By Sr. Fidelis
We have wonderful and stimulating disagreements in our scholas! It is thrilling when schola members are so engaged that the small details matter — the lengthening of a note, the shaping of a particular neume — all in an effort to bring out the meaning of a word or phrase within a chant. That being said, however, I would like to offer us a quote this week from Dom Eugene Cardine about the final goal of chant:
“Gregorian Chant is a sung word, a sacred word which comes to us from God in Holy Writ and returns to God in praise…we must so greatly assimilate the result of our work that we end up by forgetting technique so that the listener does not hear it either…May good sense guide us and keep us halfway between inaccessible perfection and a routine which is too easily satisfied with anything at all.” (pp. xxviii-xxxi, The Restoration of Gregorian Chant, Dom Pierre Combe, trans. Marier/Skinner, Catholic University of America Press, 2003.)
May all of our discussions have this blessed ending!
