a syllable accented, and what makes an accent a tonic accent?
There’s nothing necessarily authentic about the “authentic” rhythm.
A brief historical survey of free rhythm in plainchant, as practiced from the modern monastic foundation of Solesmes (1833) to the present.
A few further thoughts on what ways of singing chant are “allowed.”
Ostrowski, wishing to avoid fussiness, may justifiably refuse this invitation. But to argue, as he has, that these signs and the prayerful and aesthetic movements they embody are “illicit” is just wildly off the mark.
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