A Beginner's Guide To Reading Gregorian Chant Notation

by Noel Jones

"This wonderful little book is the chant-equivalent of Dick and Jane…a refreshing way to reduce an idiom carrying with it a mysterious theoretical and stylistic aura to the fundamental, even primal musical language" Haig Maridosian • The American Organist This is the easiest book in print that gets you started reading Gregorian Chant. We do this by printing out the notes and signs as big as they were back in medieval days. Big notes are easier to read and remember.

You will learn the simple note patterns.

And when you open The Parish Book of Chant or the Liber Usualis you'll be able to read the notes. In Gregorian Chant notes are arranged like a train....each note or grouping has a clear purpose and when connected to its neighbors makes up a melody. Join the new schola at your church or school and find yourself confident and comfortable reading Gregorian Chant. More

This was a great refresher, it's been years since I sang chant and this brought it all back to me fast! Our schola appreciates how effective this book is, seeing these big notes makes it so much easier to recognize them in today's small printed pages that we usually find in churches.

Genres: Music

78 pages, Paperback

First published July 28, 2008

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tonight I finished reading A Beginner's Guide To Reading Gregorian Chant Notation. Gregorian chant is the foundation of the modern system of musical notation.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is clearly a use for this little book, but it's not ready for primetime. The proofing is so bad that multiple sentences on later pages are ripped off midstream at the end of a line. For such a tiny book, it's quite a bit *longer* than it needs to be since every individual concept, however boneheadedly simple, not only gets a two page spread, in the middle of the book the author does three basic ones over again. Meanwhile some of the more confusing stuff is left very underexplained (partly via aforementioned truncated sentences).

So if you actually understand neumes, go write up a little guidebook. It would be almost impossible not to improve on this one.

[Daniel Volpato]

Excellent for someone that wants to be introduced to singing gregorian chant. It lacks a suplement (online would be nice) with the audio recordings of each of the "scores" presented. This would help those without previous knowledge of music scores. Since this supplement does not exist, some notion on reading scores is recommended.

Ideal para iniciantes, como diz o título, porém, extremamente simples. Faltou um suplemento (ainda que online) com as gravações em áudio de cada uma das linhas apresentadas. Facilitaria para aqueles com nenhum contato anterior com partituras. Como este suplemento não existe, um pouco de noção de leitura de partituras é recomendada.

[Pauline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

This is a great little book. It does exactly what it promises in very clear diagrams. I now understand Gregorian notation :0)