3: Solesmes and Gregorian Chant

      While the organ world was embroiled with its own philosophical imbroglios, what was to be a seminal musical influence in France was established in 1832 by Pope Gregory XVI in the form of the Benedictine monastery of Solesmes. Under the guidance of Dom Prosper Guéranger, this abbey—which was partially destroyed during la Terreur—baulked the anti-Catholic rancour that pervaded post-revolutionary France. With its Ultramontane proclivities, Solesmes became the focal point for the palaeographic and semiological study of Gregorian Chant, their work culminating in the publication of the Liber Usualis in 1896, a work that ultimately would receive official papal imprimatur under Pope Pius X. Their florid and expressive chant interpretation having a complex prosody composed of a composite duple-triple rhythmical ictus was conceptually revolutionary in its day. In the Méthode raisonée de plainchant (1859), Guéranger explained, “Plainsong is an inflected recitation in which the notes have an unfixed value, the rhythm of which, essentially free, is that of ordinary speech.” Prior to this, chant in the Gallican tradition was performed with a very strict note-for-note hymn-like homophonic accompaniment in metrical rhythm with a “modern” diatonic harmony to painfully over-simplified chant renditions. The richly elaborate melodic freedom and nuance revealed through Solesmes’s renascent insights greatly annoyed men like Widor, who believed this style to have “too many ornaments, too many accents, and too many notes.” Widor, who continued to advocate the simplified method that more adeptly reflected his notion of strict metronomical volonté, rather indignantly remarked:

The rhythmical freedom of Gregorian chant clashes with our strict metronomic time. What task requires more delicate handling than the transcription into modern notation of a vocal Gradual or of an Alleluia? The transcriber is reduced to the necessity of verbal explanations: quasi recitativo, rubato, expressivo, a piacere, &c.

Video: Charles Tournemire “Offertoire” for Candlemas from “L’Orgue Mystique”