ChantHacks with Mark Emerson Donnelly
Episode 3: The Podatus & Sanctus "ad libitum" IV
[00:00:00] Hi everyone. Let's dive into the nitty gritty of singing Gregorian Chant.
So for this episode of Chant Hacks, I thought we would dive into looking at the neumes; not so much to study them so that we can understand them from an academic standpoint, but how they can help us sing the chant better. In other words, what's the hack in the neume? What I thought I would read to you [00:01:00] is just a little bit out of "Laus and Ecclesia", and let me grab my glasses here so I can read it.
This is from lesson 11 of, level one of Laus. It's "The interpretation of Neumes". Now, "neume" comes from the Greek word "pneuma", which means breath. So a neume represents a kind of an outgoing on our part, and in this case, particularly with regards to singing. "Neumes are not random assemblages of notes, devoid of significance. Even if their value is primarily melodic, they constitute a kind of material element susceptible to being animated and vivified by the text, rhythm and style. They then become, indirectly, expressive, and can thus be the object of [00:02:00] a specific interpretation."
So, the neume is not just two notes; so it's not simply [sung Re-Mi], it means more than that.
And that particular configuration, a lower note followed by a higher note, is a configuration we call the "podatus". Dom Gajard, who, actually you hear on the opening music, he's the cantor who sings the "Jubilate", " Dom Gajard often used to say in jest that a special place would be reserved in heaven for those who could sing the podatus correctly." That's because it's sung very poorly often. It's simply either sung as two notes of even strength, or it sung [00:03:00] with the top note being louder than the bottom. So it'd be sung [loud even volume] Re-Mi.
So let's look at this. "The ascending character of the podatus naturally gives it the value of an élan, a lift up." It has to lift. So if you go [sung incorrectly] Re-Mi, it's not so much a lift, but kind of a push. A lift would be [light on top] Re-Mi. So let's see, what else? Laus tells us, "The first note leads to the second. Whatever the interval that separates the two notes, the first of these two is thus normally more stressed, whereas the second being higher is also lighter." It's a light. "Above all these two notes are joined, the [00:04:00] warmth of the first blossoming out into fluidity into the second without any vocal rupture between the two."
Another thing that often people will sing [heavy separate notes], and, there's no join between them. If you see on the side there, (if you are watching this, rather than simply listening) you'll see that there are five instances of the podatus. Well, let's look at the first three. Okay. We have Re-Mi, Mi-Sol, Fa-Te.
Now those were just the notes. How does the podatus tell us to sing these notes? Well, it's not [to sing heavily]. It's [00:05:00] telling us, rather, that we sing these with that notion of the lift, that notion of the élan [good and bad examples sung]. No, we don't do that.
Okay, so that's the podatus. It's kind of that simple. There's some nuances beyond that, but if you pay attention to the podatus with that much (actually little) amount of care, then your chant will start to come alive.
We now also have the podatus, not only by itself, but with some added signs. The first one we're going to look at is if there is a "horizontal epizema", the little short line looks like, for you musicians out [00:06:00] there, looks like a tenuto mark. Okay. And what does that do? Well, we saw that we had [three podatus sung correctly].
Well, we kind of sing it the same way. As it says here in Laus, " This interpretation applies all the more if the podatus is marked with an epizema of expression."
So if we look at that fourth one [example of how the podatus is sung without the horizontal epizema], on the first one; but with the epizema we have [sung example]. ,
Dom Hébert Desrocquettes says, you can even lengthen it up to the double of the note. But that would be a special occasion [00:07:00] and it would depend on how you want to express the note. So what you want to do when you have it on the epizema, you just don't want to go [sung with added length but weakly], which is what a lot of scholas do. They'll simply just lengthen that note. But, really, what the notation indicates is that there's a bit of swelling on the note, or enlargement. [example] But the top is still soft. Okay.
Then lastly, as it says here in the text, "When the podatus is doubly dotted, each note forming a binary composite pulse," that means there's two beats on each note. (So here's something you need to know. If there's a dot on a note in Gregorian chant, it doesn't add half onto the note. This is for all musicians out there who read music. It doesn't add half of the note, but it actually doubles the note. [00:08:00] So what we have, instead of a single pulse or a single note, we have a note with double in length.) So if we look at the fifth one in our diagram here, we'll see that there's a dot on each note. So in which case, each one of those notes has a bit of a build and then a bit of a relaxation. Okay, so we get something like this [sung example].
Now again, still the top note is softer than the bottom note. So there's a build in the bottom note, and there's a build in the top note, but the one in the top note a little less so. So we have, Sol-La. Okay, so if it was on one syllable [sung example].
Now the one thing [00:09:00] we want to avoid on that is we don't want to get what's called sausage singing. [example] Something like that.
Okay, so what do we do with this now? Well, how do we put this into practice?
Well, we have a "Sanctus" here. This is an "ad libitum", it's not from any particular set of mass ordinary, and this has a lot of podatus in it. So you'll see there we have, it starts off with (I'll give myself a pitch here): [beginning of "Sanctus" sung] So you see it starts with two podatus.
So we don't go [bad example/good [00:10:00] example]. So we get a nice rhythm in that. Then you'll notice on the second sanctus there's another podatus, third sanctus, podatus on the second syllable there, and so on. There's several, and you'll notice there's different neumes in there. We'll be getting to those in future podcasts.
So what I thought I'd do is I would sing this for you; and why I think this is a good one also is that this is part of an ordinary that I put together that I just simply call Missa "ad libitum", since it's at liberty, I put the various parts of the mass together. I've actually used this ordinary since we were in Pennsylvania back in the 1990s. It's quite a nice mass, especially for a parish just starting out with the Latin Mass. It's very tuneful, as Father [00:11:00] Bachman here at Clear Creek said; it's very tuneful and it's not that difficult. This mass sort of cuts down the middle. You can use it for a regular Sunday, but it also sounds festive enough for even your patronal feast day. Okay, so here we go. This is the Sanctus "ad libitum" IV, with a lot of podatus in it.
Sanctus [sung].[00:12:00]
So there you go. There's the podatus in action, or at least in demonstration. Of course, it's in action when you sing it at Mass or the office, or just simply prayer at your own home. Okay? God bless and we will see you later.
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Again, I'd like to thank the Saint Gregory the Great Foundation of [00:13:00] Nebraska (SGGF) for their support. It's wonderful to be able to get working on these podcasts, plus working with Domus Mariae. And, speaking with a lot of people, there's other parishes and schools who are interested . I hope that I'll hear from some of you who would like to get a Domus Mariae group started in your parish community, or even just amongst your friends!
