First link didn’t work (“Not Found”), and the second required an installation of some kind that threw my computer for a loop.
I’m very interested, though. The very subject was being discussed a bit last evening among friends, and I have to say it’s a subject I know nothing about. One fellow maintained that much Gregorian chant was composed by Irish monks at the time when they were doing their thing in mainland Europe. Anything to back that up?
Hi, I fixed the link to the html version. You might need Word to read the .doc . I will try to post a pdf version at some point. The problem with the html one is that the footnotes and formating is not quite correct.
I might try to tackle a more indepth answer to the Irish monks as composers theory later on, but I have been told that the Irish monks were taught an early form of the chant when they were first evangelized which they then brought back to Europe, preserving a more ancient form of chant while the chant became ‘corupted’ in Europe.
In class today we were looking at a twelth or thirteenth century manuscript of Notre Dame-polyphony (Referring of course to the French style of early polyphony that grew up around Notre Dame de Paris, not the school I happen to attend) which was comes from Scotland. The interesting thing is that we do not posess any manuscripts from Paris of this Parisian polyphony, all we’ve got is these Scottish and other national copies that are about fifty years younger than the original music, raising all sorts of interesting questions about what the original French notation was, and if the Scots or whoever else copied the music developed the ‘modal’ (in a different sense than notewise modal, referring to the rhythmic notation which looks similar to Gregorian square-note neums but is interpreted [controversially] quite differently, with different sets of notes representing rhythms in a bizarre way that I do not quite understand) rhytmic notation that exists in the sources handed down to us. (Some scholars, such as my Professor Alex Blachly, have posited that the original notation was closer to the simpler Calixtinus style notation still extant in Santiago, the absolute earliest polyphony still in existence.)
Its amazing when studying early notation to see how apparently difficult notational ideas that we take for granted (height on the staff representing pitch, a relatively simple system for representing duration, etc.) were to develop. Of course, the early notators of ITM had notational problems of quite a different sort, being sometimes unable to acurately pitch tunes due to modal systems they didn’t understand or to wily musicians who couldn’t play the same thing twice. (There’s an interesting story of this sort in one of O’Neill’s memoirs, describing his attempts with James O’Neill to transcribe a piper’s (Patsy Touhey? McFadden? I can’t remember) playing who kept changing the tunes around each time.)
There are quite a few similarities between sean-nós singing and Gregorian chant. One of the hardest things for me since I started learning sean-nós is I find myself wanting to throw in a few ornaments when we’re chanting the psalm at mass! But seriously…they’re more alike than not.
In her book “A Hidden Ulster”, Pádraigín Ní Uallacáin mentions in a few places the influence of French chanson styles introduced to Ireland by the Norman conquerors. You’d have to get the book to pull the references, but it might be an angle to follow up on, as the dates follow closely on the major changes in Gregorian chant referred to in your article.
This has been discussed a bit before in the boards, the link between plainsong and Irish music–indeed, the link between plainsong and all Western music.
–James
“Irony,” said the Old Witche; “It’s good for yer blood, dearie.”
What a fantastic topic. I was a medievalist in college and grad school. the Hilliard ensemble’s Perotin CD tops my list of desert island discs. Now I know why!
In Baroque music, composers expected the musician to bring an element of improvisation to the performance, in some cases significantly and in other cases at the level of ornamentation only.
Indic composition operates with similar expectations. Of course, unlike Baroque compositions, those of the Indic classical tradition are solfa notated for an oral tradition and are fairly skeletal simply recording an original theme within a modal scale marked by a certain distinctive phrase/s. Protocols within the tradition guide how the theme may be developed and presented in the various movements. (I compose in the latter vein).
PC Smith Esq., I am still going through your piece as light reading. Its fun.
Baroque music provides an interesting comparison with ITM is several ways as well, most notably in the absolute need for a proper playing style to interprete the written music at all, especially with the French music which seems to be interpreted quite differently than it is written.
On the other hand, the absolute dogmatism noticable in some baroque performers about the authors of the period texts (Quantz, etc.) on baroque style can be amusing. While the efforts of Messrs. Larsen, McCullough, and others of their ilk are certainly commendable, I would not hold their texts on Irish style as being authoritative in any way compared to the personal experience I have had with Strong Tradition Bearers that I have played and studied with. I wonder what would happen in five hundred years if somehow ITM had died out and the recordings that existed suddenly vanished, and all one had to go on trying to reconstruct the music was the 20th century books on ITM. It seems to me that you’d have quite a hard time going about it.
That was an interesting paper.