Decadent Enchantments: The Revival of Gregorian Chant at Solesmes (Volume 10)

California Studies in 19th-Century Music

by Katherine Bergeron

The oldest written tradition of European music, the art we know as Gregorian chant, is seen from an entirely new perspective in Katherine Bergeron's engaging and literate study. Bergeron traces the history of the Gregorian revival from its Romantic origins in a community of French monks at Solesmes, whose founder hoped to rebuild the moral foundation of French culture on the ruins of the Benedictine order. She draws out the parallels between this longing for a lost liturgy and the postrevolutionary quest for lost monuments that fueled the French Gothic revival, a quest that produced the modern concept of "restoration."
Bergeron follows the technological development of the Gregorian restoration over a seventy-year period as it passed from the private performances of a monastic choir into the public commodities of printed books, photographs, and Gramophone records. She discusses such issues as architectural restoration, the modern history of typography, the uncanny power of the photographic image, and the authority of recorded sound. She also shows the extent to which different media shaped the modern image of the ancient repertory, an image that gave rise to conflicting notions not only of musical performance but of the very idea of music history.

Genres: Music, History, Religion

196 pages, Hardcover

First published July 11, 1998

Reviews

[Andrew Marr · Rating 5 out of 5]

The ancient music of Gregorian chant has come to enchant many people, including many who have little or no interest in religion. There are questions such as how Gregorian the chant is as well as how ancient it really is. This highly engaging book explores such paradoxes while telling the story of the revival of plainchant centered on the French monastery at Solesmes during the 19th century. As with many churches, the monastery and its chant needed to be revived after the ravages of the Napoleonic war. The study of chant, the creation of performing editions and scholarship of hard-to-decipher manuscripts make up the story. Has the tradition really been uncovered, or do we have a new thing never experienced on the face of the earth? Or something in between. Readers fascinated by plainchant who would like to learn about the beginning of its revival (which is still ongoing) and readers interested in monastic history will find this an informative and enjoyable read written by a Catholic who had grown up in a church without plainchant and who discovered it at Wesleyan University.