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You are here: Home / Others / Paléographie musicale online

Paléographie musicale online

August 18, 2010 by Allen H Simon 4 Comments


It's the millennium for the Abbey of Solemnes — this French abbey, which has been the world center for Gregorian chant scholarship since the 19th century, was founded in the year 1010. 
 
When I was an undergraduate and took a course in chant, I found the early manuscripts fascinating, particularly the ones which pre-dated Guido and his staff-line system for indicating pitch. The most extensive collection of such manuscripts was published in facsimile over the period of about 1890-1910 under the title Paléographie musicale. These dozens of volumes, incorporating thousands of early chant manuscripts, are now available online, viewable via an online viewer or as PDF files. 
 
When I've performed chant with my choir, I've sometimes presented them with samples of these early manuscripts to help them better understand what these chants meant to the early church. It's tempting for modern singers to treat them like any other composition, as a creation of notes, but they're really more like an enhancement of the words, as seeing the cheironomic symbols shown at right makes clear. Having this terrific resource at our fingertips makes presenting this understanding much easier.
 
h/t The Chant Café

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Comments

  1. David Topping says

    November 24, 2023 at 10:17 am

    Jiří, the English version of Gregorian Semiology does not appear to be available online, as it is still under copyright, published by Paraclete Press. I found it on the German version of Amazon for €19.00:

    https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Eugene-Cardine/dp/2852740672/

    Robert M. Fowells is no longer living, having passed away in November 2016 at the age of 94. His obituary is in this publication:

    https://www.calstatela.edu/sites/default/files/emeritimesf16.pdf

    Peace,
    David Topping

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    • Marie Grass Amenta says

      November 25, 2023 at 8:55 am

      Thank you, David, for explaining about Robert M. Fowells for this person!

      ~Marie

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  2. James D. Feiszli says

    August 18, 2010 at 1:50 pm

    Anyone interested in this subject should obtain a copy of the Dom Cardine book Gregorian Semiology, available in English translation by Robert Fowells.  It explains how the neumes should be interpreted.
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    • hodina says

      November 23, 2023 at 1:48 pm

      Dear Mr. Robert Fowells,

      could you please send me Cardin’s semiology in English? In pdf or word? I have international students at faculty in Prague and I could really use this copy. I have a French edition at home. I studied in Paris with L.M.Vigne.

      Thank you very much in advance.

      Jiří Hodina
      https://youtu.be/yJaqtIfBK14?feature=shared

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