'Gregorian Chant: a guide to interpretation and conducting' brings together the practical experience of chant performance and its long theoretical history. Intended for every plainchant lover who wants to know more about what they are singing and why, it examines such subjects as melody, rhythm, treatment of text and conducting technique, and provides clear references to both the available corpus and the wealth of secondary literature. Practical, inspired and critically aware, this handbook c...

When one realises that thousands of liturgical chants were transmitted over more than three centuries in which there were no accurate means of melodic notation, the core repertoire of Gregorian plainchant has been transmitted with an astonishing degree of uniformity.

On the other hand, these chants are reflections of a living liturgy, and thus reflections of their particular surroundings: any monastic or collegial environment could develop its own conventions in relation to what only seems to...

At various times and places, elaborate musical formulas (‘tones’) have been used for sung lessons on solemn liturgical occasions. The best-known are the tones used for the lessons of the first nocturn of the Night Office during the Triduum Sacrum. The first three lessons of each Night Office were taken from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. The current edition offers Lamentations as notated in five sources from the Low Countries. At present these are the only manuscripts from the region known...